Where-ever I lay my hat

Steve’s birthday – 18 December – started in the airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur then a 6-hour flight to Dubai, 4 hours in the airport terminal at Dubai, and another 6-hour flight to Vienna. As we arrived in Dubai the pilot warned us that it was a very chilly morning in Dubai at only 18°C! The terminal is being rebuilt and is an architecturally stunning, if somewhat disturbing, huge worm. We got to see the famous Dubai hotel and the palm shaped island from the air as we flew out. Although there was snow everywhere from Iran north by the time we got to Vienna there was none to be seen from the plane. On the ground there are little bits of snow and cars that haven’t been driven have some on the windows but basically there’s none, which is a shame, as we’d felt so hopeful of a white Christmas seeing all the snow from the plane. It felt great to be in Vienna, or at least back in Europe, and finally felt Christmassy. This is the way things are supposed to be – its cold outside – 0°C at midday – the trees are bare except for mistletoe and your breath makes fog outdoors. We got a bus to the hostel and checked in and the first thing I did was snuggle under a duvet for a while which felt great instead of desperately trying to cool down. Then we went for a walk in to the closest Christmas market, which is the Stiftsgasse market and is the oldest and most authentic in Vienna. It is on little cobbled streets and has lots of stalls of gluwein and food and handcrafts rather than lots of tacky Christmas decorations. We had a gluwein and a erdapfelpuffer, which is really delicious especially when you spread the extra fat and salt on it after its been fried! We walked as far as the market at the Rathaus (town hall) and it is huge and very pretty. We started looking around but I decided I was too tired to enjoy it so we went home to bed. It had been 42 hours since we got up on Monday in Kuching and I hadn’t been in a bed and had only had 3 hours sleep and 2 1-hour naps on the flights. Those numbers and me really don’t add up at all.

It was 13 hours later that we woke up on Wednesday feeling somewhat better and although I still have a bit of a cold and sore throat, I actually have my own voice back. We had a very lazy start and after Steve went to the supermarket to get cereal for breakfast we got organised and left the hostel at 11am to go strolling about town and visiting Christmas markets. We managed to visit 5 and it’s interesting how each of them have slightly different characters. The first was MariaHilferStrasse and looked like they are just trying to establish it, as most stalls were not occupied. The second was Maria TeresenPlatz and was a lovely setting in the square between two museums. We tried the gluwein and jagertee and had some roast chestnuts while we strolled around the stalls that were not especially special. Then we strolled through the Hofburg palace courtyards which are really grand but in a friendly kind of way rather than an imposing way. We stopped at café Demel for coffee and cake. It was a lovely café and the whole experience was very nice. Even though it is one of ‘the’ posh café’s of Vienna the staff were friendly and helpful to a couple of grubby looking tourists who don’t speak much German. Actually their English was impeccable but they spoke to us in German as it must have been clear we wanted to try in German because other tourists they spoke to in English. The cakes were great and the coffee also good and they have a view into the kitchen so you can watch the bakers creating beautiful things like gingerbread houses and chocolate elephants. We are working on the European art of having coffee and managed to take an hour over one coffee and cake and it was extraordinarily pleasant – mind you the cake was too rich to eat very quickly anyway. It’s quite a change from the Asian eating culture where everything happens fast, and also from the NZ eating culture but I think the European art of eating is something that should be mastered. Then it was on to more Christmas markets. It was just getting dark enough for the lights to be switched on so the city became prettier as we walked. The first was the altwiener market with was a lovely market with more handcrafts and slightly less of the mass-produced things. There were a couple of particularly lovely stalls and they were a bit cheaper than anywhere else we’d been so we got a couple of pretty wooden decorations. The next market was a lot more food orientated with a few different wineries and cheese stands and truffle oil so it was interesting too. Lastly we made it to the Rathaus market, which is huge but fabulous. The lights are gorgeous and the Rathaus is all lit up and there are lights in the trees all around. There is also a children’s workshop in the hall where children can be left to make Christmas decorations and gifts and it was really well organised and fabulous. Then there was a children’s amusement park around the outside with a wee train and merry-go-round and a few stalls with singing puppets and moving Christmas scenes. We had a bratwurst and gluwein (and just didn’t take the cups back for our deposit because they are very pretty and make great souvenirs). Then we strolled home via the WMF shop where we spent far too much money on some cutlery from our set that has been out of production for several years but they had quite a bit. Although it cost a lot it means we don’t need to start over and get a new set because we didn’t have enough. Dinner back in our room was a light snack of pumpernickel and Brie and a mug of red wine followed by another early night.

