Budapest
November 2
I woke up that morning feeling like someone had taken a rake to my throat and smelling like an ashtray… EW. So in my lifetime I have smoked two cigarettes total (woot for junior year with Mark Anderson in the Jack N the Box parking lot at 2AM) but last night the vending machine at Pipperment that sold every brand of cigarette you can possibly imagine was just too cool to pass up, so Kate, Amelia, and I chipped in for a box.
I found the half-full box in my purse this morning but seriously it feels like someone set the entire box on fire, put it in my mouth, and made me swallow. I have the worst sore throat of my life. How people can smoke several packs a day and still be able to breathe and talk is amazing (and totally disgusting) to me.
After cleansing myself of ashtray, we packed up, checked out, and started our day.
First stop? Starbucks of course. My latte made my throat feel a little bit better.
Our flight to Budapest wasn’t until 18:40 so we had the whole day to tour. First we took a stroll down Las Ramblas. Souvenir shopping, a million tourists, stands selling HUGE chickens, pigeons, turtles, and squirrel-like creatures, homelss people, and statues that were really people later, we ran into the ocean!
A really cool column/monument was set up at the shore marking the spot that Columbus returned to after discovering America. Of course we stopped to take a million pictures (mostly of us riding on the back of the larger than life, bronze, lions that bordered the monument).
After a stroll down the shore/harbor (which was really pretty) we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our time absorbing the gothic architecture that Spain is known for. Unfortunately everything was covered in scaffolding. First we saw the Barcelona Cathedral; horribly gothic and horribly ugly but still pretty cool. Then we hopped on the metro and headed toward Gaudi’s “La Familia Segrada Cathedral.”
Okay, Gaudi was one of those brilliant, mathematician, freaks. The cathedral wasn’t complete when Gaudi died but he knew that he couldn’t finish and left behind a specific detail and plan of how it’s sposed to be completed. Unfortunately, funding for its construction comes from the entrance fees paid by visiting tourists (the four of us contributed 20 euro). Basically, its estimated completion date isn’t until 50 years from now! The cathedral is gnarly… it’s probably the biggest drip castle I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful until it was time to go to the airport: we walked about 20 blocks looking for another building by Gaudi but gave up cuz we got sick of walking, ate Subway (the final meal in our American food binge) and interneted it until it was time to go.
Amelia had arrived in Barcelona by plane separate from us and claimed she knew where the bus was to get us to the airport. After a million, “Are you sure?’s” we left the hostel in the direction of the bus stop. Well. After walking around the plaza with all of our heavy bags for about 20 minutes and reading and not understanding any of the bus maps, I walked all the way back to the hostel to ask where the bus stop was. The hostel lady pointed us in the complete opposite direction of the plaza that Amelia lead us to… By the time we got on the bus, we were 45 minutes behind schedule and were all stressing about missing our flight.
THEN, things got weirder at the airport when our flight wasn’t listed on the departures schedule… ehhh…
Europe has a bunch of small and cheap Southwest-ish airlines (I seriously haven’t paid more than 130 euro for any of my flights which is convenient when you’re a college student that wants to do everything but has limited means to do it with). Anyway, the airline we were scheduled to take was called “Smart Wings.” Um, there was no evidence that Smart Wings even existed and when we asked information where we were sposed to check in, the guy sent us to an unmarked check-in stand. We got to the check-in 5 minutes before it closed…
In the terminal (after my pump yet again caused a ruckus in security) we had a little time and did some shopping. It was confusing cuz our flight was scheduled to leave at 18:40 but when we got to the gate (which was totally empty) the board said that it left at 17:45… um, it was 17:50 – DID WE MISS OUR FLIGHT?! Thankfully no. Smart Wings is just retarded. The flight’s original departure time WAS 17:45 but since they sold tickets that said 18:40 they had to delay it. I know, I still don’t get it.
The flight was about 2ish hours. For once I didn’t fear for my life. I spent the entire time writing in my journal and didn’t really have time to think about the prospect of plunging into the ground from 35,000 feet in the air. Hm.
Our flight was about ½ full and consisted of four Americans (us), and all the rest Eastern Europeans that were all speaking to each other in languages I’m not even going to pretend to understand. All I know is, Hungarian boys are hot… our flight had about 6 potential husbands on it. Yess.
At the airport we got our passports stamped (YAY!) then proceeded to prance around and cause a big scene taking pictures with anything and everything that said “Welcome to Hungary!”
