Prague

I have just come back from a weekend in Prague, which in my humble opinion may be one of the prettiest cities in the world. Budapest is lovely, but now having been to Prague, I understand why it is the less visited of the two cities.

Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral, and the Vltava River

I arrived very late on Thursday night after a seven hour bus ride. Nothing was open, but the city looked lovely on the walk to my hostel. I spent all of  Friday and Saturday touring the old city. Our tour guide was excellent and told us a good deal about Czech history, which for me was fascinating.

The Famous Astronomical Clock

One of the few cubist style buildings in the world

Franz Kafka

The Spanish synagogue 

The Vltava

View while climbing to the castle

Stained glass window in St. Vitus

Outside St. Vitus

The Jewish Cemetery

Although none of my traveling companions agreed with me, I loved Prague. I love the history and the architecture, and the cleanliness. Admittedly it is very touristy. I had lunch at a place called Bohemia Bagel one day, and it was filled to the brim with the stupidest american students known to man. Similarly the old town is full of European tourists. All this aside, I felt very at home in Prague for some reason and wonder if I would have enjoyed studying there.

As a final note, there is no reason to ever go to Bratislava. You can see the two famous landmarks driving through it on a bus.

Aquincum

As I mentioned in a previous post I visited the Roman ruins of Aquincum  recently. Before Hungary was settled by the Magyars, it formed the Roman province of Pannonia, and marked the most North-eastern reaches of the empire.
This is how the ruins look today:

The ruins of the old amphitheater are located directly by a highway north of the city in the suburbs of Obuda. They're rather hard to find if you aren't specifically looking for them, because there's no actual sign indicating where they are. (Although judging from the empty vodka bottles and graffiti, it's perfectly easy for Obudan teenagers to find.) If you walk further along the highway you find a small museum dedicated to showing some of the things found in the archaeological excavations of Aquincum but it appears to be designed mainly for tourists. Oddly enough, unlike many other European nations, the Hungarians don't really care about the Roman period of their history. They gloss over it in school, in favor of discussing the Magyar tribes and various Saint Kings.  Hence the high-rises and highways being built all around the ruins as you can see in the pictures. Maybe this apathy towards ancient history is due to the fact that they were still in Central Asia during the Roman occupation and were thus unaffected by it. If I find the real answer, I will let you know.

Why Hungarians may secretly control the world

We have been watching promotional videos in several of my classes, and from the looks of them half of they stuff we use today was created by Hungarians. I'm beginning to believe that you can't call your self Hungarian unless you invent something
 Watch and see for yourself. The scenery is also very pretty
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hungary+world+of+potentials&aq=2


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0wkokaybWA


And for you pop culture enthusiasts, see if you can recognize the places in this music video. It was all shot here in Budapest. The castle is actually the National Gallery where my Art and Architecture class is held

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw

Oops!

Soo, sorry about the accidental deletion. I'm not exactly sure what happened and for the past two days I've been getting messages in Hungarian whenever I tried to get on the site. Needless to say I had no idea why until my dad was kind enough to inform me what the messages said in english. Anyway clearly the problem has been fixed somehow. New posts soon!

Lazy Thursday

This afternoon was glorious. My roommate Rachael and I decided to take a self-motivated field trip around the city and enjoy what remained of the sunny weather. We started with a glorious gluttonous lunch at a little cafe in Buda, accompanied by spiced coffee and incredibly rich cakes. Hea-ven. I had dobos torta which is a layer cake of white cake and chocolate mousse topped with a sheet of carmelized sugar.
After lunch it was off to Pest for some Palincka ( a type of hungarian Brandy we were told we simply had to try) and shopping and serious people watching on Nyugati. Maybe not the most fascinating travel day, but it was really nice to just enjoy ourselves and have fun on our own instead of running around in a giant American gaggle like we usually do.

As a fashion alert from the east, it looks like the MC Hammer pant is coming into style. I wish I was kidding.

Sun, Sun, Sun!!!

For the past four days now, it has been sunny and warm(ish) here in Budapest. It has been wonderful! The buildings look cleaner, the Danube is sparkling, the people seem especially cheery, and I don't freeze my tush off every time I step outside. This was particularly important as I've been spending quite a good deal of outside running around exploring the city. I wandered down Vaci Utca, the city shopping district on friday, ran around the entire city on a scavenger hunt on Saturday, and explored the old Roman ruins at Acquincum on Sunday. Getting to know Budapest is both exciting and exhausting.

Corvinus University

The back entrance of the Great Market Hall

Szent Istvan's Basilica

Inside the Basilica

Parliment and the Duna(the Danube in Hungarian)

Fisherman's Bastion

Welcome to Budapest: part II

So now that I have tried to, in my own rambling way, explain that while Budapest can look grimy and disgusting, It is also very pretty in its own grimy disgusting way, I feel the need to move onto the more mundane aspects of my life here thus far. Like the University that I'm studying at.

I go to Corvinus  University which is located right along the Danube river and next to the Great Market Hall. (This will be great for between class munchies and sudden unyielding needs for a non-meat-based dish) Much like the city, it is very pretty...but grimy as all get out. The newer of the two university buildings is sleek and modern and clean. More importantly though, it has a coffee shop! Yaaaaaaaay! In spite of it supposedly being a coffee culture, Budapest has few morning coffee places. Go figure. My university used to be called Karl Marx University of Economics and he has a statue in the main hall of the old building. On Christmas they dress him up in wreaths and Santa hats apparently.

By far the coolest thing I've done yet was getting hot chocolate yesterday. It sounds anticlimactic I realize, and when we walked into a big bookstore, I thought so too. I was very wrong.  The first thing we encounter is a wall of wine. In the Hungarian equivalent of a Barnes and Noble mind you. Hungarians LOVE their vino. With this exception it continues to look like a Barnes and Noble until we go up an elevator and walk into a giant room covered in gilded paintings and mirrors from floor to ceiling and glistening with chandeliers. They even had a live pianist playing Sinatra. It was just the essence of Old World elegance. And I got to try real hot chocolate for the first time. So good.

 Veiw of Pest From Buda. As I said, grey

Coffee house

Welcome To Budapest!

Today was my first full day in Budapest after landing at Ferihegy Airport around 3ish yesterday. I landed, wandered around like a deer in the headlights at baggage claim for a while and was thankfully rescued by the program director Kata and put on the bus to the Folledes Ferenc Kollegium where I'll be living this semester. I am, as one could expect, a delicious mixture of terrified, exhausted, and exhilarated.

Budapest is at first glance...grey. Very grey. And somewhat dirty truth be told.  As you slowly get to know her and look above the graffiti and the bleak color palette though, her real character shines through. Budapest has hidden beauty and elegance that in order to see, you have to stop and really examine the old art nouveau details and Baroque swirls hidden among the buildings. Once you have though, it's hard to remember you once found her ugly. This is less of a chore in Buda, the old historic half of the city which is less urban to begin with, but Pest is not without its charms either. Pest at night is truly a breathtaking sight. If you can avoid the Burger kings, which I'm beginning to think of as the American embassy here.

I haven't seen much of the city yet, but I'll be blogging and photographing all of it for you to see