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Saturday May 30, 2009
We learned a costly language lesson when we checked out of our hotel in Budapest. We decided to have the hotel launder one pair of pants for each of us so that we could fly home in a clean set of clothing. We had packed rather light on this trip to save space in our luggage for souvenirs. We checked the box on the laundry form for "pants". The price seemed really reasonable--about $5 US or so per garment. We were surprised when we checked out and found a charge that translated to about $30 US. It turns out that pants = underwear in this part of the world. We were charged for dry cleaning on two pairs of trousers. We'll definitely be more careful next time!
On the train, we staked out 2nd class seats in a six person cabin. Two couples eventually joined us. We got to chatting--they began by addressing us in German and then we soon switched to English. We learned that they were from the Netherlands near the German border and that they had just completed a cycling tour from Vienna to Budapest. Scott had nabbed a banana off the breakfast buffet at our hotel before we departed. He pulled it out about halfway through the train ride. Our Dutch friends seemed to be inspired and did the same -- bananas for all! Some things are universal... It turns out they had nabbed bananas from their hotel as well.
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