this is a full post. hopefully it doesn’t take me more than 3 hours to complete – but it’ll depend on how good my internet connection is. So we’ll have to see!

---

On thursday me and a group of 11 other FH students left for Vienna at 8:15, where we caught a bus to Budapest! We arrived in Vienna around 10 am, and our bus for Budapest left around 12. So we took the metro to the bus station and grabbed some lunch and snacks for the ride.

The bus ride ended up being about around 3,5 hours, which is about how long taking a train would be, but half the cost. So that was good that we did that – save every bit you can!

Once in Budapest, our next task was to figure out the metro system. We got it down pretty easily, and we all purchased a 72hour transportation ticket for 12euro. This meant that over the next 72 hours, we could use any and all trams, metros, buses and (on weekdays) most boats as much as we wanted. For 12euro, I thought that was a pretty good deal!

We ended up getting to the hostel, which was a pretty awesome set up. Overall, it cost each of us less than 10euro a night, and it was big enough for all 12 of us to stay in comfortably! Plus, it was only 4 blocks from Hero’s Square, so it was in a great location!

We all kind of crashed in the hostel for a couple hours or so, because we were all tired. We played some cards and other games, and eventually made our way out the door to Hero’s Square!

I LOVE Hero’s Square. It is one of my FAVORITE squares that I have seen. It’s so BIG, but very simple and clean. It’s not too fancy or over-the-top, but is really amazing to look at!

 

From Hero’s Square we wandered around City Park, where we walked through Vajdahunyad Castle, which is not a real castle, its more decoration than anything. But its still pretty cool!

 

We also wandered aimlessly among other randoms in City Park.

 

Our evening was pretty uneventful. After a late dinner, we went to Tesco close to our hostel, bought some food for breakfast for the next few days, and then headed back to the hostel where we played cards and ate junk food. It was pretty simple, but kinda nice.

---

Anyone who knows me knows that Thursday was my birthday! I’m 21 now!

In all the “glamour” that comes with having a birthday, you may have noticed that I did not mention any birthday celebrations or festivities. And that’s because I didn’t tell anyone it was my birthday, except my friends from Ireland – but I told them not to tell anyone.

You may wonder “Why would you do that? Wouldn’t it be fun to celebrate with your friends?” And yes it would, but not quite like this.

Being an adult, and an adult on exchange, its all about going out and getting drunk. This is something I do not do. The religion I belong to believes that the consumption of Alcohol is a sin, and we do not accept it as a part of our standards. We also believe that being around these sorts of things can be dangerous and lead to temptation and poor choices – we adhere to the saying “Stand in Holy places”. I don’t like alcohol and I don’t like being around it either.

There is not another LDS person that I know of within atleast 30KM from where I live in  Steyr. And so there is no one else who shares my standards or views. The students I go to school with enjoy going out, drinking, whatever. I do not. Which is why in several instances I miss out on great stories or jokes, because I choose to stay home by myself rather than go to the pub/bar with my friends.

If the group of students I was with in Budapest knew it was my birthday, it would be a reason to go out drinking to celebrate – something I didn’t want to do. But explaining that would most likely ruin their night of fun, and not saying anything and going with them would ruin mine. The easiest and most pleasing idea for everyone was that I didn’t say anything about it. So for my birthday I got a very sweet card from my Irish friends, and a night of playing cards and eating sweets. No gifts, no cake, no singing. Was it what I wanted or hoped for? No. I always thought having a birthday on exchange would be really cool and special and different, but instead it was like every other day. And that made me a little sad.

But it wasn’t all bad – I got to have my birthday in Budapest, one of the most wonderful places in the world. I get to live in Austria, and visit cities and countries and places that many people dream to see. I get to make friends with people from 56 different countries. And I get to have an experience of a lifetime.

So maybe 1 day out of all of this wasn’t exactly what I wished it was. But its only 1 day. I can deal with 1 day.

---

The next morning we were up and moving, and took the metro to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. From here we were going to go on a free walking tour of the city. We assumed this tour, like most tours, would be about an hour, and only take us a few places.

