San Sebastian - Day Seventy Two

I had just over a week of trip left.

I had the whole of Europe to choose from.

I came back to San Sebastian.

Obviously, there were lots of exciting new places I could have chosen to spend my last few days in, but at this stage, after nearly three months of travelling, I was starting to feel tired. Travelling around like this - spending a couple of nights in a place, cramming in the sights then hitting the road again - can really take it out of you after a while. The thought of a few days spent on the beach and nights spent sipping beers in the pintxos bars was too tempting to resist.

Unfortunately, my bank balance has taken a real pounding after all these weeks, so I took the cheaper option of taking a Eurolines overnight bus to get down here. It got me into town at 4.30am and then nearly drove off with my rucksack. I wasn't allowed to check into my hostel until 12pm, so I sat on a bench by the seafront and watched the sun rise, which was nice. I'm not taking another overnight bus though.

There's not actually that much to do in San Sebastian. I can't surf (yet), so that rules out the main attraction. I rented a mountain bike, but the town's not particularly big so that didn't last long. I visited the aquarium. I sat on the beach a lot and wondered why men with pot bellies and genitals that look like sad little sun dried shrimps enjoy taking their clothes off so much. The rest of the time I've eaten great food and sunk a few beers. It's been great! I've spent so much time looking around art galleries, monuments, cathedrals and famous landmarks recently that all this sitting around doing bugger all is just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, writing this blog post has been more than enough activity for now. I'm off to find a bar.

Paris - Day Sixty Seven

The night train from Rome to Paris treated me surprisingly well. I slept like a smacked up koala bear in my crowded cabin that night. I'm not sure if it was residual tiredness from the pub crawl or the couple of beers that were bought for me in the restaurant car by Miguel, a lovely Chilean guy travelling with his two teenage daughters, but I was out like a light as soon as I hit my tiny tiny pillow.

As you may have gathered from the last post, I hadn't planned to come back to Paris just yet, but ended up here as the result of drunkeness and a lack of job satisfaction from the harpy at the international ticket desk. I'm not complaining though; arriving in Paris at 9am on a sunny spring morning is the sort of wonderful experience that makes travelling worthwhile.

I sauntered to the metro station, skipped easily across town, and in no time I was checked in to a clean, spacious and comfortable room in my hostel (click to check out the photos) right next to Bassin de la Villette, a spangly stretch of canal. Paris was beautiful when I started my trip here back in March, but now that spring has really kicked in it's just stunning. The trees are all in blossom, people are laughing and relaxing in the streets, parks and along the waterside, and beautiful women are suddenly wearing far fewer clothes than they were before.

I did very little in the few days I stayed here. I soaked up the sun outside the Sacre Coeur, ate lunch in Montmartre, caught up with my journal writing in street cafes (looking like an arty ponce and loving every minute of it) and generally just basked in the general goodness that fills the streets of the city of lights at this time of year.

I also finally buckled - finish line in sight - and got a haircut for the first time in three months. I hadn't planned to go so long without a trim, but after a while it seemed like it might be a fun idea to try and do the whole trip with a steadily expanding barnet.

It turned out not to be a fun idea at all.

For the last month or so I've been getting plenty of laughs by telling everyone that my hair makes me look like a lego man. Over the last few weeks I couldn't help noticing that the laughter was getting louder every time, and that people had started to through in casual little ad libs like; "you're right, you look like a right tosser" and, "stay away from my kids."
The time, I realised, had finally come.

So I bit the bullet and shelled out for one of the pricier options in town (I justified it to myself by the fact that the girl who cut my hair could speak english, and this was worth the extra cash. The fact that she was also Swedish and extremely hot played no part in my decision whatsoever). Now my bizarre, apparently naturally occuring side parting has gone - hopefully forever. Instead I have a sort of shaggy mop which looks like I just woke up with a hangover. For a while I thought this was because I kept waking up with hangovers, but I experimented with sobriety for a couple of nights and it's definitely the haircut rather than the booze. The hot Swedish girl liked it though, and at the end of the day if that's not a good reason for liking your haircut I just don't know what is.

The other significant development from my time in Paris is that I've booked a ticket home. I need to go back for a friend's wedding, and realised that if I planned properly I could also make it back in time for the stag do and my mum's birthday. Not to mention the fact that I'm getting a bit sick of wearing the same three t shirts, my money's nearly gone, and every now and then I wake up in a cramped hostel bunkbed after a beautiful dream about my lovely king-sized bed back home. So I'll be catching the Eurostar back on the 20th of May. Not long left then.

I'm only going to be back for a few weeks though, then stage 2 of my masterplan swings into action. At the moment that's increasingly looking like a more full-time move abroad...

Rome - Day Sixty Four

I left Rome a tired and broken man.

The sky-high prices of everything in the capitol (I paid 50% more than usual for a particularly skanky hostel) and my ever-shrinking budget meant I'd limited myself to just three nights in the city. The problem is that you could easily spend a week there and barely scratch the surface of all there is to see and do.

With that in mind I spent every waking minute walking the streets, in weather that was scorchingly hot from the moment I arrived. On Saturday I stumbled on some kind of giant street protest/party, with crowds of crusty goths and punks rocking out around a big fountain as a huge number of police watched on. I carefully studied their tactics, and as far as I can make out crowd control in Italy mainly consists of chatting up any hot girls that walk past.

After wandering around for a bit, wishing I spoke Italian so I could find out what was going on, I ducked into a nearby church for a break from the heat and noise. It was an impressive place, and it turned out I'd stumbled in there just as a wedding was taking place. I got out of the way as quickly as possible, a few minutes before the bride came in - looking like an A-list movie star. I watched for a few minutes then went back out to the streets - straight back into the party. Italy truly is a country of contrasts.

Over the three days I was there I tried to cram in as many of the major sights as was humanly possible. I will now attempt to describe them as briefly as possible:

• Colosseum - crumbly, familiar, ever so slightly smaller than I imagined
• Trevi Fountain - beautiful, but only when you've fought through the crowds to catch a glimpse
• Pantheon - well lit
• Vatican Museum - Longest. Queue. EVER.
• Sistine Chapel - amazing (despite the angry security guards), surprisingly colourful, very quickly makes your neck ache
• Circus Maximus - the place where they had the chariot races, now just a big field. Probably a nice place to walk your dog
• Isola Tiberina - island in the river; lots of fishermen
• St Peter's Square - nuns galore. Don't go on a Sunday, it's nuts
• Piazza del Popolo - beware of careless chumps doing Segway tours
• Piazza Navona - the amazing fountain was closed when I went, so not so good really
• Quirinale - silly uniforms
• Piazza della Republica - full of crusty ravers, sleazy cops and public weddings (probably not always though)

On my last night in town the other guys in my hostel bribed, blackmailed and begged me into going out on a pub crawl. Looking into their pleading eyes it seemed cruel to deny them my awesome presence, so I gave in (reluctantly) and soon found myself playing drinking games outside the Colosseum, which was lit up impressively against the night sky.

I don't remember many of the events that followed, although I know that Fraser, an Aussie guy, bought a megaphone, and none of us could figure out why people don't take them out drinking more often. The many barmen of Rome certainly seemed delighted and amused to be bellowed at repeatedly by a group of chuckling pissheads who were making less and less sense as the night wore on.

I was up and out of the hostel early the next day, so the hangover only really kicked in as I was standing in the line to buy international train tickets. I had no clear plan about where I was heading, and logical thought was getting harder by the minute as my dehydration worsened in the Italian heat.

I have to be back home in a few weeks for a friend's wedding (I'll be travelling again afterwards though), so I changed my plan to go to Croatia from Italy and replaced it instead with the vague idea of drifting back through France and Spain over the next few weeks. There were three people working on the ticket desk; a friendly, smiling guy that people seemed to be thanking a lot and sharing jokes with, a grumpy but efficient looking guy, and a woman who looked as if she hated nothing in the world as much as train stations and the ticket-buying public. Guess which one I got.

Our conversation went a little bit like this:

Hungover Jim - "buon giorno, parla inglese?"

Angry Woman - *disgusted look... brief pause... tiny nod*

HJ - "I'd like to travel to Spain today please, do you have any trains going there?"

AW - *making no effort to check computer* "No."

HJ - "Umm, OK. How about the South of France?"

AW - *still not checking the computer* "No."

HJ - "Nothing?!"

AW - "No."

HJ - "What about Paris then?"

AW - "Why go to Paris if you want to go to Spain?"

HJ - "My plans are very flexible."

AW - *gives me a look as if I just leaned over and spat in her coffee, then makes no attempt to check the computer or answer my question*

HJ - "Do you have any trains to Paris?"

AW - *sighs deeply as if the whole world is against her and proceeds to sell me an extortionately expensive ticket to Paris*

That's how I ended up on a night train to Paris, back to the City where the trip began, with a pounding head and a much lighter wallet. I left Rome a tired and broken man.

Naples - Day Sixty

When people told me that Italian drivers can get a little feisty, I used to give them a knowing look and maybe nod sagely. 'I've been to Milan', I thought, 'I know exactly what you mean'. Nothing had prepared me for Naples.

