Hypermobility

So, I went to Budapest!

It was largely awesome, the only negative points being the fact that it was absolutely freezing, and the fact that almost everything shut down from xmas eve afternoon until the day after xmas. Still, despite all this, we managed to cram quite a lot in:

- The Dohany Street Synagogue, with its attached Jewish museum and Holocaust memorial. A really beauiful building on its own merits, and the museum had a lot of very interesting exhibits, as well as a rather disturbing room about the Budapest Ghetto and the local events during the Holocaust, including the massacre of staff and patients at the Jewish hospital. It put a different perspective on the streets nearby, which used to be the Ghetto.

Also, the Nelson Kavehaz, almost next door, does excellent hot chocolate and lovely scrambled eggs with sausage and onion. Mmm. The hot chocolate was so good that we went there once on our way into the synagogue, and then again on the way out.

- The Terrorhaza, the museum of the Terror. While I did get the frustrating feeling that I was missing quite a lot owing to my lack of Hungarian language ability, the way that the musum is set out – almost like an art installation – is effective and affecting enough to make an enormous impression, despite the limited information available in English (there were information sheets in English available in almost all the rooms, but many of the displays weren’t labelled in anything in Hungarian, and some of the rooms didn’t have information sheets, including one of the most interesting ones, which appeared to be built out of ubber replicas of bars of soap). The way it’s set out means that you start on the second floor and work your way down, and the bit that sticks in my mind most is getting the pitch dark and excruciatingly slow lift down to the basement, in which is screened an interview describing how the regime hanged people.

- The Hungarian National Museum, which we found almost by accident on Boxing Day, and which turned out, by some small miracle, to be a) open, b) free, and c) warm. Also, very interesting indeed. I have a bit of a thing for Hungarian history, obviously.

Other than that, we just did a lot of walking about, something that Budapest is perfect for, and our apartment was ideally placed (we were staying in the Harsfa apartment, which was largely awesome, aside from the leaky shower; very cunningly set out, and perfect size for two people) on the Pest side. We largely missed the Christmas Market (though thankfully we were in time to get some giant cheesy pretzels), and spent much of our time walking through eerily deserted snowy streets and squares, which was rather magic in itself.

All my hard work in finding vegetarian restaurants for the sake of my vegetarian boyfriend nearly came to naught, as most places were shut between xmas and new year; however, we did make it to Vegetarium on our first night, which had an extensive menu, excellent food and good beer, and we would have gone back if we could. The rest of the time we survived on indifferent sushi from a nearby Japanese restaurant, and frozen pizzas from our local supermarket over xmas when all restaurants were shut. Oh, and cake: Gerbeaud, of course, was excellent, if rather crowded; Central Kavehaz did a great Esterhazy cake; and the Gerloczy Cafe saved our arses by being open on xmas itself, when we’d just come back from a lengthy walk up to the Var in Buda, and my feet were numb with cold. The pub right next to our apartment was somewhat frightening, but fundamentally decent, serving cheap beer and allowing us to meet some of the more colourful locals (though I did lose my gloves there).

Pictures are slowly being uploaded on my flickr page, but aside from that, I am up against a novel-related deadline, so hypermobility is officially on hiatus until 2008. Happy new year, and all of that; see you on the other side! x

Blimey, it has almost been a month since I flew to Beijing from Sydney, and I have been terribly tardy in writing about it, haven’t I? Anyhow.

For some odd reason, China had never been particularly high on my list of places to visit. I mean, it was on my list in the same way that EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD EVER is on my list, but I never had that great, panting longing to go there, in the way that I did with, say, Africa, or Eastern Europe (or Latin America, which I have still not visited, woe). Perhaps it was the sheer hugeness of the place that made it difficult to grasp, mentally – I never felt that way about Russia, but while Russia is unimaginably vast, much of that vastness is empty, whereas China is packed frighteningly full of fascinating things that would take a lifetime to see. Which makes me slightly panicky.

I fully expected that visiting China would spark off a fascination, though, and indeed it did. I now have all sorts of trips planned in my head – out west to Xinjiang and Tibet; down the east coast from Shanghai to Hong Kong; through the south to the Burmese border. Who knows when I will find time for these jaunts, but no matter.

