Budapest, Hungary.

It didn’t take me long to proclaim this place as one of my favourites. Strangely, I can’t really pin it down to anything in particular. It’s pretty old, often with bleak architecture as a reminder of the Soviet era, incredibly hot and deceptively large. And if you head to the western side of the Danube to Buda (the eastern side is Pest, no points for guessing how the name Budapest came about) you’ll have a lot of hills to contend with.

But for all those apparent down falls, it’s an exceptionally interesting place with more of a sense of that stereotypical, post-Soviet/Eastern European feel than the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, all lying much further East. Several buildings bear the scars of time, some pockmarked with bullet damage, and there is plenty of pre-1900′s architecture that is fairly unique to this region of Europe.

The Parliament building on the banks of the Danube

I decided to check out another one of those ‘free’ tours and must say I highly recommend it here too. There’s a lot of stuff you will easily miss, and a lot of stories you won’t hear about, if you don’t go on one of these. Corruption, bureaucracy, severed hand in the church, statue of a girl that looks like a boy, and the ottomans building a number of very impressive baths all feature in the stories you’ll hear.

Our tour guide didn't go on to explain how furniture can build anything.

One of my favourite stories from the tour was about the statue up on Gellért Hill. She was installed by the Soviets, but in the cleanup when the city decided to rid itself of all their statues, the people of Budapest apparently really liked the Liberation Monument and didn’t want to get rid of her. The solution: Cover her up with a sheet for 3 days, thereafter unveiling her as if she were a new installation. Good on em, I say.

The locals were also forthcoming with advice, with one walking up to me after I had purchased a train ticket, warning me that I must validate my ticket every time I get the train because, quite bluntly, the transit officers there are corrupt bastards and target tourists who may not know what to do. In fact I had several people offer this advice, so it’s apparently a big thing there.

There is just so much to see in Budapest, it’s mental. Originally only planning maybe three days, I wanted to extend it to five or six. Unfortunately, my ticket home was standby and some events were conspiring against me that meant I may literally be stuck in Europe for weeks, or face the option of having to buy a full fare ticket despite having only a couple hundred dollars to my name. In short, the original planned three days wound up being pretty much a day and a half, with about 24 hours of scrambling around trying to find the quickest and most cost effective way to Frankfurt.

I managed to squeeze in one last activity before my journey to Frankfurt, a trip to the Széchenyi Spa (pronounced ‘say jenny’). If there was one thing everyone before me had stressed about Budapest, it was “GO TO A DAMN TURKISH BATH, YOU FOOL!” So I did.

It’s terribly ornate, with huge pools and fountains, and then you enter those buildings and walk into the Narnia of spas. Oddly, the hot spring baths are on the outside and the cooler pools are indoors, although that makes a little more sense in the winter when they experience extreme cold.

The escape from Budapest and Europe was a mission, a bit of a race against the clock. I had to get up at stupid o’clock to catch a 10 hour train direct to Frankfurt, where I would then wait 5 hours for my flight… which I didn’t even know whether I could get on. Literally 10 minutes before the gate closed is when I was finally told I had a seat.

On to Singapore, any hope of getting a standby seat to Sydney was pretty much out the window. The next best option was Sydney via Perth. Again, it was only moments before boarding that I had any idea I was on the plane. It landed in Perth around 1am, which meant another 5 or 6 hours of sleeplessness and waiting around in airport terminals to get a flight back to Sydney. In the end it all worked out, but I hope not to have to do that ever again.

Sad to say, but Asia-Europe 2011 is done and dusted.

The solution: Austria!

Truth is I was mainly looking for a solution to visiting a new country or two, and while Poland was high on the list, Krakow was just as far as Vienna from Berlin, but starting to get a little far from Frankfurt.

From Berlin I hopped aboard a train travelling via Prague and wound up in Vienna. As I’ve been doing on a lot of my travels in the past year or so, I rocked up with pretty much no clue about the city, save for Schönbrunn Palace and I only know about that because of an Andre Rieu DVD (that’s the kind of stuff you become well acquainted with, working at a record label).

