Things I was not expecting for the weekend: no dinner on
Thursday night, hail on Friday, and snow on Sunday and Monday. Things I was
expecting: having an amazing long weekend in the beautiful cities of Budapest
and Vienna.
Bridget and I had booked a trip through a tour company for
students called
Bus2Alps, so instead of spending a crowded Easter in Rome, we
went away for the weekend. We left Rome at about 5:30PM on Thursday, and
arrived in Budapest at 9:30 Friday morning. Then we shuffled everything into
our hostel, ate breakfast, and went on a two hour walking tour starting on the
Pest side of the river and ending on the Buda side. One thing I found really interesting was that Budapest has a population of 1.5 million people, and the next largest city in Hungary has only 200,000.
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| A monument in front of an actual monument for the victims of the Holocaust because the citizens of Budapest did not feel that the monument represented how much their own people had a hand in the horror. |
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| I'm not really sure why this is there... but it's near the US Embassy building... |
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| The stunning Hungarian Parliament Building |
The Buda side from the Pest side
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| All of these shoes represent people that were told to take their shoes off and then executed so they fell in the river |
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| St. Matthias Cathedral on the Buda side |
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| View of the Pest side from the Buda side |
From there we walked back across the river to a giant indoor
market, got lunch, and did our souvenir shopping. Along the way, Bridget and I
made friends with two girls who are studying in Florence for the semester. Emma
happens to be from Wisconsin somewhat near where I have family, and Engy is
from Egypt… so not close to anyone I know! We spent the rest of the weekend
with them, which was really fun!
We went back to the hostel around 5:00 and took about a four
hour nap because we were so exhausted (and some of us sick) from the night
before. We didn’t feel like doing anything, but we forced ourselves to walk
about five minutes away from the hostel and get food at a neat little street
food nook. I got Thai, so if you’re wondering what traditional Hungarian food
is like I really can’t tell you.
The next day we went to the famous Thermal Baths in the City
Park and had a relaxing morning in the warm water – until my towel was stolen
and I couldn’t get my 5000 fornit down payment back, which is the equivalent to
16 euro. Bridget let me share her towel, so I was just a little bitter, but
besides that, fine and dry. We left the baths to get lunch at a market that was
set up around and inside the Castle in the park (there were festivals going on
EVERYWHERE). Before we left, we also got the same pastry I had tried in Prague,
except this time I got it with cinnamon. Needless to say, it was delicious.
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| The Szèchenyi Thermal Baths |
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| Hero Square in City Park |
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| Kürtöskalàcs AKA Chinmey Cakes |
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| The Castle in City Park |
On our way inside a museum on the side of Hero Square, we
stopped to see just what a huge crowd of people with pillows might be doing in
the Square. Little did we know, it happened to be International Pillow Fight
Day, and at 3:30, the feathers starting falling. It was really quite fun to
watch, and even once we went through the exhibit and left the museum, the fight
was still raging.
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| Awesome candid shot of a stranger |
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| Who's going to clean this up? |
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| Happy International Pillow Fight Day! |
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| (Meet Engy) |
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| Some of the light art in the museum AKA my new phone background because it looks cool when I type my passcode in! |
Once again, we went back to the hostel and took a nap (I
worked on homework and didn’t actually fall asleep), and then left pretty late
to find some food. First we took pictures by the giant letters that spell out
Budapest, then we stopped in one of the ruin bars that Budapest is famous for
just to see what it looked like (it was huge and pretty amazing and quirky),
and then finally sat down and had a light dinner.
On Sunday morning, we left Budapest around 9:30 and made it
to Vienna around 1:00. We stored our luggage and headed out for our walking
tour with very empty stomachs. After a very informative two hour tour of the
city center, found ourselves in the Weinerhaas restaurant and eating different
kinds of schnitzel, a traditional wienese food. Before heading back to the
hostel to get ready for the The Sound of Vienna concert later that night, we
stopped at a famous shop called Demel, where we purchased the traditional
winese chocolate cake with apricot filling and apple strudel. I personally
didn’t like the chocolate cake because of the filling, but the strudel was
amazing! The concert was actually really entertaining, with a variety of songs
and dancers and opera singers for a few.
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St. Stephen's Cathedral
Fun fact: the nearly vertical roof was tiled by a total of four women because supposedly the men were too scared. |
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| On the inside |
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| The Hofburg Imperial Palace Square |
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| St. Peter's Church |
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The Hofburg Imperial palace again
For our last morning of the trip before we headed back to Rome, we toured the Schönbrunn Palace and shopped around another market set up in the square. As we walked out to the beautiful gardens behind the palace, we saw some wedding photos being taken! I agree, the palace is a beautiful place to take pictures, but I was freezing in my warm coat, so I can’t even imagine those poor women in their strapless dresses! It snowed as we were leaving the palce too… yikes. |
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| Schönbrunn Palace |
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| You obviously can't see the detail in this picture, but both of those dresses were gorgeous! |
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| The Gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace |
The bus back wasn’t too bad. I just watched three or four
movies in a row, then finished my homework, and tried to sleep a little bit! We
had heard mixed reviews about
Bus2Alps, but overall, I had a good experience
and would recommend it to future study abroad students – just as long as you
don’t do it every weekend, you spend a lot of time on a bus!
Observation of the
Day:
“Out there
things can happen, and frequently do,
To people as
brainy and footsy as you.
And when
things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew.
Just go right
along, you'll start happening too!”
- Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places
You’ll Go!
