Croatia: A Very Sweaty Birthday Boy.

Money-saving initiative #8: When booking a night train, don’t pay the extra fee for a sleeper carriage. Instead the carriage full of non-reclining seats will be fine, right? Here is a photo of Phoebe, reading a Eurail pamphlet with pictures of what your typical Eurail customer is meant to look like. As you can see, expectation and reality are often very different things:

Needless to say, we arrived in Split at 6am bright and ready to face a day of exploring in 30 degree heat, and rapidly rising. Our decision to skip inland Croatia and head straight to the coast seemed to be a good one - Split is a pretty beautiful city. It’s typically Mediterranean in climate and culture, and has an old Roman style town centre. We went on another free walking tour, which was great for learning a bit about Croatia’s varied history. Every day we were told the next day would be even hotter, which seemed totally ridiculous when we were already consuming at least 3.5 litres of water each day, sweating about 2 litres of that just wandering around, and desperately searching for any opportunity to cool off in the ocean.

Split was originally built as a retirement palace for the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Do we get retirement palaces in New Zealand?

 

 We hobbled up this hill to get magnificent views over Split. It was too hot for anything other than hobbling.

Felix, getting really excited at the market we found inside the old city walls. In truth, the excitement probably stemmed mostly from the fact that this was a place to escape the heat for a bit.

After Split we headed down the stunning coast, to the  ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’, Dubrovnik. As anyone who has been to Croatia/any Game of Thrones fan will tell you, the old town of Dubrovnik is a place like no other. It makes Split seem like a bit of a chump. The blue of the Adriatic Sea, the striking brightness of the sandstone buildings and the orange terracotta roofs make for an extraordinarily beautiful walk around the old city walls, which entirely surround it. No, we’re not authors for the Lonely Planet, we just found Dubrovnik really lovely, ok. Felix turned 22 on our last day in Dubrovnik, an occasion which called for much celebration, and served as the perfect excuse to sign up for the Dubrovnik Pub Crawl. The 30-degree temperatures in the evening meant that crawling between pubs probably would have been the easiest way to do things. DIVIDED WE STAND, UNITED WE CRAWL.

 Our walk from the bus station to the hostel was brightened when we stumbled across a little hedgehog. Sometimes it's the little things that count.

Dubrovaz the stunner. A view from the city walls. Money-saving initiative #9: Remember your student card. In most places this will give you a half-price discount. We don’t have student cards.

Felix walked round on his knees all day pretending to be Tyrion, yelling things like "Did ya send the raven?" and singing the Game of Thrones theme music.

We managed to find a sick jumping spot, where the locals Barbeque little cevap sausages, jump off rocks and throw around a waterpolo ball.

 Hey look, it's a starfish! Lol just kidding, that's Phoebe again. (Back to our old tricks.)

 The birthday boy in his new birthday singlet, which may or may not have been fashioned from one of his old t-shirts.

 Phoebe executes a perfect scuba entry. Splish splash hohohoho. Scuba diving somehow seemed to trump the birthday singlet.

A beached whale.

Next time: Kotor, Ostrog and Durmitor.. We had no idea where these were either.

Hungary For a Good Time (lolololololol)

Our appetite for central European countries not quite sated, we headed to our next destination, Budapest. We unashamedly stayed in a hostel named ‘Hi-5 Party-ish Hostel’ which well and truly lived up to its name, we were even kitted out with fluoro watches which not only looked fashionable but doubled as room keys, a handy initiative for inebriated hostel-goers trying to find their way home. We won't really miss you, Hi-5.

Budapest as a city is pretty amazing. As some of you may know, it originated as 2 main cities, Buda and Pest, separated by the Danube river. Modern day Buda is hilly, expensive and houses the impressive Buda castle, while modern day Pest is flat, and contains most of the tourist attractions like the baths, bars, restaurants and museums. It has a similar feel to Prague in that it balances old beautiful buildings with a modern and fun atmosphere, but with a definite Turkish influence to it (something to do with the fact that Budapest was occupied by the Turks for 150 years, we’re told).