So as you do, I pretty much headed straight to the only place in town I knew of. And man is it impressive! Honestly, it seemed like just another palace from the front, but it was all kinds on crazy awesome once you went around back. Huge gardens, massive water features, faux Roman ruins, the worlds oldest zoo and a labyrinth to boot! You don’t have to spend a dime to enjoy walking around the joint (although you can go on tours into the palace, the zoo has an entry fee etc).

Wikipedia also has a few other kick ass pictures here and here.

Keeping in the spirit of the musical history Vienna is so rich in, I headed for a hardcore gig to see a couple of Australian bands, 50 Lions and Hopeless. Tiny venue, it was basically a cramped cellar underneath a trendy restaurant. Good times were had. While it was indeed small in there, it was still a decent turnout and the kids seemed stoked on it all.

Also regarding Vienna’s music scene, they’re very big on Mozart. They’ll show you anything and everything related to the Austrian Pianist, they’ll even try and sell you his balls.

During my brief time in Vienna I headed out to the Wurstelprater (amusement park) which in itself is little more than any old amusement park, but it is home to a micro nation known as the Republic of Kugel Mugel (roughly translated as “Spherical Hill”). Long story short, dude built a house that he didn’t have approval for, local authorities tried to order its demolition, dude tried to declare it a new country and succeed from Austria. Kinda funny, kinda idiotic. Get the full story here.

Republic of Kugel Mugel.

As it turns out, Bratislava, is not even a two hour train ride from Vienna. Seizing the opportunity, I proceeded to check off another country with a day trip to the Slovakian capital. I don’t know what was going on, but it seems as if absolutely nothing was going on. Like a lot of European cities it has a small old town and an adjacent castle on a hill, but beyond that it didn’t seem like there was much to see, and most places seemed to be pretty well shut anyway. No regrets on making the trek, but I probably won’t be heading back in a hurry anytime soon.

So we made arrangements to jump on a coach from Amsterdam to Berlin. EuroLines were the cheapest option available, it was only 10 hours and it was an overnight trip so it’d save us accommodation for a night.

And that’s when I swore I’d never do it again, again.

We arrived to Berlin and were at our hostel by about 8 or so in the morning so we dumped our stuff and freshened up a little bit before heading out. While getting ourselves together I noticed a lanky, afro-d guy with a distinctly Australian voice and realised it was Brad from Gyroscope. I turned to Bee only to notice she was wearing her Gyro t-shirt. Of all the cities in the world, of all the hostels in Berlin, and of any of the times she could have been wearing it, was a pretty funny coincidence for the embarrassment of both her and Brad.

We stayed in EastSeven hostel which was cheap, comfy, and considering Berlin’s transport system it was also very easy to get to. The first mission was to check out all the usual tourist things such as the East Side Gallery and TV tower, and generally just go for a stroll around the place.

The next day we went on one of the “free” city tours, and I have to say these are highly recommended, at least in a place such as Berlin with such a storied history. It’s free in the sense that you’re supposed to tip what you think the tour was worth, but it was easily worth a good few €€€ for the 3+ hours it went for. We were taken up past Museum Island, down Unter den Linden to Bebelplatz (site of book burnings by the Nazis with an underground memorial viewable through a glass sidewalk panel), past various war related buildings and landmarks (Ministry of Finance, Berlin Wall, site of Hitler’s Bunker), through the Memorial for Murdered Jews of Europe and finally winding up at the Brandenburg Gate with a view of the Reichstag.

Bebelplatz

What's left of Hitler's bunker

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The next day we headed out of the city on a half-day trip to Sachsenhausen, the site of a former concentration camp. I’ve mentioned this in a previous entry from a couple years ago and it’s surprisingly changed a little bit since; the wall around the semi-circle has since been removed and they’re currently marking out areas and doing earthworks that would suggest they’re maybe going to start re-constructing some of the old demolished buildings to more accurately represent how the camp once looked.

