and then i was back

monday

it was time to leave my experiences in budapest. i was off to the airport at 640 in the morning. my landlord's dad met me at the apt to collect my room key.

i was taken to the airport and got there with plenty of time. i had a united flight, he said terminal 2B would be correct. the B and A terminals are probably 100 m apart, but having 2 large check-ins (above 50 lbs each), and no ez carts being available, i had to take a few of my luggages a little bit, and then move the rest. realizing terminal B did not do united, i was not happy at all. so i finally slowly and methodically moved all my luggage to terminal A, finally finding a cart to make my life easier there.

then i waited in line and the computer to get my boarding pass. there, though, you have to have a confirmation number- its not like america, put in a credit card and they recognize you. i had nothing, so this line was a waste. i was very angry by this point, so i pushed to get in the right line, and i ended up cutting in front of a Hungarian couple who were not very pleased about it, and were arguing with me while i was saying bad things about United. finally the conversation ceased and i faced front, just not looking back.

at least duty free was nice!

the plane to frankfurt wasn't bad. unfortunately the plane was delayed like 20 minutes, and i didn't have much time to make my connection in the first place, so i had to run like HELL through frankfurt. it is a very painful airport. so i was finally in the place which would take me to my terminal, and i had to ride the escalator. of course, after getting in it, it went down instead of up. then it went back up to the level we were just on, and a dumb man just asked the terminal assistant we had just passed whether or not we were on the right level. siigh....

finally i got to my gate. i had to go through security again, while everyone was telling me to hurry up- i was the last one. i made it on the plane, all sweaty. the flight attendants congratulated me, and gave me napkins and water. they changed my seat since a couple wanted to sit together and i got to sit in united plus (or something like that) and had extra legroom!

before i know it, and an interesting pasta dish later (my butter to spread on my bread had been liquified, strangely enough) i was back in the states. hooray! it was different being able to understand everyone's conversations....

so, i've been back in the states for a week now. i was relatively sick with pink eye, but now i'm back home and much better.

i've been thinking about the things that i've missed about hungary.

• an abundance of minerals water (which i finally got accustomed to near the end)
• cabbage (esp. cabbage strudels, cabbage is so common there!)
• crazy math people i've met
• non-fattening (yet tasty) deserts
• fresh and delicious crossaints at the store
• meat and potato dishes
• cheapness of food
• traveling throughout europe
• pear juice
• the opera
• meg valamit? maybe

but of course there are things i won't miss as well.

• toliet paper that is as tough as normal hand towels
• waking up at 7 AM to go to 8 AM class
• the occasional really nasty and old piles of fruit that turn me off
• the weird non-refrigerated milk (i just had a normal glass of milk. yay!)
• not having free streaming tv through sites such as hulu (i've spent a lot of time last week catching up on the last season of House!)
• losing the internet intermittently and having to reset the router
• region 2 dvds

as you can tell, i had a wonderful time, and i hope you enjoyed reading about it. i have no plans for any further posts, unless something new or something forgotten comes up. although my time in budapest was amazing, its great to be back as well.

vislat!

my adventures finally come to a close.

last week

thur

i was off to tour parliament. of course, by the time i got there, this time all the tickets had sold out. this was my second time, and the policeman was telling people to come back at 8 AM tomorrow to buy tickets. so much for that.

in the afternoon we had our going away party, where we got our transcripts. before this was my last time at kiray gyros, which was sad. i got the HUGE lunch- they gyros plate, which was expensive too, but quite worthwhile. then at the party, we got to say goodbye to a lot of good friends we had met, as well as a few professors. champagne was involved as well.

the night i went with some friends to a bar, ended up playing spades which is always a lot of fun. when it was getting late, me and a friend (it was her last night) walked aroud budapest for a few hours. it was disappointing since the lights on things such as parliament was not turned on. i heard after midnight, they turn them off.

friday

a nice relaxing day. i continued to pack. i did have tickets to don juan but i decided to hang out with friends instead. we went to Marxism Pub, a pizza place with Communist decorations. I had a delicious, and cheap, Tschiakovsky Pizza with beans on it. Then we appropriately were headed to the new Indy movie to see him defeat Communism. It was a decent movie, my friends were bigger Indy fans and more disappointed. but it was a quite nice movie theatre.

saturday

it was my last outing. so I went to Szechenyi baths again, this time equipped with my camera. this time I was smart enough to find the indoor baths, which are nothing compared to Gellert's. it was nice to sit in the hot-ness, but i think i enjoyed this better a few months ago, when it was colder, and thus the baths seemed hotter. i did discover the 16 degree pool indoors though, which livened up things quite a bit.

