My world comes crashing down - Budapest, Hungary - July 24

Friday July 24

When we reached Budapest on the train we headed back to the Back Pack Guesthouse which we had stayed at previously, the hippy friendly place. Upon arrival they asked for our passports. It was at this point that I realised the final thing I had forgotten. My hand bag was still on the train, which travelled on to Belgrade. FUCK. I could repeat this word a hundred times and it really doesn't sum up my feelings at this point. The guy working the front desk disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a beer, which was on the house. FUCK. I can't fucking believe I'd been so careful all trip and the one thing I decided to lose was my fucking passport.

They called the station for me, and we were informed the train had been searched and they had found nothing. We enquired as to how they could possible search the train in the minute we had been on the phone. They said they search the trains at every station. Now we have been travelling Eastern Europe for months now and I have never, ever seen this happen. After much unhelpfulness from the staff, we hung up the phone.

I decided that I was going to have to search the train myself, so we rang them back and probed for more info. Where was the train going next etc. This time they admitted that the train booths were not searched, merely that someone walks up and down the corridors at each stop. Great. The train was due into Belgrade after 1, due to the delays. They gave us the train number and said that exact train was due to turn around and come back at 7am the following day. OK good start.

I called Natasha and Goran and asked them to go down to the station. Upon arrival they were given the third degree and told they would have the police called on them. They wanted to know why I had called them and not the station. *sigh*

So there was only one thing left to do. Get drunk. The hostel was throwing a party that night, complete with pass the parcel and fairy bread. We didn't realise it until the fairy bread came out, but it is in fact a very Australian thing. No one else in the world knew what fairy bread is! You learn something new every day ;)

The hostel common room packed out and the lively party started. Each layer of pass the parcel was peeled away revealing a new drinking game in each. Steve had to have a beer bong and I had to have a shot. Some people had to have upside down beer bongs, with salt in the beer. Yuk. I did however end up with the last prize. Earlier, when I had arrived, Taz who was working there when we were there last was asking me how long should it take someone to eat a lemon. I said 10 seconds. And so the joke was on me when the last prize was to eat the lemon in 10 seconds...


After that we all headed out around 1.30am to a cool DnB club where we drank until about 3.30.



Taz, Steve and I went AWOL from the main group (of about 15 people) and found a small side room that seemed to have the dregs of a private party. We decided to try and look as stupid as possible so we started dancing like idiots. Steve ended up swapping hats with a girl there (pic above) and Taz ended up trying to pick one of them up.

When we left we visited the famous Langos lady (anyone who visits Hungary MUST eat Langos)
This pic makes them look uber yuk - and they are for your tummy the next day, especially mine.
They start as a large piece of uncooked dough. Donut dough. And they cook them in front of you. It puffs up and becomes a large donut, the size of a small pizza. I had mine with sour cream and cheese (pictured on the left) and Steve had his with bolognaise and cheese (right). But they are oh so tasty.

We caught the night bus home and crashed at around 4.30-5am.

Bratislava - Slovakia (Slovenska) July 20-24

Monday July 20
We got the train to Budapest at 7.30am. It took 8.5 hours and was long and uneventful. I slept for the first half even though the chairs were really uncomfortable. We arrived in Budapest at 4 and went to the ticket box to secure tickets on to Bratislava, which was only a 2.5 hour trip. We had decided to do this last minute - when we realised how close it was to Budapest - and we hadn't seen any of Slovakia yet. It was to be our 11th country, 23rd city/destination and we've officially passed the 3 months away mark. Here's our list so far:

THAILAND - Bangkok, Phuket, Khao Lhak, Phi Phi Island
GREECE - Athens, Santorini, Thessaloniki
BULGARIA - Sofia, Varna
ROMANIA - Bucharest
SERBIA - Belgrade, Novi Sad
GERMANY - Berlin
SPAIN - Lloret De Mar, Barcelona, Madrid, San Sebastian, Valencia
ENGLAND - Liverpool, Redditch
HOLLAND - Amsterdam
HUNGARY - Budapest
SLOVAKIA - Bratislava

We have ended up missing out on Italy, Portugal, The Czech Republic and more of Germany due to the fact that we did Eastern Europe instead. Since we have been traveling though, we really want to see Poland, Turkey, Bosnia and maybe some of Scandinavia as well. Hopefully we land kick arse jobs in the UK and we can continue to live the dream...

