Today, I received the Christmas letter Mom sent out, and you can imagine my surprise when I saw that the very last sentence of the 'Chelsea' paragraph includes the URL to this very blog. I have been less than perfect in keeping all my 'avid' readers (aka: Mom) up to date with my life in Szeged. SO, here I go...
Fall Break was EPIC. I left the day after the Halloween party in Sandorfalva for Budapest and stayed with my friend Lexy for the night, and headed to Nepliget bus station alone to meet the 6 others I was travelling with. I arrived at the bus station about a half hour early, which is more than my fellow travelers can say. After I found the StudentAgency bus stop, I found myself moving closer and closer to the end of the line to put my bag beneath the bus because my friends had not yet arrived, and I was most definitely not about to get onto a bus to Prague alone. When 2 cabs pulled up and I saw them all waving my heart moved from my throat back to my chest and I was more relieved than I have words for. We boarded the bus and headed for Prague, briefly stopping in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Brno in Czech Republic. We hadn't made reservations anywhere, because we figured, "Who goes to Prague for Halloween?" ... apparently everybody and their mothers were there because it wasn't until the third hostel we checked that we found room for all 7 of us, and oh was it a wondrous establishment. There were day-old crumbs left on the breakfast tables, the carpet had been worn so thin it was doubled over, leaving creases and wrinkles in random patterns on the floor, and the entrance was up a steep spiral staircase at the back of an art gallery where seedy men monitored the paintings lining the walls of the hallway, but Ritchies Hostel was incredible. It was in the first 15 minutes of arriving in our 12 bed co-ed room that we met the three French boys, Alex, Arnold and Aureil. (I'm not 100% on the spelling of the last one, but I thought his name was Aurelia for the first 2 days, so at least this time I have the sounds right. Go me.) They invited us to have a drink with them in the hostel kitchen, and before we knew it, it was 3 am, and only myself and Alyssa were left with the French boys, who were dying to go out to a club. At this point we were unaware of the lifestyle these guys had been living. Party until 7 or 8 am, sleep until 4, and get up just in time for dinner and go out and party again. That first night I wasn't ecstatic about any idea other than going back to the room to join my friends who at that point were in as peaceful a slumber as you can get in a hostel bed after a very long bus ride and a search to find a vacant hostel, so that's exactly what I did. About 6 hours later, our friends the French stumbled in and that was the first of many days they would serve as out alarm clock to get up. Not that we would have have had any option other than to wake up, because more often than not they (as in all three) hopped into bed with someone, or opened a shaken up beer over someone's bed. In hindsight, I'm really not quite sure what it was that kept any one of us from hitting them in the face after the way they acted like they did, but their incredible way of making everyone around them smile with their drunkenly slurred, broken English and childlike behavior made them one of the highlights of Prague. On Halloween, we decided to go on the pub crawl our incredibly helpful front desk girl suggested, and so after dressing up in our costumes and tossing Halloween candy to the passersby on the street below our window, we headed out to the first bar. With admission, we got a free tshirt, a welcome shot at each bar we visited, and a happy hour of beer, vodka, and absinth.
OH what an hour it was. The night ended at the 5 story club Karlovy Lazne, where we spent the majority of the night on the floor that played only 80's music, because let's face it, who wouldn't spend all night on the 80's floor? We ended our night with the French boys outside the club and for some reason I ended up trading shoes with Arnold and then we headed back to Ritchie's.
The rest of our days in Prague were spent wandering back and forth over the Charles Bridge where there was live music and art tables, watching the changing of the guards at the castle on the hill, and chatting and sitting in a circle in the middle of the beautiful Old Town Square. We decided this would be our tradition; to sit in the main square and just be. It's worked well, and after four nights in Prague, we solidified this odd habit as a tradition when three of us ate gelato at Marienplatz a few days later in Munich. After saying our goodbyes to the French boys, Ritchies, and the rest of Prague, four of us continued to travel together to Munich to stay at the Euro Youth Hostel.
Thankfully, this time we had made reservations so no long hikes were necessary to find a place to stay, but we did get into quite the pickle when we got off the bus and realized none of us had any Euro, and there wasn't an ATM anywhere. We struggled with the metro schedule, and the ticket machines in the deserted train station we were dropped off at for over an hour before deciding to just walk. We walked roughly 9 miles through 'beautiful' industrial Munich with all our bags in tow, and finally found a bank to withdraw some cash to get onto a train that would take us to the main square (where we would later sit to eat ice cream) that was near our hostel. Our second night we discovered that the bar in the lobby was an incredible hang out spot, and made friends with the bar staff faster than I could spend the €15 bar tab I won from a bingo game. Needless to say the next morning I slept in a little past noon. By a little past noon I mean 3 pm.
