Budapest

This is a long post. Brace yourselves.

Budapest. Former USSR territory. Cool city, with a lot of remnants of the Soviet Union.

Firstly, we were in Budapest for two nights and a day, so we had to pack as much Hungarian site seeing as one could possibly do during that period of time. My first impressions of the city did not really give credit to the city as a whole. It just seemed like the government had not really updated the infrastructure of the city in quite a while. For example, the public transportation looked quite old. I understand the concept of, "if it's not broke, don't fix it" but I think it could have used a little bit of a facelift. Also, there were random piles of trash everywhere. And I'm not talking about empty bottles, cans, wrappers and what not, I'm talking about office chairs, couches, books, mirrors, etc. It looked like a bunch of small yard sales in the middle of the sidewalks. And there were even people rummaging through all of the stuff. Not saying that made the city bad, it was just very different. Growing up a western lifestyle, I kind of imagine that major cities--especially capitals of countries--should be kept in good shape. If the government doesn't keep the capital of the country clean, then I would presume the rest of the country must be really bad.

Anyway, besides for that, the city was really interesting. Hungary is part of the European Union, but they have their own currency the Hungarian Forint (HUF). According to current exchange rates, 1 HUF = $0.0046. Which means that One USD ($1) will get you about 216 HUF. I took some money out of an ATM and here is what I got...


Although spending thousands of Forints was not unusual (like, if you wants to buy a sandwich or get a meal), it's still a little weird to spend 6000 on a meal, which is less than 30 bucks. But everything in Budapest was relatively cheap in terms of dollars or euros.

Here are some really cool pictures from the plane. The first is of the Italian alps, then a picture from just outside Vienna of the windmills at sunset (I'm very proud of this picture), and lastly (but not leastly) sunset from the tarmac in Vienna.





Okay, to the things we saw. Friday night we had dinner at a "traditional Hungarian restaurant" per recommendation from our hotel--which, by the way was awesome--with live gypsy music. When we got to the restaurant, they asked for our name, and what hotel we were from. Pretty authentic... The gypsy music was weird, but kinda interesting.

Saturday we woke up and we got a free breakfast from the hotel (which I would highly recommend--the Zara Continental. It was cheap, it was nice (it was on Jetsetter), and it was in a pretty good location). Not only was it a free breakfast, but it was a free American breakfast. Eggs, pancakes, toast, oh my! Then we hit the town. We went to the Citedella to see the Freedom Monument. Pretty cool. Felt pretty free.


Then off to the Castle which was kind of a waste of time. The elevator we took to get up to the castle was...janky. But we got up. And took a pretty touristy picture from the top. At least, I would say it's pretty touristy.


Then we went to parliament. I would definitely say it's the icon of Budapest. It's a huge beautiful building, based after the British Parliament building in London. It's actually kind of funny because the tour guide made it seem like the Hungarians literally copied everything from the British Parliament building. The Hungarian parliament was comprised of two houses: the House of Lords and the House of the Commons. The House of the Commons represented the peasants... Kidding. But seriously.


We also went to the Jewish quarter to check it out. Unfortunately, there were no tours of the Jewish quarter because it was Shabbat (we went on Saturday). But we still got to see the synagogues from the outside. I guess Herzl was born in Budapest. Shoutout to the guy who created modern Zionism.



Two...wait...three more things until I'm done with this blog post.

1) We went to a kosher restaurant for dinner on Saturday night. The food was okay, but we noticed the waiters getting ready for a big party. Turns out, there was a trip sponsored by the JFNA (Jewish Federations of North America) of rabbis that were going to meet with the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary. After dinner, we stood on the side and listened to his speech, which was quite interesting. For those who don't know, Israel does not mess around with security. The Ambassador had two security guards with him and a driver. After we finished dinner, we just decided to stand at the bar and listen to his speech. As we got up to go to the bar, Justin said that one of the security guards that was sitting between us and the Ambassador slowly took his napkin off his lap, and slowly moved the chair next to him just in case he needed to pounce on a moments notice. I didn't notice because I was too engrossed in the Ambassador's speech about the Hungarian Jewish community, Hungarian-Israeli relations, and Hungarian-Irani relations. That same security guard also ever so slightly called his security guard buddy that was waiting in the getaway car outside. He came down to the restaurant (the restaurant was in the basement) and stood behind us the entire time. Again, I didn't even notice. This stuff doesn't even phase me. Here's a picture of him giving his speech to the pompous rabbinical group.