Thursday morning we woke a bit earlier and go moving slowly, with a few chores to do and getting packed up to move on to Bratislava – and another new country. We got the tram to Sudbahnhof and couldn’t work out how to pay for it so got it free. It appeared that most of the population did the same so we weren’t too worried. The train to Bratislava left on time as European trains always do and was only an hour. There was a bit more snow out in the countryside but still really none. The border patrol came through the train looking very stern and imposing and checking passports but once they looked at our passports and smiled and said thank you they seemed less imposing. The countryside got a bit less tidy once we were in Slovakia and it just looks like life is a bit tougher out in the countryside. However Bratislava is tidy and clean and very beautiful. Its also very small and we walked across half of it to get to the hostel. On the way we saw the end of what looked like a changing of the guard at the presidents palace. The hostel is just off the main shopping street and very clean and tidy but has no soundproofing between rooms and we only have one small light. We went for a stroll to the tourist office, which was pretty unhelpful and then to the Christmas market. It is a gorgeous market in the central town square, which is lit up prettily. The market has lots of local handcrafts and things we haven’t seen in Christmas markets before as well as some of the staples but much cheaper than other places. There’s quite a medieval feel to the market especially with the architecture round it and some of handcrafts in hand-carved wood and metalwork. There are beautiful bells in all forms – like hand bells, cowbells, and doorbells. Wooden stirring sticks also seem very popular. I have been looking for a hat and finally found a lovely white fluffy hat but it turned out to be a real arctic fox fur hat so we weren’t having that. There seems to be a lot of fur here and it is very beautiful but mostly real. Most places you can assume that fluffy stuff is fake but here I think it’s mostly real – I haven’t looked at the prices though.
The food is fantastic and although each stall is much the same there are variations on the theme. You can have a huge chunk of bread with huge chunks of thinly sliced pork or chicken, or huge sausages. Then there are crepes with a variety of fillings including cabbage, goose liver, goose fat, walnuts and various others. There is also cabbage soup and a couple of other cabbage dishes, various different breads, sweetcorn and chestnuts. I’m not quite sure why cabbage and sweetcorn are the traditional things to have at Christmas in Slovakia but they are both really good. For dessert there are various different strudels and a few crepes and to drink hot white or red wine or a local drink called medovina which is a hot alcoholic drink made from honey ginger and lemon juice. It is fabulous and would just about put me off gluwein except that it is too sweet to drink a whole cup. It’s definitely one I need to find a recipe for and try to make myself. We tried a sausage in bread, goose liver and cabbage crepes, sweetcorn, medovina and hot red wine, and took a couple of strudel home for dessert.
The architecture is lovely and a combination of pompous Habsburg style and solid medieval style that works well together and gives a nice feel to the place. There are pretty old lanes winding between streets with all sorts of hidden things in them and also lots of statues around the streets. There are a few particularly famous ones – like Cumil – the head popping out of a manhole, a paparazzi photographer and a model, and Schoner Naci – a kindly old gentleman tipping his hat.
We strolled down to the river, which has yet another name here – Dunaj – but it is still the Donau, and then went back to our room for a quiet evening with a bottle of terrible local red wine that cost just under £2 and the strudels.
We had a terrible night after I spent the first three hours coughing – probably due to cigarette smoke in the room – and managed to get moved rooms in the middle of the night after which we got some sleep. We decided on Friday morning to just have a couple of really quiet days in Bratislava rather than rush off to Budapest. So we had a very leisurely breakfast, chilled for a while then headed off to the castle about 11am. The castle was really interesting but very stark. It is a real medieval design with a huge square keep in the middle but the keep has a central courtyard. It is perched on the hill with various layers of wall protecting it but is outside the town walls. It is largely undecorated although it looks like at one point there were some decorations on parts of the walls that have since been covered over. It has a couple of museums in it and we went to the archaeology museum, which is a small but fantastic collection of artefacts from ancient Slovakia. The best was a Dona figurine or Venus, which is a mother figure/ fertility symbol and is 25000 years old! Anyone who has read the Clan of the cave bear series would be interested in this figure found along the Donau as its some of the historical basis for the books. The other fantastic thing was a silver Roman bowl that had what looked like Mithras (Roman Bull god) on it. There were also lots of Celtic coins and an amber necklace with a fine metal chain from 1500BC. The museum cost us $NZ1 to get in and was one of the best collections of things I’ve seen. It finally started to snow but I think only managed about 30 flakes during the day and I resisted the urge to behave like a Japanese tourist and get excited about it. It had been –2°C when we left our room but was certainly colder up at the castle with an icy wind blowing and looking down over the Donau it looked like a sheet of flowing ice. We walked along the town wall and back into the Christmas market to get some lunch, which was another huge sausage in bread and some medovina to warm us up. We had a bit more of a stroll around town and into the old bishops palace. It has a collection of tapestries that tell a love story that we couldn’t work out – it looked like a series of various different people going skinny-dipping while someone on the ban k looked distressed. There was also a hall of mirrors, which was slightly disturbing to see ourselves over and over again, and a pretty wee chapel, all with far too much gold leaf. We went into a few shops and a market – where I got a new hat – then went back to the room for a rest for a while and to get some laundry done. We went out again for dinner – to the Christmas market – and had more sweetcorn, sausages in bread and medovina and Christmas punch. There was a concert on of a group that did folk-pop music and it was mostly really nice. They seemed to start each song in traditional folk style and gradually make it more ‘pop’y so it was quite a weird style but fun. It was pretty cold standing still and watching them although it had only dropped to –3°C. We had some handmade nougat for dessert, which the man had to get off the big block with an axe, and it was really delicious. We listened to Christmas music and watched our Christmas slideshow while we ate dessert in our room. Looking at the pictures of Christmas’s with friends we were feeling a little sad that we’d be on our own this Christmas since we hadn’t been invited anywhere but we are happy to be exploring Christmas markets and seeing new places just now.

