This last week for me was jam-packed. I thought my life at UR was busy and then I came here. It’s just a different sort of busy, as I can’t walk from my suite to the gym and then grab dinner before club meetings. Here, everything is a metro ride, tram ride, or trek away, and requires some planning. But back to this week’s activities… It started off low-key: as Monday was Valentine’s Day the girls in my building (Pod Karlovem 12) and I decided to hit up The Globe, an expat-oriented bookstore and restaurant, for appetizers and drinks. We stopped at our favorite cave-like pub U Sudu for one last drink before heading home.
Tuesday night we had free tickets through CIEE to hit up the opera at Narodni Divadlo (National Theater). The show was Hry o Marii, a religious-themed opera with a darkly modern performance interpretation, as various fragile females were tempted to sin with the devil. A group of us went to Zlý ?asy afterwards, one of the most traditional Czech pubs I’ve seen yet (bonus- it’s close to our apartment). 24 beers on tap, and you can get .5l mug for the equivalent of $2-$5. As a temperamental soccer fan, on Wednesday I was inspired to hit up a sports bar and watch the Arsenal-Barca game. I dragged my friend Keely out to Flanagan’s Irish pub off of Václavske nám?stí (Wenceslas Square), which was full of Brits cheering loudly at the big screen. I was supporting Barcelona, and will admit that in the past my main reason for team allegiance has been the general attractiveness of the players. There are worse criteria right? It’s served me well so far. Barca lost this game, but hopefully I can get to sports bars to watch more games in the coming weeks.
Thursday evening I went to a yoga class offered for students of CIEE through Wellness Yoga studio. Although we did general Hatha yoga that night, it was more stretching and restorative positions with less of a “flow” comprised of strong poses and the workout element that I am used to. Last semester I was an avid practitioner of yoga at UR so it was nice to start using those muscles again. The class was only me and two other students so it was quite intimate. Walking back in the door of my apartment at around 10pm after the class let out, I was greeted by the Pod Karlovem girls all dressed up and ready for a Thursday night on the town. Did I cheerfully see them off while preparing to pack and get some much-needed rest before my trip this weekend? Absolutely not! Like a champ I shook out my hair, did a lightning-fast clothes change, and joined the girls before we headed out to Radost FX, a club where Rihanna filmed her “Don’t Stop the Music” music video. It’s only two tram stops away and is free for girls Thursday nights! (Thursday night is also incidentally hip hop night. Coincidence?). The place didn’t get crowded until 1am, but we ran into some other CIEE kids and my Czech buddy Petra so it was a regular old party until I peaced out around 2:30.
Unfortunately for my friends and me, we had a 6:30 am bus to Budapest to catch. This meant rise and shine was at 5 am, to allow for the morning routine and travel time to the bus station. So flash forward from the time my head hit my pillow at 3am to Caroline shaking my shoulder in the dark at 5am—we are looking at a solid two hours of sleep. I had packed the essentials the night before, but was nonetheless stumbling around grabbing toiletries, a swimsuit, and my passport.
Rundown of excursion to Budapest:
We started off with a long Student Agency bus ride that incessantly jolted me away from sleep. D-list American movies like ‘Rumor Has It’ and ‘Bratz’ were the films of choice, and with stops in Brno and Bratislava we finally made it to Hungary around 2pm. Any new city is overwhelming at first, and Budapest was no exception. It’s smaller than Prague and less beautiful, but definitely has a life and culture of its own. After struggling with the confusing metro passes, we obtained a map and made it to our lodgings for the next two days, the Goat Hostel. 95% ratings on HostelWorld.com! Turned out to be a cheerful, bright place where we had a room of six beds to ourselves- score! We dropped our oversized backpacks off and ran to a Free Communist Walking Tour a few blocks down, where over the course of two hours we learned about the Hungary’s forty years of forced communism and trekked around the center of Budapest to see memorials to the victims of the communist regime and the entrance to an old military bunker. Starving afterwards, we had our first meal at Kalvin Bistro where my huge entrée of chicken, bacon, fried egg, and mashed potatoes and dessert of tiramisu cost 1081 Hungarian forints, or about $5.50. One US dollar is worth 198 forints, so let’s just say we were happy with the exchange rate. We ended the night at a trendy underground warehouse-style bar with two English-speaking guys from our hostel, Robbie and Connor who had both been studying in Berlin. The guys were more than a few drinks ahead of us and after about an hour we had had enough of their ‘manners’ and left.
