Danube Dreams.

After the misery that was Vienna, Budapest was a welcome change, though it didn't begin that way. Disembarking my train, I punched my Airbnb address into trusty Google Maps, which told me my address was about 5 kilometres away. The only public transport was from a different station that was a fair way away, so being my stubborn self, I decided to just walk it.
It was warm, and after 2 kms it started to feel like that camera trick they do in the movies, where the foreground zooms into focus while the background zooms out into the far distance. Sweaty and grumpy, I dumped my bags onto the ground when I arrived at my destination, which didn't look quite right. The address, 'Bathory utca' was correct, but the house was ramshackle and decrepit, seemingly abandoned. I typed a message to my friendly host to ask her what I was doing wrong.
'You are in VIII District, yes?'
Unbeknownst to me, Budapest is divided into Districts, so that 'Bathory utca' in XVI District is vastly different from the one in VIII District. I typed the address into Google Maps again, and this time, it said 'Do you mean Bathory utca in XVI District, or VIII District?' Why it neglected to ask me the first time, I don't know, but I stood in the middle of a suburban street in Hungary and had it out with my phone there and then.
Seriously, it's like typing in 'Johnson Street, Victoria' and then Google Maps just picks one at random, say in Whittlesea, and then says 'there you go! Best of luck.'
Anyway, the proper street did have my apartment, and the host was very nice. However, I was only there for one night, because my real lodgings were booked out until the next day. Gladly, I had opted for an entire place to myself that was only 5 minutes from the Danube, and what a glorious bachelor pad it was.
After dinner on the second night, I went and had an authentic Thai massage. None of this anointing with scented oils and delicate, almost sensual kneading of muscles bullshit. This was agreed upon violence in a low-lit padded room.
I basically paid a heavyset Thai woman to beat the shit out of me. She held a rope that was attached to the ceiling and walked over me like a carpet, stopping to grind her heels in at specific points. There was one moment where she put both feet together and pushed into my back, which produced a painful but oddly satisfying crack, and prompted me to exhale unexpectedly and make a noise that went 'heeugghh!'
I left feeling like a million dollars. Also I wasn't crying, it was just that my eyes were hurting.

The next day saw me climbing up to Citadella, a 19th century fortress built on the Gellert Hill, a mighty mountain of rock jutting into the sky next to the Danube. A taxing yet rewarding climb, you are gifted with an almost 360 degree view of Budapest from a height that would be comparable to Hanging Rock. There's only so much you can do on top of a rock, however, so I made my way back down and back over one of the many bridges and decided to rent a scooter.
Running solely on electricity, these things were not to be trifled with. 'A top speed of 40mph!' is what the attendant told me, and after paying a quite reasonable sum of money they just... let me loose. For the next two hours I hooned around Budapest, zipping over bridges and terrorising old ladies, all while making motorbike noises. It was an absolute blast, and I'm positive I only hit one toddler, and even then, I'm almost certain he didn't die.
Topping off a great day with some dirty doner kebab, my time in Budapest has been marvellous. A+++ city, would visit again.

Prague rhymes with 'Flarg'.

If I had to choose a UK or European city to live in that wasn't Edinburgh, I could do a lot worse than Prague. What an absolutely beautiful city. The River Vltava cuts the city in two, and is spanned by many bridges, each decidedly different in style and age. The Charles Bridge was built in 1357 and is still standing strong. It also looks much nicer than the iron turds they built further downriver.
I was staying on the 4th floor of an apartment building across from the main city, with a nice guy called Carl and his little spaniel Winston. It turned out Carl is a drummer as well, and was heading out the night I arrived to play a gig. Since his girlfriend was away, I offered to look after Winston instead of him having to go in his cage, and we had a grand old time, playing fetch and drinking from the toilet.
I spent a whole day meandering through the city streets, and taking a diversion through one of the National Museums, which, it must be said, was pretty laughable. I paid €10 to see the 'Wild Life' exhibition, and while it was well put together and quite informative, it only covered a space about the size of about 2 tennis courts. I popped out the other side and had to ask the attendant if I'd missed something.
No matter. I resumed walking and crossed the Charles Bridge into the old town, where the streets are still cobbled and the trams wend their way through the twisted, sloping streets. The souvenir stands were abundant but not too tacky; they were almost reserved in their offerings. Great street food was readily available and I may have over-indulged.
Czech women are beautiful creatures, and I got a sore neck from twisting my head around to see amazing bottoms in very short shorts. I could have stayed longer, but I had to bid Winston adieu and move on.

