eastern bloc & chrimbo parties

A scene from Eurotrip, when the four American backpackers arrive in Bratislava. I'd say it looks pretty grim. Just how i like it..

It's silly season like I've never seen it in these parts.

By parts, I mean London, not my genitalia. In case you needed the clarification.

My survival tactics by ensuring I spend ample time in a pub, astride a roaring fire, while clutching a glass of the mulled stuff, is being actioned.

And Christmas parties are but whoring themselves in. Some of them are awesome - involving champagne and banter (like with my waywardly British colleagues); the others are a bit like sitting in a padded room while smiling really really widely at my counterparts. (Journalists, clients....)

Either way. There's a pattern. When England celebrates Christmas, it involves:
1) Booze
2) Warm booze

And fuckloads of it.

For nights on end. Jesus and I haven't even been Christmas shopping yet or had time to pluck my eyebrows.

However!

The Brit and I have organised a little pre-Christmas getaway. Finding a quick and cheap[ish] deal on lastminute.com is always, yes, a bit of a mission, but once it's in the bag, the beautiful mass of continental Europe only lies...mere suburbs away.

We were thinking a bit of 'Eastern Europe,' a bit of 'Christmas market,' a bit of 'shitloads of snow,' a bit of 'strange capital of an Eastern Bloc country.'

Well.

We wanted to go to Budapest. No cheap flights, except out of Luton, which is an airport closer to the Arctic Circle than London itself.

Prague had the same deal.

So I found a deal with Austrian Airlines, out of Heathrow, to Vienna. Gluhwein and schnitzel, yes please.
Baroque architecture, birthplace of Mozart. A new country.

But that's not all. An hour away, by train, we'll head to Bratislava for the night.

Jesus Christ, I'm going to Slovakia.

We'll probably end up in some Eastern Bloc Soviet bar, drinking absinthe with a clutch of rioting ex-Soviet factory workers who escaped Chernobyl. Or at least that's the first thing that comes to mind after watching Eurotrip.

(Remember that? Scotty doesn't know Scotty doesn't know, don't tell Scotty....)

Can't wait. The furtherest I've ventured into Eastern Europe is the communist side of Berlin.