My bad...

Alright, I'm posting way too infrequently. I could probably write an autobiography about my life in Europe so far, but I don't have the time, patience, or ability to do that, so a hopefully not too long blog post will have to do.


July 4th: I had people come over to my flat for July 4th. We cooked cheeseburgers (very bad meat, maybe not even meat), and hotdogs and had about 16 people show up. Then at the very end of the night, we cut out the bottom of a coke can, ripped off about 80 match heads, put them in the can, and lit it on fire. It was the saddest attempt to make something go kaboom on 4th of July, but it had it's moments and of course, made me proud to be an American!



Vienna: 4 of us went to Vienna, Austria for a couple days. We stayed in a hostel with 2 rooms of 4 beds, so it was actually a nice stay. They had a great bar downstairs with lots of cheap drink deals, which we took advantage of that night. The girls forced me to buy a belt because I've been walking around holding my jeans up - I think not eating Burger King and Jack in the Box every day is a healthy life-style choice and now I need to wear a belt... We went to a nearby restaurant and most of us ordered the wiener schnitzel. Really, I guess I had a different idea of what it was, because it is basically deep fried breaded meat with french fries - it tasted better if you squeezed lemon on it. At least our waiter was a jolly plump Austrian who was quite friendly.

The city itself, I have to admit, was not all that great I thought. It seemed like a big tourist city. We went to one area where you can just get lost behind all the buildings because you can't see anything past them, and you're surrounded by tourists and highly overpriced fancy shmancy stores and restaurants. However, the next day we went to a gigantic palace, which was awesome. We went through some labyrinth and played in this area for a while (quite like children, it was fun). To get to the actual palace you had to walk up this large grassy slope to the top of the hill where the beastly palace stands and you could see the whole city from there. Following that we started heading back, but ran in to some people we knew from Budapest - small world! Mostly everybody left, but Kiwi, Michelle, Em, and I stayed for another couple hours and went to a theme park. We went on a small number of rides before heading over to the bus stop, where we again ran in to somebody else we knew from Budapest - small world! Just to mention it, when we got back on the metro in Budapest, we ran in to yet another person we know who had just gotten back from Vienna - small world...


Caves: Just to mention it, we went through some caves in Budapest. I especially liked the area of the cave where if you scream your favorite food at the wall you are supposed to get fed that meal that night. Sadly, I did not eat king crab legs that night...


Lake Balaton/Americans' last weekend: This was the last weekend for 3 of my American friends here - Emily, Brandauer, and Michelle. 10 of us drove to Lake Balaton in Hungary to hang out at the beach. We got lángos, which is a small country of batter deep-fried, topped with another small country made of cheese, and then we put some other stuff on it, like ham. This is seriously impossible to finish the whole thing. We ended up having like 2 lángos left and we felt sick from eating it. Enough of that...

Then we walked down to the beach, which was as expected of a beach, very fun. Of course, we're in Europe, so there are also plenty of fat, hairy, old guys in speedos who could really do us all a solid and put some pants and a shirt on, but I doubt they will. We spent much of the time throwing around a frisbee disk in the lake, but it sinks, so we actually spent more time searching for it under water than throwing it. On the way back we stopped by a restaurant where we pigged out on fish - awesome!



Amsterdam: I didn't actually remember the correct dates for this trip and I thought I was leaving the next week until the day before I had to leave. Sadly, this was also the last weekend for the first American I met in Budapest, Em. So we had to say goodbye that night instead of hang out until she left on Sunday.

Hmmm, I'm not sure what I can or should write about this trip to post publicly on the internet :) Yes there are coffee shops that sell marijuana. Yes there are prostitutes working behind the windows. Yes there are magic mushroom shops. Yes there is a great night life. Yes the city is actually quite nice, the land is reclaimed and their are canals running all through the city and it looks very nice. And that's about all I can tell you about my trip unless you talk to me personally :)


Prague, Czech Republic: The next weekend I went to Prague in Czech Republic. This city is one of my favorites so far. It looks very similar to Budapest, more touristy, but still awesome. They have a great night life (which we didn't actually do, I'm kinda mad about it). We spent the day walking around the city center, which had a bunch of things to do including a Czech dance and song going on on a stage, a church tower with an awesome view, etc. We checked out the church tower, and then moved on to the sex-machine museum. This was quite the museum filled with all kinds of old-school devices which I won't describe at all.

