Pigeon train station

Still here in Budapest. I cant seem to leave. People keep turning up and something to go see and do always appears on the list. This hostel where I'm staying just turned up on www.hostelworld.com as one of the ten best hostels in the world! Ain't nothing wrong with that. The travelin types over here have turned me on to a few other cool websites which I will now list:

www.alluc.org (has almost every TV or video show available for watching with out downloading just streaming) My personal favorite from a few months ago is a cartoon called "Frisky Dingo" very funny and a great way to waste time on a computer.

www.wikitravel.org (same as wikipedia) but for travelin')

Budapest has these bars called Kerts. Its a whole style of setting up a bar in a courtyard or an abandond alleywaw between two buildings. Theyre not quite legal but most of the coolies in BUdapest hang there for drinks and dancing. In the early hours theres free WiFi too so a lot of students hang there with their computers drinking tea before things get crowded. Whats cool is they're never there two years in a row and they're pretty underground so theres never any backpackers there unless they get taken there by a local. Lots of Expats to be found too, teaching english and taking it all in. This place I went last night was like most of these places really beautiful beause the whole structure is made of old building walls and terraces overhead. There was propane unbrella heaters keeping the whole place warm and lots of moving lights, plants and a mirror ball. A most pleasant atmosphere. Drank a lot of hot spiced hungarian wine and slept straight through the night. Its unusuall to be able to get to morning without a stirr because it there's usually someone in the room who is a competition level nose whistler or someone in training from the Brittish National Snoring League.

Go to www.bbc.com/food and look up "paprika". The two hundred entries that follow would be about what I've had to eat in the last week. I'm about a fit as a butcher's dog these days. Last nights dinner was very rich and tasty: Stuffed cabbage filled with ground pork, braised pork, a piecs of roasted bacon, a whole sausage all sitting in saurkraut and a dollop of sour cream. Not a green vegetable to be found! There were these soft dinner rolls all flakey with butter and paprika and a jug of the local house wine. My half of the bill was 7 dollars US!

Night before that I was at the Turkish baths. I was like being in a James Bond movie from the 60's all the spa staff was wearing white surgical scrubs and it was hard to see your way through all the people in the locker room for the steam and fear of slipping on the wet tile. The baths themselves are really outdoor swimming pools shaped like flower petals with 1ö1 degree water from natural hot springs that run under the city. It was a Saturday evening and well after dark the lights made the steam rising off the pool look like thick white clouds as we all relaxed on the steps or under the fountians like so many dumplings floating in a steaming bowl of broth. The statues in the middle of the pools were Women pouring endless pitchers of water into the bath or giant stone fish squirting archs of water, which if you stood in the right spot, made for a nice free massage. On leaving we caught the oldest subway in Europe: the M1 line in Budapest. More like a two-car underground trolley, it was like an underground antique still in use.

Im off for Serbia today to a town called Novi Sad. Just following the Danube downstream looking for some sun.

strudel

dave