Budapest and the end

So, I am actually back in Christchurch now but I thought I better fill you in on the last week of the trip.
Mike and I spent some quality time getting lost in Belgrade.

Belgrade was full of awesome street art

 We stumbled across a contemporary art gallery with a "non-exhibition". The gallery was meant to be refurbished in 2002 but those clever artists hadn't bothered to finish it, just opened the gallery-in-progress as the art piece. Genius!

Slightly sickening Moire patterns

Art?

 I was determined to see the modern suspension bridge (that turned out to be much farther than it looked) and was also sure that there would be some kind of pedestrian crossing to an Eden-like park on the other side of the river, which there wasn't. On the bright side we got a really good look at the busy road and a more industrial part of town in the refreshingly brisk rain.

After I got shrunk

 Mike flew home, I took a slow train through the sunny corn fields to Hungary and met up with my pal Adam in Budapest. Everyone had looked at me a little oddly when I mentioned this holiday destination but I still don't know why cos it's a really lovely city. Adam had met a local girl called Livia at an astronomy youth camp so she showed us around and fed us various sweets made out of cottage cheese. We went to a mineral spa which was a little odd, since the temperature was in the thirties but as the saying goes; spa is spa.

Szechenyi spa: Looks like a refreshing swimming pool, don't be fooled!

 

Budapest was full of fountains and people making out. I took a photo of every fountain we saw (Adam will make a collage) but not every pair of engaged lips because I embarrass easily.

Livia knew heaps of good stories about the city. There is this bridge called the chain bridge. The guy who designed it was so confident in his work he said if there were any mistakes in the finished product he would jump off the bridge. After it was done, some pedant pointed out the lions on it didn't have any tongues. Being a man of honour, he did jump, but also being a good swimmer he survived with everything but his pride intact.

The tongueless lion

Chillin and Illin

Adam said he learnt this trick from watching ever-prepared Japanese tourists in NZ.

While they were building one mall in Budapest, they casually found some mammoth bones. Europe eh!

The outside of the mall

Bits of mammoth

All good things must end, so I found myself in Frankfurt airport waiting for my plane homewards. As it turns out, Frankfurt airport is particularly dull so I snuck out to the city centre for a couple of hours to catch the last of the summer. It's a nice enough city and I wandered around the old town and - of course - ate a Frankfurter.

Occupy Frankfurt

Frankfurt dom

Well, that's it! Of course I left out heaps of stuff in order to have some yarns to tell you in person (and because I'm lazy). I don't think my Christchurch life is exciting enough to blog about but if you've enjoyed this, why not leave a comment to my professor pleading to fund me on another overseas adventure real soon?