Bratislava and Budapest...yay for old communist statues everywhere!!

(EDIT: I tried...I really did...to get all of these posts done before I actually left Europe, but the last week I was there was a lot busier than I had planned for. not busy in a bad way, just a lot of things to see and do before everyone left Prague for good... :( )

EDIT #2: Apparently a lot more people read this than I thought, and for that, thanks. Keep reading though, there will be at least one more post after this one. And if they are getting longer and longer, too bad. Good humor takes a lot of set up, and I ramble. Get over it. )

So I forgot to mention that I went to Paris May 8-12, and then I went to Bratislava and Budapest May 21-24.

So pretty much from the time I went to Rome, to now, I had been on a trip every other week. it was Rome..weekend off...Krakow...weekend off...Paris...weekend off...then Bratislava and Bupadest. It was a bit hectic. But one of my roommates went twice as many places as that in the same amount of time...and had a few days (if that) off between each trip. So I'm kinda glad I did it my way. I also kinda wish that I had time/could afford going to a few more countries, but I've already seen and done more than I expected to, so I'm pretty ok with where I decided to go. My only real regret was not going to Vienna, but I went to Munich instead (but more about that rained-out trip next time)

Of course there are other things I have done while being in Europe...like go to class (usually)... and other such activities...BUT, too bad. You all can't know EVERYTHING that goes on here....I like being mysterious like that...

My trip to Bratislava and Budapest was the second trip I went on with just one other person. Trips go a lot smoother when there are 4 or less people on them. I went with another one of my guy friends that happens to go to K-State, Chris (I only mention the names so it makes the story telling easier). First we were only going to go to Budapest, because no one else wanted to go, and we both wanted to, but then he tacked on Bratislava for some reason, and I didn't really care either way, so we went to both.

Bratislava (which is in Slovakia, which was part of Czechoslovakia until 1993 when it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia)...for those of you who watch horror/thriller movies, is the setting for the movie "Hostel", and I'm pretty sure that our hostel was remodeled to look like said movie, at least in its bar area. It definitely was slightly creepy.

So we got on the bus to go to Bratislava at about 7.30 in the AM, and got to the bus station i think around 11. We then proceeded to go to the train station, because on our way back, we could get a bus from Budapest to Bratislava, but then had to take a train from Bratislava to Prague. We were assured that this would be relatively simple, and about the same amount of money.

the guy at the bus station in Prague lied, as you will see later. First off though, our train tickets were twice the price we were quoted, but there was nothing we could do about it....grr... and then we thought we had bought the

but anyways, so we check into our hostel, walk to the city center, eat at McDonalds (something familair in a unfamilair area, yet it looked like Prague kinda)


Bratislava..."the little big city" or something like that. The town was large enough to have trams, buses, and trolley buses (I believe trolley buses are the buses that run on the electrical cables from above...similar to a tram...but don't run on the track)

One of the first places we wandered to was the Bratislava Castle. I would have posted a picture of it, but, it is covered in green scaffolding, so its really not all that exciting. Instead, I included a picture of the largest panelac community in Europe. A panelac is pretty much a large apartment building that was built during Communist times (standardized communal living and all that jazz) , and I think this community held almost 500,000 people.

Then we got bored (there is only so much to see and do and walk to in Bratislava), and decided to get on a bus and go visit the Devin Castle, which was about 20 minutes outside of the city, and which I learned later, was about a few kilometers away from Austria.

WOOT…a castle. In all seriousness, it was a pretty sweet castle. If I remember correctly, this castle was at the edge of Roman territory back in the day, and later on, was the site of some of the earliest Christian churches in the area.

We hit a stone wall (not literally…but it meant that the path pretty much stopped) but there was this path through the trees, and of course it only looked slightly chilling, and of course that’s the way Chris wanted to go. We didn’t pass anyone on this path, and I was seriously hoping that I didn’t die, because It would have been the perfect place, but it was very pretty as you can see from the picture above.

