Adventures & non-adventures whilst studying abroad in London

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY: April 21-24

On Wednesday, after checking out Galileo’s finger at the Museo di Stella della Scienza (what, you wouldn’t?) and getting our last fill of Florence, Melissa and I boarded a train to Venice at 5:30 p.m. After a 2-hour layover there, we got on the second leg, a 14-hour overnight train ride to Budapest. Friendly advice: don’t ever take a 14-hour overnight train anywhere, if you can help it.

This was, without a doubt, the longest and most uncomfortable train ride of my life! We met some cool people in our cabin, but trying to sleep was a nightmare. Cramped seat. Cold cabin. Passport control waking you up every time you cross any sort of border (and we went through various Eastern European countries). Finally, we arrived at Budapest’s Keleti Station at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 22.

We spent a couple hours getting our lives in order: booking hostels in Budapest and Prague, buying train tickets to Prague, exchanging money, and getting a late lunch because we hadn’t eaten in many, many, many hours. After lunch, we wandered. We knew nothing about Budapest – I didn’t even know what its currency is (forints) until we got there. All the other cities we’ve traveled to, we’ve done research beforehand. I went into Budapest pretty much blind. We saw the White Bridge, Buda Royal Palace (and its museum, which we got into for free!), and the Chain Bridge. We also ventured into the dark tunnels of the Buda Castle Labyrinth armed with nothing but a single lantern. Inside, it was wet and eerie and we actually did get a little lost… haha.

For dinner, we met up with Danny and his roommates Evan and Roy. It was really nice to see another DOZer abroad, especially sort of unexpectedly! I wish it had been a bit more planned so maybe we could’ve hung out more, but it was still nice nonetheless. After dinner, Melissa and I took a funicular (the second oldest funicular in Europe!) up to Fisherman’s Bastion, where we got a gorgeous moonlit view of the beautiful blue Danube River (:)) and the glowing Parliament building, which is huge. Budapest has its own sort of beauty, I think, but it is definitely beautiful. It is so very different from the other cities I’ve visited, but I don’t know that I can say how, really. It’s just… Hungarian! Despite the cold weather, I loved it.

Friday was our only full day in Budapest, so naturally, because it was me and Melissa, it was a packed day! We went to the National Hungarian Museum, had traditional Hungarian food at a restaurant called Rubens (I was sad I couldn’t try goulash – one of the few times I wished I wasn’t vegetarian!), took a Duna River Boat Tour, walked along Andrassy Ut, a street that’s another UNESCO World Heritage Site, and then – my favorite part of all of SPRING BREAK 2010, probably – we went caving!

Apparently, the “Buda” half of Budapest (Buda sits on one side of the river, Pest on the other) sits atop a myriad of natural underground caves. Caving, or spelunking, involves donning a really attractive (not) suit and hardhat with a flashlight, then crawling/shuffling/running/climbing/squeezing through crevices for 3 hours! It was so much fun! We met some cool Australians and our guide gave us some interesting tidbits about Hungarians (who created Bic pens and Rubik’s cubes, FYI). Near the end, we all turned off our flashlights and climbed for several minutes in complete and utter darkness. We only had each other’s voices, hands and spoken instructions to trust. It was awesome! I came out of the experience with scratched elbows and knees and hair full of cave dust, but I loved every minute of it .

That night, we went to a Fedde le Grande concert at Café del Rio that Danny had told us about the night before. I’d never heard of this DJ, but he was really good! Even though I was exhausted, the concert was fun. We saw Danny and Evan there again and we were there from 11 p.m. to 3:15 a.m. when we finally got a taxi back to our hostel.

Then we did what probably no other tourist/traveler would ever do, besides me and Melissa, and probably Marcos if he’d been there. We crawled into bed around 3:45 a.m. and woke up at 5 a.m. just so we could go to a bathhouse before catching our 9:30 a.m. train to Prague on Saturday morning. Call us crazy, but we didn’t want to leave the City of Spas without having spent some time in a spa! We were at Szechenyi Baths just after 6 a.m., where we relaxed a bit and watched the sun rise over Budapest in a lukewarm outdoor pool and then sweated off the stress of the past week in the sauna. I don’t at all regret getting only an hour of sleep for that experience!

We got on our train to Prague – the last train I hope to ride for a very long time – and fell fast asleep.

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC: April 24-27

Prague is beautiful. Prague is adorable. Prague was the perfect way to end SPRING BREAK 2010!

We reached our hostel at 5 p.m. on Saturday, still pretty worn out from our utter lack of a solid night’s sound sleep. For dinner, we met up with Ariel, another DOZer (and my little! ) who’d come to visit me in London, who was studying abroad in Prague. I can’t really describe what a relief it was to have Ariel there… haha. By this point, Melissa and I had been traveling for 22 days, constantly on the move, running on very little sleep, our bodies and feet especially sore. Needless to say, our minds were worn out, too; we were in no shape to plan out each day and attack it with our usual enthusiasm. Thankfully, Ariel a wonderful tour guide and generous host, so we didn’t have to do a lot of thinking! And, as I’ve said before, it is always, always nice to see a familiar friendly face.

