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.
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| 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.
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| the group minus Bius |
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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.
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| The group at the Big Waterfall |
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| postcard??? |
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| Lauren, me, Erika, Mike |
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| Fairyland |
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| 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.......
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| 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.
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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
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