Hungary... part 1...

How fitting that our first moments in Hungary and Eirin and I were Hungry… needless to say we found this hilarious and after our 7 hour scenic train ride... Hungary in Hungry was right up there with Monty Python.

The best thing was seeing Livia again. For those of you who don’t know Livia was a good friend of mine from Kuwait and we were going to be staying with her. She was gorgeous as ever and her dad came to the station with her to pick us up. We went back to their place where we met Livia’s mum and Marcus the German Shepard and Tirme (Stripy) the cat. Loverly… and the table was laden with Hungarian goodies like traditional Salami, Radish and cheeses, and for dessert (Erin was to become addicted) Turo Rudi: a sweet cottage cheese bar coated in chocolate… mmmm…

We were starving a stuffed ourselves and so we think we must have set some sort of trend for the rest of the week because we never ate so much in our lives… perhaps instead of calling ourselves ‘The Travelling Wildberries’ we should call ourselves ‘The Travelling eat all the berries and anything else that crosses our path’.

Livia and her family were so kind and so welcoming we felt like we’d come home. Indeed Livia is our Hungarian sister and will remain so (in fact with the two red heads I was like the odd cousin). Our Saturday morning began with a trip to Saint Andreas… I’m writing the English version because my Hungarian is terrible (though it did improve during our time in Hungary – Eirin and I can say like 20 words now…)

Anyway, Saint Andreas was beautiful, firstly, just nearby we went to a small open air museum that had been set up to celebrate and commemorate Hungarian folk culture from around the country. The different regions were represented by the different styles of houses all around, along with lace making room, indigo dye making, leather maker, and so on. And for some reason I took about 25 pictures of a windmill that was there and some donkeys…. Oh and there were pigs too, really, really, really, stinky, stinky, stinky, awful pigs which reminds me why I don’t eat pork… because pigs are a filthy animal… (“And I’m talking 10 times more charming than that Arnold from Green Acres”)… but enough Pulp Fiction… I’m rambling.

Afterwards we went into Saint Andreas proper and went to a doll museum – I love dolls! Yay for dollies… we went to the river and Eirin and Livia had ice-cream… I managed to resist because after already eating two lunches I felt that muffin top was getting outta control!

That reminds me… Eirin has devised a plan for the Muffin top… called ‘no muff too tuff’ ha ha… and the motivational centre of the plan is ‘muffin to nuthin’, repeat all: ‘muffin to nuthin’, ‘muffin to nuthin’, ‘muffin to nuthin’… very important…

Afterwards to continue on our merry sightseeing way we went back into Budapest and saw the Danube, whose strong currents were on full display. That’s one river not to fall into… though perhaps a cheap trip to other parts of Europe? We saw the frozen girl statue on the bank of the Danube, and viewed the Palace from the Pest side.

The palace, or castle area, is on the Buda side, were Livia lives too. Budapest was originally 3 cities, Buda, Old Buda, and Pest, Pest is the newest started in the 17th Century and where the parliament currently sits. Eirin and I thought Budapest truly charming, it made such a difference having a real tour guide who takes you to all the secret, local places like… The chocolate bar!!

to be continued...


Us at the Castle

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Prague, glorious Prague, and Eirin and I together again'

Ok, Prague – where to begin?! This is such an amazing city and since I was here 4 years ago the English have discovered it. Yes the English, particularly groups of guys searching for their own Russian bride/Nicole Kidman of the east if you haven’t seen that movie I’m rambling. But there is a way to tell them apart from the other English speaking nationalities if you are concerned as a drunken stag party group approaches you. Australians for example don’t have covered shoes… whilst pale and perhaps also wearing stripy shirts as the English their slightly more bronzed feet are encased in no other than havaianas. It’s easy to spot the Canadians too, no need to worry about them, they’re too busy been feared of being called American, and so, have diligently sewn the Canadian flag to their backpacks/shorts/wallets… ah yes and one cannot forget the Americans no need to worry about confusing them with anyone else, you can hear them coming before you see them and they’re saying “Oh my god” about something old/new/sparkly.

But all this and I have not yet mentioned Ota’s house! To use an American expression ‘Oh my god’ this place was bizarre. Eirin got there first to check in before I arrived from France – and she warned me that the whole afternoon there had been death metal music playing while she tried to nap. Rude. However when I got there, apart from the slightly out of the way location all was quiet. Unfortunately this was not to last.

At 7am the new ‘hell of Ota’s house’ began. The music started as some sort of new age-organ-are we in Transylvania-electronica and moved through to pop-rock (U2) all before breakfast. At breakfast I met Ota for the first time: stinky…and eating gruel with a wooden spatula. Yes, charming fellow he was with his long greasy hair and insistence on piping music throughout the hotel (no joke there was even speakers placed above the toilet for your listening pleasure – and we tried our hardest to unplug them- I swear they were like super-glued there). Oh and the music did not get turned off until one am – no joke it was continuous and painful.

