Day 16. Budapest.

I did... Nothing. Nothing all day.

A lie. I cooked food. 

Then I went out in search of more food and got waylaid by a collection of staff members who had met for half price margaritas. So I joined them for a while, loving every moment of the crazy stories and world that is the hostel industry in Budapest. 

After that I returned to the hostel hungry and drunk. :)

Somehow managed to get dressed and ready and then set off for the much famed and awaited boat party. 

The party was a blast, mingling, chatting, a little dancing, kissing under bridges (an old Hungarian tradition) and general nationalist mockery. And of course a fabulous look at the spectacular beauty that is Budapest. Especially all lit up at night the castles and monuments are offensively attractive. 

I saw my baby pommies (one of them on the left above) and Eddy the tall Irish dude (the tall one) again.

After the boat sailed and returned to dock we all shuffled off and onto a consistently docked boat that is a club. The club wasn't all that good but the people on board certainly were. There were a few adventures like Alex (aka Krusty) one of the staff members trying to keep guests out of the boat toilets who enraged one man to the point that he threatened to piss on him. Or C3 telling me that he had heard that Ryan Gossling was somewhere onboard and laughing as he watched me squeal and run around looking for him. Dick. :P
Or the mad dancing, or the fact that Krusty was wearing girls shirts and makeup and dancing like fool much to my hysterical delight. 

I was chilling with the staff for most of the night and was mistaken for a staff member by multiple people. Even guests of the same hostel I am staying in. Because I wasn't new when they arrived and just seemed to fit in apparently. Yay for me. 

The night was a blast and one to be remembered. 

Day 15. Budapest

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I would like to take a moment to talk about the benefits of being short while backpacking, the formost of which may be leg room on planes and trains and other such advantages. But one very great advantage is that I not only fit easily on all hostel beds, but I can also fit all of my clothes on the bed with me while I sleep and not be bothered by it.

I got up this morning and headed out to have a snoop at one of the sister hostels, Grandio. I grabbed a (disgusting) pastry on the way, rented a bike and happened to get a coffee at the cracking good place I found the day before. Then I snooped away at the other hostel. I ran into Eddy, the tall Irish guy there too. this hostel was damn fucking cool. It was an open courtyard ringed by ground level rooms and a balcony with a second level of rooms. The courtyard was glorious with trees, beer pong tables, a bar and barbecues. People were all over the place chilling and the vibe was sick. 

Having snooped enough I rode on off to thermal baths that Budapest is famous for.

They were lovely, I soaked, I relaxed and I chatted to group of Aussie guys who were on a Busabout tour and raving about Krakow, hmmm, Krakow, one day I shall meet you. 

After returning from the baths relaxed and invigorated I tagged along with Jess from the hostel to the much talked about happy hour for half price margaritas at a little Mexican joint around the corner. There was a group of staff members and hanging out with them was the best conversation and eye opening (ammeter and uneducated) anthropological study of my trip (I do love to observe a culture). Well, hostel workers, it appears  are members of a strange and unique sub-culture. 

After slugging down several punchy little margaritas I followed Jess who needed to do some shopping for the hostel. I, in a drunken moment decided to do some shopping and buy some food there. This actually turned out to be a good call though as I saved some money over the next few days and avoided gross pastries. 

We then gathered and set out for my first Hungarian bar crawl. We stopped off at several ruin bars, I mentioned these earlier but for a bit more of an explanation. Ruin bars are a rather new concept and are a venture that serves to make use of the heritage listed and abandoned buildings in the Jewish quarter. What some clever little people started to do is fit out the buildings with super cool art and open up bars. The spaces are huge and you can wander round and explore all the various levels and rooms. Jess and I had a fun time checking it all out and messing around posing for photos. 

A series of bars and people latter and we wound up at a place that has been voted the third best bar in the world. And it was fucking awesome. But I didn't get any photos of it, because I am a dick. 

FOAM PARTY!!!! The bar crawl ended up at the wonderful wonderful foam party. I have been to a foam party before and loved the hell out of it. However my friends didn't really love it, this time however I was sans friends and flying solo so free to soak up as much of the foamy goodness as I could. I did kind of underestimate the foaminess of the foam. I found out latter that on a whim the organisers had decided to order more foam then usual. There was so damn much foam. Like you could be standing up and buried in it completely. And god jesus it was fun. 

You can see me creeping in the background of this photo creepin' 

Then the hypnotising guy from the past two nights walked in, and that was the start of another story entirely. Its not really something I want to put in the blog, but I just can't ignore someone that was such a big part of the rest of my stay in Budapest. 

