By happy coincidence, I was Budapest for their national holiday - St Stephens day. Stephen was the first king of Hungary and is considered to be the man who unified the country for the first time. He ruled from 955 ad and as seems to be the case in Hungary, the peace didn't last long. King Stephen was killed in battle and a while later his body was exhumed. 'Miracously' they found that his right arm was perfectly preserved, so they chopped it in to 3 parts and gave Vienna and Bratislava a piece and kept the fist for the people of Hungary.
History lesson over...
The national holiday is huge! It puts New Zealands Waitangi day to shame. In the morning there are parades and military processions in Heroes Square, then at midday they did a floating parade with the Military vessels and included an original WWI boat! In the afternoon they have a holy procession to St Stephens Bascillica and a huge mass is conducted. After this they play music and have street stalls etc until the MASSIVE fireworks display at around 9pm.
It is altogether a busy day but a brilliant spectacular and I'm so lucky to have experienced it. There is a real sense of Patriotiscm and National pride which is probably partly due to the previous oppressive regimes that controlled Hungary but I get the feeling that dispute the history these people are really proud to be Hungarian.

After Budapest, I was going to go to Krakow, Poland. However, after looking into the actual journey of 15 hours and 5 changes, I decided against that and headed off to Munich. I had heard great things about Munich and was really looking forward to exploring the city and it's surrounds. I had 2 sights I particularly wanted to experience, Dachau and Neuschwannstein - the castle that inspired Walt Disney. My first day in Munich was spent exploring the city and enjoying the orderly, clean environment that the german generate. Having ventured out the night I arrived with my new friend for a dinner and a beer at the Augustiner Biergarten, (where the beer is fantastic!) we decided to head to the Hofbrau haus the next night. After making more friends at the Hofbrau haus and getting back to the hostel around 5am, you can safely assume that the next day was a bit of a write off. I was planning on visiting the castle and boarded the train to Fussen just after lunch. Arriving in Fussen at around 3pm, I checked with the tourist office to fond out when an where the buses to Neuschwannstein leave. I was politely informed that all buses were booked up and to try again tomorrow morning! Considering I had just spent 1 hr on a train and 1 hr on a bus just to get to Fussen, I figured I may as well have a look around. It is a beautiful old town and while walking up to the city Walls it promptly rained on me. It was fair to say that my day was not going well. I spent about 2 hrs looking around then headed back to Munich. The train service, unknown to me, had implemented some route changes and I proceded to cometely miss my change. This meant having to for 50 mins at one of the more rural stations and it appears Bavaria has some VERY rural smells in the smaller towns!
The next day was much more successful. Richard and I went on a tour to Dachau, the first of the Nazi concentration camps. It was an amazing, highly insightful tour which I would reccommend to anyone! After a few hours at Dachau, we returned to Munich and went for lunch at the Biergarten in the English Garden. Ironically the biergarten is located next to the Chinese Tower. This came in handy as it absolutely bucketed down for a good 20 mins and the whole biergarten sought shelter under the tower.
Today, I have set off for Strasbourg and will let you know how it goes.