The lady at the ticket office in Belgrade had tried to charge us 55 Euros each to go to Bratislava, yet we knew the train to Budapest was 16 each and I’d looked online and tickets from Budapest to Bratislava were only 16 return. So we just paid for a 16 Euro ticket to Budapest with the intent to change trains there, even though the train travelled on to Bratislava.

When we went to buy our tickets in Budapest they tried to charge us 58,000 HUF for one return ticket! This is approx. 145 Euros or 290 Aussie. She didn't speak English and just kept shrugging at me when I questioned it, so we went to the back of the line and hoped to get a different lady. The next one did speak some English and charged us the correct amount, 4400 HUF/16 Euros each for a return ticket.

We had a 3 hour wait until the train so we just sat and had beers at the pub inside the train station, we didn't feel like venturing out in Hungary that day.

Just before 8pm we boarded and we met a really nice 39yo guy in our booth on the train, he was born in Kuwait but resided in the Czech Republic. He told of lots of stories from both traveling and his personal life and so the trip passed rather quickly. He ran a shisha bar in Czech and he had a heap of pipes with him as he had a friend who sold them in Budapest. We arrived in Bratislava at nearly 11pm so we got a taxi (12.50 Euros for like 5 minutes, very expensive!). We weren't really sure how expensive Slovakia was going to be as they adopted the Euro in January this year. Generally Euro countries were expensive. I have been quoting prices in Euros even if we weren't in Euro countries as we have learned to convert to Euros not Aussie dollars since traveling because it's too painful to think is Aussie dollars. We set our budget when we left in Euros. Otherwise pints in Greece are $10-12, Flag fall in a Dutch taxi is $15, Flights to Budapest were $350 each, Hostels in Amsterdam are $54 each per night (the cheap ones anyway) etc...

We checked into our hostel, which had rave reviews, was only opened in October and was 15 Euros a night. It was called the Hostel Vegas. While we were checking in the boss came out and poured us shots of pear brandy and invited us to join the celebrations; his wife had given birth that day and he was proudly showing off the new addition. After we dumped our bags in our room we rejoined the celebrations out on the smoking balcony where we met the other people at the hostel and proceeded to be fed shots of vodka and brandy, washed down with a few beers for good measure. After a long boring day on the train this was a welcome change.

There were some Aussies we had met briefly in our hostel in Belgrade who were there and they were stoked to see us again. 2 of the 3 Aussies had Serbia backgrounds and spoke Serbian, and I gave one of them my email address so he could hook me up with someone who would teach me Serbian back home. The other one was trying to pick up a girl with enormous boobs, who looked to be in her early twenties who claimed to be a virgin though I suspected it was her way of getting attention/picking up since she started a conversation about what was the weirdest place people had had sex, only to say at the end that she never had, which seemed odd to me. This part of the story added for the benefit of Fudd - he wanted more boobs in the story :P

At one point the hostel Manager brought out sparklers too, we lit some but some we turned into sparkler bombs, which most of the people there had never seen.

After a few raucous hours on the balcony we called it a night and went to bed. The fate of the ‘virgin’ (who disappeared with the Aussie guy for a while) is unknown to me.







Tuesday July 21
We awoke to our alarm but failed to get up and have free breakfast - a trend I seem to have developed since we have been travelling. We slept in until around 10.30 and so only just missed it. We headed down the main street to find a feed suitable for me, and ended up at a fairly expensive place. Much much cheaper than Amsterdam/Berlin etc but expensive for Eastern Europe. We paid around 16 Euros for 2 meals and beer. After that we headed to a pub next door to our hostel to meet a Finish couple and a Canadian we'd met at our hostel the night before during the celebrations. The 5 of us decided to go out and check out Bratislava. It was about 33 degrees and everyone except for me was dying in the heat so we made regular pub stops for refreshment. Bratislava is quite small but pretty.

After our mission around the city we headed back to the bar next to our hostel to have dinner and beer – beers were only 1 Euro there – and proceeded to stay drinking most of the evening. The boys all started messing around with drink coasters, trying to flip them and catch them or flip them up onto things and this provided everyone entertainment (yes small things amuse small minds) for a while. Before heading to bed we drank on the balcony in the hostel for a while and met a few more people, including an American guy and another Finish guy (Jero, pronounced yerro with the r’s rolled). We called it a night around 4am.

Wednesday July 22

I actually managed to wake up for breakfast, though I was feeling a little seedy so I went back to bed afterwards. When we woke around lunch time we headed to the pub next door and met Jero for another cheap feed before setting off to see Bratislava Castle and have more of a wander around the city. It was nice but not spectacular like the one in Budapest.









