Euro trip 2011: Hungary

We started our trip on 16 July from Kirkkonummi, Finland. We took the train to go to Turku since our flight to Budapest is from Turku airport. It was a big surprise when we reached the airport. We had to go to terminal 2 since wizzair operates from there. Surprisingly there was no direction to go to terminal 2 from terminal 1. It's almost 700 meter far but we managed to find the way somehow. When we reached terminal 2 it looks like a small bus station, even the inside looks so horrible, doesn't look like an airport at all. Anyway, we got into the plane on time and reached Budapest on time also. The flight was OK.

It was already 2230 when we reached Budapest. We took airport taxi to go to our hostel. Somehow I felt like I am in Dhaka :) There are big roadside billboards, many banners, posters in different walls, roads are also broken in many places and the driver didn't even bother to slow down - so we felt continuous jerking inside. It took half an hour to reach the hostel. The place looked bizarre. It's an old building and too dark but when we entered into the building, unexpectedly, a beautiful young girl came downstairs to receive us. It took them almost an hour to give us a room because they made a mistake to handle our reservation. Finally it turned into better because they gave us a private room. Well, we didn't expect much from a hostel which costs only 7 Euros per night. Can you imagine with that amount of rent they also provide breakfast with egg? Anyway, we got a good room but I couldn't sleep very well since Gagan was snoring like jet engine may be because of his tiredness or inappropriate pillow.

We got up early in the morning, had breakfast and went out to roam around the city. Gagan was guiding us. We bought daily pass and hop on a tram. Budapest is divided into two parts called Buda and Pest by the river Danube. All the attractions of the city are on the bank of that river. We took a tram which runs in front of all the attractions. We could easily see those from the tram. Finally we went to the Buda castle and spent some time over there. The castle is on top of a hill and you can see a big part of Budapest from the top of it. It is a nice view.

We came back to the hostel in the afternoon, had shower and left to catch the train to go Vienna, Austria.

Facts I noticed:

1. Hungary is quite cheap compared to Finland, may be 1/3. A 30 cm subway like sandwich is 2.20 Euros.

2. People are friendly but they don't speak very good English in general.

3. Some of the roads are dirty.

4. There are many homeless people.

5. If you are not cautious there might be chance to be cheated. Somebody in the metro station tried to sell fake tickets to us :)

Pictures:



Staring from home



Gagan and Shanila



In front of Turku airport, terminal 2



In front of our hostel in Budapest



Typical European road



A homeless person sleeping in the street



Guess what is written there :P



I don't know what that structure is but it caught our eyes



Danube river



Another view



Were we arguing? Seems so :D



Looks like we made up :P



The lonely ranger :D



A building with a nice structure, on the way to castle



The chain bridge over Danube



Another view of the chain bridge



The building is nice but I forgot what it really is :P



Strange car



Entering the castle



This guy was playing nice music at the entrance of the castle



In the middle of the castle



One side of the castle



Nice view from the castle. Well, I am blocking a bit :P



The couple :)



Other side of the castle



Another view of the castle



That's the slope car to go to the castle if you don't wanna walk, of course you have to pay :)



Programming Solution

Came back to Finland

I came back to Finland after my 13 days' long trip yesterday. I traveled 8 countries (Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, France and Germany) in this 13 days. Italy was not in our list previously but due to the unavailability of train we had to drop by Italy. I was extremely exhausted after my trip. Since yesterday I have been sleeping quite a lot but I think I still need few more days' rest to regain my energy, another vacation would be even better :P Unfortunately I have to start working from Monday :( Anyway, I enjoyed the trip, it was an experience of lifetime. I decided to write single post in my blog for each country. I don't know when I will start. Hopefully very soon :)

I wanted to share one song which is linked to this trip. I listened to it at the very beginning of the trip and continued during the whole trip even though it is about the capital of Hungary, Budapest. Here is the song:






Programming Solution

Crazy trip starts today

Our crazy trip is going to start today. We will take the 17:30 train from Kirkkonummi to Turku. Our flight to Budapest is from Turku at 22:25. Gagan and Shanila came to my home last night. We arranged everything until 3 O'clock in the morning and then went to sleep. Lot of things to prepare because it's a 12 days trip and 7 countries in total. Finally the day came and it is beginning now. I feel excited. This is special for several reasons:

i. First ever summer vacation in Finland
ii. First summer in Finland when I am not mentally stressed out
iii. First ever Euro trip (crazy one as they said)
iv. First flight with Gagan and Shanila
v. First train journey with Gagan and Shanila.

I hope we can make best use of everything. Friends!!! wish me luck :)


Programming Solution

Euro Trip 2011

Today I have bought the Interrail global pass for 10 travel days. These travel days can be any 10 days within the period of 22 days. Yes I have decided to explore some of the places in Europe and wanted to do it by train since this is the last year I can get the youth discount. We are three persons going together - me, Gagan and Shanila. Our trip will start on 16 July.

