Friday, March 21, 2008

Spring Break

Budapest-
Kelsey and I really enjoyed our stay in Budapest. Dylan was very nice to let us stay with him, especially considering his parents were in town. He also had two other extra friends staying...so he is clearly an amazing person. He stayed in his parents hotel room and let us have the room (and his keys...need i say "nice" again?) We got there pretty late, and it took awhile for Dylan to figure out where we were which kind of sucked a little, but Kelsey and I are very positive people so we were not phased by that. The next day we did what we always do in every european city...walk. Unfortunately a lot of stuff was closed because it was Sunday and also the weekend of their independence day (we saw some sort of demonstration and a lot of cops in riot gear on the bus in). We walked all the way up to the Citadel and the hungarian statue of liberty (which is a long way up). The picture is from the St. Gellert Monument on the side of the hill that the Citadel is on.

That night Dylan's friend Mathias took us (and Dylan's other friends Alex and Danny) out to a fusball and billiards place. We played both games rather badly. We saw Dylan for a very short time when he got back from spending the day with his parents.
The next day Kesley and I walked some more, went shopping, and went to the baths. The baths were interesting, not something I would partake in regularly (lots of hairy old men), but interesting nonetheless. That night we went out to a place called Morrison's with Dylan's roommate Ryan (yet another amazing gentleman). We hung out with him, his Turkish girlfriend, their other roommate Andy and some more of Dyland and their friends. It was very fun.
All in all, Budapest was enjoyable. The city is fairly run down and their are homeless people around (something you don't really see in Prague at all - we have beggars, but no one actually visibly sleeping on the street). We did not like the Budapest train station at all. It is extremely confusing and rather unpleasant. We were not at all sure we were on the right train when we left for Bratislava. We met some fun British guys on the train, who also were not sure if they were on the right train (the train said it was going to Prague, so we were hoping it was stopping in Bratislava. The two guys (Jeremy and Nick) were, like most of the people we met, visiting Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague for their vacation.

Bratislava -
Bratislava is a nice town. It is similar in feel to Prague, but much smaller. When we got there we just got some food and then took a nap. When we woke up we met the other people staying in our room (who had also been napping). Four of them were students from Georgetown studying in Madrid, and the other guy was just on vacation traveling around. They were all really nice and we met up with them later that night in what is apparently the former largest beer hall in Europe. It had been recommended to them by someone who had not mentioned that Tuesday was country western night! It was pretty hilarious to see a bunch of Slovaks two-stepping to a live country band that was playing translated country music. Not exactly the first thing you expect to find in Slovakia. After that we wandered around a bit and ended up at a strange little slovakian Karaoke bar. The guys sang some Slovakian music for awhile, it was amazing :) Then we went back and hung out in the basement of our hostel, where we met Paul, a British guy who apparently works outside of Eugene for several months each year, and is a frequent visitor to Salem. He was very drunk and proceeded to call someone in Salem so that he could tell them he met girls from Salem in Bratislava. That was not the only weird connection of the night though. Peter (the blond in the picture) is from Hudson and went to Hawken for Kindergarden. Cavan (with the beard) filmed a movie in southern oregon near where Kelsey lives. Sean (next to Cavan) grew up in Northern California where Kelsey has a lot of family. Jonas (the one in the middle) did not have any interesting connection to our lives, but he is Swedish (though he's lived in the U.S. for abut ten years) and speaks about 5 languages, so he's an interesting person all on his own.

Though we enjoyed our travels Kelsey and I were very glad to come home. We ran into the British guys again on the way home which was fun, and we may see some of the other people we met who are coming to Prague. We had planned to go to Olomouc and try to hike later in the week, but the weather has turned quite cold (it was snowing when we arrived in Prague) and so we have decided to just take some time to enjoy Prague. We figure we can take a few days and spend a bit more than we usually would taking in the city since we are not paying for travel or accommodation.
Thats it for now.

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