Which leads me to Vienna. Vienna is like a fart during sex; it's a slight mistake during an otherwise enjoyable excursion. If the whole city looked like the grounds of the Schonbrunn Palace, it's most beautiful and charming landmark, it'd be heaven. Finely manicured gardens amongst avenues of leafy green trees, offset by grandiose fountains and the impressive edifice of the palace itself, it is an amazing place.
I walked at least 15 kilometres through the rest of the city, and it was unrelentingly shitty. Identically drab buildings extend as far as the eye can see, and every third business is a fucking kebab joint. Don't get me wrong, I love a kebab, but this is like a self-replicating virus of kebab. It might have been different in the days of Brahms and Strauss, but to me it seemed like the whole city was populated by Habib and family.
Perhaps with further exploration, there are other places to see and neighbourhoods that might feel welcoming, but in my admittedly limited experience, this place is awful.
Onwards to Budapest.

I would like to buy a hamburger.

Hamburg is okay. It's not great, and it's not awful, either. It's kind of beige. It felt like a place that you go through on the way to somewhere better. I stayed with a lovely Spanish family, who lived in a two room apartment on the third storey of a nondescript building in Harburg, about 15 minutes from Hamburg central. As I had taken the only other room, their whole family was in the other one. This consisted of  Rubén, the husband, Diana, the wife, Lisette, the 6 month old daughter, and Rocket the dog. And on the first night, Diana's sister.
I felt kind of bad, but Ruben reassured me it was okay. They take guests a few nights a week, and it pays the bills. He said living in this tiny apartment was better than scraping by in Spain, so he moved his whole family here. The second night they insisted I join them for dinner, which was a simple yet delicious meal of potato omelette, tomato in a simple dressing, and bread. Diana asked me in broken English if I had kids of my own. I told her my fur baby was waiting for me and showed her a photo of Sorrow.
"Any real baby?" she asked. I told her that it was something that didn't work out in the past and she made a sad face at me. If all Spanish women look like her, I could maybe be convinced to give it another shot.
I made a trip to the Reeperbahn, the entertainment/red light district of Hamburg, and wandered aimlessly for a few hours. Maybe it's the fact that we're desensitised to this kind of thing, or, more likely, I'm just a miserable sod, but there was nothing enticing about it. Not 'dangerous' in a seductive way, not sensuously mysterious. Just dirty, tacky and miserable. Homeless people begged for change every 20 feet, and every third store sold awful 'souvenirs'. Titty bars were everywhere, blasting music at painful levels and flashing bright lights in an effort to outdo the almost identical business across the street. The bordellos didn't seem to be much better. I went inside the 'Pink Paradise' so that you won't have to, and discovered that for €39 you can <censored> <censored> <censored> with a brunette, who will <censored> your <censored> <censored> and <censored> <censored> colander <censored> <censored> <censored> <censored> a tennis racket. The high point was actually the marijuana paraphernalia store and the wolfhound inside it. I made sure to give him lots of hugs. He seemed happy.

Berlin is far better.
A ten minute walk after getting off the train at the Hauptbanhof saw me standing at the Reichstag, a mightily impressive building made even more so with its history. I was surprised at its proximity to the Brandenburg Gate, situated about a kilometre away. Suitably imposing, it was crawling with tourists, and I didn't hang around long. All morning I could feel a head cold creeping up on me, and around lunch time it hit me with full force.
I haven't been that knocked around for a while, and spent the next 48 hours in bed sneezing green stuff into tissues that had the texture of 30 grit sandpaper. I actually had to change lodgings in the middle of this, and it's not something I ever wish to repeat.
I blame the fucking Wacken Festival.

The Inevitable Rant.

The break in updates was caused by some solid traveling and seething hate.

