Well, here I am, a week later (or a little more I suppose), and I survived my trip with Eric to Vienna & Budapest. Barely. :) First, I must point out that Eric and I succeeded in spending six days together, basically not ever separating, and we did not kill each other. And honestly, speaking for myself at least, I never really even got annoyed with him, and I enjoyed myself tremendously. He's a great guy and a good travel companion. I've heard stories from a few different guy/girl travel buddies that did not go so well, but as far as I'm concerned we had a great time and I loved spending time with him. Well, aside from the night that I laid in bed for a half hour listening to him snoring. At that moment, I kind of wanted to kick him in the face, considering it was 4 am. And I don't know if Eric feels the same way, but as he is one of the most blunt people I've ever met, (more on this to come) I'm pretty sure he would have let me know if I was bugging him. Now that's friendship! Ha. Also, I'm slightly nervous because apparently Eric has been announcing to everyone who asks about our trip that I'll be writing a blog about it (including his madre), so pressure's on, hope I make this one good!
We left Granada at 5 am Thursday morning, tired but pretty excited. We flew to Vienna through Madrid, and when we arrived in Vienna we were disappointed to observe that it was pouring down rain. Especially since I'm always the prepared Washington State girl with my dang North Face rain coat, which I had failed to bring. Stupidly, in my opinion, there is no metro actually at the Sudbahnhof, the train station we were dropped off at after the airport. So we embarked on a very wet search for the U-Bahn, which would take us to our hostel. At that point, we were all excited about the cold, comparing it to Granada, comparing it to home in Arlington and Gloucester where this weather really isn't that bad. Marveling over the fact that a week before we'd been sitting by the pool at the Seville hotel in 85/90 degree weather and now we were in Austria! In the rain and cold! Exciting, or so we thought.
We stayed in Meinenger (sp?) Hostel, a hostel chain where Eric had stayed in Germany over the summer. Right next to our hostel was a peep show place, and throughout our stay in Vienna, Eric continually assured me that he would be going to the peep show after I went to bed, that instead of going out we should just both go to the peep show, etc. Hysterical. ;) When we finally got to our hostel I wasn't expecting what we found, because I figured all hostels would be like Graffiti Hostel in Barcelona (which none of you really know about unless I've told you because I suck and haven't written about my Barcelona trip, but anyway). I was honestly really surprised when we walked into our room, and there was a blanket on the beds! Who would've thought? Eric assured me that all of the hostels he had stayed in were pretty much fully equipped, and that my sketch experience in Barcelona was certainly not the norm. Thank goodness! It was only around one in the afternoon when we arrived at our hostel, but we'd been awake for eight or nine hours, it was dark and dreary outside, and the beds with blankets were so inviting. So, like the good Spaniards we are, we siesta'd for like 3 hours. Que bueno.
When we woke up the number one goal was food, and after some unsuccessful searching we ended up going to Burger King. Guilty, I know. But it was delicious! We walked around in the drizzle for an hour or so and were kind of soaking up the general difference between Spain and this new world that seemed so modern and more similar to home but where we couldn't understand people or communicate at all if they couldn't speak English. Kind of made us appreciate our limited Spanish that we are able to use in Spain, even if we aren't fluent or anything. Back at the hostel, we were going to go out when we met our new hostel roommate, a guy named Michael from Germany. At first it was very clear that Michael assumed Eric and I were dating, as he continually referred to romantic places we could go to in Vienna. “Oh, you should take a walk along the river at night, it's very romantic you know. You should ride the ferris wheel, also very romantic!” When he asked how we're going to deal with me being in Spain next semester and Eric being back in the US, we figured out that he definitely thought we were together....so we cleared that up, haha. After chatting with him Eric thought we should ask him to join us for the evening, and as I'm always somewhat awkward in new social situations, I kind of shrunk back and let Eric decide. So Michael ended up coming out with us and the evening was chill but turned out really fun!
