The countdown was on; I had about a week left to kill, and I still wanted to visit another new country. The reasonable choice would probably have been Leichtenstein. Instead I figured why not head further from Frankfurt (where I was to fly out from) and go here:
Budapest, Hungary.
By this point I had no idea where I was going or how I was getting there. I was running low on cash, but wanted to spend a couple more weeks in Europe. I had to fly home from Frankfurt, so I wanted to stay in that region of Europe, but I wanted to hang out in places I hadn’t yet been. And add to that the fact I have an ongoing contest with Damien (at least in my own head) to notch up the most countries visited.
The solution: Austria!
Travelling on a budget is such a vicious cycle. After the two months I spent practically living on busses in the USA and Canada I swore I’d never do it again. Then when time comes to make another travel decision I tell myself “you’ve done it all before, what’s just one more night on a bus”? Continue reading
George: What is Holland?
Jerry: What do you mean, ‘what is it?’ It’s a country right next to Belgium.
George: No, that’s the Netherlands.
Jerry: Holland is the Netherlands.
George: Then who are the Dutch?
Post-Bristol marked a return to mainland Europe, and the reality hitting that I was a mere two or so weeks from being dead broke and figuring out a way to get back to Australia that didn’t involve things that I might one day come to regret. Bee had headed out with Drew to Paris for a few days after Glastonbury, splitting from him to head North to Amsterdam where I flew in to catch up with her.
I’ve had to remind myself recently that things going wrong make for some of the best travel stories as some kind of consolation for having been robbed in Mexico a few weeks back. It’s a drama filled story and does serve as a good travel battle story, but for now as I’m without photos I think I should try and retell the final few weeks of my Europe adventure before the memories fade. Stories of Mexico (and an entire North American trip) will be told in coming posts.
Maybe.
Here’s a photo from a side trip to Cardiff.
What a festival! I vowed to come back again some day, and two years after the original pilgrimage I was back at Worthy Farm with 100-odd thousand of my closest friends.
It’s been a pretty hectic few weeks since that last post about Paris. I’m writing this while on the bus from Vienna to Budapest, but I’ll get to that later.
Dave left us in Paris to head for the USA where he is planning to live for a bit, and Damien, Anna and I made our way further west to Nantes. I wasn’t exactly sure how or why Damien decided on Nantes when he booked the trip, but upon arriving to our accommodation the choice became obvious; It’s a freakin Hamster Villa!
Two years on I got my second chance to experience Paris properly. A little like Venice it felt a little redundant to take photos of the same things I took photos of last time but screw it, here’s the Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower - shot from a completely different angle to last time!
For me it was mostly a cruisy few days, and having done the main attractions already I was mostly left with a heap of museums and churches. I’m probably just uncultured but by this point its starting to become a little bit “oh you mean I get to see another Picasso” and “”wow look at that altar, it has even more intricate stonework than the other 32 I’ve seen in the past 4 days.”
After having spent around 14 hours in Italy we started making our way towards Postojna (“Pos-toy-na”), about an hour over the Italian/Slovenian border. The idea was to try and spend a couple hours in Trieste on the way over, get one more fix of that sweet sweet Italian coffee and maybe check out the Roman ruins before moving on but a bit of misinformation from the internet (I’m shocked and appalled that the internet could be wrong, who’d have thought?!) meant we had maybe 45 mins to eat and make a connection to our next bus.