2) Price for the pair? Or price per shoe? You decide.


3) We went to this bar called Szimpla. It's this really old bar which has all of these rooms where you can grab a beer, a table, and just chill. It's the kind of place that has a DJ that plays really chill music, has a plethora of random stuff (from hotel safes, to bicycles hanging on the ceiling, to metal sculptures), and where no two chairs are alike. There were also bathtubs that were kind of cut in half that acted as couches. Really, really cool. If I was a hipster living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this would be the place I went to every weekend. Apparently it was rated as the third best bar in Europe. No exaggeration, it was awesome. If you go to Budapest, this better be on your list.





ACTUALLY. One more thing...

We decided to go to the thermal baths. Initially, I really didn't want to go, but I'm glad I did. I'm never going to do it again. So one of the many things for which Budapest is known, is its thermal baths. The city sits on top of a natural hot spring, so someone thought it would be a great idea to build a bathhouse. The experience was...interesting. The complex is made up of thermal baths and a few pools. We stuck to the baths. We were initially told that you could go naked, so we got towels, stripped, and ended up at the baths. Once we walked in the room, everyone was covered up either in bathing suits or this little apron things that covered one's front. I don't know if they have a name, but called them "Hungarian Penis Smocks." So we were in the baths and we met this old guy who was probably 65 or so and was adorned in a legendary "Hungarian Penis Smock" (HPS) who gave us the low down about how you do the baths. So here the process:

1) Shower
2) Warm baths (38 degrees C)
3) Go to the steam room (either 50-60 degrees C, 60-70 degrees C, or 70-80 degrees C). We did the hottest one. The ground literally burns your feet. It's not pleasant.
4) Dunk in the cold baths for a second (18 degrees C)
5) Go to the steam room (which is the hottest environment in which I have ever been)
6) Dunk again in the cold baths
7) Go to the warm baths (36 degrees C)

The process was definitely interesting, very relaxing, and there were more elderly almost naked Hungarian men than I wanted to see that day. But nonetheless, still much fun.

Chocolate!

The Chocolate Festival was going on last week in Florence! It was awesome. The chocolate was not only fantastic, but incredibly expensive. One Euro for a chocolate dipped orange peal? Come on. I could have gotten an entire owl for 5 Euro. Here are some pictures. Donna got me a smurf. His arm broke off. He has still yet to react to losing his arm.

Amsterdam

Slojterdijk. Yeijk ah stoop er boot. That's my try at Dutch. I thought I was fluent, turns out I'm nowhere near it... But for the record, it is probably one of the most difficult languages to understand. You know if you don't speak Spanish, you can still kind of tell what's going on? That's not the case with Dutch. I wasn't sure if people were cussing me out, about to give me a hug or somewhere in between.

Anyway, we were in Amsterdam for the weekend. It was kind of a last minute trip--we booked the tickets on Wednesday night and left at noon on Friday. I guess being last minute isn't such a bad thing after all. We flew Lufthansa, which is my new favorite airline. Right as my phone turned to 12:50, I heard the door close. I even tweeted at Lufthansa and they tweeted back! Pretty cool.


But in all seriousness, Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in Europe. Our first au pair was Dutch (I was five years old), and almost every time my family has vacationed in Europe, we would stop in Amsterdam to visit her and her family, so this was my fourth time there. Most people love Amsterdam for the partying, café's, and the Red Light District. Not me. If you take all of that out of the context of the city, it seriously is an amazingly unique European city. Senior year of high school, I read The Fall by Albert Camus for my AP Literature class, which was a truly eye opening novel about a man reflecting upon his life to a stranger in a bar in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. If you've never been to Amsterdam, there are circular canals that rippling away from a central nucleus--that being the Red Light District. Camus portrays the city of Amsterdam as Dante's nine layers of hell. Each ring closer to the Red Light District is a new layer. Every time I've been there after reading The Fall, I always think how the Red Light District is in the center of Hell as portrayed in The Fall. I just find it a fascinating representation.