A few words of warning for fellow travelers heading to Hungary: Always count your change carefully, even from the metro ticket office! The currency is quite confusing as 1 euro ~ 285 Hungarian forints, so it turns out it is embarrassingly easy to get given 10 times less change than you are owed…

Looking out at the great Pest from the mighty Buda Castle.

Looking up at Buda Castle, from Buda Castle. Hello Buda Castle.

Apparently if you rub this guys' belly, you will eat good food. Classic Hungarian superstition.

We present to you: St Stephen's Cathedral! Another church, isn't she lovely. It's named after the Hungarian patron-saint St Stephen, whose arm is inside the cathedral on display. The rest of his body is scattered throughout the various Hungarian communities of the world, like some sort of gruesome puzzle.

The Szechenyi Baths! Easily the best tradition that was kept from the Turkish occupation. Temperatures ranged from 18 to 70 (in the saunas). A nice way to unwind, or to push  your body to its limits in the sweaty, sweaty saunas.

  Also great for playing chess..?

 How could you ever have a bad night out when mixing Happy Day and Tatra Tea?

Hanging in Szimpla, one of Budapest's famous ruin bars. According to Lonely Planet it's the number 3 bar in the world (behind the Cook and Monkey Bar, we suppose). Though we didn't manage to capture the crazy inside of Szimpla, this picture adequately captures the festive spirit in the bar.

Our plans from Budapest were to head straight to Croatia, but alas the one and only train to Croatia was full. Instead we had to spend a night in the resort town of Siofok, by Lake Balaton. Judging by the tourist office lady's reaction when we told her we were from New Zealand, they don't get many kiwis in Siofok. Most of the accommodation was booked out, but we found a very cheap 'camping hotel', which is a lot less glamorous than it sounds. Basically they hire out a bit of floor space and some inflatable mattresses for you to crash on. Uncomfortable and hilarious.

When we say we 'had' to spend a night in Siofok, we could think of worse places to be stranded for a night.

Next time: We finally make it to Croatia, and are greeted by crippling heat.

The Tatras Mountains: In the House of the Ginger Monkey.

After our whirlwind capital tour we were ready for a breath of non-polluted fresh mountain air and a break from the hoards of tourists. The obvious choice was to head to The Ginger Monkey, of course. The Ginger Monkey is the single coolest hostel we’ve stayed in so far, situated on the edge of the High Tatras mountain range, in northern Slovakia (near the Polish border). It’s got a lot going for it: everyone there was a like-minded intrepid traveler like ourselves, the staff were super friendly, the hostel itself was brightly coloured and filled with an eclectic décor, the surroundings are totes gorgeous, and there is a hammock (WE SWEAR WE’RE NOT GETTING PAID TO WRITE THIS). It was one of the most international weekends we've had, with Brits, Scots, Canadians, 'Mericans, Danes, Australians and Argentinians all getting amongst in the Monkey.

 

We even got to sample the nightlife in the Slovakian mountains, which exists in the form of one single club, potentially the most ridiculous club we’ve ever been to. A snow-plough had been driven through the wall and turned into a DJ booth, there was a pile of snow in front of the plough which made for a rather slippery dancefloor, and there was a car hanging from the ceiling. We don’t exactly remember what happened in there, but we do remember waking the next morning and going for the most disorganised tramp in the history of tramps. Doing a 7 hour tramp when hungover and with only peanuts and banana chips as food is a generally terrible (and yet money-saving) idea. At least we had a map.

Weird things happened. Rock that barrel!

 

Setting off on the beautiful Polish Lakes tramp.After 8 months of being in Europe, the novelty of being able to literally walk across into another country still hasn't worn off. Also kinda cool as our Eurail pass doesn't include Poland!

We were rather thankful that it was clouded over, it made the temperatures well within the bearable range. We were also grateful at the amount of wild blueberries and strawberries we found - without them we surely would have perished. The Gods were definitely on our side.

 The waterfalls were lovely, but reminded us of the countless waterfalls we had done on the previous evening.

Heston Blumenthal came on the tramp, he thought the scenery was fantastic.

 The team steps out of the steady stream of Poles to take a few photos.

 The climactic final ascent; the view from the top was incredible.