Last couple of weeks we have been spending hours almost every day to plan about it. We came up the itinerary and then reserved the flight ticket to Budapest to get out of Finland. FYI, Interrail ticket is not valid within the country of residence. Our train journey will start from Budapest. I also bought the return flight from Bremen to Tampere. Finally I bought the Interrail pass this morning and reserved the possible train seats for our journeys. Now it's finalized, we are really going for this trip :D Jibber jabber aside, I want to share my trip itinerary with a lovely animation. Thanks to tripline for providing this service, and Gagan for introducing me with this :)

(Play in full screen to watch it better)






Programming Solution

Gadget month :)

I have been getting myself quite many gadgets in last month. Every time I bought a new one it made me happier :) The first one I bought is the Logitech sound speaker. I bought it from verkkokauppa. It made me feel how the hell I lived without it for several years. I used to watch movies with the crappy sound of my laptop. I have an acer laptop, so I had to use all my brain's processing power to hear the sound. It's insane for a movie freak like me. I should have bought the speaker years ago.

The next gadgets I got a 1 TB external hard drive, wireless keyboard and mouse. I ordered all of those from amazon. The hard drive came within a week but it took 2 weeks for the keyboard and mouse to arrive. These days I can lean on my couch and use my pc :) The next thing is bluetooth headset. Well it was provided by my office. I wanted to buy one, but just took a chance and sent a mail to our secretary if I can get one. She replied me with a huge list of sony-ericsson's bluetooth headset and asked me to choose one so that she can order that particular model for me. I happily choose one. Nowadays sometimes I talk to my friend even while I am running :D The biggest device I have bought just yesterday. It's a Sony Bravia 32 inch LCD television. The model is KDL-32D2810. Right now my laptop is connected to it and I am writing this post on the television screen :)

Apart from these I also bought a vacuum cleaner and deep fryer. The vacuum cleaner is a small cute one with cyclone technology which doesn't need any dust bag. Oh yea, my room is clean now :D but I am worried about the deep fryer. I am eating french fry almost every night as my late night snacks. I hope I wont have a big belly within few months. Anyway, looks like I am enjoying buying gadgets these days, also enjoying seeing how they pay off :)


Programming Solution

Tampere trip

I visited Tampere last last weekend. I guess it is after couple of months. It was Rajit vi's and Mou vabi's daughter, Suha's first birthday anniversary. They invited me to attend the celebration. I went on Friday afternoon. The celebration was on Sunday. So on Friday and Saturday I met my old friends and spent time with them. On Sunday morning I went to the amusement park Sarkanniemi with three of my friends, Tareq vi, Saad and Rubel. It was a nice bright day. We didn't go for any ride; just did roam around inside the arena and watched the dolphin show. Let's look at some pictures of that day :)





Just after the entrance





A ride on water





My company, from left to right, Saad, Tareq vi, Rubel.





Now I am there :)





This ride looks nice.





Amazing tap :P





Inside the dolphin hall





The show just begun





Wow... what a jump





On top of the tower





View from the tower





Another side from tower





Yet another side





Lake view from tower





Another lake view, I could hardly believe it's a lake :-S





Yet another view





Now we are just beside the lake :)





Lovely sweet breeze over the lake



Programming Solution

Finally weekend came, now it's almost gone

Weekend feels much better after hell of a week like last one. It was a very busy week for me. The week started with the event "World Class Team" in Siuntio in a hotel. It was organized by our office. It was a two days event. We stayed overnight on Monday. The room was quite spacious and cozy with a balcony. The event ended on Tuesday afternoon. There were several nice discussion session, lots of food and drinks, sauna, swimming, billiard and so on. I must say that it was a nice event and I enjoyed every bit of it.

On Tuesday I had a badminton match in the afternoon. So I went to play badminton straight from Siuntio. I played for an hour and then came back home with a very tired body.

The next morning, Wednesday, I had a business trip to Sweden. My flight was at 8 O'clock in the morning. My home is quite far from the Helsinki airport. So I had to wake up so very early to be in the airport in time. I woke up around 04:30 and took the 05:20 train. The flight was quite short, only 50 minutes. The office gave us business class, so we got nice refreshments. We reached in Kista Ericsson office in Stockholm around 08:45 local time. Then starting from 9 we had whole day meeting until 4 O'clock in the afternoon. The meetings were quite fruitful. We had nice lunch and several coffee break. The coffee from vending machine there is better than in our office here in Finland. Our return flight was at 18:00. On the way back the flight was even shorter, about 40 minutes. We reached Helsinki airport at 20:00 local time. Good that we took taxi to home, so I reached home being totally exhausted.