We arrived Friday afternoon and went to our hotel in Zaandam--a city about a ten minute train ride from Amsterdam. From the outside, our hotel looks awesome. From the inside, it's still awesome, but the amount of awesome it is relative to the awesomeness of the outside, is much less. Here's a picture (taken from Google Images--Shoutout to Google Images):


Friday night we went into Amsterdam and got some Indian food for dinner. It. Was. Unreal. Is it bad that I'm already getting sick of Italian food? For dinner one night last week we went to Hard Rock Café in Florence...whoops. Saturday we went to Zaanse Schans which is an area with a bunch of traditional, Dutch windmills. This was my second time there, but it's still really cool to see. We also got Dutch pancakes for breakfast. Yum.


Off to the Heineken museum where we literally ran into 25 people from Wisconsin. It was a little reunion, and a lot of fun. Other people took pictures of me, but I'm sure they will turn up on Facebook at some point. So look out for them. However, at the Heineken museum, you can make your own music video. I made one with Jenna. Although, I must say, if you are sensitive to graphic images of two American students barely singing Dutch lyrics and mostly laughing in a 49 second video, please do NOT watch. Otherwise, you can check it out here: http://www.heinekenexperience.com/wall-of-fame/singalong/E728A4726C167D22F391251956D93489.

After that, Ann Frank house. Can't go to Amsterdam and not go to the Ann Frank house. Between seeing Ann Frank's house again and my class about the Holocaust in history, I really want to visit Auschwitz during my time here.

Thai food for dinner--unreal.

Sunday, Benny and I arose early and strolled into the city to go to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. I'm pretty sure this was my fourth (if not, third) time there. Seriously an amazing place. The Van Gogh Museum, not so much. It was absolutely packed, and it wasn't that breathtaking. And that, folks, is coming from an art history major. If you really feel the need to go to the Van Gogh Museum, try and get there as early as possible. Get in line before the museum opens. It was absolutely packed and kind of unbearable to be honest.

Random burning trash can. I feel like it's been burning for years...


Occupy Amsterdam. Looks like the movement is international.


Budapest this weekend. Ciaoooo.

London

Ciao! Mi chiamo Joel. Piacere! Sono Americano.

You can clearly see I'm learning a lot in Italian class... Anyway, this past weekend we were in London. In case you were wondering, I had the urge to go up to everyone and say in a British accent, "You sound like your from London." Needless to say, I did not pursue this endeavor.

Our flight to London was quite easy. We flew Alitalia, which has now been downgraded to the worst airline ever. We had no problems getting to London, and everything worked out quite nicely; however, on the return flight, Alitalia changed our flights and didn't notify us. I checked our flight from Heathrow to Rome before we left for the airport and everything was looking fine. We get to the airport and we weren't able to check in. Apparently the Florence airport was shut down and since we were flying from London to Rome, then Rome to Florence, Alitalia moved out entire reservation to the next day and told us that we would get into Florence on Monday evening. The supervisor told us that it was Orbitz's fault, Orbitz told us that it was Alitalia's fault. For the record, it was Alitalia. After much yelling and screaming and kicking and crying, we finally got onto our original flight to Rome, and we had to take a train back to Florence. It was quite a stressful few hours, but I told everyone that we would all laugh about the experience in five years. Maybe by then, Alitalia will figure their internal shenanigans out.