The inside baths.

This was the cooler bath, but it was a lot of fun. The outside circle propelled you around, so you could go round in circles without even trying.

I was out, so I figured I would treat myself to a nice dinner. It was very nice- mushroom sirloin, at a place right near Szechenyi recommended by my guide book.

Sunday

i pack. it is not much fun. in the afternoon i go and exchange my forints to dollars. i get $300. i finish off packing, and have a leisurely rest of the day at home (including some instant soup, i didn't like the cherry flavor though), and ready to leave early monday.

at Schloss Schonbrunn

So on our second day in Vienna, after waking up relatively early, we had a nice dinner at the coffee shop across the street. Vienna is known for its coffee- I had a delicious cappucino with toast.


Then it was off to Schloss Schonbrunn, a palace of Habsburg monarchs. It is well known for being the home of Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife Elizabeth (known as Sisi). We got a pretty good ticket which let us see the inside, the gardens, the maze, and even see an apple strudel show.


First we wandered the inside. This was the majestic meeting place between Kennedy and Krushchev in 1961. There was original rooms and furniture, adorned with many paintings. There was the deathbed of Franz Joseph including a painting of him lying there, there was the Napoleon room which had a lock of Napoleon's son's hair, and there was a room decorated in black that a wife made (I think Maria Theresa) to commemorate the death of her husband. No pictures were allowed, so I had to buy the guide book later.


This was the view from the outside.

Just walking around.



A pretty mandarin duck on one of the many lakes.

The structure has hieroglypics written on it, since they thought that would be cool, but this was before they were deciphered, so it is all just nonsense.

The Roman Ruins (obviously not from the Roman era).

Sisi cake. Mmm.

The view from the top.


The maze. This was really quite difficult, we went into it not at all thinking, and we ended up doing a lot of circling. When you solve it you see the maze and you can laugh at people taking the wrong paths (as people did to us).


The playground near the maze.

Then we headed to the apple strudel show. The gave delicious samples, and showed us how strudels are made. The chef asked for a volunteer, and nobody was volunteering. So I did, and I helped move the strudel, and brush it with butter. They gave me a master pasty chef certificate, it was fun.

Then we went back to the hostel to collect our things, and head out to dinner to a place my friend's parents recommended.

It was in the amusement park.


A large ferris wheel.

This cat looks creepy.


And this was my dinner. It was pork. I also had a 'Cool Man' soda that was pretty decent. It was very cheapt too, an excellent plus.

Then it was off to the bus station, and back to Budapest.

A better picture of the windmills.

We played some cool variations of war on the busride back. I think there was an accident on the road since we were stuck in traffic for about 45 minutes, so we got back to Budapest around 10:30ish.

It was a great day! And it didn't rain much, fortunately.

a day in vienna

So, my last 7 AM bus ride was rather painless. It was raining, but we got in soon after 9:50 AM.


There were lots of cool looking large windmills on the way.

First, after getting off, understanding the subway system (and buying a pass), we were off to our hostel. Then we set off to explore.

We went off to St. Stephens, and there was a church service going on, so we decided to come back later. We first went to the Mozarthaus- an apartment in Vienna which Mozart lived in and wrote some of his operas, which has been turned into a musuem. It seems a lot of what they did was replicas- and they were just selling the point of being an attraction- buit it was worthwhile to visit once anyway. They had lots of replicas and suggestions of how his apartment MIGHT have looked like- since no one really knows, and they were showing clips of Amadeus as well.

Mozart's death mask.

The alley way he would have seen.

Then we had a delicious lunch. I had wienerschnitzel, it wasn't that exciting, but it was tasty nonetheless. The Viennese salad was amazing (it has potatoes and cucumbers with vinegar, favorite salad ever!)

