Transitions

I absolutely love being here now.  It's strange because for the first few months or so I was pretty home sick and trying to settle in and I had all the time in the world.  But now that I am settled and really just enjoying myself, time seems to be going way to fast and I have so little time left.  There are going to be a lot of things that I will miss when I leave, like sour cherry pop, great public transportation, new things to see everyday, living with 9 amazing girls, and cheap food and alcohol.  I think the thing I will miss most of living is such a wonderful city.  It's big and there is lots to do but it's not crowded like the big cities in North America, there's room to breath here.  It's going to be hard going back to London and Grand Rapids, where there isn't a lot to do in comparison.  But there are a lot of things that I am looking forward to when I come back, mainly seeing everyone again and catching up with them.  But I definitely want to come back here some day.

Things I still need to do in Hungary:

v  Go to the opera

v  Go to the spa and get a massage

v  See Harry Potter

v  Go to Simpla

v  Go to Pecs

v  Go to the hot chocolate place and art palace near by

v  Go to Buda Hills

v  Go in the Labyrinth

v  Write Postcards

v  Date with Leesha

v  Date with SarahJean

Croatia

So after saying our goodbyes to our lovely visitors we headed off to Croatia.  Well, we actually didn't reach Croatia the first day, but that was our final destination.  The first day we took our time reaching our hotel, stopping along the way to see different churches in small villages and hearing their stories.  We stopped at one village that Calvin students had planted walnut trees years before and had tea and really good pastries.  Once we reached our hotel we ate a huge dinner and went to bed.  The next morning we took that short drive to the Croatian border. Our first stop was the Batina Monument to commemorate the Battle of Batina, in which 30 Nazi soldiers held off thousands of Red Army soldiers trying to cross the Danube because the Nazis were positioned on the hill, giving them a large advantage.  They were able to hold the Red Army off for two weeks. It's interesting because in Croatia and Serbia the Soviet Union is not seen as something that was immensely evil because they were not occupied by the Soviet Union.  They were able to chose what kind of communism they wanted.  We spent a lot of time there just looking around the area.  It was on a hill and you could see the Serbian and the Montenegrin boarder on the other side of the Danube.  Then we went to see another church but it was locked up so we had fun looking at the million frogs hopping around.

One of the churches we visited.

Batina Monument

The View

Next we went to a church service for Reformation day in a village one of our guides lives in and then spent 3 hours eating lunch.  It was awesome!! We had soup and then meat and potatoes and then desert.  There was an older man sitting a little ways down from me talking to the students around him.  He didn't speak English but he managed and he was one of the happiest people I've seen.  Once he got some one to translate for him and said that if everyone was as happy as him, the world would have no problems.

Sharing a meal.

Once we finally pulled ourselves away we went to a park with an old hunting castle a Hungarian princess liked to use to get away from her family.  It was really beautiful there and we had fun throwing leaves around. Then we visited another church but it was a bit different of an experience.  The church had some kind of construction being done and the whole yard had been cut down by about two feet.  In the yard there had been bodies from the wars buried there and some of the bones were dug up and laying in the dirt.  It was really strange because it didn't really creep a lot of us our right away but now that I look back on it, it was very strange to be looking at the bones of people that were dug up.  I don't really know quite what to think of it.  Apparently no one in the village cared about it, our guide said that they have so many bodies here that it doesn't really matter what happens to these ones.

Castle

We went on to see another church and the pastor was there to tell us more about it and then he invited us to try the wine and walnut liqueur that he makes.  I wasn't crazy about the wine but the liqueur was really good! And he turned out to have a lot of other kinds of liqueur he wanted to share with us, such as apricot schnapps, some kind of herb liqueur, cherry stuff (which was amazing and definitely my favorite), and even some absinthe. I think it safe to say we all had a fairly easy time falling asleep that night, except for the fact that the car Robert was driving with Tanya, Leighanne, and I started to steam right at the border and we got be towed back to the hotel by one of the vans.

Push starting the car on the way, I didn't blog about it, but here's evidence.

The next morning we crossed the border back into Croatia, no towing needed, and headed to the city Vukovar.  In 1991 there was a war in this area between the Serbs and all the minorities in Yugoslavia because the Serbs wanted an independent state.  Vukovar is right by the Danube and therefore a very important city for the Serbs to occupy. So Vukovar had Serbs attack them from across the river but also Serbs within the city started to attack the city.  Needless to say, a lot of damage was done.  One of the monuments from this war is the water tower.  It is right by the river and covered in holes and very damaged.  There was a playground at the foot of the water tower and it included a marry-go-round that I still do not understand how it ride successfully.  You face the middle on the seat but there is no back so the centrifugal force pushes you off your seat! We tried holding each others hands but that didn't work very well and resulted in me being thrown onto the ground, much to the amusement of everyone, myself included.

The Water tower.

The merry-go-round of death.

After that we went to a cemetery that had half of it dedicated to soldiers who fought in the war.  There was a monument and also a area of white crosses to commemorate the soldiers that were never found.  It was really busy that day because one of the ways people in that area celebrate Halloween is that they put fresh flowers on the graves of their loved ones and light candles.  Every grave had at least two bunches of flowers.

The monument in the middle of the cemetery.

