hungary

i have just stayed at the best hostel ever. i'll admit my first impressions were apprehensive. walking through a non-descript door, up four flights of stairs in the dark, knocking on an unmarked door, then practically falling over some long-haired freak smoking on a bean bag in the living room did not fill my heart with confidence. the long-haired dude turned out to be the owner of the place. evan hails from florida, via berlin, and had been running hostels for a few years. his latest hostel was basically his house, with an open-plan living area (lounge, kitchen, dining) downstairs and two dorms with ensuites up the rickety spiral staricase. but the place was majorly chill. we smoked inside and drank beer talked shit and played poker (i ended my five days there 3000 forints up - yo!), cooked snacks on the stove and watched the football, all in the company of similarly chilled-out people (a real mixed pot: english, irish, americans, mexicans, canadians, finns, norwegians, australians) it was very easy to just hang out and never venture outside except to go next door for more beers and fags... the dorms werent super-massive (im staying at a 40 bed dorm in munich next = whoa) and the bathrooms were squeaky clean. the kitchen was fully equiped and the internet was free. and there were no snorers in my room. what else can one ask for from a hostel?

but i did head outside for a bit, even though the weather was very ordinary. budapest is a charming city. not as beautiful as vienna (vienna was so good that i decided to head back there for another three nights afterwards) but the disintegrating old buildings and the constant flow of the danube contained an energetic, friendly population that made it, well, not better or worse, but different from prague and vienna and st petersburg and all the other great cities i've visited in the last few months.

shearing sheep

it was time. it was a tad uncomfortable at the belarussian border, being scrutinised by two massive dudes for ten minutes, because i look nothing like my passport photo. i could see them thinking: how can we get him to bribe us? in the end, they let us get back to sleep at 2am.

we walked into the hairdressing school. we didnt speak czech and they knew nary a word of english. what could possiblz go wrong? for forty czech crowns (less than three bucks) i got a short brunette with a nose stud, and gal got a tall blonde. my student got to tick off hair-trimming, beard-cutting and using the clipper - what a model customer i am! it was a bit lumpy, but in a week, you won´t be able to tell anyway.

prague was gorgeous and full of energy. i loved it.