You know how Airbnb has basically revolutionised the way people travel? How our lives would be impossible without it? How you can get a wonderful apartment with a full kitchen for a fraction of the price of a tatty hotel room? Well we don’t care. DAMN we hate it this week. OK, after a calming green tea (Rob) and bowl of porridge (Mish), we’re willing to admit that it’s not strictly Airbnb’s fault. Really, we just left it way too late. Our plan was to go to San Francisco in…

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Budapest was once two cities  We didn’t know this, and we’re hoping others didn’t know this either – or else this is a pretty crap fact. There was Buda on the west bank of the Danube, and Pest on the east bank. The two cities unified in 1873, but there are still quite obvious differences between the two sides. Buda is very hilly, and as such has some beautiful views. The Castle District (District 1) is in Buda, and it’s packed with historic sights and attractions like the Royal Palace,…

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1: The alphabet is Cyrillic And while that’s apparently no secret, we had no idea until the day before we travelled there (we were a bit behind on implementing our SOPs). And here’s the problem with Cyrillic: you can’t type it into Google Translate and see what the words mean. When you combine that with the fact that no one speaks a word of English, you’ve got two options for the duration of your visit: stay in your apartment, or wing it. We chose to wing it. Which resulted in unintentional…

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1: Not sure if you’re in East Berlin or West Berlin? Can you see tram tracks? If yes, you’re in East Berlin: trams were abolished in West Berlin after reunification, and they invested heavily in underground transport instead. 2: If you don’t speak German, don’t sweat it: most everyday words sound close to English, or are English, or are familiar because both countries have nicked them from a third language. So if you enjoy drinking Kaffee or Tee and eating Kebab Im Brot with Salat while using the Internet…yeah, you…

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