The first warning sign is that at least 90% of parked cars (although parked is a strong term - abandoned might be better) bare the scars of multiple impacts. Wings are dented, doors are scratched, wing mirrors hang sadly from loose cables and generally at least one bumper is missing completely.

As I walked the streets on my first day I came across a traffic jam of monster proportions tailing back for miles through the streets in the baking sunshine; drivers leaning casually on their horns to create a symphony of stressfulness. Scooters and pedestrians weaved clumsily through the crush of cars, and people shouted and gesticulated angrily as only Italians in traffic jams can really manage properly.

What I didn't realise at the time is that, from the pedestrian's point of view, enormous city-halting traffic jams are the best-case scenario in Naples. Once things start flowing again all hell really breaks loose. I don't know if the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV has inspired everyone to drive like they're in a getaway chase, but I've seen people driving the wrong way around roundabouts, running red lights, bumping into buses, shouting at traffic policemen and generally trying to cause as much chaos as they can reasonably expect to get away with. Maybe the guys who make Grand Theft Auto come here on their holidays.

It took a couple of days, but Naples did win me over in the end. Having arrived there on the back of Florence and Venice, poor old Napoli - with it's death wish drivers and litter-strewn streets - was always going to look like the ugly sister. I went out for some drinks on Friday night though, accompanied by an unusual mix of drinking buddies (Italian, Chinese, Canadian, American and Turkish), and we spent the night wandering through crowded piazzas, drinking beers on the streets and trying to avoid the nighttime drivers who plough through the drunken crowds as if they're not really there, bumping into people as they go. There's a fantastic lively atmosphere on the streets that reminded me more of South America than Southern Europe.

This is also the city that introduced me to the cornetto bianco; a freshly baked croissant filled to bursting point with melted white chocolate that drips down your face no matter how carefully you try and eat it. As drunken delicacies go it's right up there with the warm cheesey goodness of Austrian kasekrainers, and that's high praise indeed.

High in the Tuscan Hills - Day Fifty Eight

As I said in the last post, the combination of busy days and internet connection speeds that make continental drift look nippy have allowed me to fall behind on the blogging, so I'm going to try and condense the last week or so into one post.

Venice, as I might have mentioned, was amazing. I really loved the place; I was spellbound by it, in spite of the vast wandering hordes of tourists that walk in front of you and then suddenly stop to admire the view. Over and over again.

The extortionate prices meant that I could only realistically stay there for a couple of nights though, and - all too quickly - it was time to leave. I wandered casually to the train station with Fabienne, a girl I'd met at my hostel who was taking the same train as me, only to hear a garbled PA announcement saying that our train had been cancelled.

We had about ten minutes before it was due to depart, and although there was no mention of it at all on the departure board we decided to split up and try and find someone who could explain what was going on. In an Italian train station, this is easier said than done...

I was standing in a ticket queue, wondering what it was exactly that everybody buying a ticket had to discuss with the guys behind the counter that made each transaction last half an hour. The weather? Rising fuel prices? Silvio Berlusconi's haircut? Surely buying a ticket can't take that long...
With about a minute and a half to go before the scheduled departure time, Fabienne came running over and mimed that we had to start running.

We started running.

We made it onto the replacement train that was covering for our cancelled one (which hadn't appeared on any of the departure boards, as if passengers would have some sort of telepathic, zen-like understanding that they had to board a random secret train) with about a minute to spare before the doors closed and it pulled out of the station, making its stately way across the lagoon to the mainland.

At Mestre station we found the train we needed and sank gratefully into the seats in one of the six person compartments. We were comfortable, and could now simply relax for the next few hours. Or so we thought - once again foolishly underestimating the ability of the Italian railway network to wreak havoc wherever possible.

It turned out we were sitting in the reserved section. There was no way for us to tell this, because nothing indicated that our seats were in any way different to the ones in the unreserved section. Unfortunately, by the time we did find out, all the unreserved seats were long gone and people were already standing in the aisles. The train continued to fill with people, and I soon found myself sitting on my backpack by the door, right next to the toilet.

Even this wouldn't have been so bad, but I was collared in conversation by Chandra, a friendly old Indian lady, who started to chat to me all about my life and travels. She then needed a bit of a sit down, so I gave her my place on the bag and stood awkwardly by the window as the train continued to fill and fill with people until it resembled an enforced game of 'sardines'. At this point there was no way that Chandra could have given me my seat back even if she'd wanted to (which I'm pretty sure she didn't). My legs started to get cramp. Chandra asked me about my religious views, and then actually punched me when I told her I was an atheist. It turned out to be a long three hours.

When eventually I arrived in Florence, I was a bit of a tired sweaty mess. I was soon picked up by the free shuttle bus to my hostel though, and everything began to change. The Heart of Tuscany Hostel is located in the rolling olive grove-strewn hillsides that lie about an hour away from Florence. It is just outside the tiny village of San Baronto, itself a short distance from Vinci - birthplace of Leonardo.

When I arrived I was treated almost immediately to some excellent homemade pasta and lots of lovely wine, and then fell deeply asleep in a four-bed dorm in which I was the only person. The hostel has been run for years as a more expensive, up-market holiday location, but at the start of April they decided to open it as a hostel. This means that for my mere 17 euros a night I had access to a swimming pool, restaurant and bar, and a panoramic view of the beautiful Tuscan countryside that was worth twice the price on its own.

I used the hostel as a base over the next few days to explore some nearby towns and villages, including Florence, San Gimignano, Siena, Pisa (that tower's really leaning, they're not making that up),and Lucca. In the evenings I enjoyed more tasty pasta and wine, and I even spent my last, slightly rainy day playing an increasingly heated game of Disney monopoly with a group of Canadian and American girls that very nearly ended in bloodshed.

If you ever fancy a cheap stay in one of the most beautiful areas of Italy (and why wouldn't you?), you could do a lot worse than tracking this place down.

Venice - Day Fifty

Okay, I've fallen a little behind on the blogging in the last week through a combination of busy, action-packed days and stone age internet connection speeds. As a result, the following are a couple of extracts from my personal journal, written shortly after my arrival in Venice:

I remember being at school (I'm not sure when, but I was definitely quite young) and learning that the city is gradually sinking and will one day be lost. I felt a real shock that this might happen before I got the chance to visit, and promised my young self that I'd get there before it did! Now I suppose it's a race between the rotting foundations and the risk of rising sea levels for what gets to finish the place off first.

I disembarked the night train (good word that), and strolled sleepily through Santa Lucia train station. I don't think there's a station in the world that can rival Santa Lucia for a first breathtaking look at a city.

Without warning, the concrete blah blah funcionality of the station drops away to reveal the Grand Canal sloshing merrily in front of you; gondolas, vaporetti, barges and speedboats weaving in amongst each other, and the graceful arch of the Ponte degli Scalzi spanning the water like an elegant alabaster bracelet.

Immediately you know that you can be nowhere in the world but Venice. It was yet another one of those moment where my natural, unbidden reaction was to smile and let out a gentle laugh of delight. I must be starting to look like a nutter.

The next morning, after I had spent my first day exploring the city in a fine light drizzle, I sat down in a sunny piazza and wrote the following:

Here are the first impressions of Venice that I scribbled down on a scrap of paper in a cafe where I stopped to grab a revitalising breakfast of croissants and cappucinos along the way:

• Too many tourists! Even on a rainy day in April.
• The city is very, very beautiful. Intoxicatingly, perspective-shiftingly beautiful. It's so familiar, and yet every side street and stumbled-upon piazza brings something new and intriguing.
• Venice is probably just as knackered (if not more) as Budapest, but it somehow turns its dishevellment to its advantage, like a frustratingly beautiful person who can roll out of bed with a hangover and still look like a movie star. The exposed brickwork, crumbling plaster, tumbledown ivy and lopsided church towers all just add to the charm of the place, in the same way that it is often the slight imperfections in a person that you end up becoming the most attracted to or affectionate about.
• I could stand and watch the traffic on the Canal Grande for hours. I stood on the Rialto and watched the hustle and flow of gondolas, barges, police boats, ambulances, vaporetti and so on and on for ages, a sea of tourists shifting around me like the coloured grains of a kaleidoscope for so long that I lost track of time as I simply stood spellbound and absorbed by the lifeblood that flowed before me down the city's main artery.
• Piazza San Marco is smaller than I imagined, and has less pigeons.
• There are barrow boys (well, men) everywhere. I hadn't really considered the logistics of supplying businesses in a city without tarmac roads until I watched the supply barges full of beer and food and a hundred other products, and seen guys sweating to get barrows up Rennaissance era stairways. This is not a good city to be in a wheelchair.
• I really can't decide who's louder; American tourists or the animated locals. They all bellow away like a herd of elephants after a wasabi enema. Italian is definitely a better language for swearing in though - I watched a wide-bottomed American lady clobber a guy in the face with her umbrella and nearly gave him a round of applause for the operatic volley of abuse he unleashed on her. I didn't understand a word of it but it sounded bloody good.
• I'm a coffee freak, and I've been saving my first authentic Italian cappucino for a city worthy of that honour (i.e. not Milan), and so there was a certain amount of expectation as the waiter brought it over to my table. I sipped it gingerly, only to discover... it was absolutely outstanding! Ordered another one immediately afterwards.

