been guilted into blogging...

so with all these people clamoring for my blog I decided it was finally time to unveil the happenings of my EASTer break. Haha, ok so people really aren't clamoring and there isn't really anything dramatic to "unveil" but I do want to procrastinate my paper another hour and figure this is a good way to do it :)

Once again I was my little nerdy self and brought along a notebook in which I jotted down notes of everything we did (well, close to everything). But here's the basic outline:

Thursday 4/1 Caitlin and I took a train from Strasbourg to Stuttgart, then a plane from Stuttgart to Budapest, where we arrived ~9:20 pm we staying in a hostel with Olivia for a night then switched hostels and met up with Erin and her friend Beria.
We were in Bupapest until Sunday (4/4) late night and then took a 11:15pm flight to Istanbul where Caitlin and I stayed with Erin. Olivia went home (to Madrid) on Sunday night from Budapest and Caitlin went to Madrid from Istanbul on Thursday morning. I stayed with Erin and then on Friday night (4/9) she and I took a night train to Thessaloniki, Greece for a few days. Erin went home (to Istanbul) on Sunday night and I flew to Stuttgart on Monday morning, and then took a train back to Strasbourg. Thus, now I am here :)

And so, without further ado, here commences my journey eastward.

Thursday (4/1) wasn't really an interesting day, just a day of traveling, but it was exciting nonetheless because we were finally going on our adventure East! I'm not sure why I'm so interested in Eastern Europe, maybe because it has a really different history and feel from Western Europe (although its becoming more and more Westernized as time goes by) and I love seeing different places than what I'm familiar with, but at any rate, awhile ago I decided I wanted to go East for Easter break (so it was my EASTer break- lol sorry that was bad I know), especially since I loved Prague, I figured I would enjoy other places in Eastern Europe also. Plus, its SO much cheaper there. I think my whole weekend in Budapest, souvenirs and hostels included, I spent less than $150. Alright shoot I'm off track. Ok so Thursday, Caitlin and I had a 1:45 train from Strasbourg to Stuttgart, Germany. So we got on, had a rather short ride there (only about 1:15 long) and then took the Stuttgart metro to the airport. European metro systems never fail to impress me. The US really needs to get on that. Well, maybe some cities have pretty good public transport, but the T in Boston is definitely lacking for the number of people that use it.

Jeez, I really can't focus this morning, I should probably go back and edit this post (but I probably won't lol). So we took the metro (illegally -- we didn't buy tickets - shhh!) and got to the airport. We both checked in and I checked a bag because I figured we were going to buy souvenirs and I wanted room to bring them back. Then we had a few hours to kill before our flight so we hung out, got dinner and a bretzel (german bretzels are SO good) and then finally got on our 7:50 plane. We took that for around 1:30 I think and landed in Budapest around 9:20. We got my bag and then went to search for the bus to the hostel. We also got money out of an ATM. I swear, monopoly money came out. I withdrew 10,000 forint (the equivalent of 50 USD) and it came out in one bill. One bill for 10,000 forint. seriously? haha Caitlin and I just looked at eachother and laughed. After that we went and waited for the bus. We took the bus to the metro stop and then found out the metro was closed - Welcome to Hungary! Ugh that was a hassle, especially since between the two of us, we spoke about zero hungarian. So we followed other confused looking people onto a different bus driven by a large, angry looking man who refused our money and took that bus to a different metro stop. Then we got to the metro and realized we had yet another problem: we had 2 10,000 forint bills and needed to get 200 forint coins to use the metro. So, obviously the easiest way to do that would be to buy something and I was hungry so we bought a snack. Then we realized the ticket machine was broken. Then a sketchy looking man sold us his ticket and showed us how to punch it (thank you, sketchy looking man for saving two confused American girls!) and finally, we got on the metro.

And then when we disembarked from the Metro, we were confronted with Budapest at night: changing street names, hidden doorways, lots of cars, multi-lane streets that we found ourselves running across (don't worry, we got pretty good at dodging traffic in France), but we eventually found our hostel where Olivia was waiting for us. We checked in, paid and settled in. Then we were hanging out with Olivia and another girl sleeping in our room who was from Lyon, studying in Paris, and spending a semester in Slovakia! She was really cool, we had a really funny conversation in Franglais with the three of us (me, Cait and Amanda- the French girl) switching back and forth into French and English. thennnn we all went to bed :)

Wow so maybe thursday was an interesting day. Haha well it was just the start to our adventures... more after I finish my paper ;)