The best part of Prague is that absinthe is legal! Absinthe, for those who don't know, originally had hallucinogenic chemicals in it that supposedly made it quite the fun drink. Nowadays it doesn't have the hallucinogenic aspects, but is still an extremely strong drink. We went to an absinthe bar at night to try it out. We got an absinthe shot, an absinthe slushy, and an absinthe ice-cream and we were sloshed. It was raining like crazy and we were supposed to go out to the clubs, but everybody decided to go home instead, so we walked about 30-40 minutes through the cold rain while drunk instead of partying at a 5-story dance club... yeah...

The next day we went to supposedly the largest castle in the world, although it didn't even seem much like a castle - more like a large area of things surrounded by a wall, but it was still cool. There was a large basilica and a nice view of the surrounding areas. It was a good end to the trip. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the food they have in Prague is really delicious. Yet, on the way home we stopped through McDonalds! Ugh!!!


Aquaworld: Yesterday we went to Aquaworld, a water park in Budapest. It was quite fun - I don't remember the last time I went to a water park. They had some fairly big slides, one of which was a toilet-bowl style where you go on a double tube with somebody. They had another toilet-bowl style where you just go on your back too - that's the best kind of slide. They also had a surfing wave, but the line made it take too long for us to want to wait for it.


Other than that, I've found some new clubs around town which are a blast, taught some people a poker game, found a bug in my food at my favorite restaurant and can't eat there anymore, and met a bunch more people. I believe I won't be able to leave Hungary until September 5th to go anywhere, but there are still plenty of places to see in Hungary. I have a plan to visit my friend Ali in Romania because she is going home in 3 weeks and her birthday is in 4-5 weeks. Our plan consists of going hang-gliding, seeing much of the amazing country-side, and going to an absolutely humongous and crazy dance club. It should be a blast. Also, I will be coming back to the U.S. on a Monday, October 17th. My plane departs from Frankfurt, Germany, so I will fly there on that Saturday. It's only $20 for a plane ticket there! It's also only $20 to fly back to Budapest on that Tuesday, so I will have some people come with me to Frankfurt and they can leave the day after me to go back.

Sorry again for waiting so long between posts - Maybe I'll have more time to write blog posts since I won't be leaving the country for a while. After looking at the pictures I'm uploading, I'm reminded of so many details I could write further about, such as the John Lennon wall in Prague, Margit Island in Budapest, Maci fröccs drinks (aka Teddy Bears). I will do my best to update my blog more. Hopefully, things keep being interesting!

The party's still going

Hey everyone. On the last blog I mentioned I shouldn't wait 3 weeks before making a blog post, and yet, here I am making one 2 and a half weeks later. Since my last post, I haven't really traveled all that much since Poland, but I have experienced a whole lot since then. I need to start writing down what I do every day because I can't seem to remember everything I do because I haven't had a slow day since Poland - every day there is a new adventure. After reviewing this, I'll warn you, it might take a while to read!

I'll just make an attempt to detail the most exciting of things - as in, the ones that I can recall or have pictures :)

Wine Tasting - Saturday, June 18th: This is one of the longest and best days in Hungary so far. A group of about 14 of us took a bus to Zsámbék where we visited a ruin church. I guess it was originally a church, but was destroyed by Mongols, rebuilt, used as a fortress, then had Turks occupying it (and obviously they made a bathhouse in it), then it was taken back and used as a castle, then destroyed by an earthquake... It's been through a lot... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zs%C3%A1mb%C3%A9k

After the small tour we took a bus to Páty for a wine festival. The wine festival was on a hill which was covered with trees, but cleared near the top of the hill, so it was kind of a hidden area. Before we made it up the hill, there was a house we stopped at where they were serving food and wine. We sat down at a table and we were quickly served for free by a very friendly and funny Hungarian man who was so happy to serve us (and he spoke very good English). He gave us plenty of wine. He preferred the red wine and influenced most of us to take it over the white wine as he referred to the red wine as "sex machine wine".

