Escaping the cold of winter of Europe

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Escaping the cold of winter of Europe

by Mark on December 21, 2010 in Mark's Travels

London -3°C, Budapest -15°C, Kuala Lumpur 32°C

It seems like I made it out of Europe at exactly the right time. In Budapest, we had a surprisingly warm November but as it moved into final month of 2010 things took a downward spiral. It got cold, very cold. Now was the time to fly East for the winter in search of warmer climates.

After what seemed like 5 minutes sleep, I awoke at 4am on Saturday morning and took a taxi to Budapest airport. KLM had decided it would be a good idea to move my flight forward so it was now even earlier – 06:30 in the morning. In what is completely abnormal for me, I did not go out partying the night before the flight. As such, I was there on time and without hangover. Not a bad start.

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Bitterballen in Amsterdam

by Mark on December 17, 2010 in Mark's Travels

At 1am on Saturday morning I finally feel asleep. At 4am my alarm goes off and it is time to get up. Despite feeling like I had a grand total of 5 minutes sleep, the adrenaline kicks in as I know it is time to travel once again. My destination is Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where I will be spending around 1 month before I return back to Budapest.

Christmas time of year always means high prices on flights. The two cheapest options to KL from Budapest are EgyptAir via Cairo or KLM via Amsterdam. Not having been to Cairo, I was tempted by this. However there cheap ticket meant that no stopover was possible. I therefore chose to go via Amsterdam and spend 12 hours there. Ok, so I had to get up at 4am to do this but I’m glad I chose to do this. It was a great day and I was so tired on the flight to KL that I slept for a good amount of time.

My parents used to live in Den Haag in the Netherlands and as a result I have visited Amsterdam quite a few times. This time, however, I had a local to show me around. I met my friend Linda and promptly hit Starbucks for some tea. I had made this smart decision not to bring a jacket, as I didn’t want to carry it around Asia. Fortunately, Amsterdam was a little warmer than Budapest today so I didn’t suffer too badly for this.

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My trip to Slovakia – The future of Europe?

by Mark on November 22, 2010 in Mark's Travels

Slovakia is a country I knew relatively little about until this weekend. All I knew was that it used to part of Czechoslovakia and the company I used to work for had a called center there once. I was meant to go to the capital, Bratislava (or Presburg for zee Germans) about 6 weeks ago but had to abort the trip due to hangover related illness.

Last week I was out at a bar with some friends when I was telling them the story about how I never made it to Bratislava. My friend Kati is actually from Slovakia. Well, she was born there, grew up there and has citizenship there but still considers herself Hungarian – more on this later in the post. She was going there at the weekend to visit her parents and invited me along. Being exceptionally impulsive when it comes to travel, as I am, I instantly said yes.

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This is my tractor, there are many like it but this one is mine

by Mark on October 13, 2010 in Mark's Travels

A few days later I arrive on the new farm, it’s a little bit different in that this is a family run affair. The dad (80 years old) was on his 2nd or 3rd wife (49 years old) and they have a 17 year old son and 15 year old daughter. The also have a rather eclectic mix of aunts, uncles, half cousins and god knows what else spread around the nearby countryside. Hey, maybe it gets lonely out there or something.

It’s worth mentioning that the parents pulled their kids out of school permanently so they could work on the farm. Even then, I wasn’t really judging them – it’s their life after all. The other seasonal workers were pretty cool and we had a pretty good laugh. One the second day I got asked to reverse a truck round a corner. I gave it a go, but was a bit to heavy on the clutch or something and the “old c*&t”, as he affectionately would become known, had a bit of a hissy fit.

For the next couple of days I sustained a torrent of verbal abuse…

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My new home – Why Budapest is remarkably awesome!

by Mark on September 20, 2010 in Mark's Travels

Budapest, a city that isn’t exactly world renown, became my new home last week. I have to say that so far it is my favourite city in the world (yes even more so than Hong Kong). Aside from being super cheap, very modern and having awesome architecture all around, a few points really stand out for me.

The first is that Budapest is far more cosmopolitan than I had imagined. People from all over come here to work and to study. Additionally, most young people speak great English and you can get by very easily without knowing Hungarian.

Super fast internet is another. My landlord barely uses the internet but the basic package he bought is faster than the fastest connection you can get in the UK. This is great news for me as I spend most of the day working online.

At night time, Budapest holds a truly epic secret…

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That ‘London Baby’ feeling

by Mark on September 5, 2010 in Mark's Travels, Outlook

From September 2008 to May 2009 I lived in a town called Farnborough which is around 35 minutes by train from the centre of London. I lived here because it was 3 minutes away from where I worked, but I regretted not living closer to London and braving a longer commute.

London is one of the most unique cities in the world, and boy is it something to behold. I’ve visited the place dozens of times over the years so I was a bit numb to the ‘London baby’ wow factor. The only exception was on one of my last nights out, in May 2009. I was walking across the river Thames to Waterloo station. It was about 6.30am on a Sunday morning – did I mention London is good for partying? I look to my right and gaze upon Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

Despite having walked past these building literally hundreds of times over years there seemed to be something special about this this time. It was a few days before I left for the first leg of my trip and knowing I wasn’t going to see them again was playing with my emotions. I was genuinely sad that I wouldn’t get to appreciate them, despite barely taking notice of them in the past.

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