Ukraine

This past weekend I was in Ukraine with everyone else and I think it was my favorite class trip so far! Transylvania was a lot of fun but we were still getting to know each other and Poland was a more serious trip.  In Ukraine we were really close and enjoyed ourselves a lot and got to invest more in the places we went.  We stayed at a high school run by the Reformed Church there.  They have hotel like rooms at the school just for visitors! There's a Calvin grad teaching at the school for a year so it was really nice to see her and I'm sure it was nice for her to see some familiar faces.  We took a train into Sárospatak on Friday and looked at the Reformed school there, which is very old with a lot of history, and the castle in the area.  We also had lunch and dinner there.  That night we went to a wine tasting in an area renowned for their wine.  We tried four different kinds, all very good, but the last one was the best.  It was a really special wine that requires a lot of work and is crazy sweet.  King Louise tried it once and called it the king of wines and the wine for kings.  I don't know what kind of wine kings like, but I would have to agree with the general idea of how good it is.

First Reformed School

Wine Celler

Really good wine!!

We arrived at the school that night rather late and were all really ready to be in warm beds, sleeping.  It was pretty cold again, just like Poland, but we were more prepared this time.  The next morning we headed off to visit a Gypsy community that one of our guides has been working with to improve the living condition.  As we walked through, the kids started following us and we reached the end of the street where their playground was and spent 2o minutes just playing with them.  It was so much fun!!  It's awesome that you don't need to speak the same language as someone to play with them, it's universal.

Playing!!

That afternoon we visited another high school by the Reformed church and spent time telling each other about our schools.  Most of the people we visited are ethnic Hungarians and continually living with that tension.  In the past some odd years, Ukraine has had their nationality changed 5 times, which is crazy.  We also did a workshop with the students at the school we were staying at, which was a lot of fun, even though they were kind of shy.  We had dinner there and then watched a documentary about the Gypsy communities in the area.

The next day we visited an orphanage built by a Dutch man, I can't remember his name.  During the Communist Regime orphanages in Ukraine were really horrible.  They were really dirty with awful living conditions which led to underdevelopment in the kids.  This happened in Romania as well and when the Iron Curtain fell the orphanages in Romania got a lot of press and a lot of relief was sent there.  Unfortunately, the orphanages in Ukraine were revealed later and didn't get as much press or relief.  But there have been a group of Dutch people that have been working with Ukraine and one group decided to try to improve the orphanage situation.  They tried sending materials but that wasn't working because the materials wouldn't make it to the kids because the workers at the orphanages would keep the stuff for themselves or sell them.  So they decided instead to built an orphanage to show how they should be properly run.  And this place seems to be very well run!  They grow veggies and have a bunch of animals and keep bees and bake bread...it's pretty sweet.  It's not self sustaining, but that's because it's really tough for places like this to become self sustaining in Ukraine.  But it seems like a really great place.   They only take girls and are at their full capacity right now.  They also take girls with disabilities who's parents can't take proper care of them.  It's was interesting being there because orphanages often have a really depressing connotation and it feels like we're supposed to be really sad, but this place is not a place to be sad about.  The girls have definitely been through a lot but they are in a great place now.  And they have a sweet playground!!!  They have a trampoline dug into the ground (very smart, less broken arms), and a zip line, and a small merry-go-round!!  We only got to play on it for like, 5 minutes:(

The Orphanage

After tearing ourselves away from the awesome playground, we ate lunch, which was really awesome  (as most food is on these trips).  Then we went to a church service in another Gypsy community.  We got too see a few baptisms and they asked us to sing something so we sang My Friends May You Grow in Grace.  Then we saw another high school really quickly and headed to the train station that would take us back home.  The train ride was 4 hours and I was sitting beside my friend Kaile and we were soo hyper!!  It was a lot of fun!!

Gypsy Church

So it was a pretty awesome trip.  Now I'm working on getting ready for mid-terms, figuring out my classes for next semester, doing some of the many things I want to do here etc. Time here is starting to go really fast!!  And all us Calvin students are throwing a Halloween party this Sunday cause we're going to be in Croatia next weekend.  We're inviting all our friends from here and it's going to be really sweet!!  I'm going shopping with some friends tomorrow and I'm hoping I can find something that will work for a costume.

Canadian Thanksgiving.

So just an update on what's been going on in my life between all the traveling.  As most of you know, this past Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving.  My idea for celebrating it was to in some way consume a pie, preferably pumpkin.  At first I was going to make it, but that turned into something that sounded like a little too much work for me in my present condition, busy and limited in kitchen supplies.  So I decided I would cop out a little and buy one.  Morning of Canadian Thanksgiving, off I go to the big grocery store.  I pick up all the groceries I need so I could eat for the rest of the week and head over to the bakery section, only to discover that Hungary is not big on pies and does not supply them to the general public, at least not at this grocery store:( A little bummed and a strange stomach ache starting, I head back home.  It does not get better.

