The Budapest Circus – It’s Better Than TV

Remember, parents out there. If you don’t bring your kids to the circus, don’t buy them a bicycle or don’t allow them to play videogames, they’ll grow up to ride a unicycle, make videogames and join the circus.

I’m really more familiar with theatrical circuses; the modern Cirque du Soleil and similar story-driven circuses. This might be the first time I’m actually at the equivalent of the Big Top and I love it.

Budapest Circus
The Budapest Circus

I think there are different shows through the year but the circus is a permanent fixture where the most expensive tickets go for something like US$20. It was Children’s Day when I went but I still managed to get seats 4 rows from the front.

Budapest Circus
Because the circus is all fancy

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A Helsinki Day Trip

Helsinki was a transit stop and it so happened a friend was passing by en route to Singapore the same day I’d be there so we got to wander around a bit. My main grouse about the city is that there’s not a whole lot to do rather than hang out on someone’s lawn and there are surely less expensive places in the world to chill out.

How expensive is it? While waiting for said friend, I started practicing a bit of contact juggling at the railway station beside some guy in a Darth Vader mask. Soon some kids started crowding and then I had more people talking to me. I threw down my cap for the heck of it and when the friend showed up, I THOUGHT I had enough for a meal at McDonald’s.

Close but no.

mcMoney
mcMoney

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Tallinn, Estonia – Castles, Towers and a McCafe

Ye Olde McDonald’s

I didn’t feel Helsinki was that exciting so I hopped on a cruise to Tallinn in Estonia to spend the night. The hostel was half the price, cleaner, less crowded and more comfortable than the one I stayed at the day after in Helsinki and the old town, a UNESCO World Heritage site by the way, looked from a completely different age.

Tallinn, Estonia
Ye Olde Alleyway

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Europe.

Tourist Photo
Tourist Photo of Tallinn, Estonia.

Ah, the best laid plans. There’s probably a moral to all of this and I think it might be that cookies sometimes have raisins. Or something along those lines.

I had planned for months a long trip through South America where I’d enrol in a Spanish school, then travel around for a bit and maybe take a cruise down to the South Pole through Argentina. While researching for a project, I chanced upon archeology field trips to the middle of nowhere which sounds like a great learning experience. Ok, who am I kidding, it sounds like an adventure so here I am in Europe.

I’ve really been avoiding Europe because it’s generally expensive but Central/Eastern Europe seems affordable enough so hopefully it wouldn’t be too bad and maybe I’d have money leftover for South America after all. At the very least, the budget flights and trains seem to be affordable.

I’m booking flights as I go along but the flights I do have are Singapore to Helsinki, then Helsinki to Budapest and finally Amsterdam to Singapore. I’ll talk more about my first detour to Estonia in the next post.

Til then!

 

Odaiba – A Giant Robot, Creepy Amusement Park Rides and the Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty
Welcome to New New York

Because Odaiba is kind of like New York, you can find the Statue of Liberty there. By ‘kind of’, I mean it’s beside the sea, there’s a McDonald’s and there are skyscrapers.

Unlike New York which is constantly under threat from the likes of King Kong however, there’s a giant gundam in Odaiba that’s watching out for its fair citizens so it’s very safe.

gundam
No worries, fair citizens.

Jokes aside, there’s an unexpectedly fun indoor amusement center called SEGA Joypolis around the corner that stars more than the famous blue hedgehog. Think of it as a high-tech amusement arcade where instead of say, punching buttons on a joypad in a track-and-field type game, you’re literally made to run on a treadmill and instead of merely racing in a Wipeout-type of game, you’re put in the cockpit on some machine that literally makes you go through the spin cycle over and over and over and over.

There are no photos of that evidently. Continue reading →