Eastern Adventure Part I: Hungary

My trip to eastern Europe began early in the day! I wasn't sure how long security would take me at the airport, so I took a train from Erfurt at 7:05 for a 2:30 flight. I ended up getting to Berlin around 11:30 and was through security by 12:30. While in the airport, I saw a girl running to make her flight trip, fall, and break her duty-free wine all over her coat. When I walked by that same spot not 15 minutes later, the entire mess had been cleaned up!

I flew easyjet. It was way nicer than I expected. 

Once I got to Budapest, I got some Hungarian money from the ATM and got a transfer ticket to the city center. The metro in Budapest doesn't reach the airport, so you have to take a bus to the first metro station, then ride from there to the center of the city. It was a painless experience!

(The worst part of this trip was trying to remember what the conversion rate was...I think it was something like 300 florints to the Euro. But on the upside, I now have some interesting Hungarian change!)

I met Kitty at the metro stop, then went to the apartment where we were staying and met Peter. Kitty knew Peter from their plane ride to Germany and the three of us became travel buddies. We stayed in a studio apartment that we paid about 9 Euros per night per person for. (Not too shabby!)

That evening we walked around Budapest looking for food. We eventually came across a place that Peter had seen earlier - Tacos Locos. (That's right! I flew to eastern Europe to eat Mexican food!) It was really good, and we talked a bit to some girls in the Peace Corps at the table next to us. (Of course we'd find other Americans at a taco place...)

Budapest had the prettiest Christmas decorations.

St. Stephen's had this video display that projects onto the cathedral. It was spiffy.

We stayed up pretty late talking and trying to plan the other parts of our trip. (We just had the whole "we'll be in this place on this day" thing figured out - we didn't have definite plans or a place to stay, so we had a lot to figure out. And, to be honest, we didn't figure any of it out. German people would never do something like this.) At one point, all three of us tried to sit on the bed and we broke some of the slats. Oops.

We slept in really late the next morning. This started our tradition of only eating like once or twice a day. (Actually, Kitty and Peter had been doing this before I got there.) I was delighted to discover that they sell stick deodorant in Hungary (Germany only has roll-on and spray), so we went and bought some. Around lunchtime, we met one of Peter's Hungarian friends...who was also named Peter but was called Peti, so that's how it's going in this blog for simplicity's sake. We all went to eat lunch together, but ended up just having soup and coffee.

After that, Kitty and I went on an amazing tour of communist Budapest. It was free! The guides told us stories about their childhoods under communism and took us to important places in the city.

Fancy bunker for party member in the event of nuclear war.

mtv. The M is for Magyar!

A Soviet war memorial...right in front of the American embassy. (I'm looking at it from the side...)

Ronald Reagan.

Nagy.

After the tour, we stopped at Starbucks because neither Kitty nor I have a Starbucks in our German town and because we wanted to use their bathroom and wifi.

After that we went up to the Buda Castle.

It was so pretty at night!

Hey there, Danube.

If you can't tell, I really loved the view. The church lit up is St. Stephen's. 

Then Kitty and I were hungry and couldn't find anyplace that was both cheap and nearby, so we ate at KFC. (It's our ironic tradition because neither of us really like KFC that much at home.) And OH MY GOODNESS: the KFC drinks were self-serve and there was ice. ICE, I tell you! (Germany doesn't really have self-serve drinks.)

Once back at our apartment, we continued on our joint quests of finding someplace to sleep the next night and researching Bob Jones University (they're crazy!). We stumbled across this gem of a high school health textbook on the take a book, leave a book rack in the apartment's foyer. It was too heavy, or we would've taken it with us.

After a while, Peter and Peti and one of Peti's friends all came back. It was nice. Peti taught us some basic Hungarian stuff (thank you sounds kinda like "goodtoknow" and if it ends in a K then it's plural). After mentioning that we didn't have a place to stay in Bratislava for the next night, Peti invited us to come and stay at his parents' house in rural Hungary instead. So we said yes!

The next morning I awoke to discover that a statue had been watching me sleep. (We had drawn the curtains the first night, but we were afraid that we'd sleep in far too late again if we did that again, so they were open for the first time.)

The train to Agard! I was watching our stuff while the others went to find coffee because we got on our train about 10 minutes early...a pair of beggars came up to me and spoke a lot of Hungarian, so I responded in German and said "a little" when they asked me if I spoke English. (I did this because I [correctly] assumed that they spoke a little English and no German.) It worked, though. They moved on to someone else.

Peti's parents and sister were very gracious and welcoming! His dad just speaks Hungarian, and his mom and sister speak Hungarian and German, so Kitty and I spoke German to them and Peter didn't say much because he doesn't speak German. They made us a late lunch of Hungarian Christmas leftovers, which was delicious.

After that we went to the next town over because one of Peti's friends was visiting.

She was fantastic as well - we saw this church, but we don't really know anything about it.

Then we saw this, which is a model of the orb used in the coronation of the kings of Hungary. This trip basically turned into a coronation tour...

After that we went back to Peti's house and had some grilled cheese for dinner. Kitty & I stayed in Peti's sister's room; they were really nice people and I'm so glad I got to meet them.

The town, Agard, was also pretty excellent because it was a lake town like Eufaula! Most of the stuff was closed because it was December, but the houses and roads and yards definitely reminded me of the town part of Eufaula.

Then we were off to Bratislava! We had to buy tickets at the train station from a lady who didn't speak much English, but it worked out alright in the end. The escalator down to the metro is literally the stuff of my nightmares...I hate escalators, and this one was super fast with the signs and ads hanging at an angle so it seemed like you were falling into the center of the earth. The metro is also really deep underground in Budapest so that people could use it as a bomb shelter if needed.

Before we left, Peti presented us all with these cool buttons! Hungary was definitely my favorite part of this trip. (But don't worry: the other two parts were also cool. They just weren't cool enough to involve an actual encounter with natives.)