After this we made our way up to the festival and checked out the scene. There was a band playing an American song, but with Hungarian vocals - I'll have to remember which song it was (good luck to me). We sampled about 10 different wines and made our way to a cellar where we were able to get a discount since one of the Hungarians knew somebody working there. We apparently decided to get enough wine to kill an elephant to split between about the 12 of us that were actually drinking. Before we drank, I informed everybody that the night would be a shit show, and for a while it was :) We drank all the wine while trying to crowd around our one blanket on the grass.

Afterward we made our way down the hill to the bus, losing sight of many people along the way, but we all found our way back down to the bus stop. Some Hungarian teenagers started yelling "gypsy!" at us so in a drunken stupor I started chanting "U.S.A.!" in Hungarian pronunciation. They then came over to try to talk to me because they thought it was interesting. Some of them knew very little English, but not really enough to communicate. They seemed way too intrigued by me, and some were very young (14-19!) When the bus came I was glad to get away, but alas! They looked in the window and yelled Facebook Facebook and my American friend Emily was sooo nice that she wrote my full name and showed them. Now I'm FB friends with a bunch of Hungarian high-schoolers, great...

We nearly got kicked off the bus as 2 people apparently had just a little too much to drink and got sick. The rest of us were loud and probably pretty annoying haha. When we got back, most people went home, but 5 of us went out to Ötkert, a dance club (or disco as they call it) in Budapest. We danced for a pretty long time and pulled out all the moves - the bernie, the dougie, the cat-daddy, etc. We went home late and I'm sure we woke up the next morning and went out to do something else.



Colorstar concert - Wednesday, June 22nd: My favorite place to go for concert, Zöld Pardon, hosted the band Colorstar, a semi-electronic, semi-instrumental, semi-alternative rock Hungarian band. Here's why this is the greatest venue in the world that I know of. If you get there before 6:30 or 7:00, it's free entry (otherwise it's like $2). Before 7:30 it's buy-one-get-one-free for wine, beer, and shots. This means we get there at 6:30 and get super tipsy for about $5 and see a whole concert. It's an outside venue. You can get a pretty good pizza for like $5. They have big bean bags all the way across the back wall. The stage is really big and the area in front of it is big enough to fit a ton of people. It's seriously the best place ever (unless it rains...) The band was actually really awesome too, so all in all, this was a great night.



Hungarian circle dancing - Thursday, June 23rd: OK, we were nervous going to a Hungarian circle dance, but we thought we should do it just one time. It was actually a pretty fun time. They had these sandwich-like things which had chopped sausage, diced cucumber, tomatoes, and some other things, which was really good. The girls were immediately ready to go dance, but it took the guys several beers before we decided it was time. The live band was playing Hungarian instruments, and I can only say it was a flute-like thing, a guitar-like thing, a drum of some sort, and some occasional middle-east-esque vocals. Eventually a second group of musicians joined and had some more circle dances. We were about ready to go but we decided to do one more. I swear we did the same 15-second move for 20 minutes before the song was done and we were drenched in sweat - it was disgusting. Believe it or not, after like 5-10 minutes we jumped back in for one last dance (like 10 minutes only at least) and then headed out. Fun, but a one-time experience!




Kesha concert, kind of... - Saturday, June 25th - There was a Kesha concert today, which I was doing everything in my power to not see, but still have a fun night. The day involved walking in all the wrong directions with no apparent reward at the end. Before the concert we went to a Mexican food place, where I for the first time had food that tastes a lot like the food we have in the U.S. and it was sooooo amazing. I got a breakfast burrito with carne asada, onions, cheese, lettuce, hot sauce, and it was soooooo good. We apparently were supposed to bring it with us to the Kesha concert, but three of us gave up on that idea. We sat on a bench and absolutely demolished the messy pile of deliciousness before moving on. We apparently were supposed to take the metro right up to the concert, but we missed that idea and walked all the way there. By the time we got there, Kesha was done (mission accomplished!). We then took several bottles of wine to the park for some drinking. About 20 of us sat on a couple tables and played Never Have I Ever, which seemed to turn in to Kevin Story Time. I thought I was a pretty normal person before that game!

We then walked in a huge unnecessary loop back past where the concert was and many people went home. About 7 of us decided to go to a Turkish Gyros place. Gyros places are everywhere here and are so friggin' good and cheap. This place, like many of them, has a downstairs area to smoke shisha (from a hookah). 3 of the people had no busses, trams, or metros to get home when we wanted to be done, so we ended up just staying there for a long time. 4 of us (including me) fell asleep at some point because it was ridiculously late. We left at 5:30 with the sun blazing in the sky and hopefully we all slept in...



