It’s official. Pete and I are the The biggest excitement of last week Get that? Last week. Our moment as passed, and now we can slink out of the spotlight and get on with our lives. This is a nice feeling.

But if you’re here from Troubled Diva Caught up in the gossip-fever Then leave a comment, do; but it ought to be a clerihew.

• Sunday night bloody marys with my brother, in Cafe Aloe. We never had time to make it into a long-standing tradition, but we know that we would, given half a chance. It was great, for a little while, to spend so much time in his company, having moved further and further away from each other, geographically, since I left home. It’s nice to be so closely related to such a good friend.
• The sense of achievement that follows a successful exchange in hungarian, or when I understand an overheard conversation, or when I figure out what a shop sign or a translated film title is. I could have spoken good hungarian. I never tried.
• The weather, and checking the temperature display every time I pass Nyugati on the tram, to see just how hot or cold it is. The long hot summer, being able to sit outside a cafe in a tree-lined square from March until November, sleeping with all the windows open. The cold, cold winter, with – literally – heaps of snow. Icicles hanging from the windowsills, and great big fat snowflakes on the last shopping day before Christmas.
• The food. Most of it, anyway. Especially the parolt kaposzta, or stewed red cabbage, as you might prefer to think of it. Deep orange gulyas soup. Gyulai kolbasz. Seasonal vegetables, non-EU lumpy and discoloured, but actually tasting the way they should.
• The music. It’s everywhere. The sound of a piano from an open window as you walk down the street. Singers practising scales. The musicians at the music academy tuning up, when we lived nearby. Two gypsies walking down our street playing accordions, one day last summer.
• The view down the Danube from the centre of Margit Bridge, with the Houses of Parliament on the left, then the Chain Bridge with Gellert Hill above it, and the Palace, and the Castle District, and all those colourful churches and apartment blocks along the Buda side. Especially at night when each one is individually illuminated and you can’t see that the river isn’t blue.
• The novelty of living abroad, experiencing new things every day and learning how to cope with them. Strange foreign things in the supermarkets, not being able to get cheddar cheese, grumpy checkout staff, horrendous bureaucracy, dirty pavements, busy trams, shit wine, dealing with painters and plumbers and kitchen fitters who all want to rip off the westerners, the non-existence of a facility to pay bills by direct debit, cockroaches, and the most incomprehensible language in the western hemisphere.

Last night was bad. Last night was the row that I was expecting, him asking for reasons, poking and probing and opening up wounds. Horrible, horrible.

This morning all is calm again. After breakfast we take the 30-minute trek along the beach to the medina. It’s cooler, but the sea is still a pleasing shade of turquoise, the sand is gratifyingly white. We have money left and we intend to brave the hassle of the shopkeepers, and spend it. We fail, twice, to haggle for a leather bag, before finding a better one in a prix fixé shop. Then I haggle in french for a scarf for Páfrány – her névnap is soon. We walk all the way to the top of the old town, where a cafe with a terrace advertises its “seeview;” then back down the white cobbled streets to the jumbled shops and the hard sell. I don’t enjoy the pressure, but perversely, they are less pushy if you enter the shops voluntarily. One man grabs my elbow and tries to pull me into his shop, though, and I find that alarming, and quite painful.

We return to the beach, my shoulders now respectably covered in a Med-coloured shawl, protecting me from the nasty sun. Being sunburnt, like being too drunk, I find unpleasant and unneccesary. I’ve grown to be a fan of moderation, I must be getting old.

Last night at last, how slow this week has been. What a strange sort of a holiday.

Day 5, book 5. So far all I have done is complain. Here’s some more. Let me tell you what package holidays are like.

First of all, I get to act all superior at Ferihegy airport, because I’ve spent so much time there. I can tell what size the plane is from the gate number. Oh yeah, I’m a real pain in the arse. We fly with Tunisair, in a noisy, badly pressurised cabin, but the food is better than that usually provided by KLM or Lufthansa. The plane is half-empty, and the other passengers keep changing seats, like they think they’re on a bus. Holidays abroad, like voting, are still quite a big deal to some hungarians. They burst into spontaneous applause on landing.

We queue to have our passports stamped [oh yes, I do still have a little space for stamps]; pick up our case, and get herded on to a bus full of excited magyars. The holiday rep reads out an information sheet as we travel, and I understand about one word in ten, but it doesn’t really matter, because I know she’s saying don’t drink the water, don’t sunbathe between 12 and 2, and describing the thrills of haggling in the bazaar.

The hotel comes as a pleasant surprise: 4* accommodation, half board with a good, but unexciting, standard of catering. A large lobby with a bar and lots of comfy sofas. A gym, which of course I intend to use but never do. Multi-lingual staff. They hand out glasses of orange juice while we queue up to check in. Queuing and waiting and being herded around is always the main activity on a package tour. In the morning we are summoned to a welcome meeting [I didn't go]: more free orange juice, I expect, and that information sheet again, and they sell you daytrips, which are usually exhorbitant and predictable. Two days in the Sahara, a folklore night, the trip to Tunis. Prices for these things are lower for the hungarian group than for the western europeans; in fact, the whole holiday cost less than half the price we would have paid in the UK.

