Picture Synopsis

For those of you not on Facebook, here is a link to an album with the best pictures from the trip. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=42419&l=8318c&id=731281502

Day 33: We are on a Perpendicular Street and One Cannot Paddleboat Alone

Rosie:

Today we entered back in to the English speaking world. We woke up and had our second home-cooked breakfast. Delicious. Karen made us eggs in this really cool pan with holes in it. Sarah and I, being engineers, tried to figure it out. There were basically no problems getting to the Chunnel and the ride was pretty short, probably because we slept.

Once we got off of the train we visited platform 9 and 3/4. It was fun but I feel like they could have done a better job with it. The only attraction was an empty shopping cart that was partially sticking out of the wall. We then had to take the Underground to Victoria’s station. The prices were kind of outrageous. A single subway ride was $8. Anyway, after paying way too much for the short ride, they were charging way too much for luggage storage. Sarah and I decided to carry ours, but Corinne payed to keep hers there.

Our first destination was Harrod’s because I remembered going to the Harrod’s in Knightsbridge with my mom 6 years ago and having the best hot chocolate ever. Corinne found a free map that was not detailed at all and we began to make our way there. We kept getting turned around and eventually she asked somebody for directions. He informed us that we were going completely the wrong way, but after walking a few blocks we asked another woman and found out that that was not entirely true. Either way, she gave us really clear directions the store was pretty easy to find. About a block away from Harrod’s, however, Sarah and I lost Corinne. She walked off down the street to check something and disappeared. We actually found her again but then a bus drove in front of us and she was gone again. We decided that we should just go to Harrod’s and find her there . It worked. We met up right outside the main entrance.

After the best hot chocolate ever, Sarah and I decided to go to the hostel area and drop our bags off while Corinne did her site-seeing. It was probably our best decision on the whole trip because the bags had definitely gotten heavier. We had to ask a couple of people for directions to the bust stop, but overall Sarah and I were really impressed with our navigational skills. Also, the people that wee asked for directions were basically the nicest people ever.

The bus did a really bad job of announcing the stops. It never used street names and sometimes did not even say the name of the stop. Sarah spotted the street that we wanted on a sign, which saved us from getting lost. Our hostel was number 639 on the street, but after number 621 there was a giant cemetery and no buildings. Eventually we decided to walk past the cemetery and we found our hostel. Apparently 639 is right across the street from 850.

Anyway, after checking in and dropping our stuff off, we went for a walk to find dinner. There were a ton of places, but after misreading a sign that said “Nodes” as “Noodles” Sarah and I both craved noodles. There was a street with 4 Indian restaurants in one block, but apparently Indian food does not have noodles. One of the places was Indian/Thai though, so we went there. After ordering, the waiter informed us that they were phasing out the Thai food so there were no noodles. We were going to just leave and go somewhere else, but the waiter really didn’t want us to. After a little while and a lot of confusion, we had our noodles. They were pretty good.

After dinner we found our way back to the hostel despite the fact that Sarah gets confused between parallel and perpendicular. The hostel owned 100s of DVDs and after looking through all of them we settled on Braveheart. After waiting for some guys to finish watching a couple music videos, we started playing the movie only to realize that it was broken. We then chose Pretty Woman, but the guy there actually grimaced when we showed him our choice. He insisted on “the Doors” saying it was very good and just popping it in the VCR. It sucked. Like a lot. We left half way through to walk around and sleep. Oh yeah, Sarah almost bought 10 Kinder Eggs, but I talked her out of it.

Corinne:

So because we split up in London, here is my version of events after we went to the Harrod’s Chocolate Bar for suckao.

I began my adventures alone by helping someone find Harrod’s (apparently it is a common question). I had decided earlier to see Hype Park and BuckinghamPalace, so headed the couple blocks to the former. On the way, I was stopped by a motorcade, so if you know anyone famous who was driving by Hyde Park the other day…. Once there, I found Serpentine Lake, which was covered in paddle boats. Sadly, one cannot paddle boat alone. Instead I walked the Princess Diana Memorial Path to the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and the Princess Diana Memorial Playground and to Kensington Palace which had Princess Di birthday cards on the fence outside (her birthday is July 1st), and a Princess Di exhibit inside. What can you say? The English love their princess.

While I was meandering on my own, I had my iPod shuffle playing, and it was doing a great job of matching music to the scenery. It was playing slow, melodic stuff while I was at the fountain, and upbeat stuff while I was walking. Apple is creepily amazing.

By the way, found the obelisk again.

I stopped and sat in the rose garden for a couple minutes to eat some pretzels and discovered I was not the friendliest person in Europe (take that, Rosie and Sarah). A nice Indian gentleman sat down next to me, and we had this conversation:

IG: Do you have the time?