It completely failed to snow overnight and Saturday was another quiet day. We strolled around a bit in the morning along the shopping street, the next-door market and to the presidential palace to see if they were going to change the guards again but nothing happened. We went to a Slovak pub for lunch, which was great value and a fabulous atmosphere. It’s actually a student pub and they boast about being the only pub in Europe to give free soup for an A in your exams. Unfortunately I only got a B so we had to pay for our soup but it was still great value. We had a garlic soup in a bread bowl and a Slovak cabbage soup with sausage. We also had a local sheep’s cheese on bread and a couple of local beers and wines and all of it was fabulous and ridiculously cheap. After that I just chilled out in our room, still feeling worn out form being poorly and still having a bit of trouble breathing. Steve went for a bit more of an explore around town and saw the Franciscan monastery. Then we had a quiet evening in and reflected on the important things about Christmas. Although we have really pined for a white Christmas again it’s actually not really just about that. And all the hassle stuff that everyone complains about – like shopping and wrapping parcels and preparing food and all those stressful things are actually an essential part of the build-up and without them life just carries on as usual. It did start snowing just a little in the middle of the day but nothing to speak of again.

There was a very thin layer of snow on the ground when we woke on Sunday morning and after we got packed up and checked out it was –3°C and snowing lightly as we walked to the station. The train ride was unremarkable and the landscape very flat which kind-of surprised us. We’re not sure what we were expecting but it wasn’t flat. There was a brief time when we came near the Donau (called the Duna here) when there were hills around and it was rather pretty. By the time we got to Budapest there was no snow on the ground anymore but it was still –3°C and snowing lightly. We found our apartment quite easily and were met by Zita who answered all our questions and set us up for the few days. The apartment is gorgeous and really spacious and hard to believe it’s slightly cheaper than the hostel room in Bratislava. We have a spacious lounge, a kitchen, 2 toilets, and a bedroom and it’s really close to the centre but really quiet. We went out and did some grocery shopping, as everything will be closed for the next few days and we don’t want to starve. We got a few treats for Christmas and some local things. Then we strolled down into town to the Christmas market via the tourist information, which was extremely helpful, which was a nice change. The market was really busy with long queues for all the food and hot drinks although that wasn’t surprising as it had certainly cooled down a bit from earlier in the day and I started to see the value of real fur. I’m feeling this little moral debate happening about what the difference is between fur and leather anyway. It doesn’t mean I’m going to buy anything fur although it certainly is very beautiful and very practical in this environment – but I only have 3 more days in this environment. There were some performances on at the market and lots of lights so it was really pretty. In fact there are lots of lights in the whole of Budapest and it is just gorgeous. It’s also very friendly and easy to manage in English – I guess because it’s much bigger and more cosmopolitan than Bratislava. While I do believe that its rude just to expect everyone to speak English, I’m not sure where its appropriate to draw the line because I can get by in German, French and Spanish and I don’t think its reasonable for me to have to speak minority languages like Slovak and Hungarian in order to visit the countries. However we are trying to learn a few basic words like please, thank you, hello and sorry. I’m having a few interesting moral dilemmas here! We had a snack at the market of some black pudding sausage and some gluwein to warm us up and then headed home for a very comfortable evening in and planning our next few days.

