It's Backpacker Season

Appalling haircuts, stupid hats, goatee beards, sandals, confused Brits and earnest Yanks: it can only mean one thing. It's backpacker season.

Armed with Inter Rail passes and carrying rucksacks the size of Bristol, this tribe set about the continent's railway stations last weekend en bloc. Ordinary passengers, such as the Pocket Blogger - on a routine Pocket hop from Budapest to Vienna - could barely move unmolested by chaps called Harry, Charlie, Josh and Alex. I barely made it off the train alive.

Budapest Keleti - that station which perfectly sums up Hungary (imperial on the outside, chaotic within) - now appears to be the center of the backpacker world, the new Berlin Zoo. Budapest itself - a city in which we hope to be relaunching In Your Pocket very soon - now has more hostels per head than Prague, Berlin and Krakow put together, with an astonishing 2.1 hostels per backpacker (or something like that...).