Me: 5:40

IG: Lovely weather we’re having.

Me: Yeah, beautiful and sunny.

IG: (something indistinguishable) from?

Me: Where am I from? I’m not from London.

IG: You don’t look like London. Maybe Europe?

Me: No, America.

IG: America?

Me: Yeah, the United States.

IG: Oh, I see. On holiday?

Me: Yeah.

IG: How long are you in London?

Me: 24 hours.

IG: (Laughs and pats me on the knee)

Me: Yep, just seeing some sights before I go home.

(Long pause)

IG: It was nice meeting you.

Me: You too.

(IG rides into the sunset.)

I exited Hyde Park and headed toward the Marble Arch, which I thought was on the way to Buckingham Palace. Actually, it’s not. Should’ve listened to my iPod after it started playing some dissonant music. Good thing I didn’t have to explain my lack of orientation to Sarah or Rosie. I just got a lovely walk up Park Street, the London equivalent of Park Avenue.

Buckingham Palace was extremely underwhelming. After all the palaces with grandiose architecture and manicured gardens, it was a cemented-in blob. With guards. So I decided not to end there, but continue on toward the Thames. I headed to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I didn’t go in either, but seeing the famous structures (and the London Eye) was a lot more impressive than the Palace.

I scurried my was back to Victoria station to pick up my luggage, paid with my last pounds, then couldn’t call the hostel for their free shuttle (my card didn’t work in the machine, then I didn’t know whether to include the 0 or not, then was too late). I ended up taking the Underground to find Sarah and Rosie watching some creepy Doors movie. And the rest is (or will be) in Rosie’s blog.

Day 30 : Fun at the Airport

So Sarah refused to include this in the blog yesterday, but at dinner she ate a lot of the sugar from the shaker. When we had to leave, she then proceeded to fill her napkin with sugar to save it for later. As we were walking around, she tried to funnel it into her mouth but the napkin started to rip and she spilled it all over herself. Like her face had sugar all over it, it spilled down her shirt, and somehow even got under her money belt.

Okay, so yesterday Sarah mentioned that a group of people came into the lounge while we were hanging out and there was this really annoying Canadian guy. So anyway, along with the Canadian guy and the girl from Carnegie Mellon was this group of guys from New Jersey. We didn’t talk to them at all while we were up there, but later when Sarah and I were going to take a shower we ran into them again. We were in the bathroom and Sarah was already in the first shower and I was about half a step away from walking into the second one, when one of them was like “hey, where are you from.” I’m pretty sure he was not completely sober, but we had a short polite conversation until his third friend came in and he had to switch into show-off-y guy mode. He decided to finish the conversation by saying something along the lines of “if you are going to get naked don’t let me get in the way” and then “I am in bunk 40 by the way.” After they left the room Sarah laughed, but through the whole thing she was completely silent and of no help.

When we woke up this morning, the guys from New Jersey were just getting up too and we had another short conversation with them, but this time they were sober. It turns out that after the Canadian guy had left us alone, he went and attacked one of them with questions. He wouldn’t stop talking to him for at least 45 minutes and asked him the same stupid questions about how old the world was and whether he liked George Bush. I guess we were lucky to get out so soon.

After actually leaving the hostel, we went to the East Side Gallery, which is the largest section of the Berlin Wall still standing. After seeing the second largest section, I was expecting this one to be way smaller, but it was probably about six blocks long, if not longer. There was graffiti all over it, and most of the graffiti was pretty cool. We kept walking until the next subway station and then went to a museum type thing about the wall. On the way there we passed an area where there were poster boards and a few people walking around. We looked in and it turned out to be a memorial. Apparently the Berlin Wall especially affected people on this street because it ran right through it and blocked off a major church. A while afterwards, the church was demolished.

Across the street was the place that we were actually trying to go. The major point of the museum was the replica of the Berlin Wall and the death zone in between the two walls. On our tour a few days ago, we learned that the Berlin Wall was actually two walls that ran parallel to each other, and the walls were mostly there to slow people down so that guards could shoot them while they were in between. Anyway, after climbing about four flights of stairs you could look down and across the street and see the replica. Inside there were also film clips taken by American and British people.

We decided to take the tram after the museum to get back to the train station where we had stored our bags earlier. After turning the corner though there was a ton of traffic and the tram was averaging about 5 minutes per block so we got off and took the subway. After a few transfers, a 15 minute wait, and an unexpectedly long subway ride, we ended up at the airport about 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart. When we got to the right counter, the woman told us that it was too late and boarding stopped 40 minutes before scheduled departure. After looking up prices and times for every single possible type of transportation, we discovered that the cheapest thing to do would be to switch our flight to the next flight offered by our original airline with the 50 euro penalty. The problem was that the next flight was at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. Soooo here we are, in the airport 11 hours later with about 11 hours left to go. There is no way that we are missing the next one. Corinne and Sarah went out to get food a while ago and then we watched a third of the new Indiana Jones and three episodes of Greek. All in all, it hasn’t been too bad so far. Almost like a relaxing Carnegie Mellon day. We even made a friend with a two year old boy who seemed to find us very intriguing.

