Full and filthy

I am so full. You know the kind of full where you stuff yourself beyond your stomach's capacity? Where you can feel the food backlogged all the way up to your chest, almost right up to your neck, so that you feel if the food doesn't manage to find a way into your stomach somehow then at any moment - any moment now - all that food might be gurged back up again? I feel, in essence, like a foie gras duck.

It was the breakfast that did it.

For about a week (more?) now, I've been living off bread rolls (with various, unexciting fillings) and fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner (the bread and cheese for lunch and dinner stolen from the hostel breakfast buffet). So imagine the state of delirious, wide-eyed excitement I was in when I went down to breakfast this morning to find a veritable feast of culinary delights laid out on a long table before me. Oh, I wasn't dreaming, nor hallucinating under the duress of hunger. This food was real: grilled and seasoned aubergine and capsicum; scrambled eggs; three kinds of cheese; a variety of rye breads and cereals; grapes and apples; orange juice; a variety of hot drinks, cookies and cakes...

It was all I could do to stop myself from impatiently shoving everyone aside and piling as much food onto my plate as possible. Exercising all the self-restraint I could muster, I gradually filled my plate (only a close observer would have noticed my slightly shaking hands, the maniacal glint in my eyes...) - not conspicuously so - and walked over to an empty table at an almost leisurely pace, before devouring what was on my plate. It was then, I am sad to say, that the cords of my self-restraint snapped and I went back for seconds, thirds, fourths - even fifths!- before I had even finished what was on my plate. I was afraid, you see, that some of the food would run out before I had a chance to nab some! As it turned out, my fears were unfounded, as the moment a dish ran out it was promptly topped back up again by an angel from the kitchen. Oh, blessed heaven above - an overflowing, infinite cornucopia of food, food, food!

It was clearly more than I could handle.

So now I sit and wait for the food to digest beofe I'm physically able to go out and wander through the red-roofed Old Town of seaside Piran (Slovenia). I was hoping to go for a swim today, but the weather isn't the best and I'd be sure to vomit anyway.

Back in Budapest I swam - or bathed, rather - at one of the many thermal bath complexes in the city. This one - from both the outside and the inner courtyard - looked more like a Baroque (Rennaissance? I can never tell the difference) royal residency than a public bath. Highlight of the day (not breasts, I'm afraid. There were none to be seen except those of the male variety and I did see some whoppers, which to be fair, were highly fascinating in and of themselves): one of the outdoor baths was a bath within a bath within a bath (hello Baudrillard). The most inner bath was a small spa with a variety of massage jets. The most outer bath was obviously the largest, more pool-like, but with random powerful jets that shot straight up from the floor of the bath so you could lean all your weight right into it as though you were sitting in a (vibrating) chair. the most exciting bath, however, was the middle one. From afar it looked perfectly ordinary - merely a ring of calm blue water separating the inner and outermost baths. Try to traverse between the two however, and you get sucked into the middle bath and carried all the way around and around and around by what I can only guess are super-powerful jets! You could just sit there, legs afloat, and be sped around the whirlpool. Such fun! Until too many people get in and some of the weightier bathers aren't carried around as quickly as the others and you smack into them, full-bodied (there's no way of stopping!) and a pile-up inevitably ensues. Such fun.

The water in all the baths are supplied by the hot springs that occur naturally in Budapest and the minerals in the water are supposed to help cure various aches and ailments (although they do nothing for period pain, as I unfortunately discovered...). I did feel good afterwards. Clean. No need for a shower (interesting how one's personal hygiene drops a level or five whilst backpacking...).

Budapest in general: I love the bigness and the unkemptness of it (and the fact that the sun was shining when I was there). I was disappointed that it wasn't as 'exotic' (or cheap!) as I was led to believe it was (two and a half years and still these naive notions!!!).

Zagreb, Croatia was my next stop. Small for a capital city. Lovely Old Town with some funky pedestrian streets and cafes (an observation: the Croats are way funkier than the Hungarians. Generally speaking). If Zagreb was small, then Ljubljana was miniature. The capital of Slovenia has nonetheless, I thought, an even lovelier Old Town than Zagreb.

I headed north-west to Bled next, a town situated on the idyllic Lake Bled, with water more blue than Budapest's thermal baths. Indeed this water proved too tempting to resist. Halfway through my lap around the lake I found a secluded spot on the grounds of a private villa. Largely obscured by a sloping bank and a thicket of trees, I stripped off and went for a quick dip. La-la-lovely.

After two days in Bled I now find myself in Piran (belly settled, though still quite full). The sun seems to be making intermittent appearances through the clouds and it's deceptively warm. I might be optimistic and grab a towel and my bathers on the way out (no private spot for a secret nudie swim here).

Before I do, let me relate two curious and not entirely dissimilar incidents that have occurred of late:

1. Budapest. I was standing on the Elizabeth Bridge pulling my camera out of my bag to take a pic of the Danube, when a middle-aged man, evidently a tourist from somewhere else in Eastern Europe, approached me and started gesturing to me emphatically. Confused, I stepped back. He continued gesturing and moving closer. I thought perhaps he was offering to take a photo of me with my camera. When I indicated, no, I didn't want a photo of myself, he only came closer, put his arm around my shoulders and pointed to a woman standing in front of us - presumably his partner - wielding a camera. More confusion. He wants a photo with me? Evidently. He stood there, arm around my shoulders, grinning broadly at the camera which his partner willingly snapped away at, while I stood eyebrows furrowed, utterly confused, looking from the man to the woman to the camera she pointed at me, my own camera held limply in one of my hands at chest height. I'm sure it made for a peculiar shot.... Picture taken, they backed away. "Thank you, thank you!" the man said in heavily accented, struggling English. "You look very nice!" Okay...

2. Ljubljana. Sitting on the steps of a church, upon which the sun was shining, reading my book (Lolita). I had just finished my lunch (a roll with cheese - stolen from that morning's breakfast - and avocado, washed down with tap water acquired from the hostel showers. A plague on hostels with no kitchen!). A Slovenian man appoaches me and asks if he can take a photo of me! Confusion, suspicion. "Why?" I ask. "I'm a photographer," he explains timidly. After pressing him for what he planned to do with the photo, I let him take it. What do I care what he does with it, after all? He showed me the picture - very National Geographic.

It occurred to me that maybe these people think I'm some sort of gypsy-type character: a dark-skinned girl in Eastern Europe whose clothes look a little worse for wear, not to mention her hair and general levels of cleanliness and personal hygiene (which tend to deteriorate to even worse levels than mentioned above when you're travelling alone...).

And Rae - on both occasions I was wearing The Earrings...