I got one my train from Edinburgh without issue and had an easy 5 hour trip down to King's Cross, where I changed trains to head out to Luton Airport for my 6:10 pm flight. Checked my bags in and wandered to the departure lounge, only to be told via the information board that my flight was delayed by an hour. Never mind, I'll get some dinner.
Emerging refreshed, the board had updated to show that my flight was now delayed by 2 hours. Okay! I will scan the racks in the newsagency! Duly scanned, I ventured out to check my gate number, and my flight had been delayed by another hour.
How lucky, then, that Luton Airport is so fucking interesting. When the gate number was finally announced and we were informed that our plane had landed, we were told that there would be an additional delay due to the entire passenger cabin being filled with piss. They don't know how they took onboard 14,000 litres of urine, but it must have happened in Majorca.

I finally boarded at 10:40pm and was herded to the back where I passed the entire flight cradling my head in my hands as unsupervised children screamed and ran up and down the aisle whilst undoubtedly shitting themselves with impunity and spreading germs, or whatever kids do.
By midnight, I was in Hamburg, and an expensive taxi ride later, in my Airbnb. A fitful night's sleep and I was back into travel mode. Heading out from Hamburg, I disembarked at a small town called Itzehoe, with a connecting service that deposited me at a smaller village called Wilster.
Very quiet and bucolic, I ambled along a riverbank until I got to the street where I was staying.
Erika,  my host, was a lovely lady in her 60's, and in broken English showed me around. She then asked if I was interested in going to the Wacken festival site that very evening, a day before the whole three day event began properly, as they had pre-show entertainment.
Well, why not! Erika (which this fucking computer keeps attempting to autocorrect to "Srikanth") and her ancient, decrepit but lovely husband whom I named Nietzsche because I never got his real name, ferried me out the 10 miles to the festival, and we agreed to meet back at the prearranged spot at 10:30. On one side of the absolutely enormous festival perimeter ran the Main Street of Wacken, which was filled with food trucks, music related shops and beer outlets. So many beer outlets. Some enterprising people were selling beer out of their garages, and why not?
Entering the main gate of the festival proper, I could see that the avenues for foot traffic were wide, but already beginning to show signs of deterioration into muddy puddles, but I figured into wouldn't be too bad, since the days had been sunny and warm. After a cursory glance at further food stalls and the main stages, I headed back to meet Erika and Nietzsche, and we headed back to their place. I got a reasonably early night in preparation for the following three days of metal.

In the morning, I met Alex, the young Mexican guy who was also staying at Erika's place. His English was impeccable, and we swapped numbers so as to meet up during the day/night, and then catch the shuttle bus back home when the first night had ended.
According to him, some light rain had fallen during the night, but the day was sunny and I thought no more of it. Alex kept mentioning he wanted to buy gum boots, but I told him we'd be fine.
Oh, you fool.
Queuing up to swap our tickets for an armband that ensure access across all 3 days, Alex and I did our best to dodge the growing rivers of mud that had appeared since my previous visit. When we finally hit the main thoroughfare, the truth became inevitable. The rain had turned the grassy fields of Wacken into a vast sea of mud. And with it came an epiphany. As my foot sunk into the cold mud, up to my shin, I felt something click.
Two years before I suppose it officially starts at 40, I could feel myself transitioning into middle age, or at least my definition of it. Standing in mud, a guy to my right being violently ill at 11:00am from too much drink and another guy to my right pissing into a mud hole, I thought 'fuck this'. There was
almost nowhere to stand that wasn't a muddy pit of misery, and this was all before midday. One of my favourite bands was due to headline, and they weren't due onstage until 12:20 am.

After a few hours my calves had begun to cramp due to the necessity of having to walk delicately and purposefully, lest an errant foot placement send you arse over tit and into the mud. By 9:00 I had booked a new Airbnb place in Hamburg. At 1:00 am, when the band Nile had finished, it was a simple matter of walking to the shuttle bus departure point, which was almost 2 kilometres away, through more muddy 'streets'. In the dark.
While it was cool to see a number of bands that I'd wanted to see for some time, the overall experience was just fucking ghastly. If I still drank, I could maybe handle three days of mud drenched awfulness, but even that's a stretch. Kudos to the people who do it year after year, but you can keep your shitty festival in a field in rural Germany where it belongs.

