I read 83 books in 2012, so whittling it down to 10 has proved quite hard work. A few stinkers aside, it’s been a good year. So I’ve had to be pretty ruthless, and to make the final cut I decided to rule out any re-reads - the final list is just books I’ve read for the first time in 2012. So that’s goodbye to Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, and Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, all books I’ve picked up for the second time this year.

10. J.G. Ballard - The Drowned World

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for a good dystopia. Post-apocalyptic? Check. Plausible? Check. Slightly frightening? Check. I’ve read a few Ballards this year, but for me this one came out on top, and happily, Santa brought me The Drought so I’ll be onto that one next!

9. Ngugi wa Thiong’o - A Grain of Wheat

This tells the story of Kenya in the run-up to its independence, and how the lives of the key characters were changed irrevocably in the events leading up to it. Its slips and trips in time and narrator can take a little getting used to but definitely worth the effort.

8. Cormac McCarthy - The Border Trilogy

Cheating a bit here I know as it’s really three books not one, but doesn’t make sense to consider them separately in my opinion. We did the first volume, All The Pretty Horses, for our book club, and being as I’d bought the trilogy I decided to continue and read them all. The language is exquisite throughout, if a little challenging, and McCarthy is able to transmit the sense of aloneness and desolateness in a way I’ve not really come across before. The only reason this isn’t higher in the list is that a good 150 pages could have been chopped from the middle volume with no real effect, and that ended up letting the side down a bit.

7. Ivo Andric - The Bridge Over the Drina (trans Lovett. F. Edwards)

One of my long term ambitions is to read at least one work by every laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, hence my picking up of this work by Ivo Andric, who won in 1961. Not really a novel, more a collection of episodes around a theme (the bridge), or even potentially a biography of the bridge, from its building to its eventual destruction.

6. John Steinbeck - East of Eden

I find Steinbeck incredibly inconsistent as a writer. At his best, he writes works I would consider among my favourites ever (The Grapes of Wrath) and at his worst he writes thinly-veiled parables, lacking in depth and leaving the reader wanting (Of Mice and Men, The Pearl). Happily, then, East of Eden is among the former. It took me a while to get into but once I had I couldn’t put it down. The scope is epic and the cast of characters wide, but Steinbeck is able to carry it off with spectacular results.

5. Assia Djebar - The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry (trans. Tegan Raleigh)

I didn’t know much about Assia Djebar prior to picking this book up aside from the fact that everyone seemed to be talking about her as a potential candidate for the Nobel, so when I saw this available in my local library I thought I’d give it a go. This is short stories around two connecting themes - the female experience in Algeria, and the disconnection between Algeria and its former colonial master France, where many Algerians now live. I cried at least once.

4. Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savannah

I read Things Fall Apart for the first time this year and was a little disappointed, and almost didn’t pick this novel up. Happily I changed my mind, as in my opinion this volume is superior. Whilst Things Fall Apart speaks of old times in the beginnings of colonialism, this novel is about contemporary African politics and the endemic corruption within the corridors of power. It is pacey and exciting, drawing the characters together for a climatic conclusion.

3. Olga Tokarczuk - Primeval and Other Times (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

I finished reading this a few days after receiving the news that the person who recommended it to me had died, which made it a bittersweet experience as I know he would have enjoyed hearing about how much I loved it. It recounts the passage of time in a small Polish village from 1914 to the present day in a series of snapshots, drawing on myth and magical realism, in a way that is both compelling and evocative. Pretty sure I cried at this one too.

=1. Leo Tolstoy - War And Peace (trans. Rosemary Edwards)

=1. Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

I tried, really hard. But I just couldn’t do it. These two books are impossible to compare; the only thing they have in common is the page count, both around 1500 pages, and I guess out of necessity the scope of the novels and the size of the character list, which in both can be a little difficult to follow if you’re not concentrating.

War and Peace is not a million miles away from what it sounds like - following the lives of a few families during times of war and peace in the age of the Napoleonic wars. During the course of the novel their lives become intertwined and they begin to depend on each other for survival when the French invade Russia. It was a challenge I’d been meaning to take on for a long time, and I actually took a week off work in January to complete it - one of the best holidays I’ve ever had!

A Suitable Boy tells the story of Lata, a young Indian girl of marriageable age, and her mother’s attempts to get her married off to the eponymous suitable boy. It also has a lot to say about the state of post-Independence India and the politics of the time, especially the tensions between Hindus and Muslims, but not in a dry or uninteresting way, and I found it utterly fascinating. Three front-runners emerge for Lata’s hand, and the story climaxes with her eventual decision - which I found somewhat startling to begin with! It made sense once I’d thought about it a bit, and I think it’s fair to say that I will never properly stop thinking about this wonderful novel.

Finding Soutbek is the first novel from Karen Jennings, a South African author who has previously been known for her prize-winning short stories according to her author biography. She’s a new discovery for me, and a welcome one.

In the blurb, Holland Park Press describe the novel as “a thought-provoking tale of modern South Africa”, and it’s hard to argue with that. Post-apartheid, the small town of Soutbek remains divided, no longer by barriers of race but of wealth and education. The story centres around Pieter Fortuin, the mayor of Soutbek, and his wife Anna. We start the story in the present, where we see Pieter, who has worked hard to raise himself and his family out of poverty, jealously protecting what he has won. He and his family live in the ‘lower town’, preserve of those with money and power. His contrast is provided by his nephew Willem, who lives in the ‘upper town’, where inhabitants live hand to mouth and are at the mercy of events outside their control.

