Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I am starting to plan my next vacation and would love opinions on the following two trips:

Austria (Vienna, Salsburg), Budapest, Prague, Krakow

or

Croatia, Slovenia, maybe Bosnia

I likely won't have a car this trip so train travel times/convenience between stops is a huge consideration; also veg food availability, general atmosphere, friendliness, anything really.

I love museums, history, churches, scenery, PUBS and outdoor cafes.

pls cast your votes and tell me why and what I would love about each place.

Thanks!

I've been to Vienna, Budapest & Prague.

I LOVE Vienna, I go back as often as possible. It's beautiful, interesting, has great gig venues (at Arena), art & wonderful vegan food not to mention my brilliant PPK buddies acht & inceptisol. I've blogged about the food many times, here's a link to the google search for my blog & Vienna.

I got the train from Vienna to Bratislava & then Bratislava to Budapest once & from what I remember it was cheap & easy. I think it's only ~1 hour from Vie-Bra and then ~4 from Bra-Bud. Bratislava is well worth a day trip along the way & I can't wait to go back to Budapest. There was an awesome castle, the old town's amazing, we visited amazing baths & ate fantastic food which I wrote about here. We stayed at a place called Homemade Hostel which I'd happily go back to.

I visited Prague on a different trip & didn't really enjoy it. It was the middle of tourist season & incredibly hot (I'm not a hot weather fan!) & everywhere was INSANELY busy. I'm not saying don't go but it wasn't for me.

I've always wanted to go to Croatia, Slovenia & Bosnia & will hopefully make it there this year or next year so update this thread if you go.

I'm there right now! I second the recommendation, it's super cute, great location and has a decent kitchen- which is nice since most of the restaurants we wanted to go to are closed for the new year.

Anyway, we only got here from Prague yesterday morning, so we haven't seen heaps yet. We got an overnight sleeper train, which was pretty reasonably priced (compared to all the DB trains we've been catching over the last couple of weeks) and wasn't too uncomfortable. Even Boyfriend managed to get a good night's sleep, and he's tall so he's never comfortable anywhere. It took about 8.5 hours (via Bratislava, which I slept through), but the day trains are faster (maybe 6.5 hours?).

Yesterday we went to the park where all the old communist statues are kept (kind of touristy, but we still found it interesting) and the Gellert baths. Today we'll probably check out the parliament building, the castle, some memorial type stuff and I'm not sure what else yet. There's a lot of stuff to choose from!

Prague is definitely touristy. We were just there so it's mid-winter, but a lot of things were still packed. We stayed near the Charles Bridge and it took us 15 minutes to walk across it to get dinner the first night, just because of the people in the way. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy Prague because of all the people, but I ended up really liking it anyway. You just have to pick your times to do things- we found that the bridge was a lot more enjoyable at 8am the next day. We ate some great food there too- I highly recommend Lehka Hlava. We also spent a lot of time in pubs, went up to the castle (worth it just for the view, but the cathedral up there is great too), went to the Kafka museum, a Mucha/Dali exhibition, the Jewish cemetary (super interesting) and the ossuary at Kutna Hora (which I loved). Just walking around is fascinating too, since it's such a beautiful city (if you can see past the tourists getting photos of their heads in front of things).

I should also add that a couple of girls in our Prague hostel were heading to Salzburg by train next, and that we saw trains to Krakow at the train station, so both are easily accessible.

Erinerrung I love that you're at Homemade Hostel right now! I love the building it's in! Are you enjoying all of the tacky bridal stores in the area?!

Oh my, yes! Coupled with all the tacky tinsel wigs for sale on the streets for new years, the Oktogon is the classiest place in Europe!

Budapest and Krakow! I wasn't even vegetarian when I lived in Krakow (2002-2003) so I can't advise about that, but I loved it so much. And I visited Budapest twice because I enjoyed it so much. I'm not such a fan of Prague or Vienna, but I really liked Bratislava.

I love Budapest and there's a surprising number of vegan-friendly places to eat. Get a list of veg places and learn how to say "falafel no yogurt please" in Hungarian and you'll be good.

All the endorsements helped convince me, the Budapest/Prague trip it is.

2013 for Croatia
Thanks very much!!

Munich is quite close to Salzburg, maybe 90 minutes to two hours by train. I've never been anywhere really urban in Croatia, but I remember eating mostly so-so pizza while there.