Humus bar - Tuesday, June 28th: Hummussssss! We went to a hummus bar and it was really good. I split a meal with my Hungarian friend Dora, who had never had hummus before (I had it once before). We got a mixture of chicken, liver, and heart (I can't remember if it was chicken liver & heart or something else). It came with some pita bread, or whatever the flat delicious bread is called. This was a super good meal. I'm pretty sure Dora licked the plate clean, she got hummus again the next day! They also had some pretty hot sauce to go with it, which was awesome because there isn't too much spicy food in Hungary. After that, we went to a bar for drinks. I can't remember what this drink was called (we call it a teddy bear), but it involved red wine, a dash of raspberry syrup, and possibly a splash of something else like soda water, but I couldn't tell. It's a dangerous drink - it tastes of no booze, but it's strong. Three of us finished that night by playing guitar in the park. We were possibly a little too intoxicated for a Tuesday...



Canada Day - Friday, July 1st: This is Canada's July 4th, and there are several Canadians here. Interestingly, they're all Asian, except for the French-Canadian. The Canucks prepared poutine, which is basically french fries topped with cheese and gravy. Not going to lie, this was really good, but after watching them cook it I didn't eat as much - soooo much grease! We went in a big group to the bar afterward and got tipsy and danced. My Asian buddies got in to an international Foosball competition between a bunch of people. I've never seen so much excitement over Foosball before!



Tourist Weekend - Saturday & Sunday July 2nd-3rd: My New Zealand friend Antony (we call him Kiwi) had his friend and his friend's girlfriend come in to town for the weekend. My roommate Lili had her friend in as well (but he was here on the 1st-2nd). Also, some of us haven't seen some tourist attractions in Budapest, so we had a tourist day on Saturday where we went to Buda Castle and the Fisherman's Towers, had Hungarian food, and went to some Hungarian clubs. The views were great, the food was incredible, and the clubs were a blast. There were 2 guys from Manchester, England who hung out with us and were hilarious. I also talked for a minute with somebody who had partied with ASU students in England. He said they were the biggest partiers he's met - go ASU!

The next day we went to a bathhouse. This is the third time we've gone to one and it's a great way to relax. I think they had 18 pools in total - some inside, some outside. They varied in temperature from 28 Celsius to 40, and some had some kind of whirlpool thing going on. We also (very) randomly ran in to that same guy who had partied with ASU before, that was really strange!



Coming up: Today is July 4th, so we're having people over for burgers and hotdogs (assuming we find the food, we're running late on this plan!) This weekend a bunch of us may go to Vienna, Austria. There is actually a band I've been wanting to see playing there Sunday, so now I'm really hoping we go. There's a concert at my favorite place Thursday, but I haven't checked out the band yet. I am going to Amsterdam late this month. I am going to Frankfurt, Germany August 13th. I have to go - I'm meeting someone to try out their guitar because he's trying to sell it! I may come back and post some pictures, but of course, if you're facebook friends with me, you can check out my latest photos on there!

3 weeks, 3 trips

Hey everyone, I haven't made a blog post in over 3 weeks so it's time to make a new one. I was sick for about 3 weeks, but some medicine from the doctor seems to have cured me. In the past 3 weeks I have been to 3 different cities; 2 in Hungary and 1 in Poland. In between those trips I've been doing all kinds of things, but to limit my blog to something that can actually be read in a day I will talk about the 3 trips

Miskolc, Hungary: 3 weekends ago I went to Miskolc, Hungary with 7 people. It took a 2 hour train ride to get there and 2 hour train to get back. Once we got there we took a bus quite a bit to see a castle. The Europeans were not too super excited about it, but of course the American girl and I were pretty stoked to see a castle. Here's a link to the castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Di%C3%B3sgy%C5%91r. After the castle we took the bus further to go on a very small hike (there wasn't really much hiking involved). There was an amazing lake and a small waterfall (the biggest in Hungary I think!). The view over the lake was quite amazing. Following this, we took the bus back a long ways to a swimming pool connected to a hot bath that's inside a cave. Admittedly, it wasn't exactly what I expected. It seems like they converted a natural hot bath and cave to a man-made one, but either way it was still fun and relaxing after a long, slightly hungover day.









