pilnikjezerobota

I was trying to think of a good title for my entry about Sarajevo and they all just sounded like clichés. "The Lost Olympic City", "The War-Torn Jewel of the Balkans" (well, that could be a lot of places), "The Melting Pot of the Balkans", various crap titles referencing Frankie Ferdinand and WW1, "The Valley of Hope"... there's a tunnel of hope, so... well, all of these sounded too seedy. Valley of Clichés it is, even though touristic clichés were few and far between. Not much happened between Osijek and Sarajevo. On the Sunday after that dreadful walk I woke up late and chatted to the girl from reception at the guesthouse over a very hearty breakfast of whatever was left. I headed to the station promising myself to return to Osijek sometime, stay at Maksimilian ... read more

This is a 9-month late story but a story anyway. In October 2013 my girlfriend, who we'll call M, and I, flew out from Katowice to Kutaisi, Georgia for 2 weeks, finally giving me a chance to explore somewhere which isn't in or being considered for accession to the European Union. The flight arrived at some strange hour in the morning and it was one of about 5 flights per week to serve the airport, but that didn't stop the airport being chock full of taxi and minibus drivers ready to shout city names at you as soon as you got through passport control. "Kutaisi city centre, 10 euros for two people!", offered one taxi driver. We knew that sounded a bit expensive, so we tried to negotiate. "Okay, okay! So I will take you for ... read more

The train journey from Kelenföld to Zagreb was just neverending. I got too distracted reminiscing about my would-be epic fail visit to Komárno/om which never happened in my last entry to explain why I was even going via Budapest to later retrace my steps - people who know me will know this isn't like me at all. I had been held up by missing one connection and my original plan to go via Győr and Szombathely, getting there in 6 hours from Komárom, was voided. So I ended up taking an hour and half journey to Kelenföld, waiting in that café bar for two, then sitting on this dying piece of old Yugoslavian metal for six and a half. I'm very pleased with myself because I managed to make it all the way across Hungary, from ... read more

Over the summer, an ESL teacher and DJ's life in Prague often becomes a complete void. The upper classes whose companies we teach in go off on holiday, while clubs stick to their resident DJs to cater for the musically apathetic tourists and serious music shifts to the festival stage. My summer hit such a catastrophic low in mid-August, and last week, I had a day where I was apparently not supposed to do anything at all. So I went and did nothing at all, but at least got way way out of Prague to do it. I was drawn to the Bohemian-Bavarian border by a trivia question someone posted on Facebook a while back which asked "can anyone name a railway station which is in a different country to the place named on its signs?" ... read more

So this summer I am sticking two fingers up at Opencard, the terribly implemented new transport ticketing system for Prague locals, which has achieved nothing except making buying season tickets a far more complicated and slippery process. One day in March I logged onto the Czech version of Ebay and bought an old bike, which I have since lubed up and pimped out with a crafty little pair of speakers which you can plug an iPod into. Bike weather began the day after I returned from the Tatras, with temperatures soaring over 20 degrees and so I have been exploring Prague's cycleways. Generally Prague is not a cyclist's paradise, the tricky cobblestoned streets, narrow streets with tram lines, ubiquitous one way systems and the sheer hilliness of most parts of the city is enough to put ... read more