Italy-Berlin Journal (Part I)

Finally I've got the mood to blog about my long past vacations experience. It was 2nd of February 2006, the first day of my trip commenced...

DAY 1 : 2006-02-02 Budapest-Rome

I headed to Budapest Ferihegy Airport-Terminal 1 at about 1 something in the afternoon. Check in and still have another hour to go before boarding. My stomach was performing musical concert as I was too busy packing my stuff and didn't have enough time feeding him in the morning. I can't find any fast food restaurant, which ended I had to take those over priced *yikes* food in a restaurant in order to calm down my stomach.

Boarded in one of the Wizz Air planes and they started explaining all the safety precautions during emergency. While I was trying hard to concentrate on the demonstration of the air stewards/stewardesses, their slogan kept appearing in my mind..."Now we can all fly"....hmmm, true, even the ugly not-so-attractive steward/stewardess can also fly.

Since there were no CUTE stewards to soothe my eyes, I was staring out the window most of the time.

My plane flew at 14:45 and reached Rome-Ciampino Airport at 16:20. The pilot announced that it was like 15°C in Rome, which was kinda Spring-feel. Great...finally I could runaway from the bloody cold weather of Budapest. I didn't feel quite excited when I reached the airport though. No one was waiting for me there, in return, I had to wait for my herd of friends coming from Berlin which will only arrive in 3 hours time. Tik tok tik tok...I had to wait in that small little arrival hall for 3 hours.

Before I continue, let me introduce my herd of backpacking companions. There were 5 of them (3 guys 2 girls), in which I actually only knew one, JiunnLoong-the-Doctor. Well, he's not really a doctor YET but will soon to be, in 2 years time. 5 of them were Malaysians, studying in Ukraine in Medical line. In short, all of them will be doctors in 2 years time. According to them, almost 1500 Malaysians are now breathing in Ukraine, ALL studying in the same university, ALL in the same course, ALL lining up to be doctors. Scary or not? A mini Malaysia in Ukraine, and all are DOCTORS-to-be!

Okay, back to the trip, when everyone has arrived, we searched for the cheapest transportation to Rome termini in which we'll have to seek for a hostel nearby. We didn't book for any room yet, as we thought we could easily find one. We had a few hostels in mind and went to search for it. Weird though, they do NOT put up any board/sign identifying they were hostels, making backpackers' life like us much tougher. I wonder if it's illegal to open a hostel's business here. We found the first, but it's full. Then the second, also full. Start to worry...though I like the weather here, I have no plan to stay overnight OUTside and enjoy the weather whole night.

Luckily the third hostel, called Aladino had some vacancies. But not 100%. They didn't have enough rooms here but they had another Aladino, called Aladino One which was just opposite the building and it was also NOT enough for 6 people (the building we were standing was called Aladino Two, as what we were told). What they could offer us was to be 3 in each buildings for the first night, and then all of us in the opposite building for the second night.

We, the 3 girls decided to stay at the initial building (Aladino two). Reason, we were too tired to walk across to the other building. There were mostly asian people staying here. 2 groups from Taiwan, 1 group from a mixture of Malaysians and Hongkie, and we were another group. There was only one 'guai' (ghost) group in the hostel. Even the staff was actually Filipino.

One of the Taiwanese who was also staying there was very friendly and kept chatting with us. As I was the only one who could speak lousy-mandarin in my group, I was the only target for her. Not that I'm complaining, but she was really a very very friendly gal and she could really talk with anyone she bumped into. Her name was Wei Wen, or something similar.

I waited for my turn to shower while talking with her and went to bed straight after that. Waiting for people in the airport for 3 hours was really exhausting.

[To be continued...]

UPDATES :	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part I)
	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part II)
	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part III)
	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part IV)
	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part V)
	Italy-Berlin Journal (Part VI)

posted by Survon @ 5:58 PM,