There was a break in the trees and some foundations and stuff, and then we get to this path, which is not made for flip flips. Flip flops were a very bad choice, so of course I had to walk ridiculously slow to make sure my shoes didn’t get stuck and I tumbled and died, which would have sucked a little bit.

The part of the castle that looked crazy cool, but was closed for renovations.

After wandering around the castle and its surrounding area, we had some time to kill before the next bus came, so we killed some time and had our first Slovakian beer, which wasn’t too bad. And now I see why beer can be refreshing after being out in the hot sun for some time.

We wandered around Bratislava some more, ate at KFC, and continued to wander around for a bit

Long reflecting pool in Downtown Bratislava.

It was getting late, and dark, so we headed back to our hostel, but FIRST, Chris and I (but really Chris was the one that wanted to go, I just went along because I didn’t have much of a choice, and really had nothing else pressing to get to either) tried to go to some statue that was at the top of a hill that we saw when we got to Bratislava earlier in the day. The only way to get to the top of said hill though, was to follow the winding road up the hill, or use cleverly placed staircases that step up the hill to cut down on travel time for the average pedestrian. Needless to say, after going up the first set of stairs, I was done. These were the most eerie stairs I had ever traversed, and was slightly scared for my life. They were steep, and very badly lit…

Of course.

After getting to the top of them (as you can see from the above picture), and we had walked a little bit, I bitched about not wanting to die, and we left.

The next day, we left for Budapest, and got there around 2 I think. We checked into our hostel, which was like 1000 degrees (well, it was a humid 90ish degrees out, and we were on the 3^rd floor I think, so it was humid and stuffy.), found a Burger King (whose fries tasted like McDonalds fries), and wandered around.

Our first stop, the Terror Museum. The museum is in the house that the top officials in the Hungarian Soviet Party used to interrogate who they saw as criminals and threats to the Party. It was a few floors of fun and excitement, and was chock full of information. There was a sheet of paper in each room that would either explain that exhibit, or give information about what was going on at the time. It was one of the best designed museums I had ever seen (after the Jewish Museum in Berlin), but we were not allowed to take pictures….yet little high schoolers that had gotten there after us were.

Terror Museum. Way Cool.

After that, more wandering/ walking. And then at some point we get to St. Steven’s Basilica. I think. It was HUGE. And other than that, pretty much similar to many of the other churches I’ve talked about…so I’ll just leave it at that.

Statue. St. Some Lady or Another. I want to say St. Theresa.

Domed Roof.

After that…more wandering around and Picture taking of various Budapest sites, and then we were walking down what looked to be one of the more touristy parts of Budapest, we got sucked into a restaurant because they had a tourist deal for food. Neither of us were in the mood to argue though because we both were hungry (HA…hungry in Hungary! Too bad I’m not paid for this comedy gold), but it turned out fine in the end. The restaurant across from the sidewalk had a better deal on food, but you had to deal with guys with violins playing music right by your table…because they walked from group to group embarrassing people.

So in the end…we won.

Real Hungarian goulash, and our Hungarian beers in the upper left. Hungarian goulash tastes like the best parts of chili and stew, probably because of the paprika. It was tasty. And dare I say it, better than Czech goulash.

Paprika Chicken with noodles (but they tasted like spatzle). And I believe the white mess on the top was sour cream. Because, well, I was in Eastern Europe, and sour cream goes with anything, and you can never have enough of it.

Its true.

The next day, after a little confusion and a lot of standing around in the heat, we got on a bus and headed to Memento Park, which was like 30 minutes away from wherever we were in Budapest. (but really the Pest side I think). Memento Park was a way f’in far out there “park” that had a collection of 50 old communist statues from former Communist Budapest. A lot of them were torn down and destroyed, but I guess some of them were just too elaborate, massive, and interesting to simply destroy. It was f’in hot when we were there though.

I have no idea what the actual name of this one was (Probably Liberation or Working Man’s Freedom or some nonsense like that), but Chris and I titled it “Man Forgetting to Put Pants in Washing Machine.”