The book opens with such an event, two in fact, fire and floods which destroy much of the upper town. It falls to Pieter as mayor to take action on behalf of the homeless, but there are other things on his mind. We start to go back in time, both to Pieter’s own past (where it’s revealed quite how ruthless he can be) and to the more distant past, as we hear of the history of Soutbek which Pieter and his colleague Professor Pearson are writing.

They describe old Soutbek as something of a utopia where all races and tribes are able to live together, citing the diaries of a seventeenth-century explorer, Pieter van Meerman, as their evidence. The diaries are presented as the truth, but as the web starts to unravel doubt is cast on their reliability. Reality may be quite different, and we are never sure whose version of the story we should be accepting - if anyone’s. The version presented in The History? That of the village’s oldest man who maintains “I come from the sea”? Or something else entirely? The unreliability of each character’s account is what keeps the novel interesting, as rather than presenting an authoritative account, it allows the reader to make up their own mind and leaves something to the imagination.

The story reaches its ugly climax as it becomes very clear just how far Pieter is prepared to go to protect what he feels he has rightly earned - but at what cost? 

Finding Soutbek may be set in South Africa, but it has something to say about inequalities everywhere. It is particularly prescient in the light of the widening gap between rich and poor that we see in today’s societies round the world - but offers little hope that the cycle will ever be broken.

And so to the final day of the festival proper which is also the most jam-packed with bands we’ve been looking forward to. Animic are the first up. Prior to Primavera I didn’t know much about them, having picked them up from my last.fm radio and subsequently listened to the album a few times. They are a local act and seem to have a decent following despite being one of the first bands on. The female singer has a fantastic voice and plays something that could be a kids’ toy guitar but is probably actually an electric ukulele. I don’t really know how to describe them (popular tags on last.fm are experimental, folktronica and indie) but whatever it is, it’s lots of fun.

Sharon van Etten is next. Her set is largely taken from this year’s album Tramp and it’s solid enough, with her voice on great form, but something seems to be missing. She comes across as a little arrogant, saying ‘This is the ugliest place I’ve ever been to in my life’, and no-one in the audience can really tell if she’s joking or not. Maybe it’s too early and too big a stage for her - 6pm on the festival’s main San Miguel Stage - but the atmosphere seems a little flat.

Milagres, however, are clearly having the time of their lives. They are fun, harmony-drenched indie pop in the vein of Grizzly Bear and Beach House, and if there is any justice in the world should be the next band from this genre to start getting attention. They go down a treat with a surprisingly devoted local fanbase who sing along to set highlights Lost In The Dark and Here To Stay. Ones to watch, and I’ll definitely be checking them out again.

So this is where it starts to get a bit hectic. Kings Of Convenience are perhaps a victim of odd scheduling - they look really odd on the main stage and struggled to win over the crowd at the back who talked through the set, disappointingly. However, what we see of the set is fantastic, putting me in the mind of a modern Simon and Garfunkel, and I wish we’d stayed to watch the rest…

…because Atlas Sound is the disappointment of the weekend. It’s a meandering, improvisational affair during which the butchering of Walkabout and Shelia are just about discernible (annoyingly, two of my favourite songs from Logos), closing with a half-decent version of Mona Lisa which leaves us wondering why we hadn’t stayed to watch the rest of KoC. Especially as we hear the last strains of I’d Rather Dance With You, my favourite song of theirs, once Atlas Sound finishes his short and somewhat bewildering set.

[When we got back, we saw this rather worrying shot of Atlas Sound on Drowned In Sound, which makes me wonder if there was a reason for the poor showing. He looks ILL.]

We catch a few songs from The Olivia Tremor Control, who sound odd, almost garage-y and nothing like their recorded output, before moving back to the Pitchfork stage for Real Estate. They are well worth missing Beach House* for (another example of odd scheduling!), one last act whose laid-back surf pop is perfect for the wonderful Barcelona weather and helps bring the sun down in style. The crowd is surprisingly (to me anyway) large and everyone is singing and dancing to a good helping of tracks from their newest album Days and a not insignificant showing from their earlier output.

*Not least because Beach House announce, a few days after Primavera, a UK tour this autumn - see you in Leeds!

So our festival headliners are Saint Etienne (with apologies to Yo La Tengo, who I was too tired to go and see). There were worries prior to the night that they might be forced to cancel due to lead singer Sarah having a throat infection which forced the cancellation of an earlier show in London, but happily she recovers in time, and just in case brings along a backing singer to give her a hand. She sounds great. It’s all singable, danceable stuff which wouldn’t have sounded place in the electro boom of a few years ago. I think I would ‘get’ this a bit more if I properly remembered them from first time around, but they’re still fun to watch, and I recognise more of the songs than I expected I would. The ones I don’t are mostly from the new album and stand up just as well, so I’ll definitely be tempted to have a listen. And it’s great to round off the festival on a positive note for once!