Later in the day we met up with Jero at the pub next door for dinner. We couldn’t find anywhere with decent food that was cheap except the pub, so we ate pretty much every meal there. It was pretty fatty but beggars can’t be choosers :P

After dinner we went club hopping. Jero had heard a bar called Havana was good and had Cuban music, we were looking forward to something different. When we got there, the bar was playing pretty commercial music so after a really overpriced beer (3.30 Euros for a small bottle) we left. I noticed that no one at the bar (and it was busy) was drinking beer, only cocktails. During the day it seems everyone drank beer but not in nightclubs for some reason. We found another bar around the corner also called Havana and owned by the same people, which advertised Cuban music, so grabbed drinks there. Beers were 4.20 Euros for a small bottle, again most clientele were drinking cocktails (which were around 6 Euros) so again we didn’t stay long. Since we have been travelling what we look for in a nightclubs has changed slightly. Cheap drinks are more important now :P And so we moved on.

We decided to head back to the club next to the hostel. It was advertised as a chill out bar and Steve had been in on the first night briefly and he said it was ok music. We went downstairs and it was about half full, the music was average but the beer was cheap for a club, about 1.90 for half a litre on tap. A really drunk girl tried to get us to dance and over the course of that we made some new friends, this time locals. The bar emptied and was close to close so we decided to move on with our new friends. We found a place where the drinks were ok prices but the music was pretty commercial, more so than the first bar. The guys were nothing special, but the girls there were amazing. Slovakia is famed for its gorgeous women and it was easy to see why at this club. One of the people we’d met at the chill out bar, Petra, falls into this category. The guys all seemed really sleazy and rude and we had to tell guys to bugger off a few times. At one point one rather persistent guy must have pissed off the wrong girl as his was thrown across the room. There was an annoying drunk guy who was rather touchy feely with both of us and it took us a while to lose him. Petra’s friends all left and after a while we decided to leave and head to Petra’s place. We started our own dance floor at Petra’s place and had music cranked. Her friend’s rejoined her and some others we hadn’t met came over too and all was good until the landlord rocked up and we got booted out. That was around 10am. The guys from Petra’s place told us about a festival on that day which we were keen to go to but needed sleep, so we headed back to the hostel and slept.

Thursday July 23

The guys rang me around 12 and I thought I was good for waking up, that is until I saw 11 missed calls. Ooops. They said they’d meet me at the main train station at 1.30. I didn’t end up making it, needed sleep and I knew there was no way Steve was going to wake up either. We slept until 5 or 6pm and upon surfacing went downstairs and had a feed. Jaro was there too as he had also just woken up and so we began our ritual all over again!

This time we headed to a bar that our hostel receptionist had recommend (she was also really gorgeous Slovakian girl). It had some different local beers she said were good so we tried a few of the beers there including a lemon one, which was very different to the lemon/citrus beers we get back home.

After that we left to go back to the chill out bar again. There was a storm brewing, the wind was so strong things were hitting us in the legs and it was like a sting. We stood outside and watched the storm for a while and waited to see if Petra would meet us again but she had had to go to work after our night out and wouldn’t have slept so we didn’t think she would show. We headed down to the chill out bar and it was packed out. We go the last table, and as there was some space some other people took up the last few chairs and so it was that we met more people. It was a bit of a mix, an Italian girl, 2 French guys, a Swedish girl and a couple of others. We chatted to them for a hour or so before deciding we were too tired to have a massive one again.

Us with Jero

The French guys

The Chill out Bar

The very cool underground chill out bar

Friday July 24

We got up and checked out of the hostel and headed to the train station as for once we had purchased return tickets. Murphy's law would have it that upon arrive at the station we discovered the trains weren't running. The 5.53am train still had not departed and it was 11am. I thought I'd left my book at the hostel so I got the tram back, only to remember where it was when I got back to the hostel.

The train finally arrived at 3pm and we boarded and I freaked out that I'd left my towel in the station but Steve reminded me that I'd put it in my pack while we were waiting at the station.

It was to be the first few forgetful things I would do that day, the last was by far the worst and deserves it's own post.

Ruth

Belgrade, Round 2! - July 13-20

Monday July 13 - Thursday July 16
Didn't do much, just caught up on washing, blog, emails etc and met Goran for drinks. We talked Shelley into Eastern Europe and she flew to Budapest Monday and due to get a train to Belgrade to meet us for the weekend.

Friday July 17
Went to the train station to meet Shelley. It's so hot in Serbia atm, mid thirties and humid so while we waited for Shelley we sat in the shade and had a few beers.

