Hungary - Budapest

Hello my wee crumpets,

Next stop on this most lengthy journey is none other than Hungary. Heading into Hungary, our group had to split into mini-groups of four. In these groups we had to make a play-doh model of something to do with Contiki and draw five things that first come to mind when we think of Hungary. Needless to say, pretty much everyone draw a crappy diagram of an empty stomach or a ham or something. One group brought to the table something most unique and individual though - The story of Hungary. Although I can't remember the story word for word, it went something along the lines of:

This is Gary and this is Hung.
His name is Hung because he has a big willy.
Gary and Hung are in love with each other, but one day a girl saw that Hung had a big willy, so they had sex.
Hung was very angry, but also very rich, so he showed off his money to the girl and so she had sex with him too.
The girl gave birth to a child, but no-one knew who the father was, so it was named Hungary.

It may not seem like much, but combined with the dodgy drawings that went with this story, it proved to be a laugh.

The city? Budapest. Unlike how everyone on the coach thought it was pronounced, Budapest is actually supposed to roll off the tongue as Budapesh. Surely if everyone is saying it how it's spelt, you'd just accept that it's pronounced that way. I suppose not.

On our first night in Budapest, I felt like it was about time I introduced the group to The Moocher. Now, for those of you who haven't found out what The Moocher is yet, I shall explain the story. In December 2009, I was given a Christmas/Going away present from Callum and Ben for my big Australian road trip by myself. The reason they bought this particular present for me was "Just in case you get lonely, two months is a long time". It's a male sex toy made from a latex fleshy kind of substance. To put it simply, it's a rubber vagina, that can conveniently fit into your pocket. Sonja suggested that I take it with me to Europe and take pictures with it instead of the usual toys that most people take travelling with them. And so, I took it with me, and have taken pictures of it in most of the countries I've been too. You can imagine the awkwardness if I was going through my bag one day and it fell out on the Contiki coach, so to skip this awkwardness, I had to bring it out and explain the story. My open-minded group accepted it immediately and fell in love with it. She was passed around the group and fingered, fisted, shoved in a torch, broke a magical wand and slapped multiple people in the face.



In the morning, we had a group photo overlooking the city of Budapest, and everyone requested that The Moocher be present in the photo, so here it is:



Our day in Budapest was a large one, but we really didn't get a lot done. For those who don't know Budapest, it's basically two cities, just called one. Splitting the two cities is a massive river. One side is Buda and the other is Pest. Our first stop was on a big bastard mountain on the Buda side that overlooked both sides of the city and had various markets, war memorials, monuments and statues covering it. I loved it! Some of the statues were very different to the kinds that I'm used to, and they all had their own little story. This was was by far my favorite:



Down in the city, we had the day to ourselves, but due to some of the people we hung out with who needed to relieve their bowels and bladders, we found ourselves in search of some food as soon as we got there. One thing common across the entire of Europe is pay toilets. Unless you're eating or drinking in a pub, cafe or restaurant, expect to pay a fee to use a toilet. By the time we got our food and ate it, we'd eaten up half of our day already. Soon after though, we visited the TERROR museum. Inside held everything about how Hungary was involved in WWII. The museum itself was an old torture house in the war which made it twice as confronting. After a good couple hours, we made it out and took to the streets for some ice cream.

If someone were to ask me "What's the worst Ice Cream you've ever had?" I wouldn't have to think for more than a second. Hungarian Ice Cream is absolute filth. Every flavour that was available tasted nothing like what it should have. My vanilla tasted like the coconut Ice Cream Andy was supposed to get, and my chocolate tasted more like the banana version Benny Boy got. Don't be fooled by what I say though, they all had this similarity. With some discussion with everyone else who bought an Ice Cream, it seemed that there was a common trend amongst this dairy delight (or disgust). Turns out everyone's Ice Cream tasted like ass. Lesson learnt! I didn't want to risk it, so I didn't get around to trying it out, but this Ice Cream look much more appealing. Old Mate Petie had some though.



