It's 4.15am and I have just made the hideous mistake of waking up. This means I cannot get back to sleep, so the sensible thing to do appears to be getting up and doing something else.

I am currently in Budapest in Hungary. I think that without question this is the most beautiful city I have been to so far on my trip, Tallinn was quaint and beautiful in a crumbling kind of way, but Budapest has the lasting memory of the Hapsburgs in the form of spectacular architecture just about everywhere. Got to love those Austrians and their money.

So, in the last few weeks I started in Russia, then moved on to Finland (there was a blizzard in Helsinki while I was there but I think the locals would refer to it as a slight autumn storm - snow was hitting my face from all directions and it stung!), hopped a boat to Estonia and Tallinn, the medieval city, journeyed on to Riga in Latvia where I went on a bobsled, cool runnings style - 110km/hr and it was terrifying! I was glad that the driver was part of the Latvian Olympic team... After Riga I continued in the Baltics to Vilnius in Lithuania. And now I am in Hungary, tomorrow I go to Prague.

I have so many stories and experiences to relate that I don't quite know where to start. In Finland my tall, elegant Russian room-mate mimicked a kangaroo, and the beaches were covered in snow. Tallinn's old town can be walked around in a day, it is so small. The streets are all cobblestone and winding, you can get lost very easily if you aren't paying attention - unfortunately I wasn't so I saw a lot more cobblestone streets than previously planned. I went to the opera in Estonia, unfortunately it was entirely in Estonian and didn't have subtitles. I still enjoyed it though. Riga is a city of guilds, a trade city. It has the undelible mark of merchants from many countries over the centuries - there is even an English church built by the English merchants so they could feel at home. These cities are all so very old, and slowly extricating themselves from the dark mark of soviet rule. Over the centuries everyone has wanted to control this part of the world, and it is a great relief to me that they are finally ruling themselves.

Budapest and Hungary have interesting stories to tell, I just wish I knew more of them. Hungary has a few points to be told. Every revolution they have ever had has been crushed, and every war they have joined has been on the losing side. They currently have a difficult political situation with the government. I don't really know enough to take sides but I can feel the anger whenever locals talk about the current administration. Recently was the 50th anniversary of a peaceful demonstration against the Soviets in Budapest during which the soviets fired into the unarmed and mostly female crowd killing 150 people and leading to one of Hungary's failed revolutions. The people of Budapest (a measly 300,000 of them or so) who wished to congregate at the location of this significant part of recent Hungarian history were disappointed as the government decided not to let them into the square, and the police used tear gas and violence on the mostly peaceful crowd. It seems a bit odd that a peaceful rememberence of their history resulted in a near repetition of that day 50 years later. Apart from politics, I quite like the story of poor old St. Gellert who the pagan Hungarians got tired of listening to, so put him in a spiked barrell and rolled him down the hill into the Danube. Not a very pleasant way to go, but these days half the city is named after him so he didn't do too badly from it. I went to the Gellert Bath House yesterday and soaked in the warm and wonderful thermal waters. Budapest is famed for it's baths and thermal springs, and the water is considered to be medicinal. The doctors prescribe spending time in the thermal waters to patients which gives them free access. I really think we need to consider taking on this attitude towards healing in Australia, that and find some thermal springs to build bath houses around.

I trust you are all well, and I will see you again soon.

Take care,

Love Sarah