Continuing Life As a Vagabond in Buda and Pest

Who knew that Buda and Pest were two different cities until the 1800s? They still refer to the different sides of the city as Buda and Pest too. So interesting!

We got into Budapest when it was dark, but managed to navigate to our hostel with Laura's help. To get into our hostel, you have to type a code into the outside door, walk quickly into another door, climb up 3 flights of stairs, walk across a terrace, type another code into the hostel door and climb up the stairs of the loft. The lady working at the hostel welcomed us in and was telling us that our friends had been waiting. We walked in to dinner being made for us by Laura, Tim, Natasha, Scott and Ben. It was great and so exciting to see everyone! Tiger Tim- the owner of our hostel, Tiger Tim's Palace- took us out that night to a "Mask"/Karaoke party... full of Australians? It seems that at every hostel, everyone there is Australian and traveling for great lengths of time. In Budapest, they take tequila shots with orange slices and cinnamon... definitely recommended!!

The next day, we explored around Budapest.

Wandering around Budapest in the drizzling rain.

We went into St. Peter's Basilica, where there is the mummified hand of St. Peter's... a little weird? Yup, but they love it in Pest.

St. Peter's Basilica!
Yup, where they keep his mummified hand...

We stopped by Parliament. It's the second biggest... in Europe? Or maybe of everywhere. Either way, it's really big.

Part of Parliament!

We visited the biggest Jewish synagogue!

We then went to the Central Market, which had SO much good Hungarian food and hot wine! Such a cool stop in our day!

Later that night, we walked to the thermal baths.

The Heroes Memorial on our walk to the baths!

The thermal baths were heavenly. There is a mildly warm bath that has a whirlpool in the middle, a cold bath in the middle, and a really hot bath on the other side. They are great, but traveling between them is miserable in the cold! There were at least 8 other baths inside the building too.

The next day, we went on the free walking tour in Budapest.

Where people in love put locks with their names on a lock!

A view of Pest from the Buda side.

The Royal Palace.

Parliament on the left and St. Peter's Basilica just barely in the picture on the right.

On our tour with the Basilica in the background.

That night, we went to Morrisons II with everyone in our hostel. At this point, we had almost 20 people from all over... Australia, Canada, England...

At Morrisons II, a massive, three-story bar in Budapest.

All in all, loved Budapest. Especially the hostel we stayed at. It felt like we had rented an apartment for a couple of days!

Life As A Vagabond Part II

After the DIS Trip to Rome, I met Laura and Natasha at the Airport for our flight to Vienna. Our plane, Niki- a part of AirBerlin- had Hip Hope written small on the side of the plane in sparkly writing.. noticed that as we walked on the plane... comforting? Their logo is some sort of fly/mosquito too... Quality flight. But got there with no problems. We checked into our hostel... which was really nice. Run like a hotel, but a hostel feel. They even had drums and guitars for guests to play!!

We bought the yummiest lunch and ate it outside, in the hostel's gardens.

Ps. I ate tomatoes. Whoa. Be amazed family, be amazed.

Then we walked to Schoenberg Palace right around sunset!

We climbed to the top of the hill and had an awesome view of the city!

We saw a sign for a biking winery tour in our hostel and our interest was caught immediately! We just happened to be walking by the bike shop as the owner was opening and asked him about it. He said the season was technically finished, but since it was nice out, if we could find at least 2 more people, he would take us. Well, we found the people, but they didn't wake up... so we got a personal tour from our Aussie guide, Adam.

We set off early the next morning and took several trains to get us 85 kilometers out of Vienna into the Austrian countryside. Our first stop on our winery tour was literally someone's house. It was locked, so Adam had to call to have the lady who lived there let us in. She was making dinner for someone's 50th birthday that night.

We literally walked in to this woman's kitchen as she was cooking sausages off an old-fashioned stove. It was all set up with decorations for the party.

Everyone else in her family was out picking grapes because it was so nice out!

Our first glasses of wine. Adam taught us about the art of wine tasting. And we tried a wine made out of raisins. Who knew?! It tasted like honey, mmmm.

The view from the countryside was beautiful as we biked to the next town!

We stopped to look at the winery co-op of Wauchau Valley, where we biked through. The castle by the co-op was where they held Richard the Lion Hearted for a year!

The castle surrounded by vineyards.

We biked to the next town and had even more of a view to enjoy...

Follow the leader on our bikes.

We stopped to try some of the grapes off the vine!

I fell while posing for the picture... No surprise there. Adam caught me falling...

A stop for some grapes!

