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?

Correction

So apparently the piles of stuff at the side of the street aren't just evictions.  At the beginning of each month people just put all the stuff the don't want anymore on the side of the street and the city sends trucks around to pick it all up. So the piles are a combination of evictions and people just getting rid of some of their stuff. 

But seriously.

Ok, I'm done being a smart-ass for now. I actually do have thoughts/observations that might be worth posting.  At the beginning of this week as I was going to class I noticed very large piles of what appeared to be garbage scattered on the sides of the street.  Everyone else in my group obviously noticed as well and started theorizing as to where they came from.  We came to the conclusion that they are probably results of people being evicted from their homes.  It's a situation that occurs all over the world but I have never seen it so obvious or common.  The economy here is struggling and many seem to be struggling along with it.

In the days following the appearance of the piles of peoples belongings, others made a habit of going through these piles to find things they could use.  People come on the tram with bags full or furniture scraps in their hands.  It has made some of us uncomfortable and it is an awkward situation.  It kind of seems disrespectful to take the possessions others had to leave behind, but it all will end up in the garbage so isn't it better to have someone else make use of it? What if the people searching through the piles have no other way of gaining possessions?

There are quite of few homeless people here. They sleep in the metro stations on cardboard and most of them are elderly.  A lot of us wonder why it is that there are so many elderly people begging.  It is harder to pass by them without helping because they seem so helpless.  In North America I know that there are programs that are available for the homeless, but I have no idea what is available here. There are also a lot of older women who sell flowers on the street.  I wonder what their stories are.

For Nadine

So I was Skyping with my dear friend Nadine last night and she was saying that I should post more often about thoughts that strike me etc.  So here it is.  Last night at 2am I had a thought.  Do cat's wash their tails? Because it seems necessary yet I have never seen it and I feel like it would be kind of an awkward process. Hope that was enlightening!!

Transylvania

So I just got back yesterday from our first class trip which was to Transylvania.  It was really awesome!! It's a bit of a drive, around 6 hrs (that quickly turns into 7-8 with all the bathroom breaks and problems with our vans) but we kept ourselves well entertained:)  We have three Reformed pastors that organize our class trips and two of them were with us on this trip, David and Robbie. We started by visiting a little village and climbing up to the church. We ended up seeing a lot of churches, many of them fortified because of all the religious war that went on between the Reformed and Catholic churches in this area.  Most of the church had started as Catholic churches and then were taken over and turn Reformed. It was really interesting to see in influence each church had on the buildings. When the Reformed Christians took a Catholic church, they would white wash the walls so as to get rid of all the frescoes the Catholics often created.  For the sake of history (or something like that) some of the white paint was removed so that we could see the frescoes that lay underneath.

View from the first church we visited.

Frescoes uncovered in a not Reformed church.

The first night we stayed with host families from a Reformed congregation. I stayed with three other girls from my group, Tanya, Leesha, and Abby.  Our host mom fed us dinner and it was soo good!!  Amazing potatoes, chicken, and a really flavorful mushroom dish.  Our host family had a 1 year old daughter, Vikki, so we spent some time getting to know her.  She goes to a music school and wants to be an opera singer. Her school has Romanian and Hungarian students in it which, according to her, is unusual for most schools.

Abby, me, our host mom, Leesha, and Tanya.

A little history of the area to explain this separation.  Before WWI, Transylvania belonged to Hungary.  After the end WWI and as a result of the Trianon Treaty, Hungary lost much of it's land, including Transylvania, which went to Romania.  So now in the area of Transylvania there are Hungarians and Romanians and this creates a certain tension.  The Romanians are focused on getting rid of the Hungarian culture, especially in big cities, but I'll get to that later.


So back to the trip.  Staying at a host family was great and then we were off again the next morning. We went to Cluj, a very large city in Romania and the city that Andras Visky (a Hungarian playwrite.professor that was at Calvin last year) lives and works.  We toured around the city for a little with David filling us in on some history.  It is much easier to see the Romanian influence overpowering the Hungarian culture in this city. The cities main square was changed to an area with an Orthodox church and a statue of a Romanian hero (who, unpleasantly, is famous for killing many Hungarian) and away from the old main square with a Reformed church and other Hungarian aspects.  (I should point out that we were getting one sided history since our guides were Hungarian and not representing the Romanian side)  So after looking around for a bit, we went to the National Theatre in Cluj, where Andras works and got to see it and visit with Andras for awhile.  There's going to be European Theatre Festival there in December and many of us are planning on going back for that, which will be amazing!!

After having lunch in Cluj, we drove to our hotel, which was in a small village and really adorable! Our rooms where wonderful looking right onto the church.  We ate another amazing meal and then played some games.  I played my first drinking game (I was drinking orange pop, but others had beer) called King's Cup.  It's a lot of fun.  Throughout the game, people have to pour some of there drink into a cup in the middle and the person who draws the fourth King has to drink everything in the cup.  At one point it appeared that I had drawn the fourth King but we discovered that it was only the third by the time I was halfway through the cup...oh well, it was still fun.

View from my hotel room.

The next day we toured the church in the village, which had a lot to look at. For example, there was a house that the would use if a couple wanted to get divorced.  If such a request was made, the couple was locked in this house together till they figured out their problems.  To make the situation even worse, the house only had one bed, one plate, one spoon, one table, and one chair (no knife or fork).  The longest stay was 3 weeks and there was only ever one divorce in that village.  Maybe we should bring that back?

That afternoon, we visited another church and then went to see what they Gypsy area's looked like.  In this area Gypsies are the lowest on the ethnic hierarchy.  The area that we went to had recently gotten funds to fix up the area so they had a gravel road and housed and a gutter beside the road.  It used to be a mud road and huts, so it is significantly improved. People were very welcoming, especially the kids. They all wanted their pictures taken.

That night we went to a different hotel which was really cozy.  My room even had a fire place! We again had a really big meal.  Just to focus on the food for a bit, I have never been so thankful for my large appetite.  I don't think I have ever eaten so much in one weekend, it was great!

The next morning,  most of us climbed up the mountain that was right by the village.  It was pretty tiring but really worth it.  Some of the areas where just a bunch of rocks that we had to climb over which was kind of difficult going up but really nice going down!  We would just find the areas with the small rocks and just let them slide under our feet and carry us down faster.  I would call it rock skiing, it was so much fun!!!!
Close to the foot of the mountain, there was a farm horse grazing in the grass so a bunch of us decided to go see it.  We approached him slowly and were petting him and he seemed fine.  Apparently though, he was a little spooked and stared to turn away from us.  We all started to get away as fast as possible but I wasn't quite fast enough.  He kicked his feet up a little bit and got me right in between my hip and butt. He wasn't trying to hurt us or anything so it didn't hurt that much but there is definitely a bruise, which I can't even show off to many people due to it's inappropriate location. But now I will never underestimate a horse again and if I'm ever part of a conversation about horse injuries, I get to start mine by saying "Once when I was climbing down a mountain in Romania," which is a pretty sweet opening line.

From the bottom.

From the top. Well...close to the top.

Our last stop was a street with many shops all down it.  We looked around for awhile and then headed back to the vans for the long trip back home.  Overall, it was a really great trip and I'm really looking forward all our other class trips.