Talking with people from other cultures and countries is always so interesting. Because the things you think are completely normal, they have never even imagined, and likewise for your thoughts on their customs. Michael was somewhat fascinated with the term red-eye [flight] that we taught him, but even more so he enjoyed our discussion on the word “fuck.” (I know, this comes up a lot in my blogs apparently, I don't know why.) Eric was explaining to him that it can be used to describe something, or to take the place of “really,” or obviously it can be used as an insult or as a verb. Michael focused on using it as “really,” and asked us, “So, would it be right to say to a girl at the end of a date, I had a fucking good night with you”? Or, to a stewardess at the end of a “red-eye” flight, “Thanks, I had a fucking good flight!” Eric and I were trying to explain to him that you should probably reserve this sort of language for close friends, maybe family that you're very open with, but that those aren't exactly the most appropriate places to use that word...It was really funny though, we couldn't stop laughing about it. He asked me if I'd been a cheerleader in high school and if Eric had been a football player like in the American movies, and had he not been a foreigner with a very skewed version of females in American athletics, I may have punched him in the face. But instead, I smiled and calmly explained to him that I played both volleyball and basketball in high school. He was really surprised that I played competitive sports. Girls don't play sports in other countries! I mean, I know that is a total generalization and obviously there are girls that like sports but there aren't really competitive leagues, or an emphasis at all on female sports. Girls, those of us that play sports in the US and think we're not respected/under appreciated, talk to someone from another country and think again. Michael was adamant that we visit him in Germany and go skiing/snowboarding, which would be fun but I doubt we'd be able to swing it. He asked about Obama's popularity in the states, and despite whatever opinions we have (I don't even know what's going on in politics or my opinions about it), Eric gave a very diplomatic response because neither of us really wanted to talk about politics, especially to a foreigner we just met. Overall it was just very entertaining talking with him and comparing weird little quirks about our respective cultures.
The next day Michael had disappeared before we woke up but left us his card, so Eric is going to email him and hopefully he'll set up a facebook so we can keep in touch and maybe meet up someday in the future. We spent Friday walking around in the crisp fall air, I was in love with the leaves and grass and all of these traditionally seasonal things that are absent in Granada. Note that I still say “crisp” at this point. We went to the Natural History Museum, which was fun but I wasn't as wild about it as the one at the Smithsonian in DC. At first it was sunny, but eventually turned overcast, and a little chilly. We walked for a few hours along the Danube river, as Michael had suggested as one of the romantic activities. ;) Overall it was just relaxing and though we weren't doing a ton of touristy museums or sights, we were just hanging out in Vienna! As we were walking around, we were approached by a very aggressive woman (ha, not physically aggressive, but she wanted to sell her stuff!) who was insistent that we attend the opera, and actually said to us, “You mean that you came to Vienna, the classical music capital of the world, and you're not going to see an opera? Shame on you!” So we walked away, feeling shameful, and when Eric turned to me a while later and was like, “Hey, wanna go to the opera?” I have to admit I was a little surprised. But I agreed that it would be a cool experience. We went back and found the lady, and after we dished out the cash for our seats, I have to admit I was pretty excited. After all, we were going to the opera/ballet, in Vienna, Austria! How classy is that? So we got all dressed up, went out for a few drinks beforehand at a cute little bar close to the theater, that was attached to an ice skating rink. This made me really want to go ice skating, and we planned to go after the opera, but alas, it was closed when we were done. Nowhere in the world is like Spain where 10 is early. Oh, but the opera. It was good. I must say I liked the opera singing more than I expected, but I definitely preferred just listening to the classical music without the singing, and watching the instrumentalists. And the ballet dancers were so good too! Earlier in the night Eric had confessed to me that he thinks it would be kind of cool to be a gymnast or a figure skater (hope I wasn't supposed to keep that a secret) but during the ballet, he leans over to me and says, “Now, if I start talking about wanting to do ballet, that's when you should start to worry...” I don't know Eric...figure skating? :) We got free champagne at intermission (score!) and afterwards, we felt so cultured. We went to the opera in Vienna. After all, how many people can say they've done that? We went out afterwards, and at our first bar we people watched. Rather entertaining. We spotted two girls who were clearly out to get some that evening, hicky girl and blondie with the headband. Both were making out with strangers at one point, and Eric claims he saw one of the guys sucking on blondie's hip. Yes, sucking, on her hip. Strange? Very. Then they proceeded to climb onto the window ledge right behind Eric and I and awkwardly dance as their previous pursuers looked on with skepticism. During their drunken dance their make out partners ditched, and after they'd concluded they found two new guys to pursue. I love people watching. We went to another bar that had cheap cocktails, but of course I never like anything I order with alcohol in it, so Eric drank basically all of my drinks. I learned about the crazy world of Eric's summer job, which is just a completely mesmerizing subject to me (he's a waiter at a nice restaurant in Mass), and we just spent the rest of the night chatting chatting chatting. When we went to go home the metro had closed so we had to take a taxi back. Pretty sure we got ripped off, but, of course, that is the curse of being tourists and having no other option but to submit ourselves to the mercy of the cab driver....
