As has been pointed out by all the members of my family, I have gotten a little behind on my blogging. But really that's a good thing because it means that I'm so busy having so much fun that I don't have time to blog!
Yesterday I got back from a trip to Budapest, Hungary with my roommate Sammi, our friend Sarah Woodworth, and our other friends Yuri and Julie. We were there for three days and I definitely think that I needed a few more days there to really get to know the city. I had a great time though and it's still so cool to me to be able to just go away for the weekend to another country.
Yuri and Julie arrived in Budapest on Thursday afternoon, but Sammi, Sarah and I took a night an overnight train Thursday night and arrived Friday morning. I was able to sleep through pretty much all of the train ride, but Sarah and Sammi weren't so lucky, so they were pretty tired for most of the day on Friday.
We stayed at a hostel called the Home Plus and it was really great. It was small and decorated with lots of bright colors and the staff was so friendly. Someone sat down with us for quite a while when we first arrived to show us where we were on the map and to point out the fun things to do in the city.
We got to the hostel at about 10 am. We got unpacked and sat down for awhile to learn about the city and then we decided that we were all in major need of a meal. There was a girl named Emily from England who is traveling by herself staying in our hostel who arrived at the same time we did, so we invited her to go eat with us. We weren't really oriented in the city yet, so we just wandered down the main street near our hostel and settled on a Turkish restaurant.
A girl in one of my classes told me that one thing that I had to do while in Budapest was go caving. After naps and coffee, we did a little wandering before meeting up with the caving tour group. We all set off on buses to the outskirts of the city. We went into a little shack where our guide got us all suited up in full body suits and helmets with lights on them and then we headed to the caves...
Caving was fun, but a cave is no place to realize that you are claustrophobic. At the start of the caving excursion, we went through a door that led into a cave hallway with a sort of vaulted ceiling. Even at that point, when there were at least a few inches between my head and the ceiling and I had room to move my arms I felt kind of uncomfortable. And then we went down a ten meter ladder. And then we spent the next 2 1/2 hours in the depths of the caves. Some of the spaces that we had to squeeze through were so small that your back and your belly would both be touching the cave at the same time and you had to wriggle on your belly to get through. Our guide was like a mole of something and as we entered each new passage he would scramble through like there was nothing to it. In the end, I'm glad that I did it, but I can say with certainty that I am never caving again. It's funny because caving was my idea and I ended up liking it the least, go figure.
By the time we got done caving it was about 8 o'clock. We headed back to the hostel, got cleaned up and headed out for dinner. We didn't really know of anywhere in particular to go, so we headed to a street that Sarah's friend who is studying in Budapest recommended. We picked a restaurant that we thought looked cheap, and had a very good meal and some tasty Hungarian beer. Things got fishy though when the bill came. Somehow, even though we had all put in more than what we owed, we were still supposedly 3000 Hungary Hippos short on the bill. In the end, we all had to throw in more money and it turned out fine, but getting hosed like that put a definite damper on the night. Sammi, Emily and I were feeling pretty beat up and tired from caving, so we headed back to the hostel while the rest went out with Sarah's friend.
Our plan for Saturday was to go to the Hungarian thermal baths, another of the must do things in Budapest. It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to walk to the baths and stopped at a grocery store for cheap breakfast on the way. As we were walking, we went past the Terror House. It is a building that was used as the torture compound under the Nazi and Socialist regimes that has now been turned into a museum. It is supposed to be one of the best museums to go to in Budapest, so we decided to delay our trip to the baths and go.
It was very interesting, but very sobering. The to two floors have lots of information about occupation of the Nazis and the Soviets and when you reach the end of those floors, you get on an elevator to go to the basement which is where people were imprisoned, tortured, and executed. The elevator ride is very slow and as you descend, you watch a video of a man who used to clean the gallows very unemotionally describing the process of an execution. It gave me chills before I even got to the basement. I actually had to rush through the basement because I met up with Sarah who told me that the baths were going to be closing earlier than we thought. I'm glad that I didn't have time to linger though because the basement was quite upsetting.
