"Me and Poll are loving your Blog, Poll is addicted to the thing but all you seem to be doing is getting pissed, great fun for you and the randoms along the way but not good info!! Put the bottle down and get on with some sober adventures ( you know the ones that happen during the day!! )." --- Extract from an e-mail Karim sent me the other day.

Fair point. And let it not be said that Vinny and I don't respond to the constructive criticism that our fair travel blog receives. That being the case, and every day here in Moscow being like Groundhog Day, allow us to present a retrospective guide to the best and not so best of all that we have seen and done in these last two months.... Consider it, if you will, a biased and completely incomplete guide to only the small area of Europe that we encountered on our journey.

It has been a therapeutic exercise, all the more so as tomorrow we're getting on a train and in a week we'll be in China. A line is being drawn under Europe; We are tending scars, licking wounds, exchanging stories and plasters, and Vinny is set to win the European s***head championship unless I can get his lead of 17 games down by tomorrow night.

So, complete and unabridged, here it is:

Holland (Amsterdam)
Hostel: Flying Pig, Downtown - not cheap but fun, with a late bar downstairs. Full to choking point with young stoners, but the occasional normal person too.
Highlight: The Van Gogh Museum..... Only joking, it's the Red Light District
Lowlight: English Stag Weekends
Return Trip: Once is enough for Amsterdam, and twice is overkill. Third time the charm?


Denmark (Copenhagen)
Hostel: City Hostel - cheap and relatively cheerful, with awful communal showers and dormitories that have up to 62 beds in them. Good for meeting people, but book ahead and insist on staying in one of the 12 bed rooms or you'll never sleep. Nice and central.
Highlight: The women.
Lowlight: The urinal in the shower.
Return Trip: Most certainly. Barmen who don't speak Danish get paid 11 quid an hour.

Sweden (Stockholm)
Hostel: City Backpackers - Very comfortable and clean, free saunas in the morning, free internet and coffee all day. Central.
Highlight: The views.... All of them.
Lowlight: Being ill and miserable.
Return Trip: Scandanavia is worth a lot more time than we could afford. Gothenburg is also great, Malmo I am told is worth a look, and of course there's Norway and Finland. Norway for the fjords, and Finland for Lordi.

Germany (Frankfurt, Berlin, Nurenberg)
Hostel: Circus in Berlin with Karim and Polly - best hostel we've ever stayed in; clean, comfortable, secure, good location, bar downstairs showing big screen football, and they let you drink until it gets light. Plus, if you're quick like Vinny you can steal breakfast.
Highlight: Without a doubt the courtesy and professionalism shown by the German Police during the World Cup. Thumbs up all round.
Lowlight: The English football fans.
Return Trip: Definitely. More time to spend in Munich and Cologne. The Germans are a good craic, surprisingly.

Croatia (Zagreb, Dubrovnik)
Hostels: Ravine Hostel in Zagreb - cheap, clean enough, a bit out of the city but walkable. Nice woman who runs it shouldn't be as trusting with her towels.... Begovic Guesthouse in Dubrovnik - Private room for next to nothing with our own bathroom, in the Lapad peninsular so within walking distance from the Old Town but with it's own beach and bars.
Highlight: Dubrovnik Old Town at sunset.
Lowlight: Zagreb.... A bit rubbish.
Return Trip: Sack off Zagreb and start in Split, then take more time bumming around all that beautiful coastline.

Bosnia and Herzegovena (Mostar, Sarejevo)
Hostels: Omar Laski in Mostar - a room in a house, clean, friendly guy running it, very central.... Some place in Sarejevo we hated so much we forgot what it was called... So I can't really advise you not to go. But don't.
Highlight: The train journey between Mostar and Sarejevo - only around 3 hours, but through some of the most beautiful landscapes we've ever seen.
Lowlight: That cocking guesthouse.
Return Trip: Back to Mostar to see the evolution, then rather than Sarejevo take in some of the smaller towns like Banja Luka.

Bulgaria (Sofia)
Hostel: Hostel Mostel - very good location, clean enough. Nice mix of irritating young gap year types and more random grown ups. Free beer and pasta at seven makes it great for meeting others, and it really is slap bang in the middle of town.
Highlight: Ruining the American in the strip club. (funny)
Lowlight: Ruining the Irish guy in the strip club. (unsettling)
Return Trip: Certainly. We know we didn't do Bulgaria justice, and would like to have got to the east coast where there's supposed to be some great places on the Black Sea. Also we could have looked at Sofia a bit.

