Hey there,
Long time, no updates, yadda, yadda. An obvious highlight of the last few weeks was the 'International Day of Jaimie (and Matthew)', aside from the street parades and hoards of women breaking down in grief at my continuing status as a bachelor (both of arts and the eligible type), the 24th of August was your average piss-up. I cannily chose to be born on the same day as Paul and Katarina were having their leaving do, so the visual effect was that loads of people turned out to witness me stroll/stagger/crawl into my 26th year.
This month has involved a reasonable amount of travelling for me. At the beginning of September I made tentative arrangements to meet up with Jonny, a friend of mine from Hooky, in Budapest. I got up at 1 in the morning and bundled myself onto a fine example of aging Eastern European rolling stock. I folded my seat down and tried to get as much kip as possible in between the various border checks. I didn't get much. Senki had suggested to me that the trip would be ok as long as I had some attractive girls to keep me company, there were no bites on this score until my snoring reached such a volume that I was violently jolted back into consciousness somewhere in rural Hungary. The three goddesses who had arranged themselves around me didn't look impressed. I considered checking my person for sleep-dribble, but I was so far past making a good impression that I resolved to put my headphones in and study the passing countryside with super-human attention to detail.
I arrived into Budapest's Keleti station feeling in need of a walk and a shower. Before I got on with any of that though, I sat myself in a bar to wait for a call or text from Jonny which would let know when to expect him. I waited and drank, drank and waited, and then I drank and waited some more. Nothing. The sun was starting to go down, so I decided to cut my losses and find a hotel room. The friendly booking agents at the station told me how lucky I was to have secured their last single room, and that if I waited for a few minutes then a taxi would take me there. I was told that I could walk if I wanted as it was just past the next block, but as a taxi was included for free I thought I'd live the high life a little. I'm bloody glad I did, the taxi took me far away from the centre and I realised my hotel was pretty far from the action.
Never one to mope, I decided to get some food and use my journalistic skills to track down the elusive Jonny. As I have a Slovene sim card, and almost no U.K. numbers on my phone, this proved difficult. Special thanks to Stringer and Lofty for helping me out. Eventually I was in possession of a number. I got suited and booted and ready to hit the town. The phone conversation ran thus:
Me: Hey man, it's J, whereabouts are you?
Jonny: Sorry mate, I can't hear you, give me a few seconds.
(a few seconds later)
Jonny:Hey, you'll never guess where I am...
Me: Er, Budapest.
Jonny: No mate, I'm in a lap-dancing club in Krakow (Krakow is in Poland fo the non-geographers out there)
Me: Not Budapest then?
Jonny: No sorry mate, things got messed up. (It turned out that there was a little accident in Belgium involving a written off car - so Jonny was absolved in this incident)
Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em I thought as I got into bed to read Robinson Crusoe. Rock and roll.
The next day I got up nice and early, hangover free, and hit the tourist trail in Budapest. It's a very historic city and I strolled around the castle in Buda taking in the views and the sights. After much searching I found a sports bar to watch a bit of British football before hoping on the train back to Ljubljana.
Hungarian is a really crazy language, it's debatable whether or not it is actually related to any other European language, although current linguistic fashion shoe-horns it in with Finnish. My Slovene has got to a point where I can operate quite well, but there are so many accents over the letters in Hungarian that you can't really guess how to pronounce things. My next trip was to take me to Serbia. Serbo-Croatian (note to any Serbs or Croats reading: I of course mean Serbian and Croatian, because you have some idea that they are completely different languages 
) is quite similar to Slovene, so you can get by easily in Croatia. After a weekend not understanding anything in Hungary the Serbians decided to conspire against me by having a language I can kind of understand, but using the Cyrillic alphabet, which is impossible to read if you haven't learnt it. What joy...
The following Tuesday, Simon, Luke and I headed off to Belgrade. I'd never been to Serbia before, so it was a new experience. The train left at about 9 in the evening and didn't arrive until 6 the next morning, so we decided to pay extra and have some beds after my Hungary bound experience. I sunk a couple of beers before nodding off, muttering 'Don't mention the war' quietly to myself*. I was rudely awoken many times by various shadowy figures asking to see my documents. The sleep was far from sound and I questioned the payment of the extra fare.
We arrived bleary-eyed in Belgrade. One of the most striking things on the approach (apart from a man who emerged from a hedge after what I hypothesised was a session violating his dog, you had to be there) was the vast corrugated iron shanty town that spanned a great distance along the track. Recent past has created a large refugee population, which is still trying to resettle and I was later told that this was a huge gypsy township. We were greeted off the train by the ever bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Bethany, an American girl whom we had met when she was studying for her Celta in Ljubljana in January.
