Having attempted to keep this blog updated reasonably recently in the first half of my trip, the past 3 weeks have gone by in such a whirlwind of adventures and exploration that I find myself starting this post in my (hopefully) last foreign city with a faint apprehension as to where to even begin.
As tradition dictates I shall thus begin at the start of this section – leaving Turkey. This journey proved itself rather challenging; on my way to Romania I took 9 different lifts in one day, including a 8km yomp across the border and along a baking motorway in the sweltering midday sun, with only the occasional vehicle passing – this was one to chalk down as a character building experience. The night-time entrance to Bucharest was an impressive and worthwhile one though – second only to the Pentagon in terms of size, the Palace of the Parliament dominates the skyline and provides a fascinating insight and metaphor for the entire city. Built under the orders of the dictator Ceausescu, it houses an interesting (if somewhat lack-lustre) tour of but a small fraction of the building’s 3000 rooms. Having cost somewhere approaching $30 billion to build, it nearly bankrupted the country, and was almost torn down when Ceausescu was overthrown. To this day, it fiercely splits opinion with it being voted both the prettiest and the ugliest building in Romania in the same poll.
The rest of the city was explored with another walking tour, and culminated in a highly cultural nighttime visit to the underground Kulturhaus club, which provided an excellent ground for letting off some steam.
Bucharest also provided me with my first insight into the popular backpacking routes that snaked their ways across Europe – here I met people that had just come from Budapest, and were more than happy to provide me with suggestions of places to stay. This is both fantastically useful (saves wasting time in rubbish hostels), but also almost heart-breakingly impersonal. At times it felt like you were just following a very-well trodden path, and makes the whole trip feel somewhat less “adventurous”. My counter thrust against this mass-homogenisation of travelling falls then to the glorious uncertainty and randomness of hitching. From the hostel to the club and then onto another hostel, it can be difficult to ever actually meet real local people, particularly if you only have time to travel to the big cities. That becomes distinctly less of a problem when you decide to jump in a random persons car for a few hours – fascinating tales and stories invariably entail. An example of this would be when I was picked up by a delightful couple who were travelling with their child to a party in Transylvania. Whilst driving through the Black Hills (the range that separates Romania from Transylvania), we stopped at a large cafe by the side of the road. Here Oliviu, my driver, explained that when he was growing up during the communist regime his family would, once a month, drive 3 hours purely to purchase the traditional food we ourselves had ordered (mititei, a type of skinless sausage) as they were unable to get them outside of this one very small area. This trip would often be the highlight of their month, and the small aspect of me taking part in this may seem worthless but being involved in a tradition continuing down the generations made me feel honoured, and connected me to the country that little bit more
As I’ve mentioned a few times in this blog, I’ve been blown away by the generosity of the people I’ve met, and the lengths people would go to help an essentially random bearded English man they found on the streets. I was struck by this again when I found myself in a random dreary and dark Romanian town late at night where, having been accosted by a drunk Romanian cyclist (who spoke no English but did shout “Anglese!” and “Manchester United” at me for several minutes), I sought refuge in a petrol station. Upon questioning the people in the station, I was fortunate to find Natasa and Picas. These two larger than life characters were driving to the Channel Islands, but for whatever kind reason decided to drop me off directly outside my hostel in Budapest, despite it being a significant diversion from their planned route. The journey with them was another one full of fascinating discussion and analysis of the world around, and they are people who seem to simply love the world, each other, and travelling – great company for the early hours in the morning.
And so I arrived in Budapest. With it being half 1 in the morning and having been travelling for about 16 hours, it may have been sensible to head to bed, but what with the hostel being full and me having to crash on a sofa that night, it seemed wiser to instead head out and meet the bar crawl that had left several hours previously. This inevitably ended up at 7am talking to a group of Mexican and French students in a beautiful ruin bar, with the sun pouring through the inner courtyard we found ourselves dancing in, demanding our attention and insisting we either head to bed or keep on partying. This provided a good introduction to Budapest – the few days I spent here were up there with the craziest I’ve had in a while, and these ruin bars often featured heavily (whether they continue to feature heavily in my actual memories is another matter entirely). A walking tour of the city was of course required, but the real highlight of that Saturday (and perhaps the entire trip) was the infamous Sparty at the Szechanyi baths. These gorgeous traditional Turkish baths shed their relaxing vibe once a week and turn into a laser filled, alcohol fuelled rave where just about anything goes. Combining pre-drinks at theRetox hostel (well worth a stay if the slightly smaller but more homely Carpe Notrem Vitae hostel is full) with a veritable mob of lairy backpackers in swimming costumes is a recipe for either a brilliant night or potentially a disaster (and actually often both). If you are visiting Budapest, and are not too squeamish, I cannot recommend this enough. Just don’t take your goggles and look underwater…
Aside from the debauchery of the spa party, Budapest also provided another highlight of the trip in the form of caving. With over 120km of caves under the Pest side of the city (the city was actually formed from two distinct towns, called Buda and Pest), this is another great way to spend the afternoon. As ever with these tours much probably depends on who your group and guides are, but I was fortunate to be with a hilarious group of Canadians who kept the quips flying throughout the tour, and also with a Hungarian guide who kept the atmosphere fun and upbeat. This tour also had one of those “what am I doing here/how is this now my life moments”, when, whilst 50m under the ground, we all turned our head torches off leaving us in absolute pitch blackness, and our guide proceeded to sing to us a traditional Hungarian carol in a haunting, beautiful tone
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