When she arrived we went and finally checked out Kalmegden Fortess during the day, it was pretty cool.

That night we went down to the ? Tavern and had a really good feed before heading back to the hostel so Shelley could be soft as pass out in a bean bag. Steve and I decided to go out anyway and we hit up the clubs on boats that we'd missed last time we were here. They would definitely be in full swing.

We visited 3 clubs, the drinks were really expensive for Serbia so we didn't drink that much. The music was fairly commercial but we had a nice night out before heading home around 4am.

Saturday July 18
We took Shelley to the place we got our tatts at so she could get her boyfriend's birth date tattooed for his birthday. Steve got 2 more ear piercings. Shelley got filmed and interviewed for a news show the following day - they were doing a feature on the studio.

After Shelley's tatt was done we headed to Natasha and Goran's place. We hooked up Shelley with her first couch surf - she goes to stay with them on Monday. Natasha, Shelley, me and their Russian couch surfer all went out to their local kafala (so don't know how to spell that) and had chevapcici again (yum yum). Before we left we had rakija as an entree. We had it with the milk stuff which I actually remember the name of now - kymak. We continued drinking at Natasha and Goran's place after that. The Serbs like their drinks strong, and so we drank rakija and then vodka with just fresh lemon juice. The Russian couch surfer had brought them a bottle of vodka.

After that we headed out to the boats again, where the 3 of us drank and chatted to locals for a while. We actually found a place that played Serbian music - it was a live band. Very cool. We headed home again around 4 or 5.

Sunday July 19
Did pretty much nothing again today. Cooked an awesome dinner of thrown together left over veges and stuff, and drank with the hostel owner. Then we headed to a cafe and drank with Damian, Andrea and Sebastijan. Damian came back to the hostel with us to keep drinking. The hostel owner got out the home made rakija. Damian stayed until I went to bed which was around 3.30-4am. We had to get up at 6.30am to get the train to Budapest, yay.

Sorry this blog post is boring Fudd :P I will try and include some boobs in the next one...

EXIT Festival Overview - July 7-13

Ruth highlights:
Korn, The Irish guys, the Scottish embassy, Carl Cox & Green Velvet & the dance arena in general, partying in a fortress

Steve highlights:
Korn & the Scottish embassy

Ruth disappointments:
Missing Adam Beyer vs Eric Prydz, James Zabiela vs Nic Faniciulli, leaving early on 2 of the nights.

Steve disappointments:
missing most of the 3rd night

EXIT Festival July 7 - 13

Tuesday July 7 & Wednesday July 8

We landed at Budpest Airport, Hungary on Tuesday afternoon and decided that we really wanted to live in Serbia. So we went house hunting. We had something in mind from our last visit to Hungary and we returned to see if we could make a purchase. Upon arrival we discovered the sale that was on when were in Hungary last was still on, a whopping 57% off. It seems the housing market in Europe had crashed too. We made our purchase, signed our lives away and walked away the proud owners of our first home. We couldn't wait to get to Serbia and move in.

Just because our first home happened to be a tent detracts nothing from how excited we were... Serbia here we come baby!

We then headed to the train station to see about an overnight train to Novi Sad. We were heading to EXIT a day early to get a good camp site. Upon arrival to the train station, it seemed half the population of Europe had the same idea. We lined up for an hour and a half for a ticket and secured the midnight train. We me some Maltese guys, Mat, Steve and Pablo at the station and they shouted us beers while we waited. I love being able to drink everywhere in Eastern Europe. We had about 4 hours to kill so we decided to drop in to the hostel we had stayed at when we were in Budapest last time, the Backpack Guesthouse. When we got there we found that everyone who worked there had moved on, but Kevin (and Aussie) who was working there then welcomed us with open arms and so we used the net, chatted to people in the common room and made some new friends to kill the time. It's one of the coolest hostels, we are going to stay there again when we come back before we fly to the UK.

We left Backpack and headed to the station. When we reached the platform, I nearly fell over. Holy shit, how are all these people going to fit on the train? Well the easy answer is, they didn't.

When the train finally pulled up to the platform there was a massive cheer from the crowd. Everyone scrambled to get a seat. We didn't get seats (Eastern European trains have booths, with 6-8 seat per booth). It was to be the most uncomfortable train ride in history (at least, the history of my life). What should have been a sleep in your chair job, turned into sit in the aisles, or on the toilet, or where ever you can find space job.