A cool girl we met in the Barcelona airport gave us some tips about the country (touristy-type things) and after grabbing a map and exchanging our euros for Forints, which I’ll go into later, we hopped in a Zona Cab the color of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (cabs here are sketch/rip-offs and the girl told us that Zona is the only way to go) and headed to the hostel.
Bytheway, the temperature at this point was -1 degree centigrade… that’s about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The forecast for the next day was snow. Eh…
At the hostel (that we thought was going to be a hotel), after Kate fell and slid all the way down the handicapped ramp, there was a little drama about our room since we had four people instead of three… it ended up being a little more expensive than we were planning but everything turned out okay.
The hostel was a convent. Seriously, each room had two double beds and walls that were painted solid white. The two beds were about one foot high (perfect for getting on your knees to pray at night…?), a tiny dresser, and a window that had a perfect view of a very Eastern Euro church complete with flying buttresses. Oh yea, I also found a copy of the Old Testament on my bed… I think someone’s trying to tell me something. When we arrived it was about 10PM and our floor seemed like it was completely empty! Everytime I had to go down the hall to the bathroom or to Kate and Amelia’s room I RAN cuz I was so creeped out by the place!
Before bed we had a group meeting about plans for the next day and a discussion about Hungarian currency. Earlier at the airport I gave the exchange lady 50 euro and she gave me back 14,000 Forints. Hahahaha, I had a 5000 forint bill! The exchange rate is pretty funny… 1 euro = about 255 forints (for you Americans to understand, 1 dollar = about 200 forints). Hungary uses the euro too but aren’t officially adopting it until 2012. It’s crazy, our cab ride from the airport costed 3,600 forints!
(Bytheway: from this point on I’ll be referring to forints as “finfers” cuz I couldn’t remember what the right word was and “finfer” came out. Meeh, understandable… both words have two syllables and start with F’s…?)
I was a smidge annoyed cuz everyone started freaking out about being in a country where we didn’t speak a lick of the language… I tried to calm them down but it didn’t help. I think the only reason I wasn’t freaking out was cuz we had to deal with all the language barrier crap in Brussels (where they speak DUTCH I finally found out) and sure it sucked at times but the group I was with was so mellow that I almost didn’t notice the fact that no one spoke English. I mean, it’s going to be a little complicated, sure, but nothing to freak out about.
To soothe my nerves I fell asleep listening to The Fray. That guy has such a hot voice. I love it.
I woke up that morning feeling like someone had taken a rake to my throat and smelling like an ashtray… EW. So in my lifetime I have smoked two cigarettes total (woot for junior year with Mark Anderson in the Jack N the Box parking lot at 2AM) but last night the vending machine at Pipperment that sold every brand of cigarette you can possibly imagine was just too cool to pass up, so Kate, Amelia, and I chipped in for a box.
I found the half-full box in my purse this morning but seriously it feels like someone set the entire box on fire, put it in my mouth, and made me swallow. I have the worst sore throat of my life. How people can smoke several packs a day and still be able to breathe and talk is amazing (and totally disgusting) to me.
After cleansing myself of ashtray, we packed up, checked out, and started our day.
First stop? Starbucks of course. My latte made my throat feel a little bit better.
Our flight to Budapest wasn’t until 18:40 so we had the whole day to tour. First we took a stroll down Las Ramblas. Souvenir shopping, a million tourists, stands selling HUGE chickens, pigeons, turtles, and squirrel-like creatures, homelss people, and statues that were really people later, we ran into the ocean!
A really cool column/monument was set up at the shore marking the spot that Columbus returned to after discovering America. Of course we stopped to take a million pictures (mostly of us riding on the back of the larger than life, bronze, lions that bordered the monument).
After a stroll down the shore/harbor (which was really pretty) we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our time absorbing the gothic architecture that Spain is known for. Unfortunately everything was covered in scaffolding. First we saw the Barcelona Cathedral; horribly gothic and horribly ugly but still pretty cool. Then we hopped on the metro and headed toward Gaudi’s “La Familia Segrada Cathedral.”
Okay, Gaudi was one of those brilliant, mathematician, freaks. The cathedral wasn’t complete when Gaudi died but he knew that he couldn’t finish and left behind a specific detail and plan of how it’s sposed to be completed. Unfortunately, funding for its construction comes from the entrance fees paid by visiting tourists (the four of us contributed 20 euro). Basically, its estimated completion date isn’t until 50 years from now! The cathedral is gnarly… it’s probably the biggest drip castle I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful until it was time to go to the airport: we walked about 20 blocks looking for another building by Gaudi but gave up cuz we got sick of walking, ate Subway (the final meal in our American food binge) and interneted it until it was time to go.