Saturday we visited the Palace in Vienna, which I thought was neat, despite the fact that basically all the palaces I've been to have essentially been the same, lots of elaborate rooms that you really don't understand why these people deserved this ridiculousness. We agreed the palace wasn't as fancy as the one in Madrid or Versailles, but still over the top of course. But I enjoyed learning about Queen...Elizabeth...of Austria, there was an exhibit about her. (PS, Eric, I'm apologizing now for any historical things I butcher in this blog, I am not good at retaining that sort of information!) Really, what I recall most about the palace is walking through an exhibit of dishes for probably 45 minutes. Yes, dishes, thousands of them. There were dishes for breakfast/lunch/dinner, gold dishes, silver dishes, thousands of candlesticks, dishes for traveling, etc. They were serious about their dishes man. After the palace we ate delicious sausage things for lunch and walked around Vienna some more, not really finding any concrete museums or sights to visit. We discovered that the entire time we'd been here we were pretty disoriented in the direction of our hostel, the city center, everything in general. We went to this Museum of Torture, which sounded cool at first but nothing was in English and we had to read this translation book to know what everything was, plus it was kind of cheesy and to be honest I thought it was dumb. By that time, we headed back to the hostel to get ready to leave for Budapest. Eric had to work on some homework for his translation class, so I just chilled until it was time to leave.
On the train, we faced a bit of a...problem, you see. Once we crossed the Austrian/Hungarian border, the Hungarian conductor took one look at our train ticket (printed online, and checked by the Austrian conductor with no problems) and just said, “No...eet is problem. Eet is problem.” Eric and I just looked at each other, myself probably appearing a little less panicked than I felt. We attempted to ask what the problem was, but to no avail, as she continued to say, “eet is problem, eet is problem, eet is problem,” and shake her head. My mind was full of fears that we were going to be dumped off the train in some random Hungarian town where we have absolutely no idea how to speak the language, in the freezing cold, just 19 & 21 year old American college students lost in Hungary! It's like the setup of a good horror movie plot! But, apparently, it must not have been that big of a problem, because miss conductor didn't kick us off the train, and to our relief we eventually made it into the city of Budapest. Our roommates were from Mexico, so we practiced our Spanish a bit with them and had some drinks. Our hostel had a sign warning boys that gorgeous women in Budapest will approach you in the streets inviting you to a bar or club for a drink, and when you leave you have a bill with a few too many extra zeroes. Crazy! That stuff actually happens! It warned not to talk to these women, because after all, since when do hot women just walk up to you and ask for a drink? Haha. I was teasing Eric about this, and he told me I better protect him if one of them comes up to him. I assured him that he already has his pretty girl with him so he need not go gallavanting off with some Hungarian ho. :) It was our plan to go out for Halloween, but my discoteca mood diminished as the night progressed, so we didn't end up going to a club but grabbed some late night shwarma (doesn't come close to as good as the ones in Granada, by the way), and headed to bed.
Within an hour of walking around Budapest, I had fallen in love with the city, and both of us were more enamored with it than with Vienna. We visited St. Stephen's Basilica, and went up inside the Basilica to see a view of the city. The church was really unique and unlike the other churches we've visited, which is interesting because sometimes I feel like if you've seen one church in Europe you've seen them all. It was weird because the church seemed so old but it was only completed in the early 1900's. We walked across to Buda (our hostel was in Pest, they're actually 2 cities if you didn't know), and explored the area surrounding Buda castle. We really wanted to tour the castle, but we searched and searched and I am convinced that touring it isn't an option, or else the entrance is extremely hidden. We walked around Fisherman's Bastion too (which we think is strange because why would a fish market be up on a giant hill so far away from the water?), basically the Castle is up on a hill with hotels, stores, restaurants, and other monuments surrounding it. We spent a few hours up there, and had traditional Hungarian goulash (like a beef stew) for lunch with some DELICIOUS hot chocolate, followed by strudel, which I'd never had and it was really delicious, which is saying a lot because I don't really like most desserts. It was the best meal for such a cold day. After that, we took the metro to another part of the city to visit Hero's Square and take a walk down Andrasy street/avenue (not sure). They're tourist monuments, and unfortunately I don't know exactly what they signify, but hey, do I ever? After that it was already getting dark and we were pretty tired, so we went back to the hostel. I tried to sleep, and struggled, but Eric, as usual, did not, and slept for like 2 hours. I had to wake him up so he could finish his homework, and by the time he was done with that, we had a hell of a time finding dinner. It appears that the rest of the world is definitely not on Spanish time, so going out searching for dinner at 9:30 was a difficult task, and we ended up getting Chinese takeout and eating at the hostel. Once again, we had a grand plan of going out, but the later it got and the more drinks we had, the less we wanted to step out into the cold only to search for places we didn't know the location of! So we ended up just chatting with random people in the hostel. While we were eating and chatting, I went and made myself a drink, and noticed that there appeared to be significantly less rum that probably should have been there, because we really hadn't drank much. I mentioned it to Eric, and he didn't seem too happy. We kept talking to these guys from Ireland and Austria, and as the night wound down everyone went to bed except for ourselves and two others that were sitting away from us and talking to each other. Eric went in to make himself a drink, and when he came back, he says to the guys at the table, “So...I don't know who's stealing my rum, but whoever it is, that's pretty lame..” Mortified, my jaw dropped and my eyes became huge in disbelief, as I am not a fan of confrontation in the least, and this was just too much for me! But as Eric assured me, we didn't do anything wrong, he was just mad because someone had been stealing our alcohol, and he was just assertive enough to say something. It was really awkward though, the guys got up and left, and I was just so embarrassed! ;) But that's what I said about Eric being blunt! And honestly, I wish I had the balls to do something like that. Neeeever gonna happen. Haha.