When the train finally got moving there was an almighty cheer from the hundreds of punters squished into the train. We knew EXIT was going to be awesome. The atmosphere was electric, and we were still 6 hours away from Novi Sad.

These pics are the door way (and I nearly fell out when border control tried to get in to stamp our passports)



We finally made it to Novi Sad - man what a long night - at 5 something in the morning. We grabbed breakfast with the guys from Malta before saying goodbye and heading to set up our new home.

After setting up we crashed out for a few hours. It had been raining so it was cool enough to sleep. When we woke our sleeping bag mats were damp. So we decided to invest in some new furniture for our home - some foam mats (the EXIT shop had camping gear, even tents!). After that we went to check things out. Whilst EXIT hadn't started yet, they had 2 music stages set up inside the camp site to keep people entertained. There was a reggae stage and another random stage which played minimal most of the times I heard it. As it had been raining and the reggae stage had some rather muddy punters in attendance, or should I say lots of dirty girls. If I describe just how dirty they were, will you keep reading the blog Fudd?


We discovered the camp site was pretty well serviced. There were portable ATMs, internet cafes, safes, mobile phone charging stations, pretty much everything we needed. But most importantly, our tent was near the beer vendor. Beer in Serbia is cheap, really cheap. But we were at a festival, so it was expensive for Serbia, but for a festival? You would never get a schooner at a festival for $3 back home. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a schooner under $3 in any pub in Melbourne (if indeed you could find a schooner).

The porta loos, were, er, well pretty unsavoury. It seems they hadn't been cleaned for a few days. We were starting to dread camping there for the next 5 days. As it turned out once the festival got under way the cleaned the regularly, lucky, because we would have thrown up if they kept that up.

The food vendors were pretty good, there was a chinese take away place that had pretty nice veal, cabbage, carrot and rice stir fry, no onion (w00t!) which I would live on for the next few days, and for Steve there was pizza, hamburgers etc, the usual festival food.

After we had a feed, downed a few beers and hung out in the "chill out" area, which was more of a beer pavilion, we headed to bed. Just after we went to bed, we heard and almighty cheer go up, which "mexican waved" around the campsite. Some louder music fired up and we knew again, EXIT was going to be awesome.

Thursday July 9 - DAY 1 - EXIT Festival

We woke once the sun came up cos god damn our tent was roasting. We were looking forward to the day, as EXIT was kicking off at last...

We went for an explore and to collect our wrist band, there were street vendors lining the streets from the camp site to the fortress (for those of you that don't know, EXIT is in a fortress) and so if you didn't feel like paying $3 for a beer, you could buy them for even less on the street. The camp site staff permitted everyone to take their own beer in too, the rules were very relaxed... AWESOME.

We headed in to see Lily Allen play main stage that night. She was good but really not as good as I was hoping.

Roots Manuva were on after and the got boring very quickly so we headed to the dance arena.
It's a little hard to tell in the photos, but this is looking down on the dance arena. There were 3 different levels of dancefloor (different platforms of the fortress).

This is the dance arena stage off to the right, the people and 3 platforms full of punters extend out to the left

We saw Reboot (Live), Lee Burridge and Steve Lawler, but left to go see some of Artic Monkeys main stage and so missed Sasha and Digweed and James Zabiela and Nic Fanciulli. When we arrived at the dance arena for Reboot, they let off several minutes of large fireworks over the crowd.


We only saw a bit of Arctic Monkeys before heading back for sleep - the tent was too hot to sleep in during the day. I woke up and heard Zabiela and Fanciulli from my tent and was really pissed for missing it - it sounded fucking awesome.

Friday July 10 - DAY 2 - EXIT Festival

It was way too hot for people to sleep in tents so everyone got their sleeping mats and crashed under trees, in the beer tent, where ever they could that was in the shade. I think I slept with my head out of the tent with the zip for the front done up around my neck so mozzies didn't get in. It was not raining and very hot. Still annoyed about missing Z&F.

We met some cool Irish guys and headed down to the 'beach' with them. The beach was an artificial beach created on the banks of the Danube. We took our sleeping mats so we could doze in the shade if we wanted to. We drank beer all day and Steve crashed eventually while I stayed up drinking.