Night fall hit and the evening's plans involved a night cruise through the river to see the city from the water by night with a buffet style dinner. It was a lovely evening and most of us went back to camp afterwards for some cheap wine drinking. After a relatively quiet night in the social circle, we hit up the tents and smashed up some slumber.

In the next edition we move forth to the home of the musical legend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Austria, where German is the language and the schnitzels are large. Moving closer and closer to Germany, the beer gets better and better.

BYE!!

The chaps with The Moocher

Hello again!

Before anything, this song was played a couple times on the coach, and I fell in love. I hope that by putting it on here, it will infect others.



I’ve finally had the inspiration to finish the blog, and I hope I’ll be back to my routine of having a new one up every couple days. So at this point, we’ll just pretend I’m still on the Contiki tour.

Croatia with a similar vibe and temperature to Greece, was another destination in the trip that everyone was looking forward to. On arrival, the tents were set up, the Frisbee came out, and after dinner, wine was consumed. Our first night in Dubrovnik scared me. I opened a bottle of 11.5% Rose, not a particularly harsh bottle by any means, but enough to get most jobs done. After finishing that bottle in record time, and still feeling incredibly sober, I started to worry. At the start of the tour, a bottle would make my cheeks pink and my tummy giggly, and I’d be pretty pissed. Halfway through the tour, a bottle would be a great start to the night, and would get me in a chirpy, happy mood. I think it’s now at the point where a bottle mellows me, but not much more. It’s now like a tastier (sometimes not exactly delicious) version of water. A popular activity shared among the group is a shower beer. It kind of goes without say - you take a beer to the shower and drink it. Some of my chumps at home have heard me speak of taking a green apple into the shower and eating it. I can honestly say that a shower beer is 30 times better. The bogan Australian girl of the group introduced us to it. That again probably goes without say.

Bright and early the first morning, a guided tour took us through the ‘old town’ of Dubrovnik. I must start by saying that the Croatian people that live in the old town have to be very fit, and if they aren’t, it doesn’t take long for them to get fit. It was an impressive layout. The main three streets are on the ‘first level’. On these streets you find food, banks, myths and tales, souvenir shops and clothing. To see the cool and strange stuff, you have to climb flights upon flights of stairs. Here, one can find where all the people live, and the overgrown forests that were once a veggie patch. Dubrovnik dwellers are insanely nosey people. Each house when-ever they were built has a little hole in each wall. This little hole had a really cool name that I’ve forgotten, but it has the sole purpose for listening to your neighbours. In the old day, there were no secrets. One English chap who decided to move there for a year was making coffee one morning, only to find out that he was out of sugar. He simply said to his wife “Oh darn, we’re out of sugar, I’ll have to make a trip to the shop”. Moments later, the little old lady from next door was knocking at his door with some spare sugar. No secrets.



Basically, the old town is just a massive maze encased in massive city walls. After the guided tour, we had a couple hours free time, and we used that time to get lost in the maze and find a dying pigeon, a peg and a bar. This was no ordinary bar though. Half of the city boundary is cliff face. To get to this bar, you have to walk through a little opening in the city wall, and you walk out onto one of these massive cliff faces. Spread out on the rocks on the cliff were various little tables and chairs and that was the bar. You could even jump off the rocks into the Croatian sea and climb back up to finish your beer. You may be asking “Why is a peg worth mentioning?”. Well my friends, this peg turned into a game throughout the day. Whilst walking along, the peg would be opened and without knowing, someone would fall victim to a peg being attached to them. To be properly claimed a victim, a photo had to be taken of you with the peg attached, without you knowing. Please see exhibit A:



At 12:30, everyone made their way to the port to get on our cruise, similar to George’s boat, just not as sleazy. It was a gorgeous day and a gorgeous cruise, and since they sold beer, we got pretty bloody drunk. After cruising around for an hour the boat stopped for lunch in some port on some island, both unknown to this old fish, but I know that we were allowed to swim here, and to make use to this opportunity, we spent most of our time leaping off the boat into the water. This boat was far larger than George’s, and had a second level which made the leap so much more exciting.



