As it turns out, our hostel in Prague has free internet as well...

I woke up the day after my last post to slight drizzle in Bratislava. The weather then degenerated; drizzle turned into heavy rain, which turned into heavy ice which turned into heavy snow. It was the worst weather I´ve ever been associated with... It didn´t do much for our one day in Bratislava. By lunchtime I was soaked from head to toe so being the defeatists that we are we packed up our things and headed to Vienna.

I loved Vienna. People have said its a bit stuffy, but we had an aweome hostel with a bar, so could get all cultural during the day and then come home to a fun atmosphere at night. Being the home of a lot of classical music, on our second night we went to the Musikverein to see the Vienna Symphony tackle Brahms. Cheap as we are, we got standing room tickets (a bargain at 5euro). It took me back to my days at Moorabbin..... except rather than standing next a fat bloke yelling at Tim Pekin from the outer we had a fat bloke wishing he was a conductor, shaking his head at us every time we shifted our weight onto the other foot. I´ve never seen anyone get so into it - he looked in a trance most of the time and at one point in the second movement I thought he was going to burst a vein in his forehead.

We arrived in Prague yesterday and are keenly awaiting the arrival of Seany and Kate in a matter of hours (I´m currently killing time while Hana dries her hair - one of the many joys of travelling as a couple).. But at least its given me time to write this to you all, so you don´t have to worry for another second about what I´m doing..

Today I'm in Bratislava, Slovakia.

I know it hasn't been long since my last post but there's free internet at the hostel here, so I may as well write something now rather than waste my time filling you in to this point when I'm paying 5euro an hour.

From Sarajevo we caught the overnight train to Budapest. We'd been forewarned about this train; bring all food, toilet paper, lock up your bags and compartment doors because there's no security on board and there were no sleepers (not that we can afford sleepers anyway) as the train was part of a donation form the UN to help Bosnia rebuild and consisted of 2 mismatching carriages, one german from the 70's and one from some eastern european country. We chose the german carriage. Luckily we got the same deal as the train from Zagreb to Split and even though we only paid for a seat we got an entire compartment and were able to lie down across 3 seats. Didn't help a bit though, because between Bosnia and Hungary there's a considerable chunk of Croatia. So between the hours of 1 and 6 in the morning we had 4 border guards and 3 ticket inspectors barge into the compartment at various times. In an attempt to lighten the mood the Hungarian guards brought their pet German Shepherd on board with them. Friendly animals... Fair to say we were pretty grumpy by the time we arrived in Budapest.

Everyone I've spoken to has raved about Budapest, so my high expectations combined with miserable fucking weather left me fairly disappointed. There's some cool architecture around but was mostly lost on me as 1. I have no appreciation of architecture and 2. The grim weather turned the cool gothic buildings into miserable, bleak ones. The exception was the paliament building which I don't think could ever seem bleak.. I must say we did go to a very good museum (we have been starved of anything vaguely informative since Riga) but I don't know whether I can generalise an entire country based on one museum's captions but Hungary has such a fucking victim complex! They were unwilling participants in the Austro-Hungary alliance, they were forced into joining the Nazis in WW2, Stalin made us become communists, wah, wah, wah. I guess it was intended to divert blame for any perceived wrongdoing but it just made them sound pathetic. (note at this point that I don't actually have anything against the Hungarian people, although the we only actually spoke to two of them, one of whom was wearing sandals in the snow - and hadn't cut his toenails since millennium - and the other was pretending to shoot people with his fingers while we chatted to him over lunch... It seems the only people who learn English in Hungary are fucking insane).

From Budapest we got the early (only) bus to Bratislava this morning. We only got like 3 hours sleep last night so I spent some time this afternoon napping. Now its almost midnight and I can't sleep. Grim... At least there's free internet to keep me entertained. Bratislava seems fairly small so we'll probably hop over to Vienna tomorrow evening(Bratislava's so close that when Ryanair flies to Vienna, they're actually flying here).

Seany and Kate (Hana's friend from uni) are meeting up with us in Prague on Wednesday so its all very exciting... My posts from now on depend on the price of internet in various countries. So you may get one in 2 days if we have free internet in our hostel in Vienna, or more likely you won't get one for a week or two until internet drops back below 5euro an hour. Judging by the interest stirred up by the last post I'm sure you give a shit.. Hope summer's off to a good start. Think of me slowly dying of hypothermia in The East.

I'm freezing my tits off in the former Yugoslavia...