That night we went out and it was uber cold. We were wearing shorts and so when it got cold we found it rather bad. We saw all of Korn's set, which was awesome, one of the highlights of the festival for us.
It rained the whole time, Korn was playing so our jumpers got wet and the wind cut straight through us. We saw the start of Andy C - there were 2 DnB sets after the bands finished on main stage each night, as a warm up for people to transition to the dance arena (main arena closed at 4am). We crossed over to the dance arena to see Richie Hawtin vs Dubfire, but alas, the cold got the better of us and we bailed just half an hour before they were due to start. Walking home we stopped at a pub and had a beer and thaw, and we heard some of his set and tbh (Brian & Julie: to be honest) it didn't sound that good. We continued home and got some sleep in the cold.

Saturday July 11 - DAY 3 - EXIT Festival

That night we were trying to make it down for Kraftwerk but we met up with a guy we knew from our last visit in Serbia and missed them. We watched Moby who was really good, really different to the last time I saw him. Steve was really tired and falling asleep in my lap so we called it a night really early. Missed Adam Beyer which was a bit of a bummer.


Sunday July 12 - DAY 4 - EXIT Festival

By morning I was too hot again so I moved my mat into the entry of our tent where it was cooler. During the day we caught up with some Scots we met over the course of the festival, and hung out with them at the Scottish Embassy - the only place in Eastern Europe that accepts Scottish money.


We first met one of the guys at the airport in Hungary, his bags went missing so he didn't get the night train with us but we randomly met him again at EXIT. These are the guys we spent the most time with at the festival.

We all headed in to the fortress together that night and saw Madness, then the Prodigy. The numbers at the festival that night were crazy, it seemed there were twice as many people, I'm guessing the got day passes rather than for the whole festival. It was slow going going anywhere.


Before the Prodigy ended we headed to the dance arena to watch Valentino Kanzyani & Marco Nastic


We headed to a smaller arena after that to see the guys playing psy (from the club we visited on our last trip to Serbia). Then we headed back to the dance arena and saw the end of Sander Kleinenberg and Darren Emerson's set which was way cooler than I thought it would be. I expected really commercial electro but it wasn't.

While it was still dark a guy came through the crowd dressed all in black on stilts, he had a helmet covering his face which was black, and wound around him from head to toe was a thin plastic tube of green lights. He stopped right next to us to 'perform'. He had a pack on his back and was firing a fire extinguisher (or something similiar) over everyones heads. He then let off fire works from his hands, the sort that fire short range and continuously, like a massive sparkler. We were literally right next to him and I felt the sparks on my head. It was really fucking cool. The sun started to come up and the it was time for Carl Cox & Green Velvet to start the festival closer. We met back up with the Scottish embassy again and danced with them for the next 2 hours. Steve's camera batteries died so we didn't get any pics :( It was insane tho, so packed out. Green Velvet sung La La Land live... Half way through we moved from the bottom level to the top level, so we were looking down over several packed out levels of the dance floor. Going nuts in a fortress to Carl Cox and Green Velvet was the perfect way to finish our weekend and we were glad that we'd managed to stay all night at last.

Monday July 13 - EXIT Festival is over...

We all walked back to the Scottish embassy and hung out there for the morning and kept drinking. Brody passed out and so we piled stuff on top of him so you couldn't see him anymore, then put a plum in his mouth and made him close his mouth so it stayed there by it's self. Then we put a whole tent on him and pushed the pegs into the ground, so only his head way sticking out. Of course pictures were taken but not on our camera, so alas I cannot post pics here.

We packed down our tent and got ready to leave. We decided to leave and head for Belgrade again rather than camp the extra day so we headed to the station and caught the train late afternoon. It was only a 90 minute trip but we passed out as we hadn't slept. We stumbled back to the Star Hostel to see if they had room which they did, thank god. We had a quick feed and shower (hooray a real shower!) and went to bed.

Amsterdam - Nederland July 2-7

This one day, we saw, you'll never believe it, a DRAGON! Larger than life, all green and fire breathing and he came and took some large busted blonde damsels in distress from the castle turrets. The a brave knight called Steve came and rescued them with his legendary sword of death...

No, we haven't smoked too many spliffs in Amsterdam... Fuddly thought we needed to make the blog more exciting, so that one's for you buddy.

