Budapest and the Sziget Festival in August

If you know me well you know that I like to go to a music festival or two. I decided that in the northern hemisphere summer of 2009 I would go to one in Europe. The choice is vast, there is at least one on every weekend of the summer in one country or another. I decided I would venture to Hungary for the first time and go to the Sziget Festival in August.

It was a great decision. Hungary is still a relatively cheap country, and is not in the Eurozone, meaning that I didn’t get raped by the currently tragic Pound-to-Euro exchange rate.  Apart from that, it was also a huge festival in a beautiful city.

The festival was on an island on the River Danube in suburban Budapest.  You could come and go as you liked, so when there weren’t any bands you wanted to watch, you could go to one of the nicest cities in Europe to go sightseeing.

The line-up was vast, but I managed to catch these acts:

Wednesday: Snow Patrol, Lily Allen

Thursday: Ting Tings, Bloc Party, Fatboy Slim

Friday:  Jet, Primal Scream, Pendulum, Prodigy

Saturday: Placebo

Sunday: Maximo Park, The Offspring, Faith No More, Turbonegro

It was a tiring 5 days!

I had gone semi-alone.  None of my friends in London were able to come along, so I found a tour company offering to do it as a package tour. Wasn’t much of a tour, more like a handful of people, most of whom had never met before, all going for a week of fun.  It was a small group but a great crew to spend the week with, although my liver needed some rest by the end!

The festival itself was the most organised event I had ever been to. The island has everything you could possibly need, from hot showers to internet cafes to convenience stores, and of course many, many bars (serving cold pints of beer for about £1.50 a pop).

And as for Budapest, quite a beautiful city. Perched upon the Danube, with plenty of fine European architecture – it provided a great setting for some river cruising and riverside pubbing.

Flashback to the Rocky Mountains

I spent another evening in Windows Movie Maker last night. I complied some footage I took on my train from Vancouver to Edmonton, the first leg of my train journey across Canada last year.

This was the result:



For more detail on the overall journey, check out the older blog posts from April 2008.

Video killed the blog star

I have long been thinking about doing some vlogging instead of (or as well as) blogging my travels, and creating little videos of some of the places I visit. The problem is I can never be bothered filming any commentary whilst on location.

But I decided to have a bit of a go anyway, and created a short video based on some snippets of footage I took last winter while I was in Helsinki.

This is the product:



My first ever YouTube upload!

I hope to create some more video files either about my future or other past travels.

Bonfire Night in Birmingham

It is the 5th of November. And I am in England. That means it is Guy Fawkes Night.  To quote Wikipedia, it "marks the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament."

Strange thing to celebrate for over 400 years, but it is an excuse to light massive fires and set off fireworks - everywhere - so why not?

My first year in England was in 2006 and as daylight savings ended and November 5th approached, fireworks were being let off all over the place in outer North London suburbia where I was living. Firwroks aren't illegal here, and you can buy them at the supermarket.  I didn't understand the fireworks craze at the time, but it all culminated on Guy Fawkes night, when my friends took me to "Ally Pally" (Alexandra Park, which has a palace in the middle of it) to see one of London's largest fireworks displays. I liked the tradition of rugging up and seeing the festivities.

My second Autumn in London, last year, I was living in Clapham. Friends and I headed down to Clapham Common to see the fireworks but missed it due to a timing issue. The crowds on the High Street were an experience in themselves though.

This year I am living in inner London Rotherhithe, right near a large park called Southwark Park. So I was looking forward to seeing the big fireworks display there. But I ended up having to go to Birmingham for a business meeting in the afternoon, and by the time I got back to London it was all over. Though I did get to see quite a few massive bonfires by the train tracks on the way back to London.

Walking home from Bermondsey station, I had never seen so many people in the area. Bonfire night really does bring out the people. I noticed how mild the weather is this year. The previous two years I had been very rugged up for the freezing conditions outside this time of the year - and that's how I know November in London is already bloody cold. But it's not too cold at all this year. Not that I'm complaining.