Visegrád, Hungary: The next weekend about 15-20 of us went to Visegrád, Hungary for a hiking trip. It actually took a 3 hour boat ride there and 3 hour boat ride back along the Danube River, so it was epic enough getting there and back. Once we got there, the hike began. This was one of the more extensive hikes we've done. I can't recall the exact time it took, but it was hot, humid, and part of the trail was very muddy. It made a nightmare for the girls that wore flip flops! When we got up near the top there was another castle (que North Americans going "oooooh!"). The view from the castle, like many views I've seen in Hungary, was incredible. I will need to upload some of the pictures in full size, best quality some time so everyone can get a better idea of what it looks like. Here's a link to the castle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visegr%C3%A1d#Upper_Castle. Once we finished the castle we hiked up more and went on a luge! Like a one-person bobsled that doesn't need ice! There was a break to slow down, but I found if you don't use it, you go muuuuch faster and I nearly tipped it over on the last turn, totally worth it! After that we hiked back down, bought some champagne for the boat ride home, and headed back.








Krakow, Poland: This next weekend was pretty action packed. 10 of us took 2 cars and drove to Krakow, Poland. We drove through Slovakia, so technically I went there too, but really we just drove through it and stopped at a gas station, nothing too exciting there. As soon as we arrived we put our stuff in our big hostel and then went to get food. What we got is called zapiekanka and WOW it was amazing. I'm not sure if this trip is indicative as Poland as a whole, but from what I've seen, their food is incredible and in giant portions, and everything is very inexpensive! My zapiekanka (the first one) had bread, mushrooms, cheese, more cheese, ham, garlic sauce, and ketchup. It was probably 18 inches long, and it cost about $1.50. The one I got on the last day was the same, except instead of ham I had salami and pepperoni and only had barbeque sauce on top. We went on a tour around a small part of the city which was a large part of where Shindler's List was shot, and for good reason. There was a lot of history in this part of the city, including one of the oldest Jewish buildings (I forget if it was a synagogue or what) and the Jewish ghetto, where Jews were kept if they weren't sent off to a camp.

After the tour we went to market square, which was pretty much what you would expect Europe to look like, it was pretty cool. There was a church with 2 towers, designed separately by 2 brothers so each tower has a bit of a different look. We had some drinks and headed to dinner. WOW, the food, again, wow!!! Potato cakes with Hungarian Goulash, I've rarely eaten anything so amazing, and the portion size - gigantic. It was kind of a Hungarian place, actually. The bathroom doors didn't have pictures, but it did have the Hungarian words for Men and Women, so I was able to pick the right one! After the meal we went out to a bar. In this square there are 16 bars, each are pretty unique in their own way. Oh, forgot to mention, my Kiwi friend Antony and I downed a bottle of vodka before getting to the bar... yeah...

The first bar was playing mexican music the whole time, it was kind of cool for about 5 songs and then I determined we had to go haha. So we went to another place which has a bunch of tables outside with working sewing machines outside (don't ask me why!). We danced there for a while, and my Kiwi friend Antony bought us some shots and beers and, yada yada yada, I got lost and couldn't find my way back to the hostel. Luckily my polish friend Joanna saved the day (at least that's what she says, I don't recall). The next day we went to Auschwitz. I'll spare this day, it was as you would expect, very sad. The worst room was the one in which they showed barely any of the leftover hair they had from the people (they would cut it off and sell it or make goods and sell those goods). By barely any, I mean it was probably about 10000 pounds worth of hair by my best guess. We went out again that night, but not nearly as long, and it wasn't such a chaotic night!

The last day we went on a reallly long hike to the top of this mountain. We saw a castle, although there was barely anything left of it, I wouldn't really call it a castle. At the very top was a small cave that a king from long ago hid out after the valley had been taken over. He was able to regroup their forces and form a plan, and later retook the valley from the inhabiting enemy. The hiking trip took wayyyy longer than we expected, so we ended up leaving Krakov at about 10pm and we arrived back in Budapest at 4:30am. The next day I started work at 9:00am, rough day.















