HUBBERS BLOG

Took in the Friedensreich Hundertwasser gallery. Hunderwasser is like the Austrian Gaudi. That is he is an artist/architect who was a little nuts. The gallery was designed by Hunderwasser himself who believed that people shouldn’t live on flat floors. It was a wacky building that you’d hate to live in if you were drunk often. He has work all over the world including a public toilet in Kawakawa, New Zealand. He even lived in Aotearoa for long stretches and designed us another flag because he thinks Kiwis are cool people. Tu meke.

The train to Ljubljana was most notable for the high grade egg fart that a local guy dropped in our sealed six seat cabin. For the first time in living memory Runty forgot to shove a dead rat up his arse before breakfast so we were unable to retaliate.

The whole time we were suffering he was talking loudly in the local language on his mobile. We imagined that he was saying something like “Boris, I just did a mean egg fart that is killing these two backpackers in my train cabin. Remind me not to have curried eggs with onion for breakfast again.”

If I hadn’t been choking and holding back the tears I would have thought to take off my sandals. That would have sorted him out.

After a long train to Ljubljana we rewarded ourselves with a quiet beer. Our hostel is an ex-prison in a semi-derelict part of town. The area next to our hostel has a make-shift bar and was packed with young alternative Slovenians. The bar we chose was in a disused room adjoining this area. There was even entertainment in the form of ‘famous’ German alternative musician Felix Kubin. He is a solo artist who would be right at home on bFM’s most alternative shows. His music is performed on at least three keyboards and something that might be the box that made the sound effects for Dr Who in the 70s. Sometimes he sings and sometimes he smacks his head on one of the keyboards as he pumped out great Kubin classics like ‘Get The Fuck Out of My Dreams Donald Duck’. Impressively entertaining stuff. Runty, who has never seen any alternative performance art before in his life said “I really like this but this **** wouldn’t last five minutes in Hamilton before someone punched his lights out and smashed his keyboard”.

Next week: my analysis on why Hamilton isn’t the arts and culture capital of New Zealand.

Te Runt was too under the weather to do the tour so I struck out alone. The tour wasn’t on because the main tourist season as just finished but luckily I ran into Paul and Penelope from our Russian tour. Together we struck out for the very cool Kreuzenstein Castle.

Later in the arvo I picked up a rested Runt and walked the city. Saw The Earth from the Air exhibition which is doing the globe at the moment. If it comes to a city near you do it because it is o for awesome. Or try www.earthfromtheair.com.

This is one of the best days we have had on tour. I fully recommend doing the www.mitchstours.com wine tour. We met some fabulous people, ate some fabulous food and drank loads of excellent wine and other alcoholic delights. I even learnt the best new drinking game I have learnt since university.

THE NAIL GAME

The nail game goes like this. You need one big block of wood, one hammer with a big and thin side to the head and one nail per person. First you tap all of the nails a little way into the block and then every person gets a turn trying to hammer their nail in only using the thin side of the hammer head. It’s much harder than it sounds and every miss means you have a drink. Finishing last is a full vessel offence. Smashing stuff and the Runt cleaned up.

BYE BYE MORE STUFF

Runty left his bag at the Wombat hostel bar after the crawl. The list of stuff missing includes:
The bag itself

Sunglasses
Cards X 2

Chess (this includes the draughts and snakes and ladders)
Schnapps X 2

Runty is gutted that the world is so full of thieves when he is so honest. I agree.

The Hostel Mostel in Sofia is one the best we have had on tour. The service is second to none and you get free beer, free internet, free breakfast, free dinner, free map, free advice and if you buy some expensive steaks the hostel guy will even boil them for you for free. Chewy.

Today is the day that Greg and I go our separate ways. He is a good friend and has been an excellent travel companion. He has to be in NZ two weeks before me so he is flying ahead to India to enjoy some sun before heading home. I am going to get back to my backpacker roots and do it overland by myself.

There are going to have to be some changes now that Greg is gone.

The best thing about having Greg on tour is that he is, in his own words, ‘a smoo magnet’. This has had many unexpected benefits as smoo rarely travel alone. On the occasions that we have come across a single smoo I have sometimes wished I had bought a book. There are quite a few young girls with broken hearts throughout this part of the world that will be looking for a place to say in London soon. Greg with his usual generosity has offered to give them one.

The other big change is that I will have to start paying a lot more attention. Greg does well over half the organising on tour and when he is in charge I usually go onto remote control let my mind wander. Sometimes I am so far away he will talk to me and I wont even hear the question.

Left Kiwi backpacker parents and Greg at the hostel. Quite a touching goodbye. Greg gave me one of those Hamilton hugs where you do a handshake first and then hug the other bloke whilst keeping his hands firmly clasped in between you so nobody in the room thinks you are poofters.

First solo travel effort went well. Well well enough. The bus to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, was one on which you would expect to find chicken coops. The seating was done by everyone grabbing any seat they could and then the people who come later trying to get the people in their numbered seats to move. Chaos ensued.

