Going to Bratislava!

Well, this was the first I’ve ever backpacked in Eastern Europe. Candy asked me to travel with her before I went to Romania. And then we confirmed our trip in the early June. Thus we bought one-way train tickets to Bratislava (via Budapest) in Oradea, which cost us 150 lei per ticket (around HK$500). I am not sure if it is expensive or not. Anyway, we departed in the morning and arrived in Budapest at around 11pm.

This was the first time I visited Budapest. The Keleti train station (international train station of Budapest) was big but kind of old. The next train to Bratislava departed at 13:30, so we went to the nearby shopping mall to change some Forints and buy food. The shopping mall is quite big and we went to have some fast food. The food there was priced normally, like those in the shopping mall of Hong Kong, yet it was still expensive to me. And then we went back to the train station where we saw two old guys were betting on chess. Thus Galvin bet with one of the guys but eventually lost 200 Ft. That guy was damn good! :)


However, unfortunately, it was very hard to understand the train schedule on the board. We had a hard time finding our train, but eventually we watched our train going away. I was quite frustrated at that time. We then went to the tourist information centre to buy a new ticket. Fortunately we found that our tickets were open, which means we could take the next train to Bratislava without buying a new ticket. Then we caught the train at around 15:15 and headed for Bratislava. Finally! I was quite relieved at that moment. On the train, we met a British couple from Newcastle. They’ve just finished their trip in Budapest and now they were heading for Slovakia. They were very kind to give us some tips on where to visit in Budapest.

In Bratislava

Galvin and I arrived at Bratislava international train station at around 6pm. We had to find our way to the Hostel Blue. First we looked for the place to buy tickets. Since the information centre was closed, we went out to look for the tram station after changing money. We asked an old guy for how to buy tickets. He was so kind that we gave one ticket to us. Yet we still need one and so we found a ticket machine to buy one ticket. Since it accepted only coins, I went to buy a hamburger from a nearby store to get some coins. Surprisingly, the hamburger was much better than those in Oradea. We then got on the tram and got off at Street Vysoka where we waited for Candy. She arrived with her friend, Kate who was her high school classmate.


Then we checked in our hostel, Hostel Blue, and went to buy some drinks in TESCO. As usual, alcohol was cheaper than water, though we didn’t bought alcohol. We then tried to find a place to eat. We went into the centrum (centre in Slovak) and found a Spanish restaurant to eat. The food there was quite expensive but taste nice. But the weirdest thing was we unintentionally chose to have Spanish food in Slovakia. @@? Anyway, after the dinner, we walked around the centrum. We could find both new and old buildings in the centrum. The night view was quite nice since they put spotlights around the buildings. After a while, we went back to the hostel to plan for our trip tomorrow.


In the morning, Galvin and I woke up early and so we walked around the town to take some photos. Since it was Sunday morning, virtually there was no one on the street. Back in the hostel, we met two guys, one is from California and his name is Joe. The other guy is Chung who came from Hong Kong and studied in Singapore. He travelled alone around Asia and Europe and only spent around HK$17,000 so far, and he will go to Africa after his trip in Europe. That’s pretty amazing. We then went to Bratislava Castel, which was located on a small hill. On the way, we visited St. Martin’s Cathedral. The Cathedral was big but we could not go in because there was a Sunday mass until 1pm. Then we went up to the Castel, where we met Chung again. When we tried to find our way into the Castel, we found that it was closed due to a reconstruction. They were building a new garden behind the Castel. I have no idea if it was a reconstruction of the original garden or it was a totally new one. It was kind of disappointing and so we just stayed there to take photos of the city from the hilltop.


Then we went to Grassalkovitsch Palace, which now became the Slovak President House. It was again disappointing as it was smaller than we expected and we could not get in too. Then we went to the garden behind the Palace, which was again nothing special. We were quite bored and so we decided to go to Primate Palace since we knew there was opened.  In the Palace, there were some exhibitions of paintings and antiques. Also there was an interesting mirror hall where we found a hallway with mirrors in each room and at both ends. This concluded our whole trip in Bratislava. I was not sure if we visited the right place at the right time, but it seemed there was not much to see in Bratislava. Anyway, after we took our luggage in the hostel. We went to the bus station to catch the bus to Trecin. We were almost late for our bus as we arrived there 10 minutes before the bus departed. Fortunately it was very easy to find our bus and we paid directly to the driver. And now we were heading for Trecin.

Salut Hong Kong! (Hello in Romanian)

It has been one month since I arrived in Oradea. I am very happy to tell you guys that I just had a great 7-day international training camp here. It was not organized by AIESEC but by an NGO in Oradea called MTP. I had a great learning experience in the camp since I was coordinating 14 people from 10 different countries including Armenia, Azerbaijan, France, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Moldova, Romania, Singapore, and Sweden. Also I met 7 very professional trainers from Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia. It was really rewarding and fun. There were so many things happened in those 7 days. I think I need more time to organize all my thought. I will share with you guys later.

Anyway, right now I am working with Camelia, Aliz, Tomi and Galvin (the other AIESEC intern) in MTP office. We had a great time there. I love them so much!! Also sometimes we meet with Julia, Sara and Florian who are EVS (European Volunteering Service) volunteers in MTP. They are also very friendly.
So much has happened for the last two weeks. I wish I can share my experience with you all, but I will be going to Slovakia and Hungary to travel in the coming week. So I hope I can keep update you guys one week later la.

Btw, I got 5GB of photos and videos from the training camp. :P

There have been so many arguments about Tibet. Do they have human right in Tibet? Do they want to be part of China? Do the monks there still want farm slavery?

Are you sure about the answer?

Nowadays I don't trust media. I trust the power of internet more than the power of CCTV or the CNN. I think we should send people to Tibet and let them see it themselves. Then they should tell us the story on the internet!!!

This is what exchange is all about.

Exchange facilitates peace.

And this is what AIESEC is all about.