For our final day we took ourselves back out to Museum Island as per Damien’s recommendation to go see the Pergamon Museum.The museum houses a bunch of ancient artefacts that were ‘liberated’ (read: stolen) by German archaeologists. We were guided by the ever delightful Jonathon, the voice of the audio guide. It’s actually quite impressive the things you’ll find in here such as the Pergamon Altar and Gates of Babylon.

We actually achieved quite a bit in our short stay. Looking back on it, for what we saved maybe the bus wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

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.

Having been there a couple years ago I felt it was all a little ‘been there, done that’ for me but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome in Bristol and I was keen to start heading towards Germany because that country is just amazeballs. Besides, Bee is pretty good company and I am a sucker for frites and mayo (how am I not fat?!).

I never was a huge fan of Amsterdam. It comes across as little more than a freak show for Contiki tour groups to be oh-so-naughty and smoke some weed before going to a sex show. Pretty sure that isn’t really a problem to do any of that in virtually any city in the world, just that they don’t have towns overrun with shop fronts advertising the fact. Couple this with the tourist town syndrome that means everything there is incredibly expensive – I’d say it’s up there with the Scandinavian countries in this respect – Amsterdam feels like a bit of an overhyped ripoff.

That said, we still had a pretty good time. The weather was brilliant, warm but not hot, and the plethora of bars and cafes along the canals provided the perfect mix for kicking back with a few cold brews and watching the world pass by. Fresh from the obligatory tour of the Heinekin Brewery we found a neat little cafe a couple blocks south that served incredible food and beers for reasonable prices.

Having only decided on the trip to Amsterdam a week or two earlier, finding accommodation was proving pretty difficult. Good locations were hard to get, and if they were available they were at New York prices (ie. you could feed a small nation on the cost of 1 night stay). We wound up settling at Stayokay Amsterdam Zeeburg, about a 15 min train ride from the centre of the city. The public transport in Amsterdam is frequent, easy to navigate and with unlimited 1/3/5 day passes, very cheap to boot. The hostel was very modern and comfortable, up there with the better hostels I’ve stayed in.

There was one thing I managed to somehow bypass when I was here last – Anne Frank House – and now that I look back on it, I’m not sure why I didn’t go. I hardly need to point out that it was an eye opener and very emotionally charged experience, but also a massively important place to experience for any visitor to the city. It’d be weird to call it an enjoyable experience, though it was the ‘highlight’ (for want of better word) of my time in Amsterdam.

Book case concealing stairs to the hideout in the attic.

I think anywhere you haven’t visited is worth at least seeing once, if only to satisfy the curiosity, and Amsterdam really isn’t a terrible place. In fact it can be quite fun, but for me, after having done it twice I’d be perfectly fine if I never got the opportunity again.

So having finished the last proper blog at Glastonbury, while the majority of the festival headed back for London Town a few of our crew boarded the National Express bound for Bristol, where my good buddy Michael lives. I’ve been meaning to head out that way for some time now, but after reports of 7+ hour coach rides back to London I’m quite glad I opted to head to Bristol, if only because the trip didn’t encounter traffic once and had us at our destination in under 60 mins (Pro tip: If you ever go to Glastonbury, make sure to return via Bristol, and spend some time checking it out). Bristol turned out to be an excellent alternative to the bustle of London, plenty of places to shop if that’s your thing, and if you like street art there is plenty to spot; notably plenty of Banksy artworks peppered around the city.

Defaced by a local anti-graffiti group; the irony obviously lost on them.

I spent about four days in and around the city, strolling about the place just taking it all in. I’d been recommended the Clifton Suspension Bridge, spanning the Avon Gorge with brilliant views over the city. To be honest I was expecting something incomprehensibly big and almost majestic, but seeing it in front of me, a narrow two-lane bridge that’s old and somewhat fragile looking, it suddenly became a whole lot less impressive than my imagination pictured it to be.

A quick day trip out to Cardiff, Wales was also on the cards. From Bristol it must have been less than an hour from point to point on the train, and well worth the trip. As usual, I spent the day walking until my feet were numb, past the Millennium Stadium, along Cardiff Castle, through Bute Park (where the pic from the last blog was taken) and back towards the bay. I would like to go back and spend a good couple days there, it seemed there was plenty worth checking out.