For anyone who’s never been to Primavera, it’s an awesome weekend in a beautiful city and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. Just take some suncream yeah? And to the regulars - not next year, maybe, but we’ll see you again sometime.

The first queue of the day for Jeff Mangum starts at about 2:30, when we get the tickets themselves. We were a bit annoyed to be paying another 2 euros each on top of the festival price for the privilege and to have to queue for 45 minutes, but we figure that’s the price you pay for seeing a legend and play nice.

[Then we take another trip to the beach where I lay lazily thinking about how this could turn into a lovely routine and proceed to have a delicious, sunkissed nap. More on this later]

Second queue of the day for the aforementioned Mr. Mangum commences around 6pm. For us, at least - when we arrive the queue is already huge. As he’s on at 6:30, we were expecting people already to be inside or at least on their way in, but the queue doesn’t start to move until 6:28. (Yes, I checked) And stupidly we assume that they won’t start the set until a good chunk of the queue is in at least. Wrong again. We get into the venue approx. 7pm and 5 songs later, it’s all over. Cheers, Primavera. Still, at least one of them is In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

I Break Horses played a short but sweet set with most of the tracks from recent album Hearts. More perfect music for the weather, with the slightly inappropriately-named Winter Beats being the set highlight. An unexpected highlight of the weekend for us, too - we were very close to going to see Girls instead who we’ve already seen (and loved), but glad we went for the unknown.

And so on to today’s main event, The Cure. They are the main reason the festival site is rammed today with a disproportionate number of people wearing black. In this weather. They start really strongly with a run of well-known songs including Pictures Of You, Lovesong and Inbetween Days, with the singing, dancing crowd stretching back almost as far to the stairs to the lower level where the Vice and Pitchfork stages are. After about an hour, however, it all starts to flag when the band plumb the depths of their back catalogue, and I start to realise how badly I burned my back during the aforementioned ‘sunkissed nap’. We stick it out until the 2 hour mark, then decide it’s time for bed. Apparently the band whip out Boys Don’t Cry during the 3rd [third] encore, but other than that we don’t miss much.

Back at the apartment, we discover quite how violently stripey my back is, and after a bath in aftersun we decide an early night might be advisable. Note to self: Do not take the piss out of your fellow Brits abroad for looking like tomatoes - karma will be visited upon you.

I was going to blog the whole Barcelona trip, but it turns out it was really hot and I was pretty lazy, so I didn’t do as much as when we went to Budapest. So I’m sticking to the bands - as if there weren’t quite enough of them to be getting on with!

The Primavera opening party was at a different venue from the rest of the festival, at the Arc de Triomf. It was free and open to anyone, not just those with festival wristbands, so understandably it was pretty rammed. As we got there Jeremy Jay was on the stage. I’d not really heard any of his stuff before arriving, but it was likeable enough pop-rock which was a nice soundtrack to finding a drink and somewhere to sit.

We’d really turned out for The Wedding Present, who promised to play Seamonsters in full. They didn’t, quite - no Make Me Smile, boo hoo - but they did open with My Favourite Dress and were in general plenty of fun and good to watch. Less so were The Walkmen, who I saw at Latitude last year and apparently came away with a desire to listen to more of their recorded stuff, although predictably, I didn’t. Again they were likeable enough, but the fact remains that the only song of theirs I can ever remember is The Rat despite multiple listens to several of their albums over the years and having now seen them live at least twice. And judging by the crowd reaction to that song, I’m not the only one.

So, after a lovely lie on the beach, the main event. Purity Ring were our opening band and were probably what you’d see in the dictionary if you looked up chillwave. In a good way. Blissed out female vocals, perfect music for an (almost) cloudless sky), and a guy with a whack-a-mole set up which lit up and played twinkly noises when hit. My only complaint really would be that they weren’t playing directly on the beach and I had to move to go see them.

Archers Of Loaf were the first big draw of the day. Despite the fact that they must be getting on a bit now they have more energy than most bands half their age, with a special mention to the bass player who seemed to be having the time of their life. The set was culled mostly from their album Icky Mettle, with Web In Front getting the biggest cheer (especially as they announce it with the words ‘We’re playing the good one now’). A reformation worth watching, should you get the chance.

We couldn’t actually see Grimes due to the sheer size of the crowd, though she sounded great, so instead boy and I devised a highly amusing game which involved giving people points (or taking them away) for their band t shirts. Some highlights:

+20 - The Dismemberment Plan (on the same day I was wearing the identical shirt)

+15 - The Shins, Sleater-Kinney and Dinosaur Jr. somehow all on one shirt

+10 - Hot Snakes (several)

+10 - Cursive (tote bag)

+5 - Sonic Youth (various designs, unsurprisingly)

-10 - Ramones (too many, most of whom looked like they couldn’tve named 5 Ramones songs to save their lives. That said, it turns out I can only name 4, so who am I to judge?)

-20 - Bon Jovi

-20 - Pantera

-50 - Grateful Dead

Plus an automatic -1 for a band t shirt worn on the day they were playing the festival, and various other arbitrary judgements on people’s facial hair.

So yes, we’re that cool. Thankfully we were distracted by Mazzy Star who played on the Ray-Ban stage as the sun went down. Not sure if that was a conscious decision on the part of the festival organisers but it definitely worked. Fade Into You was the obvious highlight, but it was a good all-round set with songs from both Among My Swan and So Tonight That I Might See. And Hope Sandoval still has the most beautiful voice.