Besides that, I've been going out and hanging out non-stop. I went with my Polish friend, Joanna, yesterday to the top of the liberty statue in Budapest to watch the full lunar eclipse. There were apparently many people with this idea, so we had to improvise to find a place to sit, and I sorta thought there would be grass, but we stayed on a rock next to a cliff. Either way, still fun and the view was as always in Europe, amazing.

I need to go get ready to go out tonight as people are celebrating the end of the semester here in Budapest. On Saturday I am going to a wine festival, so I'll have more to write about soon. And hopefully I don't keep you all waiting for 3 weeks again as it takes too much effort to write this much at a time!!!

Europe Doesn't Sleep

Hey everyone, I'm a week and a half in to being in Budapest so it's probably time for another update. The most important thing to mention is that European bars don't close at 2, they close whenever they want to. So I can go out until 4 or later, and I have...

I have started work, although there is a pretty strong language barrier, so it has been difficult to get going on it so far. I go in to the office on Tuesdays and Fridays, and can work from home the other 3 days, so it's not a bad gig.

Enough about work, let's talk beer. Goodness me the beers are cheap here, it's awesome! 350 forints for a beer is hard to turn down. By the way, it's about 190 forints for $1 so it's often under $2 for a beer in a bar. Tomorrow I am going to some concert at a bar where it's buy one get one free or maybe even buy one get two free, I am confused. Either way, yeah they've sold me.

In case you don't know, I got to Budapest through an international organization called AIESEC. Luckily, there is actually a huge group of AIESECers in Budapest from all over the world who all speak English and are really great to hang out with. I went to an event Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday (today) and I probably met about 15 new people each of those days.

Tuesday: A welcome party for some of the new arrivals. Nobody apparently knew I had come to Hungary, so I didn't get a welcome party, but this kind of ended up being for me as well. My roommate told me she was going and then she ended up not going, so I found my way to this bar and saw a table speaking English. So I bought a beer, walked over, found out they were from AIESEC, and I had a great night finally meeting some people.

Thursday: We went to a party at a disco for AIESEC. Oh, and they call clubs discos out here, they don't play disco music or anything. There was supposed to be about 300 people there but there was only about 100. I still got to meet a bunch of people, so it worked out anyways.

Friday: Had the best beer of my life at some German pub. It has some sort of sweet flavor to it, but it's a natural flavor, not like fruity or anything.

Saturday: I went with my flatmate to a cultural cooking party thing where somebody brought some traditional meal from their own country but I didn't even realize that so all I brought was wine, but I feel like it was still accurate :) At some point everybody was looking up some song from their country on YouTube and doing a national sorta dance to it so there were latin people doing salsa and some Hungarian dance. They all of a sudden started yelling "Arizona!!!" and I'm thinking... we don't have a national dance. But everybody did something so I had to do something too. Song choice: "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" by Kenny Chesney. Dance: Two step. I couldn't think of anything any more Arizona than that at the time so that's what I did! That night we went to a disco on one of the islands on the river. Drinks were a little more expensive there (probably $3 for a beer, super expensive!). Basically we drank there until about 4am and then found our way home.

Sunday: Woke up early (11am) and went hiking with a group of about 20. It's pretty tough to fit an extra 20 people on a full tram and bus, but we found a way to do it. The tram and bus took us pretty far away and then we actually did a very short hike to a view point. This is probably the most epic view I've ever seen. We were on the Buda side, but kind of to the side of the city, so the river was aiming straight at us before it curves off, with Buda to our right and Pest to our left. The hills on Buda are just completely covered in green, with some castles and statues at the top of some hills. The Pest side has the whole city with some very old buildings that you can see from far away including the parliament and some churches. After that we hiked down, took a tram to the top of some hill just to see what was over there. There was a creepy old man statue, a war memorial, a church, and a swing-set. That's about it. In the day I met some more new people, including an American girl who just got here a week ago and had a bit of a rough start, but it's getting better for her. We are going to that concert tomorrow for 2-for-1 drink specials, awesome...

I'm in Budapest!

Hey everyone, I am in Budapest for my second night. I have a converter to charge my laptop so I am able to post an update. Here's the breakdown of my adventure so far...

