Update

I haven't written in awhile because things have taken a pretty intense turn for the worse and I was waiting for the smoke to clear. Unfortunately, things have been steadily getting worse rather than better so I guess I might as well just tell you that.

My first hostel in Budapest was a disaster and I spent my first night here in something like shock. My second hostel seemed better at first but then turned out to be potentially worse than the first one. After an especially bad night, the details of which I am not going to regale you with, I finally started to wonder why I was doing this to myself. I still had four nights in Budapest but I didn't want to stay another minute and the only reason I was still here was because of my flight to Istanbul on Thursday-- a trip that I'd come to dread with every fiber of my being.

So I decided to just scrap the whole thing. I threw out my plane ticket to Istanbul (figuratively speaking, it was actually an electronic ticket), canceled the rest of my nights in Budapest, and booked a train to Olomouc, which is a small town back in the Czech Republic. I booked two nights in a private room so that I could take a deep breath and get my bearings again.

My train left this morning just before ten and if the timestamp on this post gives you any indication, I wasn't on it. I went to sleep early last night and I've been waking up between 5:30 and 8:30 nearly every morning of this trip so I didn't bother to set an alarm. I woke up this morning and it was still dark outside and the seven other people in my room were still sound asleep so I guessed it was probably about six in the morning.

It was 9:45.

So I missed my train. There's another train just before two so I can still get to Olomouc tonight but it's a longer train and I won't get in until almost 9:00 at night which is kind of silly given that I only have two nights in town.

So the other thing I did last night was I finally decided to book a language course. I'd been thinking about it for a few weeks now and I am just really, really tired of traveling. It's not that I want to go home, I'm just sick of museums and coffee shops. I want to be doing something. So I found a four-week course in Paris that looked perfect, or at least good enough, so I booked it and also booked my flights to and from Paris. I was so excited to finally be settling down somewhere.

Unfortunately, I just got an email from the school that they made a mistake and they are actually fully booked. So my count of wasted plane tickets is actually up to three now. And I don't know what I'm doing.

Anyway. It will be fine. Everything will be totally fine.

Update: As you may have seen in my reply comment to Jess, I heard back from the language school and I may be able to get into the Paris class next week after all. Also, I should add that I did meet some cool people here in Budapest and did some fun things (you can see photos on my Picasa account) so it's not like every second here has been a living nightmare. I was just feeling a bit overwhelmed this morning at the string of bad news. I think everything's going to be just fine.