I really can’t describe this place. It was like an old house next to a main road – think Hitchcock’s psycho… we don’t think Ota did anything other than run a guest house through his inherited place, and drink too much absinth. In fact he seemed to have fried all his brain cells on something – so much so that he almost forgot to get our money at the end of our (extremely long) 2 day stay. Also he insisted we pay cash – though the website had not mentioned anything like this. Our theory was he couldn’t wait until master-card paid him and had to buy more cocaine to sprinkle on his breakfast gruel.

So began our stay in the centre of the city, in the same Hostel that my other friend Erin (spelt slightly differently) and I had stayed 4 years before (yes- can you believe that was 4 years ago!). We developed another skill, adding to our repertoire of nationality spotting. The Czechs- in a tourist town like Prague it’s not always easy to know who is local or not, but let me assure you there is no mistaking Czechs from anyone else, and once again the secret lies in the footwear. And so Moses came down from the mountain with the 11th commandment- If thou art Czech thou shalt wear skin coloured stockings and sandals at all times.

I won’t bore you with details of beautiful Prague castle, or Charles Bridge or the old Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials but I will let you know that we took 3 walking tours each one better than the last. The last was the best ‘The Ghost Tour’ of Prague at 10pm with an enthusiastic guide who seemed to care that you had a good time and learnt a lot… and we love learning. The 2nd tour had been the pub tour which included free beer and goulash – so we can’t complain we got home at 2am after having a blast. Our first tour – and yes we had bought a 3 tour ticket – otherwise we wouldn’t have taken anymore tours was something of an interesting scientific experiment in the study of Czech accent as spoken by a freakishly tall, saggy breasted tour guide, who reminded me of something like out of blade-runner if the soviets had won the cold war and decided to make their own ‘Replicas’. But here I am showing my true nerd, so I will continue…

She spat when she talked and as the tour company was ‘the yellow umbrella’ we were rather hoping she’d put it up. It was the ‘castle’ tour and was meant to be 2 hours, and after one hour when we were yet to arrive at the castle we wondered somewhat about the possibility of seeing what the Guinness Book of Records describes as the biggest castle in Central Europe (have they REALLY run out of things to make records out of or what?!?!)

As she described with her robotic twang all that we passed and deliberately avoided all the things where you could actually go inside the castle – or that may have been of historical interest our wonder increased, surely this should have been named a castle-perimeter tour! The final clincher came when Eirin and I realised that our stocking-sandaled guide was in fact making up names for the architects-noblemen and such. Luckily good natured girls that we are we weren’t too miffed. After all, the 2 hours had been well spent, formulating and further perfecting our theory for nationality spotting.

Our week long trip in Prague is over, 12-05-06, and I write this on the train to Budapest to visit Livia, my friend from Kuwait, who I am totally excited to see again! I should mention how much we struggled walking to the station and changing metros etc with all our luggage, but I don’t like hearing all the ‘I told you so’… basically though one of the funniest little Britain-esque moments occurred on our way this morning.

Eirin and I struggling with our large suitcases spot our refuge in a small wheelchair lift from the station platform to the station exit. ‘So much better then escalators’ we exclaim! Upon entering the lift, truly designed for one wheel chair and pusher we rose – up we go…. Looking out across the station platform what do we spy, no other than genuinely wheelchair bound small children looking bewildered as the two tall well-abled rich westerners took their lift up, up and away.

Villefranche, French school farewell...

29th April

It’s ironic that Eirin entitled her last post ‘no more tears’ because today I cannot stop crying. Yesterday was my last day of language school and I had to say goodbye to almost everyone and today I had to say goodbye to Carlos, Hose and Yuki, 3 more fellow students whom I had grown close to over the last month.

There were definitely tears, but I guess I should tell you why, I am slack but my time was really amazing and I didn’t have the time to really keep you all up to date as much as I should have.

12th May 2006

So while I’m on the train after hopefully have a bit of time before my battery runs out I’ll try and continue something which was a dismal post or 2 of my time in Villefranche. It was amazing – and I’m sure if I keep telling you that you’ll continue not to care. Most of all it was fantastic because I learnt a lot – thanks Stephan-Magalie-Julien (my teachers) and because of my lovely friends thanks – Yuki, Carlos (+Michael), Jasmine, Roberta, Samantha, Stephan (again), and the good natured attitude of everyoine who was there – despite the mental grilling everyday.

There were excursions to Nice, St Paul, Turretts-sur-loup, Grasse and to the theatre as well as small trips on the weekend with only a few people to Nice, Monaco, Turbie, Eze Village and some other small mountain towns I forget the name of. Villefranche was beautiful and though I swear it had more restaurants than people in it we never got tired of it. (Or eating out for that matter!).

It’s really hard to describe how the month flew, but it did, and now it kind of seems surreal, and it’s only been 2 weeks. Maybe it was a dream it was a little bit too perfect? I never laughed so much, at so much chocolate, cheese and wine (yes… until the end of the bottle… Carlita).

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