The Sun! It's Real!

I can't tell if the days are blending together or if I am having permanent brain farts. I feel like the day what we got to Budapest was not that long ago but then I remember the amount of stuff that we did and wonder how on earth we had time for everything. I'm sitting on a bus riding through the center of Croatia and half of the trip is just blending together as beig super tourists, a few lectures that are way more interesting than those at school for the most part, and enough drinking that everyone is claiming that they are not like this in the states; myself included. There is no way in hell I could afford this in the states. 

I left you guys off with the Irish Cat Pub that was around the corner from out hotel. The next day was lecture day so we headed on over to ELTE University on the Buda side of the river (pretty sure I got the sides of the river mixed up in my last post- we stayed in the pest side). As hard as it may be to believe, a university in Budapest looks pretty similar to one in the states. Lots of buildings, classrooms, a field or two and so on. All pretty typical stuff that I've come to expect, or maybe I just have strange expectations. Either way, I'm right and your wrong.

The lectures were certainly interesting but every professor has their own style and some just aren't very interesting for me. It doesn't help that the first lexture was on economics in Hungary. Let's just say the only Econ credit I have ever taken was recieved through my AP Euro class senir year of high school because we learned about the stock market for two weeks. Not exactly something that is going to help me with Hungarian economics. That being said, I understood most of what he said so I have myself a pretty big pat on the back. The second lecture was my favorite of the three, discussing the Roma population in Hungary, where a sizable population is located. We discussed identity and how one recieves it; either by the self, the community, or the governed, or any combination of the three. The problem the Roma are facing is that they typically have a very negative reputation even though much of this is unjustified. Hello Hunchback of Notre Dame. Whoever said Disney isn't relevant to daily life was completely wrong. It was interesting because they are facing muh of the same problems as the Jews, even today as antisemitism is on the rise and the Roma are often put in school for 'special people'. Despite having access to the same rights as the snobby white people across the town, they don't have the mean to access the services that are available to them by the crappy Hungarian constitution (the first lecturer's words not mine. But it does seem to be a pretty crappy constitute though.)

For the evening we went out to dinner at the Hummus Bar, which was only a block away from our hotel. It was a great place where the entire menu came with hummus that was rather tasty and the falafel was really good. To make it even better, I am pretty sure I saw a sign that the place was glatt kosher. Don't site me on that though. After this meal of deliciousness, I was probably the fullest I've been on this entire trip and I loved it. The meal came out to like $7 too. That is a college students budget right there.

When I get home or to Alex's in a week, I will probably make another blog post going over just the lectures because there would just be too much. 

The rest of the night was spent in the hotel after going to a convenience store a few doors down and restocking on beer. That is pretty much the recurring theme of the nights for the past 10 days. Did a little blogging, some drinking, I tried some Hungarian plum brandy that actually wasn't too bad; all while hanging out in a hotel room that probably wasn't quite suited for this. There was five of us there, two girls and three guys and the girls wanted to cuddle and ended up talking about bras for probably around 20 minutes with absolutely no shame. I guess this is what happens when you spend 10 days with someone all day everyday except for when you are sleeping.
I had a brief sentence in here about a funny cuddling moment that took place but who would have guessed that at 21 years old, I am still being censored by my mother. 

The next day was the first time that the sun had made an appearance in Budapest and the second time all trip. I was starting to wonder if it still existed but the sun was nice enough to make a guest appearance. We went to statue park, were all the removed statues from the communist period were relocated to. The part opened in 1993 and had lost of interesting statues and sculptures. 

Unfortunately these are the only pictures I have on my phone so no more for you at the moment. The park was organized in three consecutive figure 8's in a row next to each other becuase it is the symbol for infinity. The statues were all removed and instead of being destroyed, the statues were relocated to this park, which is continuously occurring. All the statues portrayed the soviets as heroes so there was a stark comparison to the soviet memorial that we went to in Berlin. 

The tour of the park only took around an hour and we got dropped off at the széchenyi baths near victory circle in the center of the city. The sun finally came out so it made the whole city much more beautiful. There were three outdoor baths but we originally went in the cooler of them three and were really disappointed. Thankfully we moved to the other pool that was 27-28°C which felt much better in contrast to the cool air. Even though it was not the warmest day out, it was much warmer than the typical winter and certainly has been warmer than the east coast and the polar vortex. There were also 9 indoor pools and a few saunas, massage places, a restaurant and a bar and more. This place was massive, but it also wasn't exactly cheap.

To finish of the day, the opportunity was too good to not go out and experience the nightlife. Our guide Andrea told us what street to go to and one my friends had a map that was given to her of a ruin bar and how to get to it. The ruin bars were made out of old graffitied space that was deserted. It was kind of like a strip mall of bars with lots of tables, lights and music in the middle. We met lots of interesting people including an Aussie and a guy from Oxford that were staying at a hostile not tok far away. 

On the adventure to get there, we kind of bar hopped just becuase we left early and people wanted to eat and try different beers. The best one we went to was in an alley way with heat lamps on the ceiling and jellyfish like lanterns out n the alleyway. It was a lot of fun to hang out at for about an hour before me moved on to the ruin bar. The tip jar may have been the best part along with the bartender, who decided to screw school and moved to Budapest to become a bartender a few months ago.