Nope.

This tour was 3 hours long, and covered a good chunk of the city! Our tour guide was pretty awesome too actually. He knew lots of information and was thorough in his guide.

We got to see the Castle, Fisherman’s Bastion, the Chain Bridge, etc.

Budapest is a cool city because it was originally 2 different cities – Buda and Pest. On the Buda side is where the castle/palace was built. This side was the rich side, covered in hills and “mountains”.

The Pest side was where the peasants and commoners lived – its all flat.

Budapest is a medieval city, dating back well past the Roman Empire. In fact, Hungarian wasn’t the primary language of Budapest/Hungary until the 19th century (I believe). It was mostly german.

Austria’s favorite lady Sissi (or Sisi) is also very famous around here because Buda was where she spent the majority of her time as ruler. There are sites and monuments all over the city named after her, including a tower ontop of a “mountain” within the city where she was known to ride her horse. There’s a square, a street, a bridge, all named after her.

 

The Palace was also cool – we didn’t go in it or anything, but climbed up to it, and saw the government buildings within the Palace complex as well. Many of the buildings were destroyed various times throughout history by conquerors, including bombings during WWII. So many of the buildings are not original and under construction to re-build them. But you are able to see ruins of the original buildings.

 

As well, the Palace comes with some amazing views!

 

We also went to Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion. It was also where our tour ended, so we had to get a selfie with our tour guide!

 

After the tour we had to go for something to eat because we hadn’t eaten all day! So we got some traditional Hungarian food from a small market stall in the Palace. Its called Lángos, and its friend dough, traditionally covered in sour cream and cheese. You can also get it with things like chicken, sausages, veggies, bacon, etc.

And it is AMAZING. The dough tastes a lot like the scones my mom would make us – dough friend in oil. This is my favorite Hungarian food officially!

 

After our tour, some of us went to the National Gallery, and some of us split up to do some shopping/walking around. Me, Ireland, and Andrzej from Poland went souvenir shopping! We also walked through St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

 

In the evening, we did something else I wasn’t a fan of.

We went on a Beer Bike Tour. Its a giant wehicle thing with pedals, and you get it for an hour and beer on tap so you can drink while you pedal around.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who doesn’t drink – a girl named Dilla is from Kazakhstan and is Muslim, so me and her drank a lot of Sprite while everyone else had beer.

 

After the bike we went to a Hungarian restaurant around the corner from our hostel suggested by the receptionist at the hostel. After dinner, everyone else got ready and went out to a bar. I stayed in the hostel by myself when they went out, showered, read my book, and went to bed around 1am.

---

 

The next day we got out the door kinda late, and went to the Central Market Hall, this giant 2-floored market with a farmer’s market on the bottom floor and tourist stuff on the top floor.

 

It was in the market that we got another Lángos, because those things are SO GOOD. And then we took the tram to the Parliament Building. This one is a whopper. We weren’t able to go inside because all the tickets were gone. Plus it was kind of expensive.

 

We also walked along the river to go see the Holocost Shoe Memorial. Its a Memorial of 60 pairs of shoes. Back during Nazi rule, they would line up people along the river, shoot them, and then push them in the river. Sometimes to save bullets they would tie several people together, shoot one of them, and them push them all in, using the weight of the dead to pull down and drown the others. They would make them take off their shoes because they were valuable. This memorial is to show the horrors of WWII and to honour those people who were killed. You can see how close the monument was to Parliament, which is pretty sad. There also were small baby shoes that I took a picture of that were also really sad to see.

 

Me and some other friends also got some interesting ice cream – it seems to be a Budapest tradition! It’s icecream – more like gelato – in the shape of a flower. I got strawberry and oreo.

 

That evening most of our group decided to go to an “Escape Room”. They’re those rooms that you do with your friends – you’re locked in a room and are given hints that you have to use to get out within a time frame. They have them in Edmonton, so I decided it wasn’t worth it – I could do it at home some other time.