Oh and his hostel nick name, was Krusty. lol. 

Day 14. Budapest

Day 14. Budapest

Feeling much better, with somewhat of a voice to call my own I got up and ready for a big day of walking and bike tours. I scoped out the best coffee in town and intended to hit up the Jewish quarter for that and a few vintage stores I had heard about. 

I went for breakfast with Morton, a Danish guy in his early thirties from my hostel I had been chatting to the past two nights. We wandered the  Jewish quarter and ended up finding a super cheap 900HUF each breakfast of a nice sandwich and fresh homemade lemonade at a cute little very privately owned bar. Probably the cheapest meal in all of Budapest. 

I said goodbye to Morten for the time being and set to flanning (touristically wandering) the Jewish quarter. And I fell in love rather quickly. The thing about this area is that is is heritage listed and therefore can not be altered (also is tragically empty as the majority of Hungarian Jews were simply and mercilessly shot and thrown in the Danube, Budapest actually has a very small Jewish population due to this). But in any case this area, tragic as its history is, has a special kind of beauty, it  has this rustic, shabby, distressed look to it as well as many ruins and is really pretty lovely. 

After some shopping at these wicked cool vintage shops and a crackalackin' good coffee, I made my way to another part of town for a bike tour. Unfortunately the bastards wouldn't take me as I was the only one to show up. 

But I got to see some more of the city and made a 30second long friendship in these people who wanted a photo with me. I dont now why, but whatever, thats what life is all about I think, embrace the moments. 

So rented a bike (from another place, both closer to home and that hadnt pissed me off by refussing to take me on a tour) and explored. 

I rode to the other end of Pest and visited the Terror Museum, a Nazi and Communist museum that had me crying within the first two minets. 

Next I went up to the Heroes Square and a stunning park, the (fake) castle and palace, fake because no royals ever lived there and just generally enjoyed the prettiness and vibe. 

Home and time for the party of the day. A COSTUME party. Which I love, but is kind of difficult when you are backpacking. The theme was 'home town stereotypes', awesome theme, but hard to do all the same. I ended up dressing like a bogan, tying some blue cloth on my head and drawing bogan jingoistic tattoos all over myself. 

Speaking of tattoos, there mearly a hideous moment when I met this fellow, a staff member known as C3 who I proudly displayed my "super bogan southern cross tatt" to before seeing the spectacularly authentic looking souther cross tattoo on his arm. After a horrifying moment where I thought I had really put my foot in it, I then realised he was actually a normal, non-boagan Aussie with really goos tatts drawn on. Latter in the night he let me add a bunch of tatts on, including sext chicks, a unicorn and a realistic eye. As I was drawing, wacking out shitty drunk sketches really quickly a bit of a crowd gathered and marvelling at me. I had this odd moment thinking how strange it was to be showing off this particular skill at a bar. Not expected. 

That hypnotising guy from the night before was at it again, tonight dressing as a trailer trash skank, turns out he is American and not afraid to show a little midrift. 

This night truly was one of the best nights of my life.

I drank (from buckets), I danced (to awesome karaoke songs like Hey Yah and Bohemian Rhapsody), I raped (Eminem songs at karaoke) and just behaved like a maniac. 

I was bought many a bucket of drink (to share) by an Aussie guy I had met on the caving trip who could not handle the "play money" that was the Hungarian currency and as he didn't know the value he decided to, "fuck-it" and buy drinks for everyone. 

This bar was fantastic as it was stock market themed. Meaning that the drinks prices were displayed on a screen and fluctuated as the stock market does. The idea was to watch the prices and buy when things were cheap. This mathematic/witch craft being too much for my drunk little brain I was very grateful for the free buckets of booze. 

At one point I was picked up by a ragging drunk Australian and carried across the dance floor and promptly dropped on a stack of chairs. 

Bruises to follow.

The night had a weird end as everyone just kind of disappeared at about midnight, the ragging drunk Aussie then face-raped me (kissing without warning) and I decided that his group was probably not the one to follow, so after taking an opportunity to trick him into being slapped on the arse by two large dudes I followed a group of people in a variety of bizarre costumes. turned out they were not from one of the BPH hostels. After some bizarre photos and me pretending to steal a girls phone I got a cab home and slept. 

This does sum up the end of my night nicely. 

Day 13. Budapest

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I awoke this morning amazed that I had survived all the red bull of the night before, but also to find that I had lost something, something rather important, my voice. It was technically still there, in that I could make sounds and generally be understood by people close by, but it was not my voice. 