While in Munich we took the opportunity to make a day trip to the Dachau Memorial and toured the camp. We saw the barracks, the roll call area, and went into the crematorium, which was the eeriest feeling I have ever felt. The most disturbing part of the entire day, was standing in one of the rooms of the crematorium looking at a photo from the day the camp was liberated in 1945, and seeing bodies piled shoulder high in the very spot you were standing. We had also made the most of our hostel breakfast and packed a few extra apples, but we felt it would have been inappropriate to eat anything on the site where so many people had been tortured and starved to death, so we waited until the end of the day when we were off the grounds to eat our apples, and still, every bite I took made me feel more and more guilty for enjoying food there. We made our way back to the city and decided that after a long day at Dachau, we needed an uplifting dinner experience, so we made our way to the Hofbräuhaus for enormous beers and pretzels, and headed back to the hostel bar for another night of great drink specials and meeting some 'locals'. Our trip was made complete after watching a beautiful sunset over the English Gardens from a bench with a violinist in the background. I knew after this trip that it would be a bit difficult to return to Hungary, where I rarely have the opportunity to socialize with native English speakers and I live by myself, and the next event didn't make it any easier.
The week after Fall break, on the first Wednesday back in the high school, my contact teacher Gotti spent the better part of a minute figuring out a tactful way to approach me to offer to set up an appointment to have my hair done. She settled on, "Possibly, maybe, don't think you have to, and only if you want to, I can introduce you to my hairdresser," or something to that effect. However, one must be familiar with her usual mannerisms in order to appreciate the humor in this specific situation.
Gotti is a self proclaimed "wearer of many hats" at Eötvös József Egységes Gimnázium. I think she is the head of the Foreign Language Department, Head of the English Department, she's a 'form' teacher to 2 different classes, she's married, she has a dog, and she has me... the helpless American girl. At least I think that's everything she's in charge of. All I know is that if I need to ask her a quick question between classes I usually have to wait in line behind about 4 other people.Her hesitation to approach me was rooted in the fact that she is incredibly polite and didn't want to offend me by offering to introduce me to her hairdresser, but there's no denying that my hair was in dire need of serious attention. My last haircut and color had been five months prior in May, so I agreed to meet her hairdresser, Zsa Zsa.
Gotti came with me to Strass Salon to discuss what I wanted to have done so she could translate, as Zsa Zsa speaks about as much English as I do Hungarian. So, I very clearly told Gotti to relay to her that I wanted my hair to be very dark blonde with subtle highlights. Pretty confident in what we had talked about, I returned three days later, and ended up looking like a ginger cat had peed on my head. Nem Jo!
After sitting in Zsa Zsa's chair for more than 3 hours and 8,000 forints later, I was in no mood to fumble through my Hungarian phrasebook to let her know I was unhappy with the color, so I paid her and my hair lit the dark walk home. The combination of sitting in a salon and breathing in the dye with a previously sore throat and headache, and having my head look like the macaroni and cheese colored crayon made me physically ill, so after a scary trip to the Hungarian doctor the next day, I was prescribed a week of bed rest, cough drops that made me numb from my eyebrows to my bellybutton, and the worst tasting cough syrup I could ever imagine. After a very short conversation with my translator, the doctor gave me a piece of paper containing his signature and about 4 different 'official' stamps, and we were on our way. I missed the next 3 days of work, and in those three miserable days I attempted to configure my hair in such a way that it somehow camouflaged the color to no avail. I had to go out into public looking like something out of the Muppets. Two weeks later I reluctantly returned to Zsa Zsa at Strass Salon and she was able to return my hair to a somewhat natural looking color for a small price and that was the last time I will be visiting her.
My next adventure took me to the Northwestern city of Győr for my first Thanksgiving away from family at Grammy's. It did turn out quite well despite our claims of sub-par culinary skills in the weeks preceding the holiday. We were unable to find a turkey, so we had chicken and goose, Molly's home made gravy noodles, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, Chris' walnut salad, Kelly's green bean ketchup salad, Molly's aunt's pumpkin fudge, Alyssa's grandma's apple pie, and in true form, my contribution of deviled eggs were about 3 hours late, but they served as a nice post dinner snack. We spent the rest of the night watching movies, digesting our food babies, and talking to family on Skype because we had a big day of travelling the next day, as we were set to spend the rest of the weekend in Vienna.