Now for the rest of the boring bits (you can go back to bed now Fudd)

Thursday July 2
We flew into Amsterdam and there had been a fire at the train station so we had to get a bus from the airport. We drove past the Amsterdam Arena where Sensation was to be held the following night. It looked much the same as the MCG on the outside. We got to the end of the bus line and got a train the rest of the way into Amsterdam Centraal. From there we paid a whopping 2.80 Euro ($5.60 Au) for a metro train ticket to go one stop. As we only had directions to our hostel on the train and we had no tourist map we had to cough up for it even though we probably could have walked. Not only was it expensive but Steve had to line up for ages to get it. We got off the train and started looking for a hostel. We stopped to look for the hostel and looked at the piece of paper the directions were written on and a stranger asked us if we needed help. We told him where we were going and he showed us. So far, Dutch people were nice it seemed.
We checked into the hostel. It was in an amazing location. Amsterdam central is full of canals and one way streets on each side of the canals. It is very bicycle friendly, not so car friendly and so there were bikes everywhere. The buildings are very pretty too, so I instantly warmed to Amsterdam. Unlike Berlin which took me a few days, Amsterdam made an immediate impact. I knew I was going to love this place.

Our hostel was the first Hostel International hostels we have used (we bought membership before we left Australia) and just this 3 day stay saved us enough that the membership was paid for. At 27 Euros a night this was the most expensive hostel we stayed in. It was the only hostel we actually booked well in advance, as Sensation was on we knew hostels would be in short supply. Shelley, Rosie and Luke booked late and couldn’t find anything less than 45 Euros each. (If you haven’t worked it out yet, double the amount to get Aussie Dollars). The hostel was a big generic hostel much like any we’ve stayed in in Western Europe. Eastern European hostels are so much better.

We had told Shelley to meet us at our hostel at 8pm (allowing 2 hours to get there from the airport) but due to the fire we were there around 9 and they had left us a note with their phone number. We called them and met up with them. Carol & Amber were in tow, some Melbourne girls living in Canberra who we had met at gig in Canberra last year (or the year before? I really can’t remember) so it was nice to see them again. We said our hellos and then parted ways with Carol & Amber to head off for a feed.

We were expecting Amsterdam to be expensive because the hostels were so expensive and boy were we right. Dinner and drinks was uber expensive and we knew we’d really struggle to keep under a hundred Euros a day for our stay. We headed to the local coffee shop for some cake. I only had a third of a piece due to the wheat content, Shelley and Rosie shared a piece and Luke had a piece to himself. We wandered around Amsterdam and looked at girls in the red light district, smelled copious amounts of weed being smoked and took in the busy Amsterdam street life. There were basically shop fronts with hookers in the windows, the most attractive ones were in the main strip and the side streets all had every size shape and colour imaginable. There were lots of places with sex shows, we all wanted to go to one but we didn't spend long enough there so we missed out. The atmosphere was positively electric. I decided yes, I really like Amsterdam.

We didn’t really go anything except wander around and take it all in, and we had Sensation on the following night (well it was tonight by the time we parted ways @ 2am) so we headed back to our hostels and crashed.

Friday July 3
Luke and Steve headed out curiously to check out the smart shops and Shelley, Rosie and I hired bikes and cruised around the city for the afternoon. It only cost us 9.50 Euros to hire a bike for 24 hours – cheaper than anywhere even in Eastern Europe. This would turn out to be the only cheap thing in Holland. We went to see Anne Frank’s house but upon arrival we saw a huge line and an 8.50 Euro cover charge, so we bailed on that idea. There was a huge line for the wax museum too – the only time in our travels that I have seen a line for a tourist attraction. No wonder Amsterdam’s expensive – because it can be! We decided to do a spot of shopping and OMG I could spend so much money there. In fact by the time we all met up again, Steve and I had blown 150 Euros on shopping and lunch for the day! Ouch. Steve had bought a bottle of Agwa for our pre-Sensation drinks, which is one of our favourite drinks back home. We pay $60 Au-ish for it at home, and it was a massive 48 Euros here (yes double that for Aussie). AND it’s made in Amsterdam. How the fuck does that work????

We headed back to our hostels to get ready for Sensation. After we got dressed Steve and I started our night of party with 5 shots of Agwa in 5 minutes while chatting to people in our hostel room and waiting for Shelley and Rosie to get ready. 10 minutes later we had another shot for good measure and left to get the girls and Luke. Sensation ended up starting earlier than we thought so we missed the open which was a bummer cos Sensation is all about production. We weren’t really there for the music, since Sensation has shifted away from being a trance party in recent years, but the sound and lighting would be something special and it was. The theme was Wicked Wonderland and had an Alice in Wonderland styled theme but with an over riding good vs evil theme, or more naughty and nice and so there were girls wearing kinky stuff vs girls wearing ‘nice’ stuff. Not worth describing really, but pictures tell a thousand words.... Unfortunately Shelley’s camera tells less words that Steve's, but u still get the gist. Steve wasn’t allowed to take his in because it looks like a professional camera.





