Our Goodbye to Budapest

Tuesday September 23

We ended Monday with a trip to a very classy gas station a couple blocks down in order to buy some drink sand ice cream for Eric’s birthday. We came back and played a hysterical game of BS and ended the night with a wonderful conversation. It was the deepest conversation I’ve had with people since I’ve gotten here and it was so refreshing. At 2:30 when everyone decided to go to bed, Perry and I kept the good times rolling with an intense but incredible religious debate that kept us up well into the 4 o’clock hour.

We woke up this morning with a free day in Budapest which ended up being me leading 10ish people around the city to visit the Castle/Museum, the park on that same property, the Parliament building, the Jewish Synagogue (I’m pretty sure it's the second largest in the world), to some incredible shopping (I bought lots of gifts), and then to a church in a cave on a hill. It was great to walk around the city and get to know some more of it. Navigating the public transportation without a map was nearly impossible but kept the day interesting!

One of the coolest things we saw today was the cave church. We walked to the top of this small cliff on the side of the Danube river and found this small cathedral literally carved into a cave in the cliff. After looking inside we walked a little higher up the cliff and got an incredible view of the city of Budapest which was a great way to end a sight-seeing day.

This evening we went to a Hungarian restaurant in the “wine country” part of the city. They wouldn’t let us in until we had taken a shot of schnapps so you can only imagine where the night went from there. As we ate they played typical Hungarian folk music and dancing and even called some of the IES students up to help entertain. At one point I balanced a jug full of wine. Pretty impressive, huh!

As we were leaving they played when the Saints Go Marching In which led to a lot of really awful singing on our part and was later followed up by a sing along all the way back to the hotel. We headed down the road to a small store and then returned for more laughs and card games with our advisor walking around saying, “SHHH. Bitte, Nachtruhe.” But don’t worry we really didn’t pay attention to that.

After a short but good nights sleep, I’m headed down to breakfast and then off to Bratislava where I’m sure the fun will continue. But after a wonderful 3 days in Budapest we’re all asking, “Can ever get better than this?”