Wednesday I left from Phx to Charlotte, NC and had only about a 40 minute layover before I departed to Rome. The first flight was about 4 hours and the second was 9 hours. I got about 20 minutes of sleep on the Rome flight and I barely got any sleep the night before so I arrived in Rome extremely tired. Well, when I got to Rome, I tried to get some Euros from my bank account. I tried using my debit card but it got declined. I tried again and it said the card was blocked! If you're wondering, yes, I told Chase Bank that I was going to be in Europe for the summer, but they apparently did not care. Because it was blocked, I needed to make an expensive international call to tell them to unblock it and that I'm in Europe, but I had no money to make a call and there was no wifi in the airport. So I was sorta screwed.

The only way I was able to get out of this situation was to purchase a EU mobile phone and plan in the airport, and they charged my first call to the bank with the debit card I was calling the bank to unblock. I told them to stay on the phone after unblocking to make sure it worked because the Italian girl told me too. Good thing she did because after they "unblocked" it, the card was still declined. Then they said, uhhhh, wait.... ok try now, and then it worked. So I had to purchase the phone for 60 euros and the plan for 120 euros, which gets 200 minutes. After that 15 minute call, I was down to about 100 minutes, so it costed about 60 euros, or about $100 for the call. Ok, so at least I have a debit card that works.

Next I went to check for my bag because I did not see it earlier - I couldn't find it. I went to the people to ask if they took the bags off because it had been a while. They brought me in to the backroom and asked if any of the bags were mine, but none of them were. We eventually discovered that Phx placed the bag on the wrong flight to Charlotte, so they did not have time to put it on the flight to Rome! Now it's been over 4 hours so I didn't think I would even have the opportunity to make it to the city and back, so I decided to stay in the airport. I got some Euros and tried using them in the vending machine for some food, it obviously didn't work. But hey, I was in Italy, I might as well eat at one of the restaurants. I couldn't find a nice restaurant, so I ended up going to a couple cafeteria-like places in the airport for pizza and gnocchi. Obviously it can't be as good as in the city, but wow their cheese tastes so good. I mean, wow, the cheese... When the person asked if I wanted Parmesan cheese and I said yes, she put about a pound of it on my gnocchi.

I slept a little bit in the airport because I couldn't physically stay awake, I was too tired to even play angry birds. I didn't want to sleep because I didn't want anybody to steal my backpack, but I couldn't stay awake. I discovered later that if you stand next to the ticket counters you could connect to wifi, so I was able to do that to talk to my dad. He told me to try to find the USAirways departure ticket counter because since they lost my bag, they would reimburse me with money. I had searched the entire airport for USAirways but I couldn't find them so I looked online, standing next to another ticket counter, and discovered it's in terminal 5. Well, there was only terminal 1, 2, and 3... I had to look up where terminal 5 was, and you have to take a shuttle away from the rest of the airport to get there. Once I got there, there was nobody working USAirways because there were no USAir flights that night.

Alright, luck was not on my side at this point, but I found my way to my flight to Budapest, took it, found my buddy and we took a cab to my flat. Then we went to a bar for a couple beers. I was kind of excited to see what a Hungarian bar would be like. Well, let me tell you... In this Hungarian bar, they have Miller, Jager and Redbull, Coca-Cola, but also some Hungarian spirits. They played Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Usher, and so on. Also, they had the NBA playoffs on TV. It was like going to Half Moon basically haha.

Today I bought some clothes, toothbrush, toothpaste, deoderant, food (without preservatives!), so I am in my room with stuff and it's awesome to not be in the Rome airport with nothing.

Here's some pictures, but I don't have any of the city of Budapest yet.

Leaving for Europe Wednesday

Alright, here's the deal. I'm leaving for Budapest, Hungary this Wednesday (May 11th, 2011). I will be there for 12 weeks unless I stay longer. I fly from Phx to Charolette, NC and then from there I go to Rome and arrive Thursday morning. I have a 14 hour lay over in Rome and I'm going to take that opportunity to eat 3-4 of the most delicious meals of my life and try to see some cool things (especially the coliseum!).

Then at 11pm I leave for Budapest. I am doing in internship with Intersoft Consulting as a Sharepoint developer. Here's their website, although it's not totally in English http://www.intersoftconsulting.hu/en.

I'm going to try to take bunches of photos and videos so I can share my experiences as best as I can. Keep checking for updates!