Events 10/31-11/9: Skimming

A few misc pictures

So, in the interest of catching up, and getting everything blogged, I'm going to just skim the week and a half.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (other than Wednesday night Art History) I didn't have class or Service-Learning, but I did have a lot of homework to catch up on. Thursday was normal with regards to classes, meaning Econ and Late Antiquity, and I discovered I had an Econ group presentation on the day of Thanksgiving. Joy.

Friday, my friend Tristan and I powered through our vacation plans. Tristan is a friend of mine from the US, who is serving in the US army, stationed in Germany right now. We had previously made plans to go on vacation together the weekend before thanksgiving, but our plans so far had amounted to four places we wanted to go. By the end of our 5 hour session, we were making airbnb reservations. (Hence the pictures of me)

Friday was relatively uninteresting, although I did go to a birthday party of another student. She's actually in Hungary through a different program. She lives in the same dorm as us, but is only auditing one of the professor's courses, and so is a bit detached from the rest of us. (She does go on all the excursions). I was the only other Calvin student who came, but she had lots of friends from the church she is going to (Danube) and is on the worship team at. We got dessert at a relatively fancy place. It was good. (small plate, fork, and napkin, not giant glass)

Not much happened over the weekend that I remember. Doing homework and preparing for the trip to Poland, I suppose. The Lions won another nailbiter.

The election dominated Monday-Wednesday. I didn't sleep Tuesday night, and ended up staying up to watch the results come in. I finally went to bed when Trump had a 90% chance of winning. It was crazy. I went to sleep a couple hours before I would normally have gone to service learning (I obviously didn't go). But I didn't have long to dwell on it, for early Thursday morning, we left for Poland.

Events 10/29-10/31: Prague

Photos

So, Saturday morning, we headed to Prague. The train ride was uneventful. Our Airbnb was a bit out of the city, due to all the holidays around this time (other countries had a long weekend, so we got public transportation passes and took the metro. We had to walk a bit from a metro stop to get "there". When we got to where Google Maps told us to go, which included going down a small dirt path, we couldn't figure out the address. We stopped a guy going down the path to ask for help, and he explained the address we put in had no street number, just a street. He was extremely nice, and called the number for the host that we had. They conversed for a while, and the person on the other end eventually came to get us. She came, explaining that she was a friend of the owner, and the Airbnb was only supposed to be available for a couple months while she was gone. She still offered to let us stay at her parents' house, but we declined and started looking for another place to stay. Everything was booked. One of the other students remembered a place his girlfriend had stayed at and recommended; a "botel" (a motel on a boat permanently attached to a dock). Someone called them up, and they had a room free. So we made plans to stick seven of us in a four-person motel room.

Before we did that, however, we went looking for dinner. It took a while, but we found a great place. I split a half duck (with a bunch of stuff on the side) with someone (as did some other students). The waiter came over and actually showed us how to eat it, which was everything together, not one thing at a time. I'm glad he did. It was delicious.

After dinner, we walked around the city, seeing all kinds of cool stuff. There were lots of cool stuff, but most of it was closed, so I just got lots of pictures of the outsides of things. The Charles Bridge was cool, but I don't think my pictures worked (too low light). We headed back to the botel. I went to bed, but everyone else went on a 45 minute (since the bars close at 11 here) whirlwind tour of the Prague bars.

Sunday morning, we got up, and headed to Prague Castle. There was a huge line for security to get in. We decided to wait for the line to die down, so we went to the Schwarzenberský palác, an art museum. It was quite beautiful.

After the museum, we went up to a medieval monastery, and got lunch nearby. After lunch, we wandered around Petrin Hill, which is full of parks and some medieval stuff, before heading back to the castle complex, which we then entered. The complex is massive, with an entire cathedral inside, lots of cool stuff. It's on a hill, too, so we got a lot of great views.

After that, we headed back, got some dinner, and I went back to the botel to sleep. Everyone else stayed out to enjoy the night life.

Monday morning, we got up super early, and boarded the train back to Budapest.

Quick update: Getting behind

Sorry I've gotten behind. I hope to catch up some tomorrow, but it may be difficult. Lots of traveling going on.

What have I been up to?

After Vienna, I went to Prague with some other Calvin students. It was a great experience, with a near-disaster. I'll get to it tomorrow morning.

I had a relatively boring week, mostly just homework and stuff, but kept me busy, and the week after that was extermely busy, because we had a shortened week; we left for Poland Thursday morning! We stayed in Krakow, and it was another great trip, although I got a sore throat that persists to today. This week is very busy, having been gone, and now another trip this coming weekend.

But first, Friday night, I'm going to the symphony, which will be quite interesting. The next morning, I leave for the trip. I'm meeting my friend Tristan, who is in the US army, and stationed in Germany. He has a car, which will make travel much easier. We're going to meet in Salzburg in Austria, spend a little time there, and then travel and experience some places in southern and western Germany. I'll take a 14 hour train back, going from Koblenz, Germany, back to Budapest. The train leaves at midnight, and has a transfer at 6am. It'll be kind of crazy. I'm excited for the trip, as it will be quite an experience. I'll be excited to blog about it. Hopefully more quickly than I have been.

Events 10/28: Vienna again

Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/KCfRW7iGVeqSKyJz7

So, Friday morning, we got up, and went to Vienna, for real this time. It was about a 3-hour bus ride, not too long. We got to our first stop, Schönbrunn palace, a little late, however.

This picture is actually from after we went inside. Before, we were rushing to make our tour at 10:00. It was an audio tour, with a little PDA type device you held up to your ear. I don't know how we could have been late, but apparently it was important we got there by 10.

The palace was beautiful, but they didn't allow pictures, unfortunately. It was interesting learning about Franz Joseph I, the last emperor of the Habsburg empire, since we had just read a book about the time period, that talked about him a decent amount. There were things about his wife, as well. Apparently, while we know Franz Joseph loved her profusely, we have little idea of whether she loved him, and the evidence suggests she did not. She lived an independent lifestyle, traveling all over on her own, rarely spending time in the palace with her husband. Unfortunately, this eventually led to her death, when she was killed by an Italian revolutionary while traveling.

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After the tour, we split up and went to the palace gardens, which were beautiful.

Lots of walking, tho. My group even went up a hill to see a building under construction, with a cool pond nearby. Don't know what the building was about.

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After exploring the gardens, we went to a bunch of places I went last weekend. We walked to Belvedere Palace and the Hofburg Palace with the tour guide, then stopped for lunch. Lunch was at an interesting buffet-type place. There was a central area, which kind of had sections. There was a buffet, but I got schnitzel, which was a limited amount, but I was also allowed one plate of sides, so I loaded up. It was delicious. After that, we split up. I went with some people who were going where I had been last weekend, going to St. Steven's cathedral and St. Peter's church, and ended back at Maria Theresa Square. While waiting with some people, I found you could go inside the bushes there.

We left after that. The bus ride back was fine, and I went to bed, again with a trip in the morning: Prague.