Banana Juiceski

Happy Sunday! Where did I leave off?


Last weekend was the first of the hiking weekends. One of our tutors, Peter, took us to Visegrad, a village somewhere Northwest of Budapest. We hiked about 20km over the course of the day, and it was a hard trek. Though we had a nice day for hiking, it had been raining the days leading up to it, so the woods were soppy and muddy and slippery. It seemed like everything was uphill and there weren't really paths. I liked it though, it felt like being in a movie or on an adventure. 

hikingggg

Once we finished the first hike and took a bus to the village at about 5pm, we found we had a second hike up to the top of a huge hill to see a castle at Visegrad. That was the hard one because we were all tired from the day. It was well worth the trek because the view was spectacular. I could have stayed forever. I wish it were a little closer to Budapest. 

the group minus Bius

Then this weekend, Mike, Erika, and I met up with some of my friends from SLU, Molly and Lauren, who are studying in Rome. We went to Zagreb, Croatia essentially so we could go to the Plitvice National Park. The day we hiked there was beautiful, we couldn't have asked for better weather. We got up at 6am, caught a 7:30am bus (barely!), and two hours later we were there. We spent the entire day there, the park was like a postcard everywhere you looked. I couldn't believe how clean and clear the water was, you could see straight to the bottom at every point, and there were fish and plants growing and it all looked so surreal. I felt like I was in a fairyland the whole time. 

The group at the Big Waterfall

postcard???

Lauren, me, Erika, Mike

Fairyland

Big Waterfall

The night, we had dinner outside of our hostel, which was a really cool place actually. The hostel had fabulous art all over the walls, they were spray painted different themes in extreme detail. Like the internet room had planets and space and eclipsing moons all over, but it looked really sweet. Erika and I went out for drinks with some German people she had met the night before, but it was a pretty chill night. 


Our second day in Zagreb was wet and cold. It was the complete opposite of the first day. We killed some time in a little cafe that we found downtown. I got a hot chocolate, but it was the consistency of pudding. It was good, but I couldn't quite finish it, it was too thick. We still took a walking tour of the city, rain and all, though. We found this free tour themed "Can You Speak Croatian?" At each sight we stopped to see, the guide would teach us phrases and words in Croatian. I even got a little phrasebook. It was really fun, even though my feet froze! Molly, Erika, and I were not so smart in that we wore shorts and sandals....... 

view of Zagreb

The general feel of Zagreb was different from most cities. It was very relaxed, like the whole city was one big coffee shop. It was cleaner too than Budapest and Vienna. There was none of that black grime on the buildings there that I see in Budapest. I really wish I'd had more time to spend there, I was just enamored with that city. I think Erika and I might try to at least go back to Croatia, maybe the coast, before we leave here. 

That's it for now! Tomorrow night is karaoke night at our usual Monday night bar. There probably won't be pictures and definitely NOT soundclips from that! :-P I'm planning on singing Jitterbug by Wham! hehehe well thank you for reading! I hope everything is well with you. 


xoxo

Someone once told me that Dutch sounds like a drunk British guy trying to speak German...

3 weeks of sleepless fun will never go unpunished. As many times as this happens, I don't think I'll ever learn this lesson. I was sick all week with a good cold. Interestingly enough, grocery stores and even normal drug stores do not carry over the counter medicine. The trick is to go to a pharmacy and either ask for what you need or explain your symptoms to the pharmacist who will know what to give you. Simple, and effective, and quite helpful in a way because someone could explain to you how to take your medicine properly, etc. If only the pharmacists spoke English......... Luckily I was able to find a friend to help me out.


So I haven't done too much lately. Last weekend, I signed up for a nighttime run through Budapest. It was short, just 4 miles, but it was very scenic. We ran over a bridge, beneath the lit up Buda Castle and Gellert Hill, back over a bridge to the finish. It was a great run, though I had trouble getting there and getting my registration numbers (they had lost my online registration, also I didn't know where the race started...hah), but everything worked out and the people were very helpful. I even met a guy from Big Rapids there.

Gellert Hill, with what I call Budapest's Statue of Liberty (that angel up there)

Buda Castle at night, I didn't take this, but I wanted to show you what it looked like lit up when I ran by

Let's see, what else? The other Americans and I didn't go anywhere this weekend because we wanted to stick around and get to know the Erasmus students (the other international students). We're all classified into two different groups: American, or USF (University of San Francisco) and Erasmus. I just get called a USF student, oh well. Some of the Erasmus kids live in the building next to mine, and they had a bunch of us over for dinner to have a kind of meet and greet. Two of the three hostesses are from Spain, but there was no Sangria....... What a shame. Everyone is very sweet though, and the Spanish ones are helping me remember all the Spanish I learned up through high school. I can even speak some French now! J'ai mal a la gorge: My throat hurts. J'ai mal au dos: My back hurts. Bonne nuit: Goodnight! :-)


Well. Since I have been spending a lot of time in my flat recovering and doing a whole lot of nothing, I think it'd be a good idea to post some pictures of where I'm living :-) mostly to spice up this boring post.

