One of the things that concerned us before planning a six month trip of Europe was that we would tire of all the travel – that we would get a couple of months in and have had enough. Well, fortunately there's no sign of that yet, and we are past a quarter of the way in, so I can't see it being a major concern.
Shifting towns every three or four days is less hassle than I thought it might be. Modern phone technology means it is hard to get lost or struggle to find things because we always know where we are, using GoogleMaps or equivalent. All our accommodation is pre-booked, so there's no problems on arriving (and we aren't generally going very far each time, so we arrive at a decent time and not tired). The local transport has proved to be very efficient and we haven't had too many dramas about buying tickets.
Changing towns might not be so bad, but changing countries is a pain. You just start getting comfortable with one place – learning the currency, how the transport systems work, the key terms you need, what foods they have in the supermarket – and then you move to another country. and have to start all over again.
Hungary has been terrible like that, because the language is so different from any we have any previous knowledge of. We haven't eaten at McDonalds, but I have shown a sample of a advert below to illustrate the problem – even though I know what they serve pretty precisely, I still cannot make out a single word other than "burger".
This is not helped by Hungarians speak surprisingly little English – doing German at school from what we can gather. There is a lot of pointing, and some guessing. Sometimes pictures are helpful – getting the battery changed in my watch was quite easy once I used a picture of a watch battery to hold next to it.
A few sacrifices have been made. We didn't have a lot of stuff even from the start of the trip, because we had only a 28 kg limit on the flights to and from Cyprus (bag and hand luggage combined), but quite a lot has been shed since then. Lifting heavy bags to overhead storage on the trains and up and down stairs got to be a bit too tiring. I chucked out a whole bunch of clothes, shoes and books that still had a bit of life in them, but were six kilograms I didn't have to cart round. Alison shed our emergency towels and a couple of other things at the same time. A useful side-effect is that my bag is now extremely easy to pack each shift of town, because it has room to spare, rather than a puzzle about how to fit it all in.
We have also been walking quite a lot – Alison's phone thinks she has done 1,000 km since we left NZ, and that seems about right – with a cost in blisters and worn out shoes.
Today's our last day in Hungary, as tomorrow we go to Belgrade. I'll write up something on Hungary when we get there, as it is a week's stop, so time to catch up a bit on things.
Shifting towns every three or four days is less hassle than I thought it might be. Modern phone technology means it is hard to get lost or struggle to find things because we always know where we are, using GoogleMaps or equivalent. All our accommodation is pre-booked, so there's no problems on arriving (and we aren't generally going very far each time, so we arrive at a decent time and not tired). The local transport has proved to be very efficient and we haven't had too many dramas about buying tickets.
Changing towns might not be so bad, but changing countries is a pain. You just start getting comfortable with one place – learning the currency, how the transport systems work, the key terms you need, what foods they have in the supermarket – and then you move to another country. and have to start all over again.
Hungary has been terrible like that, because the language is so different from any we have any previous knowledge of. We haven't eaten at McDonalds, but I have shown a sample of a advert below to illustrate the problem – even though I know what they serve pretty precisely, I still cannot make out a single word other than "burger".
This is not helped by Hungarians speak surprisingly little English – doing German at school from what we can gather. There is a lot of pointing, and some guessing. Sometimes pictures are helpful – getting the battery changed in my watch was quite easy once I used a picture of a watch battery to hold next to it.
A few sacrifices have been made. We didn't have a lot of stuff even from the start of the trip, because we had only a 28 kg limit on the flights to and from Cyprus (bag and hand luggage combined), but quite a lot has been shed since then. Lifting heavy bags to overhead storage on the trains and up and down stairs got to be a bit too tiring. I chucked out a whole bunch of clothes, shoes and books that still had a bit of life in them, but were six kilograms I didn't have to cart round. Alison shed our emergency towels and a couple of other things at the same time. A useful side-effect is that my bag is now extremely easy to pack each shift of town, because it has room to spare, rather than a puzzle about how to fit it all in.
We have also been walking quite a lot – Alison's phone thinks she has done 1,000 km since we left NZ, and that seems about right – with a cost in blisters and worn out shoes.
Today's our last day in Hungary, as tomorrow we go to Belgrade. I'll write up something on Hungary when we get there, as it is a week's stop, so time to catch up a bit on things.
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