Wilco, on the other hand, were a bit of a disappointment. They’re a band I’ve been meaning to catch for a while, and I almost spent a fortune crossing the Pennines to see them towards the tail end of last year before I realised I already had too much on and not enough money. Phew. They were solid enough but somehow disappointing, kept showing sparks of brilliance which frustratingly faded out instead of catching fire. And they didn’t play Heavy Metal Drummer.

So we ended up leaving early to get a good spot for Refused, easily my most anticipated band of the day. It was weird seeing them on such a big stage knowing that at the time of their split they would’ve been playing to crowds around a tenth of that size if not less - they tell us that Barcelona’s Garage at 400 capacity was a big deal for them. The turnout was testament to how influential they have been and how much their stature has grown in their absence. Songs like Liberation Frequency and Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine start the party, but predictably enough it’s New Noise that really gets the crowd moving. They sound incredibly tight and Dennis’s vocals are on form, sounding as good as if not better than on their final album The Shape Of Punk To Come, where much of tonight’s set come from. Now, if only the mosh pit for New Noise had been incendiary enough to knock away all the cameras which most of the front rows seemed to be watching the gig through..

Arnold Jansen op de Haar’s Angel is called a sequel to The King Of Tuzla, but if you were expecting more of the same you’re likely to be disappointed. Angel is a completely different read. It continues to follow Tijmen, formerly a professional soldier in the Dutch army, whose experiences serving in Bosnia and reflections on them afterwards make up the bulk of The King Of Tuzla. Some twelve years on, he’s now a writer on a Dutch newspaper and a published novelist and poet - but he is still trying to escape.

Angel is billed as ‘a story of wanting to break free’. “The reason was… to escape the person he could never be” we are told on page one.* This is his second escape, as to move on from where he grew up and his military history, on returning from Bosnia and leaving the army he moves from Nijmegen to the town of Arnhem. Nijmegen contains not only his own history but that of his parents, which is where the novel really starts. It is as if to understand himself, Tijmen must understand where he came from. But his small escape to Arnhem proves not to be enough, and with a ‘surprise lottery win’ as a catalyst, Tijmen leaves for Spain, telling no-one where he has gone. Except Angel.

Angel is a shadowy character, possibly a masseuse, a physiotherapist or a singer, or perhaps all of them, who knows? She seems to be the very opposite of Tijmen, which may be why he is attracted to her. But as Tijmen’s newspaper colleagues follow the scent and their stories start to intertwine, it becomes clear that they are not so different after all. Yet another escape becomes necessary for them both to escape their respective pasts, and the action starts to escalate when Angel’s ex, Sonny, joins the chase. The story comes to a climax on a day of high drama, first on Waterloo Bridge and then in the Royal Box at the ballet, which necessitates their final escape of the novel - but will it be enough to give them peace?

So: Angel is a frustrating read at times, often disjointed due to the movement back and forth in time as Tijmen and Angel’s backgrounds slowly come to light. But it is compelling, and as the novel goes on it gathers pace. Towards the end the threads all start to pull together and the pieces begin to fall into place. There is no resolution, and you are left wondering whether Angel and Tijmen really do ever achieve the escape they desire so much, particularly after the twist in the final pages. Will Tijmen ever attain peace with himself and his past? It’s left to the imagination - or maybe yet another sequel.

*technically page 11 according to the page numbers, but it IS the first page of text and 11 doesn’t sound quite as good does it?

We obviously slept in too late for breakfast, so our first port of call once we leave the hotel is Eco Cafe, handily located just round the corner. We’d earmarked Saturday for our trip across the river to Buda, where the castle is. After eating, rather than take public transport, we decided to walk down to the river and see a bit more of the city on foot. On the way we passed the Shoes on the Danube monument which along with a similar monument in Prague, is probably one of the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It pays tribute to the Jewish victims of the Arrow Cross in Hungary who were shot into the river, depicting only the shoes they left behind. The bit which really made me well up were the size of some of the shoes - they could have only been kids.

We crossed the river at Széchenyi Iánchid bridge, which leaves you at the foot of a tall hill in Buda. You can really tell that this is part of the tourist trail as there are lots of people selling tacky souvenirs (definitely didn’t buy any.. oh wait..) and queues.. for a funicular railway! I’d never seen one of these before so it was a bit exciting for me, being a bit of a child. We got into the front car which turned out to be a good move, because the view as it ascended was amazing, it was like watching the whole of Budapest drop away in front of you. 

Once we got to the top, our destination was pretty much in front of us - the Hungarian National Gallery. Now I’d love to be able to tell you loads about what we saw and what it meant and so on, but I know next to nothing about art, so I mostly just wandered around with my mouth wide open. The building was far too big for us to see everything, so we wandered around some Baroque stuff, which was pretty awe-inspiring, at least in part due to the sheer scale of some of the paintings, some of which were too large to fit on one wall!! Then we went upstairs to see some 19th and 20th century stuff, but at that point it had all started to blur into one for me and I had to have a sit down and rest my feet.

