BRATISLAVA

SLOVAKIA

Ahoj všetci!

Slovakia is the second stop on my whistlestop tour of eastern europe. I'm taking advantage of the Hotel Kyjev's free internet while my friends nurse their hangovers and sleep off breakfast.

So Bratislava has a very Moscow vibe to it, in the sense that you can gaze out of any window and just smell the remains of Communism. It has the same kinda drab, grey, depressing feel to it, which the shite weather isn't doing any favours. It feels like the former Eastern block that everyone kind of forgot about, then remembered it existed before promptly forgetting about it again.

I'm starting to feel that time is being wasted on computers while having exotic ex-communist holidays, so I'll finish this boring as hell entry by telling you that the hotel cashier has just started having a mad argument in English with some guy checking in. Like, passers by stop and watch kind of argument. Apparently the new guy hasn't paid his 50 euro deposit, but is adamant that he has. Hotel man not happy.

I'll do the proper entry when I get back.

EDIT - Monday 16th May

I'm back! So yeah, Bratislava. I wish I could have written this entry a little sooner, because everything that happened has gone and done that annoying post-holiday thing where it all melds into one day. I'll do my best.

I think it's safe to say that Bratislava was very much the middle ground of Eastern Tour; not that it was unenjoyable in any way, it just felt a little more low-key than Budapest and was a little rest camp before Vienna. I'd actually pictured it being a little more wild than it was, what with its reputation as party city, but maybe we just didn't look in the right places.

I think we've established from the little bit I wrote while there that Bratislava is a little more architecturally drab than the other two. This is the view from our hotel.

And a couple of streets. Second one could almost be Huddersfield.

But, on what I think was the second day, the weather cleared up and we managed to find the bit which I'd describe as 'Old town' Bratislava, let's say, with lots of little souvenir shops and cafes and restaurants.

Having just read that back, let me rephrase: We found the tourist area.

Either way it looked a hell of a lot better than the other parts of the city we walked through.

So we looked round here at strange bits of art and various shops. One thing worth mentioning is that it seems to be hockey season at the moment, presumably hosted in Bratislava, or at least Slovakia, and there are statues all over the city of hockey players, each painted a different way representing a different country. Nobody seems to have pictures of them though.

We found a couple of good signs here though:

Happy pig - roasted pig. Click for full size.

A polite sign to please bin your dog.

This next one was for a restaurant shaped like a UFO that was suspended about 100ft above a bridge, there's a picture of it in the boat trip entry. I don't know about you, but "Progressive Mediterrasian" sounds more like a music scene than a type of cuisine.

Walking on the footpath underneath this bridge, we found this, which I presume is Bratislava's answer to the love-padlocked Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, except .. just not as popular. There will be no displays of love in Slovakia, it seems.

Another view from the bridge; our boat left a little further up-river.

And us walking on the railing, because we could.

One place we did want to go was a club called SUBCLUB in an old fallout bunker sort of thing which was built into the side of a hill. Sadly it was closed, but it looked pretty good (albeit grubby and terrifying).

In the hills just above the bridge, we found a castle and a wicked playground, but me being a moron, I hadn't charged my camera the night before and this is where that day's photos ended. I managed to get a couple before the battery died completely of the city and the bridge (UFO restaurant visible here) but any others I might have to steal from my friends.

I think you can kinda see the difference between the nicey bits and the shitty bits further into the centre quite well here.

So that was Bratislaaaaaaaaava.

BUDAPEST

HUNGARY

I've not really given this much attention blog-wise, but this week I am doing a very mini trip to Eastern Europe. I should have been in Ukraine this last week, which would have been the absolute dogs bollocks, but due to circumstances that may as well have their own entry devoted to them, it didn't happen.

So the first leg of the tour is Budapest. In case anyone else wasn't aware, Budapest is actually two areas, Buda and Pest, the first one being on the west bank of the Danube and the latter on the East, which are now linked by bridges. I think historically this symbolised the division line between the bourgeois and the mad gypsy proles.

This is one of the first signs we saw, on our train towards the city centre. We took it to mean "No Austrians"

As a general rule, the place is very nice looking; most of my friends drew comparison to Prague. These pics are from just outside our hostel and I guess are fairly typical for most of the streets we saw.


I'm not certain f it was because of the time of year, or if we were in the wrong area, but contrary to my weary pre-departure fears of running into groups of moronic stag parties hunting for hookers and crack, we actually saw none. Maybe this was a dumb fear.

