Ninth Leg: Budapest - Bellgrade
Saturday Night
This was the first night train of the journey, having a 6-bed compartment to ourselves in a somewhat old and grubby Eastern bloc train.
Most worrying moments were the train attendant asking us to please make sure that we always kept both bolts locked on the cabin door, and the Serbian police waking us at 3am to see passports. They were some of the most fiercesome law-enforcers I have ever come across.
Budapest had been nice than either of us expected. It has some pretty sights, but is not overwhelmingly beautiful; people seem grave and serious, but consistently turn out to be very friendly. The city generally has a nice ambience, and is suddenly much cheaper than anywhere further west.
The hostel we stayed in was very rowdy, which worried us a bit at first. But we ended up getting to like a lot of the people there, including no less than 5 travellers from Adelaide, 2 or 3 Quiet Americans, and some Swiss backpackers. One of the Americans is a school teacher who is riding his bike from Portugal to Istanbul, and speaks impressive Spanish. There were some other Australians and New Zealanders who were drunk and shouting and smelly the whole time we were there. Also some drunken fuckwit from Ireland took a photo of Oriana without asking, when she was getting up to go to the toilet at 3 o’clock in the morning.
I had a surprisingly bad hangover on our last day in Budapest, which I attribute to weird preservatives in Tuborg beer. I felt faint and woozy most of the day, and had to concentrate very hard on not throwing up my Linguine with Pesto Genovese in an Italian restaurant.
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