Besides for the flight situation on the way home, London was amazing. We first went to the National Gallery to check out some art. I hung out with my man, Rembrandt van Rijn, chilled a little with Aelbert Cuyp, said hey to Jacob Ruysdael, and gave Nicolaes Maes a quick high five. The was a Rembrandt there entitled Belshazzar's Feast and it had God's hand writing Hebrew words in the sky. Quite interesting. Here is the link: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/rembrandt-belshazzars-feast

We then went to the Churchill War Rooms under the Treasury building which was really interesting. That was the place where Churchill conducted business during WWII. Churchill is seriously one of the coolest leaders ever--he has a great sense of humor. My favorite Churchill quote is: "I'm easily satisfied with the very best." Couldn't be truer. Below you will see Clive. He's a statue. I presume he did something pretty big at some point.


Spent a lot of time at Harrod's. I almost bought a traveling trunk for the back of my luxury buggy for £18,000. But then I thought to myself, "Self, Dad probably wouldn't appreciate that charge on his card." So with all my might, I refrained. (I hope you picked up on the sarcastic tone of the previous few sentences.)

For me, the highlight of this UK trip was Saturday night. We saw Billy Elliot, which was actually fantastic. I highly recommend checking it out if you are in the general area of London, or New York (is it still playing there?). After the show, we ate at The Ivy. I had a truly fantastic dinner--some of the best sashimi I've had in my entire life. If you are a fan of barely dead fish, I highly recommend the sashimi.


Per my father's advice, we ate a lot at Tesco. Got the mini bread things with chocolate chips in them £1.17. And just like last time, got sick of them pretty quickly.

Kind of a funny story: We got off the tube and saw a staircase, so naturally we went up it. However, we missed this sign:

It was the equivalent of climbing a 15 story building. I needed the exercise. Also, we speculated that if there indeed was an emergency in the tube that required people to climb 193 stairs, everyone would die.

I also got to chill with a few of my friends from Homecoming Committee at school. It was really great seeing all of the abroad members (minus Elliot, who kinda decided not to leave the dark abyss of Helsinki). Aimee is studying in Seville (you can check out her blog here: http://chasing-aimee.blogspot.com/), Katie is studying in Dublin, and Lizzie is studying in London. I had a lot of fun dodging birds, and chilling with my HC buddies.


By the way, the pigeons in London are absolutely fearless. They will literally fly over and grab things out of your hands (that did not happen to me). It is absolutely ridiculous. They are relentless.

Still don't know where we are headed this weekend...gotta figure that out soon. Palermo possibly? Ciao.

General Observations

Ciao!

After being in Italy for a little longer than two weeks, you start to notice things--mainly, Italians don't really do anything. An example of this happened today when my Contemporary Italian Art teacher said, "Do your reading, because I'm lazy and I don't want to lecture you on material you should know." But here are my observations in a nutshell: Italians are extremely inefficient, they happen to be the fastest drivers (inefficiency and fast driving may seem to be contradictory--I will elaborate on that in a bit), this country runs on a restaurant/bar economy, the only food you can find is something from the bottom category of the (old) food pyramid.

Italians are inefficient*:

I cannot begin to stress how inefficient this country seems to be. Maybe that's why there is a huge financial crisis here... Literally, people get to work at 11, they then work from 11-1, at 1 they shut down their shops till 4, and then they are open till 8. The streets are literally empty till like 10 in the morning (besides American students going to class). People literally sit in bars (=cafés) all day and read the paper, then take a two hour lunch, and then have a three hour dinner. It's unbelievable.

Need for speed:

I don't know what it is, but the second an Italian gets behind the wheel of a car or on the seat of a moped, s/he absolutely needs to get wherever they are going in the fastest way possible. It's as if his/her life depends on it. I don't know what changes between the four hours they are sitting in a coffee shop sipping espresso or wine, and when they get behind the wheel. I'm open to suggestions and would be willing to conduct a psychological study on the matter.

Food Inc.:

This country has an almost purely based restaurant economy. If you walk down the street of our humble little city (with one of the biggest churches you have ever seen smack dab in the middle), you'll notice that upwards of 99% of the stores you pass are restaurants*. This might be a reason why efficiency is so low. Also, if you are walking around and you don't pass a restaurant, there is a high chance you are passing a bar (remember, bar = café + alcohol). Bars are where people do their daily newspaper/book reading, hang out with friends/family, or just sit and think. The nice thing about bars in Italy is that you can run in, stand at the counter, order an espresso (similar to the word express), and be served in under a minute--the only example of Italian efficiency.