Monday 24th (Christmas eve and the main celebration here) we managed to get going fairly early to head to the pools. Budapest is a spa town and has at least 10 different hot pool complexes. We went to Szechenyi pools and walked down the world heritage street – Andrassy Utca – to get there. The street was pretty impressive with all the old buildings and although it seems excessive to have a whole street as a world heritage site (actually the whole castle area on the other side of the river also is!) its clear what would have happened by a few newer buildings that clearly got built before the world heritage status. It’s a shame there isn’t a clause that means those have to be pulled down. Many of the buildings are badly in need of renovation though and in 50 years it should be truly stunning. We went through Heroes Square, which has some pretty cool statues and is very much like the Place de Triomphe in Paris including having the grave of the Unknown Soldier and a completely insane road around it. The pools are in a fantastic old building in a big park area. The pond next to the building was also steaming and had a much greater population of ducks than other ponds although lots of others were frozen over. The pool complex itself was stunning, with old rooms with elaborate décor and pillars and stone vases and railings. Each room was different and the pool in it also different and we tried most of them. There was also an outdoor complex with three pools. The nicest was the first one which was 38°C which also had a couple of spouts coming into it and some jets in the walls as well as chess boards set up with the old men playing. It was pretty steamy and in the middle of the pool you couldn’t see more than a few feet so navigating was interesting. It was great to sit by the edge and watch the clouds of steam part and reveal the gorgeous building from time to time. We chatted with a Hungarian man who now lives in the USA and he was very interesting. We talked about the fact that Hungarian people don’t really chat with anyone they don’t know and he said that the culture is still very distrusting as there are still very clear communist and democratic factions. It was noticeable particularly in the sauna and steam rooms, which in Germany and Austria are very social places where even language is no barrier and everyone just chats. The other outdoor pools were a lane swimming pool, which was cold, but we swam to the other end and back to get to the third pool, which was more of a play pool with a river ride, and bubble jets that would pop up all over the place. We spent about three hours at the pool and then strolled back into town to the Christmas markets. One was just closing up but the main one was still going and much more pleasant than last night as it was less crowded. It was also mainly tourists there as all the locals had gone home to celebrate Christmas. So there was a lot more English and German being spoken than Hungarian, which also made it a little easier. We had a gluwein each and a special Hungarian bread that is wrapped around a large stick before being rotisseried and caramelised. It was delicious. It is also interesting that the only choice of hot drink here seems to be gluwein whereas in Bratislava there was also Medovina, hot wine and a couple of variants of Christmas punch and in Austria the list was endless. It was lovely to stand at the market stall drinking gluwein while it was snowing which it had finally started although still relatively feeble and only just to dust the ground.
We spent a quiet afternoon at home having a lovely Christmas celebration, playing the Malay stone game with nuts and all the small bowls and cups from the kitchen, watching a DVD of Ratatouille, and eating too much. We had platters of local meats and cheeses, pretzels, sweets and crisps and traditional Hungarian Christmas fish soup (from a tin), and a dish like cassoulet with beans and sausage. I firmly believe that beans are one of the most divine foods in the world and most cultures have great dishes involving beans – the French have cassoulet, the Mexicans have frijoles refrito, the Hungarians have Kolbasszal but all the British can manage is baked beans! They also do stunning sausage here, as in Bratislava, which is some of the best in the world and yet so cheap in comparison to lesser sausages in other places. We had Austrian Mozart yogurt desserts and some Mozart kugeln to finish off with a very bad bottle of Hungarian Tokaji. Its reassuring that every good wine has its really bad local equivalent because Tokaji has such an exclusive reputation elsewhere.

