Greece

Thessaloniki,
HOT. So so hot in Greece, I’m melting. Found the symbol of Thessaloniki, The White tower which they have made in to a museum. That was all we really had time for though because we had got there late the night before and were leaving that day to

Athens:
Full of history. Our hostel was really nice and we got our own room. The hostel street however was full of hookers. Old ones. Which was rather interesting. And the first thing someone said to us was offering drugs. So basically our hostel was in Red light district, gangster suburbia.
Now we are about to catch a 15 hour ferry to Italy. Off to Rome. There are a lot of illegal immigrants around. Hugh saw one try and climb the fence and get pounded and another one get arrested. They all try and talk to you to find out what nationality you are from; we put on an accent ad said that we were from Taaaasaaammaaniiiaa. That seemed to confuse them! Pretty creepy people here.
The overnight ferry was not what we were expecting; we were expecting that this would also be the backpacker code for piss up. But actually it was just people sleeping and playing cards. It was a lot bigger than I expected – haha, I was thinking Bruny ferry! We just had deck seats, which we assumed would be sun chair type things, but they were just like outside picnic chairs. So we slept on the floor, on the top. It was so windy!!! But it was pretty nice in a way. Sleeping under the stars (not that you could really see the stars, the air was so polluted; I did see a shooting star though!).

Skopje, Masadonia

Really cheap and delicious food! We had a huge chicken salad, large beer and some mineral water for 3E for an example. Just did the usual walking around and seeing the old town. Saw their newest and their oldest building.

Pristina, Kosovo

We were expecting the worst, it has only been its own country for two years and a lot of countries still don’t recognise it as its own. It was great though! The people were lovely and there was a lot happening. A lot of buildings being built and things being fixed. The people were really friendly and seemed pretty happy, so that gave it a great atmosphere. There was still some poor of course and we got asked quite often for money, but that’s to be expected. We were only game to do a day trip; I would like to go back though and am really glad that we went.

Beograd

Caught the overnight train from Split to Zagreb, an overnight train that had no beds. Although this actually worked out in our favour, due to the seats somehow turning in to mattress land. Luckily there were not many other people on the train so we had a whole cabin to ourselves, and the seats pushed down and joined together, so our whole cabin turned in to a mattress, it was super! We arrived in Beograd at about four in the afternoon, pretty tired. It was a pretty grim place, an eye opener. The train went through all these slums, it was pretty sad. We managed to find all the sights by complete accident. We still claim the map was backwards. We walked the longest way possible to the castle, it turned out to be just in the next block. Still we saw it!! That night we caught a night train to Skopje. We were expecting it to be like the other overnight train we had caught. We didn’t realise that Overnight train was actually secret backpacker code for piss up. Some Dutchies had this water pistol which they attached to a bottle of vodka and coke and were squirting people with it. I am now putting that on my things to buy list.

Croatia

Zagreb
Pretty boring place really, we weren’t there on a weekend so there wasn’t much happening. We just walked around and saw the old town and things. We did however start a very important thing – called backpacker master chef. To spice up trying not to spend money we all decided on a budget each; in this case it was 3E or 21 Kuna. The aim of the game is to get the nicest meal for this price, the only rule is that if you spend over the money you get disqualified. Andy got disqualified. We then put the pictures on facebook and got people to vote haha.
After two nights we caught a train to Split and a bus from there to Dubrovnik.
Dubrovnik.
My favourite place; probably one of my favourites in the whole world. It was so beautiful and majestic. Right on the coast and the old town centre was within castle walls. Another bonus was that it actually worked out cheaper for the three of us to get an apartment; so we were living the high life!
Andy had his birthday while we were there. We went to the supermarket and bought three little cakes, candles and party hats and had a little party in the park. Then off to the beach.. I probably should have worn sunscreen. The beach was beautiful; the water was such a nice colour!! I hadn’t seen salt water in so long, it was amazing.
That night to continue the fest of Andy’s birthday we went out for a beer, which turned in to three litres of death. What do you get when you mix tequila, rum, gin, vodka and triple sec in a three metre tube? Death. It tasted so strong! So I asked the waitress how many shots were actually in it.. She just shrugged and did a pouring motion. Luckily we met some English guys and they helped us by having a glass each. But they then bought another cocktail. This one however, was delicious – heaven.
Lucky we had a fry up for breakfast, otherwise we would not have survived the bus back to Split and then over night train to Beograd (Belgrade).

Budapest!

We stayed in the most amazing hostel. In its description it says ‘you can sleep when you are dead, so don’t expect to sleep here. If you expect to sleep before atleast 3am bring earplugs, a charged ipod or drink enough so that you pass out’ it held up to this nicely. It also had two rules.

1.) No complaining about the noise.

2.) Don’t break shit.

It was set around a car park type thing, filled with trees and vines (like a jungle) with the rooms all around the outside of it, at the top. So basically the bar was a jungle of drunk people. Naturally we went straight to the bar to join this jungle. Such cheap beers! We then joined the rest of the hostel on a pub crawl (the bar was open to the public as well). We went to three places.

