After the couple of days spent mooching about in Istanbul, we definitely felt the need to get moving again. After roughing up a brief itinerary of things we'd like to do around the coast of Turkey leading us, as ever, eastwards we go and consult with the in-hostel travel agent who tells us what we are going to do instead. He insists on us doing the Turkish "Loop", a route that the majority of tourists in Turkey take, leading down the west coast and then eastwards to Olimpos. Despite putting up a somewhat pathetic fight based principally on the cost of [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Istanbul we followed the Carrino's, Justin and Cris, to the accomodation they had booked in advance, the Orient Hostel in the Sultanahmet district of the city. Lucky enough to find space in the dorm, Joel goes out to do whatever he does whilst i get busy doing the thing i do best- get into bed for a big fat sleep! Waste the rest of the day recovering in slumberland, waking up around 6pm for dinner which we have just around the corner from the hostel where we meet Hakan, the friendliest maitre d on the planet, and go back [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Romania, sadly (haha- laboured point by now im sure) Joel, myself, and the pet that followed us to the train station (Farah from the hostel in Bucharest!) catch the train to Veliko Tarnova in Bulgaria. On the train we met Justin and Cris, two newlywed Americans, who are gong the same way and got booted out of their cabin further up the train. The pimp of a conductor tells us we need to pay the equivalent of 2 pounds as we're in a sleeper carriage without a reservation. Although we tell him we dont want a sleeper carriage he insists [View Full Entry]

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The journey into Romania kind of set the tone for the entire stay in this fabulous little backwater of Europe. That is to say its was an absolute nightmare. Ill spare the full story as i dont want to relive it anymore than absolutely necessary, but the highlights included torrential rainfall (as always) getting robbed of cigarettes by Romanian pikeys, hanging around in train stations for hours on end and meeting a french speaking Romanian tramp who complained that the coffee we bought him wasnt a cappucino! I blame Starbucks for that last incident! 24hrs after we left Egger we arrive [View Full Entry]

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So after the enlightening experience that was Bratislava we happily jumped on a train to the bright lights and happy times of Budapest, capital of all things Hungary. Arriving (unsurprisingly) to piss poor weather we trekked with our packs for 3km to the hostel at which we called home for a few days, the Caterina Hostel. After walking up and down the same street several times we eventually found the right door only to then discover another small issue with the accomodation- it was on the third floor and was precisely 118 steps up. No lift. Of course. After discussıng numerous [View Full Entry]

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so, after two nights in prague its off the european capital of all things grey, Bratislava. but first a story. i am very tired today, mainly for one reason. its not beer either you clever so and so. we had an ungodly early bus to bratislava, meaning we had to leave the hostel at 6.45 am. for those who know me they wqill know how much i love to get up in a morning. for those that dont trust me on this, solving third world debt is easier than waking me up. so i take pity on poor old travalpal joel [View Full Entry]

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arriving in the czech republic, for us at least, is the same as arriving anywhere else in that it rained heavily. everytime we get somewhere on the first day it rains. i guess crowded house were right and everywhere you go you do take the weather with you! but why does always have to be british weather? so we stay in the hostel (Travellers Hostel) play a lot of table football and drink pints for 50 pence. that takes the first night out of our hands. the second day we go to Kutna Hora, a small village just outside Prague to [View Full Entry]

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we arrive in dresden quite late and check into the Lollis Homestay Hostel, which i will tell you about in a moment. its cool, worth hearing about and thats why im going to tell you about it. its small and has pictures from the film Hostel knocking around the place. for those unaware (americans probably) Hostel is a backpacker-goes-to-europe-then-gets-butchered-by-twisted-rich-people type film. you know how it is. anyway we find this funny, obviously as we're staying in a hostel. aside from the owners of this place fucking with your head with all these posters each room has a theme. our roo [View Full Entry]

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we arrive late in berlin, courtesy of Mr Wilfried Bauchen and the Mitzfahrzentrale which is a really cool service, especially for those on a budget. Basically its a company that drivers register with and state how many spare seats they have in a car for any particular journey, those seats then get taken up by people who want to go on the same journey but dont have a car. think organised car pooling. i could have put that before, i know. it would have been quicker i guess but never mind. so, we get to berlin for 30 euros, whereas the [View Full Entry]

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at this point i have decided that joel (www.travelblog.org/bloggers/joelstern) will put all the things we actually see and do in the next few months and i will list the madcap adventures that we have. and probably some of the stuff we do too. (anyone who has read the bracketed bit at the start of amsterdam section will realise the chronological flaw here but just run with it ok) we arrive in maastricht and a new persona is born- Ruud van der Row. the reasons for this are as follows, i enjoy doing a very bad dutch voice, something along the lines [View Full Entry]

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