Szombethely

  Szombathely, Hungary
Monday, July 28, 2008

Once in Szombathely the others headed off to the congress venue (usually the local university and dormitory) while I set about finding my hotel. For a change I'd actually booked accommodation so it was just a matter of hopping into a taxi and hoping it wasn't too far away.


It turned out to be on the outskirts of town but not really too far away. Excellent room, price is ok. When I say the outskirts I really do mean the outskirts... right by the hotel is the Szombathely sign with a red line through it.

From my hotel I got some directions to the uni and off I went. What interested me on the way were the hotels that I passed. Going by google there only seemed to be three hotels in the town but I passed several on the way in, all of which were about the same standard as mine, closer to the city and cheaper. Google might be great for most searches but it's crap when it comes to hotels. No matter how I searched it was always the same three hotels showing up. It's bordering on a scam. Either they're paying for their placement to the detriment of google giving a true indication of the hotel situation, or they've done something devious within their webpage to generate a high search engine placement. Either way it makes it just about impossible to use google to reliably find good, reasonably priced hotels. Inevitably the ones that show up are the biggest and the most expensive.



This one looks pretty good... how come it didn't make it into google? Surely they've got some sort of webpage or someone's written about them?

Nice park on the way into town.

I got lost on my way to the uni. Normally it would be easy to ask directions as the word university is similar in most European languages... except Hungarian really isn't a European language and belongs to a completely different language group.

Luckily the word for university was one of the few words I happened to have learnt - egyetem. Asking people whether they spoke English or German was most likely to have them running in the other direction.


As to be expected in central Europe there are plenty of interesting buildings.






I often complain about people going to these events and only talking to people they know from previous events... Well, after running into a Hungarian I knew from Florence, a Hawaiian whom I knew from the IJK in Vietnam and one of the local organisers from Hanoi who had given me a lift on the back of her motor-scooter... all within the first couple of minutes, it's easy to see how people spend a lot of time chatting to people they only get to see once every couple of years.

It was really strange to see the fellow from Hungary as he hadn't even signed up for the IJK... he just happened to live in the same city! Very funny bloke. Lots of jokes... I can see that this week will be a continuation of the last.

The program of the IJK had already started as I actually turned up a day late. There was supposed to be an aligatorejo in the courtyard... well, maybe there was but I'm not too sure that I found the right place so I tried to start my own. For those not in the know, the aligatorejo is a place where people go to speak not Esperanto and not their native language.
This fellow spoke Russian but was actually Catalan... unfortunately at my first chance to speak Catalan... I completely forgot everything I knew.
Then along came this Russian and things were a bit easier.


The cafe/pub near the uni... I suspect this won't be the last time I pass by here.

Somehow with all the travel I'd forgotten to eat. I finally got something to eat at 3 in the morning. No doubt at the only place where food is still available on a Monday morning - but luckily I have a contact that knows the town inside out. I think by the time I did eat it had been 50 hours... not counting the beers. But I wasn't even hungry. Maybe that's what stops me from turning into a bowling ball.