Bye Bye, Budapest... Guten Tag, Wien

Yvonne's lovin' it.

Quick post, since we're at a café, and whoever isn't on the computer has nothing to entertain themselves.

(The café is pretty fresh. Lots of hip furniture, by local designers, all of which is for sale. The place happens to be in the guidebook, but we just stumbled on it after dinner at a fantastic pub where we were the only English speakers. I'm busting out some phrasebook German just because our initial experiences with the Austrians were--like the weather--a tad chilly, and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot.)

Our last half day in Budapest was spent on a trek to the flea market. Nothing terribly interesting, though if I had the space at home, I would have to have some old typewriters and old phonographs.

Also had lunch at McDonald's, near the hotel, the first Mickey D's in the Eastern Bloc. I totally have no qualms with eating at the Arches abroad. How better to understand exported America than to encounter it firsthand? For the record, I had a McRoyal, made to order (sans cheese) -- sorta wish I had the McFarm, a pork sandwich, but it didn't look that great in the picture. The McDonald's there was everything McDonald's tries to be in the commercial: fun, clean as all get out, beautiful inside (upholstered booths, a flat screens playing American music videos), with middle-class diners and groups of teenagers having a grand old time. Impossible to gage how the sentiment runs in Budapest, but certainly nobody at McDonald's seem to have any thoughts of imperialism on their minds, least of all the construction worker lunching on a Big Mac and a McFarm.

First thoughts on Vienna: the maps are virtually indecipherable. We'll see if that improves as the days go on.

A whole world of records that I sadly cannot explore.

This was Burger King, not McDonald's. This, my friends, is a travesty.