all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare... i think

found some traffic lights and the jewish quarter rules

its past midnight so this is technically not two posts in one day went out to the 700 year old salt mines this afternoon and was completely blown away at how interestnig everything was (let alone blown away by the actual things i was seeing). although these two things seem very closely related they are distinctly different and, again, my opinion on organised tours has been changed by an informed and funny tour-guide, and of course by the incredible destination. i have a tendency of being very sceptical of any commercially operated enterprise, and it is true that this place was uber-toursity, they practically had a price-tag on the air in that place *actually as an interesting aside there is a health spa down there where you can breath the heavily salted and clean air and bath in the maximum salt saturated baths... 320grams of salt per litre!* anyway the tourguide, who was incidentally a cute blonde pole, cracked several jokes about how touristy the place was which somehow made it ...

krakow, the town of no traffic lights: guessing this is a hangover from communist poland where everyone slowed down for there pedestrian comrades / didn't have any cars. the opposite is most definitely the case now spent a semi-comfortable night stretched out on the 2nd class pleather seats from budapest; managed to make the cabin look suitably full so to deter any lurking travellers from ussurping our horizontal monopoly. managed to finally sleep comfortably with my hand above my head due to the just-less-than-shoulderwidth breadth of the seats: something i have wanted to master since i was a child despite arriving at 7am and spending almost a full day here (minus a shower/nap time thismorning) i feel like i've seen practically nothing of this very beautiufl place. first impressions are all much greater than expected. krakow sports an "old (stare) town" with cobbled streets and vaulted buildings like many other cities eastern european cities, but the sorround...

yep back to the eastern keyboard this lovely small town is the birthplace of lucy's grandmother and we are staying in the university here for a great rate. the end of summer will sadly signal both the end of warmth AND cheap accomodation (and free internet: which will be very costly for me). spent another great day around budapest yesterday seeing those general areas of the city that we didn't get to the day before. the millenium monument was particularly amazing, again incredibly grandiose and permeating a definite sense of 20th century nationalism - particularly with the large statues depicting the history of hungary's rulers/kings. all cast 3 times the size of life, with broad shoulders, strong physiques and triumphant poses. mind fought over and defended by its various rulers with various weapons for centuries. speaking of which the other highly impressive/ing moment was when we reached the summit of the citadel and saw the large liberation monument that sits ato...

despite this keyboard having keys in the standard places, the chairs are ridiculously uncomfortable (probably from over-use) so I will keep it short... have had a fantastic time here; a big day of sightseeing (sometimes underwater due to storm) the major attractions including big palace big church big statues big bridges big river big baths budapest is a fucking beautiful city, and i think it is do more to the fact that the destinations in croatia were so much smaller that everything here is overwhelmingly grandiose - sometimes to the point of absurdity but nevertheless breathtaking. particularly beautiful is the breadth of the river danube, and the view from the bridges in the north back toward the centre of the city was fantastic. the gothic (maybe neo) architecture of the parliament strikes out in contrast across the smooth, wide, pale grey water against the copper domes and "secession" (according to the touristy guide) style of the palace. we managed a fully furnished...

alls well that ends well it seems in Vis, lucy got her keycard back no problems - the nice lady behind the desk at the Vis 'Splitsbanka' branch found her card amongst a hefty pile of other lonely cards sorely missed by their owners (who, I am sure, aren't as lucky as us to be able to delay all travel plans and stay an extra night to wait for a bank to open...) take two of leaving the island ran smoothly from thenceforth and we arrived in split with all intentions of following liam and vien up the coast to slovenia; but the big woman at the bus terminal said it was not to be as the only bus for the day was finito, finished, "full". we promptly cut our losses and booked the next bus to zagreb, which happened to be leaving that very minute, so ran accross to the bus and got in our seats with hungry stomachs, parched mouths and flustered hair and proceeded to be subject to terrible croatian radio which not only dirfted in and out of reception, but the radio stations...

i am looking more and more like frodo with every swim... the salt levels in the adriatic are uncannily high which both allows for easy floating and great volumous bouncing hobit-esque curls lucy and i have inadvertantly managed to spend an extra night "trapped" in paradise; she has the fortunate habit of remembering lost things just before we get on busses/ferries/other forms of long-distance transportation. thismorning as we waited for our ferry back to the croatian mainland town of split she realised that her keycard was missing. after unpacking her things onto the pavement a couple of times we concluded that it must be stuck in the atm machine (they have the nasty method of giving you your money before you get your card, which would be fine if it wasn't the exact opposite to the australian versions). liam managed to do the same thing at a coastal stop-off town on the way up from dubrovnik, which was a minor consolation to lucy who thought badly of herself: at least ...

it's all about vis this place is equally as stunning, if not more so, than when I first posted... it's been nice to leave the pack by the side of the bed and soak up some relaxation. have also managed to work up some tan under the cloudless skies (also working up a steady imprint of the pebbles that line shores of the beaches on my skin). we figure that, considering we spend so little on our accomodation here we may aswell eat out, but the kitchen and fridge has been great for breakfast and lunch/chilled water (and other beverages including some local white wine.) it seems to be the case that the weather in croatia loves its extremes, today was deathly still and hot but as i write a storm - including lightning - has broken and cuts my passage back to our abode. may have to spend more time on the internet... something i don't hate. all in all the lovely seaside cuisine of fresh fish and local bread and wine has combined with the national dress code of bikini'...