I went out for a Goulash breakfast with bert the Canadian and then we met up with the other hostel guest attending and set out for out caving trip.  

The bus ride and waiting for the bus ride was long long long and hot hot hot. Either the tour is usually this unorganised or something did go wrong, but there was an issue with tickets and we were held waiting for ages in the heat. I felt very sorry for the lone guide, a weedy, muppet sounding Hungarian who was there to meet us. Us being a group of about 60-80 twenty something year old backpackers standing around him in an actually kind of threatening manner getting quite irate at both the wait and the insinuation that many of us would not be able to go. poor dude.

We did eventually get it sorted and get on the bus, I didn't mind the whole time though, chatting to people on the bus and making the most of it. 

The caving trip itself was spectacular, and apparently I love caving. Squiggling through tiny holes was fin, but the part I loved the most was trying to go fast. As fast as I could manage through moderately easy sections of cave. 

Some of the tight spaces were insane though, bits you would swear you were stuck in if you werent sure that the guides wouldn't lead you to your death. 

Due to the late start we got back not at 8pm as promised but closer to 10pm, but no worry after snarffing a kabab, a cold shower and a change, Will from the hostel who was "babysitting" (holding down the fort back at the hostel while the rest went out to party) marked the place on the map and off we went to catch up.

Tonights party was an open mic night, allowing any musically talented peeps to show off their stuff. Not so much fun for me, Ill rock the shit out of karaoke, but unaccompanied or playing an instrument is far far far beyond me.  Plus my voice was in an even worse state and that made talking to people very difficult. So I sat with some Irish dudes, watched the very musically talented Bert perform and was utterly hypnotised by a particular staff member who was MCing the event. I pegged him as an Aussie and he was just captivating doing this cute little dance up on stage off to the side a bit.There was just something about him.

Mush to my joy I saw my baby pommies (that I met in Berlin) and Eddie (the freakishly tall Irish dude I rode from Berlin to Prague with) spinning out and being very happy to them all.   

Being tired, musically untalented and voicless I decided to call it a night and went back to the hostel nice and early. Early being sometime close to midnight. 

Day 12. Prague to Budapest.

After a quick breakfast I made the boring and un noteworthy train ride, bout seven hours total, to Budapest.

When I arrived I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a good five minuets to find my way out of the labyrinth that is Budapest train station under construction. Seriously, I was stuck in the station. Lol. Found my way eventually and followed the detailed instructions with a few hiccups but I did find my way to the hostel relatively quickly.  I even caught the tram, after which disembarking, I realised that I was probably supposed to pay for, but didn't. In my excitement and eagerness to find the place, paying simply slipped my mind. Oops!

Arriving at the hostel, which is a gorgeous old building and completely unmarked on the outside, up a stunning and lavish, but antique and distressed looking, (which I love) stair well and into the hostel that seriously feels more like I am staying in a group house than a hostel. A detailed introduction to Budapest by Claudia, or Claws as she is known and map of the city, cups of tea and a relaxing vibe latter and the immediately social vibe was sinking in. 

There are some cool people here already, though a lot of them are leaving tomorrow, but more will come. I decided to scratch Bratislava and extend here for two more nights. Hopefully that will be a good call. 

I signed up right away for the jäger train party tonight, not quite understanding what exactly a jäger train is. 

Away we went, (after all ordering in some pizza as a group) to the ruin bar for the famed jäger train. We, quite a small hostel, met up with our three sister hostels there, so there were a whole heap of backpackers. And some colourful characters indeed. 

The jäger train is, as it happens, where they set up a whole stack of glasses of red bull and balance the shots of jäger on the edges and then all in one go set them off like a domino chain. All the jäger dropping into the other glasses. You then go and collect your five. That's right five jäger bombs and all do the first one together. I somehow, astonishingly drank all my jäger bombs and remained standing and was able to speak all night. The night I was there, was apparently a particularly awesome jager train night, seeing an astonishing 450 shots set up ready to domino and then be drunk.

Back at the hostel I and a Canadian guy fell asleep on the bean bags in the common room, waking up at about seven in the morning and finally having the bright idea to go to bed. 

A fun night was had by all. 

Side note. But, you may ask, surely a lot of alcohol and red bull is spilt when the jager train goes off, isn't that wasteful? Well, no. The good old BPH (Budapest Party Hostels) has what they call "Dregs". Now, it is important to also know that they also have a facebook blog that details the craziest shit that happens each day in Budapest. Another element of this page is the weekly vote for Dregs. That is, the person who has fucked up the worst that week is allocated Dregs. But what exactly are Dregs? After the jager train does its thing, the table is scraped and the spilt drink is collected in a bucket and given to the bearer of that week's Dregs to be drunk as a punishment. 

