Being Hungry in Hungary

If you were to look at the calendar you'd read a date in late July 2011. Perhaps you're reading this blog a couple of days late. Perhaps it's August. Perhaps we're back now, safe and sound, drinking cups of cocoa reading this aloud. Perhaps it's even September. Regardless... If you live in the Northern half of the world, this time is apparently summer.

I was born in England. I have lived most of my life time in the country. I'm used to living under skies usually the colour of grey. I'm used to it raining. I'm used to it being cold. I'm used it to living in a country famous for being shitty weather wise. And as an Englishmen abroad, I am now completely used to being unable to complain about other people's weather conditions due to the appaling nature of my own.

But I'm done with it. I'm very annoyed. It's gone beyond me. It might be the cramped condition, it might be the fact that whenever I sit down I have to sit in one space, and one space only, unable to move my limbs at all once they're locked in place. It might be the lack of sleep or the reality that when I'm sleeping I'm either upright in a car seat, or on a stone cold floor shielding by thin pieces of fabric. It might be all of these things that explains that I'm pissed about it being wet. I don't care that bad weather is one of our greatest exports. I don't care if it's just one of those weeks. That doesn't mean I should like it when we're near enough 1800 miles from home, in Eastern Europe, in Summer, on holiday, and it's raining. It's cold. It's grey. It's freakin' miserable.

I came on this trip for a couple of reasons. I wanted adventure. I wanted to drive across as many countries as possible to update my map status on Facebook and desperately add to my 13%. I wanted to raise money for charity. But all those reasons are fairly superficial. The latter especially. Really, the only real reason I did this trip was... to tan. I came to escape the British summer that has plagued our little island for something like the last five years.

Now, if I wanted to camp in rainy weather, drenched head to toe, then I would have gone to the Lake District. It's pleasant. Nice to look at. But the chances of you enjoying it in sunshine are like winning the Bingo down at your nearest nursing home. Unlikely. And even if you do so you have to enjoy it with a mass of pensioners around you.

So get us to the East as quickly as possible. There's a tan to be had. And I want to be Golden Brown, the texture of sun

Written in jest. Well mostly.