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A few shots by night: looking east not far from our B&B with the dome of the parliament building visible in the distance.		Near Liszt Ferenc Square.		The Royal Palace atop Castle Hill.

The Parliament building.		Chain Bridge looking towards Roosevelt Square.

Chain Bridge with the Royal Palace in the background.		Millennium Monument in Heroes' Square.		A very brightly-lit Christmas tram.

Some old duck putting out food for what appeared to be homeless cats, similar to the Greek Islands. I found some more info about them here.

Also not far from our B&B was an awesome Belgium restaurant that did fantastic food and a massive range of Belgium beers (arguably the best in the world).		Among many, many others, I had to have a Satan beer hehe ;)

New Year's Day night was spent doing something else pretty random - a spa party! Complete with DJ's and some chick on a hoop.

This is the Gellert Spa Baths, just across the river from the Great Market Hall. It is one of several baths in Budapest, and one of the oldest (dating back to the 13th century). The spa is decorated with a wealth of original Art Nouveau furnishings, artistic mosaics, stained glass windows and sculptures.		But no one gave a shit about any of that tonight, we were here to par-ty! There are a few different indoor pools in the complex, each with their own DJ on this night. The main central pool here was a bit too crowded for me hehe; I'd be no good in a mosh pit!		DJ's aside, we even had some belly dancers to keep us entertained! Good random fun :)

So, over the course four days and almost 2,000kms worth of driving, we'd done five countries: Austria, Germany, Hungary, Serbia, and Romania. But there was to be one more...		Slovakia! Just 50kms north of Budapest. Over the course of history, various parts of current-day Slovakia belonged to various kingdoms and empires, including Czechoslovakia until 1993 after the peaceful split into what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
No matter how evidently poor the neighbourhoods, everyone seems to have satellite TV hehe!		Just in case.

To an ever greater extent than Hungary, we passed through some very derelict villages.		The locals all stare at you as you go by, as though it's quite the novelty to see cars passing through.		Good to see a lot of them ride bikes though! ;)

We headed north into the country through some fairly bland scenery at first, though the roads were fast and winding - just the way I like them!		Suddenly not long thereafter, we were up in the mountains, back in the negative temperatures, and the roads were still fast and winding - just the way I like them!		We eventually arrived here.

Having researched nothing of Serbia, Romania, or Slovakia in advance in terms of short visits (since our coming here wasn't planned and was just the result of impromptu road trips) I had my GPS find us the nearest tourist information centre, figuring that if nothing else it would have to be in a decent-sized town or city. It led us here to Banská štiavnica, about 100kms north of the Hungarian border in central Slovakia.

This place was quite a lucky find because until this point we were wholly unimpressed with what (very little) we'd seen of Slovakia. Further to this, Katie did a day-trip to Bratislava (Slovakia's capital and largest city) before I arrived in Innsbruck, and was wholly unimpressed with that too. Banská štiavnica has a population of 10,000 and is a completely preserved medieval town. Because of their historical value, the town and its surroundings were proclaimed by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site in 1993. As we do, we wandered, we photographed, we ate, and we left :)

Not far north is another place starting with "Banska": Banská Bystrica, Slovakia's sixth-most populous city at 80,000 and apparently a popular tourist destination in both summer and winter due to easy access to the surrounding mountains. These shots are of the main square. It was a balmy -1 or -2 degrees out.

The main square aside there didn't appear to be much else of great interest other than a massive mall which wasn't on my GPS, meaning it was brand-spanking new. We had a look through there, and raided the supermarket in which I found two large aisles stocked with nothing but water - bloody heaps of the stuff! Slovakia's water must be crap!				Katie ventured in to Erotic City, and quickly came out again hehe.

