Monday, October 30, 2006

So, I didn’t really sleep on the sleeper car, but it was better than nothing. Then, after the sun came up, I got curious and decided to go look outside and see what the Hungarian countryside looks like and take some pictures. I looks kind of similar to the Romanian countryside, but there’s a definite different, both in the landscape and that affected by people. I can’t really explain how the countryside landscape is different, but it is. And as far as the rest, well, it’s much cleaner and neater. Im place! Unfortunately, possibly inspired by the fact that I was outside, the nice train man took away our blankets and bedding and made everyone get up, thus relinquishing his “nice” title. We still had a few hours left to go, so we all just ate breakfast, looked over the itinerary and talked. And I took pictures. When we got to Budapest, we wandered around to try and find where we were supposed to be and waited for a while until we figured out how to get to our accommodation. While we were waiting, these 2 really nice, but really insistent taxi drivers came up and tried to convince us to have them drive us. Finally we got them to go away, because we still didn’t know what we were doing. Well, finally we figured it out and we start walking outside, when we realize we need some kind of transportation. Right as someone asks “where can we find a taxi driver,” I look up and see those two drivers like standing RIGHT behind us. They’d just walked up and started listening to our conversation! So I’m like, “right there!” and everyone turns around and sees them. Well, they gave us a decent deal, so we went with them. The drive to our apartment was beautiful and I saw right away how gorgeous of a city Budapest is. It reminded me of a mix of Galway and Edinburgh. Our apartment was really great. It’s called Apartment Buda and it’s supposed to fit 9 people but it fit our 10 beautifully. Only one person had to share a bed and the bed was a double. Had 1 bedroom with 3 people (Shannon, Jenna and Holly), 1 with 2 (Abbi and I) and then room for 5 in the living room (Bri, Megan, Melissa, Jessica and Marina). It also had a full kitchen, a room with a toilet and a room with a shower and sink. After we got our stuff together and talked a little about the plans for the day, we walked down the street a little to the bus stop and caught a bus to Moskva Ter. When we were crossing the street to get to the bus stop some of the girls, being used to Romania, just started crossing the street in front of the cars even though the light was red! The cars had to slam on their breaks and the girls, startled, ran across the street. Then Holly, with a look of utter horror yelled “We’re NOT in Romaaania!!!!” Yeah, it was hilaaarious. So we caught the bus and walked down the street a little to Mammoth Mall, to get some lunch. It was niiiice. It looked pretty much the same as a mall in SoCal. I felt like I was in the Brea Mall! A few of us ate at this super nice restaurant where it’s like a la carte and you just pick out whatever you want from the dishes in front of you. Basically set up like Panda Express or something, but the food was a lot higher quality and there was more of it. Abbi and I shared because we didn’t know what a lot of it was and we didn’t want to get screwed. We got this Broccoli casserole that looked amazing, but was nasty, some pretty good chicken, an amaaazing, meat, spice, dunno patty thing, and a breaded chicken thing that was cold and pretty bad. I kind of wanted some dessert, so after that Marina and I shared this pudding, chocolate, raisin…thing, which was ok. After that we all went over to Moskva Ter and tried to figure out what to do and I got really frustrated because I wanted to just go out and do as much as possible, and basically, well, do the itinerary. No one else wanted to though. One group wanted to just explore the city, one group wanted to go home, and Marina just kept going back and forth which really got on my nerves, because I couldn’t make a decision myself because she kept changing her mind. Well, finally Marina and I were going to go to the grocery store with the girls who were going home, then just give them our groceries. I was really mad at her for a while, but we worked it out. Well, we went shopping and were pleasantly surprised with a lot of the things we found, like strawberry yogurt vitalis, REGULAR milk, hamburger buns, and good spaghetti sauce. Yeah, that was good. Afterward though, Marina didn’t do what she said she’d do and made things hard for me again and we ended up just going home for what she said would be only like an hour. The girls wanted to take naps, and Marina and Shannon promised they wouldn’t sleep long and we could go do stuff. Well, we all took naps and I woke up quite a while later to find that it was like 9 and everyone was still asleep. I got soooooo frustrated and was mad as ever and just sat in my bed and didn’t know what to do. Because I can’t stand it when I feel like something incredibly valuable is just passing me by and there’s nothing I can do about it because it just depends on others. And I wouldn’t have been so mad except that they told me one thing and then did another. If they’d just told me that in the first place I could have gone with the