so i got a few hours of sleep my last night in prague and then woke up at about 5am to realize that my ipod had been on all night long and the battery was now dead as i'm about to board a bus to travel through three countries for 8 hours. delightful. headed to the reception desk to try to give it as much life as i could in 15 minutes before heading out into the cold early morning to go to the bus station.
turns out the bus ride wasn't nearly as bad as i had expected it to be, and i survived sans ipod for the majority of the ride. i got to watch a random sandra bullock's movie that i still have yet to learn the name of, many episodes of friends (amazing) and an episode of mr. bean in french (which needless the say i did not understand). i also slept alot. on the way we stopped in brno, czech republic; bratislava, slovakia; györ, hungary and then finally we arrived in budapest (around 1:00pm). i attempted to be coherant as we came into the cities we stopped in so that i could see as much as possible. but the view from a bus window really does not justify the city in any way at all.
when i got off the bus in budapest (literally in the middle of NOWHERE) i experienced my first dose of culture shock when i realized NOBODY there spoke english, at all. i needed to find a bank machine so i could withdrawal money to buy my metro ticket, but there was no machine to be found and nobody able to help me. i also had my first experience with a scam artist who tried to convince me that if i "just walked down this little alley with him he could get me some money". i'm pretty sure this was the only thing he could say in broken, terrible english and all the flags and red lights went off telling me this is exactly what i should not do. welcome to budapest.
i eventually managed to buy my ticket with my credit card with astronomical service charges but then i was off on the metro to downtown budapest.
as soon as i arrived, i was in love with the city. it was so beautiful. the directions to my hostel were a piece of cake and i found it no problem and checked in and dumped all my stuff. then as per usual, it was time to explore! on my first day wandering i managed to do a pretty good general tour of the city and saw charles bridge,
the parliment buildings,
st. stephen's basilica, the opera house, the first mcdonalds in eastern europe (hello western world take over),
and many little parks and lots of statues and monuments.
that evening it started to snow pretty intensely, and the lady at the front desk of my hostel informed me that they were expecting 20cms that night! i did not let this deter me and continued on with my sight seeing anyway. however after being outside in the cold walking around all day i was literally a popsicle when i returned and was completly beat from my day of traveling. i headed up to my room in the hostel, where i realized i was staying with 2 french guys, a canadian guy (who showed up after i already passed out) and 6 people that didn't speak any english at all. the six people who i can only assume may have been russian (??) decided it would be a great idea to stay in the hostel all night instead of going out and have a party until SIX THIRTY AM. i'm sure you can imagine how much i appreciated this, but its hard to tell people to fuck off in a language they dont understand.
thankfully the russians checked out the next morning and i didn't have to deal with them again. the second day there i took another free walking tour to see what was up with budapest. my tour guide (who's name i couldn't even remember if i had written it down) was a local from budapest and was hilarious. we started off in vörösmarty tér,
headed down váci utca,
checked out kiskiralylany (budapest's little princess - one of the first statues in budapest after the nazi's finally left them as a free country)
walked along the waterfront past charles bridge, up to st. stephen basilica,
down past the university, across the bridge from the pest side to buda to see the "0 km stone"
and then up the 100's of stairs to the top of buda castle. they gave us a sweet tour of the buda castle and the surrounding area and filled us in on lots of history along the way.
(this statue is "buda's cock" ... this is actually what they refer to this statue as. its the only statue that the communists made that is still standing in budapest. when they made it the communists said the "hat" ontop is to represent their empire. but the people of budapest left the statue there after the communists left because it reminds them of how blindly stupid the communists were.... because it obviously just looks like a dick hahhahhaha)
(this statue is also at the top of buda castle, and you are supposed to rub the horse's balls to improve your sex life)
then the tour ended and we were left to explore on our own. i literally spent a good 2 hours after the tour wandering around buda castle and admiring the view. after i wandered back down the other side of the hill
and meandered all around and through the buda side of the city i retraced the steps of the tour and checked out some sights in further detail. i went in to st. stephen's basilica where they actually have st. stephen's amputated hand on display from when he was cannonized like 100's of years ago. by far one of the most creepy and morbid things i've seen in a while. afterwards i wandered as far as my legs could carry me up andrássy út and then back to my hostel again, taking refugee whenever i could to take advantage of a heated building for free. when i made it back to the hostel i met my new roomates (a bunch of british girls) and a bunch of other people. the hostel has a great common room with a big projector screen with 100's of movies to chose from. so we ended up watching jackass before calling it a night.
my third day there it was actually sunny when i woke up, so i had to take advantage of it by heading over the the buda side and climbing up to the top of the citadel, which i like to refer to as "the top of the world". the view was spectacular and i couldn't get enough of it.
i spent a good amount of time up there checking out the fortress and the liberation monument
and the park at the top, but mostly just looking out at the view. the hike up was pretty trecherous, but not quite as scary as the hike back down. after all the snow they had got the trails and stairs were completely covered and had formed luge-like tracks going up and down.