A breakfast of burek and a three hour power nap were the order of the day when we arrived at Bethany's flat. Upon waking refreshed, Luke and I hit the streets in order to find somewhere to stay for the next few nights. We asked at the central tourist information and we decided to head for a the hostel that was a compromise between distance from the centre and price. Because we couldn't read the roadsigns we asked random passers by for direction (profiling them according to being women and attractive). We were really taken aback by how friendly and helpful young, attractive Serbian women are (I'm sure this works with most Serbians, but our sample selection methodology was clearly defective from a statistical viewpoint) In most places if you ask directions, someone will point and explain using land marks you can't possibly be previously aware of. But the Serbian puncas took us all the way on foot, without doubt taking them far away from where they were heading, cheers ladies.
Locating the hostel proved difficult, and would have been so for a crack squadron of S.A.S. soldiers with G.P.S. and doctorates in finding-bizarrely-located-hostel-studies. After several laps of the area indicated on the card, Luke and I decided to go for a pint of the local brew (Jelen, beer fans) and get our thoughts together. We asked the barman about the hostel and on returning to the 'hood we eventually found it. Our problem in finding the place stemmed from the fact that in Britain we follow a convention of using a photo of our actual premises in promotional literature. This quirk clearly isn't followed in Serbia, and the use of a photo showing an entirely different building was merely some artistic licence in play. Great.
The hostel turned out to suit our needs perfectly and we chilled for a while before I, finally, met up with Jonny (remember him from earlier? Hooky boy, predilection for Polish lap-dancers). We hit downtown Belgrade for some scran and went on a session. Belgrade is heralded as the party capital of Europe in various publications, so we set out with high hopes of hedonistic abandon. In reality we walked, walked a bit more and then topped that off with a bit more walking. We stopped a few passers by (using the aforementioned pretty lady tour guide method) and the general consensus was that Belgrade on a Wednesday when the students were on holiday, is perhaps not the most happening time. We decided to call it a night at about 2am. Distance covered on foot: 6 miles, Pints drunk: 3
The next day we were determined to get on the session. Bethany showed us some of the sights and Jonny and I were using the Beer/spirits rotation method that has proved so reliable over the years. We found a bar full of nice young women and acceptable music. The bar was getting a little crowded so the others decided to find somewhere else nearby. Jonny and I thought we'd stick it out a bit, until we realised that the place had filled up with massive Serbian meatheads, and made a swift exit ourselves. Plenty of alcohol had flowed by now, so Simon, Luke, Jonny and I held a conference and decided the place to be was on one of the many party barges on the river Sava. We hopped into a taxi and hit the road towards the newly christened (by us) 'funky town'.
Upon arrival we made a beeline for the busiest, brightest and best looking club. I'm sure someone accidently asked in English if we had to pay or something, because no sooner were we mapping out the shortest route to the bar from the entrance than the security blocked our path and informed us that reservations were required. This was despite the steady flow of locals who were entering without even being looked at by the guards. It was entirely because we were British, and I've never been overtly on the recieving end of this sort of thing (not that the obscene taxi fare mark-up is exactly covert). Being petty, I would have quickly developed a grudge against the Serbs for this, but there's a lot of really heavy shit that they've gone through, and I can appreciate why they might not be the biggest fans of citizens from NATO member-states (there're still no excuses for you Austrians, the grudge will be borne until you issue an apology for your actions at the U.N., this was dealt with in a previous post...).
Feeling rejected we walked down the river a bit to take in some 'turbo-folk', I don't really want to talk about this episode, I'm too ashamed. This is possibly the worst genre of music ever created by Satan and handed down to impressionable youths. Distance covered on foot: +/- 2 miles, Pints drunk: Ouch...
I spent most of the next day recovering, the Hendersonian hangover is a terrible thing. In the evening we met up with Bethany and a few of her Serbian friends, which included a couple of really drunk lads. We managed to ditch them eventually and continued to break the stereotype of British lads abroad by being well behaved, witty and erudite (at least that's how I remembered it). We couldn't have too much of a session because we were catching the train at 6 the next morning back to Ljubljana in order to watch England play football (our priorities are in order, huh?!) This meant that Luke and I had to turn down to offer of escorting a couple of Serbian girls to a club, in hindsight, probably not the best move... But England managed to overcome the mighty Israel.
I've recently decided to look for work outside of teaching. I'm currently trying out at a translation agency in Ljubljana, the work is varied, and I get to search for stuff on the internet all the time, so it suits me fine. As long as I get the job...
Anyhow, that's about it for now, I'm moving into a new flat in a couple of weeks, so I'll have fun packing everything next weekend. I hope all's well in everybody else's world.
Take it easy, I know you will. J
* The situation in Serbia is very interesting, and we had many illuminating conversations with the young people who live there, there are lots of tales to tell which should be told. However, the scars are still very apparant. People were manipulated by politicians into hating neighbours with whom they previously had no real animosity. This is why I have neglected to discuss the war here.
As I am capable only of flippant observations and lazy stereotyping on this blog, I will let very lightly sleeping dogs lie.
