big summary of events

ok, things are rolling here now and I'm feeling like i'm hitting a groove. it's my second full day in Budapest, and even though its been pissing rain here and quite cool the whole time, i've been enjoying myself. met an Aussie guy named Mike (hey, I can remember that) who in turn introduced me to another girl, and from there a couple of English guys named Paul and Andy. Today I spent the morning and early afternoon with those two at a Hungarian bathhouse. man am i relaxed now! We didn't spring for massages, but hit a bunch of different temparture pools and a sauna in various sequences. One warm pool had a water spouting statue that was gushing warm water in a heavy stream. sitting in front of that, letting it pound you in the back and neck, was like a mini massage in itself. it was great. The building itself was amazing, and fortunately i was able to snag some pictures of it from the inside. i may try to post one or two here later, but i'll finish this and save it before i try such a radical experiment.

The rain has been a bit of a bummer. i really haven't done as much wandering as i normally would, just because it's so difficult to stay dry, and once you get wet, drying clothes and shoes is pretty tough. I am pleased that i brought both my jeans (for heading out at night) and these super light nylon pants (they dry almost instantly once you're in from the rain). It's also hard to take pictures in the rain. Despite all tihs, i did go for a hike up the hill in Buda and saw this cool cave-church. Yes, it's actually a church built inside a cave, with little rooms branching off in all weird directions. Very neat.

Still having a bit of trouble with the time zone shift. I get tired around 4pm and have a hard time sleeping soundly past 5am. I think it's getting better though. Today's jackhammering road constructing at 7am didn't help though, let me tell you!

One thing I've been enjoying is some good breakfasts. i made a poiint of buying eggs and veg at the market and so i've been having omellettes with hostel-supplied toast in the mornings.

After this post i'm going to try to figure out where to go next. my original plan was Belgrade followed by Sarajevo, but i was thinking that i might just go where the sun is actually shining. unfortnately, a quick search shows that its raining throughout this entire region right now, with sun returning around Sunday. i may just go directly to sarajevo and then try to hit the coast by sun or monday. stay tuned for further details on that front.

Well, i'm going to go make some food and then probably have a nap. i'm meeting the guys at 'half seven' to go out for beers. i'll probably grab another bite later in the night, so now's a good time to eat. oh, i almost forgot, i have to get myself to a phone to call CIBC and have them unlock my online banking. somehow it got locked out and i can't get in there to transfer money from my line of credit to my chequing account, which of course is where all the atms try to draw money from (there's no option to select account). hopefully this does not turn into an ordeal.

iPod emergency

OK, I'm back in the hostel after a quick wander around town. It's not exactly pouring rain here, but it's definitely a steady shower. I've wandered around a park over in Buda (on the other side of the river) and climbed the hill there. Found a shallow little cave to hang out in during a particularly strong downfall.

I thought I'd tell the ipod story, since it really had me stressing out. Basically I noticed the symptoms of a dying hard drive starting up again the day I met Rico in TO. Most of you know that I had previously fixed just this problem by opening up the 'pod and putting a paper shim on the hard drive spindle. I figured that since it was starting up again, though, that there was no way I could fix it again. What would I do, put in a thicker shim? So, I asked Rico to drive me to an electronics store (ended up being future shop. lame eh?) I bought a new 80 gig video iPod, briefly felt like shit for spending that much money, and then set to the task of getting my music on it.

Now, let me make it clear that facing two months on the road, alone, with no music was not only a shitty prospect, it was into the 'unthinkable' realm. This is a project I was strongly committed to finishing, to say the least.

So, first thing: find a computer we can use. Rico hasn't moved his from his old place yet, and even so it's really old and has USB1.0. That would pretty much make it impossible to move all 30 gigs of my tunes. Instead, Rico said I could use Morgan's computer, even though Morgan wasn't home to approve it. I figured that this meant I should find a way that didn't involve installing software.

So, the process: plug the old ipod into the machine. Error, cannot read. Shit! Plug it into the USB port on the keyboard: error, USB hub does not have the power required to run device. Uh oh, i'm starting to freak out. Finally I crawled under the desk, moved a few things around and plugged it directly into the back of the machine. -pause- Sucess! It mounts as a new drive.
OK, this is the part where I'm glad I know my way around a PC. I went into the hidden folders on the ipod drive, found all the music files (they're just numbered mp3 files on the ipod) and then started a huge file copy to the PC. This ran for about 40 minutes, so Rico and I went for a cruise on the boardwalk at the beach. Nice.

Get back and the copy is done. I figured out how to launch iTunes using a new, empty library and then imported all the mp3s that I had copied. It ignored the numbered file names and pulled all the info from the id3 tags, just like I hoped. Again, success! Finally I plugged the iPod in, formatted it and then started the sync. This also took a while, so we went for late lunch-early dinner. Got back, and bingo: new ipod, same music! I recreated a few of the 'word find' playlists that Matt had suggested and we were off.

Crazy eh? At first I was pissed that it happened, but later I realized that it could have happened 24 hours later and I would have been totally screwed. So, in that way, it was perfect.