Day 27 : Where is Sarah?

Rosie:

This morning started out with a big surprise. Maria had arranged it so that one of her friends from Klagenfurt would give us a ride to the airport. Her friend had changed the time that we were supposed to meet outside three or four different times, but the final time that we were told was 9:15. After running out of the dorm at about 9:17, we waited…and waited…and waited. Some amount of time after 9:30 we decided that if we were going to use public transportation to get to the airport, we should probably leave. The bus came about five minutes after we got to the bus stop and two transfers later we were at the airport with time to spare. Apparently nobody in Klagenfurt gets to the airport early because it was almost completely empty. On the plus side, no lines. The airport had this smart setup though where you had to walk through their store in order to get to the gates.

The airplane was nice enough; it was our first since the flight from London to Warsaw. They gave out free magazines as people boarded, but we later realized that there was no free water. The three of us basically passed out for the entire flight though so I don’t know how much the entertainment or the water mattered. Even though we clearly did not find the flight very exciting, there were a group of girls onboard who must have been flying for the first time and definitely disagreed. As soon as the plane started to move on the runway they let out a series of streaks which reoccurred at a few points during the flight.

After we got off of the plane, we had to get on a bus and then a subway to our hostel. There were a ton of different machines by the buses that were selling tickets and we knew that we were supposed to get a 2 euro ticket from somewhere. We settled on a nearby machine that was selling some sort of ticket. After we bought them, we started walking to the bus, but on the way we noticed bright yellow machines that said “public transportation” on them. We were pretty much positive (Corinne especially) that we had bought the wrong kind of ticket. After having a minor freak-out we went and asked the bus driver and he just waved us onto the bus. If there was a problem, it didn’t matter. When we got to the subway station the sign said that another was not supposed to come for three more minutes. We all pulled out our sandwiches and began to eat because we were starving (it was already past 3:00). Just after I had taken the first bite of it, the subway came…figures. Luckily there were a ton of seats, so eating wasn’t really a problem.

The hostel was right across the street from the subway station after we got off. There were two guys right behind us with big backpacks and they walked across the street, through the arch, and up the two flights of stairs to the front desk. They were lucky, they were staying in the main part of the hostel. We, on the other hand, had to walk back down the stairs, outside, past a few doors, into a really sketchy door, and then down into the basement to get to our room. I guess it makes sense that the cheap 32 person room would be in a basement though.

We basically spent no time in our room and went straight to the grocery store. We decided that tonight we were going to have burgers for dinner but they had multiple types of ground meat, and we didn’t know what meant beef. After staring at the meat for a while, we decided that one of the words definitely meant ground. It took a couple more minutes to see that one of the packages had the word for ground plus something like ‘schwine’ which we assumed was pork, like swine. Just to be sure, we ended up going to the counter and asking for ground beef. It seemed like a better idea even though it might have been slightly more expensive. We didn’t really have enough bag space to fit everything that we had bought, so Sarah “Commandeered” a cardboard tray for the meat.

When we got back and put everything away, we started looking in books and brochures for something to do both this afternoon and in the upcoming days. We settled on a free bike tour for tomorrow and a nice English man recommended the Jewish museum for today. When we got into the museum, we could almost immediately see why he had recommended it. Architecturally, the building was one of the coolest that I have ever seen. They way that everything was set up was so interesting. I can’t really explain it, but to give an example, the architect built this garden outside filled with an 8 by 5 (approximately) grid of large, standing, cement, rectangles. They were all slanted as were the ground and the walls. It was supposed to make you feel kind of dizzy and overwhelmed like the Jews felt when they were uprooted from their homes. It was pretty cool. Everything else was similar. It was set up in a cool way, but with a specific purpose.

When we got back to the hostel, we made our burgers a broccoli, which were pretty good. Corinne then proceeded to clean the entire kitchen, including the big mess that the rude people before us had left. We decided to hang out in the main part of the building instead of the sketchy part. And that is where we are now.

Day 24 : We’re in Europe!

Rosie:

This morning we woke up a little later than usual because our only plans for the day were to go though the city in Klagenfurt. I might have been a little hyper from oversleeping, and it suddenly hit me again that we are in Europe, so I decided to announce it. It only took like three and a half weeks for it to finally sink in.