and sporting the practical footwear of chuck taylors this made for an interessting journey to say the least! once i safely managed to make it to the bottom i went to check out the jewish synagogue (the largest in euroasia and the 2nd largest in the world)
as well as the tree of life in commemoration of the victims from the nazi take over. i then hiked across the city to find the train station so i could buy my ticket in advance to get out to the airport (having learned from my mistake before leaving for paris, i have decided its always a good idea to buy in advance). after struggling at the train station to find someone i could communicate with i managed to find a man that spoke french, and quite easily i expressed myself and got what i needed (this and the bus station were the only places i had trouble finding people that could speak english, go figure). i then journey to the other side of the city again to check out heroes square (also known as the millenium monument since it was built in celebration of budapest's 1000th birthday in 1896)
and city park.
in city park you can find the annual skating rink they build (which as a canadian i can say is really nothing to write home about at all, and definatly not worth the grotesque fees they charge to skate on it), the széchenyi-gyógyfürdő (also known as the thermal baths, which again, not really worth the price. after seeing the hotsprings in iceland and how natural they were and surrounded by volcanic tundra the széchenyi thermal baths just looked like an overrated swimming pool filled with really hot water),
and also vajdahunyad castle.
it was the perfect day to wander the park and i got to watch the sunset over heroes square.
while walking back down andrássy út i stopped to see the terror museum (showing the history of the nazi take over)
and check out the inside of the opera house lobby. grabbed some dinner and wandered around downtown for a while, then it was back to the hostel to watch old school and drag me to hell (utterly terrible movie) with my new friends.
the following morning was my last real day in budapest so i did my best to make the most of it. i wandered back to the buda side and saw the famous gellért hotel
where the gellért thermal baths are. hiked half way up the citadel again to check out the view one last time and then headed to the GIANT daily market back on the pest side of town. the market was filled with lots of chili peppers and exotic foods you would never see back home,
and upstairs had traditional hungarian clothing and any souvenir you could possibly imagine.
i wandered back along the waterfront and then got a text from the girls from the cief saying they had arrived in town, so i went and met up with them at their hostel. we went and gathered some groceries so we could make dinner for the night, feasted and then got into the wine. a friend of a friends of a friend of lisa's (viktor), who lives in budapest, came over to show us a good place to go out. after we were all significantly drunk enough we headed out to gödör klub. viktor was buying us all drinks and needless to say the night got beyond sloppy.
since i had to leave to catch my flight at 7am the next day we decided to call it an early night around 12:30 or so. however, when i made it back to my hostel everyone was beyond drunk and there was alcohol everywhere, and i just could not resist the after party!
the night turned out to be hilarious, and apparently i became quite good friends with a british bloke i met. around 6-6:30 we all realized that i had to wake up in an hour to leave and i hadn't even gone to bed yet.... nor had i packed any of my things. so i called it a night, drunkenly packed my stuff as best as i could and passed out. approximately 45 minutes later i was waking up and checking out. fabulous! the rest of the days journey was absolute hell, not only was i severly hungover, but i also managed to get some bug bites on my wrist while i was sleeping. at the time of check out i figured this was no big deal (more on this later on in the post). i grabbed the metro to the train station, the train to budapest airport (where i had to wait a little while as my plane was about an hour delayed) and then when i landed in paris i had to take the metro to downtown paris and kill about 8 hours before my train to dijon. the entire day the bites on my wrist began to swell and swell until my arm had become about twice its normal size. there was nothing i could do and before long it was flaming hot, sore as hell, and starting to ooze some disgusting substance. it was completely gnarly to say the least. however, i managed to spend about 4 hours dragging my ass around le louvre trying to find the exhibit of lists for danielle (which was highly unsuccesful) so instead i wandered through the egyptian section.
when i arrived home i showed anges my fucked up arm and she seemed terrified (which really helped convince me everything was okay), but since it was already almost 11pm there was not much i could do about it until the morning, so as always after one of my excursions my bed and i become one for an unhealthy amount of time.
first thing the next morning i went to the pharmacy to see if they could give me something for my arm, and she insisted i go to the doctors immediatly. wonderful. headed to the doctors on campus where they do not speak a lick of english (thank god we studied medical terms during first semester!). when i was checking in and the receptionist was taking my information i showed her what my problem was and she immediately ran and got a doctor. when the doctor arrived she immediately went and got THREE other doctors to come and take a look as well. always a good sign right? as this point i'm thinking amputation is going to be necessary. but after they mumble to each other for a while in french and ask me a few questions they decide that all i need are some anitbiotics, to apply some rubbing alcohol and sport a sweet bandage on my arm for the next week. even though i insisted i had no allergies to medication the doctor was extremely concerned that i was going to have an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she prescribed me and insisted that i go back for another visit in the morning. luckily by the next morning it had already started to clear up a bit and wasn't nearly as hideous as the day before and the doctors gave me the all clear and said i should be fine in a week (turns out they were right as its pretty okay now, but i think i might has some nasty scars for a little while, at least i got to keep my arm though!)
anyway, i think this post is long enough, and it is definatly time for me to hit the sheets. i will update on the last week and a half back in mustardville at a later date. for now, i will sleep.
bonne nuit et a la prochaine fois mes amours! vous me manquez!
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