So me and a couple others who didn’t go went walking around for an hour while the other students did the escape room.

After the escape room we took the tram across the river to Buda and started hiking.

The top of the biggest hill or “mountain” in the Budapest area is a statue. It was erected originally 1947 in remembrance of what was then referred to as the Soviet liberation of Hungary during World War II, which ended the occupation by Nazi Germany. It was called the Liberation statue. After revolution and the transition from Soviet rule to democracy, it was changed to the Liberty Statue.

 

It was quite the hike up. But the view was pretty amazing. There was a really pretty rainbow and we were there around sunset.

 

We went to another traditional Hungarian restaurant at the bottom of Gellért Hill, where nearly all of us got a 3-course Hungarian meal for 10euro. It comprised of Hungarian Goulash Soup, Grilled Chicken with potatoes and veggies, and dessert of icecream and cream with chocolate.

It was also at this restaurant that I got a special birthday dessert.

I posted a photo on Instagram (@ekpattz_ – follow me!!) about being in Budapest on my birthday because no one from Austria except my Irish friends follow me on instagram. So no one would know. However, a girl on our trip found me and followed me, and I forgot about the photo caption. She confronted me about it, and I asked her not to mention it, but I guess she did. So at dinner, the waiter brought out a special brownie dessert for me, and the group sang “Happy Birthday”. It was a big surprise, and really thoughtful.

 

After dinner, we went back to the Hostel and most of our group went out again. Me, and a couple boys stayed behind. The boys went to bed almost immediately, whereas I stayed up, watched some netflix, and went to bed around 2am.

---

 

I rolled over around 6:30 am to see the group returning and crawling into bed! Crazy!!

We had to check out of the hostel at 11, so we dropped off our stuff in the storage room, and headed back into the Jewish Quarter to see the big synagogue. This synagogue is the 2nd biggest in the world, behind New York.

 

Because of our late start, this was the only stop we were able to have before having to head back to the hostel to pick up our stuff and head to the bus station.

Our bus back to Vienna ended up taking 5 hours – 2 hours longer than it was supposed to. We were all very tired, cramped, and hungry when we arrived in Vienna. It was a good thing we bought later train tickets so we didn’t have to worry about that. We got to the train station and bought ALOT of food for dinner, and headed out to Steyr.

On the way we played cards, shoving 8 people into a 6 people compartment!

We got home around midnight, and I went straight home and to bed. I was pretty tired!

---

 

Overall, the weekend was pretty great! We got to see lots of stuff, so some really fun things! We also had lots of inside jokes and good times.

For example, this is Mi (pronounced “Me”).

We’re going to have a movie called “Me and Mi”, where we walk around together and take the same pictures side by side. It might not do well, but the title is hilarious.

 

Also, did you know I’m rolling in Dolla Dolla Bills?!

I was running around Budapest with 20.000 HUF (Hungarian Forints). It is most definitely less than $100 CAN, but we can pretend it was a lot more 🙂

 

Also, this weekend Niamh was in charge of the selfie stick, and since her phone has no memory, my phone has been almost permanently attached to that selfie stick. This meant that over the 4 days, Niamh took 800+ pictures on my phone. So from the weekend, I have almost 2000 pictures, including my phone and camera. That is, all together, too many pictures. There are SO MANY SELFIES and random picture on my phone.

So I might as well post them.

 

I hope your weekend goes well!

This coming weekend is going to be pretty slow – next week is International Week at school, and part of it is that the students from the various countries have to make a display and present their country, including food, dress, drinks, decorations, music, pictures, etc. They told us about it pretty last minute, so we’ve been trying to scramble and finish our International Fair stuff.

We were originally going to go to Munich, but there was a small terrorist attack at a train station just outside Munich. Plus, Niamh’s sister is coming for a visit on friday.

Next week after all the international stuff, we;re going to go to Hallstatt for a few days, go to the ice caves, the salt mines, etc. It should be really fun!

See you around!!

emma.k