Three weeks ago I arrived in London weary and excited, and that’s where I pick up this blog from.

I envy travel writers that must make such perfect diary entries be it scrawled on a blank piece of newspaper, on a napkin at a restaurant, or neatly in their little laptop sitting on the cafe table. I just can’t keep up to be honest, between photographing, exploring, eating and just taking it in the blog has been left to sit idle. Which as it turns out is a bit slack as this blog, Rice and Rock Concerts has been picked up by Lonely Planet to be included as a part of their blogsherpa program, so I really should knuckle down and give some insight as to what has been happening.

To make life a little easier, both for the loyal reader and for the search engines I will write briefly now as to the what, where, when, why and how and then write single entries for little escapades that may be deemed worthy over a frosty glass of Dreher beer here in Hungary.

London was a brilliant few days – I flew in on a Thursday night and spent the next few days ticking off a list of things one must do when they get to the mother country; Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, drink a beer in a pub (it was bloody warm), catch the tube, sit on Parliament Hill, wander along the Thames and check out the London Eye, gaze in wonder from the outside of the Tate Modern, then walk inside and fall over myself in the bookshop, and then actually looked at some of the contemporary art hanging inside, take some postcard photos of the Tower Bridge, and concluded by complaining that the one time I’m in England and there is an Ashes test on it ends in a draw.

Leaving England is an absolute godsend compared to the immigration process to enter it. A wave of our passports at the easyJet counter at Luton airport to confirm identities for our flight to Vienna and they could be put back in the pocket again, almost never to be seen again. We arrived at Vienna airport with no idea where to stay so with much head scratching, guidebook scanning and internet searching we ended up at a hostel in Hütteldorf, a foothills suburb in the West of the city. It was a reasonably pleasant hostel, albeit large and lacking personality, but at €17 the price was right, well not right at all, but it was the best we could find.

We learnt though that the best price doesn’t always translate that well to the best value – given that we were spending a few dollars to get there and a few dollars to get into the city we decided that we’d move closer to the city and gathered our belongings, jumped on a train and landed at Wombat’s in the city. It, like every other hostel was booked out, so with much ringing around we found a room at a pretty awful hotel/guesthouse/hostel at €24 per person per night – at least it was within walking distance to all the attractions. Desperate to not stay there again we rang Wombat’s back and they confirmed that we could get two dorm beds the following night, so three nights in Vienna, and three different accommodations. If I was going to do it again I’d book at Wombat’s City hostel in advance, for €21 it was by far the best of the three, with good facilities, cheap drinks in the bar, tv, couches, the 6 bed dorm was roomy with lockers and right at Westbahnhof station, so you can get there straight from the train or underground.

Vienna was quickly left behind us courtesy of a quick and comfortable train to Melk, a town on the Danube which is famous for a monstrously large abbey, which was built in the 18th century. In Pingyao, China we met Max, an Austrian cyclist who had almost completed an eleven month journey riding his bike from his home town on the Danube to Beijing, and only a few days before our arrival in Austria he too arrived. He and his lovely girlfriend Birget met us in Melk and we spent a fantastic few days with them both travelling to castles, abbeys, and most importantly, to a Heurigen – a wine tavern.

Time seemed to be running at quite a pace and before we knew it we were rushing for a train at Amstetten that would send us on our way to St Pölten for a change to the Munich to Budapest train. Quickly jumping on the train at St Pölten we realised that there was a great likelihood that we would not get a seat for the three hour journey that lay ahead of us, and clearly we were not the only people on their way to the Sziget festival in Budapest. The train was absolutely packed with the lucky half sitting in seats, and the others crammed near the WC, the doors, or sitting in the aisle, with packs, tents and sleeping mats everywhere. Sensing that there was a chance that some of the people might actually be on the train to get from Munich to Vienna we decided to stand near a family from the US who looked more likely to get off at Westbahnhof station than they were to camp at a festival for a week. The gamble paid off, and they helped us swap their roller suitcases for our packs and gave us their seats before we pulled into the station, which meant the rest of the trip was pretty pleasant.

Sziget was very helpful on their site to indicate that we should jump off the train at Kelenföld station and then we would have one less transfer to get to the festival. They very unhelpfully didn’t indicate that there is next to no facilities and that to use the tram we would need Hungarian Forint (which we didn’t have) and that the nearest ATM was about 1km away, which entailed a walk though a suburb where let’s be frank, you wouldn’t want your grandma to live. Armed with forint and a new appreciation for how fast you can walk with 30kg on your back when you really, really, really want to we jumped on tram 19 that took us to Batthyánytér, a terminal for trains, boats, trams and the underground. It also has an ATM, which as it turns out we could have used and avoided a 2km walk through the seedier parts of Budapest as we never worked out how to buy a ticket for the tram and thus didn’t. Alas.