We left early as Luke felt sick and went on a mission through the streets on Amsterdam at 5 in the morning as we told the cab driver to stop as we’d reached and breached our cash limit for the night. We handed over the last of our cash and after about 1.5 hours found our hostel again.

Saturday July 4
After a nice sleep in we got up and headed out again. I returned the bike and Shelley and Rosie decided to stay and keep cruising around on the bikes as Rosie was leaving to head to the US on Sunday morning. Luke, Steve and I got a train out to the beach to attend a beach party that a friend of mine was playing at. He had arranged 2 free tickets and we were going to split the cost of the last ticket as entry was 30 Euros. We arrived and it was in a beach club venue on a perfect day, not too hot, not too cold just perfect. It was an all trance event with some big names and in particular Luke and I were looking forward to seeing DJ Shah. We saw my friend Misja Helsloot play when we arrived, and after that someone we didn’t know, and then off to see Shah in the second arena. He was on at the same time as Mark Sherry, but we’d all seen him before so we gave him a miss. There were a few other people playing after who we wanted to see but the last train back to Amsterdam was at 11.15 and the event finished at 12 so we had to leave early. DJ Shah’s set was amazing. He played the sunset set and it was perfect. The perfect finish to our one weekend of partying in Amsterdam. He even played my favourite mix of Who Will Find Me, when I usually hear his other remix being played by other people. Even though we had to leave early we felt like it couldn’t have ended more perferctly.
We headed back to Amsterdam and crashed out.







Sunday July 5
We collectively decided that Amsterdam was way too expensive to stay. Steve and I had blown 700 Euros or a whole weeks budget in 3 days. So Shelley tracked down a cabin in the middle of nowhere and we headed out there in a taxi to spend some time out of a major city for once, and enjoy Holland for a fraction on the cost of Amsterdam.
The taxi was 50 Euros, but the buses out there were going to be a massive stuff around, so we just wore it. When we arrived it wasn’t what we were expecting. We thought it had wifi, a shared kitchen etc. But they were just cabins with a gas stove and kettle – nothing else. No kitchen, no net (well they did but it was broken). So we just had the Dutch countryside to enjoy. We didn’t get up to much the first night, the whole camp was full of young German guys in our section and a Newfoundland club in the other section. I had always wondered what those dogs were as I’ve seen one in Melbourne (and I want one!) but never knew what they were. My dad told me a story about a Newfoundland capsizing his friends boat when we were kids so the name has always stuck in my head.

Monday July 6
All we did was relax, attempt to play cards and enjoy smart shop supplies, beer, vodka, metaxa and Bacardi all day and night until 2am. We went out for a walk and checked out these beautiful Dutch cottages and talked to some cows. It started to get dark and with no street lights we were worried about getting lost so we headed back to the cabin.

Steve picks up in Amsterdam

We couldn’t get details of our flight to Budapest due to Malev Airlines being the worst airline in the world so we were waiting for Brian and Julie to call the Australian number at 9am their time. We thought they might be Tuesday they might be Wednesday, as we were going back for EXIT Festival which started on Thursday in Novi Sad, Serbia. Malev did not send us an itinerary, and to call them cost something ridiculous. They sent an invoice with no details, and about 6 different document numbers. We had 20 Euros credit on the phone, and we called and before we could find out we ran out of credit. Fuck me. Like seriously WTF? So we bought a 10 Euro card and ran that out too. So for $60 Au we found out NOTHING. Brian and Julie messaged us to say our flight was at 12, and later we found out the company in Australia is ceasing to deal with the airline too as they are so bad. So anyone travelling to Hungary, avoid Malev Airlines at all costs. Brian and Julie got a lovely large phone bill talking to us also, so we added a fair bit to the cost of our 300 Euro flights.
We packed everything we could and crashed out as soon as we found out we only had 10 hours left in Holland.

Tuesday July 7
We got a taxi to the airport for 75 Euros only to find out our flight wasn’t on the board, and when we tried to use the auto check in booth it said it couldn’t find the booking. Steve scanned his passport and nothing. The attendant told us to proceed to the check in counter and hope for the best. We lined up for ages and eventually got served and they had the booking under my first name not my last name, and obviously their booking reference number was a load of shit. The flight was not at 12, but luckily we hadn’t missed it as it was at 12.25. Talk about stressing. We were both glad when that was over! And then we left Amsterdam...

Ruth
PS if there are lots of typos, too bad, I CBF (B&J this is can't be fucked) re-reading my own essays anymore...