Recently downtown I found a historical building I had no idea existed near Banwoldang where I am always wandering around. Near the end of Herbal Street I started seeing new signs for a historical landmark that were not there previously. As I had never heard or seen of this place I followed the signsThere is a small alleyway off the street that will lead you thru the narrow paths zig zagging till you reach the location. Look out for the sign markers and don't get ...

One of the places I most wanted to visit in Hungary was the town of Pecs (pronounced Pesh) which is a three hour train ride south of Budapest near the Croatian border. This town is important as it was both a Roman and Turkish city and has Unesco protection today due to the heritage that survivesI keep waking up at 3am and had the choice of the 7.45 or 9.45 train to Pecs. The train is every two hours and will take three hours so I decided to take the 7.45 since I ...

Thurs and Fri I signed up to do a two half day Pre Celta Language Awareness course before the main 4 wk Celta begins on Monday. This is a grammar crash course for those that have had no formal training.Even though I speak English, have professional designations, and have had articles published, I have had no formal training in English grammar and sentence structure (as have most native speakers of English). Often foreign students have better grammar training than...

Today was my first full day in Budapest and I wanted to squeeze in some day trips before I became busy with my coursework which was to begin on Monday. I wanted to visit the town of Eger (pronounced egg-ehre) two hours north east of Budapest which has the northernmost surviving minaret in Europe from Ottoman timesI had the guy at the hostel write down in Hungarian how to buy the ticket I wanted which is what I had done on my last trip in 2007. There are two train...

After the 9 hour flight from Seoul to Doha we arrived 4am local time. I still had a 3.5hr layover to my connection to Budapest. Fortunately the duty free shops were still open at this hour.Qatar markets itself as the worlds 'five star airline' but their hub Doha airport was not. There were only a few computers for free internet use and it wasn't worth waiting. The washrooms were certainly not 'five star' and more like something from a highway truck stopAt the hub...