Lenin.

After we got back from the park, We headed to the Buda side, and wandered around. We went to a Bauhaus Style church. It was one of the first churches I had seen where the stained glass windows curved and met with the roof. (as seen below)

Window. Get Excited.

And then we walked to the castle area, and came upon this lovely…

Buda Castle. I think the original one was destroyed in the War. Yes, in the picture and in person, it looks like a sand castle. And when we were there it was incredibly sunny out, so the sun bounced off of the castle, and made it worse. Fun times.

Buda Castle area.

After this, we went to some castle labyrinth thing (which we could not determine was a tourist trap or not), and then headed back towards our hostel. We started watching a Blackhawks playoff game that we somehow caught on the tv in the common area, and got sucked in. It was in Maygar though (the Hungarian language), and I complained I was hungry, and I knew he was, so we decided to go to Pizza Hut because we had seen atleast one of them in Budapest. And, it turned out that there was one like a block away from our hostel, so go us.

The delicious pizza, it had sausage, pepperoni, jalapenos, and green peppers. And the place had American music videos playing in the background, so it made it kinda hard to leave. AND, it was the classiest Pizza Hut I had ever been in. It looked more like a nice Italian restaurant.

The NEXT day (the last day of our trip, and as you will soon see…the most frustrating) we decided to go to the Citadel. It’s a monument at the top of the “hill” where there is also a bunker, and some other old important buildings. ONLY, we somehow found the LOOONG way to get up there, and followed the route that cars would take, and then guessed on which way to go up the hill (it turns out we guessed correctly. I would have been pissed if he hadn’t.). We get to the top, take a few minutes to regroup, and then start to look around.

Stunning view from the top.

We went in an old Nazi bunker too, which was cool at first, and then got horribly depressing when we left, and then we (but really I) felt better after Chris took off running because he was chased by a bee for like 20 yards. I should have taken a picture, but was too busy laughing hysterically.

After this we make our way down the hill, get lunch, and then go to some other park. It had some famous monument or something, and then walked around it, and then got to a tram stop, but we didn’t have any tickets. I was willing to risk it, but they have plain-clothes people randomly check, and we had already seen 2 people thrown off the tram. So then we walked back through the park. Keep in mind we had our backpacks through all of this, and it was in the 80s. This is the only time I was pissed during the whole trip, but eventually we got where we needed to and got on the bus to go back to Bratislava, so it all turned out ok in the end…

Almost too ok.

We get back to Bratislava at like 6 in the PM, and don’t have to be on the train til 10 in the PM. Apparently its pretty hard to waste 4 hours in Bratislava. We ate and then walked around the old part of Bratislava (which took like an hour) But we stumbled upon this…

YES… We found the Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy. In Bratislava. I guess if you have got to put it somewhere, that would be the place. Since there is not much else going on there. Sadly this was closed, but it inspired us to kill some time by getting beer, which we did, and then headed to the train station.

And thus began our night of “you have got to be kidding me” (only the words we used were not as nice.

So we get on the train, and the train leaves, and we’re pretty sure all the old guys we were sitting with were talking about us. And then the ticket guy comes, and yells at us for being in the wrong car (different cars go to different places), and we had to get to the right one because there one we were on was not going where we needed.

It took us ten minutes for us to learn all this, because we had no idea what the guy was saying, but one of the people we were sitting with translated, and then some guy that barely spoke English wrote down us what station to get off at to get to the right car. So the train finally stops there (I think it was right before the border), and we bolt halfway down the train to get to the right car. So we are relieved to find it, and then see that there are NO seats. So we stand at the front for a while, and see the rest of the train leave and our car stay. So we were damn glad we got off the wrong car. So the train leaves, and we stand for a while longer, and then go and see if we can find seats. It turns out that most of the cars are full and everyone in them is passed out, so we hang out in the corridor for the rest of the trip (which was another 2 hours). There were seats that folded down from the wall, but I went between standing and sitting on the floor. I think Chris eventually fell asleep on one of the chairs.

