This city is smokin'! Plus pink beauty and the little man

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Smoooookin'...

...in many different ways! Number One: very literally. I have never been anywhere that is so full of smoke and smokers everywhere, even pre-ban. But especially post-ban the difference really hits you. It's amazing how quickly you forget just how minging it feels to  wake up reeking like an ashtray! And people sitting in a restaurant smoking cigarettes and even cigars really takes some getting used to! But more importnantly, this city is smokin' HOT! ;) Lots and lots of fun. Yesterday sadly was Rob's leaving do. So just after arriving and getting to know him, he's off already after his six months here. Rubbish! But we had an awesome last night anyways. Started off at Cafe Montmartre, a very cool little jazz cafe type place that doubles as an art gallery and had a dodgy live band playing latin tunes, complete with leather waistcoat and slimy greasy hair. There was a bunch of oldies there completely off their faces (and rockers) trying to get us to dance and one of them seemed to like grinding against anything in a vaguely upright position, whether human or wall or whatever! He took a particular shine to Naz, paying him the compliment of all compliments: that he looks like Elvis! ;)

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So before it all went too crazy we made a swift getaway to Jam Pub, on the Buda side of town. This place really took me by surprise: on a wednesday night it was rammed! An American-style karaoke bar! And we're not talking little Japanese private booths where people sing hideoulsy bad and have a bit of a laugh about it, but full on singing to a massively packed big bar of people! So most of the singing was actually pretty decent and there were clearly some people on stage who felt like they'd missed out on their potential careers in show biz!! We got in there with our own (slightly less professional!) rendition of the usual classics: a bit of Bryan, a bit of Bon Jon and some Wonderwall! It was pretty funny towards the end, there was only two rival factions left standing (we'd managed to scare everyone else off with our singing!), one some hardcore Hungarians and the other us. So it was like a game of tug-o-war. One cheesy English tune, followed by a growling Hungarian rock song, followed by English cheese etc...except sadly I think they won - they got the last song!:)

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Pink beauty and the little man

Pink beauty is, of course, my beautiful new bike, which has now been pimped up and I'm cruising around on it. Hilarity of the day was trying to explain to the security guards at work that I wanted to park it in the garage...of course they had no English whatsoever! At least I knew the word for bike, and with a lot of gestures we got there in the end. But trying to figure out where the entrance to the garage was was not so easy...so I ended up going to the garage around the corner, which turns out was in a building that's still under construction. The little Hungarian security man thought I was loopy when I showed up wheeling my bike in. There were long tirades of some sort, no idea what he was saying,somehow managed to catch the drift that the garage wasn't ready. I'd clearly come to the wrong place! He was very sweet about it though.. :) In the end I found it and was told to park my bike around the corner...well pointed to the particular corner...which led me to a carwash!! So I thought I'd got it all wrong again, but nope, that's where the bike stand was- after crossing a lake of suds and squeezing past the car being washed I could finally lock up my bike! Pretty funny.

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And then as I looked out of the window this afternnon - snow!!!!! Big fat white flakes of snow!!! What's up with that?! It's nearly April!