We then went on to a bigger city in the area and just wandered around for about an hour.  It was also right by the Danube and had a little bit of a beachy area.  And another play ground! But this one had exercise machines that were fun for kids! It was pretty sweet and something every country should adopt. One thing that was interesting to see was all the abandoned buildings.  Every so often we would come across buildings that were in complete ruins with plants growing all around and inside them.  It was like a constant reminder of what had happened in the area not too long ago.

Damage done by the war.

The exercise playground.

An abandoned building.

Our last stop was a small village that our guide had been the pastor of right after the war.  It is a Reformed community that was evacuated during the war and the village was completely destroyed.  The people living there were in refugee camps for about 7 years and then were allowed to return to their village only to find it pretty much gone, except the church.  Despite this immense fall back, every one in the village returned to rebuild it.  Now it is doing fairly well but the youngest person living there is 45 because the young people that grow up there never stay.  We attended the beginning of their church service and it was strange to see the people who's story we had just heard.  The very joyful man from lunch the other day was one of these members and had been through all of it.  I am amazed at the strength these people have shown and I wonder what will happen to the village in the next 30 or so years.


And so we started our trip back home.  We stopped in a city to have dinner at a pizzeria, which was ok.  Then Tanya bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and I got to find out what they tasted like.  They were actually pretty good! I couldn't eat to many of them, but they are significantly better than raw chestnuts.

And that was Croatia.  In about a week we're heading off to Sarajevo for the weekend.  As I was re-reading this I realized how awful of a writer I am, sorry about that, you will just have to tough it through.

A landmine we passed, there are many.

 - I must give the credit of these pictures of Robert VanZanen and Tanya Adams, I forgot my camera so I had to rely on them.

Awesome week!

Happy Halloween everyone!!  We threw a Halloween party last Sunday night and it was great! It all started because Arielle (one of my close friends here) was talking to one of her Hungarian friends who told here that Hungarian try to celebrate Halloween but don't really know how to do it. So we decided to show them some of what we do back home.  We all invited people we knew from class or other random places and we had a pretty good turn out.  I invited a guy from my religion class and he brought one of his friends, they were both really funny.  They brought a squash to carve instead of a pumpkin, and it worked! We all made a lot of food, baked goods, candy, snacks etc. We had games and a photo booth and awesome dancing.  Kalie's mom sent her a big package of Halloween stuff like decorations and little toys so we used all of those.  It was all a lot of fun!

After we all partied it up, we had to buckle down and get some mid-terms done.  I had a paper to write and a mid-term to study for, both of which went pretty well.  I spent all day (no joke, all afternoon and then back in the evening) at a tea house on Tuesday studying.  It was a really great study atmosphere but I've discovered that drinking a whole pot of tea by yourself is not the best idea since it gets cold by the time you reach the least cup and you have to pee a million times in a row. But I'll still definitely go back there when I need to do some hard core studying.

After I wrote my mid-term on Monday morning, the plan was for me to go to the airport to pick up five US students studying in Romania at the time who were visiting Budapest.  One of them is from Calvin and was in one of my religion classes so we planned on hanging out and having them stay with us for a few nights. So I got to the airport and looked at the flights coming in and I didn't see any coming from Romania, all from Italy or London.  That seemed rather strange to me so I went to the info desk and asked if there were any flights coming in from Romania in the other terminal, maybe there had been a mix up.  There were indeed a few flights coming in to Terminal 2 from Romania so I made my way over there and waited, praying that they would be in one of those flights.  Unfortunately, they were not.  I was getting rather stressed by now as I made my way back to Terminal one, hoping I would find some what of figure out what was going on.  I got back there and started to look around and was incredibly relieved to find an internet cafe! I got online and looked again at the info of their flight and saw (for the first time) that they were flying in from Milan, which had been one of they flights coming in at the correct time into the correct terminal.  I also saw that Kelly, the one from Calvin, had messaged me saying that they had arrived but did not see me and would probably head over to my apartment soon if I did not appear.  Knowing that they were ok and probably in a better situation than I was I headed home.

Unfortunately this was not the end of my stress because I was supposed to have been back at the apartment by 3:30 and I would now be arriving around 6:30, which means that many people would be wondering where on earth I was, especially since the people I was supposed to pick up had arrived before I did with no news of me.  Luckily, I arrived just in time to stop Robert and Tanya from going out to look for me and to receive an enthusiastic greeting with a large pinch of scolding on the side.  But I had made it home and was not kidnapped or anything else awful like that, and I finally got to meet the people I had been looking forward to meeting all day.

The next day went much more smoothly.  I spent the whole day with the Romania group, taking them to some important areas in Budapest and we had a great time! It's really cool how much more you start to appreciate where you live once you get to show it to someone else.  We went to a lot of different places and I think they really enjoyed it.  That night we went folk dancing at a club, which was very fun, but very exhausting and difficult, and we didn't have the energy to keep it up for too long. We headed back pretty early and just hung out in the kitchen, having energetic conversations about the awesomeness of Lost and other things.  Apparently Inception is the best film known to man!

So that was the business/funess of my week.  The next morning we headed off to Croatia, I'll talk about that in my next post, which is coming really soon.

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?