Day 11. Prague

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Braved the metro and trams across the river to the strahov monastery. 

So glad I crossed. Much more peaceful and nice on this side

Looked at the library and the museum pieces

Brewery

Restaurant and view. 

Walked the ??? Royal walk ???

Eww tourists yuck

But good buskers

Seven minuet nap

Walked to station to book. Amazing bucket drummers

Resting and packing. 

Dinner with room mate. 

Old time Czech restaurant. Sat down, moved downstairs. Sat down, moved downstairs. Finally. Woah. Dead animals all over the walls. Big stone bunker like thing. Underground. 

Cheap and delicious food. Huge mixed light and dark beer. Delicious. 

Musicians. Rude couple left. Grumpy Russian couple

Grumpy Russian dude snapped and started dancing. Amazing. 

Day 10. Prague.

In a fit of rampant indecision I had a rather late start today, I did eventually wander out and casually watch some buskers and do some people watching. After more of that and, literally wandering around aimlessly I eventually went to the Sex Machine Museum. Now the first two floors of the sex museum were fascinating, seeing the tools on kink from the preceding centuries was genuinely interesting. The upper floors though, I'm not sure I want to talk about. It was frightening. Frightening, frightening stuff. Piercing, gimp masks, BDSM machines and just scarring, scarring stuff. 

I did a bit of clothes shopping then, because clothes in the Czech Republic are balls cheap and I also maybe needed a bit of retail therapy after the museum. 

For dinner I hunted myself down a lovely three course street meal of street food, wandering around and moving to a new place to watch a new busker with each course. 

After my delicious dinner I went out and found a bar crawl (when I say found, I mean I selected one of the three options. And when I say selected, I mean I found the Dutch guy that sold me the boat party ticket earlier and asked him which one was best).

I had this moment as I was following the strange Czech man in the blue shirt that said pub crawl on it round squiggly back streets and down stairs into a dingy little bar, that I really really hoped that this guy was legit and not just a psycho with a blue shirt with pub crawl written on it. So, I knocked my, usually high, guard up a few more gears and proceeded cautiously. I am alive now, so apparently the guy was legit. I was in fact though, the first person to turn up to the crawl which left me awkwardly standing at the bar trying to make small talk with the bar staff. This did however also result in me acquiring three drinks at the same time. 

Much beer pong was played this night, I lost severely to the Austrians, but with some Brits beat he shit out of some Americans and a Norwegian. 

There was one very funny/unfiunny moment where an Israeli Jewish dude asked me what religion I was, to which I responded "athist" which sent him into a spin which kept him glued to my side and hounding me amazed at and unable to comprehend how I could not believe in god. It was fucking annoying. At another time I might have enjoyed a detailed theological discussion about this, walking between pubs on a pub crawl in Prague is not the fucking place i want to have that conversation. Especially with someone completely doggedly convinced they will sway your life ling and reassessed belief by saying, "But how can you not believe", and "isn't your life empty."Rarrrr, it made me angry. I ended up escaping by litterally running away and hiding in the mob of pub crawlers. Mature? Yes.

A whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of alcohol latter and a wild night was had.

Day 9. Prague. B. .

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I got up at a leisurely time, very undecided about what to do today. There are a lot of things I want to do here and some of them are rather hard to find information about so it's kind of tricky to make a call. I eventually settled on a bike tour. 

I read some reviews mapped out the location and off I went. Now I have to take a moment for the amazing wonder of the world that is cached maps. So, on my iPhone using the hostel wireless I can load up the area and drop pin some locations. Then as I leave the wifi connection behind, as long as I don't move the map position the phone will continue to shoe me the map. But not only that. It will continue to show me here I am on the map. Don't ask me how it works. I definitely have data roaming turned off and many of the people I have met here are using it. It is a wonderful little trick. Makes things so much easier. I can't even explain how much easier. Which is lucky because I get so lost here. It's all medieval and amazing and full of tourists so I get completely turned around. It's nearly funny. 

So I found the bike place a bit ahead of time. It was really lovely to walk down the not so touristy streets. After scouting out I decided to head back to the square and get some - awful as it is - Starbucks for breakfast. Everything else around here is super touristy so at least that has some level of standard it maintains. But on the way I passed a cute little restaurant and thought what the hell. So I sat down and ordered. I had a stunning mozzarella, tomato and pesto salad and a coffee. The one downside to this was that it was kind of a small meal, till the waiter brought a massive basket of bread. Yum yum yum. It was cheap too. 

