Happy Day = my bed is fixed, no more sleeping on the floor (actually I’ve been sleeping on my broken bed, some interesting nights sleep I must say)

Sad Day = it’s raining, although I really shouldn’t be complaining, because these past 4 ½ months have been rather pleasant in the weather department.

This past weekend…

5 days, 9 pass port stamps, 3 countries (excluding Germany), 2 cities, 1 original destination.
My original plan was to go to Budapest (pronounced Buda Pescht) for a nice long weekend to visit my friend Jessie (who I meet while on my first exchange to Germany 4 years ago). Upon arriving in Budapest, I was told that that night we were catching the night train to Prague. Cool, no problem with that, I’ve never been there. So 11 hours and 5 American girls… The world was ours to explore!

Praha
We spent a total of 2 days in Praha (Prague
in Czech), exploring the city, drinking coffee
and hot chocolate, and learning the wonders of Praha.

Jessie and I at the Bohemia Bagel Place

Bohemia Bagels – Just a little taste of Home, with an amazing bagel (it even came toasted) to start the day. They even had options such has fried or scrambled eggs with hash browns, pancakes (regular or with Blueberries), and muffins for breakfast.

Jewish Quarter – The old Jewish quarter was once the Ghetto of Prague, now it is just the remains of what once was there.

Old Town Square – There was the clock at the Old Town Hall (we saw it strike at 12:00), and the churches, I believe 4 in total, the Jan Hus Monument in the center of the square. This square just happened to be where we wandered every time we happened to be lost (that seemed to be 90% of the time).

The Praha Eiffel Tower – Yes, Prague has a mini version of the Eiffel Tower, and it gave to best over look of the city. 302 stairs in total, and I’m proud to say that I made it to the top (although it really wasn’t that hard)

Chapel of the Holy Cross

Praha’s Castles – This old and ancient city has its own castle district with churches galore. We happened to make it to the Castle in time to watch the ‘Changing of the Guards.’ (Such an exciting event) We also saw the house where Franz Kafka lived (he wrote the short story Metamorphosis)


Charles Bridge – The famous pedestrian bridge with tons and tons of local artists selling their art work to the tourists (for probably way to much money). Then there was the statue that everyone rubbed for luck (although I don’t remember the myth behind it).

Left to Right = Liz, Molly, Jessie, Deb, Claire

Short story: Jessie (from Maine), Claire (from Texas but goes to CSU) and I were planning on taking the 4:45 train from the Praha main train station on Saturday (the other two girls had already left). We went to look at the departure list to find out what track our train left from, and it just wasn’t there. So we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off to find out where our train was. Yeah, that’s right, at a whole other station. ‘Super, we had 25 minutes, plenty of time to take the Metro, and find this whole new destination!’ We find the other train station and we run to the information center and ask if our tickets are valid for this train (not sure why we started freaking out, but for some reason we thought our tickets might not be valid for this train). We asked about 20 people (all train personnel) and they all said just get on the train, we were fine (some even laughed at us). Going from Praha to Budapest we also have to go through Slovakia and at every country we get new train personnel. In Praha we were fine (even got the Pass Port stamped), then we enter Slovakia and I get my Pass Port stamped again (happy day, a whole new country). Then the train guy comes around and asks to see our tickets, I happened to be the first to show mine and he takes a ‘long’ look at it and then takes Jessie’s and Claire’s, and he just keeps looking. At this point I’m starting to get worried, then he points at me, and in his broken English says ‘come with me’ (ok, so now I’m very scared) he takes me to their ‘Office’ and told me that our tickets weren’t valid from Bratislava to Budapest with this train. We would have to get out at Bratislava and wait for the next train to come at 4:20 that morning (it was about 8pm at this point). I was very nervous, and I tried to explain that we asked tons of people in Praha and they all said that we were allowed to ride this train. Then Jessie comes to my rescue, and we start asking if we can pay to stay on this train (in all reality we didn’t want to get off in Bratislava and hang out at the train station for 8 hours). The train Personnel told us for the three of us combined we would have to pay about 36 Euros (not that bad), and then Jessie asked how much that was in Hungarian money. Through the translation process Jessie understood the numbers that they were saying in Hungary and then started the conversation (in Hungarian). They found out that Claire and Jessie were students in Budapest and that they were learning Hungarian. The train personnel for some reason loved Jessie and Claire so they decided to drop the price to about half of what it originally was and said that there would be no receipt. Fine by us, we just wanted to get back to Budapest.

Budapest
Although I was planning on spending on 4 full days in Budapest, the time I had there was amazing and I wouldn’t have left Praha out for anything. I was lucky enough to have my friend Jessie there to show me the city, go to the Opera with and drink tons of hot chocolate with to stay warm.

The Castle District – Was once invaded by the Turks and then restored by the Austrians, the Castle Districts now gives the best view of Pest with the Chain Bridge and the Danube in view, because of it’s location on the Buda side.

The Danube – The Danube is the main river running through Budapest. There are many bridges that go over the Danube, most popular being the Chain Bridge leading to the Castle district. Budapest is divided by the Danube River and on the east side of the river was once Buda and then on the west side of the river was Pest.

The Hungarian Opera – Jessie and I decided to go see and Opera, tickets were only 5 dollars and why not. I had never been to one. We say some random Opera that happened to have Germany subtitles (not that the Opera made sense anyways). But it was great for the laughs, and the music was amazing.

Parliament – in 1902 Budapest opened its first Parliament building representing the neo-Gothic era. Construction began in 1884, and should have been finished in 1896, but took 6 more years to finish.

The Night Life – Jessie, Clair and I got back to Budapest just in time to hit it up for some night life. We went to this pub with live music and danced the night away.