Insert Title Here.

Glasgow's slogan is 'People Make Glasgow'. My first reaction, of course, was 'shitty?' Every city has an allotted amount of shitty people, but in Glasgow it wasn't particularly noticeable, because it's a fantastically lovely city. I had a riot of a time!
I saw a man having an increasingly violent argument with a bin, some young chap bounded up beside me and threw his arm around my shoulders and politely enquired if he could have my newly purchased hat, I acquired some knock-off sour sweets that purported to be the British answer to Warheads, yet just contained so much citric acid as to melt my tongue and make my asshole pucker up tighter than a balloon knot.
My lodgings were infinitely better than Belfast, and hosted by a hip young couple who made me feel old, but welcome. I resolved to visit two museums in a day, and made good on the first by stopping at the Kelvingrove, an amazingly designed building built in 1901 and home to a wide array of objects, including ancient Scottish wildlife, select artworks by a group of period painters known as The Glasgow Boys, weapons and armour that belonged to warriors of the past, and Egyptian artefacts.
I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, except for the screaming babies. What kind of shithead brings a baby to a museum? Are you making sure they start their education early? They can't talk for fuck's sake, they're hardly interested in the reign of Robert the Bruce.

Making my way out of the Kelvingrove, my phone decided to just stop working, even with half a battery charge. I wandered down the street and found a mobile phone repair store, and the guy told me it appeared to be the charge outlet, and he could fix it for £30. Being the pessimist and cynic that I am, it came as no surprise to me that Murphy's Law would rear its ugly head, in that the most likely time your phone will take a shit and die will be when you're on the opposite side of the globe and travelling on a budget.

This meant I couldn't get to the other museum, the Riverside, and instead had to mill about the high street and wait for the repairs to be finished. Still, as I said, I thoroughly enjoyed Glasgow. The following day, I made my way to Queen Street station and bent over the counter to let British Rail have their way with my butthole, as there's no other way to describe the pricing and services offered by them. At least they were on time.
A pleasant journey ensued, as I was sat with two girls from Inverness, who were friends that worked together at KFC. One was 26 and, in profile, the the spitting image of my sister Madeleine. She was apparently an alcoholic as well, as on the 3 hour trip, she demolished a large can of Strongbow cider, two large cans of Tennant's lager, and then three smaller cans of Kopparberg cider. The other lassie was 21 and a non-drinker. They were very inviting, however, and named some rivers and landmarks that we passed by.
Inverness itself is a quaint little port town, with a refreshing lack of high rise buildings or apartments, and my Airbnb is the very model of hospitality, with a plump, comfy bed and very modern facilities.
I dined at an expensive and uppity Italian restaurant on the bank of the River Ness and then made my way to my lodgings to sleep in preparation for the big day ahead.
The other guests at my Airbnb had a car and we're going my way, and so kindly dropped me off at the little village of Drumnadrochit, near the shores of Urquhart Bay on Loch Ness. After dutifully wandering it's pleasant streets and grimacing at the amount of souvenir shit for sale, I booked a spot on a boat that does an hour-long cruise out into the Loch. With its peat-infused water, there's nothing to see in the depths themselves, but the surrounding forested hills are simply breathtaking, and the boat passed by the ruins of Urquhart Castle, which was magnificent from afar, but as we passed by, I could see that tourists were swarming over it like flies on a turd.
Everything else was wonderfully scenic and I'm glad I paid the exorbitant price to get onto the water.

Titanic bullshit.

First impressions count, and Belfast looked like a hybrid of Dublin and Liverpool, but things only got worse as I hiked out to my lodgings, past grey shopping centres, boarded up factories and run down houses.

The place that looked reasonably inviting on Airbnb was an unclean hovel, with two lovely dogs that had no proper bedding but instead lived in the kitchen. I can't imagine that the floor would have been cleaned in the last 3 months either.

However, things got better when I ventured out the next day, back into Belfast central and through to much nicer neighbourhoods, one of which housed the Ulster Museum. Full of interesting exhibits and presented in an erudite, easy to understand manner, I spent a comfortable few hours dawdling through its halls.