We finished breakfast at almost twelve o’clock, so we decided that we were going to skip lunch and get kebabs for dinner later. We were going to get ice cream at Maria’s favorite ice cream place and pack bananas to tide us over until then.

The walk to the city was beautiful. The entire thing is along a canal and bikers ride all along the street next to it. It was the perfect picturesque summer day. We saw a few of the sites of the city, but the tower that we were going to climb up closed at 12:00 on Saturdays so we missed it. Oh well. Apparently stores in Klagenfurt aren’t very reliably open on Saturday as a few other places were also closed. We ended up spending most of our time in the mall (a true European experience). Corinne replaced the sunglasses that she broke, and I replaced the flip-flops that got worn through. During the flip-flop hunt we went into the sports store and definitely discovered the next big trend: slack-lining. The box said that it was “for anyone who enjoys balancing on a rope no more than 50cm off of the ground.” Since they were clearly trying to market to such a broad category of people, how could it not catch on?
The mall also sold miniature Sudoku books which are pretty sweet. We got pretty hungry in the middle of the mall so Corinne and I both pulled out the bananas that we had packed for the day. When I got mine out of my bag I realized why most people don’t carry bananas around for two days. It was like solid brown, mushy, and uneatable. Corinne got hers out and offered to share it with me. She started to whip it open by holding the stem and the entire strip of banana peel came off so the banana just fell on the ground. It was so sad. We both decided that the five second rule applied and decided to eat it anyway though.

The ice cream place that Maria recommended definitely lived up to the praise that she gave it. For an extra ten cents, you can get a mixed scoop with half of one flavor and half of another. If I open an ice cream store I am definitely going to do that. It is perfect for those of us who are not great at making decisions. The one problem was that the system was a little weird and I tried to be bold and order first and failed. On the plus side, the ice cream was delicious. It was actually gelato. Delicious.

We sat at the ice cream table for a long time and talked. We were trying to kill time until kebabs. As pretty and charming as the city of Klagenfurt is, there is not a whole lot to do, especially on Saturdays. We went back to the mall for a little while until Maria’s friend was ready to meet us at the restaurant. We got there, and successfully ordered everything until Sarah’s turn came. Such a trouble maker. Maria tried to explain, in German, that Sarah could not have any dairy products on hers, but the guy who worked there did not understand the word for milk. Finally he went through every sauce, said what it was, and asked if she wanted it. We discovered that she only could not have one of the sauces. It was yoghurt, we probably could have figured it out. Either way, the kebabs, or gyros, or whatever you want to call them were amazing. Almost as good as the real Turkish ones.

On the way back from dinner we stopped at a really cool booth thing that was made of foam board. People had written a ton of things on the walls (whether that’s what it was meant for or not) so we decided to write some things too. Sarah also taught Corinne and I Spanish. Well, Corinne and I blurted out every Spanish phrase that we had learned over the course of our lives, and Sarah laughed and corrected our bad grammar. At this point learning German would probably be more helpful, but Spanish was good too. We read, internet-ed, and Sudoku-ed for a while. There was a huge birthday party going on downstairs for one of Maria’s friends. Being the regular party animals that we are, we acted accordingly.

Day 21 : Conceited Cartoon Characters

Rosie:

This morning for the first time we had eggs instead of cereal. They were delicious. Sarah and Corinne made theirs in a frying pan with no handle, and I made scrambled eggs in the bottom of a pot. Maybe it was the lack of cereal this morning, but on our way over to the first thing we had planned for today, we had an intense conversation about cereal cartoon characters. We might have neglected a cereal, but I am pretty sure that Captain Crunch is the only cereal that is actually named after the character. Sarah decided that he must be really conceited. I mean, Tony the Tiger has Frosted Flakes, Fred and Barney have Fruity Pebbles, Snap Crackle and Pop have Rice Krispies etc.

Our first stop today was the Haus Der Musik (or something like that). It was a really cool museum. One of the coolest that we have seen so far. The beginning was a look at sound through science. The opening display was supposed to be similar to being a a womb. I know that sounds really weird, but they actually know what sounds you hear there, and I think that it pretty cool. We all got in the fetal position and lay on the floor for a while. It was strangely soothing and I think Sarah almost fell asleep. Thank God nobody walked in. I can only imagine what people were thinking if they were watching us on camera, but they probably get that all the time? Maybe? Okay, well there is a chance. The rest of the science rooms were about dissecting sounds, and learning how they worked through interactive displays.

The second part of the museum was about the million famous composers from Austria. Bascially every composer ever was actually Austian, who knew? Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and the list continues…a lot. The rest of the museum was also cool, but I liked those two parts the best. In the middle of the section about the composers there were footprints on the ground that were doing the waltz so we took turns dancing around. Once again, I hope there were no video cameras. I know we all seem like really coordinated people…but shockingly we are not.