The next morning we got off to a later start than usual, didn't leave the hostel until noon. We mistakenly didn't get food right away, and didn't end up eating until about 3. Our goal was to hike to the Liberty Statue, which you can basically see from all over Budapest, as it's very high on a hill on the Pest side. While we were walking up the huge hill I discovered that I am very out of shape! Ha, actually I didn't need to hike up there to know that. One time we stopped to rest and this old grandpa comes walking by, slow and steady, beating us the whole way. That made us feel good about ourselves. ;) We thought that we could see the whole city from the Basilica; we were wrong. You really could see EVERYTHING from the point up at the statue, it was so cool! Eric went a little crazy with my camera, taking like 20 pictures of everything he could see. He climbed up on this ledge to get better pictures, which terrified me, so I yelled at him, but he ignored me and continued to walk around the ledge, risking his precious life just to get some pictures for a potential future history research project. Go figure. :) We visited a bunker from WWII (I think, again, Eric please don't kill me if I don't accurately remember these details). It was so cool, we got to go down in the bunker and a bunch of the rooms had wax figures labeling what each room was actually used for, and all the rooms had pictures and stories and facts about Hungary's involvement in the war. I am not usually into history but it really was so interesting. I like learning in situations like that where you're actually in the location of the historical events so you can personalize it more. Obviously though I was continually confused and had to ask Eric to clarify random things that I didn't know about WWII. After that Eric was basically on a history high (he's majoring in it at UMass) and we concluded that we were soooo happy we had come to these two cities, especially Budapest.
We were kind of on a tight schedule, as we'd planned to go on a Communist Tour at 3:30 that afternoon throughout the city. I was particularly interested because, again, I never retained anything in high school about the history of anything, plus I know I hadn't learned anything, ever, about Hungary or communism there. Plus, even though I took Political Science 101 freshman year, I really didn't understand communism still. Anyways, we booked it down the hill from the Liberty Statue (which took considerably less time than climbing up), walked across the Elizabeth Bridge (didn't know it was the Elizabeth Bridge until I looked it up-Budapest is famous for it's eight bridges that connect Buda & Pest across the Danube). On the bridge there were tons of country flags, so we tried to guess what all of them were, and discovered that we can recognize way less flags than we thought we could! (Especially me). We realized we had limited time to grab food and make it to the tour, and so after yet another hopeless search for takeout-ish food that isn't American, we found none, and resorted to Subway. Which normally I would love but this Subway was a little stingy with their veggie giving, so I was unimpressed.
We made it to the tour in time, and met the guide and our fellow...tour people. I don't remember the guide's name but know he was born and raised in Budapest, and that he thinks it's very important that a native Hungarian leads the communist tour, because they have personally experienced it and can tell the whole truth, and contribute stories from their own lives. I wasn't entirely thrilled about walking around for two and a half hours because it was freeeeeezing. The tour was mostly talking, learning about the ways of life and the benefits of their communist lifestyle, and the struggle Hungary is having in post-communism. It was really interesting because he made it clear that he wasn't nostalgic about the communist period, but there are definitely aspects of life that were much better during that period. We saw some buildings that hadn't been renovated since the communist era, and you could see how much Budapest has changed to become more of a tourist attraction and attract visitors. The city is unbelievably beautiful, but our guide explained to us that it wasn't always that way. In the tour, I liked hearing most about his childhood, memories, the life he remembers living under communist rule. The last portion of the tour was in an old communist apartment building that has since been renovated into a bar, and I was happy to be warm, but that is the point in the tour where I lost all interest. First of all, he talked an hour longer than was scheduled, and once he started on economics my brain immediately checked out. So much for learning about communism thoroughly. I just think it's so boring! Ahh. When he was finally done, we walked out and Eric was like, “Well, that was thorough.” Ha, so at least I wasn't alone in my antsy-ness and slight boredom at the end.