For lunch in Croatia, the way to go is seafood. Dubrovnik and the surrounding islands especially are famous for their sensational seafood. I’ve had seafood before, and don’t appreciate it enough to pay the price they were asking, so I had delicious vegetarian pizza. One of the newer girls passed out before the pizza even came out. I guess that what happens when you start drinking scotch at 9 in the morning.

Jumping back on the boat full of food, everything went smoothly for the duration of the sail back to port, right up until about 20 minutes away. One joke went a little too far, and the response wasn’t exactly gorgeous. Somehow, a tension in the group had been brewing, a fact unbeknownst to me. Things went awkward on the boat for a quite some time while tempers flared, but we made it off the boat still friends and life went on.

After a massive day in the sun on the boat and slamming through the city, exhaustion was a feeling running through the campsite, but the day wasn’t over just yet. Tara and mobile chef Jodie decided that taking us for a pub crawl to see Dubrovnik by night would be a good idea, and how it was! On arrival back into the city, the chaps and myself slammed down a pizza and let the drinking commence. The first pub sucked, it was only us and some creepy old guys that just sat and watched our Contiki girls dance around. This was the shortest pub crawl known to me, as we only visited two. On arrival to the next pub, we saw glow sticks and buckets everywhere. When I say bucket, I mean like the kind you take to the beach, with a little plastic spade. In these buckets contained copious amounts of alcohol, of whatever kind you wanted. I had to have one, but instead I had about 5 with shots of every kind dispersed between. A lad from the tour discovered a thing called a tower. Similar to the bucket idea, but 3 litres worth (I think?) and is filled with glow sticks and the alcohol has to be accessed from a little tap.



At 12 o’clock, there was a scheduled blackout of the city, but no-one told us, so for a couple minutes, the bar was in complete darkness (This is what I’m told, I didn’t notice a thing because of reasons I’m sure you can all relate to). After the generator kicked in, the party went on. When everyone decided it was time to go home, we took to the streets to find a taxi. This was not a cool experience by any means. Walking through the streets of a night time and not being able to see anything was still definitely an experience though. In the distance I could see a man walking down the street side to side. It doesn’t sound creepy at all, but when he is dragging something behind of significant weight, I can’t help but to feel somewhat uncomfortable. In the distance, I could make out figures running around, going into and coming from the shadows of the walls. We made it back to the campsite alive though!

With a free day up our sleeves, I spent the day washing, talking to the parents and strolling through the old city. Before I left the campsite, there was a massive box of unclaimed alcohol that was left on the bus, and after 3 days of no-one claiming it, Jodie was about to throw it. Benjamin saw this disgrace and stopped it before she had a chance. Out of this I scored two bottles of wine and 6 beers. A fair effort I’d like to think. On arrival into the city, I found a few Contiki kids about to hike up the massive city walls. I joined their party and off we went. I’m very glad I took my camera. I haven’t too much to say concerning the walls, I think the pictures speak for themselves.



Finding some more people from Contiki, we spent the remainder of our afternoon at the cliff bar, chilling out to the max in the sun with the ocean breeze.



More to come soon as the journey through Eastern Europe continues!

Later boooyyyzzz.

Well hallow thar!

I do apologise for the delayed posting of the blog. We’ve had a lack of opportunity, and when I was faced with a possible chance to post something, I didn’t have anything written up. My blogging has been awfully slack as of late, and because of that, I have to write up about two weeks worth of blog.