aside from sounding cool, this phrase very much captures the essence of my travel so far... and i believe it may continue to do so. a big shout out to hugo back in sydney for providing me with the book that enlightened me as to this phrase's existence. indeed it seems that only having one or two planned dates on this adventure (one of those being my date of arrival) has proven to be the perfect method; at least so far after a lovely day and an early night in dubrovnik in a cute little place up the hill in dubrovnik, liam, vien, lucy and myself stowed our bags to the dismay of the 'gardenrobe' attendent (who was somewhat averse to providing the service that his job description entails: namely storing baggage) and went into town to kill some hours walking around the city walls. this generated a large desire for a swim so we did so and threw the waterpolo ball around with some locals; they do that for fun around here, no wonder they are so damned good at the sport. our 3...

well I'm back in dubrovnik which, after an accidental over-night bus ride, quite nice. particularly because i was able to get liam about of bed at 4am and then lucy arrived in the afternoon. mostar was great fun, in the end i met an incredibly cool girl with the most interesting of backgrounds; born in the u.s.a, grew up in turkey and now studying physics at stanford (though you wouldn't pick it from her bohemian visage). had a couple of lovely beers down by the river next to the beautiful old bridge (which was destroyed during the war and then rebuilt and re-opened recently) and chatted away the evening discussing topics from philosophy to frustrating mobile phone behaviour. in the end i was deeply regretting opting for the 12:30am busride because several more beers and some more quality conversation would have gone down a treat - not to mention sleeping in a bed rather than sitting uncomfortably on a bus all evening. we are off to the beach now, and then to the island h...

had a wicked night last night with the other hostellers. a great group: several from britain and several from ireland (funny buggers they are) and even some from america. decided to get drunk indoors as the beers is cheaper and the locals all go 20km out of town to get away from the 'peace-keeping' soldiers. not that there is any violence in sarajevo but the presence of tourists in camoflauge is, i'm sure, quite impeding to their desire for a normal environment! got most of this information from a local student who lived through the war and speaks perfect english. incredibly intellegent guy who took us, after we became too rowdy for the hostel, up to an old turkish tower which is now weathered to a big flat grassy stone walled look-out from which we perched and took in sarajevo by night. the local plum alcohol (slile viche - will get the correct spelling someday) added to the somber mood but one of the irish kids started playing the guitar again and they sany many a drun...

this must be a quicky as need to get back to the hostel to continue drinking beer then go out and hopefully party with some locals last night proved to be typically eastern european: customer "service" was at its best with curt "no's" and straigtforward attidude. the local cuisine is great but 2hour wait and no apologies, let alone half the menu being unavailible, was quite funny. after reports from friends that were here the previous night of packed streets and gorgeous locals (both male and female) proved to not hold true for a saturday night because the whole of the youthful population were either at home depressed after the local bosnian team lost the football, or at the seaside for the day/night. hopefully sunday evening shall be a different story I believe and drinking with brits and irish people always tests the your metal. who knows how much sleep I will be getting tonight. had a great day walking around town, took dorky tourist photo's outsid...

take two... just lost all of this. must save these things frequently I have decided. feel at a loss to describe a place in black and white words that requires so much intense imagery. will start with the beginning: managed to ditch the last day of my accomodation in dubrovnik to the annoyance of my surly but otherwise ammicable hosts; but this is what happens when you decide to jump a bus to sarajevo at the last minute. wasn't so much bored with dubrovnik as felt it would be an absolute disgrace to pass up the opportuniuty to come in here. after several border crossings (due to the particularly complicated set of border arrangements between croatia and bosnia in the post war) we managed to leave the moonlight shores of the croatian coastline and dive headlong into the dark of the bosnian countryside. managed to miss out/be denied a passport stamp due to sheer laziness: 4 physical checks of our passports and the removal of them off the bus to be closer examined still required...

well my first full day here was full indeed, managed to pack 3 days worth of touristy stuff into it... after I posted that first entry I climed up to the top of the old fortification that overlooks dubrovnik and which was used by the serbs and montenegrans to bomb dubrovnik to pieces in 91. there is a zig-zagging path that has big wooden crucifixes and small crosses intermittently, and the building at the top was still ragged. apparently it used to be used as a nightclub before the war and the cablecar (now in ruins with rusted wheels and bullet holes peppered everywhere, the cables long-since disintegrated and the poles standing lonely down the hillside) used to ferry people up and down throughout the night. a very desolate place, but with a magnificent outlook. Rob, the english bloke I met, had enough fantastic foresight to pack 4 cans of croatian beer into his rucksack so we watched the sun set through the eye of the ringpull. i went and had some dinner and saw the dubrovnik...

croatian beer + british people = hangover

hello readers, a little disclaimer: this being my technically my third day (including travel) i will warn you that this post will be substantially longer than others. was too tired last night to get the monologue part of my brain working, infact I was too tired to eat - shock horror for me! ok before I speak of dubrovnik I must recommend that, due cheifly to the calibre of the airhostesses on croatian airlines, that if you are ever to come here you must fly. anyway their attitude was in stark contrast to the obviously over-worked and stressed temprement of the qantas attendants; no offense to your mum thom, service wasn't inhibited, they just looked fucking unhappy. although this was not the tone I wished to begin my diary on, in my defense it was a relief to finally get onto the relatively short croatian airlines flight after an 8hour wait (including 3 hour delay) at frankfurt airport - which is a collossus of functionality and boredom; except for the internet "mach...