Next we went to the Belvedere palace. We decided to skip the art exhibit inside because we were a bit museum-ed out. The gardens were really pretty though. In the first half, they were mowing the grass and stuff, but the second half was beautiful. We decided to take a group picture in front of the palace, but Corinneś camera was dead, so Sarah went to set hers up. While she was fidgeting with it to try and get it at the right angle, a nice man with an intense camera offered to take it for us. As we were getting the camera back from him and walking away, an Asian man asked the same guy to take a picture of him. We did not really think anything of it, but as we kept walking, the Asian dude beckoned for us to come join him in the picture. We laughed, but reluctantly agreed. What was the worst that could happen?

Later we went to this giant cemetery where all of the composers that we had learned about are buried. There was a map at the entrance, but it did not have any of the graves listed. We decided to wander around and try to find them, keep in mind the cemetery has over 2.5 million graves. We decided to follow this family that looked like tourists, but somehow we lost them. We kept walking and like five minutes later, we miraculously ended up where we wanted to be. It was amazing. The graves were all really intense and shiny.

Rick Steves put a cool self-guided trolly tour in his book. Basically you take a trolly, and read everything that he has to say about the buildings you were passing. It was amazing, like a scavenger hunt and a tour in one for the low price of a trolly ride. It was pretty sweet.

We walked from the end of our trolly ride back to the opera house to try and buy tickets for the second time, but were bounced out. I never knew that you could not wear shorts to buy tickets. We were planning on changing before actually going to the show, but I guess that just was not good enough. We ran back to get dinner so that we could eat and still get to the show early enough to have dinner. I decided, not to go, but Sarah and Corinne are still away, so I am assuming that they finally got to go to the opera. It only took about three tries.

Day 18 : Problems With Authority

Rosie:

So today we woke up and got out of bed really quickly because we thought that we needed more milk and the grocery store was going to close in half an hour. We made it! After searching for the cheapest possible milk, we settled on the bag of milk, yes that’s right, acceptable containers for milk now extends to plastic bags. Of course once we came back and started eating out cereal, we realized that we didn’t actually need more milk. Oh well, at least it was cheap, and fun to play with. After we finished eating, we made sandwiches. Corinne and I put ours in the old bread bag, but Sarah miraculously pulled a plastic glove out of her pocket to put her sandwich in.

When we came back to the room, I remembered that Corinne had locked the door and therefore was the last person that I had seen with the key. After patting all of her pockets down and searching through her bag about ten times, she decided that she must have left it on the table or put it into the refrigerator with our perishable food. When she still came back empty handed, Sarah reached into her pocket and found the key. When we finally got the door open, Sarah left to go wash her face, but before she left she said that she wanted to climb onto the roof before we left. Corinne and I decided to climb up onto the roof and hide from her. Getting up onto the roof was no problem. As soon as we got up though, Corinne panicked, not because we could fall to our death at any moment, but because the owner of the hostel might yell at us. It was then that we realized Corinne has a problem with challenging authority, or rather not challenging authority. Once Sarah found and joined us for a little while, we all climbed down to go use the internet.

We were each supposed to get the internet for five minutes, but by the time it was my turn, we had been in that room for over forty minutes. After all of that waiting, my email did not even work…soooooo HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD! The whole waiting thing was not so bad though because Sarah and I had a lot of fun distorting the image on the other computer screen. We were thinking about leaving like that (the computer didn’t actually work anyway), but it seemed like a bad decision.

We decided to walk to the pier and sit by the water, but it was freezing, so we bundled up in sheets on a random bench and did Sudoku puzzles. Then we played hide-and-seek. After exhausting our limited entertainment by the water we started walking to the train station to check train times for tomorrow. On the way there we found some brick ruins and went rock climbing. I made the discovery that I suck at rock climbing, but we all made it to the top of the wall eventually.

There was really nothing to do at the hostel, so we climbed onto the roof again and brought up the laptop to play music (Corinne put up a protest but eventually gave into the peer pressure). Probably less than ten minutes after climbing up, the owner of the hostel came over and “yelled” at us according to Corinne. Of course this “yelling” consisted of him apologizing to us several times for making us get down, but I guess if he were speaking louder, and not apologizing and was actually made, maybe then it might be yelling.

Sarah did her laundry while Corinne and I played Purple Palace for a while, and mastered the cake making game. Afterwards we made macaroni and tomato sauce on a hot plate and stole some of the spices from the hostel. Corinne ended up getting a bunch of spice on her pasta because I was waiting for her to say when, and she never did, but she said that it tasted fine. We all went for an after dinner walk and Sarah finally ate her cherries! We found some on a tree that was hanging over the sidewalk.