As it was, this time I only had a week, and I ended up spending the whole time in Beijing. This wasn’t my intention, but while I’d known that 1 – 3 October was National Day (and I arrived on the 3rd), I wasn’t aware that actually this holiday lasts for an entire week and indeed many businesses were still closed by the 8th – which meant that lots of Chinese people were travelling (Beijing was absolutely heaving), and therefore train and plane tickets were very hard to come by. Meanwhile, I had found myself a very comfortable berth in the Downtown Backpackers, and there was more than enough in Beijing to keep me entertained.

(Incidentally, a couple of sites I found very helpful were SinoHotel.com and ChinaTripAdvisor.com - the former, as the name would suggest, was good for accommodation, and the latter seems to have excellent deals on flights – when I was toying with the idea of flying to Xi’an for a couple of days, ChinaTripAdvisor.com was able to find my plenty of flights around half the price of those that were coming up on Expedia, and they were also very helpful. Recommended.)

I spent much of my time doing the typical touristy things like visiting Tiananmen Square (frighteningly vast and teeming with people) and the Forbidden City; the Lama Temple (gorgeous) and the nearby Confucius Temple; the pearl market (where I spent far too much money) and the Temple of Heaven next door, which was possibly my favourite temple, largely for the park around it which was full of people practicing tai chi, exercising, playing musical instruments (including one chap who ran the gamut of national anthems on his traditional one-stringed violin), playing cards and other games, ballroom dancing and doing karaoke. I also did a day trip to the Great Wall, of course, eschewing the reported crowds at Badaling, and choosing instead to hike from Jinshanling to Simatai, which was spectacular, but nearly broke me – thankfully there was a massage parlour just a few doors down from the hostel, frankly.

But to my surprise – I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that – Beijing is actually a great city for just…hanging around. The street on whch I was staying, Nan Luo Gu Xiang, was in the heart of Dongcheng, one of Beijing’s hutongs – traditional, low-rise neighbourhoods, which are fantastic just for wandering about. Nan Luo Gu Xiang has been rather agressively gentrified of late, owing, I think, to it being a bit of a backpacker-and-foreigner haven (I certainly saw more European faces there than in the rest of Beijing, which is not necessarily a recommendation in itself), which meant it was a rather charming mixture of traditional cheap fast food outlets (and, slightly more upmarket, a fabulous – nameless – restaurant towards the south end of the lane, with wonderful food and Yanjing beer for 60p), very swanky shops, rowdy backpacker bars, and, my personal favourite thing about Beijing, tea house after tea house. My personal favourite was Sandglass Cafe (erm, I have no idea what’s going on in the comments on that review – ignore, I think), and the Zha Zha Cafe was also good (scroll down). I had a brief but intense fantasy of moving to Beijing and writing novels in these coffee shops, but frankly that would hardly be practical.

Beijing’s pleasantly easy to get around – the metro is quick, clean, very cheap, and has pleasant zoetrope-type advertisements in the tunnel, which I found very exciting; unfortunately it’s not always convenient for everywhere (it was about a 30 minute walk from where I was staying – normally fine, except when I was crippled from the Jinshanling to Simatai hike) – apparently the buses are good too, but I didn’t brave them, as taxis are as cheap as chips (or cheaper) and very friendly, especially if you’ve written down where you’re wanting to go rather than try to limp through in embarrassingly awful Mandarin. Only weird issue: ATMs are plentiful, but I found it incredibly difficult to find somewhere that would give me a Visa advance in US dollars. Which would of course not have been an issue if I had actually planned ahead for such things. Ah well, you live and learn, except, no, actually, you don’t, not if you’re me.

Oh! And I saw some acrobats! Which, yes, terribly touristy, but also ace. Shamefully I can’t remember the name of the particular troupe, but it was organised by Downtown Backpackers. Highly recommended.

So I am back from my most recent travels and it is long past time for an update, though I have been putting it off until all my photos were uploaded. However, uploading to flickr is taking an age (unexpectedly – I’ve never had problems with them before, and incidentally, you may not want to click on that link unless you’re prepared to wade through literally thousands of untitled and uncaptioned photos – it’s in progress, honest), and so I may as well get on with things.

