Okay, so here is a day-by-day account of what happened in Budapest, Hungary – I'm just gonna have the Budapest update, and the Vienna one will be on it's own ... I'm hoping that this will shorten it and not make my update so long. So that is why some of it is in present day first person ... just so you're prepared.

Sunday – I am IN Hungary!! So ... our plane was delayed for two hours, and we were supposed to get a 75 kroner waiver, or voucher or something like that, due to the delay ... but just guess who was not told during check in what to do, along with three other girls. Yeah ... me. Not fun. It is the problem of being the first to get a ticket, like, 20 minutes before anyone else. Haa. The duty free store was FABULOUS and HUGE! Leandra and I played in the make-up section ... very fun! I, maybe put on bright blue eye shadow and Leandra might have called me an old woman ... but yeah. The flight wasn't too bad – I lip-synched to my iPOD; it was fun! Customs took a while, which I do not understand because it was ONLY people from my trip. On the busride over to the hotel, the buildings at 11:30pm looked so magnificent, regal and old (historical-wise) --> I loved it!! Especially in correlation with my Copenhagen: History and Contemporary Urban Issues class. For our next project, it has to do with relating medieval maps to current maps and stuff, so I think I'm going to do Budapest – especially Buda. My roommate here is Lauren Berliner – a fellow CLS alum, but a year earlier. We watched Family Guy on Budapest's MTV, but it was in Hungarian. So while Lauren could understand what was going on, because she had seen the episode before, I was completely lost. But it was still funny

Monday – Continental Breakfast = HEAVEN!! Period.
We got a tour of the city. The town is divided into two by the Danube River. Buda is on the West, Pest to the East. Buda is very hilly as well as residential, while Pest is flat and ... well ... communist-esque, if that makes sense. So there are a lot of interesting history: there is a Parliament building (I believe its Parliament) where there are still bombs attached/stuck in the walls ... amazing that they kept them up instead of taking them down, but it's understandable why they want to keep it up to show the historical side of Pest. [To my Chess (the Musical) friends, thanks to one of the numbers I TOTALLY was smart and knew year from it! Fabulous or what?!?] Another historical aspect is that the city was bombed completely during WWII, and was destroyed during part of the Soviet reign so that most of the buildings you see are modeled after the originals. Also, our Hungarian tourguide is not a fan of the Viennese...ians.... although she states that most Hungarians are not due to the Hapsburg Empire taking control sometime between 1867-1870 ... I forget when. Due to my C:H&CUI, I paid attention to landmarks and roads and stuff like that, and Budapest, or Pest, has a lot of Baroque styles to it --> but it might be historicism, I don't know, we never got that far in class yet. So while we were in Buda, at the palace, there were these two guys with hawks, where they let tourists hold the hawks if they want. So I thought of you, daddy, because of what you wanted to do in Vermont!! So I was tempted to do it in honor of you J

Friends and I had a FABULOUS lunch, very typical foods .... we think. I got chicken with gnocchi in a paprika sauce --> SO good! But really heavy. Then we went to the Széchenyi Spa (natural hot springs). It was SO cool – you just had to find the main pool area. Haa, we didn't realize that it was in the center of the area, in the outside, and not in the wings. Haa ... but it was the best time ever. And we all felt soft and nice afterwards ... as well as refreshed. Then there was a group dinner in this restaurant where they had Hungarian dances and songs --> really fun. There was this wine vase/flask ... thing ... dance where the females did and it was AWESOME! Then, they started seeing if diners could balance it on their head. Guess who kicked BUTT at it? ME!! Haa! Didn't even drop it! But I'm not sure if that means that I have a flat head or a perfectly curved one ... hmmm ... We then went for drinks in the cute restaurant and we found out that drinks are about ¼ the amount they are in Copenhagen .... dang Cop. Is expensive!!! Sighness.

I feel like Hungary, while trying to be independent and itself, is a very big melting pot of different regions and cultures – Austrian, Greek, Turkish (Muslim), Serrbian, etc – and yet they see themselves as totally different and unique ... which I guess they are because, probably, no other countries are like Hungary ... very odd.
Tuesday – We got to wake up a bit earlier than, which was nice. We then went to this lecture from a dude who is a writer and lived through communist Hungary (born in 1956 when it really was THE government in Hungary). Then I went to lunch with Raphie, Cary, Mo, Matt and Leandra. VERY good food, but horrible service. Ironically, we went to the same place we got drinks from the night before. Next, we went to the Jewish Area and got a tour og the 2nd largest synagogue in the world (after New York City's Synagogue – WOO WOO!!). Really cool. It was strange, yet interesting, how the outside looked like a Muslim Mosque, the architecture looked like a Christian Cathedral and it was a synagogue. VERY COOL! Then I took a shower and went out to dinner with the same peeps and traveled around Upper Pest.

!End of Budapest!

xoxo
hil