Berlin! Part One.

Being home (well, now being back in Westminster for my job) has made me shamefully forget to blog about Berlin.  I can't believe that happened, considering it was the place I was most excited to visit.  So...I'll try to do it now!

It started with a 12-hour bus ride that began only about 6 hours after getting back from Venice and Vienna, which also involved bus rides.  Somehow, Caitlin ended up getting there on a plane, but Dani, Laura, and I decided to use Orangeways again, because it's super affordable.

It is darn near impossible for me to sleep on a bus.  I was rather miserable, although I managed to get little 30 minute power naps.  Somehow, Dani was out a lot of the time.  I'm jealous of her ability to sleep on forms of mass transportation.

One thing I noticed when nearing Berlin is the strange appearance of the trees.  So many of them seemed rather dead- abnormally so. But then I saw a sign that said Berlin was however many kilometers away and was distracted by my excitement, because this was. after all, the city I've always wanted to go to!

We arrived at the bus station, which was overwhelming because we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and the directions we had for the hostel made no sense.  We finally figured it out and made it to the subway station, where we spent an embarrassing 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get tickets.

Eventually, after a few wrong turns, we made it to Heart of Gold Hostel.  It was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed.  Caitlin was awaiting us, as her flight had not taken 12 hours, and we then signed in and went to our room, which we shared with two other people.

Dani and I had tickets for the Berlin Philharmonic that night, and I was so excited.  I'd ordered the tickets online and was amazed that they only cost 7 euro apiece.  However, the description of the event was in German, so I had no idea what I was getting us into.  It was not the Philharmonic at all, but rather, a documentary about a composer whose name I no longer remember.  It was interesting- at least, the parts that were in English were.  I think the man was there afterwards to answer questions, but that was in German and we felt awkward and left.

We were due to meet up with the others at Potsdamer Platz soon, but took some time to wander through the magnificent Sony Center on the way back.  There was a giant giraffe (life sized?) made of legos! And there were some big ads for some German thing that happened to say "Ich bin ein Berliner," so we obviously had to take photos in front of that, and while I was looking for an ATM, we stumbled upon a pretty cool alien sculpture that argued for the existence of extraterrestrial life.

A girl from our hostel joined us for dinner, and we went to an Italian restaurant that was pretty good.  The service was weird, though, as Dani had to crazily gesture to get the guy's attention so we could order dessert, which ended up being some awful gooey pudding that congealed and changed color as it cooled.  Not quite how it seemed in the photo on the menu.

It was dark by then, but we were near Brandenburger Tor and just had to see it lit up beautifully in the night.  Our new hostel friend took photos for us.

The next day was full of random exploration with the goal of hitting as many landmarks as possible.  We walked down Friedrichstrasse, admiring the shops and ogling the fancy German cars in the windows, etc.  I especially enjoyed the Ampelmann street lights and the fancy manhole covers that doubled as maps. 

We visited Checkpoint Charlie and a small museum nearby that explained the spy tactics of the SS, which was pretty cool, and then went over to the Topographie des Terrors, a museum that took us through all stages of Nazi occupation of Germany.  Afterwards, I drank Spezi, which I'd discovered and fallen in love with the night before at dinner.

On the way to go get some lunch, I took a photo at Checkpoint Charlie for 2 euro, and as you can see, it's rather corny, but I had to do it.

And then I ate my first Bratwurst in Germany!! And it was AWESOME!

Our journey continued on towards Museum Island, and we saw the location of the famous book burning, where ironically a book sale was happening, so we spent some time browsing there and I bought my dad some old German Mark that he'd requested.  We also visited the memorial to the victims of war and tyranny that was located nearby.

We went onward to the Berliner Dom, where Caitlin and I frolicked in the fountain before we all paid a nominal fee to go inside.  Totally worth it.  We explored the crypt below the church and climbed up and up and up in the midst of a rather loud of of Spanish boy-children to get to the very top, where we had spectacular views of the entire city.  

For dinner, we asked our hostel for a recommendation of a nearby German restaurant.  We found it with relative ease and it was a great experience.  I ate fried cheese spaetzle, which I later tried to recreate at home but epically failed.  Laura drank Afri-cola, which is French, apparently, and the waiter thought it was funny that we had no clue what it was.  It tasted rather good, but I stuck with my Spezi.  

We wandered back through a park, where we played for a while. That was fun.  Even though we're all 19 or 20 years old, playgrounds are still rather appealing.  

And we watched the sunset before going back to the hostel for the night.

Stateside

I am currently sitting at home with my cat eating Ramen and breathing American air, which I seem to be allergic to.

But I'm home!