Jumping on a HEV train to take us to Filatorigat station in the north was easy – men selling tickets at the platform, and other men validating them a metre later meant a) no free ride, and b) we got on the right train. The latter turned out to be quite easy as there is only one HEV line from Batthyánytér so you couldn’t really get lost, and what’s more, getting off was easy too, just follow the 95 per cent of people that jumped off at a station – they were going to Sziget too.

I was slightly uneasy as the walk to Sziget unfolded; the crowd was rough, really pretty damn unsightly with drunk people everywhere and a lot of yelling and cavorting. Not that I’m nervous nellie, but after a decent journey already I just didn’t need beer splashed on me two days before the festival proper started and I didn’t have my accreditation yet. As it would happen the first part was easy, just had to say my name, provide ID and I had a wristband – it got more complicated from there. But Sziget deserves its own story (given it makes up the Rock Concerts section of the title…) so I’ll elaborate in that, but let me just say before it got better it got worse.

Having decided that after Sziget we were heading to Eger (egg-air) we thought it wise to head to the bus station at Stadionok and buy a ticket in advance, and so with an efficiency clearly left over from communism we used one ticket to get back to Batthyánytér and then another to use the metro, despite never even leaving the terminal, it wasn’t good enough to use the same ticket, which makes public transport in Budapest more expensive than any city I’ve ever used it – London and Hong Kong are cheaper. At least we were employing a good amount of people to sell the ticket, validate the ticket, then check the ticket that it was indeed validated. And it was all in vain; the woman at Stadionok Bus Station may very well have said something in English, but far as I could tell she was just hoiking up a good amount of phlegm and told us to go to the bus. The bus driver very helpfully pointed out the price of the ticket but as his bus was leaving in two minutes it was of no use to us if we wanted to stay in Budapest for a few more nights…two public transport tickets later and we were back at Sziget, poorer and none the wiser as to whether we would be able to leave Budapest for Eger on the Monday was hoped.

Awake at 6am on Monday. That’s not really true, at Sziget you don’t really sleep, so you do not really ever awake, but semantics, we were up and the tent was getting pulled down, and before we knew it we were walking out of the Sziget gates and jumping on the train to Batthyánytér, and then the metro to Stadionok, wasting yet another amount of forint on two train tickets. We managed to get a lovely lady this time at the ticket counter who only too happily took our money and exchanged it for two tickets on the express to Eger at 11.15 am, and I wondered why it was so hard for the stubborn old phlegmy the other day. We dropped our bags into the luggage storage and walked down the road to a shopping centre where the coffee was pretty awful but terribly necessary and then grabbed some food from Tesco, on the off chance we wouldn’t find a supermarket in Eger.

An enjoyable two hour drive through the countryside to Eger was spent peering out the window and then chortling away to Bill Bryson’s Europe adventure, Neither here nor There. The bus pulled up at the station, ironically right next to a Tesco where I was tempted to change our warm brie for something a little colder, but thought better of it and set off to Tulipan Camping, a camping ground about 1km from the town centre. The only soft shady ground in the camp site was right next to a group of French guys who too had only just arrived from Sziget, and on all of our agenda’s was sleep, food, and some wine, in particular Eger Bikavér, or Eger Bulls Blood.

The wine in Eger is famous across Europe after the Ottomans sieged the city and red wine was greedily consumed by the grossly outnumbered Hungarian soldiers. The Turks saw the red beards of the Hungarians and the rumour spread that they had gained their strength from drinking the blood of bulls, hence then Eger Bulls Blood. Four or five days of Eger and we decided it was time to move on, and Tokaj (Tock-eye) was the destination of choice. More famous than even Eger in Hungary for wine, Tokaj is a World Heritage listed wine region that has been growing grapes for more than a thousand years. The region is infested with Noble Rot, or botrytis, which shrivels the grapes and allows winemakers to produce exquisite sweet dessert wines.

The first night we were here we stayed at the Tokaj Tisza campground, but it was pretty rough and unclean, so we’ve spoilt ourselves and now have a lovely room in a guesthouse. Common in Hungary it is simply a spare bedroom in someone’s house who opens it up to travelling folk like ourselves. After eleven nights in a row on a sleeping mat in a tent it is luxurious beyond belief, and at 3500 HUF per person per night it is only about AU$20.

There is still a lot to catch up on, and the week at Sziget shooting for WireImage took up all of my editing time, but soon I’ll get my site back up to date with pictures from this beautiful continent.

In case anyone is wondering, weather is glorious, high 20s, low 30s, sun shining, and I’m off to grab a beer.