We broke into this park-like place after hours. I think that it was supposed to be a beach, but it was mostly grass with a little bit of sand under the playground equipment and there were ladders going into the lake. Either way it was probably the most fun that we had since coming here. We all played on the see-saw, which was inexplicably amazing. Then we tried to swing on the tiny swings, but it was really uncomfortable, and we had to double our legs under the swing and hold them so that they wouldn’t touch the ground. There was a tree and we all started to climb it. Sarah and I got up right away, but Corinne couldn’t pull herself up and could only hang from it. See:

Just kidding. Corinne actually got really high and I realized that my suckiness at rock climbing was actually an ineptitude to climb all together. I think that I’m going to work on that.

There was a giant water slide in the distance, and after walking to it, we climbed all the way to the top. Once again, Corinne was scared that someone was going to catch us, so every time a car drove past we all ducked. And that’s basically it. Tomorrow we are headed off to Vienna.

Day 15 : Sheer Terror

Rosie:

We got up this morning ready for a pretty packed day. After a short breakfast of honey nut cheerios, we were on our way to the giant famous temple in Budapest (yes, that is the technical term). Apparently this particular temple is somehow linked to my family history, but I don’t really know how. Either way it was really impressive. The whole thing was actually the biggest building ever and was decorated like some of the more extravagant churches that we have seen. According to the really rude tour guide behind us, and Rick Steves, it is the second largest temple in the world; the largest being located in New York (who knew?). Sarah especially disliked the tour guide because she made her move out of the seat she was in when there were about a bajillion empty rows. But whatever, I’m sure there was some dire need for her to have that specific row.

Our next stop was St. Stephen’s Basilica. It too was extraordinary, but free. At least mostly free. One of the cool things about the building is that they have the hand of St. Stephen on display in a little jeweled box. In order to actually see into the box, you have to pay 100FT for them to turn on the light. I know that 100FT is not a lot of money (about 60 cents) but the concept bothered me for what ever reason. On our way out, a Chinese man gave the guard guy the money for him to turn the light on, and we ran back to see it. You basically couldn’t see anything anyway through the box, so I am glad that we didn’t waste our money.

On the way to the Basilica, Corinne’s dreams came true. She had been searching all around Hungary for the cheapest possible postcards. Most of the places that we had gone sold them for 100FT, but we had found them for as cheap as 50FT and everywhere in between. Anyway, as we walked past this one small shop, Corinne spotted a sign that said the postcards were only 30FT. I’m pretty sure that was the highlight of her day, maybe even of the whole trip.

We continued by walking down Andrassy St. which is a pretty nice walk. There is a long island filled with trees stretching through the majority of the street. We stopped to eat lunch on one of the benches, which included the latest hand food…cucumbers, now not just a topping. Afterwards, we went to the House of Terror, which is one of the coolest museums that I have ever been to. On the minus side, not very much was translated into English and we weren’t allowed to pay the student rate because we weren’t European. Some of the information was conflicting, but I think that the museum building was used as the Communist headquarters after WWII, and during WWII the Hungarian Nazi headquarters were somewhere on the same street. The basement of the building though was definitely used as a prison to incarcerate, torture, and kill people.

Since basically our first day in Hungary, we have been looking for this Hungarian street food called Langos. Which is basically deep fried dough with sour cream, garlic, and cheese. When we went to the park this afternoon we finally found a stand that sold them. Sarah, unfortunately had just bought a pretzel, but Corinne and I split one and it was delicious. We got ours with sour cream and cheese, although looking back on it, I feel like sour cream and garlic might have been better, but there is always Lake Balaton to try them again. The point is that it was really good.

After eating one of the fattiest foods ever, we got in our bathing suits and went swimming in one of the nicer Hungarian baths, according to Rick Steves. There were three main pools in the one that we went to. We started off in the colder one, which was pretty cool and had a little waterfall and big jets in random places. Then we went to the hotter one, which is apparently where every older, slightly overweight Hungarian man likes to put on a tiny speedo and sit around. Of course this was after going into the locker room and seeing completely naked, more than slightly overweight, older women. I tried to escape them by going to the bathroom, but standing stark naked, in all of her glory right in front of the stalls was yet another one. I have to say, it was way scarier than the House of Terror. Maybe the two should switch names. I feel like “The Pools of Terror, don’t come in unless you are fully prepared to be scarred for life” might be a little long, but it would definitely prepare visitors more than “Hungarian Baths.”