Vienna - Day Forty Eight

Saturday the 20th was a great day. I had been invited to a birthday barbeque, and ended up borrowing a mountain bike and cycling the width of Vienna to reach Donnauinsel - an island in the middle of the Danube that has been turned into a gigantic park. It took the best part of an hour to cycle there, but it was a beautiful sunny day, and after about ten minutes I stopped freaking out about cycling on the wrong side of the road (which is really off-putting by the way) and started to enjoy myself.

When we arrived at Donnauinsel we found a group of about fifteen to twenty people milling around a big circular public barbecue, and a huge feast laid out on two large picnic tables. Gabrielle, an Argentinian guy, had taken charge of the cooking, so I decided to get on with the important job of drinking beer in the sunshine and occaisionally throwing a stick for a yappy, happy and incredibly persistant sausage dog.

If you've never let an Argentinian cook you barbecue food, you're really missing out. Normally my manly pride would have had me poking coals and skewering sausages with the best of them, but I know when I'm outclassed. As if to emphasise his proficiency, Gabrielle pulled out the largest cut of steak I've ever seen (about the size of a small child) and started hacking portions off willy-nilly. He slathered them with a bit of secret recipe marinade and chucked them on the grill alongside the kasekrainer, wurst, halloumi and other assorted treats, and in no time everyone was chewing away happily.

As darkness began to fall, someone suggested we play some games. I got halfway through a drunken but passionate explanation of the rules of British Bulldog (a playground classic), when everybody suddenly broke into a game that was very clearly identical to British Bulldog. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming it was called Austrian Dachshund or something similar.

Missed the last metro home by exactly one minute, and had to repeat the epic bike ride in the dark whilst still slightly tipsy from all the beers. That seemed like a mini disaster at first, but the moon was nearly full and impossibly bright in the sky, the roads were quiet, and Vienna is even more beautiful at night. Various churches and public buildings became more dramatic than ever now they were suddenly backlit by a silver moon and wispy clouds - by the time I got home it wasn't just the cycling that left me breathless.

Vienna - Day Forty Six

So, Vienna again...

I was sitting in The Loft Hostel in Budapest the other day trying to decide on the next location, and after about 30 minutes of my mind wandering to other things I managed to whittle it down to two possible destinations; Bucharest or Zagreb.

This was quite an achievement, because (yet again) I was a little hungover. So, with two potential candidates to choose from, I did a little research. Here are two extracts from the Lonely Planet's Shoestring Guide to Europe,

"Stray dogs, rip off taxis, lack of tourist information and communist smears aren't great press agents for Bucharest..."

and,

"Bucharest's stray dogs number 100,000 and, on rare occasion, bite. If bitten, go to a hospital for anti-rabies injections within 36 hours"

I think it was probably the anti-rabies injections (plural, I hope you'll notice) that didn't sit so well with my delicate, alcohol-soaked frame of mind, but I had a strong feeling that the 16 hour train journey to a city full of red-eyed, foam-lipped, blood thirsty slathering hell hounds could safely be postponed for a month or two.

Zagreb actually sounded lovely, but a quick inspection of the Hungarian railway network's website showed that the only trains available got me into the city late at night, and to be honest I just wasn't in the mood for that. I've arrived late in strange cities on quite a few occaisions now and it's always a bit stressful, no matter how safe or beautiful the city.

That left me in a bit of a pickle; where to go? Where to go...?

Of course, Vienna is only three pleasant hours away by train...

And it's a major transport hub...

And it's now officially my favourite city in Europe...

So here I am. And a good decision it was too. The journey was beautiful; a deep red sunset lending a warm glow to wide green fields, with frequently snatched glimpses of solitary deer and long-legged hares. Loads of hares for some reason. Definitely hares - not rabbits. I'm from the countryside you see, we know about these things.

As if to confirm what a good choice it was, I bumped into Chad (my fellow zombie bather from Budapest) almost immediately after arriving, and we had a few beers.

The next day I saw a man in a big flashy 4x4 (a real Chelsea tractor) cut across the road and get hit by a tram. Amazing. I love this city.

Budapest - Day Forty Three

The baths were so good I had no choice but to go back there for the second day in a row, and I'm so glad I did, because it gave me one of my most memorable travelling experiences yet.

I traversed the metro system (the oldest in mainland Europe apparently fact fans) and headed back to Széchenyi Baths with the unerring accuracy of a homing pigeon, leading a procession of three English girls from the Loft who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. We spent about three hours soaking up all the goodness of the baths, whirlpools, jacuzzis, plunge pools, saunas and steam rooms (and gawping at fatties - a key part of the experience). I was more or less ready to call it a day, but decided to have one last dip in the hottest of the outdoor pools.

I had been wallowing happily for a couple of minutes, skin pruning up nicely, when the memorable thing happened: a thunderstorm suddenly broke out of a sky that had been blue and sunny a few minutes earlier. I was submerged in lovely warmth from the neck down, peeping over the water which now seemed to boil with the force of the icy rain drops pounding its surface, while deafening peals of thunder rang out across the sky. Then the sheet lightning kicked in.

It was a truly amazing few minutes. I felt a long way from home, in the best way possible. The baths are actually underneath the flight path of Budapest airport, so there was the added entertainment value of watching the occaisional plane fly past and wondering if it was suddenly going get frazzled by a stray lightning bolt.

That night a group of us went to a nearby student bar, which seemed quite quiet until a band struck up some traditional Hungarian tunes and a group of students started doing some folk dancing. I don't recall folk dancing being as popular with students back in the UK, but it looks like it's probably our loss because those guys really started going at it - whirling around in what was basically a souped up version of the hokey-cokey. I wish I'd given it a go actually.

Budapest - Day Forty Two

I'm glad I picked The Loft Hostel for my stay in Budapest. It's a spacious, chilled out place and its small scale (there are only 18 beds in total) keeps things feeling friendly and homey. I've passed the last few days in classic backpacker style - beery drinking games in the evenings and lots of pavement pounding when I walk the hangover off the next day, and this hostel has been a great base - somewhere to relax amidst the chaos.

I've been feasting on Hungarian classics; goulash, paprika chicken and mixed fruit strudels have given me the energy required to get from one place of interest to another (it's a bigger city than the maps make it seem), and I've been soaking up the palpable Eastern European feel to this region, which is quite striking after my previous destinations. It's a bit of a driftwood city - everything feels a little battered and frayed. There are some beautiful old buildings here, but most of them look as if they've had a few layers of polish worn off them over the years, and could now do with some serious TLC. After all the pomp and splendor of Vienna, Budapest feels a little grubby and tired - most places would though I suppose.

I had a fantastic day today - so good that the city will always have a special place in my heart. I woke up after a mere three hours of sleep (more drinking games at The Loft I'm afraid) and there was a very real possibility that I would have ended up wasting the day. Luckily Chad, a Londoner I'd been drinking with the previous night, managed to kick some life into me when he reminded me I'd agreed to visit the baths with him.

Budapest is renowned as a city of spas, and we headed to it's grandest old bath house in a park behind Heroes Square. I'm not entirely sure how we made it across town, as we were both shuffling about like extras in a zombie film, but somehow we bumbled our way in there, avoided the more horrific big fat hairy naked guys in the changing room (although not before I saw some things that will plague my nightmares for a few sleepless weeks) and made it out into the intermittent sunshine of the outdoor pools.

The next few hours proved to be the best hangover cure I've ever found. We wallowed in the hot pools (38C...) like drunken zombie hippos, we whirled around in a kind of giant spinning whirlpool that made me laugh like a giddy schoolgirl, and we sweated it up in the saunas and steam rooms. If there was one of these back home i would visit every day, without exception, eventually getting thrown out at closing time looking like a giant pink prune. A happy one.

After what could well have been several hours (I lost track of time pretty comprehensively), I was ready to leave, but Chad talked me into getting a thai massage...

I have never had a thai massage before. I've never had any type of professional massage before. Sweet beard of Odin it was good though . I floated out of the place! The woman who gave me the massage was about a third of my size, but she had the vicelike grip of Chuck Norris. The last five minutes or so were finished off with a head massage that left me burbling and just as zombielike as when I arrived at the baths a few hours before. Worth every bloody forint.

I'm probably going to stay here for an extra night now, in the hope that tomorrow will be another sunny day and I can go back to the baths one last time. If you only see one thing in Budapest, make it that place.

Budapest - Day Thirty Nine

The sun just won't stop shining in Vienna, and the place seems to get lovelier by the day. I spent Thursday wandering around the city just basking in the goodness of it all.

Until now I really didn't think I was going to find a city that I liked more than Barcelona, but after a fantastic week Vienna has just about stolen the title. In the same way that I was planning to move back to Barcelona for a month or two to pick up some work and get to know the place better, I'm now considering doing the same here, and I'll definitely find it hard to leave.

On Thursday evening (after yet another coffee in Phil), I met up with Bernadette and we went to the State Opera house, where we bumped into Matt and Paige, a really nice Australian couple I'd met at my hostel. There was no opera on that night, but we picked up standing tickets to see a ballet for a ridiculously reasonable three and a half euros. I've never been to the ballet before - and never much wanted to either to be honest - but I ended up quite enjoying it. I even managed to follow the storyline which was an unexpected bonus. I did feel like a bit of a bum watching it in baggy jeans and a t-shirt though.