I had been sick with a cold the week before leaving for Venice.  It had calmed down during my travels, limiting itself to my nose, but it wasn't done with me yet. Apparently it was time for back aches along with chills, stomach cramps and the occasional fever. After napping my way through the afternoon and sitting through my night class, I was ready to officially call it the worst Thanksgiving ever.  One of my friends, Tanya, was stopping by the smaller grocery store on the way home from class and said she would look for pie on my behalf.  I was grateful for the gesture, but pretty sure she wasn't going to find anything.  Well, she didn't find pie, but she didn't come back empty handed either.  She had stocked up on short cake, pie filling, whipped cream, and apple strudel with the aim to make a substitute pie.  As she presented me with all these lovely things, everyone else around our dorm sang "Happy Thanksgiving" to me (sung with the tune of Happy Birthday).  We then proceeded to the kitchen to find as many different ways as we could to construct something pie like from short cake, pie filling, and whipped cream, all by candle light.  So I was able to go to bed feeling that I had had a pretty good Thanksgiving after all, but it still wasn't done yet.

1:20 am and one of my roommates boots it past my bed to her with definite concern. I get up and look at what she had rushed to and see a dark spot on her mattress.  At first I wasn't sure it if it was blood or vomit, but neither of those would call for a rush to a bed, more like a rush to the bathroom. Turns out both my guesses were wrong as the strong smell of something burning reached my nose and I noticed the smoke in the room.  My poor roommate had been getting ready for bed and so as to not disturb those of us already in bed, had turned her lamp aiming at her bed.  Apparently she pushed it a little too far and it ended up touching the mattress.  She had left for a few minutes to the kitchen when she smelled something burning and, luckily, realized what it was, resulting in her mad rush to our room while yelling at another of our apartment mates that she had burned her mattress down.  Fortunately, nothing was burned down and we all survived, with a little less sleep but another good story of our adventures in Hungary. 

Venice!!

So this past weekend I was in Venice for four days with Robert (good friend I grew up with) and it was fantastic!!  Venice is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen!  For those who don't know, Venice is a floating city completely built on the water.  It's pretty crazy.  There are canals everywhere and very small roads that you can't drive on so everyone just walks or takes their boat!

We few out Wed. night and arrived in a town on the mainland around midnight.  Since we didn't want to pay for a hostel and it seemed a little late for it to be worth it, we slept at the airport.  It was pretty fun.  There were three other people there with us.  At around 12:20 or so the security guard told us that we could stay here but the airport was closing so we couldn't leave the building.  We were really glad we were allowed to stay since we weren't sure if we would be and didn't know what we would have done if we got kicked out.  We felt very adventurous. 

Sleeping in the airport!

The next morning, after a somewhat restless sleep, we took a bus to Venice.  We first got three day public transportation passes and bought a map and figured out where we were.  Then we just started to walk.  We hit a square/market and stopped for lunch.  We got this really tasty bread thing and had fun feeding the little birds and trying to get them to take the bread from our hands.  Then we walked over to the market part and admired all the sea life that was being sold there.

We continued to walk and ended up by then Grand Canal that goes through Venice.  We walked up and down, admiring all the different boats, from cruise ships to sail boat to sailing ships.  Then we got Gilato!!  Very tasty!!  We also looked at some of the many mask stores and had fun trying on some of the beautiful masks there.  Then we took a water bus (all the public transportation is on the water) around the whole island to see what we wanted to explore the next two days.

That night we checked into our hostel which was very clean and nice.  It was on the long island under the main part of Venice.  We walked up and down it and explored what was around and planned what we were going to do the next two days. We also walked around the shopping area of Venice and listened to some of the musicians playing for the fancy restaurants, some of them were really great!!

The next morning we went to the island beside the island our hostel was on.  We looked at the large church that was there and climbed the bell tower to get a sweet view from up top.  We had one other mission on this island but it was, unfortunately, unfulfilled.  On the map there appears to be an amphitheater in the corner of the island.  We could see the area from the tower but when we walked around to get to it we hit a locked fence.  I suggested climbing it, half kidding, half hoping Robert would be all for it, but he was not, for better or worse and we did not get to see it:(:( So that is still on my to-do list.  But the day picked up quite a bit.

For lunch we had a picnic in a park in the corner of Venice and it was beautiful!! We spent like three hours there just hanging out in the sun and playing on the playground!!  Then we went to The Island of the Dead, which is way more beautiful than it sounds!  It's a small island that was built to be a cemetery.  So the whole thing just had different kinds of cemeteries there.  We weren't supposed to take any pictures but I had to have a least a few so we made sure no one was watching. Then we went back to the main part of Venice and walked around and through the Jewish area.  It was very communal with many people around and kids playing but also signs of past history.  There were memorials and some barbed wire still in places.  It was an interesting visual.

Revisiting our childhood at the playground.

Playing in the park.