Probably the highlight of the Hungarian baths was dunking Sarah. For whatever reason, Sarah gave herself the title of ‘un-dunkable’ and of course, Corinne and I felt the need to prove her wrong. After just jumping at her from random angles for a little while, I decided to be a little bit sneakier. A couple minutes later, an English guy came up to us and started talking mostly to Sarah. While she was being forced into conversation, I snuck behind her, went underwater, and pulled out her legs from under her. Then Corinne pushed her over, and our goal was accomplished. Sarah’s self-given title had been removed. I was ecstatic, she was not so ecstatic.

After the pool we went to a palace in the park. It was really pretty, mostly because it had a small pond next to it and was in a really nice area. Outside of the palace there was a pretty sweet statue. It is of “Anonymous.” The first written history of Hungary was signed Anonymous and this statue was supposed to be a tribute to him/her. It basically looked like a dementor, its face completely hidden by a cloak. At some point Corinne decided that she wanted another Langos all to herself, so we went back to the stand and she got one, this time with garlic. I tried to push her into getting the one with Nutella, but she didn’t want to spend the extra money. It was sad.

We went back to the hostel to cook dinner. I cooked with Sarah’s help, apparently Sarah and Corinne haven’t heard the horror stories. We made sloppy joes, which were delicious. Sarah realized a little later that we still had frozen broccoli that we never ate, so she made that afterwards. Maybe I am a little biased, but I think that was our best dinner in Hungary.

Oh yeah, Sarah tried copying a fashion trend that we have seen around. Maybe it will catch on back home? :

Day 12: You will never be there

Rosie:

So basically, today the plan was basically to ride the train for seven hours from Prague to Budapest. We got to the train station and there was a picture of Hilary Clinton on the TV monitors. We were all wondering if she had lost or won, but the story was in Czech so we had no idea. None of the important words remotely resembled anything in English. When Corinne and I got in line for tickets I said kind of loudly, “We should fine some Czech person who speaks English to translate the story for us.” The woman behind us overheard, and informed us that she was no longer in the election. Afterwards we waited on the train platform for our train. While we were waiting, another tourist came up to us and asked us what time it was, after getting off the train in Budapest and walking about half way to our hostel, the same guy was walking right behind us. It was so weird. Most of the people on the train got off way before Budapest, in fact we were three of about seven people in our train car upon arrival.

The train ride was long, but we managed to entertain ourselves. First of all, we had a ton of food because we had “cashed out” of Czech currency the day before. We had Hannah to listen to, and we were constantly trying to figure out how to get our own compartment, which we succeeded in for probably about two or three hours of the trip. Towards the end of the trip we were getting kind of restless so we went out of our compartment to walk around the car a little and realized that there was no one there. Sarah made up a game to play in the hallway where we each stood still without moving our feet and without touching the walls to see who could stay up the longest. Corinne lost almost right away, but then we started again. After about fifteen minutes of standing, switching directions occasionally to make it harder, we decided to switch to one foot. Once again, Corinne lost almost right away, followed by Sarah in a few more minutes.

We got off the train, ran into train station kid, and went basically directly to our hostel without stopping for food. Once we got here we decided not to leave for food again and to just eat what we had left over. We updated the blog and basically went to bed. Oh, for those of you who don’t know, the EuroCup is going on right now. There was a big screen set up about 100 meters from our window and we could here shouting and yelling until pretty late. It must have been an exciting game.

Day 9 : Mamma Mia!

Rosie:

So last night when we arrived at the hostel, there appeared to be some confusion with our reservations, but it did not seem to be a big deal at the time. The nice man behind the desk said that we would have to change rooms some time in between 7 and 8 in the morning. While this was definitely not ideal, it didn’t seem horrible. Anyway, we wake up this morning at about 7:30, as planned, pack up all of our stuff, and leave it with Sarah out in the hallway. Corinne and I go to the front desk and ask the woman for our new room. Of course she speaks no English and has no idea what we are trying to say. Eventually she directs us down the hall into some random office where a man tries to explain the situation. He isn’t really making any sense, but at some point in the conversation he said something about the place we are staying not being a hostel and only being for University workers. He keeps babbling on about a man who works as a counselor who I guess had some relevance to the issue. Finally, he writes down the price per night per person, which was about what we had found online. Corinne then asks him if we can pay for all four nights for all three of us, and whips out the calculator on her cell phone to do the math. About ten minutes later of explaining and re-explaining what we want to do, the man finally brings out a calculator of his own, punches in the same numbers, and comes up with the same answer. He gives us a card and writes the amount that we have to pay to give to the desk. We, or at least I, felt slightly relieved after leaving the room, thinking that the hard part was over with. But after reaching the desk a new problem arose. We showed the woman the card with the amount that we intended to pay on it and she took it and nodded. It was my turn to pay for the hostel, and I had taken out a lot of cash so that I would have enough because all of our hostels requested payment in cash upon arrival. After showing her the slip we asked if we could pay right then. She pointed to the card and said what sounded like “completion.” I did not want to be carrying all of that cash around with me in the “most dangerous city” for four days so I asked again if we could pay it now. This time she pointed to the card and said “koruna” (which is the Czech currency). Obviously the amount was in koruna, she clearly thought that I was retarded. It continued like this a couple more times, with us asking about paying now, and her responding with random irrelevant words. Finally I showed her the money and she actually got it. Corinne and I made sure that we got a receipt before leaving though. It seemed like the smart thing to do. Suddenly is made sense why this hostel was rated at a 40%. Needless to say, we went back upstairs and went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

