This weekend was full of delicious food, fantastic people, and exciting experiences. Yay, adjectives!
Wednesday night was not at all good; drinking, personal (boy) problems, and not enough sleep are the three things that sum up the entire experience. I crashed at Bruce's, but didn't get to sleep until 4 and then woke up at 7:30 Thursday morning, unable to get back to sleep.
Aaron had also spent the night there and at 8 the two of us groggily left in search of coffee. We found ourselves at California Coffee Company, a café even more Americanized than our usual haunt, Soho. Usually the coffee is fine (they even sell drip coffee!) but that morning it was cold, disappointing and overpriced. We used their internet, didn't talk much (I was mopey and we were both out of it), and parted ways around 9. On my way home I stopped at grocery stores to pick up supplies for apple crisp: golden delicious apples, butter, brown sugar and oatmeal. I couldn't find oatmeal or brown sugar at the Match I went to first. (The major grocery store chains in Budapest are Match, Tesco, and Spar/Interspar/Kaiser's). I ended up at the Spar in me and Voula's neighborhood, where I found all the ingredients I needed (although the brown sugar was the type that's just white sugar mixed with molasses). I brought my ingredients over to Voula's where I was planning on doing my cooking and she fed me tea and let me cry lots.
I left around noon, went home, took a shower and ate breakfast, grabbed the apple crisp recipe then came back to Voula's where she, Aaron and I were going to make 3 different dishes in Voula's tiny kitchen. We spent the next two hours cooking and bumping into each other. Voula baked squash and mashed it with butter and brown sugar, I made my crisp, and Aaron made the most nuclear, 1950s dish possible. Broccoli casserole that called for canned peas, mayonnaise, canned cream of mushroom soup and shredded cheddar cheese (it was quite tasty, but definitely disgusting to watch him make).
We felt like such good housewives, braving the metro with our hot casserole dishes covered in tinfoil and we got to Kevin and Davids to find it full of people and delicious food. A fantastic time was had by most. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pirogies, rolls, deviled eggs, squash, sweet potatoes, homemade bread, mulled wine, crisp, pumpkin pie; a real feast! The only thing missing was cranberry sauce, which couldn't be found anywhere. After a few hours and lots of food, Me, Voula, Aaron, Kyle, Mark, Amol, and Zeb went back to Voula's to watch Mallrats and hang out.
Class wasn't canceled on Friday, but I usually only have one class on Friday's anyways. Graph theory, at 8 am. But I was a good student, I actually went to class! It was only me and four others (the class has over 20 students in it, but a lot of people decided to make the weekend a long weekend and go traveling and others decided that it just wasn't worth going to graph theory). We got tests back and mine came back with a 73% on it! I have now officially passed a test in Hungary!! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!!!
In the afternoon Kyle and I went shopping at West End because he needed a coat. We found him a nice one, then went to a ritzy café in the mall for overpriced coffee and sat and talked. We parted ways around 5, then I went over to Halcy's to make dinner with her. We made fruit salad (kiwis plums oranges apples bananas yumm), pasta and chicken for dinner for the two of us, Halcy's roommate, Jax, and Bruce, and Bruce brought over two bottles of wine. After dinner we realized how nice something sweet, and it turned out that Halcy and Jax had two bars of baking chocolate... so we melted them with butter and sugar and had impromptu fondue with the leftover bread and fruit salad from dinner and drank red wine while they taught me how to play Euchre (Euchre is like Heroes in BSM; a couple of people got a couple of more into it until everyone was obsessed). They all went out to a bar and I went home since I was still very sleep deprived.
Yesterday was museum day! We ended up skipping the Baudelaire exhibit and only went to the French Erotic Illustrations exhibit and the Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit. The French Erotic Illustrations exhibit was definitely eye opening. When you hear about "bawdy French books" in historical or period fiction this is exactly what it was in reference to. The exhibit was books in glass cases, open to the most ridiculous illustrations. I will not describe them in detail, but let me say that the French of the 18th century had a fascination with flying phalli.
The Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit turned out to be much more than that. It was an exhibition of paintings from the Rupf collection, featuring many other artists besides just the headliners. Aaron, Voula and I didn't stay together while we were walking through the exhibit, but ended up choosing the same favorite painting independently. The painting was by Klee, called "Companions Walking" or something similar. I want to show a picture, but we can't find it on the internet anywhere, which is a little strange.