I look forward to catching one of  the fireworks displays on Saturday night instead, although as I write this, I can hear constant fireworks outside, from people exploding their supermarket fireworks....as they probably will well into the night.

Brussels

I recently had my first business trips into Europe, both to Brussels. Brussels one of the administrative centres of the European Union, and therefore has a lot of law firms practicing EU law (mainly to do with competitions investigations, ACCC-type actions as they would be known in Australia). Meetings with some of these law firms took me to Brussels.

The beauty of going to France or Belgium from London is that you get to catch the train. And when it comes to choosing between training and flying, rail wins almost every time. Trains, of course, are slower than planes, but when you factor in the time getting to the airport, checking in, waiting, boarding, taxiing, flying, landing and getting from the airport on the other end, the city-to-city connections trains provide are very attractive. The first and last time I caught the Eurostar train to the continent was back in late 2006, and since then the English side of the high speed train line has been upgraded (from slow to really fast). And instead of going from the seedy Waterloo International station, you now depart from the magnificent St Pancras International. London to Brussels is only 1 hour and 50 minutes!

Brussels is an interesting international city. All the signs are in French and Dutch, although French is the spoken language. Despite this, it seems almost everyone speaks English, and in the law firms there are people from all over Europe, who all seem to speak a selection of languages.

In terms of city sights, there are some really nice old squares and some typical Northern European buildings to look at, but out of the main tourist areas it is mainly office blocks and industry. If you are planning a holiday to Belgium for the first time, pick Bruges instead, but Brussels is certainly an interesting place to pass though. And a any trip to Belgium can be fruitful – with an ever-present selection of cherry beers, waffles and fine chocolates .

Rebirth of the Blog

Although it doesn't look like it, this is actually the first entry in this blog.

I have been keeping a bit of a blog on Facebook of this trip which started in April 2008.  But Facebook notes are not exactly the best way to manage a travel blog, so I have decided to copy the entries onto this blog site and backdate them. I also decided to include my group emails from my trip in 2006, which I used to write before the rise of blogging or the advent or Facebook.  At least this way I can have everything in one place. It has certainly been interesting going through all this material, and reliving the travels.

These are the countries I have covered so far:


visited 27 countries (12%)



visited 13 states (26%)

Rome

Over the past few years I have done a lot of travelling, especially around Europe. I’ve seen some out-of-the-way places, and others right along the beaten track. But there was an exception: I had never been to Rome. I had been to other places in Italy along my travels, Turin, Bardonecchia and Ancona. But not those famous and amazing spots like Venice, Milan, Florence or Rome.

So when I saw a cheap hotel deal for a nice hotel in Rome right around my birthday, I put the idea to V and we booked it. She had been to Rome before but was willing to come and be my guide, and to experience the city in a bit more depth (as much as is possible in a weekend) then the stop on her European bus tour a few years ago.

I went to Rome without too many expectations. I had never been that impressed with Italy, but was mindful of the fact that I should experience this reputably amazing city. And yes, I was amazed. My expectations were exceeded by this ancient city.

The weather was stunning, hovering just below 30 during the day. The sun was shining, the tourists of the high summer season had largely disbursed, and the city was buzzing. I was surprised by how open and colourful the city was. I was expecting it to be denser, dirtier, and more cramped. But I was pleasantly surprised.

We spent much of the weekend walking, walking and walking some more, just taking in the city and sights (and gelato). Everywhere you walked, there was amazing architecture to see, whether Roman Catholic masterpieces from 500 years ago or ancient Roman ruins from 2000 years ago. Just walking along a footpath it wasn’t uncommon to see the remains of some ancient columns just lying there.

The newer part of the town involved walking between many scattered fountains, pizzerias, churches and of course the mandatory tourist shops.

Overall it was 2 days well spent. We managed to fit in a lot of sights in a short period of time (including the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basilica, the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon and more) while still managing to find the time to spend a morning at the hotel swimming pool enjoying those last few strong sunrays, before our lives in London hit the cold, dark winter.