My living room! Where I'm sitting right now.

Kitchen.

Only the latest in exercise technology

I don't feel like too much of an alien here anymore. I'm picking up on the language. For the most part I know what people mean, and I can kind of make some sentences (with extremely poor grammar and an atrocious accent!). The best part, however, is that I know my way around the city. The Erasmus students did a "treasure hunt," as they called it, of the city a few days ago. It ended at a club (of course) called the Living Room, where another USF girl and I met up with them. It should have been called the Dancing Room(s). Great music, by the way. Techno and trance is really growing on me. I'm not sure about this one song though, called We No Speak Americano, I get the feeling it's kind of some European inside joke...hahah! But the point of  that story was that I had to walk all the way back to my flat (as by that time the metro and the trams were closed) with only a metro map that doesn't have street names on it. I somehow found my way! And it only took 40 minutes! Actually that's kind of a long time hahaha.... I'm really just trying to say I can navigate the city now, above ground. It's quite a different trek when you're sitting on a subway and have no idea what the street looks like above. 


Anyway. I am supposed to be going hiking tomorrow, but I'm not 100% sure that I'm going as the weather is cold and wet and I'm still trying to shake a cough. But considering the rest of the bad decisions I've made about whether to go out and dance or stay in and get rid of my cold, I'll probably be going hiking. I also have a train ticket to Croatia, where I'll be from September 23-26. We have a big group of kids coming with us, and I'm meeting two of my friends from SLU who are studying in Rome. We're planning on staying in Zagreb, and taking a day to visit the Plitvice Lakes, which I couldn't be more excited to see! I will definitely have pictures from there!


I hope everything is going well for you! Thanks for keeping a tab on me. 


Love, Amy

Wien, or Becs, or Vienna?

I now know how to say "Vienna" in three different languages. 


Seeing 5am a few too many nights in one week is killing me. I was so exhausted this whole first day in Vienna, but it was still sweet. The city was beautiful. The first day, we walked around downtown and found Parliament. I love this kind of building, the US just doesn't have it... All the statues carved into the sides of the buildings and the details in the iron cast lamp posts.... I love art.


Vienna is much cleaner than Budapest. I guess it makes sense since Hungary saw quite a bit more of the rougher side of World War II. It's interesting to see a lingering impact of the world wars in Budapest, also quite sad. The people here are very serious looking, it's not like America in the sense that most people look approachable, relaxed, and smile a lot in public. People here are more withdrawn and they don't smile as much and try to blend in. I'm told that this is because during the occupation by the Soviet Union, it was for your own good to stay serious and be like everyone else. Standing out while living under a communist regime invites trouble, authorities would want to know why you are so much happier, find out what you have that others don't. This kind of demeanor has been passed on through the years, and it's very apparent now. That is kind of hard to get used to. Also, because it is not impolite to stare at people here, I had some trouble adjusting. I kept having a very serious, quiet person watching me on the metro. Weird! What, dude? Look away or something. Haha but it's all good now, just some interesting cultural differences that I didn't anticipate.


Anywho, back to Vienna. It's clean, the metro is cool, and the people were nice. Actually, the people were amazing. Every single time we had to ask for help, the people were very patient, tried hard to speak English, spoke slow, and were really helpful. To top it off, they always told us they hoped we were having a great stay in Austria. I was always smiling after I got help. I totally recommend going to Austria, if only because the people rock. 


The rest of the weekend blurred by. We went to a huge park where there was a zoo (the first zoo ever in Europe, it got its first elephant there before the US was a country!). I like zoos, I found the frogs and turtles and lions, which are my favorites :-) We went to see the jaguar feeding, and I thought that they'd feed the jaguars big hunks of meat. I was wrong. They ate big, white bunnies! It was kidna like watching Animal Planet. The park also had the Habsburgs' summer palace, which was beautiful! The Habsburgs, in case you're wondering, were a royal family. The head of the House of Habsburg was usually the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire as well, at least until like 1800. There's your history lesson for the day! I feel like a dork. There was also a hedge maze, but we didn't go through it because no one wanted to pay for it.... Euros, man. It's all way expensive there. 

nom nom nom

Summer Palace

We visited St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was being cleaned so a lot of it was covered up. We took a tour of the catacombs. Those were weird. And there were rooms full of skeletons. Seriously, bones filled the rooms, piled from floor to ceiling! We also climbed up 300 some stairs to the top of the tower at the cathedral and got a sweet view of the city. 