In the evening the three of us invaded Zeb and Luke's where we made sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, drank some cheap Egri Bikavér that Mihály brought, and watched Kiki's Delivery Service. After the movie I frenchbraided Voula, Aaron and Luke's hair and we finished the wine. Voula, Aaron, Mihály and I took the tram back to the Castle district (Zeb and Luke also live in Buda, but further south than Voula and I). Mihály left us to go to the pancake place to do homework and Voula, Aaron and I walked back to Voula's singing selections from Hedwig and the Angry Inch a little louder than we should have. When we got to Voula's door Aaron realized it was already 10 (he also lives in Buda, but about 45 minutes away by metro and tram since public transport isn't nearly as good in Buda as it is in Pest) so he headed home. I hung out at Voula's with her and Casey and we made hot cocoa/tea and talked about Casey's trip to Dublin this weekend and just chilled for a couple of hours.
Then I walked home. And slept another 10 hours. I think I might officially be caught up on sleep now, maybe. Possibly.
Now I'm in Soho with Voula and Aaron, I've had coffee and carrot cake, and it's time to attempt some homework!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Turkey and French Erotic Art.
I am now officially finished with midterms. No more tests until finals! (Let's just ignore the fact that finals are less than a month away).
This is a full weekend ahead:
This is a full weekend ahead:
- Out to some club tonight for post midterms celebrations.
- Thanksgiving tomorrow.
- Museum day Saturday! Me, Voula, Aaron, and maybe others are taking a single day to see all the exhibits around the city we've been meaning to see: there's an exhibit on illustrations from French Erotic Art books from the 1800s in the castle gallery, then an exhibit on Baudelaire that Aaron wants to see, and finally an exhibit featuring Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky at the gallery right by Hösök tér.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Overheard in BSM
Something you'd never expect to hear from two people working on math homework:
"No, that can't work because fish and bird share a letter!"
Someday I will get more batteries for my camera and take some pictures. Until then you will just get colorful anecdotes.
"No, that can't work because fish and bird share a letter!"
Someday I will get more batteries for my camera and take some pictures. Until then you will just get colorful anecdotes.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Oh, what a life!
WHOA. Sorry I haven't updated in ages.
Highlights of the last couple of weeks:
I have been here for 3 months now, officially! Time is zooming by! Next week is Thanksgiving, for god's sake! Sarah and another guy from the program, Sam, are organizing a Thanksgiving dinner for Thursday. Sam's taking care of the turkey, Sarah's doing rolls and pies, Kevin is taking care of mashed taters, I'm going to make Gramma J's apple crisp.. I think it's going to be a fantastic time!
Highlights of the last couple of weeks:
- Failed my number theory midterm quite spectacularly (just like the rest of my class, I'm pretty sure)
- Making stew, bread and bougatsa (a Greek dessert that Voula knows how to make from scratch) with Luke, Zeb, Aaron, Mihály, Voula and Kristoff last Friday night, then going to a way-too-cool-for-us hipster club in Pest for mad dancing, then coming back to Zeb and Luke's for bougatsa and sleep.
- The Red Line Progressive (similar to the Yellow Line Progressive, without costumes) which started near College International and ended in a nightclub called Tabu in a mall in Buda.
- SO MUCH CLASS this last week. Had make-up classes for Number Theory and Abstract Algebra which resulted in 4 8am classes instead of the usual 3, and an Abstract class that lasted until 4 in the afternoon.
- Jeans shopping yesterday with Voula. I bought skinny jeans because I am in Europe and I have lost a bunch of weight, so when else am I going to have a chance?
I have been here for 3 months now, officially! Time is zooming by! Next week is Thanksgiving, for god's sake! Sarah and another guy from the program, Sam, are organizing a Thanksgiving dinner for Thursday. Sam's taking care of the turkey, Sarah's doing rolls and pies, Kevin is taking care of mashed taters, I'm going to make Gramma J's apple crisp.. I think it's going to be a fantastic time!
Sunday, November 4, 2007
When in Slovakia...