When it was over the four of us went to Naschmarkt (the outdoor farmer's market). As it was about 10pm the stalls were obviously closed, but there are a string of cafes and restaurants alongside the market, and the whole place had a surprisingly buzzing atmosphere. We picked up a tasty and reasonably priced dinner over a nice conversation - a good end to another great day in Austria.

By Friday I had put off leaving town so many times that I felt it was finally time to move on. It feels like summertime already here, and the city has never looked so beautiful, but I think it's probably time to hit the road again.

I jumped on a train to Budapest and had a compartment to myself all the way there, the window open as far as it would go to ease the baking temperature in the unseasonable heat. I bumped into Cameron, an American guy from one of my dorms in Wombats in Vienna, on the train - I'm starting to encounter a few familiar faces the longer I travel now - so it was nice to have a brief conversation before returning to my solitary compartment.

First impressions of Budapest are that it seems... interesting. Caught a bus across town in surprisingly humid heat that left me a bit of a sweaty mess by the time I made it to my hostel, which is on the fourth floor of an old residential building. It was worth it though - The Loft where I'm staying seems friendly and well thought out, a real traveller's place. I had a beer and snack in town but kept it quiet tonight. Apparently there's a DJ night in one of the traditional Turkish bath houses tomorrow, with everyone getting hammered in the saunas and baths whilst wearing swimming costumes. Sounds worth a try...

Vienna - Day Thirty Eight

I am an idiot.

Last night I went out to Flex - the legendary nightclub with the legendary club night, London Calling. I had an amazing night, I danced like a fool and drank too much alcohol, but spoiled the whole thing a little by somehow managing to lose my digital camera in the back of a taxi on the way home.

This is even more spectacularly inept than it sounds. My expensive, all-singing all-dancing camera has been broken since Milan and apparently needs to be sent back to Nikon to be fixed, which will take a few weeks. With that in mind, and frustrated at being in beautiful cities and unable to take any pictures, I had just blown about 150 euros on a compact digital camera and then spent the last two days making up for lost time. This is the camera I managed to lose, a mere 48 hours or so after buying it.

I had about 100 photos on there already, and some of them were really nice. Yesterday, with time on my hands and the sun hot in a blue, blue sky, I visited the impressive palace and gardens at Schönbrunn, on the edge of the city. Completely on the spur of the moment I bought a ticket for the zoo that they have there - the oldest in Europe, founded sometime in the 1700s. I sometimes get depressed at zoos - there's nothing worse than seeing animals cooped up in bad enclosures - and I was a little worried that Europe's oldest zoo might be a bit basic, but it turned out to be fantastic. The enclosures are pretty imaginative, and they have some cool animals. I would have paid the entrance fee just to see the three jaguars they have there (especially when one of them snarled at a teenage girl who tried to poke it - she nearly passed out with fear), but they also have a baby panda, some energetic sea lions, sleepy hippos and a really well designed rainforest house. I had more fun than a solitary zoo visitor should probably expect to have, and enjoyed walking round the palace gardens and getting lost in the deceptively tricky maze.

I know I only have myself to blame for losing the camera. It's another beautiful day in Vienna today though, and it's hard to get too depressed in this town. I'm off to sit in the park and maybe grab another coffee in the excellent Phil. I think I'll put off moving on for another day...

Vienna - Day Thirty Five

I was right about this town; it definitely deserves more than a few days of exploration. After a hectic month of dashing from city to city it has been really nice to slow things down a little and get the feel of Vienna at a more civilised pace.

I checked into my hostel on Thursday and almost immediately bumped into someone I knew. I had met Will - a British guy on a one man cycling odyssey - in Munich about a week before. In the time it had taken me to interRail between Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna, he had cut a swathe through the Bavarian countryside on his bike and trailer, sweating it up and braving the elements as I reclined in sleeper carriages and quaffed beer in hostel bars - that sort of behaviour takes the wind out of your sails a bit when you imagine yourself to be roughing it around Europe.

About ten minutes later I also bumped into Jenna and Isaac, a couple from San Fransisco I had spent an evening in the laundry room with in Munich as I tried desperately to keep myself out of the bar for a night. They ended up drifting away after a brief chat, but I've spent most of the last few nights with Will, eating like kings in the excellent (and affordable) restaurants of Vienna, and hustling drunken Americans at pool. We´ve sampled traditional Austrian (two cannonball-sized dumplings of stodgy potato, encasing a cricket ball-sized mass of sausage meat, on a bed of sauerkraut... yummy), Italian, Vietnamese and Turkish. Admittedly though, the Turkish was a kebab.

I've passed the days lazily wandering the streets of this beautiful city. You can almost smell the history that wafts from every grand public building, elegant museum or extravagant statue that you pass, and when it all gets a bit too much you simply duck into the nearest kaffeehaus for a comfortable sitdown and an invigorating caffeine hit. My favourite of these by far is the excellent Phil on Gumpendorfer Straße. I'm not taking the credit for discovering it (it was recommended by the same girl who told me to check out Monsieur Vuongs in Berlin), but I've already spent several happy hours in there. It's a combination of cafe, furniture store, bookshop and music store. If you can find a seat (it always seems to be packed with all the cool kids of Vienna), you can kick back, sink a few excellent coffees and get chatting to friendly locals while a DJ plays the sort of background music that has you planning significant additions to your record collection. I had a great conversation with a Viennese guy called Matthias in there the other day - he's a graphic designer and proved to be extremely chatty whilst also wearing the coolest hoody I have ever laid eyes on. I felt significantly more fashionable just being in its presence, bathing in its reflected wonder. No one that cool is usually so friendly. Got a few more insider tips for the city which I'll hopefully check out over the next few days...

Today I was shown around Naschmarkt - a farmer´s market that´s been running since 1780 - by Bernadette, my informative local guide to the city. We assembled an extremely tasty (and uncharacteristically healthy) lunch from various market stalls which we ate with her flatmate Lizzy, then we walked to the top of a hill that overlooks the city. It´s only when you look down on Vienna like this that you realise how flat the surrounding landscape is for miles and miles around. This lack of geographical impediment also explains the fact that it gets really bloody windy. I wandered around at a 45° angle to the ground as frequent icy blasts painted my cheeks rosy red and threatened to carry me off into the distant Danube, but the view made up for the frostbite.

If all goes to plan tomorrow I might make a little day trip to Bratislava, which is only an hour away by train. I have decided to stay at least until Wednesday night so that I can take in a legendary club night at Flex - a place described in my hostel as "best club in civilisation". About five people now have told me to go on a Wednesday for a night called London Calling. With a name like that (my favourite album of all time) I´d turn up even if they played non-stop James Blunt, but apparently it´s the defining night out here. Time will tell.

Vienna - Day Thirty One

Ok, I yesterday I overslept again. This time it's because a couple of people were having sex in my dorm that night and it's hard to get your beauty sleep when your head's buried under the pillow and you're waiting for the fleshy panting noises to stop.

So, because of the bedroom athletics I missed the walking tour for the second day in a row. I'm not too gutted about that though, because the cold, rainy weather would probably have taken the edge off things. I caught the U-Bahn across the damp grey city to the Zoologischer Garten, which I would have checked out if the rain hadn't started coming in sideways at that point.

I ran through the downpour for a couple of blocks, nearly getting run over at an intersection where the green man turned red a bit quicker than I anticipated, and made it into the warm, dry sanctuary of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. This once grand cathedral was bombed to ruins by the RAF in WWII. Today it's broken tower and shattered body stand as a powerful anti-war memorial - the gilt-mosaic ceiling of the only remaining original section arcs gracefully above an interesting and moving museum exhibit that aims to convey the futility of war and the importance of understanding and dialogue between different nations and cultures.

Beside the ruins of the original church there is a new church. It's a simple tower from the outside, but as you enter through its heavy doors it is illuminated by thousands of blue glass windows - it was impressive even on the dark, rainy day that I visited. These two churches are well worth a visit if you are in the city. I found the ruined, bullet-strafed old cathedral profoundly moving, despite the thirty or so noisy English schoolkids who were bustling around when I was there.

Just before 9pm I borded a sleeper train for Vienna. This one was a lot more comfortable than the one from Barcelona to San Sebastian - I actually fitted in the couchette bed for a start. Like the previous train I had one of six beds in a private compartment, but there was only one other woman to share the cabin with this time (and she got off the train at about 5am) so I had a lot more privacy.

When she had left I opened the blind for a while as I tried to get back to sleep in the empty carriage, and the journey became surreal and cinematic. The train was quiet, except for the soothing background hum of the carriage sliding over the sleepers and cruising around long lazy corners, and my cabin was almost dark; illuminated only by the stars and the occaisional light from a farm in the sleeping countryside outside.

I was woken at about 8am this morning by the conductor as she brought me a cup of tea, some bread rolls and some tasty peach jam. As I had the cabin to myself I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast as the Austrian countryside rolled casually past my window. My interRail ticket is valid until the 5th of April, but I have a feeling this might be the last journey I make on it. I arrived this morning in a sunny, welcoming Vienna, and I have a strong suspicion that this city deserves more attention than a couple of short days.