On the walk home, my friend Carly and I came up with a few observations about being noticed as a foreigner. People will not stare or speak English to you if you: are alone or with one other friend, are speaking quietly, look like you know where you are going and walk with a sense of purpose (this means ducking into side streets to look at maps!), are wearing street-smart clothes, and are not carrying an obnoxiously large backpack. I personally do not like to draw attention to myself if I am traveling or unsure about my surroundings, so I tried to minimize my obviously foreign appearance as much as possible.
Saturday was our main day in Budapest so we had to make it count! After a much-needed sleep and shower, we went on another free walking tour of the city and saw the main sights: cathedral, monuments, and town squares. We crossed the Chain Bridge over the Danube to climb up to the Royal Palace, where we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the city. We passed bullet-ridden walls from battles, the entrance to the underground labyrinths of Buda Castle, and the Fisherman’s Bastion before heading back down to the river level to check out the Great Market Hall. Items for sale ranged from meat, pastries, and Tokaji wine to scarves, lace tablecloths, and souvenirs. I know I sound like a tourist guidebook right now, but seriously we did some educational things. Next stop was the House of Terror, a museum housed in the actual building on Andrássy Street where resistors of both the Nazi and Communist regimes were detained and tortured. After seeing both Prague and Budapest, I am realizing that these cities’ identities are deeply rooted in and tied to the scars sustained from those bloody years.
Our evening plans were to hit up the famous Hungarian hot springs! There are a few different options, but we chose to go to Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, which apparently is the largest medicinal bath in Europe. Its water is supplied by thermal springs, and the compound with outdoor bath areas was beautiful, encircled by statues. It was absolutely freezing outside, but in our flip-flops and skimpy towels we ran from pool to pool, testing the temperature before sinking into a steamy, Jacuzzi-like pool for a good 30 minutes. My goal was to keep my hair dry, but Keely managed to dunk me fully. I ended up floating serenely on my back, spread- eagled in the bubbling water and gazing up into the black sky, while tiny snowflakes turned to rain before my eyes in the hissing steam.
Back at the hostel by 11, after a shower and change Carly and I were game to check out the club scene. Map in hand (surreptitiously of course), I led us hesitantly down two major roads, paranoidly checking behind us periodically to see if we were being followed in the dark. In a multi-lingual line outside club Corvintet?, I spotted a familiar face that I couldn’t quite place. Incredibly, it turned out that a Czech guy who was part of the Zlý ?asy group the past Tuesday evening (post-opera), was in Budapest this weekend too! Having only briefly talked to Jirka at the pub, I nearly jumped on him in the utter astonishment and delight of knowing someone there, in the most random of places. We were in luck that night, there was a dubstep show headlining Doctor P, so we trooped upstairs and proceeded to dance our hearts out. Carly and I worked our way to the front row amidst a sea of crashing bodies, and I let the music take me away in a surreal haze of incredulity and joyful abandon.
In bed by 4 that morning (Carly had to drag me home), the next day of Sunday was characterized by the long ride back to Prague. I admit I had begun to miss the city that was my new home. Carolinska and I ended the day with takeout butter chicken from the amazing Indian restaurant next door to our apartment on Pod Karlovem. It had been quite the week. I know this entry was more like a novel, but I had to fit everything in. Oh yeah, classes started last week too. Who would’ve known?