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!