Berlin - Day Twenty Nine

I woke up a few minutes too late to take the free walking tour of the city that left from my hostel, but I wasn't too bothered about that. Headed out to town on my own for a bit of an explore.

Berlin is clearly the sort of city that needs a bit of time, but I think I'll probably have to push on tomorrow to get the most out of my last few days of interRailing. With that in mind, I took the advice of a German friend who knows and loves Berlin, and went to the one place she told me I couldn't miss; a Vietnamese restaurant on Alte Shönhauser Straße called Monsieur Vuongs. I got in there a little before the lunchtime rush, but it was still packed with people. There are only about three dishes on menu, and I went for a kind of green curried chicken with stir-fried vegetables which was probably the best meal of my trip so far, and only cost me nine euros with a drink as well. That girl knows her stuff; if you're ever in Berlin ignore all the sights and head straight to this place...

Satisfied after my meal, I created my own walking tour of the city; past Alexanderpatz's enormous tv tower, past the impressive buildings that line Karl Liebnecht Straße (unfortunately I didn't really know what I was looking at, but they look nice all the same), and through the Brandenburg Gate. I walked around the Reichstag - the German parliament building - which has an impressive glass dome designed by Norman Foster, through the moving new holocaust memorial, which took me by surprise when I finally realised it's deceiving scale, and then ended up in Potsdamer Platz - Berlin's Time Square; a futuristic and expensive expanse.

By the time I'd got through that lot I was feeling a little pooped. Chilled out at the hostel for a couple of hours, and then met up with Grace for a drink. She's just arrived here to start a three month placement as part of her music degree, and it was really nice to spend a couple of hours with her and her friends. They all seem a little wide-eyed, having just arrived and still needing to sort out apartments and so on, so we didn't have a late one. I did something I've never done before and ate a 'fake' cheeseburger in a vegetarian restaurant that seemed to offer nothing but poor imitations of popular meaty fast food. Never again...

Berlin - Day Twenty Eight

Twenty eight days later...

The past month seems a bit of a blur when I think back on it now. A very good blur though. I've managed to cover a lot of ground on my interRail ticket, but I still have a few days left to sqeeze a little more value out of it.

We said our goodbyes at Centraal Station in Amsterdam a little after midday, after Rusty and I had been the only ones capable of making it down to the incredible Hilton breakfast - I ate enough free food to keep me going for a few weeks. Even though the weekend hadn't gone entirely according to plan, it is always a pleasure to see these guys, and I'm always sorry to say goodbye. With Avvon, Byron and Rusty, it was a fairly standard deal - I'll probably bump into them again in a few months when I'm back in the UK (if I ever come back that is...), but Ryan is supposed to go back to Australia - it's not certain for how long - and Dan is going to India, and then emigrating to Australia himself for anything up to five years. It's hard to say goodbye when that sort of time scale is involved.

I waited an hour or so for my own train, then borded a comfortable German ICE (inter city express) to Berlin.

It was another long trip - 10 hours or so - and was the first time I have been asked for my passport as we crossed the border into Germany. I was shaken awake by a German policeman, gun at his belt and two partners in the aisle behind him, who told me to take my feet off the seat and show him some ID. Not the most relaxing way to wake up.

Got into Berlin Hauptbahnhof at about 10pm, with no hostel reservation, and had to politely but firmly decline the offer of staying at the house of an old man who started chatting to me on the platform. He seemed a nice enough old guy, but told me he had spent the 1960s living in a cave in Crete, that George Harrison used to stay at his house in India, and that his house was in the countryside beyond the city "surrounded by fields". Creeped me out a little. In the countryside no one can hear you scream...

I was booked into a hostel by 10.30, but everyone in my eight bed dorm was already fast asleep by then. I was a little wired from the trip, so went down for a beer in the hostel bar, where the bored bar staff seemed grateful for the company and gave me some free drinks. It's been a long day.

Amsterdam - Day Twenty Seven

We left the Airport Hilton a little bit after check-out time and caught a train back to Centraal Station. When we got there we once again demonstrated our complete inability to learn from past mistakes, and so headed off on foot to the main Amsterdam Hilton, despite none of us having a clear idea of where it was, or being prepared to ask for directions.

I try to pack light, but my bags get a little heavy when I have to walk aimlessly around a city for an hour or two, so I was a little bit touchy by the time we eventually asked for directions and found we were a thirty minute walk away. We jumped on a tram (which, of course, we should have done in the first place) and had our first bit of good luck in not paying for it, as none of us could work out how to get tickets.

Our rooms weren't ready when we arrived, so we were shown to some leatherbound armchairs next to a log fire in the hotel bar and given a couple of rounds of free drinks (the fools!). Predictably the guys ordered five of the most expensive cocktails on the menu, the Caribbean Gold, which at 21 euros cost more than most hostels I've been staying in. I went for a gin and tonic...

When we finally did get our rooms they seemed unspeakably lovely to me. After a month of smelly travellers in crowded dorms and and long walks down cold corridors to get to the bathroom, the en suite seemed like a palace of luxury, and my bed was so comfortable I almost considered just getting an early night and making the most of it.

We walked into town, stopping at an Irish bar on the way for some food, booze and pool, and then finding a couple of bars that had live music. The first place was a little cheesy (middle of the road rock with the guitarists getting a bit too into their solos), but the second was a funky little jazz bar, with a tight band lead by a girl on the trumpet. Things seemed to be going well, but then - with an impeccable ability to create chaos out of harmony - Ryan and Byron decided that they wanted to go to a casino. They had left their passports at the hotel, and their plan was to run back and get them, then come back to us in the bar. We gave them a deadline of an hour to do that, and waited in the bar until 12.10am, but there was no sign of them.

It was a shame to get seperated on a night like that, but by this point the jazz was sounding a little samey and we were sick of waiting around on our last night in town. We all wanted a big night out, and that wasn't what we were getting. We walked out into the rain and headed for the centre.

The night was probably doomed from that point on. All the bars closed at 1am as it was a sunday night, so we had less than an hour anyway. When we did find a decent place, we somehow managed to get thrown out it when the angry Dutch barman misunderstood Avvon and took offence at us. We bought a dodgy takeaway which we ate in the rain, then caught a cab back to the hotel, where there was still no sign of Byron and Ryan. So much for things going to plan.

Amsterdam - Day Twenty Six

It takes a while to get from Munich to Amsterdam by rail, but it was worth it because I was heading there to meet some mates from my Cardiff days. Avvon, Dan, Byron and Rusty were flying to the Dam as a farewell weekend for Ryan, who's heading back to Australia soon, and it seemed silly not to join them when I've got an interRail ticket burning a hole in my pocket.

Arrived in Amsterdam's Centraal Station at about 6.30pm, and headed straight for a payphone. Bizarrely though, all I got from all five of their mobiles was answerphones, and a huge connection fee for each attempted call. I blew nearly ten euros, then gave up and found some internet access.

No emails from the boys. Not a sausage. 'This is strange', I thought to myself, stranded in a busy city on a saturday night, with no accommodation booked (I was going to crash with the guys at the airport Hilton, where Avvon had sorted staff rates for our rooms) and my bags weighing me down. I tried calling all five phones again: nothing. I hadn't travelled for ten hours for this.

After an hour or so, there seemed to be nothing for it but to check into a hostel and dump my stuff. 7.30pm on a saturday night isn't the optimum time for finding a room though, and three full hostels later I jumped at the chance to pay twice my normal hostel rate for the smelliest, most minging 30 bed dorm I have ever seen. I nodded a hello to a collection of crusty hippies in the corner, threw on a clean t-shirt and put Plan B into action.

Plan B will not go down in history as one of the finest examples of strategy. It basically consisted of me power-walking around the centre of Amsterdam, looking in the windows of bars and coffeeshops in the hope I might spot one of the guys. Astonishingly, it didn't work.

I had forgotten how seedy Amsterdam can feel on a saturday night; with crowds of drunken Englishmen leering sleazily at the girls in their neon bikinis in narrow UV lit windows, and dodgy characters sidling up to you from dark alleyways to offer you harder stuff than they sell in the coffeeshops.

I gave the call centre one final, desperate try, and found - against the odds - a new email from Byron. They had all left their phones switched off in the hotel, apart from Rusty, who had a new number. Sheesh.

Ten minutes later we were reunited in Dam square with lots of hugs and backslapping. We ended up having a relatively tame night on the town - a few beers and a space cake shared mainly by me and Dan which had no effect on me whatsoever, despite the fact that I ignored the instructions and ate about three times more than it advised.

Avvon was feeling unwell, so Dan and I went back with him to the Hilton (having gratefully retrieved my stuff from the hostel of doom). We had rooms in the main Hilton for sunday night, but had to catch a train to the airport for tonight's stay.

Two sets of guards told us to go to the wrong platform, from where we watched our train pull away without us. In the hour wait for the next train, the space cake finally kicked in (with a vengeance) and Dan and I became giggling idiots. Eventually made it back to the Hilton where we collapsed gratefully into bed - hopefully sunday night would go a little more according to plan.