The 25th was a similar day except that we spent 5 hours walking around the town before our afternoon of relaxing and eating. We woke to a small layer of white on the ground but only enough to make it look pretty and not difficult to walk about in. We walked across Szechenyi Ianchid Bridge to Buda (we are staying in Pest) and up the hill to the castle. Its defences are pretty neat with winding paths up the hill between the layers of defensive wall. The castle itself is pretty but the statues and other buildings around it more interesting. There is a ‘fish bastion’, which looks a bit like a series of sandcastles and is rather stunning. The area around the castle is the old town of Buda and has a nice feel to it with pretty old buildings. The Mathias cathedral is also very pretty but is hiding behind scaffolding. Then we walked back down the hill at the other end and along to Margaret island. It has a tram stop in the middle of the bridge and is a huge recreation area with athletic stadium, pools, casino and lots of parkland to run, walk and cycle through. We just wandered around the tip of it and then carried on to the parliament buildings back on the Pest side. They are very impressive parliament buildings and the largest building in Hungary and the largest parliament building in Europe. The architecture is very elaborate and more like a cathedral. Next stop was the Basilica, which was probably the most elaborate church interior we have seen anywhere. There was tonnes of gold and delicate carvings and beautiful paintings. Finally we stopped at the Christmas market for a gluwein to warm up. There were a few chores to be done when we got back to the apartment before we could relax – like washing. We do our washing by hand in the basin and it is drying really quickly on the heaters here because it’s so warm. The apartment is very comfortable to relax in and its only down side is that it was supposed to have wifi but we can’t get it. There is no reception and the people just meet you to check you in and then to check you out again so we are hoping to get access when we check out. Its been a bit of a problem because not only could we not call anyone for Christmas but we have a flight booked into Bristol that arrives midnight on the 26th and we haven’t been able to look for somewhere to stay so it has been pretty stressful. We had booked the flight as we were leaving Bratislava because we were checking fares and they were going up and up as we looked until the only flight we could find back to the UK was this one, which is far from ideal.
Our second Christmas meal was much the same but we had a salad and a stuffed egg thing to start then goulash soup for our main with some gnocchi – not a traditional combination but pretty good and very filling. We played some more of the Malay stone game and just sat and chatted and had a lovely relaxing afternoon and evening.

Boxing day started off with chores – dishes to be done, tidying, packing, writing job application letters, and then checking out at 11am.

To be continued... (we have got somewhere to stay in bristol though)

Boxing day started off with chores – dishes to be done, tidying, packing, writing job application letters, and then checking out at 11am. We still couldn’t get Internet access (this is becoming an obsession) so had to go out for the day still with no accommodation in Bristol. We walked along the main shopping street, which was pretty but all closed, to the market hall, which was also closed but pretty. Then we crossed the river again to Buda and realised we should have brought our swimmers and spent a relaxing day at the pools rather than walking aimlessly. However we continued walking aimlessly back up to the castle and to see if the Hungarian wine museum was open, which it was not. The marzipan museum was however – who ever heard of a marzipan museum!!! We had a look around and even Steve enjoyed it. The things they had created out of marzipan were amazing and included scenes from fairytales and modern stories like the Flintstones and Shrek. There were also replicas of lots of Budapest buildings including the parliament and the basilica. We strolled about the castle area a bit more then had coffee and cake and walked back across to Pest and to an Internet café. We managed to find a few places but couldn’t book anywhere because we needed to phone so finally at 6pm we went to collect our bags from the apartments office and their Internet was working. It was about the 9th place we phoned that would take us and not very cheap but at least we had a bed. We got a taxi to the airport where wifi access was easy so we got a few more chores done and a few phone calls made which all felt a lot better. Wifi and Skype are wonderful things when they work but can make life fairly stressful when they don’t and you’re as dependent as I am! The flight was unremarkable and the man from the B&B picked us up at 12.45am and we got to bed just after 1am. It was a big change from Budapest where it had never got above –2°C to be 5°C at midnight! It felt positively balmy.
The B&B is pretty grotty and overpriced because its near the airport. We are just in a room in the family house and were asked to be quiet because their daughter is sleeping in the room next door. Our room seems to be the storage room for all the excess old furniture and is rather cluttered and small. The bathroom is the family bathroom with their towels and junk all over the place and the smallest shower cubicle I’ve ever seen. It is out in the countryside and it was nice to look out the window in the morning and see a pheasant in the field next door. The breakfast was also pretty decent and they dropped us back at the airport to catch the airport bus into Bristol. On the way in on the bus we decided to try and stay in Bristol for a few days and see if we could find work.