So we get back to Prague, and then have to wait like 20 minutes for a night tram to get us to the main part of Prague, and then we have to wait another half an hour for the tram to get us back to our dorm.

And I think we arrived some time between 3 and 4, and then I passed out around 6 (I think.).

Next Trip: MUNICH. Could I afford it? Not exactly. Was it spur of the moment? A little. Was it worth it? Heck yes.

Stay tuned. Same Bat Time…Same Bat Channel!

Paris!

I'm already 2 trips behind on this thing, and I'm going on another next week. (EDIT: now less than 4 days. Geez)

I guess I need to power through then. who knows...maybe I'll have 2 posts in the same day!

But yes...Paris. One of the most romantic cities in the world, and I went with one of my new guy friends Manny that I met here. I actually fell into a group of American guys that I got to know while being here. Most of them go to my university, so it made it all a little easier to find common ground and whatnot. THAT, and I think I am one of the only girls that ever hung out with them. they are a good group though...they definitely made parts of my trip ones I won't soon forget. (example: my trip with most of them to Rome)

Moving on though...

So our flight from Prague to Paris was at 5 in the evening, which was the latest either of us had flown to another country. Everything leading up to the flight and getting to the Paris Orly Airport was uneventful...we got our tickets...got Mcdonalds to kill time...got on the plane...got off the plane...ran to the bathroom...and then began the ordeal of getting from the airport to our hostel.

when dealing with the Paris Metro...you see this map and want to have a heart attack.


THAT....is 14 lines. Yes...14. And of course they are not all clearly labeled, its very bizzare how far you have to walk to transfer at times, and sometimes you don't know if you are going in the right direction or not until you get on and hope that the next stop is towards you final destination. With that being said, Manny and I NEVER got lost on the metro. I would tell us where we were going, and he would figure out how to get there. It was a beautiful system. I figured if I had a hard time finding our hostel on a map, that I had no business looking at a metro map.

You are often greeted by this sign on the metro. I think it says something to the effect of "don't be a dumbass and use your foot to block the door from closing" These doors were quite scary. I should have gotten a picture of them. instead of them opening automatically, there is a latch you have to lift up to unlock the doors, and they open kinda fast. and riders would like to open the doors before the train had come to a complete stop. And you had to step up to get on the train. fun times.

But we found our hostel, got dinner at McDonalds (which was across the street from our hostel. Smart planning on someone's part.) and then wandered around the area because we had nothing else better to do with our time.

Typical metro stop decoration. They are designed in the Art Nouveau style, and of the reason why I went to Paris in the first place. Coincidentally, these metro stops are some of the only designs I care from from Art Nouveau...the rest of it is all too frilly and busy for me.

La Bastille, which was i think about a mile away from our hostel. That is all that's left of the infamous prison that started the French Revolution. I think i read somewhere that you could see remains of the foundations of the prison from a metro stop nearby.


FULL DAY #1 Started with a trip to the Eiffel Tower. And just like when I saw the Colosseum...the first words out of my mouth upon seeing it were..."that's the god damn Eiffel Tower right there." And there it was indeed.

From the Bottom

From the middle-ish?

View from the first or second observation level. Im going to lean towards this being the higher one of the 2

A view of the menu for a restaurant at the top of the tower. That's right...they have pigeon on the menu...and if I remember correctly, its 74 Euro. You heard it here folks...the French are somehow making money off of a bird that won't move EVER, even when a tram is dangerously close to flattening it. (Sidebar: the pigeons in Europe are entirely too domesticated. You could be standing next to it and it still won't flinch and the larger the open public area...the more they swarm around people, especially friendly old people).

View from the bottom (obviously). I tried to get the whole tower in the shot, but I failed.

ME. We walked across the street and to some other building that is parallel to the Eiffel Tower. It had a lot of flags and statues and whatnot in front of it. We mainly did this to get a picture of the whole thing.

