weekend in Budapest!
Hey folks.
Let's see... I guess I'll talk about my classes another time, and just talk about my weekend in Budapest in this entry.
We left Thursday night on an overnight train. It was kind of ridiculous b/c it seemed like every american student studying in prague was in that train station, going to budapest... and not only the ones from my program, but from the a few others too. geez! we got on our train and were really excited about our cabin, to have the guy tell us that our tickets were for first class and we needed to go to the even nicer cabins! sweet. we passed through the a few borders. i had been sleeping with my passport on my body, and my purse at my feet (away from the locked door) but after we passed through hungary, i decided to consolidate all of my stuff. somewhere between 5am when we passed into hungary and 7am when we arrived in budapest, my purse was taken and ended up in the bathroom sinked, with the door locked. we can't figure out exactly what happened, because none of the logic completely matches up, but it either involves me leaving my purse in the bathroom or someone coming in the locked door and taking it. i could write an essay on all the reasons why we're not sure what happened, but i won't! just know it's confusing and not fun to think about.
so needless to say, i was pretty upset the first day we were there. remaining in my purse was my passport, my credit cards, and my silly things like chapstick, etc. they took my (brand new) ipod, my digital camera, and all of my cash. definitely not fun! i was really upset the whole day and had difficulty making decisions or getting excited about sightseeing. but once the shock wore off, i realized that the only things stolen from me were material things that don't mean much in the scheme of life. my friends can copy digital pictures over to my computer and i don't have to hear music all the time in order to be happy. so i am going to try to treat this whole thing as a growing experience.
now on to budapest! budapest is atually 2 towns put into one city. on one side of the river is buda (on a hill) and the other side of the river is pest. we stayed in pest, but my favorite side was buda....
on friday, we went into some really pretty churches and then headed over to the synagogue. it's the 2nd largest synagogue in the world! it was very pretty, and we got pictures from the outside, b/c we missed the last tour by like 30 minutes. bummer. and of course they didnt have tours on saturdays, so all we got was the outside. but it was very nice. it was also nice to see something that wasn't a church... i feel like all we see when we tour cities is go to churches, and there are many pretty and interesting buildings in this world that are not churches... then we went to the National Museum, which was like a walk-through history of the hungarian people. it was a little more informal than what we are used to in the US, but was still really cool. my favorite part was the different costumes from all the periods of time! i want to wear a beautiful flowing dress with the garter-looking thing! then we saw pictures of the national library, so we asked some people in a store where the library was... and they gave us directions to the public library. it was not what we were looking for, but was awesome b/c we got to actually see something that was REAL and hungarian! we had to fill out this sheet to get in. it was a 8-floor library and had really cool enclaves everywhere. kudos to us for doing something completely out of the ordinary touristy thing to do. then we walked across the chain bridge (very beautiful at night!) and up to Castle Hill. now, this castle was totally awesome. apparently, my favorite part was actually the "fisherman's wharf", but i'm going to call it the castle, b/c that's what it looked like... tori and i pretended we were princesses up in a castle. it had the spires and looked out on the water and was just wonderful! you should definitely check out my pictures to see what i'm talking about. i wish i could describe it better b/c it totally rocked.
on saturday, we saw Hero Square, on our way to the other castle in town. (i've decided that i have a new interest in life: castles. i love them! they are so beautiful and so much fun!) that castle was pretty nice, but we couldn't go in. there was a skate rink on the moat behind the castle, which was fun to see. you could hear the hungarians singing to the really old american music playing as they skated along. then we went to the baths! it was at the Hotel Gellert -- remember that if you ever go to Budapest! dr. citeroni had told me i should go there, and i'm really glad she suggested it. we have also been told to go there by many others since we've been here. it was really awesome. it cost me $15 to go for 2 hours. the baths are thermal baths, heated from hotsprings below, so they are all natural. i felt like i was in a roman bath, relaxing like they did centuries ago. in the all-female section, there were 2 big hot tubs (36 and 38 degrees celsius), 3 saunas of different temperatures, a steam room, showers, a cold water bath, and a place where women sat, i think to air themselves out. if you went past that area, there was the co-ed pool (you swam in a big circle, conter-clockwise) and a co-ed hot tub. people were clothed in the co-ed place, but in the all-female part, there were many women who were naked. it was a wonderful experience to see how many different body types there are! i got even more frustrated with the media, society, etc for making us feel like there is only one way to be, b/c it was so beautiful to see firsthand in these baths that everyone in beautiful. my friends and i even went topless for a little while, which was empowering and really cool! i really want to come back there in a few years and spend the entire day there (you can get manicures, pedicures, mud baths, massages, and i'm sure much much more) and i also really want to take my children there so they can see the beauty in everyone. what a wonderful experience. then we went to a hungarian dinner -- i got fried meatballs & garlic soup -- and went to go see parliament all lit up with it's nighttime lights. on the way back to the hostel, we passed the basilica, which was also beautiful.
and that pretty much concludes my trip! budapest was really cool, and somewhere i'd like to go again in a few years from now. however, i must admit i missed prague a lot (especially while i was still mourning having all my stuff stolen), and enjoy praha much more than budapest, especially the pest part. pest was rather dirty at times! i have pictures of all of these places and i will post them soon so make sure to check out them soon!
hope everyone is diong well! feel free to write me an email or to leave comments on my journal!
love, tempa
PS - if you send me a package, make sure you put "czech republic" at the bottom of it... i think i may have made the mistake of not telling you all that earlier.