The second part of the KLM flight wasn't awful.  I had a nice person sitting next to me, and I had a window seat which allowed me some scattered winks of sleep because I was able to lean on something.  The whole waiting process to get on the plane was miserable, though.  I used my remaining Euros for an overpriced apple and some coke.  Instead of doing all security checks before entering the terminals, Schipol airport made us do them at each terminal, so I waited in a really long line to be body scanned AND patted down. Not fun.  And after that, we waited some more for our boarding time. Once I got on the plane, though, things were looking up.  I probably got a total of 3 hours of sleep, which was awesome because I hadn't gone to bed the night before.  And the flight attendants were really nice.  I couldn't eat the plane food because I felt sick so I just kept drinking orange juice.  And I watched "Black Swan" and "No Strings Attached" and an episode of Family Guy and an episode of The Big Bang Theory, courtesy of the plane's entertainment system built into each seat.  And I read the entirety of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which wasn't that impressive, and I started reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula," which was awesome because I went to Bran Castle in Romania, which was allegedly Dracula's.

And then we arrived so many hours later, and customs didn't take forever, although I did learn that Kinder eggs are illegal in the U.S.  And after struggling to get my baggage and stack it on a cart, I found my dad and he bought me a chocolate chip cookie and I finally got to leave the airport!

First meal in America? Taco Bell.  It was awesome.  Second meal in America? Velveeta Mac&Cheese.  It was also awesome.

The best part about coming home was getting to give souvenirs to my family, which I had fun doing and I think they enjoyed the stuff I got them.  They really liked seeing all of the different currencies I brought back.  I wish I'd saved money for myself as souvenirs, but Emma had specifically requested that as her souvenir from me so it all went to her.  That's okay, though. I have some duplicates I get to keep after also giving some to my dad.

I've started doing laundry and it's amazing how much stuff can fit into the washing machine. That sounds silly, but it's significant after 4 months of tiny loads of laundry.  Lots of things are different, actually.  Stairs in the US are higher, and American airports are crummier, and roads are worse, for example, but that's all I can think of right now.  It was also strange being able to understand what people were saying around me, and it was embarrassing to find myself saying "Bocsi" when I accidentally ran into people with my luggage instead of "Excuse me."  I need to get out of the habit of using my limited Hungarian vocabulary.

Well, I've got lots to do today, but I'll keep posting here over the next few weeks with reflections of the trip as well as videos and photos when I have them ready.

Sitting in the airport in Amsterdam

Well, the flight from Budapest was turbulent.  I'm exhausted from not going to bed last night due to my frenzied last-minute packing, but it all went well, I suppose.  As well as it possibly could, at least, considering I ran out of time to thoroughly clean the apartment and I had to throw away a bunch of stuff that wouldn't fit in two suitcases...but hey, who needs socks, anyways?

I'm sitting in Amsterdam, mentally preparing for the 2 hour wait ahead of me, which will be followed by a super long flight- maybe around 8 hours?  I don't remember.  I really hope I get some sleep...and I don't really know what to do for the next two hours because the waiting area is super crazily crowded already and although I'm really hungry, I don't want to risk losing my seat to go get some food, because I'm too exhausted to stand until it's time to board.

I should be in the US around 2 or 3 Eastern time, and then my dad is taking me to Taco Bell on the way home (which is another two hours, by the way).

I can't wait to get into a bed.

Last Day in Budapest

Well, now that the last possible goodbyes have happened, I really do need to get to work on packing.  I had planned to go to Margaret Island today as an incentive for packing, but my lunch excursion cost me over 2 hours, so that's not going to happen.  So, I'm procrastinating less detrimentally by writing this!

I've been packing all day because my taxi comes in about 12 hours.  I've made pathetic progress.  The good news is that I finally ate gulyas, and I liked the broth part at least.  I went to a Hungarian Restaurant with Rebekah, Catherine, Luke, Nick, and Rhaelynn for lunch.  It's located right near school so I also finally got to take a picture of McDaniel Budapest.  And I recorded my bus ride there.  I'm being oddly sentimental about stuff like public transportation. I went to the ABC for quite possibly the last time, am eating what is possibly my last Magnum (Ecuador Dark) in Budapest, and have withdrawn my last forints ever.

So, I guess to recap chronologically since my last post, we went to Okay Italia for the last time on Friday.  We didn't go to the one at Nyugati, though, because we were tired of getting the same waiter every time, and instead went to the one in between Nyugati and Jazai Mari ter on the ring road.  It was so sunny outside and we had to eat outside because the inside was reserved, so the setting sun made the first part of it slightly miserable, but the sun finally started to go down and the food came and then it was awesome.  I couldn't finish mine, but it tasted really really good until that point.  We split up then, and I said goodbye to Julie for the last time and then went home to wait for the others to get there with Caitlin's stuff, at which point I said goodbye to Laura.