So many grapes! Tasty!
We stopped again for another picturesque moment... so easy to have so many of them on this tour!

We rode to the neighboring town, where we stopped for lunch at Adam's friend's winery.

In front of the town where we stopped for lunch!

Natasha and our guide, Adam, at lunch.
Laura and I at lunch!
We went into a couple other wineries, a chocolate shop for homemade chocolate and schnaps, and climbed up a hill. We were in Wauchau Valley for an entire day and could have stayed longer!

At the end of our bike ride. Survived with only minor injuries! One of my favorite parts of the travel break!

The next day, we went to go listen to the Vienna Choir Boys sing. Little did we know that we were going to standing room only of a church service. We stayed to listen to one song and left. It's just for the experience, right?!

At the church with the Vienna Choir Boys above us

Nina, Aliza and Hanna got into Vienna that day, so they met us up and we wandered around Vienna. We visited the Freud Museum, whoop de doo. Then tried to find Beethoven's house... and got really close... but no one there knew where it was. So no luck there.

Playing in the newly fallen fall leaves by some beautiful church!
Awesome views by Hofburg Palace!
The Palace!

Laura and Natasha left the next day. Hanna, Nina and I went to Belvedere Palace to see Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" in Belvedere Park.

The outside was beautiful and the grounds around it were so pretty! The inside of the museum was the same! Every room was as much of an exhibit as the art in it! So immaculate!

My new favorite piece of art (if I ever had a favorite to begin with...) is Klimt's The Kiss. SO awesome, but ten times better in person!

Later that day, we waited in line for standing room tickets to the opening night of the Opera's Madame Butterfly. Only 4 euros to see what others paid almost 200 euros! Quite an experience!

The outside of the Opera was so pretty, and the inside was even prettier!

The next day, we only had a little time in Vienna. We visited the Waser house, which was really cool

The architect believes that buildings get their personality from their windows, so he makes no window the same. He also believes that humans aren't meant to walk on flat ground, so he makes bumps and little hills in the floor!

Our bus to Budapest was awesome! They played a movie and we got free hot chocolate/tea/coffee!! So luxurious!

Life as a Vagabond- The Beginning

Hej mine venner :) Hvordan går det!?

Just showing off some Danish! Raphael and I had to take a Danish Oral Midterm before travel break... I can (kind of) hold (very little) conversations in Danish now! Haha. I lied... it has been a month since I've blogged again. My bad! It's easy to be busy in Copes! Just got back from a two week study break, so mentally prepare yourself for a whole months of activities :)

Since the time that I left off...

Per usual, coordination got the best of me... aka, I fell of my bike haha. No surprise there. And at practicum, Mirielle, one of the teachers in my classroom, decided to use the apples the kids picked on a trip to an orchard today. So she decided to make a cinnamon apple cake... which was heavenly. I could have eaten my body weight in cinnamon apple cake... but definitely not socially appropriate. Here is where the Danish educational mindset comes in about the "competent child" (aka what we talk about in my base course essentially every day): I am in a classroom with 2 to 6 year olds. To make this cinnamon apple cake, they had to cut up the apples. We spent the morning cutting the apples up... the kids got REAL knives to cut the apples with. Not a table knife, a reallll one. I was in panic mode for the next hour, about to have an anxiety attack at any moment. Imagine 15 little children going at apples with these knives... the teachers weren't worried at all, but I was definitely on edge the entire time. All the kids (thankfully) made it out with no injuries.

And switched from a single into Aliza's room and loving it! Having company is always the best thing :)

I got a gym membership at a gym around the street! Talk about immersion. The Danes are crazy exercise enthusiasts... aka they are all literally dripping pools of sweat.

We had a soccer tournament between my apartment and 3 other DIS shared housings. It was hilarious and such a blast. We got 4th... yup, last... by the complicated scoring system. But it was awesome, plus so Danish!

We went on a field study to the Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center. SLPs (Speech Language Pathologists) had a whole wing there! It was super interesting... definitely something I want to look into! While we were being given a tour, I was volunteered to test out the harness for the treadmill in the workout room. The harness helps some patients, making it the first time that they have ever ran before! It was much more difficult than I thought... definitely harder to run with the harness than without!

Another day at my practicum! I had multiple REAL conversations with my little kids!! So exciting to be able to talk to them, even if it's short!! The school was short on teachers that day and the teachers in my classroom had meetings, so I was the teacher of my classroom for part of the day! For a snack, we had the traditional Danish dessert of strawberry jam in yogurt... the Danish word for it is (according to the Danes) the most difficult thing to say. Becca came over for dinner with Natasha and I! (She went to highschool with Natasha!) My computer broke that night too... it would turn blue and start to turn on and then go black... no good.