I think somewhere at the back of my mind there was also the image of being mugged by some Eastern European in a tight T shirt with a wrench if I left the hostel alone. Call me naive, but I felt a lot safer walking round there than in many places in the UK.

One thing we did manage to avoid, fairly successfully, was Budapest's tourist traps. Because Hungary, alongside Japan and Russia and an uncountable list of other countries, has a currency that translates into thousands for a few measly quid, it's mind blowingly obvious to see how people think they're richer than they are. We were probably loathed by a good deal of the people we bought from for our general money savvy-ness when in reality the dumb Brits abroad should just be fair game.

The previous point leads me to language. After god knows how long studying German and having no qualms about being thrown into a group of Germans and being told to socialise, to suddenly arrive in a country where the language isn't similar, nay totally unrecognisable, in comparison to others was a bit of a shock and probably a bit of a sore point for us all.

On the second day we went exploring properly, but the weather decided early on that it was going to be both rainy, windy and muggy, in whichever order it felt like. First step was windy and rainy, so we took shelter in a playground.



Another thing that didn't help us language-wise was that all we had to go on was a 30 second mp3 of basic Hungarian pleasantries, which would get you about as far as saying hello and then apologising before the bloke in front of you spoke broken but perfectly understandable English. Having said this, we did meet quite a lot of people in touristy areas who didn't seem to speak English, which was terrible purely because it intensified the feeling of harbouring the ignorant foreigner mindset of "I am in YOUR country, why do the people not have the basic courtesy to learn MY language?"

Once the rain cleared up a tiny bit, half of us went off on a walking tour of the city while the other half (me included) headed over the bridge to make the mother of all treks up a large large hill to see the city from on high and check out some old communist sculptures.

This bridge was actually a pretty awesome bridge.

Me on the bridge in rainy rainy Budapest, shortly before climbing the hill in the background.

Team Hill, halfway up, and a couple below of the view so far.

Right at the top we found the promised Communist sculpture. It was the shameless communist stuff too, y'know, like the giant of communism slaying the capitalism allegory dragon.

Yeah, that kind of laughable stuff. We insulted communism.

Sheeran and Pipsquin re-enacting Communism vs. Capitalism.

Even further up we found the world's answer to Minas Tirith. That's Lord of the Rings trivia for anyone vaguely like half the cinematically unfulfilled people on our trip who also didn't understand. Remember the dragon scene? It was basically that, disappointingly without the dragons (except for the capitalist ones).

Like this but without hobbits and a volcano

See?

We did a fair bit of exploring in this bit, although half the balconies you had to pay for so it was hardly budget tourism, nor did it seem worth paying to look at the same view but 10 feet higher. The views we got for free were pretty spectacular.


So the hill was a bit knackering at times and it was a sweaty sweaty ascent, but well worth it.

We saw this sign outside a cafe I believe, somewhere near the bottom of the hill, which presumably only lets good looking people in.

One thing that Team Walking Tour found that we discovered a bit later was a statue of horse. I don't know to what extent the Hungarians are practical jokers, but at least one tour guide gets away with "if you grab the horses golden balls it improves your sex life" every single time. Are we gullible, or superstitious? You decide.


A highlight of Budapest would have to be 'ruin bars' which are essentially old buildings which have been bought, been outfitted with 3 or 4 bars on 2 or 3 levels, and filled with anything and everything. I wish I had photos of them. The first one was a building which had been taken over by someone or some group who gave the building an indoor woodland theme for an art project, the remnants of which are hanging from the walls and ceiling. In the second one we drank sitting on a dentists chair and in an old Trabant car fitted with sofas. You get the idea.

I'll finish up this entry with miscellaneous things.

Pasta called "Nakedli". Immaturity success.

And, in case you didn't see it on the pasta label, Hungary has Tesco! We were probably a little too excited about that, but after 8 months of Lidl and Rewe, Tesco was a welcome blast from the past.

Apart from which, reading signs like this just makes me wish the English language had more interesting characters.

We found a cafe selling freshly 'squizzed' juices. They get maximum points for being able to convey the accent through spelling. But the menu above seems a little more adventurous than the previous place, which simply offered -

€2.60 for cabbage. Tempting, but no.

So that was Budapest. We battled with the 18th century queueing system for train tickets at the station, then caught a train with actual compartments (kind of Hogwarts Express style) where an old man joined us to make it a little awkward and Sophie cut open bread rolls with the handle of a comb.