Being the patriots that we are, we took one for team NZ and completed a pizza challenge each. In a tortoise-and-the-hare turn of events, Phoebe took 1h45 to eat the whole pizza, while team USA's pizza came back up onto the floor, two bites before the end.

Next time: The mighty Budapest, and a Hungarian holiday resort.

Prague, Vienna, Bratislava: European Capital-Hopping.

Eurail passes are the best things in the world, but sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with them. This was probably the case over the past days when we visited Prague, Vienna and Bratislava, all in the space of 4 days. This rather ambitious plan was essentially a whirlwind of central European history, culture and beer.

Prague, a classic stop for all central European travelers and the capital of the Czech Republic, was first up. It’s difficult not to love Prague – the old town centre is mind-blowingly beautiful with different architecture and colours everywhere you turn, being the birthplace of pilsner, the beer is delicious and dangerously cheap, and it has the largest castle complex in the world (who doesn’t love castles??). They say that one is lured in to Prague by its past, but compelled to stay by the present, a description that seems fairly accurate. We’ll be back.

Help! Phoebe's drowning in a sea of history and culture! HEEELP!! (She survived)

 The old clocktower, which is famous for the animation it does on every hour. Often voted one of the most overrated tourist attractions in Europe, but considering it was all done in the 15th century, it's not bad.

The view from Prague Castle. The most interesting history fact we learnt here was about the 'Defenestrations of Prague'. Czech people love throwing folk out windows (defenestrating) when they get into arguments - there have been several defenestrations throughout Prague's history. Basically if you get into an argument with a Czech person, make sure it's on ground level.

We fell in love with the Czech/Slovakian desserts, particularly the poppy seed ones!

 One pizza in Oslo = 35 euros.

Beef goulash, a pint of beer and an after dinner shot in Prague = 7 euros.
Need more be said?

Looking up at Prague Castle from the old Charles Bridge. The lights on the castle are courtesy of Mick Jagger, that old devil. Cheers Mick.

After czeching out from our hostel in Prague, we popped over the border to Vienna, another classic stop. Vienna is beautiful, there is no doubt about that – it is populated with some of the most luxurious and decadent palaces you could ever imagine, left over from when Austria was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it overall feels very clean and safe. Maybe we needed more time there, but we couldn’t help but feel that Vienna is just another beautiful European city. It sounds horribly blazé, but there was nothing that made Vienna special to us. Or maybe it just had some pretty tough acts to follow, after Berlin and Prague.

In an unexpected turn of events, Felix got crowned king of the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Lol just kidding, he's just wearing a map on his head.

The Real Estate in Vienna is through the roof. Bucketloads of nice buildings.

 We felt lost in Vienna without a free walking tour. We got some electronic walking guides instead, which were completely abysmal. Never ever get one of these. The only good thing about it was that it played classical music in between chapters. Speaking of which, this is a statue of Mozart, who is a bit of a big deal in Vienna.

The Opera House. Very nice, but not nice enough to make us want to see an opera show. We'll stick to music festivals!

Get that wiener down ya, boy!

We hurried on to our next European capital city (we love you Europe for being so compact), Bratislava. We had no idea what to expect as we had heard very mixed reviews from other travelers, but it turns out Bratislava is a bit of an underdog in Europe. We love underdogs. Sure, a lot of the old town of Bratislava was destroyed to make way for communist development during the Soviet occupation – the buildings are quite ugly, with no real embellishments at all except the odd creepy, sad looking statue. But if you stick to the part of the old town that remains today, which has become the centre for all the hustle and bustle, it’s a pretty nice city with plenty of character. Slovakia has had a huge increase in tourism over the past few years and is continuing to boom; a pretty cool place to explore!

The old part of Bratislava. The same as any European town centre you might say, but dang it's got character.

The view from Bratislava Castle looking out towards lego city/concrete jungle, aka the Communist block. Also Bratislava is right on the border, with views into Hungary on the left, and Austria on the right. Geography, it's science.

The Blue Church (10 points if you can guess why it's called that), built as part of the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. Oh yes, we're quite partial to a bit of the ol' Art History.

Next time: You can never get sick of mountains, can you?