The border crossing was one the most thorough I have ever experienced. Everyone was ordered off the bus and every bag was searched. Was told they were looking for people smuggling stuff like clothes. Eh? I thought I was stuffed for sure as my pack is loaded with ‘clothes’. Managed to get through the inspection somehow. Rather comically the when we reboarded the bus the woman in front of me collected bags and bags of ‘clothes’ from several people who had them stashed with their own gear. Anyway I think I found out who the ‘clothes’ smuggler was.

The guy next to me offered me some of his beer and I almost didn’t take it because I have met other backpackers who have been drugged and robbed in this part of the world. It’s sad when being overly cautious about a few crooks almost causes you miss the genuine hospitality of a country.

For dinner followed the Runty recipe for social tourism and went to the Irish pub. Going to have to get used to going to the pub by myself.

Oh yeah and why does no one ever use the ‘comment’ facility on the blog?

Walked around Bratislava only to find that EVERYTHING even slightly touristy is shut on Mondays. Gutted. Went shopping instead.

Caught a train to Vienna or Weiner as the locals know it. Wiener is a treasure trove of magnificent architecture.

Spent most of the day hiking out through gorgeous forests and mountain rivers.If you have any interest in hiking then you have to come to Slovakia and do the High Tatras, you will be blown away.
Caught the last train to Bratislava. It turns out that Today is the last day before term starts and every student is trying to get to Bratislava. Our chivalry failed us when we let a number of cute local students stand for four hours while we rested our weary old legs.

Interestingly the students said the Russians were actually very good people but that they like to wear a grumpy mask in public.

Up at 8am with hangover to hike up to Teryho chata at 2015 meters. This was amazing because we started in pine forests and ended the hike well above the snow line. Hot coffee and new ‘mountain beanies’ then we hiked back to where we started from. Later in the day we trekked across the Tatras and took in the highest peak, Lomniky Stit (2632), via cable car. Our final trek of the day took us over a treacherous mountain pass at 2300 meters. It was fine on the way up but on the exposed side of the mountain the snow was icy and the path criss-crossed a steep vertical face. Uncomfortable stuff. It took us nearly four hours to do a downhill walk that was supposed to take just over two. Had one of my best sleeps in ages that night.

Caught the sleeper train to Kosice in Slovakia. I say sleeper even though it went from 6am to midday. As far as I am concerned any train you have to get up at 5am for is a sleeper sooner or later.

Slovakia is the fiftieth country I have backpacked. The goal is one hundred so there is a little way to go yet ;). Runty is still lagging behind on 49.

From Budapest we trained up to Stary Smokovec the hiking base camp of the High Tatras. We ditched our packs at a cheap hotel in Horny Smokovec and started hiking. We both agree that the views and scenery in the High Tatras among the best we have ever seen. Runty called them majestic and I agree. The Tatras are covered with Chatas or huts that hikers can sleep in. Our first Chata, Zamkovskeho chata, had hot showers a restaurant and even a bar.

Amazingly you can buy a beer in any chata in the Tatras. This is because there is a group of mad Slovakians who routinely carry kegs of beer up the side of the mountain. The minimum load of these European Sherpers seems to be a keg, a crate of bottled beer, some bottled water and then some other bags of stuff on top to make the stack look impressive. This means they are probably humping over eighty kilos every journey. Mad Bastards, but apparently it pays well.

Mostly travel admin all day. Sleep, laundry, post and train tickets.

Made the thermal pools for the forth time in four days. This has become our Budapest ritual. I could definitely learn to live with it.

Budapest is an amazing city full of interesting thing to see and do. The people here are friendly and polite. Often you will get a little laugh or a smile when you talk to them.

Finally made our Romanian road trip today. It started late because we had to wait for Runty’s Romanian girlfriend (yes there really has been one in almost every country) to finish her driving lesson.

The main roads in Romania are quite good. The smaller roads are another matter. Some of the potholes were so big they had their own gravitational field. On the plus side if we had driven into one it would have saved us a lot of money on airfares to New Zealand.

While on the subject of the roads there don’t appear to be any roads laws here. I have seen a few creative driving moves that would have received a approving yellow toothed smile from a Bangkok tuk tuk driver.

Romania has a bit of a wild dog problem. It is not uncommon to see packs of dogs in built up areas. From the amount of dead dogs on the road the solution to this problem seems to be to run as many of them over as possible.

Saw two cool castles. The first was Peles Castle which is a 18th century palace with lovely statues in the garden and the like. Very nice. The second, Bran Castle, was a striking hilltop fortress which is billed as Dracula’s castle even though the Count never actually lived there. And not because he is undead and technically doesn’t actually live anywhere. And not because he didn’t exist either. Even when he didn’t exist he didn’t live here. Get it? Yeah me to then.

Greg had a date with his girlfriend so I went to Club A with some of the people from the hostel. A good night but the most interesting even of the evening was when a pack of glued up Romanian street kids tried to pick my pocket on the way home. While the bulk of the group distracted me from the front one of them rammed his hand into my camera pocket and they all ran for it. Thankfully my pockets were deeper than his grab and he got nothing.

Greg didn’t make it back to the hostel until the next day. Have to assume that the
Romanian girlfriend is his favourite of the plethora of girlies who have had crushes on him in Eastern Europe since she was the first to put out.