Heading back, I crossed the River Lagan, and made my way down to the docks, where a flashily designed building had caught my eye. It was the new Titanic museum, Belfast being where the ship was built. Interested, I made my way inside. Then back out again when I learned they wanted 20 fucking quid to tour a building 1/4 the size of the Ulster. It was noisy and full of American tourists and I hated it.

Back outside, I found that I could visit the now filled in dry dock where the ship was built, and read informative billboards placed along the way, for free. So I did this instead. Heading back into the city, I got myself a haircut from a barber who had an Irish accent so thick, I could understand only 1 of every 5 words. Eventually I gave up, and just nodded, and laughed when he laughed, and said 'ha ha, yeah!' with a conspiratorial nod.

Today dawned cold and dreary, with the rain gusting in from the west and pissing all over my planned day trip. I nodded back off, and when I awoke, the day had come good. I walked out to see Belfast Castle, situated at the base of the Cave Hills. A lovely building, it was built at some point by someone. I couldn't find out any further information because they didn't provide it. The castle itself is the starting point for walking trails into the Cave Hill Country Park, and I ascended the mountain to a beautiful viewpoint, where I took lovely photos that I can't show you.

A kid who looked to be about 8 asked me if I'd sell him the water bottle I was drinking out of, but when I declined he said 'your loss!' and headed down the hill. Strange.

Tomorrow, I board a bus at 6:30 am so that the bus can board a ferry and take me to Glasgow, where I  can be miserable. Looking forward to it.

Potato Famine Hilarity.

What a lovely place is Ireland. If I listen to Jeremy talk about it, it's an island made of turds and swarf, populated by arseholes, and a weather system that actively hates humans. I know he must secretly love it, because it's beautiful.

Very akin to Scotland, naturally, it has hues of green that I didn't know existed. The view as the plane came into land showed lovely, organised rows of houses and belts of luscious greenery, and I couldn't wait to get out and see it.

I stayed with a lovely family the first night, and with whom I should have stayed the whole time as their place was closer to Dublin than the place I'm at now, but never mind. The city centre itself is rather circuitous and rambling, as opposed to the straight streets of Melbourne, but Google maps is a fantastic tool. I wandered through Temple Bar and observed the buildings and the people, skirted around Dublin Castle, and watched a man high on something swim haphazardly across the River Liffey.

The next day saw me arrive bright and early at Dun Laoghaire for my bus out to the countryside, as part of the 'Wild Wicklow Tour'. Our first stop was the tourist trap hellhole of Eniskerry, a little village whose only reason for existence was to sell tat to bus loads of tourists, and I began to think I'd made an awful mistake.

But then we hit the real country part of the tour, and all was forgiven. The bus came to a stop overlooking Lough Tay, and I had an impressive view from a cliff side of some mostly untouched natural beauty that took my breath away. (It is here that I'd link a picture, but this fucking blog program makes it so hard to do so I can't even figure it out.)

Then, we moved on to Glendalough, where the bus driver herded us around an ancient, crumbling monastery and its accompanying graveyard, then advised us to walk to the Upper Lake, which I did. Standing on the shore, looking towards the far side, was a view that was so amazing and humbling it made me want to shit. Seriously, this vista made my anus relax. The photo I took is so fit for a metal band that I'm just going to make an album because of it.

Back in Dublin I wandered round and looked for a restaurant, and settled on a nice Indian place that provided me with a tasty vegetable vindaloo, and I ate slowly, watching people out the window as they headed for a night out. One alarming trend I've noticed is that the younger women have taken makeup application to a new level, where the only real comparison is Homer Simpson's shotgun that he modded to apply beauty products. 'Homer, you've got it set to whore!' says Marge. I'm of an opinion that makeup can play a supporting role to natural beauty by enhancing it in reasonably subtle ways, not looking like you've just smashed your face into a child's multi-coloured birthday cake.

Today I was hit with a mild migraine and so slept the morning away and opted not to go out, but tomorrow I shall return and view some more Dublin before heading for Belfast.