Atkins:

If you are on the Atkins diet, don't ever step foot in Italy. I ate my first piece of fruit yesterday, and I've been walking around this city for two weeks. Fruit can only be purchased from a grocery store--never a bar or restaurant. Literally, this entire country is running off a very high carbohydrate diet. It's amazing that people here are thinner than the US of A.

Other observations:

In order to get into a building, you push the door--which is not the case in America because of fire codes; People will open their windows and air out their windows--even in sub-zero weather. Also, I joined a gym yesterday around the corner from our apartment. When I signed up, Giovanni (the man who owns the gym), said, "Thanks for becoming member. My name is Giovanni. Nice to meet you. If you have question, come find me. If you have problem, I can't help you." A woman then walked in and they had a brief two minute exchange. She left and he turned to me and said, "Fuck her! I hate women..." He also proceeded to say, "Tell me I'm the fucking greatest!" He's quite the character. I will probably devote the end of each blog post to a Giovanni quote.

London tomorrow.

Ciao for now.

*Note: This is obviously a generalization. Not all Italians are inefficient. However, it really seems as if no one does anything here.

**Note: The number is probably around 50% depending on the area you happen to be.

Bruxelles

Bonjour de Bruxelles.
(Hello from Brussels.)

As the title suggests, I'm in Brussels...or as we say, Bruxelles. We flew Ryanair into Brussels Charleroi--an airport about an hour outside the city--from Pisa. You can kind of see the leaning tower from the picture. In case you can't find it, it's the thing that is white and kinda leaning. Just trying to help out...


So the bus ride was supposed to be an hour, but we ended up getting caught in a blizzard, so we were stuck on said bus for quite some time.

Anyway, Bruxelles is a beautiful city. Last night, we went to some bar, got some Belgian beer, and sat down at a table. We then started talking to the two French guys who happened to be sitting next to us (who shall be known as French Guy #1 and French Guy #2) who were both Ph.D. students studying (Cyber) Security in Paris. A side point--they did not like the word "cyber". Apparently, there is currently some big computer science convention in Bruxelles right now called Fosdem. So anyway, we started talking to them and they happened to be chilling with a Mexican guy who was in Bruxelles for Fosdem as well (he shall be known forthwith as Mexican Guy #1). Mexican Guy #1 was talking to two girls who were from Brazil (Brazil Girl #1 and Brazil Girl #2). During our conversations, a random Russian guy--also here for Fosdem--stumbled over (He shall be known as Sergey). We aren't really sure what his deal was, but he was drinking wine and was rambling about something or another. We ended up spending the rest of our time at the bar hanging out with this group of continently diverse people (minus Sergey--he left). It was super fun. Here are some pictures from the bar...




Today we kind of wandered around the city. We started off the day at this place called La Pain Quotidien for an authentic Belgian breakfast. It was delicious. They basically handed you a basket of bread, a soft boiled egg, and on the enormous table that you share with 15 other people there are 20 different kinds of jams, spreads, honeys, and preservatives. It was very cool.




After breakfast, we walked around a bit and checked out the city. We decided to check out a brewery (When in Belgium...) called Cantillon Brewery. I can't tell you much about the brewery besides that it's small, it was cold, they brewed Lambic Beer (a fruit flavored beer), and we got two free samples--I decided to not read the handout they gave us. Here are some pictures from the brewery...




We then went to Atomium--of course. How could you go to Bruxelles and not go to Atomium?! It was really cool. Built as a monument for the World's Fair in 1958 to show the great strides of science and technology, it had graduated to "big fucking thing" status. Some more pictures (I feel like this is becoming a picture book)...




Last night in Bruxelles. By the way, it's colder here than it is in America. Just soak up some warmth for us. As they say here, (and as GoogleTranslate helped me figure out), Je vais vous parler plus tard. (I'll talk to you later!)