We’d had every intention of going to see the caves under the castle in the afternoon, but time was wearing on and so were my feet - so instead we got a taxi back to the hotel for a nap before tonight’s main event - our other restaurant recommendation from the lovely hotel staff.

According to the blurb on the brochure, “The Rézkakas restaurant, situated in the heart of the city, is one of the oldest, most elegant restaurants in Budapest, with a menu that not only offers a representative sampling of Hungarian cuisine, but also includes many international dishes. The attentive Rézkakas staff makes every effort to give patrons the perfect dining experience, while after 7pm a virtuoso gypsy band creates an enjoyable atmosphere for all.” 

What can I say? From the moment we arrived to the moment we left I felt pretty much pampered, especially my stomach!! We were given a choice of where to sit and of course opted to be as near as possible to the music, the prospect of which fascinated me. It was another beautiful, wood-panelled building with plenty of art on the walls. And the food.. where do I start? To open we had a goulash soup, which thankfully wasn’t served in such vast quantities on our first night, and was just delicious. For main we both ate venison with a blueberry and apple tart (kind of like a pancake) and a sauce made from the same. Maybe one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever eaten. I was pretty much full at this point but it would’ve been almost churlish to refuse a dessert, so we shared a raspberry foam, which was just about as much as my stomach could take. It was all washed down with peppermint tea as is my custom right now, and of course a few glasses of delicious Hungarian rosé wine. For how much? £35. I would not have baulked at paying that in a fairly average restaurant in Sheffield, for three courses and drinks at least, so we were a bit chuffed to be paying that in what seems to be one of the best restaurants in Budapest.

And then the music! Our entertainment for the evening was Robert Kuti and his Orchestra. I cannot find a website or anything unfortunately which is a shame, because the music was fantastic and I’d like to share. His orchestra, on this occasion, was a double bass player and a cimbalom player, an instrument I’ve never come across before. It doesn’t sound vastly different to a piano, except that you hit the strings with beaters, and because of this it is played in a completely different way as it would be difficult to get chords and so on. We bought the CD and it looks like sometimes he plays with more musicians, but I guess there’s no room for them in the restaurant! The music was traditional gypsy folk music and was a really good accompaniment for the meal - I will keep looking and see if I can find some of it online as I’d like to share.

Sunday was our last day and we took a walk into another part of Pest to head for the day’s destination, the Hungarian National Museum. We saw a slightly different side to Budapest as much of it seems to be closed on a Sunday, and for the first time we saw quite a few tramps and beggars. We passed quite a lot of discount stores, but once we got back onto the tourist trail it was back to normal. We passed another street full of bookshops, literally 4 or 5 one after the other - shame about the Sunday closures.

This was another place we really couldn’t see all of due to time and feet constraints, so we opted to see the History of Hungary from the foundation of the state to 1990. I guess because it’s a relatively small country which isn’t prominent in our culture it hadn’t occurred to me quite how rich the history of Hungary might be and how far back it might stretch. So we spent a wonderful few hours investigating the history of the country from about 1000 AD which was pretty exciting. My favourite bit, being the geek that I am, was the maps and explanations they had just inside the door of each room, and you could see the borders of Europe moving backwards and forwards and slowly coming to resemble what they look like today. I have tasked John with making me a flickbook of Europe for Christmas purely based on this experience!!

That evening we returned to the restaurant of the first night, Menza, because we were too lazy to find anywhere else and anyway we’d enjoyed it so much. And then it was time to head back to the apartment for an early night, in preparation for a morning of packing, checking out and airport fun.

You’ve probably guessed from this blog and the previous one that I adored Budapest. I’d rank it up there with Prague and Berlin as my favourite places I’ve visited. I hope that we’ll go back in a few years, with a bit more knowledge of the language and culture to discover even more of Budapest and re-visit the best bits we’ve already discovered. But I’ve got a long list of other places I want to go to, so we’ll wait and see!

DIsclaimer: I really should have written this a few weeks ago, ie as soon as possible after getting home, but obviously I’m a lazy sod so this hasn’t happened. There may be inaccuracies/gaps in my memory.

Our home for the weekend is Mamaison Residence Izabella Budapest. I cannot recommend this place highly enough. For around €75 a night between the two of us, we got a one bedroom apartment that we could’ve comfortably lived in permanently. It’s seconds away from Andrássy útca, which was one of the main streets leading into the centre of Budapest and had cafes, restaurants and shops galore. And then there’s the incredibly helpful staff. At short notice they sorted out our airport transfers, and gave us awesome recommendations for restaurants, which I’ll come to shortly.

OK, now. We arrived on the Thursday in the evening and having freshened up were starving. We were directed to Menza by the receptionist at the hotel, promising traditional Hungarian cuisine at good prices. NOT disappointed. I started with a creamy garlic soup with a kind of fried bread/pastry type thing topped with sour cream and cheese. Probably not for those on a diet - but it was so tasty we returned on the Sunday night so I could have another!! And then of course we had to try some goulash, which was also delicious. I had to enlist John’s help to help me make a decent assault on it, being full to the brim by this point. And it’s so cheap!! Memory fails me now as to how much it cost for two courses each, tea and coffee afterwards and wine with the meal, but I remember being stunned.