Viszlát!

NEUERBURG - almost hols

GERMANY

Tomorrow my easter holidays begin, yay! I think I'm supposed to have a support group session tomorrow at about 9, but going on the attendance rate of the last couple of weeks, I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that my holiday may begin tomorrow morning.

This week has not been a good week. As I've already mentioned, the 12th grade are all away drinking on some beach in Tuscany so I'm virtually all out of friends, my lesson on British humour this morning fell apart like dog shit being hosed down, and on top of everything, I've run out of milk. You can drop me somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Germany and make the internet a rare occurence, but you can't take my milk.

COLOGNE

GERMANY

Man, I'm racking up these Cologne trips, right?

Last weekend I was there once again for Dora's pre-birthday celebrations. This time was one of the best seeing as the weather was wunderschön and we managed to gather a 20 strong group to party with, including ones we haven't seen in aaaages.

I reckon I can save a hell of a lot of time by saying that 50% of our time there was spent sitting on the bank of the Rhein, getting sunburnt, eating ice cream and people watching.


There's the recent spectacle of people in roller blades showing off on the paths in front of all the restaurants and hotels, which I've never seen before, and which just seems to scream 'attention whore'.

Our first hostel was fairly bog standard, nothing really to complain about, except that the price they were asking was a little much. The second one, split between 6 of us, was awesomely swish and a big improvement, apart from the fact that they charged for bedsheets and someone had puked lasagne in the lift, which Marina slipped and fell in.

On Saturday, after an unending stream of new faces, ice cream cafes and free city travel, we met up with Dora and her family, who as real people/proper grown ups could afford a hotel with free bed stuff and clean lifts.

In the evening we all went to an Argentinian restaurant for steaks. When I say "for steaks", that's quite a literal statement, as nowhere on the menu did I see anything to the tune of "the steak doesn't come with anything unless you specifically order it". Thus this marks the first time a man has handed me a plate with nothing but a huge chunk of cow on it and said "guten appetit".


Birthdays plus British people plus foreign country equals alcohol abuse, to quote the well known equation, so Saturday night we went out um party zu machen. First stop was a cocktail bar for pre-drinks, a wonderful phrase which should shortly enter the Oxford Dictionary and the catalyst of many a good night out. We spent about an hour in here because shortly after the bartenders begun making our 20-strong drinks order, they lost the piece of paper.

After this we went to a sweaty sweaty club called Underground, which may be the only club that I've been to in Germany that isn't at least 2 years in the past as far as music is concerned. I also exploited the method of hobos this country over by picking empty bottles up off the floor and returning them to the bar for Pfand. Basically, 50 cents per empty bottle. I made €5.50 this weekend.

Sunday I reckon was one of my best days of this year abroad. The weather kept it all together and racked itself up to 21 degrees, the cue for more ice cream, beer and river-chilling. Beer was essential for hangover repair. In the best move of the day, I cancelled my handy lift back to Neuerburg and had an awesome day in Cologne, because God knows you don't pass up this kind of day to sit on trains and then cook dinner for one in the arse end of nowhere.

Another particular highlight was finally climbing the Dom instead of just looking at it. I counted 504 steps; turns out there's 510. Anyway, it was well worth the half an hour it took to haul up the rucksack I should have left with my friends. Here's the view from the highest reachable point (about 100m high).



Here's an example of the literally millions of bits of graffiti thats accumulated on the inside of the towers over the years; not current, but still relevant.


The final act, and a pretty sweet end to a perfect day was Asian food in the Haubtbahnhof with Glen. Man, I could live in that thing. The haubtbahnhof I mean. Not Glen. But he is still pretty special.

And then I rode the 3 hour purgatory journey back towards Neuerburg just in time to catch up with all of my 12th grade students who were about to head off to Tuscany for a week. This is pretty much my entire friendship group within this school, as well as my favourite classes. This week is gonna blow.

Oh yeah, we found this in Cologne. That's not a paint job, it's furry material.


Coming home on the train I was sat near a guy with a huge beard. This really made me want to go travelling and grow a beard. I can hardly grow a beard now but I'm certain travelling would release beard growing qualities. I'd see cool stuff and embrace other cultures, but a cornerstone of the whole thing would have to be the achievement of a beard.

But, in 2 weeks I'm heading off on my mini Eastern Tour with the Leeds folks, which will be amazing as long as I remember to book everything right. Who knows, I might grow a beard.