Sorry, Prince, You're Not Invited

As we all know by now, Belgium has more than its fair share of issues, attempting to be a modern, first-world, western European monarcy/nation. Besides having no functioning government for well over a year now (I don't think there's any African or southeast Asian nation which can boast the same...), even the monarchy seems to be disfunctional.
Not disfunctional as in the UK, where most royal dalliances seem to center on sex or divorce. Here, it's disfunctional as in the crown prince can't seem to keep his mouth shut whenever he travels and has now gotten himself onto a sort of internal national PNG list. Recent trips to the Congo and Libya turned into public relations disasters for him and it's gotten to the point where he is no longer allowed to travel abroad without first clearing the trip with the parliament (!). The parliament which, of course, was voted out of office over a year ago.
There are over a half-dozen monarchies in western Europe, but none seems to be plagued with royal issues as much as Belgium. The prince has become such a lightening rod for embarrassment that, at the royal festivities this week to celebrate Belgian Independence Day, the king formally dis-invited him to take part. Just as well - the prince was probably busy checking out Ryan Air flights on line, booking his next purchase to Morocco or somewhere in that area...

Not a Clue...

Since this was seen on the elevator in a 4-star hotel, I have to assume it's all above-board. That being said, maybe What Happens In Budapest, Stays in Budapest...

An der schoenen ?blauen? Donau

That's what Johann Strauss called it - the beautiful, blue Danube.
Having seen this river in 4 different countries now, I can tell you that 1) it definitely is the Danube; 2) it might just be beautiful; and, 3) no way is it blue!
I find it hard to believe it was all that blue even in Strauss' time; I'm wondering how much Austrian wine he had imbibed when he wrote the waltz.

Definitely Not From Here

Seen on a busy street in Budapest last week.
Admittedly, this is one of the busiest intersections of car, bus, and tram in the entire city. That being said, here's probably a good rule of thumb: if you start driving down a narrow street, notice no other cars on that same street, have no traffic lights or stop signs, and see that you are actually driving on streetcar tracks, it's probably a good idea to get off that street. Now. This guy has obviously made a poor choice (no doubt assisted by his GPS system, my favorite whipping boy, but that's another blog post). We didn't have the guts to stick around to see the outcome, although 10 minutes later we did hear lots of sirens coming from this general area...