Before leaving Michael and I had organised to go to local dive bar, The Fleece, to go check out Gallows. To see these guys live is mind blowing, their intensity is unrivalled and with the personality of the band residing largely in frontman Frank Carter, I’m stoked to have caught him with the band one last time before the announcement of his departure mere weeks later.

I enjoyed hanging out in somewhere that wasn’t London for once. I’ve had few  real experiences in the UK outside of London, but those I have all turned out to be loads of fun. I think I’m going to try and make it a rule to spend more time away from London and in other cities throughout England/UK from now on, there’s some amazing and vibrant places out there.

Here’s a photo from a side trip to Cardiff.

It all started in London where I caught up with Bee and Allie and soon to be followed by Drew for a couple days of some r&r before our five day weekend with very little of anything even resembling rest. While my compadres hit up the usual tourist spots along the Thames I spent my time getting all science-y in the Museum of Science, and promptly returned to the hostel to play with chemicals.

Wednesday morning we crammed onto the party bus for the four hour journey out to Glastonbury… then a 2 hour line-up through mud with 30kg backpacks and a cripple to boot.

Trudging through seemingly endless fields and dodging the plethora of tents we somehow caught up with old mate Mikey, my pal from Bristol who I somehow see more of these days than I did when he was living in Australia. He’s a good dude who’s always doing his best to make everyone happy and create the best atmosphere for everyone.

If one thing is a certainty in England it’s rain, and the one thing we could reasonably wish for was a dry camp setup and pack up. Thankfully the weather held out to this request, then made good on it’s own promise to hammer down on the first night just so it could ensure some deliciously sloppy walkways for the rest of the week.

It rained a little on the Friday evening too, but for the most part it was a relatively dry festival.

U2 put on a pretty sweet performance which I wasn’t expecting, they even had a (supposedly) live cross to an astronaut on the international space station aired on the big screen to introduce Beautiful Day.

Coldplay seemed to be the talk of the festival but with a show that hasn’t really changed in two years it was a little tired. The setup also made it impossible to do things like playing on a tiny stage in the middle of the crowd like they had been doing on the Viva La Vida tour previously.

It seemed like quite a lot of people were pretty keen to catch Beyonce and I won’t lie I was one of them. Always keen to check out acts at festivals that I probably wouldn’t pay good money to see at their own concert and I figured she’d have a pretty elaborate stage show worth seeing, even if only for a couple songs. She kicked off the set with Crazy In Love and All The Single Ladies, so I guess I was “lucky” (?) to see her sing her two biggest hits but I was pretty unenthused about it all, her show was elaborate as  expected but didn’t seem to translate too well to a massive festival stage. The punters seemed to enjoy it, but I figured I’d have a better time with Queens of The Stoneage (good choice).

Other highlights were Morrissey, who played a great set and I am super stoked to be able to now cross off my list, Jimmy Eat World, Gaslight Anthem, OK Go and The Wombats.

Of notable mention was Pulp who played a not-so-secret set on the Park Stage which had become so packed with punters they ended up closing it off so no more people could enter. Bee and I made it in, but to say we “saw” the band might be stretching it a little. I may have caught a glimpse or two through the ridiculously thick crowd.

City and Colour was a bit of a snoozefest and a disappointment after the great set I caught by him/them in Edmonton last year. I’m not really getting why Dallas keeps getting more and more popular while his music is getting more and more dull. Where are the hooks? Anyhoo…

Here’s a list of the acts I managed to catch over the week:

Thurs 23
With Love From Humans!

