We've just heard from another Cornish team, the Penzance Pirates, that they're in Kazakhstan already. That's mental. We're still back in Budapest. They'll be at the finish in no time, toasting Mongolia with weird moonshine supped from a yak-herder's pelt posing-pouch, and we're still here trying to work out how many euros there are in a florence, which doesn't even exist.
We really are trying to leave, but driving a huge lump of potentially lethal Wazboobleyoid isn't the wisest thing to try after a debilitating birthday do. Which means we have to stick around. Oh well... We manage to wake up after three hours kip to snag the free breakfast, then shuffle over to the campsite's bar to upload some more of this self-indulgent blog nonsense. At around 12 Steve half-jokingly asks if I want a beer. Yes. And so we do absolutely sod-all all day.
While Jeff sleeps, we force more booze down ourselves and go over the events of the previous night, repeatedly watching the videos and giggling like idiots. Then Jeff joins us, and we get gradually more wired there till the evening, missing out on the Turkish baths again, and failing to watch the travelling Belgian minstrels doing a gig in the street. Looks like we could be rounding off our first week away with the first uneventful day of the trip...
Then the Dutch girls get in touch - they're heading to an outdoor club on the banks of the Danube, in the centre of the city. We decide to meet them for a couple of quiet beers. That way we'll be in decent shape for getting back on the road and driving to Romania tomorrow.
After a sensible pizza, we find a bar that's covered in sand, where a Belgian rocker shares with us his love for Black Sabbath. I'm almost asleep, but it's obligatory we plough on with the beer and the fruit polenkas. 'I've totally given up on water,' says Steve, in a rare moment of lucidity. 'It's bollocks.'
It's weird going out at midnight on the back of a mere three hours' kip, especially when you're still an hour's walk down the river bank from the party. But we yomp there and arrive to find this huge fairground-style promenade full of carnival game stands and dancefloor areas. Standing in the middle you can hear a naff house remix of the Beastie Boys in one ear, and naff house remixes of Billie Jean and Nirvana in the other two. It's great being abroad.
We also suffer another barrage of fine eastern European figures, but these are controlled by brains that are young enough to be my daughter. (Is it possible to have a daughter who's just a brain? I'm 32 now and need to start thinking about such things. It would be pretty ace.)
I notice that while all the women are dolled right up, the blokes look like John Travolta and Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction when they get blood on their suits and have to borrow shorts and t-shirts from Quentin Tarantino that make them look like volleyball players. 'You look like a couple of dorks,' he says. I'm happy when I notice this, mainly because it's good to see guys succeeding while wearing what is essentially my wardrobe. Steve's advice: 'Be that dork.'
Before long we realise the Dutch girls aren't here. They're in Rio, the club across the road. This turns out to be the best-club-I-blatantly-hate that I've ever been to. Right on the river, serving G&Ts in real glasses, and about three quid to get in. And populated by that increasingly pleasant and characteristic blend of mellowness and attractiviticity. At one point I suddenly imagine the little man whose job it is to drive my penis. I picture him sitting in a tiny pilot's chair, wailing as he repeatedly smashes his head into the steering wheel.
We spend most of the night pretending to be into house music. And blowing half the trip's budget on Hungarian gin. Turns out the previous evening's conversations went down well with the Dutch girls. They'd bought me a birthday present - a tub of butter - but it had melted. I ask what they did last night, and Tess, the brunette, replies that she'd had 33 things which also relate to what we spoke about yesterday.
Pretty soon Jeff's wowing her with his dancefloor prowess. Which is an improvement on the day before, when he'd had to offer her an apology. 'Sorry,' he'd said in response to a look she gave him. 'When I've had a few beers I get a bit starey.'
The night ends with Steve and I leaving the club with no idea how to get back to the campsite, and we embark on that hour-long walk back up the Danube as the sun comes up. Jeff reappears in time to pack up, which is lucky: we'd concocted a plan to eradicate all traces of him from this trip - wiping out any mention of him from the blog, and replacing him with dwarf-shaped holes in the photos.
Budapest has been a real laugh, and given us an unbelievable weekend, but we really have to leave soon - we've got a race to win. We will exit the city in a happy daze, and for that we've awarded it the Stenalees Surf Club maximum score of five-and-a-half thumbs up.Apologies for the continued decent into tedious hedonism. There's probably plenty of proper adventure to come...
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