During the autumn of 2005 we went to leafy Budapest. [View Full Entry]

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Evenin' all. Since last we blogged we have been enjoying the delights and....well, the other bits of Budapest. Sam insisted we discuss the extremely fast escalators that you need a prepared run-up to get on 'cos they're so quick. And the lifts that have not been serviced since the fall of the Soviet Union and therefore cant really take Ben jumping around doing busted impressions! Anyways our first night saw us stumbling upon the rather spectacular light-art-show-thing, certainly brightens up the place! Since then we have seen the awesome Parliament building, Basilica, and hero's square, [View Full Entry]

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Listen to Mozart. So I did. Vienna was nice, but I can't say I was...moved? The buildings were absolutely stunning, Doners (aka Gyros, Kebabs, Felafels) were abound, but I failed to get really excited about it. However, with that being said, on the second day I was there, I was meandering about, clicking away with my camera like a good little japanese tourist (they're everywhere, also Aussies, its really quite incredible, there aren't many Aussies in the world to begin with, but it never fails that when you walk down a street, one must always be prepared to hear some sort [View Full Entry]

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Well, since last I wrote I've finally managed to get to a hotel "business centre" where the coimputers were working and not been told "We have virus, the IT manage is coming to fix to later!" [View Full Entry]

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Budapest has been AMAZING. It is everything I expected plus more. I´ll start at the beginning... We arrived in Budapest (with everyones luggage excet Mike´s) early Friday morning and took two taxies to our hostel, or so we thought. The taxi drivers kinda just dropped us off in front of this building and took our 4000 hufflepuffs or whatever currency those Hungarians use (okay, they use Fornets, but we liked calling them huffs). So, we walk into this building that looks nothing like a hostel and try to find someone that speaks English. Yeah, that doesn´t happen. About an hour later [View Full Entry]

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Besides making the obvious Hungary puns, we also spent our time at the Roman Baths, playing a little ultimate, eating goulash, paprika, and learning a lot of history. [View Full Entry]

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So, just thought I'd add some more photos from Hungary before I run off to the East. Share with everyone the joys of the Labyrinth below the Castle in the Buda side of Budapest. Great fun if you like being underground, watch out for the trolls though, they are a bit nasty. Also one from the lake Korfball tournament (you should all know by now, if you don’t, look it up). One week to go until I’m in a country where 1 billion people have a different hair colour to me. It’s going to be like a very easy version of [View Full Entry]

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Good thing we speak German, we met absolutely no one in rural Hungary that spoke english. Would have been a shame since we discovered that even though Hungarians ARE almost as serious and dry as Germans they are actually quite nice and veeeery friendly (at least as far as our host in Keszthely goes, she'd greet us calling us "my dearest guests"). The other (veeeery) good thing is that, here too, essentials are pretty cheap and luxuries even more so. Totally clueless (as far as price standards go at least) we ordered 2 glasses of wine on our first day in [View Full Entry]

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Okay, I guess we should have known how this city was going to fare when we got into the cab and the driver started telling us that "communism - good, democracy - idiot". His words, not mine. We both were disappointed with Budapest and are very ready to leave. I think this is more of a 3 day and 2 night kind of city than the 5 days and 4 nights we were here. The natives are not friendly and the service is poor, even by European standards. We tried to get out of here earlier, but we couldn't get out [View Full Entry]

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Man, I am really getting really good at charades. So after our wild night out in Budapest, the next day was spent just recovering. We went to these thermal baths with are gigantic pools that people just lounge around in. They are different temperatures too. And different colours. We determined that the colour was determined by the level of pee in them. The more the colour actually looked blue, the less likely it had pee. In the green pool, i accidentally got some water splashed in my mouth. I was not pleased. So that evening I took my 10 hour train [View Full Entry]

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