I left Glasgow on September 22nd for the first, and least glamorous, destination on my journey: Knutsford, Cheshire, for the wedding of a friend. I’d never been to Cheshire before and to be honest was not enormously excited (though I was excited about the wedding), as the image in my head was of untrammelled suburbia, punctuated with footballers’ mansions and tedious commuter monstrosities. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Knutsford itself, which, in addition to being your typical slightly-posh Middle English small town, has a rather bizarre collection of Art Nouveau architecture, including the freakishly opulent Belle Epoque restaurant and hotel, where the wedding was – excellent food, and good just to look at. Too pricey for us in terms of accommodation, though, and we stayed at the Angel Inn down the road (scroll down), which was perfectly serviceable, despite giving Tom the Small Town Fear. Man Zen for decent Chinese food, too.

Perhaps most usefully, Knutsford is also only 20 minutes by car from Manchester Airport, from whence I was flying to Sydney the morning out of the wedding, and therefore made an infinitely preferable alternative to a grim airport hotel. Would visit again. Probably.

Across to Edinburgh on Wednesday night for dinner with friends. Given that I can’t realistically spend my entire life travelling, I try to take advantage of the mini-travel opportunities available close to home, and I’m the idea of going to a whole different city for the evening still has its novelty value for me.

Anyway, we ate at the awesome Calistoga, which claims to offer Californian cuisine, though I don’t really know what that means. In any case, I had Indian-style gazpacho (no idea what that meand either), followed by sea bass, and artisan cheeses, and it was all excellent. (Heh, I notice from their website that they’re associated with a wine shop called Sideways, next door.)

My trips to Edinburgh always seem to be gastronomic successes, actually – last time I went across we went to Wok & Wine, which does, I suppose, modern Chinese – I had some sort of delicious mushroom and squid arrangement (this is why I am not a restaurant reviewer). I haven’t had the chance to try fine dining in Glasgow yet, due to my brokitude over the summer, aside from a lovely evening of blintzes and vodka at Cafe Cossachok, which was ace.

Planning a trip to Budapest for Christmas, trying to take advantage of a) the fact that my office shuts down between Christmas and new year, so I have actual time off (small miracle, as I am using up all my allocated leave over the next month, until next April), and b) the fact that Ryanair has just started flying from Prestwick to Budapest (no, of course those super-cheap fares don’t apply to the Christmas period, but it’s still cheap). I haven’t been to Budapest since 2002, and this will be the first trip Tom and I have taken together, so I am excited!

Anyhow. I am trying to find out whether Budapest completely shuts down for Christmas, which will obviously make the trip slightly less fun. I haven’t been able to find specific information on opening hours, etc., but I did find details of Budapest’s Christmas market, which is at least an indication of some sort of activity over that time.

Actually, the whole site (www.budapestinfo.hu/en) is suprisingly useful for a generic tourist information site. The last time I was in Budapest my companion was a city-hater, so we didn’t stay long (it was part of an extended jaunt around Hungary and Slovakia), and there’s loads of stuff I haven’t done. I’m particularly keen on the whole Turkish bath thing, and look, there’s a whole site devoted to them! Given that I spent last Christmas and new year in Turkey, wallowing in the hammams, I feel that this could become a rather excellent Christmas tradition (though I’m not sure how long I could carry it on for.

The accommodation service on the budapestinfo.hu site seems quite useful, too, as it’s got the option of apartments – which might be good, given that Tom is a vegetarian, and Central/Eastern Europe tends to be the Land Of Meat, so having cooking facilities might be helpful.

On the other hand, the Happy Cow lists a number of veggie places in Budapest (some even vouched for by vegetarians), and wait, there’s also www.budaveg.com! Awesome. Linked from http://vegetarianguides.co.uk/links/index.shtml, which is an excellent resource for veggies/those travelling with veggies. Hurrah.

Another possibly useful Budapest guide at www.budapestagent.com.

Also quite keen, while I’m there, to head up to the Danube Bend region – Szentendre (website only available in Hungarian, seemingly), Visegrad (in English! Rather quaintly phrased…) and Esztergom (again, only in Hungarian) – which I didn’t make it to last time. And a return visit to the Statue Park, which remains one of my favourite things I’ve ever seen while travelling.

Edited to add: OK, why did no one ever tell me that Budapest has caves?