nesday night we headed to Cologne, Germany by train and spent the night in the train station to wait for our train to the airport at 4:21a.m. We arrived in Vienna groggy and tired, found our hostel, grabbed lunch, wandered around for awhile and called it an early night. The next morning, we got up early and headed to the city for a tour of the Hofburg House. This is overrated in my opinion...the entire first floor is comprised of dishes and linens. (I'm supposed to write a paper about this somehow). My impression of Vienna is sub-par. It's somehow dreary, smells bad, and yet it's elegant. All to say, I'm glad we had the chance to go, but this wasn't the highlight of our trip and probably not somewhere I need to go back and see. That afternoon was fairly drizzly so we found a place to have something to drink and watched the U.S. soccer game! We stood out like sore-thumbs, it was very American.That night was possibly the highlight of Vienna for me, we found Mexican food! They nickel and dimed us for each tortilla and each round of 10 chips, but it was worth it!
The next morning we headed to Budapest!! We arrived around 1 and were immediately welcomed by money-hungry Hungarians. In Hungary's defense, the train station where we got off is in one of the worst parts of town. The first thing on our agenda was the find an ATM. We were warned that the currency rate is modestly different than the euro, but as we pulled out 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 Forints at a time, we felt rich. Holding a 10,000 bill in any form is a strange feeling. By the way--10,000 Forints is roughly 40 euro.
Next on our list, was to find our hostel, also known as "The Goat Hostel." This sounded sketchy from the beginning, but it was 13 euro or 3,260 Forints, and we couldn't pass it up. Looking for a large sign with a goat on it, we must have passed our future home 3 or 4 times before realizing that their form of advertising consists of a tiny plaque on the side of a building, plainly written in small font, "The Goat Hostel." We hesitantly walked through the door into a dark room, marched up a spiral staircase which led us to a balcony and rang the door bell. We all exchanged worried looks until Avey, the owner, opened the door. She said, "Oh, the five Americans are here, come in, come in!" This wasn’t a typical hostel. It was an apartment with 3 private rooms, a cute kitchen, and a lounge/computer area overlooking the city. Sighs of relief came from all of us.
We quickly put our things away and headed out the door, across the balcony, down the stairs, into the dark room and out the other door to go explore. We only had 24 hours here so we had to make the most it. This place was surprisingly beautiful! Everything about Budapest appealed to us. There was so much character to the city, it was populated but not too loud, it was sunny but not too hot. We stumbled upon a wedding reception outside of a Cathedral, then headed to see Parliament and the Opera. In search of finding the Budapest Castle to watch the sunset, we managed to take a wrong turn and ran into live music. We took a seat in the grass, and from what we could manage to understand, this was a Hungarian/American Christian concert. Although this wasn't what we were expecting, it was really neat to find that across the world, in what is considered a rather dark place for religion, it was vibrantly being expressed.
We headed to Fisherman's Bastion, a medieval looking castle on the hill to find a bakery known for their chocolate cake, and to look out over the city skyline. This is probably what won us all over. We sat there awhile looking out over the city, happy. We were determined to find this underground bar that a friend from home who had just returned from Budapest after living there all semester had suggested. Thanks to Sam's iphone, we managed to. This again, was awesome! We didn't stay there long, but Traci bought us a round of Hungarian shots (which tasted like petroleum), in celebration for my birthday. Although we were exhausted we had one last thing on our list to do--The Hot Spring Baths! These are therapeutic baths with various temperatures that were built by the Romans years ago. It is said that Napoleon actually went to the same baths we were at in his time. It was a perfect ending to the night...despite the fat men and the owner who stole our locker key and tried to make us pay for it.
Our flight left Sunday night at 8:50 and landed in Cologne 10 minutes shy of catching the last train home. So…back to the Cologne train station where we spent the night with bums on the floor! We caught the 5:15 a.m. train, and arrived at 7:45 in Maastricht just in time to walk to
breakfast and greet everyone. Great trip!Tonight, Bonnie and I fly to London and the other five girls will meet us there tomorrow after class! Our plans for London include so far: Horseback riding, a tour on a double-decker bus (Erin's dream), Lion King, and a Paul McCartney concert in Hyde Park!
Cheers.
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