We then went to the cathedral, climbing the tower. There were some great views of the roof.

We continued to wander, passing the opera house. Vienna has lots of statues- like the following.

Then we ran into the very interesting WWII memorial. This is where a building was bombed, and hundreds of people were trapped- and died, under the wreckage.

It took us a while to figure out what it was.

We ran into a Mozart statue.

It was raining really hard, and we passed by the Tutankhamun exhibit. We decided to go in. This was really worthwhile- we saw lots of amazing treasures of the tomb, including Scarab jewelery, statues of Anubis, and such. A lot of it was in German, but most of it had English plaques as well describing what stuff was. Unfortunately- pictures were not permitted, so all I have is my memories. Some of the coolest things were when they had the pictures that Howard Carter took lining on the wall, and the same artifacts were sitting in the cases. I hoped I wouldn't get cursed!

Then we walked some more and ran into the below.

Then we went back and headed out to dinner to a place recommended by our travel book.

It was great!

Its not complete without desert.

A weird ad on the subway~

We headed back and planned for tomorrow.

and just like THAT! the term is over....

(Monday)

My number theory was 8-10 AM. I had finished by 9:30, it was a cinch, I had solved 5/7 definitely right. Solving congruences are very satisfying.

Then was logic. That was... um, logic. It wasn't too bad.

Then I was done! I decided to do some more tourist-ing. My first destination- parliament! I wanted to do a tour and see what's inside.



The last two pictures commemorate the 1956 revolution.

And of course when I went they weren't giving tours. So I decided to wander around freedom square, SE of Parliament.

Here is where the American Embassy is located. I took a picture, then a policeman screamed at me "No pictures!" Security is amazing. There was also a block in the road. None of the other embassies in the square were protected like that. It feels good to be an American.

Then- I headed to the second largest synagogue in the world (#1 is in NYC). I got tickets to do a tour. It is very impressive. Fortunately it survived WWII- the Germans knew the Americans wouldn't bomb it, so they used it for the Gestapo. But of course they did a lot of rebuilding anyway.

Glass paneling.

Chandelier.

The pulpit. Note the organ. So this is not an orthodox church.

The holocaust tree in the garden.

Then I decided to go visit the Castle that I have never seen near Heroes Square, and visit Anonymous. This is where Paul Erdos used to go and do math.

I headed home, preparing for Vienna!

friends visit- last saturday

So Saturday I had friends over- they took the night train over and came very early. We headed out to tourist.We first went over to Buda, seeing the castle. There was some ceremony going on. It was hot- we saw a boy with a costume faint.
Going inside Matyas church- I hadn't been inside before.

We saw Gellert Hill. Lots of things were different because there were waterfalls now.

We headed to the market, then got dinner.

Mmm, meat dumplings.

We then headed to the Basilica.

On the way we ran into a family of knights.

To end the day, we went to Heroes Square. It was a good exploration of Budapest, and it was- what I thought- the last time I would see many of the sights.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I would study lots and lots of number theory and logic. I was excited, because that would be the last studying in a while~~~ My highlight of the day was amazing squid (not including understanding number theory! Not logic though haha.)

i'm back!

Last week after my Combo midterm I celebrated in great fashion, going to a Belgian eatery with friends. I ordered the cheapest real meal on the menu: the rabbit. Thinking about that, I really haven't seen any rabbits in Europe! How sad. I also had some delicious Bellevue.

Friday- since there was no functional class, I decided to head to the House of Terror, which is very close to me. It was an amazing musuem- pictures were not allowed inside the museum. It documentated the Hungarian struggle against the Arrow Cross party, and then the Communists. There were lots of tragic stories and such, and I learned a lot during the visit.

The museum is located where the Hungarian 'Gestapo' was. They imprisoned people there- the prisoners were destroyed, but they were reconstructed. There were square short cells so people couldn't stand straight, and there was a cell flooded with water a few inches deep, so you would always have to sit in water.

The entrance.
The outside.

I headed to the last class of Character Theory. It was fun.

Tomorrow (i/e last Saturday- I would have friends visiting me)