Long Haul Flights & Riverside Sights

Saturday night saw the team members congregating in Perth, ready for a long journey to Budapest!

Qantas, reliable as always, delivered the Melbournians to Perth on time, and Virgin, our singular Sydney-sider. Unfortunately, Wen’s flight from Brisbane was delayed by 3 hours, with an expected arrival time in Perth… 15 minutes after our international flight’s departure. We’ll be catching up with him and Deputy Leader Andrew tomorrow, but in the meantime we’re trying to replace Wen’s iconic sarcastic jokes with (rather disappointing) dad jokes, such as ‘without my glasses I’d walk into so many poles. Actually, I’d walk into more in Warsaw.’ *laughter track*

The flight to Doha came with a first for many – none of us had ever had to climb stairs on a plane to reach our seats before! Top deck seating had it’s own quirks, such as an absence of toilet queues, and a speedy disembarking at Doha through an upper floor airbridge. Doha itself was an interesting stop – the heat and humidity had most of us convinced we were swimming through the air. After another five hours of flying, we were greeted with some pleasant weather in Budapest – finally!

Absolutely exhausted after almost 20 hours of travelling, (and for some of us, 20 hours without sleep!) we of course decided that that the best thing to do was go for an hour-long walk to the river Danu.

As you can see, our sleep deprived photography leaves a lot to be desired, with two team members out of the frame (and one outside of the country), but rest assured – we don’t lose team members *that* fast!

The walk let us truly appreciate Hungary’s famous architecture, with several interesting sights both classical and modern.

However, after the walk we were knackered, so we decided to return to the hotel by means of metro.

With tomorrow morning bringing the first of several training exams (and the last of the team members) we were well and truly ready to set down our bags and wind down for the day – we’re all looking forward to the first decent sleep in a while. Hopefully we can wake up in time for our exam!