Just a short, no pictures entry. On wednesday there was a public holiday in the Czech Republic celebrating the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which overthrew the Czechoslovakian single-party communist state in 1989. On this day many small towns have markets popping up, as it serves as a great reason for people to start their christmas shopping. Jessica, Jakub and I took a 2 hour trip to Havlíčkův Brod, a small historical town about halfway between Prague and Brno in the midst of the Vysočina region, where I had previously never been. The town square was thriving with interesting stalls, mostly of craftwork and local food (the speciality of this region is "zabijáčka", basically meat from a ritual pig slaughter). We also saw someone serving goulash from a cauldron, and a lot of honey-based snacks (including ... read more

My request to the heavens for a celebration of my recent giving notice to my rapidly sinking language school was answered nicely as this weekend randomly and suddenly turned into a Polish road trip, with six (ex-)workmates to a cottage, built by our half-polish/half-czech comrade Jakub's family in the early 1990s. The cottage is situated in the village of Miedźno, near the city Częstochowa, which is one place I have been dying to visit for a long time. Our expedition to this cottage comprised seven people and two cars, who gathered in the early morning calm of the somewhat surrealistic Sídliště Rajská Záhrada on thursday, a Czech state holiday to commemorate the independance of Czechoslovakia from Austria-Hungary. The journey there was long and winding, and became noticeably more chaotic as we crossed into Poland (bringing my ... read more

Arriving at the border, we were bothered for our passports while on the platform (so, Romania hasn't quite got the hang of being in the EU yet, then) and shepherded onto an "overgrown bus, meet shed" style osobáček which took us to Debrecen. Jitka's correspondance with her friends in Liberec revealed that while we were running away from storms in the deep south, the Czech Republic was suffering from a rather epic heatwave - something we had now caught up with here. We decided that since the temperature had skyrocketed so much, for our two nights in Hungary, we should sleep outside and seek places with lakes and rivers. The first thing we needed to do was go and get a sleeping bag for me, which I needed. This was all we saw of Debrecen, the ... read more

As we stepped off the train at Braşov, we were surprised to be hassled about accommodation for a change. Finally, maybe we had come to a place in Romania which did expect tourists! Not that I mind walking off the beaten track a bit, but having already been recommended visiting Constanța by someone and finding the apparent lack of anywhere to accommodate tourists there, I was worried that the whole of Romania, including Braşov, would be a repeat of this. However, I had been told to go to Braşov by two other people who were very right. We took the guy who offered us a hostel up on his offer, and we stayed in an extremely cool place called Kismet Dao hostel on the outskirts of the historic centre. Our train had picked up the standard ... read more

We woke up on thursday morning having slept surprisingly well, considering the wonkiness of our masterpiece couchettes constructed from fully reclined seats and our backpacks. It was 9am, and we were expecting that some earlybird tourists might have started to arrive by now, however, the sky just happened to be covered by a pale but gloomy layer of stratus, and stepping out of the car, we realised it was infact very windy. We pondered what we would do in conditions which made swimming and sunbathing impractical over our breakfast of moar bread and white cheese. We decided to go to the next beach up, Rusalka, which we knew was a resort, so would at least have some kind of bars and such if the beach were empty. When we arrived however, the stratus had started clearing ... read more

I guess I should remember that "no problem" as an epithet of hope is an extremely unwise remark for a traveller to make. As we left Novi Sad, we encountered only problems - firstly running to catch our train in time, secondly being told we had to pay a supplement for not having a reservation (which the european rail database said was not necessary on this train) and thirdly, after all this stress, sitting in a steamy oven of a carriage half-full of Serbian grandmothers who refused to open any windows because of the noise were not exactly our wishes. Anyway, when we arrived into Belgrade, we immediately noticed that it could not be much more different to Novi Sad, considering that they are both part of the same country. While Novi Sad was flat and ... read more