Munich - Day Twenty Five

Bit of a random one today. I was in the bar of my hostel, playing some pool and drinking a few beers, when I got chatting to Danny, a sharp suited, blinged up guy from Miami who told me he worked for Nike. He was a litle bit overdressed for a hostel bar, but he told me he liked meeting people in places like this. He also told me he was guestlisted and VIP'd at a club in town, and asked if I wanted to come along. I did.

We jumped in a cab with his friend D'mon (I have no idea how to spell his name, but that's how it sounded), went across town to the club, then breezed to the front of the queue. We were ushered inside to the VIP area overlooking the dancefloor, and handed an ice bucket with a bottle of Hennessy and a bottle of vodka, then partied away on all the free booze.

I got home after sunrise. I have no recollection of how I made my way back across town, where I bought all the sausages in buns that I devoured, or whether I even said goodbye to the guys in the end. I hope I did.

Some time later, I woke up and wandered around my hostel room in my boxers, wondering why the group of Americans who had just checked in were giving me such startled looks. I got back into bed, checked my watch and discovered I had slept until 5pm... That'd explain the startled yanks then.

I had wasted a day, but I think the night was worth it. I probably won't manage too many more VIP nights on this trip though.

Munich - Day Twenty Four

After spending my first night in the hostel bar, not really moving from the pool table, I woke up wanting to get out and see the city. The hostel I'm staying at offers a free walking tour of the city, and although I usually tend to avoid that sort of thing I'm really glad I went on it. I got a lot of historical and cultural information about Munich, and our guide also took us to a great food market, where I got an amazing roast pork roll, a frothy beer and some authentic German gummi bears.

When the tour came to an end I teamed up with Neil, a Scottish guy, and Mandy, an American girl, and we went to the Hofbrauhaus - the most famous of Munich's many beer halls. I couldn't believe that I had been in Italy only one day before, because the Hofbrauhaus is probably the most German place in the world. Three litre-sized glasses of beer (called a maß) were plonked down on our table, we ordered a massive, doughy pretzel, and then after a heartfelt 'prost' we got down to some drinking as an oompah band played on in the background.

Munich is in Bavaria - the most 'German' area of Germany in terms of cultural stereotypes like laderhosen, beer drinking, big moustaches and so on. It seems to me that these Bavarians have really got things sussed out; the most important things in the world are beer and a wide array of tasty pork products to tuck into whilst drinking your beer. By law you can drink a litre of beer during your working day. You can bring your dog to work, and it's perfectly legal to wander the streets with a bottle of beer in your hand (which we did ourselves). I need to come back here for Oktoberfest. Or maybe to live...

Munich - Day Twenty Three

The train ride from Milan to Munich (Verona to Munich more specifically) was the most impressive of my journey so far. Picture postcard Italian landscapes of pretty vineyards, rolling hills, crisp blue lakes and distant mountains gradually gave way to the towering Alps of Austria.

Huge, gravity defying road bridges are built far higher than they have to be, as if the engineers were just trying to prove a point. As the snowy peaks of Austria begin to fall, there is a definite change in the feel of the landscape, and things feel a little more Bavarian; with forests of pine trees and well organised German villages.

I had the sort of six person, compartmentalised train carriage that I always think of when I imagine European rail travel (it felt like I was in a classic movie, or a Poirot thriller), and I was lucky enough to share it with Saskia and Gijs - Dutch students who have been on a hitchhiking competition with nineteen other two-person teams from their university in Utrecht. They had both spent the last week or so hitching down from the Netherlands through Germany and Austria to Italy. They hadn't won the competition, but that wasn't the point at all; along the way they had experienced huge amounts of kindness from so many people - often being put up for the night, or taken home and fed by the drivers who had given them lifts.

They were recovering from a big party in Italy the night before, and were taking there first train journey of their trip so far. They picked a good one; the scenery was spectacular and it was a beautiful sunny day. I was almost sad to get off the train in Munich.

Milan - Day Twenty Two

With no room mates to wake me up, I slept late for the first time in ages, and didn't head out to town until the early afternoon. Milan is fairly flat, and the buildings are all quite high, so it's hard to get your bearings as you walk the streets. I came out of my hostel with no idea at all where I was or where any of the interesting stuff was, so I opted for my 'old faithful' method of picking a direction and walking hopefully until I find something.

For once old faithful worked swimmingly. After about half an hour of being convinced I was lost, I stumbled upon Il Duomo, Milan's landmark cathedral. It is the biggest gothic cathedral in the world, with space for 40,000 people inside apparently. When you're travelling you see a lot of cathedrals, and they can start to fell a bit samey, but this is definitely a good'un.

Italy definitely feels like the most foreign place I've visited so far. Part of this is the language barrier - which is frankly embarrassing, I didn't even know how to say "I can't speak Italian" until I'd left the country - but I also get the feeling that the baggy jeans and dirty hoody look is not going to be lighting up the catwalks this season. Several people had a slow, meaningful look up and down of me as I was waiting at traffic lights or in shops, and it seemed that my lack of Prada left a bitter taste in their mouths.

I enjoyed dodging crazy Italians on scooters, admiring the fashionable passers-by and trying to avoid the more impressive arguments going on around me in my brief stay in Milan, but this has really only been a chance for me to relax and recharge myself. I'll come back and see Italy properly soon...

Milan - Day Twenty One

My train from Lyon to Turin turned out to be a bus. I found this out about five minutes before it was due to leave, and ran to a car park at the back of the station, making it aboard just in time.

Having stashed my bag, I found my seat, and was less than pleased to discover that I was sitting next to a very strange man. His strangeness was strange in itself, because it was threefold. Firstly, he was strangely small. I have seen smaller men, but something about his titchiness was just plain odd. Secondly, he had distinctly strange fingers - chubby, stubby and with gnarly nails. The most remarkable source of his strangeness though was his smell; powerful, elaborate and all-pervading. The five hours we spent next to each other were not five of my best. Especially when he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder. A good old fashioned elbow to the ribs showed him how a Boyne deals with that.

Caught an earlier train than I had expected from Turin to Milan, and felt immediately uncomfortable when I realised that I don't know a single bloody word of Italian beyond ciao and grazie. This should be fun.

Found my way through a dark and deserted Milan to my hostel, Hotel America, having briefly fretted that I'd be stuck on the streets all night. It's run by Giovanni - a strong contender for the nicest hostel owner I have ever met - who gave me hot chocolate and cake, and watched some cheesy films with me and a couple of American girls also staying that night. The Polish guy I was supposed to be sharing with never materialised, so I had a room to myself - an unexpected luxury after three weeks of dorms.

Lyon - Day Twenty

We piled into the van the next morning and tore out of Bourg d'Oisans in a green slushy blur. The mountain roads were beautiful, the music was pumping, and I knew that even though they were heading home, I would be sad to leave the guys after such a short time together. InterRailing on your own is all well and good, but you just can't beat a road trip with your friends.

As the mountains shrank to foothills and the horizon flattened out, I settled down on the bed in the back of the van and must have drifted off, because as I groggily came back to consciousness we had already arrived in Lyon. I woke up this morning with a plan of getting to Lyon and jumping straight on a train to Milan, but Bruce wisely pointed out that I might run into a few problems arriving unprepared and without a reservation in a devoutly Catholic country on Easter Sunday.

The guys dropped me at the tourist information centre in the middle of the city, then drove away as I stood waving and blowing kisses in the middle of Place Bellecour. Alone in a strange city, I climbed a steep hill (the woman in the tourist info place hadn't mentioned that) to the Auberge de Jeunesse that looks out across the old town and the newer city behind.

Lyon crept up on me that day. After booking my ticket to Milan I walked for miles around the city, taking in most of its squares, public places and landmarks. My first thought was that it was very nice but a bit too boring; like a Dairylea Slice, but gradually over the course of the day I realised it was more of a bubbling fondue, with unexpected objects surfacing when you least expected them, and a constantly shifting aroma.

I would be walking down a boring, pedestrianised street that could be any town in Britain, then come across an amazing fountain (the best is in Place des Terreaux, by the guy who made the Eiffel Tower). Another time I was climbing a steep sequence of stairs, heading towards Place de la Croix-Rousse and wondering if it was worth the effort, when I looked back behind me and saw the whole city stretching beneath me - the impressive Notre-Dame de Fourvière cathedral glittering on an adjacent hillside like a decoration on top of an elaborate cake. I took a funicular up the hill that evening at sunset, and was nearly swamped by people as the congregation swept out of an Easter service in a thick, devout tide of bodies.

That night I went for a couple of beers with Ryan and Manuel, a Canadian and Spanish guy I met in my dorm, and we watched the Lyon vs Paris St Germain match in a bar in town. It was Ryan's fist ever 'soccer' match, and he couldn't have picked a better one - a six goal thriller, with a penalty and everything, that Lyon won 4-2, prompting the bar to erupt in happy support.

Made it back up the ridiculous hill at a reasonable hour for once, battling our way through the snow that has been falling with increasing ferocity all day. Tomorrow Milan, and my first taste of Italy.

Alpe d'Huez - Day Nineteen

Waking up to snowy alps, having taken in the surf and sunshine the previous morning, was a bit of a shock to the system, but in a nice way.