We've spent our last few days bashing our way through the Balkans. Ljubljana was a cool town. Very chilled out, especially for a capital. From there we went to Split in Croatia via Zagreb and an overnight train. We had 3 hours in Zagreb, but didn't explore far beyond the station for fear of getting lost and freezing to death. We were kinda pissed cause we paid as much for a seat overnight to split as we did for a sleeper on our last overnight train. As it turned out the train was fairly empty so we had an entire compartment to ourselves and could laz across three seats each. I had a better night's sleep than I did in the sleeper..

The Adriatic coast of Croatia is beautiful and by some freak of nature never rains and rarely gets cloudy. The skies were blue, the sea was bright green and with the mountain backdrops and clay-roofed houses it all looked too good to be true. And it was. It was bloody freezing. I don't know how it was so cold though because just a week before we were in Cinque Terre where I thought it was warm enough to swim. Anyway, we were picked up as soon as we stepped off the train in split by a woman offering a room in her house for peanuts so we accepted. She also picked up another couple who we befriended - an irish-new zaland-australian girl and a chilean-spanish guy. We all caught the bus together the next day to Dubrovnik, a similar town to Split but more cliffs and less beaches, which was unfortunately irrelevant to us. The bus ride was a highlight just for the scenery. The great ocean road has nothing... In Dubrovnik we had a similar scenario to Split in terms of accommodation, except that the woman didn't live in the house so we basically had a private appartment between us for like 10euro each a night. It was even colder in Dubrovnik than Split so sitting out on the terrace with a bottle of wine was not as pleasant as it could have been.

From Dubrovnik we all got on the bus together for Bosnia (yes, motherland of our friend and team-mate Dario) but while we were going all the way to Sarajevo, Roisin and Christian planned to get off at Mostar (the capital of Hercigovina). However things didn't go to plan and they ran into trouble at the border. Christian was travelling on a Chilean passport and needed a visa so was told to go back to Zagreb. Grim. The last we saw of them was being led to a grey building by a surly Bosnian border guard... The rest of the bus ride was spectacular. We'd been told in advance about the road between Mostar and Sarajevo and it lived up to it (though I still preferred the ride between Split and Dubrovnik). Now we have absolutely no need to go to Switzerland.

Sarajevo's one of my favourite places I've been so far. Aside from the setting of the city - mountains rising up on all sides - it genuinely is a melting pot of east and west. We're staying right in the Turkish quarter and the call to prayer from the mosques makes the perfect soundtrack to the small streets of the old town (I should write travel brochures..). Mind you its still bloody freezing..

So we're going to stay here a few days then get the overnight train to Budapest where I'm sure it will be just as cold. The question is what would I rather - to be able to feel my fingers or be free from hoardes of tourists?!

I'm back in The East...

When I last left you I was living the good life in Perugia after having to practically starve myself in Rome and Siena for fear that my unpriced 'pizza by weight' would end up costing me 8 euros - as it often did. From Perugia we caught the train up to Florence to meet back up with Amy who had returned to Rome from Siena to get her ticket dates changed at the airport where she was told she should have done it over the phone.. Florence was completely overrun by americans. I don't know if it was a seasonal thing, but I hope not cause they weren't the good american's like i've met in Russia and India, they were the americans that practically drive you to murder simply by allowing you to overhear them talking behind you in a queue. Our hostel was overrun too, and whilst it was a pleasant change from the old, slow, baseball cap, bumbag and new balance shoe-wearing, package-tour americans we'd previously encountered in Italy (and elsewhere) the frat boys complaining about italian pizza soon grew tiresome also..

From Florence we went to the Cinque Terre national park, where the main attractions are five seaside villages linked by a walking trail with awesome views of the sea, and rocks and trees and stuff... As we all know (or at least should know) hiking is not my strong point (god knows why i'm walking the inca trail - after cinque terre I now know that I am going to die in Peru), and there were certainly sections of the walk that had me huffing and puffing and getting dizzy, and having my left arm go tingly. But we were lucky enough to have a beautiful day of blue skies and sunshine, and the views were amazing. I said at the time that its the sort of place where my dad would just be saying 'wow' every few minutes. I would have loved to have gone swimming in the Mediterranean (and it was definitely warm enough) but silly us started at the one town with a beach and just kept hanging out for another one.

From Cinque Terre we spent a long day on trains to get to Venice. I think we arrived in Venice at just the right time. Everyone I've spoken to (apart from my mum) has disliked venice and said just spend a day or two because you have to - it smells, its expensive, its packed full of tourists, etc. I found every one of those false. I really liked Venice. We found an awesome pizzeria for dinner - after spending a couple of hours exploring, our hostel wasn't ridiculously priced (although it was run with military strictness) and even though it was grey and miserable it was still beautiful. The public transport is a bit steep (5 euro for a single ride) but I think most people do what we do and just use it as a cheap boat cruise down the grand canal (considering the alternative is a gondola at 60 euro an hour). And finally, there were barely any tourists there. Our hostel was the only one anywhere near being in Venice (there's a campsite near the airport and another hostel on a neighbouring island) and there were about five other people staying there. Made things a little lonely but much better than being swamped by idiot americans.