Friday’s main attraction was the Terror House - given that it was literally round the corner it would’ve been pretty rude not to. Andrássy útca 60 was the headquarters of the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian Nazis) from 1944-45 and then once the Communists had completed their takeover of Hungary, the lair of their intelligence organisation. Most of the building is now a museum, taking you on a journey through the life of the building, the horrible events that took place there, and the wider historical context in which it all took place. The nastiest part is saved for last, that being the basement which is pretty much preserved. You can see the cells in which people were tortured, including the ‘wet cell’, a cell in which you wouldn’t have been able to stand up forcing you to stoop, and one which was reminiscent of the chokey in Matilda. It was a moving experience and not a little depressing - John vetoed anything else so grim for the rest of the weekend - but I’m really glad we went.

Now onto the bit I’d obviously been looking forward to - the bookshops! I have never, ever seen so many bookshops as I saw in Budapest. The ones we tackled on Friday were some of the more famous ones, handily clustered together not far from our apartment. 

The first we’d already passed the day before and looked well worth a visit. Irók Boltja (or Writer’s Bookshop according to the Lonely Planet guide) is on the corner of Andrássy and from the outside, looks delicious. The inside doesn’t disappoint. The books stretch from floor to ceiling on the ground floor, necessitating ladders to reach the higher shelves, and without having to get too close you can tell these are the kind of books I want to be reading. All the big names in Central European literature (and further afield) are visible on the spines - and now I’m kicking myself I didn’t bother learning more Hungarian.

Worry not, though, because (as seems to be the norm) upstairs there’s an English section. As well as all the bog-standard stuff, there’s a special shelf full of Hungarian authors in translation. I must’ve spent about half an hour perving on that section alone. I eventually came away with a bonus birthday present from John - Skylark by Dezso Kosztolányi - who also bought Detective Story by Imre Kertész. We also went halves on a history of Hungary on our second visit later in the weekend.

We paid a short visit to Treehugger Dan’s Bookstore which is mostly used English books, but a pretty good selection of them. I treated myself to a copy of Václav Havel’s The Garden Party and other plays as I’ve only seen it for £ridiculous in this country - at 1800 forints (about £5) here a bit of a steal! Then it’s back onto the main street where we pay a visit to Alexandra, which is a bookshop, wine shop and cafe all rolled into one. There are at least 2 floors of books, which we don’t explore fully due to their sheer size. Again there’s plenty of English books on offer and I’m hard pressed not to spend the rest of my forints right there.

Alexandra’s big selling point is its beautiful cafe however. At the top of the escalators is a grand room, with a beautifully panelled and painted ceiling, and in this country it would certainly be a ballroom, a grand hall, or some other building of that description - certainly not a mere cafe! It made the experience of drinking beautiful hot chocolate and reading Hungarian literature (more on that in a separate post!) even more arty and pretentious than it might have done. One of my mental notes is to find out how the building came to be and why it’s now a cafe - still not done that yet.

The Hungarians do hot chocolate exceptionally well, by the way. I drank an awful lot of it that weekend including some delicious white hot chocolate, so thick there was almost an element of rice pudding about it. I think that’s an awesome thing, John disagrees vehemently. Apparently rice pudding is the only thing that makes him sick. And on that massive digression, I’m going to skip on. Friday evening’s entertainment, aside from a mediocre Italian, was at one of Budapest’s ruin bars, Szimpla, which we’d been recommended by John’s sister. It is a bit difficult to describe, but it looked like the gap between ruined buildings kind of tarpaulined over with a bar on the bare floor!! It’s the sort of place we would’ve needed to go with more people rather than just as a couple, as there’s only so much of an all night disco party you can have with the two of you. But nevertheless we tried out the fruit brandy, which took the back of my throat off. Mixer please!!

I picked this one up at random in Glasgow Waterstones, back when I was working up there and had little better to do with my evenings than potter around bookshops on their late opening night (Thursday, I think). Emblazoned on the front is that it’s the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction for 2011, which I don’t really approve of, but evidently I didn’t let that put me off. Since then, I’ve had numerous positive comments about it so I decided to skip it up my ‘to read’ list and give it a whirl.

The author biography is faintly depressing. Téa is the same age as me and already winning literary prizes, while I’m doing nothing more interesting than posting on this blog. That should be a call to arms, right? Maybe next week..

But anyways, the book. The Tiger’s Wife is the story of both Natalia and her grandfather, at different points in their lives, and also of the deathless man and the eponymous tiger’s wife. One of the striking parts of the novel is how these different threads are woven together but it’s all made to seem natural - the ending might seem contrived in the hands of a lesser writer but here it’s perfect. Until the end, I’dve been hard pushed to tell you exactly what the plot was, but once it all comes together it makes sense.

It’s set in the former Yugoslavia, both before and after the wars which broke the entity up into its constituent parts. Where exactly we are isn’t named and is probably at least fictionalised - and yes, I did look up some of the place names on Wikipedia before working this out!! - but the air of mistrust across the border line between two unnamed but brand new republics is just the same. I found it fascinating to get an insight into the process of breaking up a country and its aftermath, and sad to see the sundering of communities who prior to this were close. It’s hard to imagine living through this but Téa brings me as close as I hope I’ll ever get.