Fri 24
GroupLove
Brother
Metronomy
Two Door Cinema Club
Wu-Tang Clan
The Wombats
Warpaint
BB King
Biffy Clyro
Morrissey
Primal Scream
U2

Sat 25
Tame Impala
The Gaslight Anthem
Graham Coxon
Jimmy Eat World
Pulp (“special guests”)
The White Lies
Coldplay
Fujiya and Miyagi

Sun 26
The Joy Formidable
OK Go
Paul Simon
The Eels
TV On The Radio
Kaiser Chiefs
City & Colour
Queens Of the Stoneage
Beyonce

]]> http://happyseizure.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/glastonbury-2011/feed/ 0 mike blue Allie old mate slop drewskills http://happyseizure.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/hamster-dance-in-nantes-france-shamrockin-around-ireland/ http://happyseizure.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/hamster-dance-in-nantes-france-shamrockin-around-ireland/#comments Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:29:15 +0000 mike http://happyseizure.wordpress.com/?p=752 ]]> 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!

So yeh, the entire apartment was modelled on a hamster cage, complete with running wheel, a loft bed (with a caged ladder), a drinking tub/fountain, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t also include hamster mask-hat things and tails too! Nice choice Dampo.

Nantes itself was a little scant on things to do, the two main attractions being the castle and a robotics/mechanical museum.

The museum was pretty gnarly, they have a larger-than-life mechanical elephant that you can take rides IN, and they also have grand plans to build some crazy ‘underwater world’ type carousel with fish and other sea creatures that you can take rides in! Some of the completed sea creatures are already on display.

After a couple days  in Nantes we skipped over Britain to shamrock and roll our way through Ireland (I can’t believe I just typed that). Dublin was grey and wet when we arrived so the first and obvious port of call was the pub. Of course, Guinness had to be the drink of choice and if you were wondering what I would look like with a mustache, well here you go.

Along the main street in Dublin is a spire, apparently the tallest structure in the city, a monument to the millenium… built 3 years after it occured. Not so impressive really.

Day 2 of Ireland was a bit of 4-seasons-in-one-day as we drove from Dublin, up to Belfast in Northern Ireland and further up to the Giant’s Causeway. One of the funniest parts of the day was when, driving along the highway, the speed suddenly went down to 60 (from 120 or so). Cars kept flying by us as Damien didn’t really want to be collecting fines while on holiday and fair enough really. It was probably only after about half an hour that we realised we had crossed the border into Northern Ireland and thanks to Britain’s insistence of perpetuating the grossly outdated imperial system, the signs had all suddenly changed to MPH. Weird, but there seemed to be no obvious point at which you crossed over.

Belfast was pretty cool, it seemed to be all about the shopping with a pretty big shopping district. Unfortunately we didn’t have a huge amount of time to really explore the place as we had to head further north, but what we saw was nice.

The drive had some great scenery despite some pretty sub par weather.

We finally made it to the Giant’s Causeway, some pretty sweet geological formations of 5+ sided columns that formed thousands of years ago when a then-active volcano spewed lava into the sea which cooled it down rapidly and caused the resulting formations. Some batshit crazy Irish legend has it that it was the steps from which some giant would use to cross over to Scotland to fight one of their mythical giants. A little too much moonshine for them Irish, I think…

On the way back we drove through Bushmills and saw a bunch of geese just chilling out the front of a shop for no reason. No park, no lake, no anything nearby except houses, so who knows what the hell they were doing or getting up to, but I bet they were organising something pretty badass.

And there you go. That’s pretty much it for the Asia+Europe trip with my buddy Damien.

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.”

As I write this on my way out of Paris it turns out I managed to squeeze in a fair bit, just at a more relaxed pace. I caught up with the miniature Statue of Liberty that resides by one of the bridges on the Seine, and started to notice a whole bunch of street art from Space Invader (check out the documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop)

Day two was all about Parc Asterix, the theme park inspired by the Asterix comics. Damo was suitably excited.

Shortly after entry with a minute on the water rapids ride and a subsequent soaking, I was not.

The park was actually quite fun, a few rollercoasters, almost blacking out on one, stunt shows, kiddy coasters, carousels, it had the lot.

Also questionable character poses.

