Next up was Belgrade. Having found another couchsurfing host, I was in for another treat. Over the three days that I was there, her, her flatmates and her friend, showed me their city and introduced me to Serbian food and alcohol. I arrived in Belgrade at around 6am and my instructions were to get to her house before 7.30am as she had to head off to work at that time. With the help of some really friendly locals, I managed to get to where I was supposed to be. I had arranged to ring her from the post office in her neighbourhood, but on doing so, there was no answer. I tried about 7 times over the next half an hour, but didn't have any luck and thought I was about to have a rare bad ... read more

Ljubljana is a city I will never forget. I choose to come to Slovenia because they use the Euro and I thought I'd minimize my bank fees by taking out a much needed cash injection there. It turned out my bank run coincided with carnaval. I had arranged couchsurfing again and this time was staying with a family on the outskirts of Ljubljana, a name I still can't pronounce!!!! The only thing I can say about this family is that they were awesome from start to finish. At the start they invited me to enjoy their homebrew schnapps. After doing so, we (Nina and I) headed off for one of the best Saturday nights I have ever had I would say. It was carnaval and everyone was dressed up accordingly, with all sorts of random costumes ... read more

Now that I have uploaded the photos for this entry, I'm not really sure why I bothered as apart from walking to the busstation to get the bus to Zagreb I did nothing else in this town. It was snowing heavily and minus 10 degrees!!! I suppose as it is my last entry for Hungary I mars well have one last gripe about the people who work in the train and bus stations. I went to the trainstation in Pecs where I was pleasantly suprised to be served by someone who spoke relatively good English. That lasted all of 20 seconds, which had seen us get passed the greetings stage and establish that there were trains to Zagreb. My next question, saw the attendant shrug her shoulders, roll her eyes and begrudgingly stamp her oversized feet ... read more

Cluj Napoca is a city that I had heard alot about before I had got there. As a student city, it is according to many Romanians I met the best party city in Romania. So I was pretty excited to be arriving there on Friday night. I had arranged accomodation through couch surfing again. This time being lucky enough to be hosted by a flat of translators that both knew how to and liked to party. Friday night ended sometime near Saturday afternoon. This is pretty much what I spent my time in Cluj doing and I had such a good time doing so that I was going to extend my stay despite having had made other arrangements. Unfortunately or fortunately, I shall never know, guilt won out and I left Cluj on Saturday night just ... read more

Having arranged accomodation through couchsurfing again, I found myself in Sibiu's main sqaure waiting for my host to come pick me up after finishing work. Alexander was his name and sales was his game. He was also a fairly high standing member of the Romanian Orthodox church as I was to soon find out. Unfortunately due to committments I had only one night and day in Sibiu. As Europe's cultural capital in 2007 you should probably allocate more time to the place than I did. However through good fortune god, the universal power, luck whatever you want to call it sent me Alexander along, who had been responsible for hosting European dignataries when they came en masse during 2007 to visit Sibiu. Thus having walked around the city during the day myself, trying to take in ... read more