A Legjobb is The Best

So, my time in Budapest began with a week of general explorations with Max. Budapest took me completely by surprise, a far more European than eastern bloc flavour, and simply more super-models walking the streets than I've seen in my entire life...



Budapest is split down the middle by the Danube river. The two halves are known as Buda and Pest. People had told me this fact before. I had simply assumed they were joking.

Alongside our best and completely failed touristic intentions to see every historical part of Budapest, cycle to the monument up on the hill of Buda, ride a boat through the Danube and learn some Hungarian, we managed at least to eat goulash, sleep in past 1pm, and get lost in the middle of the night in a small neighbouring town called Budakesti.



Hungarian that we did manage to learn:

• kösönöm = thanks


• a legjobb = the best


• with gas = soda water

So, after almost a week of stumbling around Budapest the main point of going to Hungary began - the Sziget festival! 500 Hungarian bands, 200 foreign acts including Prodigy, Radiohead, Iggy Pop, Placebo, DJ Storm and Franz Ferdinand, with music ranging from Gypsy Roma to Rock to Afro-latino to Techno. And all spread out over a full 7 days on an island in the middle of the Danube.

120 euros gets you a weekly pass including camping, but with the constant roar of speakers and drunks and the attraction of an actual warm shower and comfortable bed at our borrowed flat in Pest we found ourselves only sleeping every second night onsite. Apart from the constant music, there are live theatre performances, cafe and restaurant areas, activity tents, even a Hungarian army tent where you can go fire off a few rounds. As you do when at a music festival.

Anyway, I could go on for ages. This party was awesome and I recommend it to anyone over this part of the world. In the meantime, here are a few photos of the week in madness.











So, since then it's been a slow and fairly uneventful trip back through Germany with a spot of meditation in Aschaffenburg (as you do when in Aschaffenburg), a visit to Mannheim and Karlsruhe once again to pwn a bit of playstation, and then to meet up with friends again in Cologne and Ede as I wind my way back to face the fates of life in Amsterdam.

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And that life begins on the 29th. And this trip is over!

Dunno when I'll next write on this blog. Maybe not till the next time I go for a European roadtrip. Perhaps any interesting photos of daily life in Amsterdam...
I'm sure I'll find some creative use for this. In the meantime, and till next time, Chopps.

The Things We Do...

So. After finally bidding farewell to Mete & Marianna after my 3 weeks of lounging indolence (well, the last week actually saw me quite busy, developing a taste for raki) I jumped back on the bandwagon and proceeded through Koycegiz and Fethiye, 2 small mediterranean towns, to a place called Olympos...



Olympos is a small area located on the Mediterranean just south of Antalya, where back in the day some Turkish hippy named Kadir forayed out and began building the first of the now multitudinous tree-houses around 2 kilometers from the beach. These tree-houses now exist as collected backpacker and holiday-maker retreats, where the days are spent as lizards on the rocks in 40° heat and the nights spent as semi-alcoholic lizards (on the rocks, or with cola) at the local party bars. A real Thailand-islands-esque feel to the place.



After Olympos it was a sleepless, restless, joyless overnight busride up to Capadoccia, an incredible valley full of bizarre volcanic rock formations and underground cities dating thousands of years back...



One thing I've noticed about Turkey, is that any and all of its tour guides that do English-language tours have the worst English in all of Turkey, worse than the street vendors that sell trinkets and bread. Our day-guide through Capadoccia was no exception to this: a young girl perhaps in her early twenties who spoke without grammar or tonal inflection, and who broke up her strings of gibberish with barked commands "QUESTION!", "HURRY UP!!". For whatever reason she also decided to pick on me personally, saying "Do you like it here? Want to stay forever?!" where a simple "Time to go" would have sufficed...



Fortunately I was being trained in the use of polite Turkish phrases during my stay in Bodrum, by a sweet little old lady named Rashan. One of the most inspirationally polite Turkish phrases helped me defuse this situation with my charming tour guide: "Orospo, lütfen, siktir git". (Look it up)


Anyhoo... Another overnight on the Fez bus and it was back to Istanbul for my final 2 days of Turkey-time. After wandering the fantastic and completely un-tourist-shark-infested streets of Nisantasi, and saying farewell to my Melbournite companion (hi Anna!) I went with local friend Berk to bargain down a leather jacket in the Grand Bazaar, and purchase my train ticket out of here: a 34 hour-long ride to Budapest, through Bulgaria and Romania, for the next section of my trip: meeting up with Max again and hitting the Sziget music festival.



Point of note about the following photo: Turkey has bestowed me with 2 truly great articles of fashion sense. The first is, as mentioned, the leather jacket. The second is, of course, the undeniable, the sensational, the moustache. Both of which, as you can see, sit together like.. like peas and carrots.



So, final story for this blog. My train ride to Budapest started out well enough, with a last minute mad rush to the train, then from the train to the nearest food-stall upon the discovery that the train has no food or water facilities, then back to the train to search desperately for the correct carriage, cabin and seat. The first night passed fairly swiftly, then the following day was a hugely slow and pleasant trip through some beautiful Bulgarian landscapes, until in the evening we reached the Romanian border.

"What do you mean, I need a visa?"

Midnight.
Kicked from the train in some random outpost in Romania and onto an extremely fortunately positioned train back to Sophia.
Questioned 2 hours later for my train ticket, which of course doesn't exist in my pocket, by non-English-speaking Bulgarians, the alternative being Bulgarian cash, which of course doesn't exist in my pocket, the alternative being the Bulgarian countryside (a helpful finger points to the carriage door.)
Finding an extremely fortunately positioned English tourist who supplies with the much prayed-for cash.
Arriving in Sophia 6am the following morning, taxiing to the airport, shelling out another 200 euros for the afternoon plane out to Budapest.

The things we do.