What began as a four-person (myself, Aaron, Luke and Kristof) trip to Zagreb, Croatia ended as just Kristof and I in Bratislava, Slovakia, getting perhaps the most authentic tourist experience possible, short of staying in a home-stay. I should mention that before I got there, my sole knowledge of Bratislava had come from Eurotrip (not a very accurate portrayal)
Our journey started on Thursday night with telephone calls around to see if anyone was still interested in going somewhere this weekend. Croatia had fallen through due to costs and Fraser not being able to make it up to the capital and interest in traveling had waned. The only person from the original group still up for an adventure was Kristof. There were trains to Bratislava leaving Keleti Pályaudvar at 9:50, 11:45, 13:50, 16:15, 16:45 and 19:45, so we agreed to meet at the international ticket office at noon to buy tickets for the 13:50 train.
The next morning I did the last bit of planning for the trip: finding a hostel for the two of us. I don’t have internet at my flat, so I called Mihály to ask him the huge favor of looking up hostels on the internet. A quick Google search yielded several results, so I just wrote down directions and price quotes to the first two. The more promising (read: cheaper) of the results was the Hostel Star, at somewhere in the neighborhood of €12-15.
Kristof and I met at noon as planned and got in line for our tickets. We weren’t sure how much the tickets would cost, but had been told that train fare to Bratislava was pretty darn cheapo. We didn’t realize just how cheapo that was. We got to the front of the line and I asked for a round trip ticket to Bratislava. Since there were two of us standing in front of her, the ticket seller asked us if we wanted a two-person ticket. I was about to say “No” when Kristof said, “Yes”. The line was long, the people working the windows were slow, and it would be easy enough for him to pay me back later so I agreed that yes, we wanted a two-person ticket. And how much was the grand total for two round trip tickets to the capital of Slovakia? 7800 HUF, (about $40).
We were done buying our ticket by 12:40 and our train wasn’t set to leave for over an hour so I asked Kristof if he wanted to find a cup of coffee somewhere, a question I really didn’t need to ask since the boy loves coffee even more than I do. For those of you who think it’s gross that I occasionally enjoy a coffee from Starbucks, you’ll really cringe at where we ended up: the McCafé across the street from the train station. We enjoyed our coffees, talked about David Sedaris (side note: From reading this blog, my dad says I’m going to be the next David Sedaris. Too bad I’m not male, gay or Greek. Or nearly as hilarious), and took advantage of the free WCs. At 13:45 we boarded the train departing Keleti bound for Bratislava en route to Prague. Since the train was originating in Budapest we found a compartment to ourselves, no problem. As we sat in our seats across from eachother talking, a head poked in the door. A head belonging to Rob Hildebrand, another BSM student who was attracted by the American voices (but had no idea they were going to be attached to people he knew) and wanted to say hi instead of studying for the GRE he was traveling to Prague to take. He quickly gathered his things and joined us in our compartment for the duration of our shared time on the train.
When Kristof and I said goodbye to Rob and got off the train it was approximately 16:30 and due to daylight savings time the sun was already set. We followed the directions to Hostel Star Mihály had read to me from the website, buying tickets and taking the 61 bus and getting off at the Slowackcho stop. Too bad once we got off the bus, turned to Beckovska st. and walked approximately 50 meters as the directions told us to, the hostel was nowhere in sight. We wandered the neighborhood for a good half an hour before we finally found the hostel, another bus stop beyond the one we had gotten off at, and on another section of Beckovsa st. The neighborhood was far sketchier than we had expected and the people we found at the hostel were not the young crowd we were expecting from all of the stories of hostels we had heard before. This was not, in fact, a hostel but a hotel, and from the looks of it a fairly seedy one. We had to show our passports to get a room and the clerk was surprised, almost offended, that we had Hungarian visas but no Slovakian visa. He, thankfully, still gave us a key and we got a room for the two of us for the night for 580 Sk (about $27).
We let ourselves into our room, put down our non-valuables, and left in search of dinner and the night’s entertainment (making sure to keep our valuables on our persons due to the sketchy nature of our accommodations). Our hostel was located about as far from city center as possible while still being technically within Bratislava city limits so we weren’t sure where to go. We found a large, ritzy mall nearby that we wandered around in first. The mall featured, not only an ice skating rink, but also a life-sized chessboard, ping-pong tables, a bouncy castle and a small track for big-wheels. We decided not to settle for food court food, but to instead find some more authentic Slovakian cuisine. Let me tell you, we found it.