Nice dark, snowy and icy park en route back to the car - a sign of what was to come en route back to Budapest.		Not long after leaving Banská Bystrica it began snowing really heavily, and the roads quickly became covered in it along with ice which made for a bloody treacherous two-hour drive back. Not so much of a big deal on level ground, but we had to go through mountains to get back and the brakes were going to do more harm than good in such conditions. All I can say is thank Christ for manual gearboxes! :) Everyone on the road was noticiably as cautious as I was. No one was overtaking, corners were being taken at half the speed limit, and a few trucks did look as though they'd been abandoned on the roadside (above-left for example). Obviously Slovakia can't afford to treat its roads as well as Austria in terms of de-icing. Despite the carefulness, the car did go for a minor skate around a couple of shallow downhill bends, but I was able to bring it back largely without Katie noticing hehe (I didn't want her freaking out).

When we got back onto Hungarian motorways the snow was twice as bad and the road twice as slippery but it was all flat and of little danger as long as nobody did anything rash.		Be that as it may we did pass what appeared to be one good pile-up on the other side of the motorway. Anyway, after what in hindsight was a pretty fun drive we made it back in one piece, again.
The following day was our last, though we weren't flying out until 8:30pm so we spent the day here at the Széchenyi Thermal Baths in Budapest's City Park. This was the first public bathhouse to be built in Pest (recall, one part of what is now Budapest), using a thermal spring discovered in 1879. The bathhouse was erected in 1913 and was the biggest spa complex in Europe at the time. It is still visited by a million people annually. On this day I think it was 1 degree out, but the wind made it feel a lot colder and walking/running between pools was pure punishment hahaha!

Whirlpool - fun :)		A popular pastime in the pools is to play chess hehe. These blokes were at it for hours!		This statue depicts some Greek mythology story that Katie tried explain to me and it just it weirded me out! Katie can you bung a page comment in below please, and tell everyone what you told me?

My camera is waterproof but I'd never actually tried it out underwater. Now seemed a good time hehe.				I thought my arms could do with some work (I'm all legs really thanks to the cycling), so I did a few push ups underwater...

Kaite did some modelling...		I chilled out...		And Katie, I don't know, drowned.

The queue at the airport for security - it actually forms a spiral if you look carefully. The check-in queues were pretty atrocious as well - too many people in a far-too-small terminal building. Chaos!		The flight was delayed by an hour for whatever reason, which meant we'd be getting home at 2am instead of 1.		Then to make it just that little bit more fun, Gatwick Airport decided to de-ice the runway right as we were coming in, so we had to circle for a good 20 minutes while they did that. For whatever reason the captain decided to inform us after landing that we had barely five minutes worth of fuel left after that hahaha - good to know!

And so ended our bloody hectic but bloody awesome 10-day gallivant around central-eastern Europe! We really did cram a lot of shit in there, and had driven 2,200kms by the end of it (much of that in very trying conditions)! Austria is a beautiful country as is Bavaria, Germany (the only part of Germany I've seen), though I already knew that. Venture into Eastern Europe however and it's not difficult to see the contrast between east and west. The countries of Western Europe are well-established for the most part, have strong and stable economies, and getting off the beaten track is a very rewarding experience. Eastern Europe on the other hand is still finding its feet after a long and painful period of history. National borders continue to change shape, economies are still developing, and getting off the beaten track is often a very depressing experience. However, change is also evident in these parts, and the gradual inclusion of more Eastern European countries into the European Union is certainly helping. What also hinders one's perception of this part of the world is friggin' winter; nothing looks as good in winter as it does in summer - simple as that. With that in mind, a lot of the little villages and the landscapes we saw that looked bloody awful are probably anything but with some green on the trees and some sun in the sky. All that aside, it was great to get a taster of three new countries as well as a look at Hungary. In a nutshell I'm content to tick the 'Hungary' box, Slovakia and Serbia I don't think I'll venture into any further, but Romania as I mentioned is a country I'd like to see more of. As for the rest of Eastern Europe (and there is a lot of it!), well it'll require a lot more upfront research and planning than I feel Western Europe does to distinguish its highlights from its lowlights and its must-sees from its hell-no's, but it's definitely an area I want to explore some more.

I've stuck a couple maps up of the routes we drove in each country: Austria and Hungary.

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