After the museum, we continued on to the baths. Sarah and I took to the metro because we were worried about the baths closing and Sammi and Emily broke off to walk the rest of the way.
At first when we got to the baths I was a little disappointed. It was cool and all to have lots of baths, but we were indoors and it smelled like sulfur and there were just a few too many old men in Speedos. We decided to walk around to see what else was available and after a little bit of exploring we made our way outside to a huge gorgeous open air pool. It absolutely wonderful. It was the temperature of a warm bath and it felt so great to soak our aching muscles. We met up with Sammi and Emily eventually and they were just thrilled as we were. After soaking for awhile, the other girls decided that they all wanted to get massages. I didn't feel like spending money or waiting an hour to get a massage, so I split off from them to head home.
I ended up walking home around a really pretty boulevard. I met up with Yuri and Julie back at the hostel and just hung out until the rest of the girls came home. For dinner that night, we went to a really nice little restaurant that the hostel recommended. We were a little wary about going out to eat again after getting screwed on the bill the night before, but everything turned out fine.
That night, we went out to a bar called Instant that was recommended by our hostel and by my roommates who went to Budapest last month. It is the newest of the "ruin bars" in Budapest which are bars that have been converted from old apartment buildings or other buildings. Every room in Instant had a different theme. There was a school of fish hanging in the large courtyard, a room with light up butterflies all over the walls, a dentist themed room with a toothbrush chandelier, an upside down room with tables and chairs glued to the ceiling, and there was dancing in the cavelike basement. We went to the bar with a group of German guys that we met at our hostel and we all had a really great time.
On Sunday, we wanted to do a walking tour since we still hadn't really seen the sights of Budapest. We chose to do the free tour that had pamphlets in the hostel, and let's just say you get what you pay for. We spend the first 30+ minutes of the tour just standing around listening to the guide talking about Hungarian history. It was interesting enough, but the point of the walking tour is to be walking so you can see the city. He led us down random alleyways and it seemed like he didn't really care about us seeing the tourist sights, which is why were there. After listening to him talk about taxes for 15 minutes while standing in a random alleyway, I had had enough. I approached him after we saw St. Stephen's Basilica and asked him exactly what sights we would be seeing since we had to leave in just a few hours to catch our train. When I didn't get a straight answer, Sarah and I decided to break off and see the sights on our own. We actually probably took the same path as the tour group since we kept almost awkwardly running into them, but it was worth leaving the group to not have to listen to the guide any more.
It turns out, Sunday, March 15 is Hungary's Independence Day, so there was lots of excitement. We walked across the bridge from the Pest side to the Buda side (they used to be two separate cities) where the main celebration was going on. It was really fun to see the locals all celebrating, wearing silly hats and ribbons with the colors of the Hungarian flag.
Sarah and I wandered around the Buda Castle and saw St. Martin's church and what I think was the Fisherman's Bastion which had a great view of the city. After a lot of walking, we made our way back to the hostel to meet up with the rest of the group.
The train ride went very smoothly until the very end. After six hours on the train, we were all very ready to get off. We were expecting to have another hour on the train, but lo and behold, a whole hour early we hear them announce, hlavni nadrazi, which is the name of the station we were supposed to get off at in Prague. We all rushed to get off the train and exited our platform, but when we looked around, we were definitely not in Praha Hlavni Nadrazi. We were in a random train station of almost the same name in some tiny town an hour outside of Prague. I freaked out a little bit at the thought of having to spend the night in the Czech boonies, but we were able to get another train into Prague within about 30 minutes. It was a pretty hectic ending, but all's well that ends well.
Once again, sorry about the lack of blogs. I still owe you a blog about Paris, let alone what I've been up to around Prague. Miss you all and I can't wait for visitors! :)