On Thursday I went to work, was quite busy at work and I had another badminton match on that day. It was my last match in this round and I must win to enter into group 2, which was my target since I started playing badminton in LMF badminton club. Thursday's match was really tough. The opponent is almost of my quality. I had hard times to win against him but finally I managed somehow with a set 2-1. After playing for an hour with him another employee from our office asked me if I wanna play more because he has a reservation. I agreed and I played another half an hour. He is also a tough opponent. I could hardly walk after playing one and half hours in a row. On Friday morning I could feel every muscles of my body when I tried to move. I had to leave office early, around 16:00, because I was really tired. Finally the weekend came and it felt so good :) Weekend feels so good after such a hectic week. Now it's almost over again. It's Sunday evening now. Need to prepare mentally for tomorrow's work. Good that I have got an invitation in Khokon da's house to watch the Final match of ice hockey championship between Finland and Sweden. I will go watch the game there and most probably stay overnight. His home is quite close to my work place. Most probably I will go to office from his home tomorrow morning :)



Programming Solution

ADSL connection in home

Finally I have got ADSL(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) connection in my home. I have been waiting for this connection for long time. It took several months for the bureaucracy of the process. But I am still happy to get it from my office.

For several months I have been using internet connecting via my mobile phone. That is a 2 MBps connection but that is only in theory. I used to get more or less 300 KBps always. The ADSL connection I got is theoretically 18 MBps connection. I just tested the connection speed with http://www.speedtest.net/. According to this site right now I am getting 9.02 MBps downstream and 0.90 MBps upstream. The connection is still half of the maximum speed but still I am quite happy to have this connection after using the crap connection for several months :)



Programming Solution

Luxury of food

I spent the Easter vacation at Gagan's home in Oulu. I stayed 5 days. It was a nice trip. We played sports, board games, went to different places, played games in xbox, watched movies, even had basic driving lessons from Gagan. I did practice driving ( only in first gear :P ). Beside all these, as usual, we cooked lot of foods together. This time I didn't even take pictures of all of those. Here goes few pictures that I took exceeding the threshold of moving my lazy ass.





Preparation to take breakfast in balcony.





Already sat down to start. It was too bright outside and camera was flashy.





Started the nice breakfast with pan cake.





Home made french fry and sandwich.





Home made shingara





Home made samucha





Evening snacks with shingara, samucha, noodles and tea.





Shorma



Programming Solution

Eight and half hours journey to Oulu

As I have told in my previous post, I was so excited about the long road trip to Oulu with Gagan. On Thursday I came back home around 14:30. Yes, the plan changed a bit. The previous night we decided to start the journey together from my home. It took us some time to prepare everything and start. Finally we began at 16:00. The weather was a bit gloomy but quite ok. Unfortunately we caught by the rush hour and it caused us few extra minutes to get out of the town.

As we came out of the town and fall on highway, Gagan started to drive at highest speed limit. It's awesome to run that fast. We played music that Gagan put on few CDs particularly for this trip. Both of us sang to our fullest voice. Because of that shouting we had sore throat at the end of the trip :P

We took two breaks during the journey. In the first break we stopped in a road side parking beside a lake and had our snacks. The other one was in a gas station. We took sufficient gas and then took dinner. The last four hours was without any break. Finally we reached Gagan's home at 00:30. Shanila was waiting for us, obviously with nicely prepared food :D

The whole journey was a bit tiring but I enjoyed every bit of it. Let's have a look at some pictures of that day :)





The car is waiting for the long run :)





Last minute checking.





On the highway, it was raining a bit at that time.





Taking the first break.





Having snacks beside the lake.





Now me, I was talking about something funny I guess.






Preparing for the next run.





The journey began again.





Stopped for gas and dinner.





At night, at the end of the journey.



Programming Solution

Waiting for the long drive

For last few days I have been waiting so eagerly for the long drive that we (Gagan and me) are going to have tomorrow. I decided to spend my Easter holiday in Gagan's place in Oulu and we planned to go there by car this time. It's around 650 kilometers drive which will be my longest car ride so far.

Gagan and Shanila went to visit London 10 days back. They came to Helsinki by car, left it here and took ryanair flight from Tampere. Shanila came back 3 days back and is in Oulu now. Gagan just came to Helsinki today, 3 hours back and now is in my home, sleeping and snoring I guess :P We will start our trip tomorrow around 3 PM. I will still come to work tomorrow. The plan is, I will prepare everything tonight, come to work tomorrow morning and in the afternoon Gagan will pick me up from my office and we will head to Oulu. I think it will be a memorable trip :-)



Programming Solution

Ericsson Badminton Doubles Championship

Today I participated in Ericsson LMF badminton doubles championship. I missed the singles championship due to illness. This time I was so eager to participate and I made it. And you know what? Me and my partner became the champion :D

Only four teams participated today. The partners were put together by lottery. I was really lucky; I got the best player among us as my partner :P Each team had to play against all other teams and then best two teams would play final. We won all the matches in round robin league and secured our place in final. At the end we managed to win in the final as well. As a matter of fact, there was no trophy, rather each of us got a box of victor shuttlecock which is really good to me as an award.

I played 11 games in total within two and half hours. I was totally exhausted and I feel pain in many parts of my body right now. But I enjoyed it very much. This championship turned my boring Sunday into a great enjoyable day :)


Programming Solution

I dreamed of you

I dreamed of you last night
After a long time.
It was a nice one
Full of happiness and smile.

You were even laughing,
Talking in Bangla
With other people.

You looked nice;
Fresh and cozy.
Exactly how I wanted to see...



Programming Solution