hello from east

hello all,

i flew from frankfurter hahn airport (misleadingly named as its about 1:30 hrs from frankfurt) to bratislava (slovakia) on friday as i got a cheap ryanair flight.

ryanair is the virginblue of europe, but even more low cost...you can get fares for 30 cents plus taxes, which ends up being about 20 euro. mine was last minute but only cost 50 euro which is around 75 dollars, so still good value. they have no seat allocation either so its like a bus, but a very nice russian girl offered me the seat next to her. a siberian, she was studying english in luxembourg at the university of miami campus there (?!) - very international.

from bratislava i got an hour or so bus from the airport to vienna, stayed there for one night, and then travelled south to the student town of graz. graz and freiburg should be sister cities, both are about the same size, both universitaet stadt, and both have a schlossberg behind the town.

i am now in budapest as austria have some special cheap train tickets to certain countries. budapest was very sunny today. i walked from the train station through the city until i got to the duna (donau or danube). the view as the city opens up to the river is amazing and i have to give budapest the title of most beautiful european capital so far. they have a mountain on the buda side of the city with roman ruins and a fort on top. budapest has been conquered by romans, then magyars, then mongols, then turks, then the germans blew all the bridges over the donau to stop the russians advancing, the russians then pretty much levelled the city - so quite a turbulent history.

a canadian guy in frankfurt had been travelling for about 5 months and described himself jokingly as an international man of leisure. in the next week or so i will go back to bratislava, then to prague, then to leipzig and berlin - so i may adopt the title myself.

anyway thats all for now and i hope all is well back in australia...

...tom