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 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.
posted by YT at 11:18 pm
2 Comments:
Tommy here.
I noticed you have taken a shining to the word 'grim'. I don't recall you saying it so often when you were home, so I figured you must either be having a worse time in Europe than you were before you left (which is doubtful), or you simply need to increase your vocabulary.
Thanks to Microsoft Word and the Shift+F7 function, here are but some of the available synonyms:
- Bleak
- Harsh
- Dour (I like that one, use that)
- Dismal
- Gloomy
- Grisly
- Macabre
You can thank me and Microsoft when you come back.
Hi Tighty,
Gary visited me in Leeds at the weekend, no need to say that we were completely wasted by 8pm.
Now that your rugby team has been humiliated in their last 8 matches I will stop making fun of you, I do not believe in kicking people whilst they are down.
Europe sounds fun maybe I should think about crossing the channel myself one day. Or maybe I should say that I told you Europe was full of weirdo's and that you should have stayed here.
Thats all for now.
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