“The key ingredients are budget flights, cheap accommodation, cheap alcohol and strangely enough, a well-preserved historic centre. When it comes to booze-fuelled mayhem, it seems that Brits feel most at home amongst medieval buildings, getting their kicks in Prague, Budapest, Riga and Tallinn.” (BBC)

Inching slowly closer… I managed to send my Romanian visa application off this morning, and I’ve given money to Ukrainians I found on the internet for a Ukrainian visa invitation.

And catching up on older news… I had a lovely long weekend in Brussels, and came back late Sunday night so I was able to spend a lazy Bank Holiday Monday on Southbank. I went to the Tate Modern to check out the re-hang, then to the pub.
I didn’t do anything touristy in Brussels, though we did accidentally come across Manneken Pis and I rubbed effigy of ‘T Serclaes. We went to a few small exhibitions, lots of clubs (Just Another Party, Miss Kittin at Fuse) and ate waffles. I find the bilingual thing fascinating – the Walloons and the Flems don’t even call the city by the same name.

I’m in Brussels until Sunday night, and so far it’s been fabulous. Met Dreeny at the station, and we went to a private party at one of the bars in the gay area. There was a military theme, which meant that everyone was equipped with water pistols, and there was a free-form water pistol battle going on most of the night.
I haven’t done much sight-seeing yet but I’ve been so busy and stressed at work that time spent relaxing is just what I need. Dreeny has lots of cool parties and club nights lined up for us over the next few days.

It’s that time of year when I start collecting sites of travel information. I’m booking my flight to Turkey today, and I’ve booked my flight back from Krakow already, so all I have to do is fill in the gaps to get from one to the other. I’ve never been this organised about a trip, but we’ve already worked out how to get from Istanbul to Romania (via Bulgaria), and we’re starting to work back from when Min must leave to see what we can see in Romania and Moldova. I’ll have nearly a week in Ukraine by myself, but even then there are vast distances to cover so it’s not as much time as it sounds.
At least I’ll have two weeks of vegetarian food on site but then I’ll be needing IVU’s Vegetarian Phrases in World Languages and Vegetarian Phrases In Other Languages.