St. Stephen's Cathedral

A view from the tower

The Imperial Palace, where the Habsburgs worked, I guess.

That night, we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Austrian versions of Mexican food.... oh gosh. I miss Taco Tuesdays. I thought it was so nasty there... The chips and salsa was great! But when they brought my tacos....and my tacos had sauerkraut in them... no way. Luckily the rest of the night was better, we found a cool little bar and chilled.


The last day of the weekend, one of the USF girls, Laurel, and I went to the Sigmund Freud Museum while Erika and Mike went to the United Nations building. Laurel and I really wanted to try schnitzel, but we never found any. What on earth is schnitzel???!! It was everywhere, I have no idea why we didn't think to get any before it was too late :-(


Oh well. It was a very nice weekend and I'm so happy I got to go! I'm back in Budapest, and the other international students from around Europe have finally arrived. We met a few of them at Morrison's, our favorite Monday night bar. Oh, Mondays here are the same as Thirsty Thursdays at home, it's a party day. Celebrate the start of a new week, I guess. I like that philosophy! 

The group at the Imperial Palace

I was Russian to Austria....but I got Hungary along the way...

Hi! It's been too long since I last posted! Basically it's been school for three days a week, then travelling. Last weekend, we explored around Hungary. 


We visited a little village called Szentendre and it was too cute! It actually reminded me of a little backstreet in Rome that I was in a few years ago, only everyone spoke Hungarian and there was langos instead of pasta. Oh langos. I wish I took a picture of it to show you! It is this HUGE chunk of flat, fried bread COVERED in whatever you want. Most people lather it up with sour cream, cheese, ham, sausage, anything else, and garlic. I couldn't do it, I'm no sour cream fan so I just spread garlic on mine. It is sooo oily and heavy but sooo gooooood. Also, I really like the ice cream here. I got fabulous caramel gelatto and it's totally to die for. Rivals that of Italy. However, I do really miss that chocolate moose tracks from Meijer...... Moving on, we took a Danube riverboat back up to Budapest from Szentendre. I love river cruises, and I really wanted to go on one up the Danube. It was so nice.

Our riverboat in Buda, across from Parliament in Pest... hehe

Later that weekend, we took a train to Lake Balaton, which is the biggest lake in Hungary, and I think it's the biggest fresh water lake in Europe. It was beautiful, but it was as cold as all get out. Brrrrr! Not lake house weather, but it was still fun. There was a wine tasting festival going on and live music and the gorgeous lake and yacht club.... Where I found lasers, optis, M24s, and something like a J30.....alllll myyyyy boatttssss :-D

David, Nora, and I wine tasting

New Westerns location??

Hungarian Gray Cow!!!

We biked up to a little village called Tijany (I'm not even going to tell you how to pronounce that! It's not what you think.... haha). It had a gorgeous church and an even more gorgeous view of the lake. Gorgeous seems to be the word of the trip! But really, I loved it. I especially loved getting to know everyone else in my program and all the tutors. 

The group at Tijany

Tijany from across another little crater lake

So after Balaton started a new week of school. I love my classes. Hungarian is such a hard language, I'm glad I'm in a basic language class! The teacher, Feri, is very cool, too. I'm learning a lot, and I wish I could explain it to you. I will when I get home! My Nationalism and Ethnicity class is also very interesting. It's all about Europe and all the different nations and states within it, and everything is right up my alley. The teacher, Alan, is a guy from London who now lives in Hungary, and he is as sarcastic as he is smart. And he's VERY smart. I get him off topic like crazy. He knows EVERYTHING, kinda like Prof. Lomperis at SLU. Oh and my Contemporary Issues class... Marcel is our teacher and he's hilarious! He's from Hungary, and he has a thick accent and a fabulous sense of humor. He cracks me up! He starts jokes in English, but doesn't finish them because he just starts laughing, so I have no idea what's going on, but it's funny. He had a pen that had a button you pushed and it made a burp noise, so we had a guest lecturer and he sat in the back of the room and made burp noises. He later gave me that pen.... It burps in my bag all the time. 

I have to go do stuff and run now, so I'll write about my trip to Vienna later. I hope this informs you better!

A picture of Pest