Island of the Dead

Then we tried to find our hostel (we were staying in a different one this night) which took awhile but was worth the struggle.  This hostel was very different than the first one.  It was a small house run by a bunch of young Australians with between 20-30 people staying there.  They fed us dinner and we just spent the rest of the night just hanging out.  It was impossible to not meet new people which was awesome!  We met some Hungarians from Cluj and got to know a girl from Australia and two people from Malaysia.  A bunch of people started playing drinking games, which was fun to observe while talking with people.  Apparently it's common in Australia/New Zealand for young people to spend 6 months to a year traveling around the world. Very different than North American culture, but pretty cool.

The next day we brought our bags to the first hostel since we were staying there that night again and went to San Marco, the main square of Venice.  There wasn't all that much to see there actually except a lot of shops and the main cathedral.  One thing that was cool was the HUGE puddles in the area from high tided.  There were platform walkways set up so people could still get around.  I got Robert to take his socks and shoes off and we walked around in the puddles bare foot for awhile, which I loved but I'm not sure Robert did, lol.  We then went to find a theatre that I had seen a poster for and got tickets for the show because I really wanted to see some kind of theatre there.  We then grabbed dinner and went to the show........and it was awful!!!  I've seen better high school shows!!  So that was a huge disappointment, especially since my other theatre idea didn't work either.  But I got to see a bunch of Commedia Dell Arte masks (a kind of Italian theatre I studied in high school) which was really sweet.  Another thing that kind of sucked was that the show ended by 8:30 so we still had a lot of time still and there isn't a whole lot to do in Venice at night if you don't have a whole lot of money. So we just hung out in the common area of our hostel.

Walking through the puddles.

The next day we found an English speaking Anglican church to go to which was really nice.  I really liked the structure of the service.  We did communion and we had to go up to the front and kneel to receive the elements.  After the service a couple from England talked to us for awhile and it turns out the husband has family in St Thomas and has flown into London, ON. Small world!!  We spent the rest of the day just walking around, we read our books in a square for awhile and then took the bus back to the airport on the mainland and waited for our flight.  We got back to Budapest after the trams and metros ran so we had to take a taxi home and it was a really nice taxi!!  It looked like a brand new car and had satellite radio and everything, I was very impressed.

Beautiful street outside the church.

So that was my weekend in Venice. Pretty awesome.  I definitely want to go back there some day.

Poland.

Ok, so it's been awhile and I have a bunch to blog about!  Two weeks ago I went to Poland with the rest of the class.  We spent a lot of time in Krakow and also a day in Auschwitz.  Krackow is a really beautiful city.  It hardly got any damage from WWII so it still has a lot of old architecture.  We spent most of our time in the Old Town (down town) and the Jewish District.  We ate some Polish food, mainly pirogis, which were really good.  One thing that was kind of a bummer was that it was way colder than any of us expected! And our hostel didn't have heat in our rooms so we got to pile up the blankest and wear all our socks to bed.

I probably should say something about Auschwitz, but I'm not really sure what.  I guess I'll just talk about a few moments that stand out in my mind.  The first thing that really hit me was the shooting wall.  There are flowers and candles placed all around it and we spent a minute there in silence.  I don't know what it was about that place, but it was there that I started to realize the tragedy. 

The second time I was walking to the next point in the tour and I started to think about how cold my feet were and how uncomfortable that made me.  Then I tried to imagine how cold the prisoners must have been. They had way worse shoes, way worse clothing, and more extreme temperature for longer periods of time. I can't even imagine being that cold. And that was only one aspect of what they had to endure.  There's also the hunger, the strenuous labour, being tired all the time, and the fear and terror that surrounded them daily.  I can't imagine experiencing one aspect of their lives and they had to live through so much more.  I feel like I would be very temped to run that the electric fence and end the suffering but surprisingly, very few people did that. 

The third moment that hit me was walking around the ruins of one of the crematoriums.  It was the first time I was really alone that day and could try to take it in.  What amazed me was that such a small building could kill so many people so quickly. 

The night after being at Auschwitz we spent hanging around Old Town in Krakow.  We ate dinner and found a cafe and played some games with a small group of us.  The next night there was a concert happening in the square and they were practicing some of the songs.  We all ended up listening for awhile and then did the electric slide to one of the songs! It looked so sweet and everyone around us was watching us. 

On the way back home on Sunday was stopped at the salt mines for a tour.  It is so amazing there!!  I think the best part was the chapel three men built down there, it's very elaborate!  Unfortunately you had to pay to be allowed to take pictures so I don't have any, but Leighanne did so I'll try to get some of her's on my computer.

We also stopped to look at this castle on a hill which was pretty sweet.  The best part though was that it was really warm fall weather and there was a stream and forest there.  It made me think of Canadian Thanksgiving, which is today.  I tried to find a pie today at the grocery store but I think it's a very North American thing that they don't have here.  I was pretty bummed but oh well, what can you do?