Category: Europe

Beating the January Blues with a Week in Prague

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As January 1st 2018 approached, I commented to Mitch that for the past three years we’ve always booked a flight to somewhere on New Year’s Day. Often in a tired state, we book an adventure for later in the year or, sometimes, about three weeks time. We joked that we should make it a tradition. So, this year we continued the trend. What better way to perk up January than book a flight for a week’s holiday? I say holiday; we were working but also holiday-ing. We booked to go for one week to beat the January blues. There was …

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The Highs of Travelling in Low Season

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In January this year, Mitch and I packed our bags and flew to Albania. Why would we do that? Low season: it’s cold, places aren’t open, cities lack atmosphere, and hostels are practically empty. All these things are true. We had days where it was bitterly cold we couldn’t stay outside long, days we were rained in, restaurants closed, places where buses didn’t go to at this time of year, so many hotel/hostel owners saying, “Come back in July! You can see this, this and this.” I would love to go back to all the places in the summer. You know …

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Waving Goodbye To Warsaw And Europe

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Warsaw. We spent a lot of time here in small chunks but I still feel like I didn’t really see it. It was the city we got picked up in for our numerous Angloville programmes. The day before the programme we had a complementary walking tour of the city, participating in three programmes meant three tours. “Why go on three?” I hear you cry, well, it’s nice to refresh your memory, but also, they gave us free lunch afterwards and as budget travellers, we would never say no to free lunch. It was a great opportunity to meet fellow volunteers before the programme …

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Krakow: History, Food And Friends

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We were drastically running out of money but had one week off inbetween our Angloville courses. There were so many places in Poland we wanted to visit, but knew with limited time and money there was one place which was top of the list: Krakow. We found a super cheap hostel in a great location and settled there for the week. It wasn’t the liveliest of hostels but that wasn’t a problem as we managed a mini Angloville reunion.

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Farming & Family Life in Slovakia

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It had always been our intention on our trip to do some work/volunteering as we travelled. It’s not only a great way to save money and elongate the trip, but also a wonderful way to meet people and immerse ourselves in the culture. Unfortunately, due to travelling in low season, the opportunities were far between. We had planned another week’s worth of English teaching in Poland due to start in April but before then we were crossing Slovakia from Hungary. We took this opportunity to try our luck on help exhange once more.

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Halušky, Hubert and A Happy Day in Bratislava

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We actually hadn’t planned on going to Bratislava. We were going to leave Debrecen and go straight to Help X farm work we had lined up in a small place in Slovakia. However, the couple we were going to work for/with asked us if we could postpone it a couple of days. We didn’t mind, and so headed to Slovakia’s capital for two nights and one full day. As much as we enjoyed our time in Debrecen, we were looking forward to heading to a busy city and perhaps having a night out. We arrived in Bratislava and checked into …

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