Schengen rhymes with changin'

Or at least it sort of rhymes.  Rail travel throughout Europe has been through some changes over the last few years with the EU Schengen agreement.  Only in Paris so far have I had to show my passport.  Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Germany and now Switzerland couldn't care less whether I dart through their countries or not as long as I'm coming from another Schengen country.  So much for hello.  What eases the travel stress for EU citizens, erases one of the best free and compact travel souvenirs a backpacker can get - the passport stamp.  On the flip side, not having to forfeit your passport for hours on the night train is definitely comforting.  My favorite quote about the Schengen agreement comes from my travel guide: "Even as borders fade when you change countries, you still change telephone cards, postage stamps, and underpants."

For my last night before country swapping, Patricia and I see Mr. Nobody in English with Hungarian subtitles.  The theater is tiny, but for about $2.50, who cares.  To give you an idea of the theater's size, our group of 7 is too big to fit in one row.  The movie is incredibly strange - another one about dreams and separate dream worlds.  Afterwards we head too far away to Szimpla, a bar built into the ruins of a building destroyed during WWII. I'm low on forint and low on energy to hold a conversation, but once the discourse turns to fox news and Americans and living in Berlin, my energy builds back up (sadly the amount of forints in my purse didn't follow suit).  On our walk home later we watch some oh so cool German teens get kicked out of McDonald's - when you're too obnoxious for the golden arches, you know you're classy.  I mean as much as getting kicked out of McDonald's is an ultimate goal of mine, I hope its for something other than running my open mouth down a display case over and over.  Especially now that that's been done already.  I'm all about originality.

After an early morning wake up call and jogging circuit between tiger tims and the money exchange, I check out and head to the train station.  Getting out involves using all of my extra forint - and 10 (about 5 cents) from either a very friendly or very impatient Hungarian woman behind me in line.  My journey takes me to the Hungarian border then over to Austria and then back to Slovakia.  The one hour I spend in tiny little Parndorf, around the familiarity of the German signs and Deutsche sprache almost makes me want to skip my final foray into the former East entirely.  But that par of my trip will come soon enough.  Parndorf is alternately burning and freezing, but after a few minutes i realize it's the first place I've seen the sun in days so the temperature is not so important.  Onward to Bratislava with a Shengen change of underwear.