And then we headed towards the Paris Catacombs...and got really hungry, and progressively more pissed (atleast I was) because it took us forever to find a place that had an english menu outside of it, and it started drizzling, then raining, then pouring.

Typical street in Paris

My first "french" meal. 1/4 of chicken and french fries at the place we settled on. it was tasty

THE CATACOMBS!! We paid 4 Euro to get it (roughly 6 bucks i think) and then had to go down a flight or 2 of stairs, and then down a corridor that was 400-600 meters (i went like a month ago...I don't remember exactly...geez!) it was slippery. and dimly lit (these pictures were taken with flash though, because the night setting on my camera blows). It quickly turned into one of the creepiest/most awesome places I've been to in Europe. Expect for the me almost slipping and falling part a few times. BUT...I figured if I died that they would just throw my body in with the rest of the bones, and no one would know... It would be quite ironic as well.

Entrance to Catacombs. get excited!

Proof I was in the Catacombs. YES that's my shadow, and yes, I think those are femurs and skulls behind me. I spent some of my time in the catacombs taking pebbles that were on the floor. I thought it would be a pretty sweet sovenier (Sidebar: sorry...that word is incredibly difficult for me to spell this semester), and would have less potential to bring a horrible curse onto my family than taking a random bone.

From what I understand, the Catacombs were concecrated in the 18th century because the bodies in a nearby cemetary were causing a plague to spread, so the bodies had to go. And then I guess that bones from all Paris cemetaries were put down there until 1815. I didn't even know the Catacombs were there until someone told me about them a few days before I left for Paris; I thought it was an "off the beaten path" tourist destination. Apparently Manny and I were wrong. We waited in like for close to an hour, and contemplated even getting out of line because it was still drizzling, and both of us were cold. And it almost looked like we were not going to get in because someone who worked there came around at like 4ish and said that not everyone in line was going to get in (we actually have no idea what the guy said, but neither did the people in front of us, a lady was kind enough to translate for them, and I overhead what she said), but I think we were in the last group of 20 or so people to get it.

View from the bathroom of our hostel. I thought I had gotten a picture of it, but if you had looked to the right of this building, you would have seen a Mcdonalds across the street. It became very convenient during my stay in Paris

After the catacombs we headed back to the hostel for a bit, and then traversed to the Triumphal Arch. or Arc de Triomphe if you speak french. I believe its modeled after Hadrians arch in Rome or something like that. It has a tomb to an unknown soldier from WWI at the base of it. BUT before we got to to the Arch, we got sidetracked by some people dancing.Manny says they were pop-and-locking, but it looks suspiciously similar to someone doing the Robot, so I'm going to say he was doing the Robot, which made the Paris trip awesome. Because ever since seeing Eurotrip, I had always wanted to see the Robot done on a Paris street. Granted, it was not a battle royale like in the movie (which is one of the best scenes in the movie. well, that and the train scene, which I also experienced sort of when I was in Rome.) And I think there was a Lambo parked on the street behind them. So of course Manny had to get a picture.

Best Angled picture ever! The sign's arrow points the arch! in reality though, the sign points to stairs you can take that lead you to a tunnel that can take you from one side of the roundabout that the Arch is in the middle of, to to the other one. We were unaware that was there at first, so we ran across the roundabout because we could not figure out how else to get closer to the arch.

It turns out thats a bad plan.

After that, we went back to the Eiffel tower, because we heard it "sparkles" at night. Oh yea it sparkles. The lights flicker like a spasmatic seizure-inducing strobe light. It was definitely a sight to see.
FULL DAY #2 Began with a trip to Versailles

The gate to the palace. We waited in line to get tickets for almost an hour. But it was one of the most entertaining lines I had ever waited in. Because you see, I was greeted with some guy talking with his friends and mom about random shit, It went from why Texas should seceede from the Union, to what he was wearing that day, to his crystal meth addiction earlier in his life, to living in London. Granted, I overheard all of this, but he would have had to be stupid to think no one could hear him and wasn't paying attention. THAT, and waiting in a line at a famous house in France is not the place to discuss your entire life story with others.

