We got to Budapest, Hungary yesterday, but first let me catch up with the day before that. After flying from Tampa to Miami to Chicago, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on Thursday. Frankfurt is amazing! Most of it was destroyed in WWII, so everything is really new. We got lunch-frankfurters!! (called rindswurst in German) and just wandered around the city for a while. We walked down the main river and laid in the grass and took naps in the sun. The weather is definitely warmer than I thought it would be! Then we went out to this Irish pub near our hostel, O’Reilly’s and drank hefeweisbeers. Being in Germany reminded me of when I lived in Spain…the guys still wear those euromullets and fauxhawks! When we were leaving the bar we walked by this Brazilian bar and these guys called us over. Once they found out we were a “package deal”, as Meryl said, they became BFFs with Harris. He got more free drinks than we did! Turned out they were getting their MBAs from Iowa, so it was fun meeting some Americans. Someone started playing Nirvana and System of a Down on the jukebox and I guess a noise violation was called in because the polizie came and made us turn down the music, but not before we could get some pictures with them!
So after going home at 4, Meryl went to bed and Harris and I decided to try to stay up until we were supposed to get up at 5. Unfortunately, we decided to take short “naps” and didn’t wake up til 7. We all freaked out because we had missed the last bus to the flughafen (airport) and we were thinking Budapest was not in the cards. But 160 euros and an hour cab ride later, we made it to the airport in time for the flight.
We got to the hostel which was supersketch so we ended up switching to the other hostel owned by the same guy. It turned out to be a great decision because it was much newer, nicer and cleaner and we made some great friends. We walked around Budapest for a while just taking in all the amazing architecture here and had lunch at a sidewalk cafe. People here don’t seem to speak a ton of English and Hungarian is definitely a hard language to learn so it’s a little tough to communicate, but its amazing how you can do it just by gestures and using the few words you each know. We saw what we think was a procession involving the Russian president, but we are not sure. We were all REALLY tired and cranky from getting about 4 hours of sleep in two days so we ended up taking 5 hour naps at the hostel.
When we got up, Harris talked us into going out with our new friend from the hostel, Zoltan, who is from Sweden. We all chatted about the differences between Sweden and America over Hungarian wine, which is much sweeter than any wine I’ve ever had. Then we went to this bar called Fat Mo’s. Talk about an American name! There were actually mostly Hungarian people there, but it was funny because they played really American music, like Elvis and some stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Everyone seemed to know all the words too! We tried the Hungarian specialty of “plum brandy” and danced a ton. We met some other people from our hostel, two girls from London and one from Boston. I’m loving this trip so much and I am loving meeting all kinds of people.
Today we’re getting ready to go explore Budapest some more so I’ll post when I can about our adventures!