Moving on from the Turks, we visited Bulgaria. At the border, we were stopped for a about 2 hours, and we had to pull out all our luggage from underneath and stand beside our bags. A chap would walk around the bags, and when he saw a suspicious person, he would shove his hands in the bag and feel around. I have no idea how we would find anything using that method. If that’s how the border control works in Eastern Europe, it would be too easy to smuggle. I expected some dogs to come through and have a sniff, or even just a more extensive search. Having shaved off my beard, I no longer look like a drug dealer, so the customs man didn’t go near my bag, but another fella on the tour who didn’t go for the shave (the only lad who didn‘t get a shave), had his bag felt up. I think on the way home, I’ll have a shave before I get to the airport, then I won’t get bomb tested like on the way in to London.

After making it through, we went through ages of driving. Through Eastern Europe, we’ve spent a frigg load of time on the coach. Some people are really starting to feel it and are sick of it. I don’t know why they get so sick of it, those bastards can sleep with no problem. There are two or three of us that really struggle with the idea of sleeping on the coach. I’ve had a few small naps, which last a whole 5-10 minutes which suck more arse than just staying awake. I can’t continue whinging though, because the further north we go through the East, the more beautiful the scenery is becoming, so there is always something magical to look at.



I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this story, but I’ll throw it in anyway. When Benjamin and myself were in Scotland, he broke the fly on his jeans. After a small search, we discovered that to get it repaired was far too expensive. He could have had a rather good night out for the price of that zip repair, so he didn’t bother. Instead, he decided that he was going to go out and buy a button and some cotton and sew a button in place of the zip and just cut a hole in the opposite side of the button. No offence to the old chump, but I highly doubt his ability to pull off a procedure like that. I went along with it anyway. Before we could get to a sewing shop, Ben found a button on the ground that looked like it might fit his requirements. Throughout our stay in Scotland, he found a couple more. Whilst in England, he found even more, and had built up a collection of about 6-7 buttons. All of these buttons are just found on the streets. Sure enough, we visited France, and there were a few more buttons lying around, and Big Ben discovered a passion deep within to find a button in each country he visited. Therefore, he now has buttons from Scotland, England, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Monaco, Macedonia and Turkey. Our entire tour is now on the search for buttons every time we get to a new country now. It’s gone beyond an obsession now. Unfortunately, because Ben didn’t realise his passion for buttons until France, he wasn’t able to keep track of where each button came from, so he’s just got a big fat bag of multi-coloured, multi-sized, multi-holed buttons. Tara took us for a walking tour through Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. Throughout this entire walking tour, we were looking for buttons, and because of it, I missed half of the friggan attractions. Ben’s compulsion has infected all of us.

Each time we get to a new country, Tara has us draw on a piece of paper five things that we know about the country, followed by Tara telling us what the country is famous for, who we may know from that country and a brief overview of the history. After Bulgaria, the coach drove us through the beautiful country of Macedonia. When asked what I know about Macedonia, I had a complete mind-blank. I’d heard of it, but with a population of only two million, I’d like to think I can be forgiven for not knowing anything about it. Again, we were stopped on the border for ages, and everyone had to pee. Luckily for us, there was a public road-side toilet about 2 minutes after the border…Or is it really that lucky? If you know anything about public road-side toilets, you’ll know they aren’t exactly immaculate. In Macedonia, where you have a hole in the floor as a toilet that doesn’t flush, this dirtiness escalates by about 50. On first glimpse, it I had the impression that those who had used this thing haven’t bothered aiming for the hole and have just shat wherever seemed convenient for them. On a closer inspection, I came to the conclusion that the poop scattered on the walls, urinals and floor were actually put there on purpose. In my life, I’ve never smelt anything worse. Walking in at first with a shirt over my nose worked very well for the first minute, and then the little faeces particles penetrated my shirt, and I could smell it through the shirt. After taking the shirt of my face for a couple seconds to smell how bad it really was, I found myself struggling to keep my stomach in my throat. Everything was brown.