You never know who actually speaks english...

The tour cost about 11 Euros (we just looked at the palace, but you could pay extra to see Marie Antionette's rooms, the Petit Trianon (her little cottage on the grounds), and the Gardens), but it did include an audio guide thing. We accidentally got rid of the audio guides before you were supposed to, but all they really talked about was the art anyways, which is not exactly why I came to Versailles.

Yup, that's marble. It was some of the most colorful marble I had ever seen as well. And I totally touched it.
The world famous Hall of Mirrors. Louis XIV built it, and used it to walk from his rooms to the chapel in the morning. And other such functions were held in there as well. i just looked it up, and wikipedia says that there are a total of 357 mirrors.

We got to the Palace at 11.30, and by the time we got out of there, it was almost 3, and both of us were STARVING! So, with very little arguement, we settled on Versailles' friendly neighborhood McDonalds, which was actually cheaper than the McDonalds by our hostel by 40-50 Euro cents.

Then, we went to Norte Dame, a church I distinctly remember learning about in school, and know that the facade is uber important, but I can't quite remember why. Grr, after a while all the Gothic churches looked the same...

Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame Cathedral!

This was yet another church that had candles you could light (but for like 2-5 Euro depending on how decorative a candle you wanted to light with the potential of burning the church down. YES, I know that the church is mainly stone, but it could happen...) so I totally did. SO now I can say that I've lit candles in 3 countries, Poland, Hungary, and France. WOOT.

After church, it was ice cream time!

Tirimisu Ice Cream. Delicious. And I still have that spoon. It was pretty.

Our "french" dinner. The tortellini (the pasta in the top left) was the best out of the 3. I always have the best akward conversations with people when people are trying to say whatever to make the whole thing less akward. Food seriously brings people together.

FULL DAY #3 began with looking at the Sacre Coeur. I believe its a Neo-gothic church with islamic influence built in the 1800s. its at the top of a hill. And full of people trying to sell you stuff. I thought was terrible in that respect, but Paris is WAAAY worse. And they are a lot smarter about it here too. They situate themselves in places where you have to pass by them, so its nearly unavoidable to talk to them. It is incredibly irritating.

Sacre Couer in all its glory

Since that took like 20 minutes, we headed in the direction of the Hotel Invaldes, which was the French Military History Musuem was, and Napoleon's tomb. Tickets were like 11 Euro though, and we were only mildly interesting, so we just walked around the outside of it.

Napoleon (Dynamite's) Tomb. You have to pay to get in. We were having none of that. And both of us had to go to the bathroom.

Since that took like 45 minutes, and we were running out of ideas, we back in the direction of the Cathedral because when we had gotten ice cream earlier in our trip, we saw this one guy making delectable looking crepes. So we got ham and cheese ones, for I'm not a fan of ham, but I was a fan of this crepe.

Ham and cheese crepe. I started eating it right away, so I didn't take a picture til halfway through eating it.

After this we were going to go to the Louve, but I thought it was free at some point that day, but not til later on, so we loitered around in a few bookstores and a Starbucks for like 3 hours. I did get a book for 3.50 Euro there, So it wasnt all bad.

THEN, We tried to Louvre it up.
The glass pyramid signifying the I.M. Pei addition to the louve.

Yea...i fucked up on the times and the placed closed like 20 minutes before we got there. But the gift shop was open, so we wandered around there for a bit. I was so pissed that I screwed up on the times. But I guess I saved a bit of money, and its not like i know a whole lot about art anyways....so i would have gotten through the whole place in like an hour.

Then we spent the rest of the day killing more, had a slight scare that we were going the wrong way when we left for the airport in the morning (turns out we were right anyways) and then I made it back to my room at like 2 in the afternoon.

all in all, a good trip. I'm sure more things happened...I was on this trip over a month ago...so its time to push onto the next one...Bratislava and Budapest!