When we first arrived in Budapest we observed so many nice restaurants, and our little guide book the hostel gave us told us that Hungarian food is delicious and famous for it's spicy-ness! After being in Spain, the land of bland food where nothing has even a kick of spice (granted, the food is good, but I miss flavor!), we decided to make Monday, our last night, the big dinner night, and go out to a nice Hungarian dinner. So again, like opera night, we got a little dressed up and went to Arány Bárány, which I think means Gold Lamb or something in Hungarian, which was really close to our hostel. I had veal, which I've never had before (delicious), with baked potato wedges, and white asparagus wrapped in bacon with this delicious sauce. Eric had chicken, lamb, and pork with a sort of crepe looking thing and vegetables. His first bite was so shockingly spicy his eyes were watering! And it was strange because the whole meal wasn't that spicy. But our dinner was so delicious, and it felt nice to treat ourselves to a fancy dinner like that. My only qualm was that the violin player serenaded us a bit too aggressively while we were waiting to get our food. Satisfied and happy, we went on our way. That was by far the best meal I have eaten in over two months. We finished up our trip by walking along the river to take pictures of the night lights, and again I am just so thankful we went on that trip, it is such a beautiful city! I am frustrated with my camera though, it doesn't take very quality nighttime pictures. We struggled to take good pictures, but it was still absolutely gorgeous out and just a really amazing end to our trip.
Turns out...the trip wasn't quite over. We woke up at 6 and left the hostel, as our train was leaving at 7:10 back to Vienna. We sat down on the train, and when the conductor came by we showed him our ticket (the same round trip online printed ticket that provoked “eet is problem”), and he, who spoke not a word of English, just looked at the ticket and kept shaking his head an yammering in German. He tried German and Hungarian and we obviously did not understand a word of what he was saying, but we basically understood that he was not going to let us ride this train with this ticket. Horrified, Eric and I were just looking at each other with no clue what to do, when thank the lord, Jesus happened to be sitting next to us. By some far cry stroke of luck, the guy across the aisle is like, “Hey, do you guys need some help?” YYYEEEESSSS!!! So this random American guy who happens to speak perfectly fluent Hungarian asks the conductor what the problem is, and apparently without the “control” ticket that we should have received from the Austrian train conductor, we cannot ride this train to the border, and we have to buy another one. Mind you, we have ten minutes until the train leaves. So the savior stranger comes with us to figure out if we need to buy new tickets, and sure enough, we each have to pay 25 euro for a ticket that we each already paid 16 euro for. So frustrating. Oh, and thank god they took card, because they didn't take euros, and at that point we had no Hungarian money left, so Eric paid with his debit. We got back on the train, could not stop thanking our American friend from Reno whose father made him speak Hungarian at home as a child, and the train pulled away minutes later. These stories, they're so crazy and dramatic and when it turns out alright, like it did, fun to tell people. I sometimes wonder though, what would've happened if we hadn't made the train? Are stories where the close call actually ended up being a really crappy situation, would that be fun to tell? I don't know We would've missed our flight to Vienna, and who knows how long we would've been in Hungary. Again, I can't say it enough, I don't know why we were blessed with that man sitting by us but we were seriously so thankful!!
We had a bit of a struggle when we reached our stop in Vienna and the dang train door wouldn't open, so the train kept moving with us inside. It was embarrassing and frustrating, but again, thankfully it was a close call and there was a stop after that we were able to take. The remainder of traveling home went smoothly, just a very long, tiring, and boring day. Total we had a three hour train ride, an hour and a half in Vienna, three hour flight to Madrid, three hour layover in Madrid, hour flight to Granada, and then a half hour bus ride home. Finally, at 8:15 I sat down, exhausted, with my hermana and had pimientos con huevos, my favorite dinner that Marí Carmen makes. What a trip. Memorable, certainly. :)
Hope you enjoyed the stories, I'm sorry it was so long! There were many more and of course I'd love to include everything but I think this is sufficient. As always, love and miss you all back in Atown and Bham and Spokane and everywhere else like crazy. Till next time! -MacKenzie.