 Caitlin spent the night on our couch since she and Dani were sharing a taxi. I went to bed early because the Internet was too slow to keep me awake and I was exhausted anyways, but woke up the next morning in time to help Dani and Caitlin take their stuff down to the taxi.  We said our goodbyes, they drove off, and I began my day's adventure.

I finished up souvenir shopping at Vaci utca before coming home to eat some grilled cheese, and then took the 2 to the chain bridge, which I walked across before beginning the hike up to Buda Castle.  It was so hot outside.  I found a foie gras festival, which was unexpected, and wandered the Castle District for over an hour, taking lots of photos and being a tourist, but I ran out of water so I took the bus and then the tram back home.  The rest of my day was a whole bunch of nothing.  I should've packed, but I was exhausted from the energy-draining heat, and just spent my time on Skype and stuff.

And here I am now.  My iTunes keeps playing really depressing music on shuffle, and is therefore not at all motivating me to do anything but wallow in my desire not to leave Budapest.  But I have a lot to do, and no ideas of how else to procrastinate other than perhaps making a playlist of happy music, so yeah...it's likely that the next post you'll read from me will be written in the good ol' USA!  I am indeed excited to go home- it's just been an awesome semester and it's always sad when awesome things end.

Lots of Goodbyes

It's my last Friday in Budapest and I guess I'm not in denial anymore. I'm actually really sad to be going, because this has been the experience of a lifetime.  The majority of people here are leaving tomorrow, a couple left today, one or two are leaving on Sunday, and I am leaving early Monday morning, while others leave later on Monday.  I'm probably not going to see very many people again until next semester.  It's so different from the normal end of a semester/year, because as Dani put it, it's like coming here for a semester took a chunk out of time and slowed it down to a more significant segment of life, and now that segment is ending.

Today, Julie, Laura, Dani and I went to Vaci utca for the unicorn horns I still can't spell in Hungarian (Dani disagrees and thinks they look like arm casts), and then we went to City Park (minus Julie, who had blisters).  City park was beautiful and there was a castle we looked at which was cool, but there was so much tree fluff that I couldn't stop sneezing and we had to leave.

We went to Millenium da Pippo for lunch because Julie and I had had a good experience there before and I was hungry from only eating a Magnum (double chocolate!) for breakfast, and they were thirsty from the heat.

I met Matt at Jazai Mari ter on the way home to get some packing paper and got home just in time for to let Dani in, because she just turned in her keys.  And now here I am, trying to get caught up on blogging before dinner tonight at Okay Italia and stuff.  We have to help Caitlin carry her luggage over here because she's spending the night so she and Dani can share a taxi to the airport tomorrow morning.  And at some point tonight, Dani and I need to meet with Laura to write the constitution for the book club we're starting. It's cool that we can manage to start a club from over here.

I have such a backlog of photos to upload and videos to make that I'm sure I'll continue adding things during the summer.  I'm looking forward to going home but it'll still be weird to not be here, just because I've finally gotten used to it.

Final Exams and Final Exploration

This week has been a whirlwind of attempting to study and attempting to do everything Budapest has to offer that I have not yet done.  The studying part hasn't really happened yet, but that hasn't been a problem because my only real final is this afternoon and I'm gonna study for it after going to get cake with Julie in half an hour.  The accomplishing Budapest stuff, though, has been challenging only because it's been necessary to plan around people's exam schedules, and despite everything I've done this week, I still have a lot to do this weekend when most people have left already.  

So, last Sunday we went to Aquincum, the Roman ruins that exist in Obuda.  Rhaelynn, Caitlin R, Julie, Dani, Laura, Matt, and I took the HEV to get there at no extra cost because it's within the city limits. I think it cost us about 600 HUF for admission, which was awesome because we're all running out of money.  The museum part was really cool, and I appreciated that the signage was in both Hungarian AND English, which isn't all too common in Hungarian museums.  There were lots of artifacts (obviously) and information about the archaeological excavation downstairs, and upstairs there were some really awesome mosaics.  Outside were the ruins, which were initially awesome.  They had a few things of which I do not remember the name, but you look through them and it shows you pictures of the excavation- perhaps they were chronographs. Not sure.  Anyways, eventually the ruins became repetitive, but that's perhaps only because it's hard for normal people like me to realize - oh hey! That little wall used to be the kitchen.  It began to just look like a lot of rocks.  Still though, it was a good experience and only took a couple of hours.  