Down the road from the mall, about three quarters of a mile away, was a restaurant called Sunny. We’d already poked our heads in a few other restaurants/pubs and this seemed the least offensive of them all so we asked for a table for two. The host spoke no English, but asked if we spoke German. “Kleine” (a little), Kristof replied. I asked “Beszel Magyarul?” (Do you speak Hungarian?) “No”. He led us to our table and spoke short sentences to Kristof in German (his Deutch knowledge was limited to what he had learned in high school, and he and I are both currently seniors in college, if that gives an idea). We read the menu (which was all in Slovakian) until a waitress came up to us speaking Hungarian. Hooray! A language we recognized! …but didn’t really understand. I asked her in stilted Hungarian if there was an English menu? No. Her Hungarian was better than mine, but I am almost certain she wasn’t fluent. Next she called over a girl who was another Sunny waitress, on break I’m almost certain. This girl spoke English quite well and was able to take our orders. Kristof asked for a chicken dinner and I asked if they had something with beef. “Biftek?” Ok, sure, whatever you think is good. Then she asked for our drink orders. We both ordered beer and she asked us if we wanted 10 or 12%. “Whaaa?” Yes, that’s right -- 10 or 12% alcohol. In Slovakia that’s something you can choose. We each ordered a pint of 10%.
We sat sipping our ridiculously alcoholic beers, getting quite giggly on a third of a glass each due to our empty stomachs. Then the food arrived. Fries for me, ok. Chicken for Kristof, sure. Two salads and a plate of toast… ok, not sure who ordered the toast. And then a dish was placed in front of me. In the center of it was a pile of raw, not-quite-ground beef with what appeared to be a raw egg cracked on top of it. Surrounding the lump of everything-you’re-not-supposed-to-eat-raw were piles of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, whole cloves of garlic, and sliced raw onions.
We stared at the monstrosity before me, unsure of what to do next. We giggled, not sure whether I was supposed to mix it up and send it back to be cooked, a sort of make-your-own meat loaf, or if I should just send it back. Before I had a chance to make up my mind a woman who saw my incredulous expression from several tables away rushed up to our table, patted me on the back, and went to work on my plate. She expertly mixed the beef and egg with the surrounding ingredients, taking larger amounts of mustard and ketchup with my fork and knife, mixing them with the beef and smaller amounts of salt and pepper, and then adding more mustard until the glop was some sort of consistency she was pleased with. “Ok,” we thought, “this is when she takes the plate back to the kitchen and they cook this mixture and bring me back meatloaf.”
No.
She picked up one of the pieces of toast, spread a thick layer of meat-goo on the bread and handed it to me and then did the same for Kristof. We panicked. Unsure of what else to do, we each took a bite. Egeségedre.
Together we finished the “oh crap we’re not supposed to be eating this” dish, and sat talking while we worked on the rest of our meals. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the meal once my beer was gone. When I returned there was a full beer in its place. “Kristof… is that another beer?” Kristof explained, giggling apologetically, that the German speaking waiter had come up while I was gone and said “Zwei?” Kristof had half nodded, acknowledging that he understood a word in German, and the waiter had returned minutes later with zwei more 10% pints. Oh lord.
Once we had finished our meal and our beers we decided we had had enough excitement for one night and that we didn’t really need to do more exploring before we went back to the hotel and to sleep. We paid the bill, walked back to the hotel, talked for a while, giggled more about what we had put in our stomachs at Sunny, braved the corridors with old men in boxer shorts to go to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then finally went to sleep before midnight.
The beds weren’t the most comfortable, but we both slept fine, and woke up around 8:00 am. We were supposed to be out by 10, but ended up packed up and ready to go by 9-ish. There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, so after we checked out we wandered down to the (virtually deserted) restaurant. A hostess seated us and we ordered coffees then took a look at the menu, which thankfully was complete with pictures.
After breakfast we bought bus tickets from the hotel clerk and took the bus back to the train station to find out when the trains would be going to Budapest. 11:45, 12:44, 15:45 and 19:45. We decided to go for the 19:45 train, since it would still get us back to Budapest before the metro curfew, acquired a free map from tourist information, then set out to explore. The time was about 11:30 am.