other group. Well, Abbi woke up and kind of tried to comfort me and kind of just yelled at me, which really didn’t help. Then, she went and woke up Shannon who was really sorry and apologized because she’d promised to get up earlier and go do stuff with me. Well, eventually Marina, Shannon and I got out. I was still kind of bummed and we were at Moskva Ter, walking up these steps so we could get to this street that we were going to take up to castle Hill, when, let’s just say Shannon and I got in a little argument. We both had some amazing miscommunication and it was great, because we ended up being not upset that we quarreled, but amazingly happy that we worked it out! See, the thing is, that due to the layers of miscommunication it was one of those thing that you have to be really mature to get to the bottom of. If we weren’t mature about it we would’ve just ended it in a shouting match. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up at the McDonalds right by Moskva Ter and Shannon bought me a muffin and the three of us found a spot on the 2nd floor where we could just talk. It helped so much and by the end we had all of our stories understood and were better friends than ever again. Well, we were doing all of this talking on a couch (yes, McDonalds had couches). I was in the middle and Marina was laying down with her head on my lap. While we were in this position, an Egyptian man in a brown suit, who looked to be in his 40s walked up to Marina. Apparently she’d talked to him a little downstairs while we were ordering and she’d told him she was Canadian. Well, He walks up and she’s looking up at him from the couch and he asks how long she will be here and offers to pay to change her plane ticket to have her stay longer and offers to pay for her to go to Egypt and basically, as we saw it, proposed that she come back and be the gem of his harem J. I was very impressed, because she didn’t laugh the whole time and just casually refused him. Then, he suavely handed her his business card and urged her to think about it and contact him and then he walked away. We – laughed – so – hard. Right after he walked away, my jaw just dropped and I was staring with my eyes wide at the business hard that she was just holding, watching him walk away and I just grabbed it and stared at it. Shannon said it was hilarious. We couldn’t believe that if she’d said yes she could have actually just walked away with this rich Egyptian and, as we decided, become part of his harem! Shannon thought it was all so funny that we replayed the whole situation and took pictures of it all. Oh, and ps, from his card we learned that his name was Solomon and he was a member of the board on a trade company. Well, after quite the break, we finished talking and then decided to aaaactually go out on the town. We walked back to where I broke down, had a little laugh and then continued on up the hill. We knew we’d gotten to the entrance to Castle Hill when we came to a stone archway that cars would pass through and with pedestrian gates on the sides. Right as we reached the entrance we saw the most absurd thing. There were these 5 guys and they were ALL pushing this little tiny cart that had this little baby tree on it. I was thinking “I’m pretty sure I could push that….just me.” We tried really hard to get a good picture, because we were going to entitle it “how many Hungarians does it take to push a tree?” But, unfortunately they all turned out blurry or too dark. Well, first we explored the wall that made up the entrance. You could take some steps to the top where there was a nice little lookout to the city. It was so much nicer than all the beautiful city views we’ve experienced on our travels because it was just us in the dark night on this deserted ancient wall – no other tourists. Then, Shannon made me take pictures of her as she climbed over the wall to stand on this ledge beneath. Yeah, it was slightly nerve racking. When we were done with the wall we walked down the beautiful deserted cobblestone streets with beautiful houses on all sides and romantic streetlamps. We found a big statue with some steps around it for sitting on right in front of a beautiful cathedral. Shannon and Marina danced on the steps and I took a video of them when they weren’t looking. Then we tried really hard to get a picture of the three of us on the steps by putting the camera on a bunch of different things and taking a timed picture, but they were all pretty crappy. About that time we started wondering when the busses would stop running and we figured we should probably get going. On the way back though, we stopped back at the wall again because I’d figured out a good night setting on my camera, but it still didn’t work too well. Such a good night, with so few good pictures! When we got to Moskva Ter we saw our bus, Bus 22 and since we didn’t know whether another one would come that night we ran as hard as we could and jumped on. While we still standing there breathing hard, have just flown on, we hear a voice say, “hello girls” and we look up and see Holly and Jenna just sitting there staring at us! It must have been such a surprise to see us just randomly fly into their bus. The two of them had just seen a movie at Mammoth Mall and were on their way home as well.