Vienna Part 2 and Western Hungary

I'm so sorry it's taken me forever to post! I've been having issues with the site lately.

The weekend after I returned from Malta, my friend Rachel and I took her friend Abby who was visiting Budapest on a jaunt to Vienna. We saw some more art exhibits and had what has got to be some of the greatest chili in my life. (In a little pastry shop by the Viennese Opera of all places. Who'd have guessed that one?) More importantly I finally managed to snap a few pictures!

St. Stephens Cathedral

Various Unknown Viennese Buildings

Creeptastic angels in the Cafe

Pooh Bear!!!

Due to the fact that I apparently never spend full weekends in Budapest, the next weekend was the program excursion to western Hungary and Lake Balaton. I'm going to be honest here. My expectations were somewhat low. The first excursion was enjoyable, but I generally prefered the trips I had taken out of country with friends. When I was told our first stop was the Pannonhalma monastery, my expectations plummeted. Silly Silly Kristy. The moment we started hiking through the woods up to the monastery,  I couldn't help but be flooded by this wonderful feeling of peace. It's amazing how leaving the city can remind you how much you really like nature. The monastery is on top of this woodsy mountain, and the air just smells so clean and full of trees and spring blossoms. Pannonhalma itself is also a very simple but beautiful building that clearly belongs in it's serene surroundings. It also happens to have a library straight out of a fairytale, so for me it is basically heaven.

After our stop at Pannonhalma, we journeyed on to the city of Veszprem, the city of the Hungarian queens. We poked around a bit, climbed back on the bus and ended our journey at Nagyvarad, where we had a lovely wine tasting at a very nice vineyard who made us delicious snacks to keep us from getting utterly sloshed. (There was some local green that tasted kind of like spring onions that they baked into the pogacsa biscuits and bread bits. It was incredibly delicious) The wine was also excellent. Unlike in Eger I actually bought a bottle willingly. My particular wine was a white wine called Sheeps Tail or more affectionately "Wedding Night Wine" due to its  traditional usage at weddings by Hungarians and the Hapsburgs of Austria. According to the vitner it produces sons.  I'm a bit skeptical about this claim, but I can vouch for it being very nice and dry for a white wine.
The next day we drove to the Herend porcelain factory, where we saw porcelain I can never ever ever afford and tried our hand at making porcelain roses. It did not go well. After Herend, we drove to a little town on Lake Balaton and had some free time. The lake was very nice, and I finally tried real gulyas soup. It's quite tasty.
After a night back in Budapest, we got back on the bus on Sunday morning and drove to Estergom to see the famous Basilica. It's very big, but I didn't see much of the insides as there was an actual Palm Sunday mass going on. The big treat of the day was lunch. The restaurant they took us too was renaissance themed with dressed up waiters and old decor. We ate  renaissance -esque food on typical renaissance clay plates and goblets.  To top it off, we also all got paper crowns. It's a very amusing site to see a bunch of young adults sitting around looking like five year olds at burger king, I'm sure.

Fortress on route to Veszprem

Szent Istvan and Queen Gizella

Veszprem

Esztergom

I'm off to Transylvania tomorrow, but I promise big updates on Paris and Transylvanian peasant life when I get back!

The Maltese Hungarian

My friend Cindy asked me way back in February if I would like to meet up in Malta. I knew nothing about Malta at the time, but it sounded fun, so I booked a flight. I am so glad I did. Malta is so beautiful. It's warm and sunny and even though it was still just a little too cold to swim in the Mediterranean, it was the perfect little tropical mini-break to get me through the sometimes cold, sometimes hot, always crazy Hungarian spring.

Street view of Valetta

One of the many cathedrals on the Islands

A little bit of the tropics for you

The maltese language (It's so strange!)

Helmet at the Royal Armory

Crest in the Palace

These Vintage Buses are the only way to travel in Malta. Luckily they're cheap and cute!

The aptly named Blue Lagoon

Malta is very quiet and peaceful. In hindsight we probably should have done far more research about what we wanted to do before going, because we ended up wandering around aimlessly, vastly over-paying for transportation. We spent all of Saturday  shopping and seeing the sights in Valletta, the capital, because we had to be near a wifi connection in order to select an apartment for the coming school year. On Sunday, we decided to do water related activities, which started with a ride on the front of a little boat over to the blue lagoon, and ended with us climbing around in sea-caves after being semi-stranded on the practically deserted island of Comino. In spite of our poor planning, I had a blast catching up and getting into trouble with one of my best friends. I miss home and F&M , so seeing a familiar face was just great. (The fact that we were on a sunny island didn't hurt either!)

Eger mini-break

This past weekend, I went on an excursion with my study abroad program. The general destination was the small city of Eger about two hours from Budapest, but they also wanted to show us as much of Northern Hungary as possible, so it was quite late in the afternoon before we actually got to the city. Our first stop on Friday morning was the tallest mountain in Hungary. This is far less impressive then it sounds. Hungary is an incredibly flat country, so any elevation counts as a mountain.

After "attacking the peak of Hungary" as our program Director Elizabeth called it, we went to the Soviet era work camp of Recsk. The communists did a very good job of destroying all the evidence of its existence, so with the exception of the memorial commemorating the victims of the camp, it just looked like a harmless little mountain meadow.  I feel really guilty about saying it, but in all honesty it was really pretty. The weather was gorgeous, there were little yellow flowers blooming by the stream in the foresty areas, and on the whole, it was very hard to believe that such a pretty place could be the site of so much suffering.

From Recsk, it was on to Szilvasvarad, where we visited the stables of the Hungarian Lippizaner horses. We got to see the stallions, but sadly were not allowed to touch them. We also walked through the national park and found ourselves at what seemed to be a gypsy carnival or something. The rides were air-brushed with the faces of celebrities, but the only recognizable one was Nicholas Cage oddly enough.

Weird Pokemon themed Merry-Go-Round at the Gypsy Carnvial

We finally arrived at Eger around five and after setting our things down in our rooms, we were hustled off to the nearby "Valley of Beautiful Women", the valley where all the wine cellars are located. I have never been wine tasting before, but it was quite enjoyable. My Hungarian comprehension, it turns out, is much better when I've had some wine. However, my friend Rachel and I were conned into buying more wine than we can ever drink. We had gone ahead of the group to other wine cellars and each bought a little plastic barrel of a wine we liked before returning to the first cellar to try one or two more things. Now our program director was there, as she happened to be friendly with those vitners. She practically forced us to buy everything the women offered us. I enjoy wine when I'm with people, but I don't drink much on my own, so I am at a loss about what to do with the three extra barrels and one bottle Rachel and I were bullied into purchasing.

After the best sleep I have had in a very very long time. (One my roommates snores, and the other one keeps very odd hours.) we went to explore Eger for the day. We took a tour of the fortress which successfully held off an Ottoman siege, only to be taken a few years later. (Hungarians are not known for winning) We also saw the Cathedral and took a tour of the underground wine cellars. The cathedral looked more impressive in the photos in Art History. The underground tour was amusing because it mainly consisted of dark tunnels and a guide telling us about the exhibits they would like to put there.

View of Eger from the fortress

 
I just got back from a trip to Malta, so expect another post in a day or two!