We spent the day aimlessly wandering around Bratislava, stopping around 14:00 for lunch in a café where the staff thankfully spoke English (no biftek repeats). We saw the castle, bought a few souvenirs, discovered that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is actually in Bratislava (which I’m sure says something about the city itself), witnessed lots and lots of tourists, took pictures and had quite a fantastic, relaxing day. I became very glad it was just the two of us, since we had no plan or agenda. The more people, the harder it becomes to make spur of the moment decisions like, “let’s go here for lunch,” “my stomach doesn’t feel so good, I think the biftek is catching up with me… let’s go into that hotel and use the bathroom”, or “well I think the biftek is mostly out of my system, but let’s aimlessly wander in the direction of a drugstore for some ‘happy belly’ drugs” (side note: we found no open drugstores, thus no happy belly drugs, so I settled on a remedy Éva would have approved of: dark chocolate).
After the sun went down we sat in a park eating yogurt and cookies
and talking, then did more wandering. We eventually found our way back to a recognizable area of town where we took advantage of another upscale hotel’s bathroom, then worked our way back up north to the train station. We got there with a little less than an hour to spare, wandered the train station in search of ways to spend my left over Slovak currency, ate grapefruit and waited for our train.
The train back to Budapest was entirely uneventful. We didn’t get a cabin this time and instead sat in general second-class seating. We listened to music, Kristof wrote postcards, I drew pictures and then we settled down to reading (Malcom X for Kristof, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for me). We got back to Budapest at almost exactly 22:30, boarded the M2, hugged goodbye and thanked eachother for the fantastic adventure, then parted ways when he got off 4 stops before me.
Our journey started on Thursday night with telephone calls around to see if anyone was still interested in going somewhere this weekend. Croatia had fallen through due to costs and Fraser not being able to make it up to the capital and interest in traveling had waned. The only person from the original group still up for an adventure was Kristof. There were trains to Bratislava leaving Keleti Pályaudvar at 9:50, 11:45, 13:50, 16:15, 16:45 and 19:45, so we agreed to meet at the international ticket office at noon to buy tickets for the 13:50 train.
The next morning I did the last bit of planning for the trip: finding a hostel for the two of us. I don’t have internet at my flat, so I called Mihály to ask him the huge favor of looking up hostels on the internet. A quick Google search yielded several results, so I just wrote down directions and price quotes to the first two. The more promising (read: cheaper) of the results was the Hostel Star, at somewhere in the neighborhood of €12-15.
Kristof and I met at noon as planned and got in line for our tickets. We weren’t sure how much the tickets would cost, but had been told that train fare to Bratislava was pretty darn cheapo. We didn’t realize just how cheapo that was. We got to the front of the line and I asked for a round trip ticket to Bratislava. Since there were two of us standing in front of her, the ticket seller asked us if we wanted a two-person ticket. I was about to say “No” when Kristof said, “Yes”. The line was long, the people working the windows were slow, and it would be easy enough for him to pay me back later so I agreed that yes, we wanted a two-person ticket. And how much was the grand total for two round trip tickets to the capital of Slovakia? 7800 HUF, (about $40).
We were done buying our ticket by 12:40 and our train wasn’t set to leave for over an hour so I asked Kristof if he wanted to find a cup of coffee somewhere, a question I really didn’t need to ask since the boy loves coffee even more than I do. For those of you who think it’s gross that I occasionally enjoy a coffee from Starbucks, you’ll really cringe at where we ended up: the McCafé across the street from the train station. We enjoyed our coffees, talked about David Sedaris (side note: From reading this blog, my dad says I’m going to be the next David Sedaris. Too bad I’m not male, gay or Greek. Or nearly as hilarious), and took advantage of the free WCs. At 13:45 we boarded the train departing Keleti bound for Bratislava en route to Prague. Since the train was originating in Budapest we found a compartment to ourselves, no problem. As we sat in our seats across from eachother talking, a head poked in the door. A head belonging to Rob Hildebrand, another BSM student who was attracted by the American voices (but had no idea they were going to be attached to people he knew) and wanted to say hi instead of studying for the GRE he was traveling to Prague to take. He quickly gathered his things and joined us in our compartment for the duration of our shared time on the train.