The room is reasonable, although would benefit from having the window left open; clearly there is no concept of non-smoking. The bed is a pair of single mattresses – made up separately, hurrah – on a raised platform. Bathroom basic but clean. Enormous telly – boo, I hate TVs in the bedroom, but T is delighted to have access to Eurosport and CNN at any time of the day or night. Balcony with a view of the next hotel.

At breakfast and dinner we have to share a table with a hungarian couple. On the first night, I introduced myself in carefully pronounced hungarian, and they grunted. Now they greet us in german. I don’t mind eating in every night here, because it’s this or dodgy pizza, and at least I can see that the kitchen standards are quite high here. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of traditional dining on offer anywhere in the resort that I would consider safe to eat. I’m not neurotic, I’m wary, and he is far more susceptible to food poisoning than I am, and I really don’t want to deal with that.

For the first couple of days, it rains. No wonder I’m miserable. Nothing to do, once you’ve seen the souk and the mosque, except read or play cards and go stir-crazy. Thereafter the sun comes out, and the options remain the same, but out of doors. The wind is still too strong on the beach, but the pool is sheltered. I lie in the sun and daydream.

Up shortly after 6am, how barbaric! Bus trip with about 50 Magyars and a hungarian-speaking guide, two-hour drive to Tunis, past dusty miles of olive groves. In the town, the guide [appropriately named Gabi, pronounced Gobby, she never shut up] leads us into the heart of the souk and abandons us to be picked up by touts and salesmen. This souk is marginally less tourist-oriented than the one in Sousse, but the locals appear to be less used to the sight of white girls’ legs. The novelty of being leered at pales quickly, and I kick myself for not wearing a long dress. I should know better.

Next stop a huge museum of mosaics. Just mosaics. Nothing but mosaics. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling mosaics. The first million of so bits of broken tile were mildly interesting. Gabi was keen to herd us around and tell us lots of fascinating stuff about the wonderful mosaics, but there was little point in sticking with the group. They all had plaques in french, which was infinitely more comprehensible.

Ken is clingy today, wants to know if there’s anything at all he can do to make me change my mind. There isn’t, and in fact the idea that he should only now consider this just annoys me. He said that he had expected me to dump him, he knew it was coming, so deep down, surely he must understand why. To spell it all out for him would just make things very unpleasant. He squeezes my arm and I want to shake him off. He says he doesn’t want to start all over again; well I have to, and he’s pushed me into it, and I’ve finally chosen to make it a positive decision. He will just have to do the same, but he’s no longer my responsibility.

What next, after mosaics? Oh yes, lunch in a seafront hotel, very ordinary. Escaped the pack to get coffee in a grubby cafe nearby. I like escaping the pack. I dislike bustours. If I sound like Marvin, it’s because I am reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

The highlight of the trip was next: the ruins of Carthage. Gabi lectured the Magyars for a good twenty minutes, while we roamed amongst the pillars and archways. I hadn’t expected to come here, having done no research into Tunisia and taken no interest in the bustrip itinerary. Yes, really, I left home without a Lonely Planet. Doesn’t happen often. The ruins of the port at Carthage were covered in yellow and purple flowers, scenting the breeze, and I filled my second 16mb smart card.

After Carthage, a little town whose name I didn’t know, but I have since discovered was Sidi Bou Said, whose sole purpose is to fleece tourists. Just like Clovelly or Haworth, a large car park, a steep street, very photogenic, packed with tourists and tat. Stopped for an expensive coffee, alcohol-free beer, and cute ginger cat.

Finally set off back to Sousse, two somnolent hours speeding past vinyards, olive trees, flocks of sheep and goats. Hard to believe this is Africa [immediately new earworm starts, featuring Toto. Earlier it was Pat Benatar, must be having an 80s day]. Reminds me more of Greece or Portugal; I suppose it is so green because it is still early in the year – Malta was like this one January. At least Egypt had lots and lots of sand!

Will there come a point where I might as well stop travelling, because everywhere starts to look the same? Or am I just a jaded package tourist? I could work up far more enthusiasm for northern european baroque architecture, lakes, mountains, city squares, fine coffee, reliable wine. If he had stuck to the original plan of taking me to Moscow, would we be staying married? No, that’s just a bad joke. I know I am dong the right thing here, and anyway, why do dreams have to be grandiose? Can’t I just dream of being happy? Ken and I jarred constantly today, and I was lonely to be sharing even this experience with a like mind. It’s a long time since Ken and I had like minds, if we ever did. Tonight we will have the usual disagreement: he wants to go off and find a different bar to drink in. I want to sit on our balcony and play cards or read. It’s a resort, all bars are identical, what’s the point?