The first was a swing dance/jazz bar. Which felt like walking back in to the 50’s. There was a huge band with people swing dancing on a dance floor and in the corner was an old projector playing old black and white videos of swing dancers. It had such a great atmosphere – I loved it!!!

The next place was an outdoor bar. Nothing special really, same as an outdoor bar would be anywhere.

Lastly we went to a club with two layers, one being on the roof. By this stage the hosts of the pub crawl were drunker than us! It started thunder storming on the roof, not long after we got there. Everyone bailed but I thought it would be much more fun to sit in the rain and watch the thunderstorm – I’m still convinced it was! Ben sat with me too. How often can you say you sat on the roof of a club, in the rain, watching a thunderstorm, in Budapest? On the downside my shoes are still drenched, too many puddle fights. Went to bed at 8.30am and a few minutes later there was so much noise in the room. I turned around and our room was full of police. I thought they were going to do a bag check or something. Turns out they wanted to steal our roommate. He had been pulling number plates off cars. They took him to jail, he was crying. The rest of the room – oh so concerned – cheered when he left because he could finally go to sleep.

Andy and I were our own tour guides the next day; we managed to find an amazingly big and very impressive statue. We had no idea what it was but took lots of photos like good little tourists – it is the statue of hero’s. Until that day we had no idea how huge and beautiful the city was! So many old buildings, many of which are totally going to be my future homes. We concluded it was good enough to stay another night.

The last day we showed Hugh our statue and then went to the other side of the river (Buda or Pest – we still aren’t sure). Saw the castle and other beautiful things.

Now off to Croatia – super excited!!!! I’m having so much trouble staying awake as the train is moving! I can never stay awake on something that moves. Except maybe a horse or camel but they don’t count. But I am on gypsy duty after Andy was convinced a gypsy tried to take our things on the last train.

Bratislava - Make your own fun

We made it to Bratislava, thank god for the guy that helped us!!!! Then we had no idea what to do. We couldn’t find the place to buy the tickets for the tram or anything. I thought I had found the trams... But Andy was not convinced. The trams I found had wheels! But to be fair they did attach to the lines in the air – like trams. We couldn’t find the tram we needed to get to the hostel but we waited anyway. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a real tram down the bank! To get there we had to walk down this bank and walk along the tram line – by this stage we thought Bratislava was the dodgiest place ever!! Once we got down we found our tram though! And also a set of stairs that came down from the train station. Ooops. We tried to get on the tram but couldn’t.. Andy says ‘I think you’re right Soph, we can’t get on this tram yet.. It has a huge red X! Oh.. wait.. that’s a no icecream sign’. Hahahah I couldn’t stop laughing – to be fair, it was a huge cross!
Once we got to the hostel it was pretty good, we went out to try and get dinner but only McDonalds was open and then we tried to find a pub; couldn’t find any! So we called it a night. The next day we decided to just walk and see what we could find. We managed to find everything that’s on their postcards so I think we did pretty well! The most famous thing that they talk about is their ‘castle’ Which is in fact rubble and builders (it burnt down and they are rebuilding it).
We were going to go on a pub crawl that night (the hostel hosted it) but it was 13E and we weren’t really sure about it. Then at dinner (one sausage for 1.50!! They tricked us by saying ‘as much as you want’ but they meant as much ketchup as you want!) we met these Dutchies that were really nice and they said they were going to just go out by themselves because they HAD to go to this pub called Cafe Kut (which means cafe pussy in Dutch) so we decided to tag along with them instead. We also met these two English guys and they came too. At cafe Kut we decided to order a beer and a Slovakian shot. The waitress gave us the strangest look when we ordered the shot, but we did ordered it anyway. The shot ended up being thick and yellow – a lot like off custard. Later we found out, it was in fact, egg nogg – not a famous Slovakian shot!! Next was an Irish bar, just the same as all the others really. Then we went to a super club (sarcasm) which had a DJ and everything! (a cd player in the corner! Then to choco loco (only went in for the name) and last a place called ‘The chill out room’ which was tables and chairs and incidentally, the only place with an actually DJ! It was SO loud! Then back to the hostel common room. I discovered I have a natural talent at being shockingly bad at Fussball! Also Andy and Tom decided to run down the hill with Andy in a shopping trolley.. They got pulled over by the police. Hahaha and then I was saying lets not tick any more boxes tonight! While walking backwards.. I walked straight on to the road and the police had to swerve to miss me. Ooops again.
In conclusion we decided that Bratislava should have the motto ‘Bratislava – make your own fun’ and that Eurotrip was very misleading. We had such a good time! But it had nothing to do with the place. Although, the view from the burnt down castle was very pretty.
This morning we slept through two alarms and missed out train. Off to Krakow at the moment. We have two nights there and then to Budapest where we have another night with Tom and Ben! (the English guys)