In the city of Skopje, we stopped for lunch, and the first thing we saw was a young local kid asking for some coin. When we didn’t deliver, he challenged us all to a boxing match. When we took a photo, he told us that photo’s were 10 Euro. Crafty little bugger, but not crafty enough to get anything out of us. A loaf of bread, two bottles of wine, some cream cheese, a bottle of water and two bananas set me back about AUD$5


Our campsite for Macedonia was pissing down rain when we arrived. So far on the 27 we’ve been on the tour, we haven’t had to endure a whole lot of rain, maybe a wee sprinkle on the odd occasion, but nothing like in Macedonia. Located about 50 metres down a path was a massive, wavy, freezing lake, and so naturally, Benjamin, two other insane girls and myself went and jumped in. Our lungs shrunk to about a quarter of the size and we couldn’t breathe. After spending a whole 45 seconds in the water (Long enough for a digital camera to be pulled out of it’s case, turned on, and have a really crap and an ok picture taken) my lips were blue, so we all ran back to the luke-warm showers. Just for your information, 2L plastic bottles on wine don’t go down very well with 50kg girls.

Our next stop through the Eastern Europe block brought us to one of my top highlights for the trip. Having not known anything of Albania, it was a pretty big hit driving into. To put it bluntly, I’ll say that the place is an absolute hole. It’s appearance suggests that WWII is still at large, not only based on the visual poverty and destruction, but by the general depression you can see on everyone’s face and the general shit mood and atmosphere of it. We stopped for about an hour for lunch in a city called Elbasan, the 3rd largest city in Albania. Unfortunately my camera had cracked the poopies at me that day so I wasn’t able to take as many snaps as I would have liked. Finding lunch was a bitch too. The closest thing to food we could find was a cake shop and a “Kebab” shop which sold dodgy looking sausages that would have me questioning why some dogs were missing their legs. By far, Elbasan would be the poorest city in condition, wealth and atmosphere I’ve experienced and this has inspired me to start thinking about further travels down the line, in countries probably not normally suited for tourists. While walking around, looking at the many children waiting for a coin from the rich Australians, it occurred to me how much I love Australia. These children won’t ever get to see outside of their country, and if they do, it will probably be illegally. Tara was telling us that a lot of Albanian men get out of the country to go to Greece or Italy or something to find a work and send money back home because of the crappy economy.

In complete contrast to the absolute scum that was Elbasan, the scenery that followed was among the most gorgeous I’ve seen in my life. People constantly tell me that Australia is the most beautiful country in the world, most of them European. I think if they ventured out to the Eastern countries on their own continent, they’d find something magical a lot closer to home. For all of the creepy and slimy men, rubbish on the streets, food poisoning and everything that comes to mind when the Eastern block is mentioned, the country side most definitely evens the balance.

We managed to score a night at a resort on the beach. Even for an Albanian resort, we felt like the Kings and Queens of Contiki compared to where we’re usually sleeping. Despite everyone needing jumpers and being windier than skydiving, a bottle of wine is all the persuasion I needed to sprint down to the broken glass filled beach with one of the Canadians. I managed to find a 2L bottle of nasty Merlot for about AUD$4 and further managed to consume the bottle that night. Needless to say, I was a walking mess. Ben managed to slink away from me un-noticed the entire evening, but I heard stories…For starters, our curly mop-head felt sick and seeing as he can’t throw up on his own, tried shoving his fingers down his throat. Unfortunately for Ben, he has managed to build up a tolerance to the reflex that makes him spew, so when that failed, he grabbed Derek the Canadian’s fingers and forced them down. What else happened that night, neither of us know, but he did end up sleeping in a ball on the floor beside his bed, because he’s under the impression that if he gets too comfortable, he snores and he didn’t want to awake his room-mates. I don’t recall ever saying we were ever normal people.

To make our way to Dubrovnik, we hit up more of the coastal side of Europe, our coach drove us along the shores of Montenegro (Where all the Hollywood stars go for holidays). As everything is only cliff-face to water, there we no beaches. All the cliff sides were made up of massive hotels, casino’s and resorts a little more upper-class than the one we spent a night in.