I found the writing compelling, and what seemed somewhat lacking in plot at the beginning came together and gathered pace, until the end of the novel I was ripping through the pages in an attempt to find out what happened next. My one complaint if I had one would be that parts of the story are lacking in depth; I would have liked more back story regarding the tiger and his wife, and other elements of the story would have benefitted from this as well. But overall this is a great first novel and I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her work.

So, a couple of months ago we decided to have another go at a book club, our last one having died an untimely death late last year. In lieu of choosing another arbitrary method, I decided that people got to choose books in the order they showed interest in joining. So after Nick’s choice of Love In The Time Of Cholera, next up is mine, Exile And The Kingdom. An unfortunate coincidence means that I’ll actually be in Budapest come meeting time, so I thought I’d stick some thoughts here instead.

I’ve read it before. I’m a huge Camus fan and I’ve read the vast majority of his fiction. (Not bothered about his philosophy - The Rebel bored me to tears) Normally in book clubs I choose something from my TBR pile, but this sometimes backfires, so I decided instead to inflict on the guys something I know and love.

It’s perfect for a book club; weighing in at just over a hundred pages it’s difficult for people to complain they don’t have time to read it. There are six short stories, all but two of which are set in Algeria, where Camus was born. The clue is in the title - Algeria began a bloody war of independence with France in 1954, leaving the white Algerian-born French, or pieds-noir (literally dirty feet), homeless and unwelcome.

The blurb on the back cover promises that “Camus evokes beautiful but harsh landscapes” and the publicist isn’t wrong - the descriptions are so real that you almost feel you’re there, and the sense of longing is clearly transmitted too, for a way of life now disappeared. This is clearest in The Mute, the story of a barrel-maker whose craft is slowly but surely dying away, but the theme runs throughout. The loss of his home country is most felt in The Adulterous Wife who falls in love not with another man, but with the desert - “Farther still, and as far as the horizon, began the ochre and grey realm of stones, where no life stirred… Janine, learning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, incapable of tearing herself away from the void opening before her.” Camus’ prose is, as always, simple yet exquisite, no word unnecessary.

So, whilst in Budapest I’ll be crossing my fingers that some of the other members find the beauty that I’ve found in this wonderful collection, and perhaps if they haven’t already, to dig a little deeper and discover more works of this fascinating writer.

I get up early and have a wander on my own. I initially get confused about who’s on what stage and so end up on the garden stage watching a bit of Lightning Dust. This is another pleasant surprise of the festival. Apparently a side project of Black Mountain, this is more pared-down, with haunting melodies and Amber Webber’s beautiful voice - I suspect that if I only buy an album of one new artist because of this year’s EOTR, it will be this one.

I eventually find Emmy The Great, who I was looking for in the first place, and to be honest I wish I’d stayed put. There’s nothing wrong with her per se but she’s really nothing special and does not deserve the hype I frequently see about her. My camping buddies are raving about her, but it does nothing for me.

We trot back to the garden stage and get comfortable. The next act on is Woods, who are described in the programme as ‘pop genius’, but the first mind that comes to mind is PROG. With all its negative connotations, this is still really interesting noise and well worth a listen - I started off not enjoying it but towards the end of the set I found myself converted.

The Leisure Society seem nice enough but not massively interesting, so I decide to make my way to the Big Top tent to see..

..Kurt Vile and the Violators. The tent is more packed than I’ve seen it all weekend. I’m not sure if this is due to hype, genuine word of mouth or the threatening-looking clouds on the horizon - possibly a combination of all three? It sounds like Sonic Youth’s poppier moments, with a bit of Velvet Underground thrown in for good measure, and all with a frontman who can really sing. This is definitely Sunday’s highlight as far as I’m concerned.

And so back to the garden stage, where Josh T. Pearson is just tuning up. He’s one of those artists who appears to be on everyone’s lips at the moment, who all the cool kids are listening to and everyone seems to like but you. On this evidence, I’ve utterly no idea why. It’s slow, dreary and seems to have very little to it. His between-song interludes are slightly amusing, until he reminds the crowd that this is a “family festival” and then starts making jokes about fucking goats anyway. You can get away with that sort of thing if you’re playing half-decent songs before and after, but this was just dull Americana with no redeeming qualities. Possibly the low point of the weekend.

So due to festival tiredness and rain phobia, Midlake headline the festival for me, and it’s another letdown. There’s nothing wrong with them as such, they’re just not doing anything that a hundred bands aren’t already doing and in most cases better. And they’re certainly not doing it well enough to keep me out in the cold and the rain of an evening, so it’s off back for an early night ready for the mammoth drive the next day.

As with Latitude, I hate ending on a negative point, it’s just unfortunate that those were the last two acts of the weekend I saw. It was a great weekend all told, and aside from those few raindrops on Sunday evening the weather largely held out. The food was impressive, notably the Tibetan kitchen, Pie Minister and the wonderful selection of tea and cake shops. The organisers of EOTR have also announced that a new festival called No Direction Home will take place next June in Sherwood Forest - and as we’re talking about half an hour from my house, well, it would be rude not to!

We get up a little earlier today in order to shoot down to the Garden Stage to check out James Yorkston, who I’ve been introduced to this year by my boyfriend who is very enthusiastic about him. The set is wonderfully ramshackle and stripped-down, played acoustic with a clarinettist and a violinist along for the ride. Definitely one to catch if you get the opportunity.