We woke up early (frankly, it's a little rude of these guys to expect my body clock to adapt just so they can go snowboarding) and drove up the windy, icy roads from Bourg d'Oisans (were our hotel was) to the bigger, more snowbound Alpe d'Huez. The cars we passed on the road were all sporting snow chains and winter tyres, but we thought that sort of behaviour was distictly unBritish, so pushed on in our low profile summer tyres - the van coping superbly all the way up.

The boys went off up the lifts and I wandered the town. It's all a little touristy (and the coffee's a bit bloody steep), but I had fun wandering about in the snow. That night a foot and a half of powder had fallen, and San Sebastian couldn't have felt further away.

After lunch with the guys, Bruce and I played some pool and wandered around some more while the other two had a last bit of boarding. This has been Oli's first time, and he's walking around with the wide-eyed stare of the recently converted. I was pretty jealous not to have a go myself, but money, insurance and the almost certain odds that I'd instantly hit a tree and have to go back home all kept me at the bottom of the slopes.

That night we went out for a meal and some beers in Bourg d'Oisans, which is not the thriving filthy fleshpot of debauchery you might expect of a small village at the bottom of an Alp. In fact, it's much more like a small quiet village at the bottom of an Alp.

We restrained ourselves to table football, games of shithead, and some daring excursions into experimental organ music in the lounge of our strange little hotel. Where to tomorrow..?

Alpe d Huez, France - Day Eighteen

I left my hostel at 6.30am and walked the dark streets to the train station, empty at this hour apart from the dregs of revellers from the night before. The first stage of the train track out of town was closed for maintenance, so I had to take a bus to a station further down the line. Took me a while to get on the bus, however, as three drunken guys and one squealing girlfriend were shouting at the driver and kicking the bus doors. After a police car turned up, and the guys started shouting at the cops instead of the bus, I was able to get aboard. Good start. As the bus pulled out of town, the sun began to rise.

14 hours of rail travel lay ahead of me, involving four connecting trains. Until now my experience of the French rail network has been based only on the TGV - the high speed service that runs across the country's main routes. As it turns out, Hendaye to Grenoble is a route that not many people travel. Therefore there aren't any shiny TGV trains, and things are far from high speed.

Every one of the three stations I changed at saw my crappy, uncomfortable old trains rattle their way in with no more than a two minute window to change platforms. I sprinted at Hendaye, I barged my way through Bordeaux, and when I had to get across 6 platforms at Lyon I was shoulderbarging grannies and hurdling small children. Somehow, against all the odds, I made it onto my last train. I still couldn't relax though, because on the previous train I had talked a friendly Belgian girl into letting me make a call on her mobile, and in the brief conversation I had with Oli he casually mentioned there was a chance they would be snowed in and unable to meet me. At this stage in the game, this was not what I wanted to hear. The Belgian girl smiled encouragingly. I smiled not.

Somehow (mainly due to her kindness and patience) I convinced a French girl on the train to Grenoble to let me make another call. We were ten minutes from the station. I was not my usual icy-cool self. The call was answered. I spake unto James, who told me they were waiting at the station. Sheesh.

After many hugs and hellos, we all piled into Bruce's van and headed for the mountains.

San Sebastian - Day Seventeen

On Thursday morning I packed my stuff and headed out of San Sebastian. Despite the weight of my bags I took a longer route than necessary, walking past the surfers at Zurriola beach, across the river and through the centre of town, before heading out to the train station. The sun was shining and a fresh breeze was blowing off the shore, and I had a powerful sense that I was coming down off the crest of a wave.

The last few weeks have been pretty intense. Since that first, long Saturday night in Madrid every night has been a party, and I've been surrounded by funny, interesting people more or less constantly. Walking away from somewhere as beautiful as San Sebastian, and being alone again for the first time in a while, both my rucksack and my heart grew heavier with every step.

I need to push on though, and it's about time I covered a bit more ground. I caught a bus across the border to the French town of Hendaye to book tickets across the country. My brother Oli and his friends (James and Bruce, from that first night in London) are snowboarding in Austria and the French Alps this week, so I queued for about an hour for a ticket to Grenoble, where they could pick me up in Bruce's van. Unfortunately, I hadn't anticipated the sort of mayhem that consumes the French rail network during the Easter holidays. The woman at the desk told me there was literally no way I could leave that day - not even to go to Paris and head back down to Grenoble from there. I booked tickets for a 14 hour day of travelling the next day, then headed back to San Sebastian...

To be honest, despite the frustration of the wasted morning and the hassle of heading from Spain to France and back again in a few hours, I was glad of the chance for one more night in San Sebastian. In the time I had been out of town, the population seemed to have at least doubled as the town filled up with Easter tourists, drawn here for the Semana Santa celebrations. I had real problems trying to get a bed for the night, and in the end had to settle for a knackered old armchair-bed in a run down hostel that seemed to be run by a mad woman. I don't know what language she was speaking (probably Basque, because I'm pretty sure it wasn't Spanish), but whilst she seemed crazy she wasn't stupid - the uncomfortable armchair cost me more than any hostel yet. At that stage I was prepared to take what I could get though.

I bumped into Scott again, and that night we went out for our third 'last night together', along with David - a freelance travel journalist I got chatting to in my new hostel. Had a good night, and for once I managed to exercise a little restraint; I got to bed before 2am.

San Sebastian - Day Sixteen

San Sebastian is a funky, sunny, surf swept town, and would have been a great next destination after Barcelona if it wasn't for one thing; my utter failure to have a proper detox. One of the reasons for this is that I'm still hanging around with Scott, and when we go out alcohol just seems to fall into our mouths without us having much of a say about it, but the other major factor is that San Sebastian is packed with the sort of bars that demand your attention, respect and dinero.

This area of Spain is famed for it's cuisine, and the reason soon becomes obvious when you wander into any of the city's fantastic 'pintxos' bars. I enjoyed snacking on tapas in Madrid with Aidan, spitting my olive stones on the bar floor like a local, but the pintxos you get here are the big daddies of the tapas world. Your first thought when you wander into a bar here is that you've stumbled into someone's wedding reception buffet and you should just sheepishly back out of the place. Every available area of bar space is crammed with plates of interesting, irresistible treats - skewers of seafood and olives, french bread piled high with cured ham or chorizo, black pudding, any number of cheesy delights and a range of kebabs, sausages and giant prawn skewers that get fried up at your request. Each pintxo costs a couple of Euros or less, so you can gradually scoff down a huge range of local treats as you sip at your caña and hop between bars. When you're finished, you just tell the barman roughly how many pintxos you've devoured and settle up the bill before you leave. I'm going to open one of these bars back home and retire a very rich man...

Yesterday Scott and I climbed to the top of Monte Urgull; a wooded, fortified hill above the city where an imposing statue of Jesus keeps a rocky eye on the locals. The view from the top is pretty impressive, but we picked the only two hour period of the last few days when the sky was overcast to go up and have a look. It was worth the walk though.

Last night we went out for a quiet drink, and (predictably) ended up gorging ourselves on pinxos and putting away more beer than we anticipated. We ended up partying until the early hours with a couple of German girls we bumped into in a bar, and as I'm now in no fit state to travel it looks like I'll be here for another night. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck...

San Sebastian - Day Thirteen

I finally did it; somehow I have made it out of Barcelona. I tried booking trains to the South of France and was foiled by French rail strikes, and I tried to catch a 19 hour ferry to Rome but was thwarted by crowds of holidaymaking Spaniards booking every seat on the boat. In the end, I have had to slightly retrace my steps and am now back in the Basque country, in San Sebastian in Northern Spain.

Scott, my Australian mate from Hostel Kabul in Barcelona, and I caught a sleeper train last night and arrived in sunny San Sebastian this morning. It seems like a great town, but at the moment I'm just impatiently killing time before I can check into my hostel and have a long overdue shower.

After the sort of stay we had in the Kabul, our last night in town had to be a special one (especially being a Saturday night). We started with a few drinking games in the hostel bar - joined by Shelby and Lesley, the Canadian girls from the other night, as well as a selection of good friends from the hostel, including Ben, Andie, Vidtoria, Gustavo, Stephan, Paddy and Leandro, amongst others. We headed to town and joined up on an organised pub crawl - which sounds a lot tackier than it actually was! Went to about four bars and ended up at a club called Sunset, down at the waterside. We hooked up with a group of American girls on the pub crawl and partied well into the morning. I managed to make it down to breakfast for the first time in my stay, purely because I didn't get to sleep that night. I fumblingly packed my stuff and checked out of my room while I was still feeling tipsy, forgetting to have a shower before locking my bag in the safe room. This would prove to be a serious oversight.

Andie, one of the girls from Kabul, let me grab a brief powernap in her bed that afternoon while she went out shopping, but I didn't manage more than an hour and a half...

Sunday developed into a peaceful last day of chilling in the sunshine of Kabul's roof terrace and saying my goodbyes, despite gradually suffering more and more for the night before. When Scott and I finally left for the station at about 8.30pm and were waived off by a big table full of friends it felt like leaving a new found family behind. I'm going to miss that place.

Was excited about bunking down in the sleeper car of my train last night, but I do feel sorry for the people I shared it with. I wonder if they'll let me have that shower now...