That night, Laura, Dani, Julie, and Caitlin B were planning to see Thor, but I was exhausted from the paperwriting of the other night and took a very long nap. I woke up to a text message from Casey inviting me to Ring for dinner, so I joined him, Z, and Matt there at 7.  My burger wasn't bloody this time and it was actually rather awesome!  We went to Alexandra after to browse books.  That bookstore has Penguin classics for 600 HUF ($3), which is amazing.  We went back to Casey and Z's afterwards and played Scattergories, which was so much fun! I won.  That day was Erica's birthday so many people were at Szimpla with her.  We met up with them and that was rather fun- much better Szimpla experience than my previous one.  

The Memento Park plans of Sunday failed, as many people needed to study, so I ended up going to Vaci utca with Caitlin R and Rhaelynn around 3 to get what I call Unicorn horns, but are actually called something Hungarian (I'll look it up later and tell you the real word). I got one covered in cinnamon sugar and it was delightful!! I also had fun exploring Vaci again, because it's a beautiful, albeit touristy, pedestrian street. That night, I saw the movie Paul with Dani, Laura, Julie, and Caitlin B, which was rather stupid but not altogether awful.

Then it was Monday.  I had a Journalism class during finals week, which was just strange because on the main campus we never have classes during finals week. I met up with Julie after and we ate lunch at Millenium da Pippo, which was affordable and Italian- we shared a pizza.  We got there before it was open though so we killed time at Lukacs, a bakery that Luke recommends because it's his name in Hungarian, but it was kind of pricy so we split a piece of cake and I had some delicious lemon tea.  After food, we took the yellow line to the end, explored Vaci utca because Julie's never been, and then began our walk down the entire metro line, called the Millenium tour by my guidebook. It was really fun and a great way to see a lot of the city for one of the last times.  We walked all the way down Andrassy and saw Heroes' Square again and below you can see a selection of pictures of the adventure!

So that night, I went for a walk and ran into Casey and Z, who picked me up off the street to go to the Hummus Bar.  The first location we went to was closed down so we had to walk elsewhere, and on the way, we found an awesome motion-censored fountain that we played in! Then we found the restaurant and they gave us some awesome tea and we attempted to figure out the complex menu.  I ordered some hummus-filled laffa with a side of rice as a safety net, because I've never had hummus before.  Didn't like the hummus but LOVED the rice because it had lentils in it, which I've also never had but rather enjoyed.  I also had some rather delightful lemonade.  And the student discount made the already good prices even better.

At that point, I was still in denial about leaving in less than a week, by the way.

On Tuesday morning, I met with Peter and Fardin to put Messenger articles online from the final issue, and they're up now but they aren't the correct versions...I met with Mr. Smyth and Joao and Dr. Adamson about that yesterday, actually, to discuss the future of the Messenger as a web-based paper and to figure out how to streamline the process to prevent such issues from happening.  

That afternoon, Julie came over after and I made us grilled cheese and we then explored the area of Budapest dubbed "Watertown" by my guidebook.  I got sunburned a bit but it was otherwise nice.  

We plus Laura and Dani met at the Opera to tour it, but the cost was nearly twice as much as we were expecting, so we went to get pancakes instead.  It's amazing that there's a place in Budapest that realizes that pancakes are not equivalent to crepes.  And it had great prices.  It was rather awesome, actually.  

Tuesday night, a large group of the study abroad students went to Gödör, which was cool because there was live music.  It got boring though, because it was very slow live music and some of us relocated to Instant, where there was an improv band playing that was rather awesome, but soon enough we were all exhausted and went home.

My journalism final was the next morning, and I wrote about the arrest of the head of the International Monetary Fund and it's potential implications.  I think I did well but I'm not sure.  I met with Julie to explore the Castle District, but I was exhausted, so after walking across the Chain Bridge, we went to Margaret Island instead, which was absolutely lovely and flowery!

Luke, Nick, and I went to Casey and Z's for dinner, because Z was making perogies, which I've never had before but were kind of good.  And after, we played Scattergories, which was awesome and I won again! Love that game.  Julie and I met up to possibly go to Morrison's but instead ended up meeting people at a bar called Vitulla just to hang out after a long day.  

And then it was Thursday, and I ate grilled cheese for both breakfast and lunch, and went to the bakery with Julie and Dani for cake, and studied for my marketing final and possibly did well, and then had my aforementioned meeting, and then went to Catherine and Rebekah's apartment for an end of the semester et-together that culminated in what initially was a plan to go to A38, a club on a boat, but ended up actually at an outdoor club that played a mix of Hungarian music, American pop music, and American hard rock. That was really fun, actually.  My neck hurts this morning from crazily dancing to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Sabotage" and "Are you gonna be my girl?"

And now Laura is here so I need to get to work on that constitution!