Amelia had arrived in Barcelona by plane separate from us and claimed she knew where the bus was to get us to the airport. After a million, “Are you sure?’s” we left the hostel in the direction of the bus stop. Well. After walking around the plaza with all of our heavy bags for about 20 minutes and reading and not understanding any of the bus maps, I walked all the way back to the hostel to ask where the bus stop was. The hostel lady pointed us in the complete opposite direction of the plaza that Amelia lead us to… By the time we got on the bus, we were 45 minutes behind schedule and were all stressing about missing our flight.
THEN, things got weirder at the airport when our flight wasn’t listed on the departures schedule… ehhh…
Europe has a bunch of small and cheap Southwest-ish airlines (I seriously haven’t paid more than 130 euro for any of my flights which is convenient when you’re a college student that wants to do everything but has limited means to do it with). Anyway, the airline we were scheduled to take was called “Smart Wings.” Um, there was no evidence that Smart Wings even existed and when we asked information where we were sposed to check in, the guy sent us to an unmarked check-in stand. We got to the check-in 5 minutes before it closed…
In the terminal (after my pump yet again caused a ruckus in security) we had a little time and did some shopping. It was confusing cuz our flight was scheduled to leave at 18:40 but when we got to the gate (which was totally empty) the board said that it left at 17:45… um, it was 17:50 – DID WE MISS OUR FLIGHT?! Thankfully no. Smart Wings is just retarded. The flight’s original departure time WAS 17:45 but since they sold tickets that said 18:40 they had to delay it. I know, I still don’t get it.
The flight was about 2ish hours. For once I didn’t fear for my life. I spent the entire time writing in my journal and didn’t really have time to think about the prospect of plunging into the ground from 35,000 feet in the air. Hm.
Our flight was about ½ full and consisted of four Americans (us), and all the rest Eastern Europeans that were all speaking to each other in languages I’m not even going to pretend to understand. All I know is, Hungarian boys are hot… our flight had about 6 potential husbands on it. Yess.
At the airport we got our passports stamped (YAY!) then proceeded to prance around and cause a big scene taking pictures with anything and everything that said “Welcome to Hungary!”
A cool girl we met in the Barcelona airport gave us some tips about the country (touristy-type things) and after grabbing a map and exchanging our euros for Forints, which I’ll go into later, we hopped in a Zona Cab the color of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (cabs here are sketch/rip-offs and the girl told us that Zona is the only way to go) and headed to the hostel.
Bytheway, the temperature at this point was -1 degree centigrade… that’s about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The forecast for the next day was snow. Eh…
At the hostel (that we thought was going to be a hotel), after Kate fell and slid all the way down the handicapped ramp, there was a little drama about our room since we had four people instead of three… it ended up being a little more expensive than we were planning but everything turned out okay.
The hostel was a convent. Seriously, each room had two double beds and walls that were painted solid white. The two beds were about one foot high (perfect for getting on your knees to pray at night…?), a tiny dresser, and a window that had a perfect view of a very Eastern Euro church complete with flying buttresses. Oh yea, I also found a copy of the Old Testament on my bed… I think someone’s trying to tell me something. When we arrived it was about 10PM and our floor seemed like it was completely empty! Everytime I had to go down the hall to the bathroom or to Kate and Amelia’s room I RAN cuz I was so creeped out by the place!
Before bed we had a group meeting about plans for the next day and a discussion about Hungarian currency. Earlier at the airport I gave the exchange lady 50 euro and she gave me back 14,000 Forints. Hahahaha, I had a 5000 forint bill! The exchange rate is pretty funny… 1 euro = about 255 forints (for you Americans to understand, 1 dollar = about 200 forints). Hungary uses the euro too but aren’t officially adopting it until 2012. It’s crazy, our cab ride from the airport costed 3,600 forints!
(Bytheway: from this point on I’ll be referring to forints as “finfers” cuz I couldn’t remember what the right word was and “finfer” came out. Meeh, understandable… both words have two syllables and start with F’s…?)
I was a smidge annoyed cuz everyone started freaking out about being in a country where we didn’t speak a lick of the language… I tried to calm them down but it didn’t help. I think the only reason I wasn’t freaking out was cuz we had to deal with all the language barrier crap in Brussels (where they speak DUTCH I finally found out) and sure it sucked at times but the group I was with was so mellow that I almost didn’t notice the fact that no one spoke English. I mean, it’s going to be a little complicated, sure, but nothing to freak out about.
To soothe my nerves I fell asleep listening to The Fray. That guy has such a hot voice. I love it.
posted by tera a firenze at 12:54 AM
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