When Kristof and I said goodbye to Rob and got off the train it was approximately 16:30 and due to daylight savings time the sun was already set. We followed the directions to Hostel Star Mihály had read to me from the website, buying tickets and taking the 61 bus and getting off at the Slowackcho stop. Too bad once we got off the bus, turned to Beckovska st. and walked approximately 50 meters as the directions told us to, the hostel was nowhere in sight. We wandered the neighborhood for a good half an hour before we finally found the hostel, another bus stop beyond the one we had gotten off at, and on another section of Beckovsa st. The neighborhood was far sketchier than we had expected and the people we found at the hostel were not the young crowd we were expecting from all of the stories of hostels we had heard before. This was not, in fact, a hostel but a hotel, and from the looks of it a fairly seedy one. We had to show our passports to get a room and the clerk was surprised, almost offended, that we had Hungarian visas but no Slovakian visa. He, thankfully, still gave us a key and we got a room for the two of us for the night for 580 Sk (about $27).
We let ourselves into our room, put down our non-valuables, and left in search of dinner and the night’s entertainment (making sure to keep our valuables on our persons due to the sketchy nature of our accommodations). Our hostel was located about as far from city center as possible while still being technically within Bratislava city limits so we weren’t sure where to go. We found a large, ritzy mall nearby that we wandered around in first. The mall featured, not only an ice skating rink, but also a life-sized chessboard, ping-pong tables, a bouncy castle and a small track for big-wheels. We decided not to settle for food court food, but to instead find some more authentic Slovakian cuisine. Let me tell you, we found it.
Down the road from the mall, about three quarters of a mile away, was a restaurant called Sunny. We’d already poked our heads in a few other restaurants/pubs and this seemed the least offensive of them all so we asked for a table for two. The host spoke no English, but asked if we spoke German. “Kleine” (a little), Kristof replied. I asked “Beszel Magyarul?” (Do you speak Hungarian?) “No”. He led us to our table and spoke short sentences to Kristof in German (his Deutch knowledge was limited to what he had learned in high school, and he and I are both currently seniors in college, if that gives an idea). We read the menu (which was all in Slovakian) until a waitress came up to us speaking Hungarian. Hooray! A language we recognized! …but didn’t really understand. I asked her in stilted Hungarian if there was an English menu? No. Her Hungarian was better than mine, but I am almost certain she wasn’t fluent. Next she called over a girl who was another Sunny waitress, on break I’m almost certain. This girl spoke English quite well and was able to take our orders. Kristof asked for a chicken dinner and I asked if they had something with beef. “Biftek?” Ok, sure, whatever you think is good. Then she asked for our drink orders. We both ordered beer and she asked us if we wanted 10 or 12%. “Whaaa?” Yes, that’s right -- 10 or 12% alcohol. In Slovakia that’s something you can choose. We each ordered a pint of 10%.
We sat sipping our ridiculously alcoholic beers, getting quite giggly on a third of a glass each due to our empty stomachs. Then the food arrived. Fries for me, ok. Chicken for Kristof, sure. Two salads and a plate of toast… ok, not sure who ordered the toast. And then a dish was placed in front of me. In the center of it was a pile of raw, not-quite-ground beef with what appeared to be a raw egg cracked on top of it. Surrounding the lump of everything-you’re-not-supposed-to-eat-raw were piles of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, whole cloves of garlic, and sliced raw onions.
We stared at the monstrosity before me, unsure of what to do next. We giggled, not sure whether I was supposed to mix it up and send it back to be cooked, a sort of make-your-own meat loaf, or if I should just send it back. Before I had a chance to make up my mind a woman who saw my incredulous expression from several tables away rushed up to our table, patted me on the back, and went to work on my plate. She expertly mixed the beef and egg with the surrounding ingredients, taking larger amounts of mustard and ketchup with my fork and knife, mixing them with the beef and smaller amounts of salt and pepper, and then adding more mustard until the glop was some sort of consistency she was pleased with. “Ok,” we thought, “this is when she takes the plate back to the kitchen and they cook this mixture and bring me back meatloaf.”
No.
She picked up one of the pieces of toast, spread a thick layer of meat-goo on the bread and handed it to me and then did the same for Kristof. We panicked. Unsure of what else to do, we each took a bite. Egeségedre.