Barcelona - Day Eleven

I have ended up staying in Barcelona for several more days than I'd originally planned. There are two reasons for this:

1. Train drivers in France were apparently on strike the day I tried to book my ticket out of here, and;
   
2. I'm having too much fun

I've slipped into a nice pattern of sleeping until the early afternoon, heading out to town and sightseeing for a few sunny hours, then partying with various combinations of people from Hostel Kabul through the night. It's hard work, but somehow I'm soldiering through...

On Wednesday Scott and I had an epic clash-of-the-titans style faceoff at various games after making doubles teams with a couple of Canadian girls. It was civilised enough at the start with a few quiet card games, but by the time we moved on to table football the competition was vicious. Unfortunately though we took some bad advice and ended up at a rubbish Irish bar in the middle of nowhere. The Canadians did a runner and we had to sit through one of the worst dj sets I've ever heard. Had a good night though.

Last night was a bit more successful - headed out in a United Nations style group (Brazilian, German, US, UK, Italian...) and went to a dirty little underground club. Scott had adopted an American guy called Ben for the night - he's lost all his money and has spent the last few days in his dorm to try and save cash - so we bought him a few beers.

A little while later, after Ben had bumped into most of the larger, angrier drinkers in the bar, and was about two minutes away from starting a good old fashioned bar fight, I decided to walk him back to the hostel. It was a long walk, with many people being stumbled into on the way, but my constant apologies for him kept us more or less out of trouble. I think he'll be staying in the dorm again tonight.

I wasn't quite ready for bed, so headed back out with a couple of American girls I met in the hostel reception.

Went to another club.

Got back at 6am.

I need a night off...

Barcelona - Day Nine

Another day, another hangover...

Yesterday I left Aidan and caught a bus to the train station. I knew the journey was only about 15 minutes, so I didn't bother taking off my backpack, despite the fact the bus was crammed with old people and really hot. We got stuck in traffic for about 40 minutes (plenty of time for me to get good and sweaty), so I jumped off and walked to the station instead.

It turns out that Atocha Station (the one I was trying to travel from) was the one targetted in the Madrid bombings in 2004, and I had got there on the fourth anniversary of the event. As a result, all the streets leading up to the station were closed by the police (which freaked me out as I walked towards it - I got worried there might have been another attack or something), and I had to wait outside for about half an hour while the memorial service took place. It was very dignified and moving, but by that point all I wanted was to get on a bloody train and get out of there.

I caught one of Spain's impressive AVE trains (high speed and ultra-modern), and made it to Barcelona in just two and a half hours, where I checked into Hostel Kabul. Kabul is a busy, funky place on the Plaça Reial - a palm tree lined square just off Barcelona's busiest street. It's full of travellers from all over the world, and is equipped with the most important feature of any good hostel; a cheap bar.

After a cheeky warm up beer, I soon felt sociable enough to sit myself down at a table and start meeting people. I ended up making friends with a few of the staff, and made plans to go out that night with a laid back Ozzie guy, an Ozzie girl with very good taste in British music, and a crazy Italian girl.

Don't ask me how it happened, because I'm not really sure, but at about midnight the girls decided they wanted to check out a strip club...

One hour, twenty euros and a couple of beers later, we stumbled back out onto the streets. Victoria, the Italian girl, had spent most of the time sitting at the front of the stage cheering on the ropy old strippers, while Scott (the Ozzie guy) and I sat a little further back exchanging 'what the hell's going on' glances with each other.

After that place, we somehow talked our way into a private bar that was hidden away amongst some flats, which had no sign, and a locked door we had to bang on for five minutes to be let in. I was half expecting a little window to slide open in the door, but instead we just had to chat to a couple of drunk guys who seemed to work there. The bar turned out to be a sort of old-fashioned, art deco kind of place, with the feel of a cuban mansion - high ceilings and lazy fans whirring away in the gloomy half-light. Despite it's secretive location, it was full of locals who all clearly knew the best place to drink into the early hours.

I made it home at about 4am, and no doubt woke up everybody in my dormitory. I'll probably manage to have a sober night sometime soon.

I really love Spain.

Madrid - Day Seven

Wow, what a city! It's Monday now and I'm still trying to recover from my antics on Saturday night...

Yesterday Aidan and I went to Parque del Buen Retiro, an enormous public park that's right next to Aidan's flat. We had a nice little wander, taking in the eclectic collection of bongo players, jugglers, rollerbladers and rowers that fill the place up on a weekend. Bars and clubs here are literally open all night, so you're just as likely to encounter bleary-eyed pissheads as frisbee tossing families on your Sunday morning stroll through the park. We were both looking pretty bleary-eyed ourselves, although hopefully not as bad as the happy old man in the stained mac who was dancing along to the bongos.

That evening we met up with Saira, Aidan's lovely girlfriend, and went out for some drinks and tapas in La Latina, a funky area full of bars, where the streets are packed on a Sunday night. Tapas and cerveza (served in tumblers rather than pint glasses) are such a perfect combination, I don't know why it's not more common back home - the pork scratchings and pickled eggs of British pubs don't quite measure up somehow. We went to a few lively, noisy bars, and all of them were brimming with vocal locals acting as if no one had to go to work tomorrow. Everyone here seems happy, noisy and drunk on a night out, but I still haven't seen the sort of vomity, comatose drunkenness you get in Britain, and people pace their booze across the night instead of racing each other through yard glasses and shots.

Today Aidan and I walked around the most interesting bits of the city centre. Madrid doesn't have a world famous landmark like the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum, but it's still a great place to explore. We checked out the Palacio Real (Spanish version of Buckingham Palace - big courtyard, nice views), and then walked a little way to the Templo de Debod; an ancient Egyptian temple that was transferred stone by stone in the seventies. We also checked out some of the many plazas in the city, including Plaza Mayor (impressive, spacious, pigeon-filled) and Sol (busy, noisy, currently being dug-up). Had a great lunch of paella and sardines, then chilled in a funky little bar while Aidan went off to teach an English lesson.

That's the thing you really notice about this city actually; the sheer number of bars. They're everywhere! It's probably just as well I've got time constraints...

If all goes to plan I'll be heading to Barcelona tomorrow (hopefully by high speed train, which takes half the time). I wonder how it's going to measure up to manic Madrid.

Madrid - Day Five

Woke up at 7.30am (earliest start yet) and began a long day's travelling to Madrid. There are no high speed trains on the way, so I enjoyed a half hour trip to the border town of Irún, a three hour wait at Irún station, then a seven hour trip to Madrid. The scenery on the way down kept things interesting though, especially through Basque country, which looks surprisingly Alpine rather than Spanish.

So, I arrived in Madrid after a long day's travelling, and was met at the station by Aidan - a good mate from school. By the time we'd got back to his flat it was 10pm, and by the time we had eaten some tapas, sunk a few beers and watched a football match on tv, it must have been about midnight. It turns out that in Madrid, midnight is early...

This city is amazing! There are bars everywhere, and at night everyone hits the streets; hopping from bar to bar, snacking on tapas, and sipping at drinks with some of the most ridiculously generous spirit measures I've ever seen. I had easily the best night of my trip so far, and eventually got to sleep at about 9am. I want to live here.

Biarritz - Day Four

After a brief five hours on France´s superfast TGV (high speed train), I found myself in Biarritz. I´d made arrangements to stay with Paddy and Jess - good friends from Devon - and had managed to book a train that arrived about 10 minutes before Paddy finished work.

With timing this perfect it would surely be the work of a moment to either give him a call and get picked up from the station, or make my way across town and surprise him at his flat. I looked in my wallet for the piece of paper I´d written his address and phone number on and strolled to a payphone.

Two significant things soon became clear to me:

1. I´d left the piece of paper with all his contact details on it in an internet cafe in Paris
2. The payphones in France are the playthings of satan - they don´t accept coins, credit cards or the phonecard I´d picked up in Paris.

Bugger.

Still, this sort of thing is what makes travelling fun. I grabbed a street map from the station, got a taxi to an internet cafe, and then discovered that their house was only a couple of streets away. After 10 minutes of wandering about trying to read house numbers I found their block of flats at exactly the moment Paddy was wandering back from his car, a case of twenty beers in his hands. Panic over.



Had a really lovely evening staying in and catching up with Paddy and Jess, who treated me to some tasty quiche and a very strange Australian film from the 80´s, Hercules Returns. If you ever get the chance to see it I highly recommend it - one of the weirdest films I´ve ever seen.

The next day Paddy and Jess both went to work, and I was left to discover the town on Paddy´s pride and joy: a pimped out, blinged up bmx he got off eBay from some guy in Germany. Someone has literally made every available accessory on that thing gold and shiny. I was assured that as soon as I hit the streets I´d have a crowd of babes chasing after me, all wanting a piece of the shiny action, but in the event all I managed was a friendly "super" from a passing French granny.



Because my interRail ticket is only valid for a month, I only had time for one more night with the guys, but that didn´t matter as they were heading off to the mountains to go snowboarding with Paddy´s Quiksilver workmates anyway. We had a great pizza in a restaurant that was decorated like a pirate ship (if you know me at all you´ll know just how sweet it is to write those words), and then all too soon it was time to hit the road again. I´m starting to feel like the littlest hobo, and I´m not even a week in yet.