Let's see... I guess I'll talk about my classes another time, and just talk about my weekend in Budapest in this entry.
We left Thursday night on an overnight train. It was kind of ridiculous b/c it seemed like every american student studying in prague was in that train station, going to budapest... and not only the ones from my program, but from the a few others too. geez! we got on our train and were really excited about our cabin, to have the guy tell us that our tickets were for first class and we needed to go to the even nicer cabins! sweet. we passed through the a few borders. i had been sleeping with my passport on my body, and my purse at my feet (away from the locked door) but after we passed through hungary, i decided to consolidate all of my stuff. somewhere between 5am when we passed into hungary and 7am when we arrived in budapest, my purse was taken and ended up in the bathroom sinked, with the door locked. we can't figure out exactly what happened, because none of the logic completely matches up, but it either involves me leaving my purse in the bathroom or someone coming in the locked door and taking it. i could write an essay on all the reasons why we're not sure what happened, but i won't! just know it's confusing and not fun to think about.
so needless to say, i was pretty upset the first day we were there. remaining in my purse was my passport, my credit cards, and my silly things like chapstick, etc. they took my (brand new) ipod, my digital camera, and all of my cash. definitely not fun! i was really upset the whole day and had difficulty making decisions or getting excited about sightseeing. but once the shock wore off, i realized that the only things stolen from me were material things that don't mean much in the scheme of life. my friends can copy digital pictures over to my computer and i don't have to hear music all the time in order to be happy. so i am going to try to treat this whole thing as a growing experience.
now on to budapest! budapest is atually 2 towns put into one city. on one side of the river is buda (on a hill) and the other side of the river is pest. we stayed in pest, but my favorite side was buda....
on friday, we went into some really pretty churches and then headed over to the synagogue. it's the 2nd largest synagogue in the world! it was very pretty, and we got pictures from the outside, b/c we missed the last tour by like 30 minutes. bummer. and of course they didnt have tours on saturdays, so all we got was the outside. but it was very nice. it was also nice to see something that wasn't a church... i feel like all we see when we tour cities is go to churches, and there are many pretty and interesting buildings in this world that are not churches... then we went to the National Museum, which was like a walk-through history of the hungarian people. it was a little more informal than what we are used to in the US, but was still really cool. my favorite part was the different costumes from all the periods of time! i want to wear a beautiful flowing dress with the garter-looking thing! then we saw pictures of the national library, so we asked some people in a store where the library was... and they gave us directions to the public library. it was not what we were looking for, but was awesome b/c we got to actually see something that was REAL and hungarian! we had to fill out this sheet to get in. it was a 8-floor library and had really cool enclaves everywhere. kudos to us for doing something completely out of the ordinary touristy thing to do. then we walked across the chain bridge (very beautiful at night!) and up to Castle Hill. now, this castle was totally awesome. apparently, my favorite part was actually the "fisherman's wharf", but i'm going to call it the castle, b/c that's what it looked like... tori and i pretended we were princesses up in a castle. it had the spires and looked out on the water and was just wonderful! you should definitely check out my pictures to see what i'm talking about. i wish i could describe it better b/c it totally rocked.
on saturday, we saw Hero Square, on our way to the other castle in town. (i've decided that i have a new interest in life: castles. i love them! they are so beautiful and so much fun!) that castle was pretty nice, but we couldn't go in. there was a skate rink on the moat behind the castle, which was fun to see. you could hear the hungarians singing to the really old american music playing as they skated along. then we went to the baths! it was at the Hotel Gellert -- remember that if you ever go to Budapest! dr. citeroni had told me i should go there, and i'm really glad she suggested it. we have also been told to go there by many others since we've been here. it was really awesome. it cost me $15 to go for 2 hours. the baths are thermal baths, heated from hotsprings below, so they are all natural. i felt like i was in a roman bath, relaxing like they did centuries ago. in the all-female section, there were 2 big hot tubs (36 and 38 degrees celsius), 3 saunas of different temperatures, a steam room, showers, a cold water bath, and a place where women sat, i think to air themselves out. if you went past that area, there was the co-ed pool (you swam in a big circle, conter-clockwise) and a co-ed hot tub. people were clothed in the co-ed place, but in the all-female part, there were many women who were naked. it was a wonderful experience to see how many different body types there are! i got even more frustrated with the media, society, etc for making us feel like there is only one way to be, b/c it was so beautiful to see firsthand in these baths that everyone in beautiful. my friends and i even went topless for a little while, which was empowering and really cool! i really want to come back there in a few years and spend the entire day there (you can get manicures, pedicures, mud baths, massages, and i'm sure much much more) and i also really want to take my children there so they can see the beauty in everyone. what a wonderful experience. then we went to a hungarian dinner -- i got fried meatballs & garlic soup -- and went to go see parliament all lit up with it's nighttime lights. on the way back to the hostel, we passed the basilica, which was also beautiful.
and that pretty much concludes my trip! budapest was really cool, and somewhere i'd like to go again in a few years from now. however, i must admit i missed prague a lot (especially while i was still mourning having all my stuff stolen), and enjoy praha much more than budapest, especially the pest part. pest was rather dirty at times! i have pictures of all of these places and i will post them soon so make sure to check out them soon!
hope everyone is diong well! feel free to write me an email or to leave comments on my journal!
love, tempa
PS - if you send me a package, make sure you put "czech republic" at the bottom of it... i think i may have made the mistake of not telling you all that earlier.