Hello again!
It's been almost two weeks since my
last update, and once again a lot has happened! It's already December, which
means that in just a couple more weeks I'll be on my way back home to the U.S.
Schoolwork is ramping up a bit as we receive our final assignments for the
semester, but I'm done with travel now so I should have enough free time to
handle it all in good order. The last two weeks have been full of wonderful,
exciting adventures, which I'll do my best to elaborate on in sufficient detail
below. As usual, expect another post with photos going up in the next couple of
days. I hope you all are well and had a lovely Thanksgiving break!
The highlight of the weekend before last was definitely on Friday night, when I had the opportunity to go folk dancing with a few other students! I'm not much of a dancer and have never gone to something like it before, but I had an amazing time. The first hour was a lesson where they taught us two simple partner dances, and after that there was a half-hour folk music concert followed by a 90-minute dance. It was so much fun!! We did a lot of circle dances, which were both exhilarating and relatively easy for me to pick up on the fly. We also did the partner dances a little, which felt more intimidating but were still a blast. Otherwise, I spent most of the weekend getting ahead on homework and doing housekeeping-type activities, which was nice in a quiet sort of way. I spent a fair amount of time at one of the main Christmas markets in Budapest, enjoying the atmosphere and window-shopping at the various stalls. The following week was pretty nondescript, although I did go to another Müpa concert with Travis. However, we had a four-day weekend for Thanksgiving break, and during that time I got to do some traveling!
On Thursday morning I got up around 7:00 and caught my bus to Bratislava without too much of a hitch. It was cold and rainy, but the trip was nice ( Igot to admire the beautiful countryside on the way and everything). The bus stop in Bratislava is actually super ugly, surrounded by construction and blocky buildings, but I walked into the city center and suddenly it all became beautiful! The old town is pretty small and pedestrian-only and it's lovely. I wandered through the alleyways for a little bit until I found my hostel, which turned out to be right in the center, looking out on a Christmas market and one of the many churches. The volunteer who checked me in at the hostel gave me a few recommendations for where to go in the city, and I spent the day walking around and enjoying the sights. I started out by walking through Old Town to get to Bratislava Castle, which is on top of a neighboring hill. The walk was super pretty and took me past the cathedral, which I visited briefly, as well as the Jewish quarter, with some monuments to old synagogues that were torn down in the 20th century. I hiked up to the castle and admired the grounds and views of the rest of the city before going back down and spending an hour in a museum of Jewish culture in Slovakia. Afterwards I walked out of Old Town again to see the Blue Church, one of the most famous landmarks in Bratislava. It was very pretty, although it was closed so I couldn't go in and only saw it from the outside. From there I walked to see a couple of very ugly Soviet buildings that reflect the other half of Bratislava's history, which was also cool even though the buildings were less pretty. Afterwards I grabbed food at a nice restaurant before returning to the hostel. I spent my evening alternating between doing homework and talking with the other hostel guests, who were all extremely nice and fun to be around. We ate a chili dinner together and then I retired to my dorm, which consisted of a young dentist from Ukraine, two Greek nursing students, and a teacher at one of the U.S. air force bases in Italy.
On Friday I woke up around 8:30 and spent the morning wandering around Old Town a bit more. I checked out of my hostel and found my bus to Vienna without incident, which brought me there around 2:00. Grace and Meg were waiting for me at the bus stop, and I went with them to find the place where I was staying, see their apartments, and a couple of their favorite stores in town. Meg had a voice lesson at 6:00, and while she was busy Grace and I went to the Albertina museum to see an exhibit on Albrecht Dürer. It was amazing! They had many of Dürer's most famous works open for viewing (something they only do for a few months every decade or so), and I had no idea how much cooler the real thing is than the reproductions I saw back in my high school history class. Some of his studies are so realistic I had trouble convincing myself that they were just paintings. I highly recommend "The Great Piece of Turf" to everyone! It's the best painting of grass I've ever seen, no joke. After the art museum, we got a simple dinner from a grocery store and spent the evening watching a movie together and catching up in Meg's apartment.
On Saturday we all gathered at one of the larger farmer's markets in Vienna, where Meg and Grace often go shopping. We got breakfast together at a café and wandered around the market for a while before traveling to one of the nicer, more residential districts, where Meg and Grace have an English tutoring job with a family. While they were working I went to a café and worked on my homework, which gave me a nice chance to listen to German being spoken and admire the views. Once we were done with our respective tasks, we did some sightseeing--Stephansdom, the main cathedral of the city, and Hundertwasserhaus! Hunderwasser was a wonderful architect who did a great job of incorporating nature into his buildings, and these apartments are stunningly beautiful. We finished looking around as it got dark outside and explored one more neat thrift shop before going to get a fancy dinner near the city center. I got to try sachertorte, an Austrian specialty! We closed out the night with the biggest event of our weekend: several hours at the Moscow Ball, held at the Hofburg palace itself. The place was incredibly fancy, with huge ballrooms playing music in a variety of styles for people to dance to. Different workshops were held to teach newcomers how to dance--we all learned the Russian quadrille, and Meg and Grace taught me how to waltz and quickstep as well! We also spent a lot of time admiring everyone's fancy outfits. It was really cool, and we stayed up until around 2:00 dancing and taking it all in.
We were all pretty exhausted on Sunday morning, so we opted for a quieter day together. Since we're all separated from our families this Thanksgiving, we had a friendsgiving lunch where we cooked fall foods together. We made pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins, cranberry sauce, and sparkling juice to consume together (along with some other staples like yogurt and cheese). Cooking, baking, eating, and cleaning up took us until 3:00, making up most of the day. Towards the end Meg began to fall ill, so we said our goodbyes in middle of the afternoon. I had a few more hours before my bus left, so Grace and I went to Schönbrunn palace and walked around the forests and hills behind it for a while. We also enjoyed a Christmas market in front of the palace, then went back to Grace's apartment to make dinner and pack up. My bus left at 7:30, and I when I returned to Budapest I found it was snowing!
That's about all I have to say this time around. The last few days have been spent studying for the most part--classes have become more difficult as we discuss our last topics of the semester. I'm hoping to spend most of tomorrow working, but with luck I'll have time to cook mac and cheese for myself and go folk dancing again in the evening! Things are generally going well here, but I can't wait to be back home. I hope you all are well! :)
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