I have uploaded photos that should have been included in earlier blogs about Budapest. There is one picture of a bathroom sign, that explains how different cultures can be. I can remember being in a bathroom, in between flights, tired from the 4 oclock alarm, not quite sure what country/city I was in until I saw the sign that instructed people to put used toilet paper in the bin and not the toilet bowl, and I knew I was in Athens airport.
Travelling has a way of knocking you out of zone, which is a good thing. Perspectives change. Now my bathroom at home does not seem too small at all. I had one half its size in a hotel in Santorini, and could function well enough. Throughout Austria the signs for public bathrooms is WC, water closet, and they do mean small closet. ha ha
It is the quiet that I enjoy when I travel. Not knowing the language around me can make me feel like a child, but that means I am blissfully unaware of the interactions. Peoples lips flap, and I am in my own bubble until I need to find something. Then it
is a lottery if the person I speak to can understand me, or will admit to understanding me. In Austria, I have seen too many people, in the service industry, frown when I approach them. Im not sure why, and wonder if we are all still getting over covid mentality and too slow to returning to the past. There have been really good people, such as the clerks at the local pharmacy this morning when I asked where there was a bank machine. One of them walked out to the street and took me to the ATM and pointed to a second bank down the street as back up. This was useful because the regular ATM that I used in grocery store was down.
In Hungary, I saw the same thing, staff at the train station had no interest in my questions and shook their heads angrily when I asked if anyone spoke English, but the lady in the bakery across the road was exceptionally helpful.
This morning, I decided to break my goal of never owning a cell phone and bought one at the internet cafe where buddy could set everything up for me. When I launch
A needed sign for those of us who have returned from Greece where the signs are reversed....all used toilet paper there does NOT go in toilet bowl, it goes into container beside it.
out into other countries, I may need access to internet at every nook and cranny. This morning I tried to book a hotel and got through the reservation process until a cell phone number was required. Dam, the facist cell phone companies!!!!
I am taking the train to Prague tomorrow and it is a four and a half hour trip. I guess I can read the manual for this phone then, maybe figure out if it can play any games if I tire of the view from train window. ha ha ha
The last photo in this blog is of the Brazilian embassy in Vienna, I think. I took photo from tram window, such a beautiful entrance.
