Budvar to Budapest

It's my second night in Budapest and things are going good! I couldn't remember what the hostel I'd booked here was like and hence was pleasantly surprised to discover I'd booked another apartment-hostel, this time in a spacious loft! It's wicked! Earlier tonight there was a lot of cranked up 90s music. I approve.

Here are three more good things about Budapest:
1) When I say my usual form of goodbye in shops, a humble English "see ya", I'm actually also saying goodbye in Hungarian.
2) I found Canada Dry ginger ale in a supermarkets here! I've been trying to find this ever since I went to Canada 10+ years ago. Not too sure why they have it in Hungary but not in any of the other European countries I've been to (that I saw)! It was just as good as I remember.
3) One of the classic films of our time was filmed here. By "classic film" I mean I Spy.

I also had possibly the best coffee I've ever had today. The milk was milky with the right amount of foam, it was in a massive mug that was definitely larger than standard coffee size and it cost about $2. So good!

Here are some stories about what I've been up to over the past few days, involving drinking a lot of beer:

In Prague I went on a "beer tour", where we went to 4 pubs to try different types of Czech beer and learn some beer history. Most of the beers we tried were brewed at the pubs themselves and tasted awesome! Also the fourth pub we went to was Soviet propaganda themed, which was really cool. There was just me and two couples so when we had to vote "best beer drinker" of the night I got picked mostly, I think, for being the odd one out. Either way, hooray! It meant I won a voucher to do a tour with the same company in either Paris, Dublin or London (or other towns that I'm not headed to) - worth about 10-15 euro, so score! Jenny, I will tell you all about these tours in case you're interested in doing one half price!



The next day I went out to see the bone church at Kutná Hora, which was indeed very boney. I really liked the town because it smelt unnaturally strongly like honey. Surely there must have been a hidden honey factory somewhere around there?

On my first night in Bratislava a friend of the people running my hostel came in to do a Slovakian food cookup! We had cabbage pasta which was really good for just cabbage, pasta, pepper, salt and sugar. I then hung out for beers with a guy from Belgium, Yoeri, with whom I share three solid interests of britpop, black and white movies and beer, and we joined forces to see the town the next day.
Bratislava was a cool city and I think I liked it a lot more than Prague! Smaller, friendlier, stranger mix of older and Soviet-era buildings. To fully experience Slovakian ways we then went to the ice hockey! Those ice hockey players have some crazy skills, I'm still not sure how they know when they're getting subbed on and off and how they do it so quickly. Slovan Bratislava won and the crowd was very excited about this! Also, whenever there were pauses in the game they played loud, short clips of songs, with no discernible connections between them. The best choice was Disco 2000, the strangest choice was YMCA!

After the hockey match we fell in with some more Australians and more Belgians and ended up having some international beer drinking competitions, as a result of which I consumed more beer than I thought I could physically fit into my body. It was good fun, but shamefully we lost overall to the Belgians. Belgians can drink beer very fast!

The next day Yoeri and I were both headed to Budapest, so we joined forces again but unfortunately he couldn't get a place at my hostel for further team antics. But we went to a place that did good, cheap, traditional Hungarian food for dinner where I had "Hungarian crispy duck". It was two massive slabs of crispy-skinned duck, possibly constituting an entire duck between them, with sweet cabbage, mashed potato and orange. Turns out hacking your way through a mega duck feast is a truly great dinner after a night of a lot of beer drinking!

Concluding my stories, today I went for a big walk around town and enjoyed it for the previous stated reasons and also because it's another really cool city! Cool, but massive - I walked for 6 hours and didn't see everything I wanted to but hopefully I can fit some more stuff in around a trip to the Soviet monument park tomorrow!

I've put up Czech Republic and Slovakia photos right here!

Hope things are good with everyone back home! Many cheerful European regards to anyone and everyone reading this!