After dinner at a great vegetarian place and a glass of Staropramen, one of Prague’s famous beers, Melissa and I were clearly dying a slow and painful death by exhaustion, so we called it a night. For the first time in I don’t know how long, we got what could be legitimately considered a good night’s sleep. My body has never loved me so much (although it would hate me again by the end of the next night…).

The next morning, we went on a Sandeman’s New Europe free walking tour, which covered all of these main sites. Sandeman’s should make us their official promoters: Melissa and I have been on their free walking tours in Amsterdam, Dublin, Prague, Paris, and London! The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, so we had a leisurely lunch outside in a beer garden, where I tried some Pilsner. We rented a paddle boat and lounged on the Vltava River (also known as the Moldau! The Moldau by Bedřich Smetana was long one of my favorite classical songs, so I was really excited to finally see this river that inspired Smetana’s piece) under the glorious sun. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Vyšehrad, an old castle on a hill near Ariel’s dorm. The cemetery there is home to both composers Smetana and Antonín Dvořák.

That night, the three of us went on the infamous Prague Pub Crawl, determined to make it all the way to the end. Strangely enough, we ran into another London study abroad kid who’d been in one of our classes! It was an odd turn of events. I won’t say much else about the evening except that 1) I have no intention of ever consuming absinthe again and 2) we didn’t make it past the second pub. But it was fun while it lasted, and I got a free t-shirt out of it!

Monday was a lazy day, and not nearly as beautiful. Melissa and I woke up late and had “smaz,” or fried cheese sandwiches that are all the rage in Prague. Czechs really seem to love their fried cheese. We tried to find Mozart’s house and failed, so we checked out the Franz Kafka Museum. Kakfa is a fascinating person… I’ve only ever read his The Metamorphosis, but it’s one of my favorite short stories. What I gathered from the museum is that Kafka was so self-aware it was painful. We met up with Ariel on the Charles Bridge and went to see the Lennon Wall. Apparently, when John Lennon died in 1980, a grief-stricken Czech fan graffitied a portrait of him onto this wall. Since then, all sorts of people have smothered the wall with Lennon portraits and Beatles lyrics and their own signatures. Of course we left our mark! Ariel and I even signed the wall on behalf of DOZ.

We spent a few hours meandering around the various parts of Prague Castle. I tried Czech potato dumplings at dinner and was incredibly disappointed. I tried very hard to like them, but the fact that I couldn’t finish them says a lot. I can usually finish all my food, but I couldn’t down these dumplings. We were definitely not up to another night out, so we had the most delicious milkshakes ever whilst playing Monopoly (I won! I never win) at The Globe Café.

Tuesday was glorious because it was the day we were going home, the day the month-long SPRING BREAK 2010 would finally come to a close. The singular image of my bed in my corner in my flat in London was enough to energize me for the day. Melissa and I had a gigantic breakfast at Café Louvre, the self-proclaimed “crowning jewel of Prague café culture,” then walked to Petrin Hill. Here, we took a funicular to the top of the hill and climbed up the Observation Tower there, which looks like a mini-Eiffel Tower. We walked back to Prague Castle to finish seeing the parts we’d missed the day before.

Then it was back to Old Town Square to see the Astronomical Clock, Prague’s pride and joy, strike the hour. It’s a very pretty clock, parts of which were constructed as far back as 1410, that chimes on the hour every hour. And when it chimes, so begins the “Walk of the Apostles” (video #10). After all the raving I’d heard about it, I was expecting something maybe a bit grander, but it was still cute. Afterwards, we checked out of our hostel and walked all the way to Ariel’s dorm for a last goodbye.

Then we were on a bus to the airport. Then we were at the terminal. Then we were on the plane. Then we were in London! HOME, SWEET HOME. It was truly a beautiful moment.  I thought I’d cry tears of joy. Somebody should make a movie about it. I never thought I’d be so happy to see our cramped little flat, or my squeaky bed that jabs me in the ribs every night with its metal mattress frame. But it doesn’t even matter. It’s my bed, not some hostel’s. And I could speak English. And I could take money out of ATMs without being charged. And I could do laundry! Sweet, blessed laundry.

I feel like I sort of rushed through the last few cities in these blog entries, but we just did way too much in these 26 days! All in all, SPRING BREAK 2010 was all kinds of wonderful. It was full of incredible sights, more history and culture than you could imagine, fantastic food, and plenty of curveballs. We had our fair share of transportation woes, group discrepancies and clashing personalities. But the way I see it, it’s those curveballs that make the experience just that: an experience. I saw a lot, I did a lot, I experienced a lot! And in some way, I guess I can say I backpacked across Europe… or at least across parts of southern and central Europe!

So concludes the saga of SPRING BREAK 2010: me, passed out face-down on my bed in London, wearing the dust, grime and heart of 5 different countries on my back, clutching my pillow like it’s the long-lost love of my life. End scene.