Rather than posting it any way, I've decided to start again and include Bled in a broader (though quite short) post covering our visits to Bled, Budapest and Brasov. Three B's, three countries and three very different experiences.
Bled is a quaint town, situated on the edge of a lake of the same name. Walking around it, is like walking around a postcard. The lake is a brilliant turquoise in colour, with its glass like surface only broken by rowboats ferrying visitors to a church on a small island in the middle of the lake. Heavily wooded hills shade the town, with snow capped alps visible in the distance. To top it off, overlooking the town and the lake from up high on a steep sided lake side hill is a castle.
The calmness of the scenery, is matched by a slower and more laid back pace of life. After the heat and sleep deprivation of Croatia, Bled provided a nice rest. Well, at least for a day or so, after which we became twitchy so went exploring, found a canyon, a toboggan run and tried the locals approach to avoid paying to use a 'beach'.
Hidden in the hills a few kilometers from town is Vintgar canyon. With easily walked walkways hugging the canyon as it snakes its way along, it is popular place to visit for tour groups. Thankfully, the rushing water, waterfalls, and rapids, drowns out most of the inane buzz created by 40 people simultaneously describing the exact same thing.
With Bled being a ski area in the winter (the lake becomes skatable), a few of the surrounding hills have cleared runs. On one of the runs is a toboggan run much like the one at Jambaroo, which unlike Jambaroo, you cannot fall off or launch the toboggan off. The result is, should your adrenaline be high enough and your fear low enough, that the brake is decorative until the end of the run. Brenda and I did our best to chase down whoever was launched in front of us.
From Bled, we hopped on a train, then another train, then another train, to Budapest. A very very cool place (though not to do travel related errands).
We lost our first day completing travel related errands, made all the difficult by some irrationally interpreted EU regulations and the Hungarian language (which can sound like something from an alien movie). In fact, on the language, we were told that George Lucas had the original script for Yoda translated to Hungarian then back to English, so as to produce the brilliantly backwards form heard in the movies.
We went on a 'free' walking tour of the city (you pay in tips at the end), which was great, upon which we were told that if you see the city glittering over the Danube at night, you will fall in love with it. One night, after a night of visiting some of the strangest and most fun bars I have ever seen (a number of bars, decorated with whatever was around and however people felt like, are found in disused Communist era buildings), I got half way there and, on seeing the city glittering, just fell. Thankfully I didn't do any real damage to myself or the camera in my hand at the time.
Budapest, where we ate, drank and had alot of fun, is a place I will definitely return to.
From Budapest, having not learnt our lesson from last years trip to Amsterdam, we boarded an overnight train to Brasov, in Romania.
As the train left, and for the first hour or so of the journey, we heard the unmistakable sound of Australian bogans fighting. It brought back memories of sitting on the balcony of our little flat in the densely populated and socioeconomically diverse North Wollongong of an evening, listening to the inventive use of the English language, the creative attempts at getting through doors, and the bright flashing lights of the entertainment ending spoil-sports. Not for the first time, we were embarrassed to also be Australian.
In Mostar some weeks earlier, we were chatting to an English couple and they told us, after talking about their experience dealing with loud and drunken idiots in Croatia, that we did not seem like typical Australians. Why is it that so many Australians act so disrespectfully and poorly when they travel?
Brasov, deep in Transylvania, was not at all what we had expected. There was not dark, mist shrouded mountains, there was no lightning, no foreboding atmosphere and no vampires. It, and our visit there, was pleasant but not especially memorable. Bran castle, which had some tangential link to Vlad the Impaler upon which Dracula was based, was not worth a visit.
From Brasov, we went to Bucharest and then flew to Istanbul where we hung out with, and celebrated the birthdays of, a couple of great friends from home. The next morning, we flew down to Cairo.
As we have just started a two week tour of Egypt and Jordan (though this was posted later as our access to the interwebs has been poor). The next time I post will likely be from Dubai, where we head from Jordan to Dubai.
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