Romania (Bucharest, Brasov)
Hostels: Villa Helga in Bucharest - a bit too 'youth hostel' for most tastes, but the good mix of people and friendly staff made it cracking fun. Clean and comfortable, and within a short walk of the action. Rolling Stone Hostel in Brasov - some misleading advertising, not enough showers or toilets but very friendly and clean. The girl working there will be helpful to the point of irritating.
Highlight: Daytrip from Brasov to Sinia.
Lowlight: Spending way too long in Bucharest due to immense hangover.
Return Trip: Bucharest is average but Transylvania is fantastic. Sack off the capital and spend more time exploring the old castles and mountains, before the king gets back and kicks out the tourists.

Hungary (Budapest)
Hostel: Yellow Submarine - the hostel is average but the guy running the place is such a colossal t*** that I would strongly advise nobody to ever go. But particularly if you're Irish, because he's banned all you lot. Apart from that it's the usual crap - locks don't work on doors, little security, but OK.
Highlight: The entire city is beautiful, particularly the Parliament buildings and surrounding.
Lowlight: That p****who runs the hostel.
Return Trip: There's a lot more to see in Hungary than Budapest, and it started so well it would only be polite.

Switzerland (Jona)
Hostel: Chez Shelia - a delightfully appointed luxury apartment ran by the nicest woman in the world. Facilities include all the food in the world.
Highlight: The cracking evening spent with Swiss Family Tuckwell, with the mountains for our view.
Lowlight: Only being able to stay for one night.
Return Trip: Euro 2008 baby!!!

Poland (Krakow)
Hostel: Nathan's Villa - this place gets a lot of stick, but it does exactly what it says on the tin - it's a place for good times, drinking and, if the mood takes, debauchery. All commendable attributes. Just don't plan on getting too much sleep, unless you're Vinny.
Highlight: The international melting pot of the hostel bar.
Lowlight: The international melting pot of the hostel bar.
Return Trip: We didn't spend much time in Poland, and obviously there's lots to see. Auschwitz doesn't really appeal, but there's always Warsaw and Gdansk which are meant to be nice.

Estonia (Tallin)
Hostel: Old House - there are two of these places, down the road from each other. We stayed in the overspill building, which is a school shut for summer. Very nice though, clean and well run. Plus the staff let us sit around all day even when we had checked out, waiting for our bus.
Highlight: The old town square for it's mix of old, new, streakers and good times.
Lowlight: The streaker.
Return Trip: We would have like to spend time in all of the 'New Three' (Lithuania and Latvia too), and get to know them and the differences. Definitely worth a return.

Russia (St Petersburg, Moscow)
Hostels: Sleep Cheap in St Petersburg - a very hard to find (when you see that dark alley just take a deep breath and walk inside, to your left, your right, then up the unmarked stairs and press the unmarked buzzer - good luck!)) but very well positioned hostel. The staff comprises three girls who rotate 35 hour shifts, but all of them are very helpful and thanks to us now offer a free "English to Russian Translation Service" for buying train tickets. No common room as such, but with only two dorms it becomes a very social environment. In Moscow, an overpriced hotel that we don't want to talk about.
Highlight: The nightclubbing with the young of St Petersburg.
Lowlight: Russian techno music.
Return Trip: Try as I might, and with all respect to Russia, I can't think of an occasion when I would return... They just don't make it easy.

And because no retrospective travel guide that Vinny and I make would be complete without some top 5s, here are ours.....

Top 5 Impressive Places:
1 Brasov And Sinai, Romania
2 Mostar, Boznia and Herzegovena
3 Budapest, Hungary
4 Dubrovnik, Croatia
5 Stockholm, Sweden

Top 5 Cities
1 Budapest
2 Copenhagen
3 Frankfurt
4 Berlin
5 St Petersburg

Top 5 Nights Out
1 Bucharest
2 St Petersburg
3 Frankfurt
4 Sofia
5 St Petersburg

Top 5 Hostels (Based only on the hostel itself)
1 Circus, Berlin
2 City Backpackers, Stockholm
3 Rolling Stone, Brasov
4 Hostel Mostel, Sofia
5 Nathan's Villa, Krakow

Top 5 Impressive Sights
1 Fanfest, Frankfurt
2 Parliament Building, Budapest
3 St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow (credit where credit's due)
4 Old Town Square, Krakow
5 People's Palace, Bucharest (not really for good reasons)

Top 5 Strange Sights
1 Christiana, Copenhagen (hippies... thousands of them)
2 Red Light District, Amsterdam (hookers... thousands of them)
3 Boat/Statue, Moscow (a big statue of a big boat)
4 Singing Fountain, Budapest (unexpected)
5 Train driving onto boat, Denmark/Germany (baffling)

When it comes down to it, no matter where you go and what you do, it's the people you meet along the way that make it or break it. That being the case, the following are, in the order that we met them, giants amongst people, legends in their own lunch hour and should be made love to on sight.

Pete the Canadian, Daniel and Laura the Colombians, Max the German, Patrick the American and Bruce Cambell the Australian who's actual name is Corey.

And there we have it. All information was accurate at time of going to press, and now my fingers hurt.