We woke up for the second time at a much more decent hour, got dressed, and went out for the first real food that we had eaten in about 22 hours. On the way to breakfast, one of the dorms was blasting Abba, and much to Sarah’s embarrassment, Corinne and I started singing along as we walked. Who could resist? We ended up eating at the crepe place near a hostel, where we had tried to eat the night before, but they wouldn’t serve us because we arrived 20 minutes after their scheduled closing time. I decided that if I open a restaurant and starving people come to the door with money while we are closing up, I will feed them. We also all decided that we are going to be really nice to tourists from now on. The crepes were pretty much the best thing ever, which is either because or in spite of the fact that mine was mostly butter and sugar. But it had apples on top of it, so it was healthy.

Our next stop was the Jewish quarter of old town. Right after we stepped out of the subway we could see why everyone loves Prague so much. It is beautiful. Looking across the river was the nicest view that we have had yet. We bought tickets so that we could see four out of five of the synagogues in the area along with a couple other attractions. The first synagogue was connected to a cemetery, and luckily for us an English speaking tour happened to be right in front of us, walking at the same pace, and stopping at the same places so that we could hear their guide the whole time. He was basically the coolest tour guide ever. He kept making jokes and his speeches were short and interesting. Apparently one of the major contributors for the Talmud is buried in the cemetery and his grave is used as a sort of Wailing Wall. We didn’t write anything, but we there were a few notes placed under pebbles on the grave. As far as the synagogues go, the Spanish one was beautiful with intricate designs and warm colors all over the wall. Other than that, there was nothing too significant about any of them. I would show you, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures, it was awful.

Afterwards we went to the old town square where we stumbled upon a choir singing on the church steps. They were pretty good, but they could have chosen some catchier tunes, although Corinne was able to sing along with one of them. Right around the corner was the famous clock, and across the square was yet another famous old church. While we were sitting in the square, a girl was standing near us, reading an English tour group. Corinne jumped at the opportunity to talk to another person and said “I see you are reading in English, where are you from?” For most of the rest of the day we just wandered random streets on the way to, and around new town. There were cool shops up and down most of the streets, and we ended up going in to a large marionette and toy store. Afterwards we quickly stopped at an internet café, followed by a quick lunch. As Sarah was finishing up her lunch Corinne suddenly noticed that Rick Steves was missing! What would our trip become without the book that tells us what to do? We traced our way back through the day and decided that she must have left it at the internet café. While we were walking back to the internet café, Sarah discovered that her bag with everything that she had bought for the day was no longer in her hand. When we made it back to the computers, we found Rick Steves right behind the desk. David, just so you know, as soon as Corinne had Rick back in her hands, she professed her love to him.  Sarah found her bag back at the marionette shop. Mom, Dad, and Frank— I would just like to point out that I did not lose anything today.

As we continued to walk around, we ran into the French Festival where they were giving out free samples of a few different types of food. Two of my favorite things, free and cheese. Leaving the festival, a man came up to us claiming that he was a designer photographer who took pictures of beautiful ladies. His work would only take two minutes of his time. We were tempted, but refused the offer. As Sarah pointed out, even though his camera was disposable, he was probably telling the truth. Later we walked around more and eventually went to the supermarket to buy food for dinner and the next couple of days. We knew that back at the hostel we had no utensils, bowls, or anything to cook with, so we went with the basics. We got sandwich stuff, vegetables, fruit, bread, cereal stuff, and salad stuff. We also swiped some disposable chopsticks that were next to the sushi. When it came time to eat, we dumped the salad onto the Styrofoam tray that Sarah’s cantaloupe came on, poured on the dressing, and ate it with chopsticks. Since we had nothing to cut our tomatoes with, we each grabbed one and ate it whole. I can finally say that I understand all of those college food stories. Anyway, I for one am looking forward to eating cereal out of my water bottle with chopsticks tomorrow.

Oh, I almost forgot. On our way back to our hostel, some random teenage guy took a picture of Corinne on his phone. David’s competition count : 2.