You Take The Good, You Take The Bad

... you take them both, and there you have the facts of life.

That theme song popped into my head when I decided to write this post. It's pretty apropos ... well, the lyrics, not the show. No, wait, scratch that, it's a bit similar to the show too - learning to live with people you aren't related to in a new environment. Sure, it's a bit of a comparative stretch, but I think it can work if you want it to.

Ok, away from delightful 80's TV shows and back to Budapest ...

Yesterday was a pretty great day. I arrived to work at 10am. I met with the Big Boss Man for about 5 minutes and he sent me back downstairs after handing me his business card. I have a feeling I won't be seeing him again any time soon. Very typical partner maneuver of giving the new kid a "hello, welcome, good luck, see you later." I think the assistants thought he would be assigning me tasks, and he thinks they're assigning me tasks, so I yet again had nothing to do but surf the internet (which, coincidentally, is my non-task for today, hence the blog post).

I left at noon from work to join everyone else on their tour of the Hungarian Parliament:

(all images stolen from Wikipedia because I can't upload my pictures onto my work computer)

It's an incredibly gorgeous building and the inside is just as striking as the outside. Randomly, the Speaker of the House (and, it seemed, possible new President soonish?), just happened to be in the rotunda as we were being given a tour and since the director of the program on the Hungarian side is friends with him, we were able to meet him. Seemed like quite a nice guy.

THEN we got in a bit of trouble after the tour. See, there was a sign on the wall that seemed to say "restroom", so we followed it and actually found a restroom ... so three of us used it. When we exited we found the tour guide lady and a very large guard, arms crossed and shaking his head at us as if to say "How ridiculous that they just wandered off and used a restroom they weren't instructed to use, I can't believe someone would do that." There was a LOT communicated in that shake of his head. They quickly escorted us outside, with more shaking of the guard's head. The rest of the group had apparently put their lives on the line (not really) insisting that there were some of us still behind in the building and the group couldn't quite leave yet. Seriously, do not mess with the guards in the Hungarian Parliament building.

After that little adventure, we walked around a bit and went to St. Stephan's Basilica, where they, kind of creepily, have his right hand in a glass case in one of the side chapels. The church is gorgeous, as usual. I have yet to be in a church here that wasn't completely striking and awe inspiring (Hmm, I have to think that's somehow intentional ...). I think I've been in church more on this trip than I have in the last couple years (sorry mom and dad).

After St. Stephen's we went to a famous pastry and ice cream shop: Gerbaud. It was beautiful and DELICIOUS. All four of us had something different and they were all so, so good.

I think that's actually three of the items we ordered. I had the white one in the back - crushed walnuts with creme between layers of cake. Ah-may-zing.

I headed back after snack time becuase my work shoes were definitely not hiking-around-Budapest-sight-seeing shoes. Once everyone else got back we headed down to the Gellert baths. Hot baths in intricately tiled rooms and great company? Yes please! I'd go there every day if I could. Ok, that's a lie, I probably wouldn't, but it was still amazing and relaxing.

After we towelled off and changed we headed to dinner. We were just walking down a street with a bunch of restaurants and stumbled on this great Italian-Hungarian restaurant, Rustico. We're all already kind of over the heavy traditional eastern european cuisine, so we all ordered off the Italian side of the menu. It was seriously some of the best Italian food I've ever had. I'm not sure why this surprised me, since we're much closer to Italy here than in the states. I'll definitely be going back while I'm here. We split two bottles of wine, one a delicious Rose' and the other, the traditional "Bull's Blood." The name is disgusting, but is one of the most delicious red wines I've ever had. I want to bring a couple bottles back home.

Aaaaaaaaaand after that very long day we headed back home and crashed out. One of the best days of the trip, so far.

Budapest!

I know, I know. It's been a couple weeks since my last update. In my defense I've been in places with very poor internet access.

I'm currently blogging because I'm at my internship office and the boss is almost an hour late and they have no idea what to do with me. So here I sit browsing the internet until he arrives.

Budapest has been great so far, other than the sketch train station and the pushy cab drivers.

When we arrived on Saturday the leader of the program from here in Budapest had his assistant waiting for us. We thought she would just check us in and take off, but instead she drove us all around the city. We had our own private tour and it was amazing. I'll post pictures soon (since I'm on the office computer I don't have access to them).

I've now walked across the three southern bridges between Buda and Pest, have been up to the castle and museums, been to Hero's square and up and down Vac´i street, which is a main shopping street kind of like 5th Avenue, only not quite as ritzy. It's a pedestrian only zone so it's more of an outdoor mall.

Ok, I think the boss is almost here!

P.S. forgive any typos. The keyboard here is different and it underlines almost all words in red, so I have no idea which ones are actually misspelled and which are just non Hungarian and I don't have time to read closely.

Eek, Behind Already!

I haven't blogged for a few (several) days because 1) I've actually been out and about doing awesome stuff that I will tell you about and 2) Internet has been even more hard to come by than normal. I will do my best to catch up!

I think I'm going to save my blog on the alternative walk home from class for a bit later because there is way more exciting stuff to tell you about.

First up:
MELK MONASTERY & DURNSTEIN

On our first day as a group in Vienna a Colonel in the Army gave us a tour around Vienna to show us the sights. His job for the army is to be a historian so he knows pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about Austria and Vienna. He showed up to join us for dinner on Friday, May 28th and offered to take us in his VW bus/van on a day trip out to the countryside so we would have a chance to see more than just the city.

Five of us took him up on the offer, he picked us up the next morning at 10:30 and off we went:

(me, Alecia, Laurin)

First The Colonel took us to the Melk Monastery. The pictures of it on the Wikipedia are more gorgeous than any I took, but I'll do my best.

The inside square of the monestary:


The entire monastery was gorgeous. It's up on a hill overlooking the Danube with an adorable village at its base. The entire village is historic and picturesque. It's easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

From a window of the monastery down to the village:


Ceiling of one of the rooms:


The library was beautiful, but the nerd in me was so bummed that all of these gorgeous and ancient books were basically now decoration for tourists and were no longer read.


The beautiful church:


One of the strangest things I've ever seen. In each of the side alcoves there was a small display and area for people to pray to various saints. In this one there was a glass display case with the skeleton of an actual dead guy posing:


All of us in a gorgeous archway at the front of the monastery overlooking the river:


We hiked back to the parking lot, climbed in the van, The Colonel turned the ignition and the van wouldn't start! Luckily we were on an incline and, since it was a stickshift VW, we were able to roll it back and start it up on the roll.

We took a small road along the road through several adorable villages with cobblestone streets that just barely fit a car to Durnstein.


Me and the vineyards that were stoked to get a picture with me.

Walking through the town:


The ruins of the castle on the hill:


And the famous church tower. Apparently there's some scandal that it was painted blue. For a century it was yellow (which was referred to when used in other places as Durnstein Yellow), but when they did some repair work they found out the original color was blue and restored it to the blue. The villagers were pissed, but at least it's now accurate:


And AGAIN VW Bus refused to start and again we started it by pushing it down a slight incline. Say hello to adventurebus:


Coming up: Parliament and my birthday, Prague & Bratislava.