Well and truly full I went back to the bike place. And awesomely, I was the only person to show up for that particular tour. 

So whoop. Private tour for the price of a standard. 

My guide Emmanuel was from Portugal but living here since his government cut all its arts and sports education program's (he used to teach theatre). Here he does the guide business and also a bit of theatre, commercials and voice dubbing for different tv shows. And he was awesome, really informed and interesting plus he chatted to me about so much more, asking questions about Australia and my trip and other parts of the world. Telling me about Prague and Portugal and more of Europe. It was so great. And Prague is so pretty and there was so much to see. 

I laughed. I cringed in horror, my jaw dropped in awe and shock and I laughed. We went to a Jewish cemetery that had 80,000 bodies in about an acre of space. He told me the gory medieval stories about the man who built the astronomical clock who was blinded lest he ever design one for another city. We watched the astronomical clock do its thing, which was comedically underwhelming given the crowd that gathers for it, but impressive since is was built in the 1400s.     

There is a lot of great modern art in Prague, some very funny but classy looking stuff. Like giant babies with barcode faces, men pissing (running water through the Dicks in their hands and everything) spelling out Koffka quoted with the pee trails. Amazing. 

We went to the Lennon wall, which was a wall that people during the communist days would - if they learnt any - write song lyrics from the west on to share them around. The wall became known as the Lennon wall. Lennon as opposed to Lenin. 

After the tour sadly ended Emmanuel told me about a neat little bar that is about docked in the harbour that never moves but is a good spot with a great view. He invited me to meet him for a drink there after his last tour that day. 

So off I went and met him, we ended up having a really great night talking about everything and getting progressively drunk and falling into D&Ms. Lol. 

We went hipster watching at one of the hipster haunts and he kept showing me little tid bits about the town, like the most haunted building in Prague and the old hall of the alchemists (a tradition based in Prague) above the doors there are carvings of bears in stone and when you take a photo the whole wall appears grey stone coloured but the bears are tinged in gold. Spooky. 

Prague has amazed me how strikingly medieval it is. I've never been anywhere like it. 

Day 8. Berlin to Prague

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As agreed the night before I caught the latter train to Prague with my new buddy Eddy the Irishman, after a breakfast with a group of people including Marisa where Eddy experienced the life altering event of eating - for the first time in his life - watermelon.

The train ride was much more enjoyable than my others due to the company, Eddy being quite great conversation studying a little Philosophy himself on top of being a traveler.  

We shared a compartment with this completely adorable gay couple from San Fransisco who were blast and again made the trip more enjoyable. 

I loved the walk from the station to my hostel finding Prague delightful, vibrant and buzzing, if a wee bit too touristy. But delightful all the same. There were buskers everywhere and the city is stunning, absolutely stunning.

My hostel was in a building that had been build in the Renaissance and was absolutely stunning. One delightfully funny part being the clunky old two pronged style keys on a lumping great key ring I was given in place of a swipe card. The downside to this hostel being its lack of a single central common room, making it hard for a solo traveler such as myself to meet people.

So I went out alone for food, and spontaneously paid to go on a boat party. I followed the guy selling the tour to the meeting point paid my (about $30) followed the advice of the guy that sold me the ticket and bought a beer at the supermarket across the road instead of the overpriced bar and then got very worried. There were several people throwing up in the street, at 9pm, before we had even left for the boat.

But all was well, all the morons who cant hold their drink wither didn't make it to the boat or spent the whole time spewing over the railings. On the walk their I found a bunch of cool people and spent the whole night bouncing between groups, failing to learn names but remembering places like a champ (it is the odd little thing about me, that I have no trouble at all remembering where people are from, but can never remember a god damned name to save myself).

We set lanterns away from the roof of the boat, which was a pretty magical moment, especially considering the fairytale beauty that is Prague. Particularly at night all lit up and glowing.

After the boat I latched onto a group from Mad House Hostel (which I latter learnt is voted on of the worlds best party hostels), they were chanting out "MAd House" to which I would respond "Hostel Homer"much to everyones amusement, it became a sort of game. Im not quite sure if this next pub crawl was included in the price of my boat party ticket or if I just mooched off the Mad House people, it being assumed I was a guest, but in any case, with a cool group I danced the night away in a very cool Czech bar.