This morning we left Venice for Ljubljana in Slovenia. Our journey was fraught with trials (we chose 3 regional trains and a bus rather than a direct train) but we made it safely back behind the iron curtain. And after being charged 1.50 euro for 15 minutes internet in Venice (and that was cheap) we now have a computer with free internet in our room.. Money goes so much further here... We've been told Ljubljana is a highlight so we're looking forward to the next few days.

Good news about the soccer. I had no idea about anything that was going on. Internet's been so expensive I didn't even know who we were playing. Now Gus has some time to work with the team and we'll be the South Korea of 2006... And England will be the England of 2006.

Oh and finally can people stop leaving anonymous comments. What are you scared of? That I'll come home and whack you?

Now for a few months solid travelling without coming back to London!

Last Wednesday we flew out to Rome (very) early morning on RyanAir. We'd heard its too easy to miss the early flights out of Stansted so thought it would be a bright idea to camp out at the airport overnight. We caught the last tube to Victoria and got the 12.30 bus to Stansted. We arrived at the airport at about 2am and what we saw slightly amused Hana and disgusted me. The floor of the airport was littered with bodies.. It was as if london had been hit by some natural disaster and the city was evacuated to stansted. It was barbaric.. and all so they could save £10..............

...............I spent mine on a slice of pizza when we arrived in Rome...

I really liked Rome - Hana wasn't so pleased. First of all we had awesome weather for all 4 days we were there. From when we arrived it was sunny and 26 degrees and accordingly I was in my shorts and jandles. There's so much stuff in Rome you just spend your days wandering around and even if you have no idea where you're going you're bound to eventually see something magnificent. Rome is the home of my new favourite building in the world... I can't remember what its called but if anyone's curious and is in the area its on the Piazza Venezia. I just saw it and said 'there's nothing like that in Melbourne'.. The problem with Rome is that the place is completely overrun by tourists. There's no point in sitting back and taking in the way of life because in the areas we were 90% of the people around us were foreign. We had a particularly awful experience at the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. The queue to get in went for about 2km back down to St Peters Square and then once we finally got in there was just a push to get into the Sistine Chapel. And now I can answer Robin Williams' question in Good Will Hunting: the sistine chapel smells like the underarms of the other 2000 people in there pointing their cameras at the roof. I guess its bound to happen with so many people in a cramped space but it was still funny watching some high strung american blow his top in the Vatican. He was dealt with promptly by the swiss guards. How much of a dick would you feel being dragged away by those guys in their puffy purple jester suits... I can't imagine what its like in summer.

After Rome we got the train to Siena in tuscany. The rain came on Sunday but we'd had a good look around town the night before so we passed the time in poor weather at a football game. We saw Siena v Chievo - a Serie A game - in a little stadium sunk into a valley in the Tuscan countryside. Very picturesque. The game was ordinary after about the 30 minute mark, but it was still good fun to be a part of a scathing home crowd. Men were yelling at the team 10 minutes after the players had left the pitch. It took me back to my days watching St Kilda when we were shit - specifically when we had Tony Brown, and before him Craig Davenport. That evening Amy, Hana's flatmate from Fitzroy arrived in town and we hung out with her till we left Siena for Perugia yesterday morning.

The bus ride through Tuscany into Umbria was very nice, and the sunshine came back briefly yesterday. Perugia is awesome. Its a university town perched on a hill between Rome and Florence. Hana's friend Jess is living here at the moment learning Italian so we're staying with her. There's such a good atmosphere here - we were out in the town square late last night and it was packed with people drinking cheap wine out of plastic cups (bought in a little store in the square). The scenery is amazing - the centre of town is basically the top of the hill and there are views in all directions. And best of all the place doesn't feel like one big tourist trap. The problem with Italy so far has been that you constantly feel as though prices have been jacked up no matter how far away from attractions you get. Perugia hasn't felt like that at all. We've been taken to nice cafes and restaurants and paid the same as we would have for shit take away in Rome.

We leave Perugia tomorrow morning for Florence where we'll spend a few days. Then we'll go across to Cinque Terre for a mini trek through five closely spaced towns before heading back across to Venice.

Hope everyone's going ok at home, etc. etc. etc. I'll be in touch.