Together we finished the “oh crap we’re not supposed to be eating this” dish, and sat talking while we worked on the rest of our meals. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the meal once my beer was gone. When I returned there was a full beer in its place. “Kristof… is that another beer?” Kristof explained, giggling apologetically, that the German speaking waiter had come up while I was gone and said “Zwei?” Kristof had half nodded, acknowledging that he understood a word in German, and the waiter had returned minutes later with zwei more 10% pints. Oh lord.
Once we had finished our meal and our beers we decided we had had enough excitement for one night and that we didn’t really need to do more exploring before we went back to the hotel and to sleep. We paid the bill, walked back to the hotel, talked for a while, giggled more about what we had put in our stomachs at Sunny, braved the corridors with old men in boxer shorts to go to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then finally went to sleep before midnight.
The beds weren’t the most comfortable, but we both slept fine, and woke up around 8:00 am. We were supposed to be out by 10, but ended up packed up and ready to go by 9-ish. There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, so after we checked out we wandered down to the (virtually deserted) restaurant. A hostess seated us and we ordered coffees then took a look at the menu, which thankfully was complete with pictures.
After breakfast we bought bus tickets from the hotel clerk and took the bus back to the train station to find out when the trains would be going to Budapest. 11:45, 12:44, 15:45 and 19:45. We decided to go for the 19:45 train, since it would still get us back to Budapest before the metro curfew, acquired a free map from tourist information, then set out to explore. The time was about 11:30 am.
We spent the day aimlessly wandering around Bratislava, stopping around 14:00 for lunch in a café where the staff thankfully spoke English (no biftek repeats). We saw the castle, bought a few souvenirs, discovered that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is actually in Bratislava (which I’m sure says something about the city itself), witnessed lots and lots of tourists, took pictures and had quite a fantastic, relaxing day. I became very glad it was just the two of us, since we had no plan or agenda. The more people, the harder it becomes to make spur of the moment decisions like, “let’s go here for lunch,” “my stomach doesn’t feel so good, I think the biftek is catching up with me… let’s go into that hotel and use the bathroom”, or “well I think the biftek is mostly out of my system, but let’s aimlessly wander in the direction of a drugstore for some ‘happy belly’ drugs” (side note: we found no open drugstores, thus no happy belly drugs, so I settled on a remedy Éva would have approved of: dark chocolate).
After the sun went down we sat in a park eating yogurt and cookies
and talking, then did more wandering. We eventually found our way back to a recognizable area of town where we took advantage of another upscale hotel’s bathroom, then worked our way back up north to the train station. We got there with a little less than an hour to spare, wandered the train station in search of ways to spend my left over Slovak currency, ate grapefruit and waited for our train.
The train back to Budapest was entirely uneventful. We didn’t get a cabin this time and instead sat in general second-class seating. We listened to music, Kristof wrote postcards, I drew pictures and then we settled down to reading (Malcom X for Kristof, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for me). We got back to Budapest at almost exactly 22:30, boarded the M2, hugged goodbye and thanked eachother for the fantastic adventure, then parted ways when he got off 4 stops before me.
Kristof on the train
Rob on the train. The three of us were sitting talking after the train got going when we heard some American voices yelling "Omigaw! It was cah-RAZY! Omigaw, like, omigaw!". Rob turned to us and told us that he wouldn't have investigated those American voices.
Welcome to Bratislava!
Mommy, you raised me good, you would barely let me eat raw cookie dough and you overcooked my steaks my whole life... so why did I eat this?
The view from our hotel window. Remember the view from BJ's in Prague?
Kristof looking kind of sketchy in our sketchy room.
No wonder we got lost trying to find the hotel.
Cows in tophats on a billboard
Dried up fountain in the palace garden.
Who knew it was in Bratislava? (Glad to see that Slovakians love Douglas Adams, too)
Kristof and I in front of the Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy (Universe)
The windows on the left were painted with a Van Gogh theme. The building on the right was a huge, beautiful church.
Empty back-street in Bratislava.
The view of the other side of the Danube from the castle wall. In the distance to the right you can barely make out windmills.
I tried to take a picture of me and Kristof with Bratislava behind us, but I had the zoom on, and then my camera ran out of batteries, so this is the best we've got.Now it's Sunday. This morning my flat got invaded by Éva's son in law, nephew, nephew's wife and 5 little boys. It was a very noisy, tiring morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