Friday, October 29th...

I had a Danish oral midterm and a Copes test this morning... Yuck. Copes test was rough and I'm pretty sure my brain melted at the end of it. I had to bring to IT and they recommended I call Apple care and then bring it to Eplehuset... at least it was going to get fixed!

Sunday, October 31st...

Halloween!! Woke up really early to get to the airport to kick of my two week travel break. The first week, I was traveling around with a DIS "class"... aka, I'm basically getting one credit hour to go to Rome for a week... then the second week, I'm traveling around with friends from Tåsingegade. On my way to the metro to get to the airport, I was serenaded by a drunk guy on the bus... at 5 in the morning. Quite entertaining. Once we got to Rome, our bus driver who drove us to our hotel was named Massimo!! (Can you believe it!? To explain, the last time we were in Italy, we named our HUGE van for the nine of us Massimo! Weird coincidence!) We stayed at a hotel in the smack dab center of the city! And right by our hotel is the Victor Emmanuel Monument! It's huge!! I had to give a "presentation (aka, repeat the wikipedia page) for class later.

Our view from the hotel!

Thygge, our DIS professor, took us on a walking tour around to some of the squares! Rome supposedly has 300 sunny days a year... the first two days we got there were 2 of the other 65.

A summary of our walk...

The Pantheon, with half under construction.

Mason and I in the Pantheon!

All the squares have Egyptian obelisks.

The "Cat Sanctuary"- Full of a million cats.

Piazza Navona.

The fountains in the square used to be baths from the Baths of Caracalla!

Every meal we had with DIS was amazing! Lots of "free" food and wine! After, we walked to the Trevi Fountain at night! John in my class got roped into taking a picture with these three Italian men...

Because this, I got roped into taking pictures with them picking me up and kissing me on the cheek. It got to the point where I had to tell them I "had a boyfriend" and ran over to the guys in my class.

Part of the class in front of the fountain. And yes, the guy decided to join our picture.

On November 1st (Whoa, can't believe it's already November!?), we started off our morning at the Coliseum. Watching people fight to the death for entertainment... sounds fun, right?

Walking through the Forum... At this point, the weather went from drizzling to raining. We made it all the way to the top of the Forum, with a great view of everything.

But... it was now down pouring. Thyge told us that there are 300 sunny days in Rome and this just wasn't one of them!

Raincoat soaked through.

To brighten the day... Tiramisu and nutella gelato, obviously. After we finished up with our class part of the day, a big group of us visited a church fully decorated with human bones... extremely, extremely creepy. Supposedly it is one of the churches from Angels and Demons too? Then we made our way over to the Spanish steps, which were much less crowded than normal because of the rain... Sometimes it pays to be a trooper!

November 2nd...

Conquering Vatican City in one day.

Vatican City Walls

We had a four hour tour... far too long for me, but definitely cool to see everything. We learned in class that on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, God is "in" the shape of a brain. Check it out, kinda interesting. We visited St. Peter's Basilica, which is huge and elaborately adorned.

Then Mason and I decided to climb the 551 steps to the top of the Cupola. Definitely worth it. There is something that makes it more rewarding after you climb to the top. Plus the view was amazing.

We walked by Castello St. Angelo on the way home, where the Pope used to go (don't know if he still uses this) to stay safe.

Went to dinner at this cute place right by the Tiber and got to sit outside! It was November and still warm enough to eat outside... how great is that?! Plus it was awesome and super cheap... wine, lasagna and tiramisu for 8 euros!

November 3rd...

Went to Ostia Antica, the old Port City of Rome, for the day! It was beautiful out too!

Alter in Ostia
The Theater in Ostia with houses in the background. And look how blue the sky was!

After we were done for the day, some of took the train to the coast. It was the perfect day to be on the beach!

Cheesy picture, but I like it!
Seein' ya there in Rome!

We took the elevator to the top of the Alter of Fatherhood at sunset and had the best view!

Sunset was beautiful, with a view of the Basilica in the background!

VIEW OF HOTEL

Kim joined us for dinner that night!!

November 4th...

Visited the Pyramid in Rome (out of place much?) and the Aurelian walls. Found out it was some Italian celebration so there were military and airplanes leaving green, red and white trails!

We visited the old Baths of Caracalla, which were HUGE!

So glad I went on the DIS Trip. Good food, great people, awesome time!