Next up is Jolie Holland, who I must confess I’d heard nothing about before coming to the festival. Her day job is as a member of the Be Good Tanyas (another act I’ve paid no attention to) and indeed she tells us she usually plays with a band, but instead we are treated to an intimate, soulful acoustic set. She has an astounding voice and makes for the first really nice surprise of the festival.

Phosphorescent starts off sounding like utter drone, presumably due to a feedback loop or something equally nice. It gets better, just about, but not enough to stop me scarpering to see..

..Twin Shadow, who I’d been looking forward to after a fair few plays of ‘Forget’ prior to coming to the festival. They’re the first act we see in the tent, and the atmosphere and the sound are both great. It’s beautifully chilled-out indie/electronica (indietronica, remember that?!) often lazily called ‘chillwave’, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Sadly, made-to-order hipster kids pop up out of nowhere, mostly barefoot, practicing ridiculous 80s dancemoves and then disappearing as quickly as they came. (Who knows where, as we don’t see them again - possibly back to 6th form?!) I say sadly because a lot of my attention goes towards slagging them off, rather than towards the band, and soon it’s time to shoot off for..

..Gruff Rhys, who is definitely my highlight of the day. More perfect end-of-summer music which brings the sun out to play, heavily culled from recent album Hotel Shampoo which is fast becoming one of my favourites. He directs proceedings with a double-sided sign - one side applause, one side ‘WOAH!’ according to the reaction he wants, which the crowd are happy to oblige. He crams as many songs as possible into his hour’s set including Ni Yw Y Bid, which apparently has the most key changes in any song ever (really?) and which he counts out for us, not knowing himself how many there are. Closer Shark Infested Waters is my personal favourite and a great way to end the set, which of course is bookended by another sign, this time stating ‘Thank You’.

We take a break at this point and mostly listen to Wooden Shjips whilst trying on hipster jumpers at the nearby vintage stall and eating pie from Pie Minister, but they sounded pretty good from where we were standing.

My main thoughts whilst listening to M. Ward were ‘why is this guy not bigger?’ He’s in the same sort of territory as a number of male solo artists at the moment and doing it better than most of them, but shows no signs of breaking into the indie mainstream, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. He reminds me a lot of Bright Eyes and similar artists but has nowhere near that following, although he comfortably fills up the Garden Stage. All in all, a very good way to fill a hazy drunken evening whilst waiting to go and see..

..Mogwai, who are tonight’s headliners. They are epic as expected and perfect music to listen to at night - unfortunately, I forget that it’s September, not July, and that a) the nights draw in and b) that it’s actually pretty cold once the sun goes down! So I have to confess that most of their set is taken in whilst walking back to the campsite and then snuggling up in the sleeping bag, but the music is no worse for it. But maybe if I’m presented with a similar situation again, I’ll pack an extra jumper.

The weather is beautiful at Larmer Tree Gardens for End Of The Road festival. It’s my first visit and I’m lapping up the sunshine, finding comfortable places to snooze and read, stuffing my face with yummy food and browsing the stalls. What, I should watch some bands, you say? OK then, I suppose so.

First up is Tune-Yards, who I’ve got to say I’m less than impressed with. Having heard her hyped from all quarters in the last year or so, I’m a bit disappointed - she doesn’t seem to be doing anything that another ten female artists aren’t already doing right now, and in some cases better. It’s nice enough, but nothing to make me take my head out of my book for more than a few minutes. (Geert Mak’s in Europe, if you’re interested - likely to be a separate post on that before long)

Then we go to the main stage to catch Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. This is perfect summer music to enjoy with a pint of cider. I’ve heard criticism of the new album but for me, tunes from all three albums blend seamlessly together. (Disclaimer: I don’t know any of them that well.) Gordon Gano (of Violent Femmes fame) came out for a rendition of Add It Up which ticks all the boxes and really gets the crowd going. An act I’ll be paying more attention to in future.

I said that about Lykke Li after her set at Latitude earlier in the year, and thankfully I managed to keep my promises about that one giving both her albums, Youth Novels and Wounded Rhymes, a few listens prior to the festival. I’m glad I did. The set is probably much the same, but it’s always that bit more fun when you can sing along. She seems more at home on the outdoor stage, holding the attention of the main stage crowd with ease, and that’s not just the legions of guys fantasising about making her their new girlfriend. Closer ‘Get Some’ rounds off the set perfectly. I see Lykke Li going from strength to strength in the next few years and will look forward to hearing what she does next.

Beirut are today’s headliners and one of the main reasons for my buying a ticket to End Of The Road. Fittingly, then, they’re my highlight of the day. A fair proportion of the set is culled from new album The Rip Tide which I suspect most of the crowd are hearing for the first time, as it’s tracks like Postcards From Italy which get the best reaction by far. I’ve heard it said a few times that he ‘shot his load’ by playing these tracks too early on and it’s probably a fair criticism, but it’s testament to the quality of the Beirut catalogue that the later part of the set is just as good as the former, if maybe not as well known. All told, an amazing set, and I’m just a little sad that I didn’t get tickets to see them again in Manchester last night - but maybe that would have been a little overkill.