Back in Paris I also finally had my chance to see the catacombs, and they didn’t disappoint. It was originally an old quarry in the 18th and 19th centuries, and when mass graves in the area were spreading disease the bodies were exhumed and the bones placed inside. It was neat the way they were arranged, and quite creepy to learn that theft of bones is somewhat of a common problem. Most the pictures didn’t turn out well as they don’t allow flash.

One of the workers on the mines has carved scenery from his hometown into the rocks. All from memory, too.

Upon Dave’s recommendation I also hit up the Pantheon. Inside there was Foucault’s Pendulum, an old experiment that proved Earth rotates on an axis and around the sun, crypts of various famous French people, but best of all was the incredible views over Paris from the dome.

Further wandering around I stumbled up the great arch at La Defense, an office building designed to be a modern day Arc De Triomphe.

It’s been some time since I’ve seen a show now, I’m getting a little twitchy and jittery without my fix. Thanks to a last minute addition to their tour schedule Converge wound up playing a show in a venue that couldn’t have had more than 250 capacity. Pretty good show in all, even if the support act was some dude pressing play on his iTunes library of hardcore songs. It was pretty bad, but whatevs.

I also saw Paris Hilton.

Paris, I approve.

There's a giant bronze thumbs-up in there if you look close.

Dave has officially left the Euro trip and the gang, so now it’s 4 days of playing third wheel to the couple then onto Glastonbury adventures with a new gang of misfits. Bee better bring some Tim Tams (I know you’re reading this!)

A train and 2 bus trips later we found ourselves in Postojna, our introduction to the land that loves to jam the letter J randomly into words presumably to see how dumb tourists sound trying to pronounce them.

Postojna, I’m informed, is home to Slovenija’s (again with the ‘J’s!) number 1 and number 2 tourist attractions, being that of the Postojna caves and the castle built into the side of a cliff/cave. First off we headed down to the caves which was actually pretty sweet to see. The cave system was very extensive, to the point that we went on a 2km train ride through the caves just to get to the point where we could take a proper walking tour.

I took a few photos but the limited light and the constant “no photos!” “keep moving!” or “no flash!” being barked at the group by a trailing tour guide prevented me from getting (m)any good shots.

Train to get deep into the caves.

It’s a constant temperature of around 8 degrees celsius year-round in there, and was weird to have gone into there from outside where it was closer to the mid-twenties. At the end of the tour we get guided through the ‘concert hall’ which is quite literally what they call it, except it’s a cave. Up the back there was a bunch of mock-up graves with a little gremlin type thing.

I tried asking the guide what the deal with this was, to which the response I received was pretty much along the lines of ‘eh, it’s just some crap useless art installation’. Maybe not in so many words, but yeh.

The caves were pretty damn sweet, but now it was time to check out Slovenia’s number 2 tourist attraction. We didn’t go inside, but it was a pretty sweet looking building.

After our short stay in Postojna we moved on to Bled, a sleepy lakeside town tucked away in a valley which I could explain but I guess I could just let the pictures do the talking.

You don’t really do much in Bled, you kind of laze about, take in the scenery and know that life is probably 3 million times sweeter just being here looking at the scenery than wherever you are right now, whatever it is you are doing. Sorry, but it did rule.

We went rowing…

…swimming….

…hiking up to the castle for incredible views…

View from the castle

…and using the opportunity to get some great snaps.

From Bled it was on to Ljubljana (“Loo-blah-nah”… or “le-jew-bull-jar-na” as we were calling it) for another overnight stop as we were flying out of there. It also had an ‘old town’ district that kept us busy for a few hours as we explored it .Dave and I kept an eye out for points of interest, the guide maps recommending the castle and the Roman wall. The castle was what you’d expect, nothing bad, but the Roman wall… well yeah, I was a little disappointed.

They even restored the pyramid that stands over the gate at the Roman wall… with freaking cinderblock! Seriously, they’re not even trying anymore. Slovenia, I are disappoint.  and sorry.

The wall aside though, it’s been great fun through here. Slovenija, you’ve been rad, but now it’s time for Parijs, Frajnce.

Coming up in the next episode:

You know what they say, big feet...