Our welcome to Vienna was one of the best I've had to date, as we met a man who invited us to his restaurant and ended up giving us 4 complimentary bottles of wine. After our 'welcome drinks' we continued across the street to a small outdoor Christmas Market and we each had a mug of apfel rum punsch and made good friends with a man whose market stall had a variety of brain teaser games. Our brains were not quite in the best form after our welcome drinks and our apple punch, so we proceeded to do some sightseeing on our way to our hostel. On the way to our hostel we found a makeshift restroom in the bushes of a Viennese palace because sometimes, "when a girl's gotta go, a girl's gotta go."
My most Christmassy moment of the season came at dinner that night, as we were drinking (more) beer and I had a huge 'Farmer's Feast" plate in front of me, when I saw snow begin to fall outside through the floor to ceiling windows, and our less than completely sober selves began to sing Christmas carols in the middle of the restaurant. I'm unsure of whether our fellow diners appreciated our singing, but the seven of us were thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
While in Vienna we explored the night life in a club called Chelsea, and another one I don't recall the name of, but one thing I will never forget are the projections of 70's style pornographic film clips on every wall in the club. When I read my copy of Dr. Seuss' "Oh the Places You'll Go" I received for my high school graduation, it never said anything about this place. Someone should update and re-release that book with this addition. Guaranteed increase in sales.
The next time off was for Christmas, and the three weeks between my Thanksgiving break and Christmas break seemed to fly past. Three whole weeks of talking about Christmas and showing 'Elf' was a dream because my students were so incredibly excited. One interesting thing I learned is that Santa comes to Hungary on December 6th instead of on Christmas, and he brings good children chocolates, candies, oranges and peanuts, while the bad children get a stick that they will be hit with and followed around by demons. A little more violent than a simple lump of coal, but interesting all the same. Apparently Santa thought I had been good in 2010 because on the 6th when I returned to my desk in the teacher's room after teaching a class of starry-eyed 5th graders, my boots had been filled to the brim with treats, no twigs and no demons have been following me around so I think I'm safe.
Christmas was spent in what was probably one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen. I stayed on a farm with 6 other CETP friends in a town called Eben im Pongau in the Salzburg region of Austria, and it was incredible. Our group had the top floor of a 100 year old farmhouse the family rents out throguhout the year, and I made sure to write down all the details about this place because I definitely plan on returning sometime in the future. It was that good. The little Austrian family lived in a large house behind the barn, and the father's parents lived on the main floor of the house where we were staying, and they had two gorgeous kids, Simon (8) and Eva (6) who we were able to play in the snow with and have snowball fights. It's funny how a language barrier doesn't get in the way of a snowball fight, but their parents told us they were really excited that we were there because the guests usually don't play with the kids.
The barn next door had cows, horses, sheep, goats, rabbits, and the coolest barn cat ever. This cat was so cool, it's facebook profile picture worthy. Whoa, I know. We exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, and my Christmas day was spent drinking rum cocoa and beer a ski lodge with Alyssa, Celia and Jordan while our more reckless friends went skiing. We thought the idea of riding a train back to Hungary with a broken leg didn't sound pleasant, which is what would have been the case when, (not if) I broke my leg on the slopes as our Hungro health insurance does not cover a skiing accident in the Alps.
The next leg of the journey included one night in Salzburg, the land of The Sound of Music, where Alyssa and I visited the Christmas market on the last day it was open. I had to buy a pair of purple gloves at the market that matched my new scarf because I had forgotten mine in the hostel and I didn't want to lose a finger to the bitter cold weather. After the market we were determined to find the building where Mozart was born before we headed back, so we wandered the streets for about half an hour with no luck. Just as we were about to give up, we overheard an English speaking tour guide tell a group of people that the big yellow building we were standing directly in front of was it. We tried as best as we could to discreetly put our map away, pretended we knew exactly where we were, took one picture and had a laugh as we made our way home. Gotta love being a tourist. The next morning we made our way to the airport for our flight to Dublin. and we were off again.
We knew we had to book ahead for our hostel, especially around New Year's, so being frugal travellers we thought we had scored in booking a hostel for 5 nights at only €8 a night. Oh how wrong we were. We arrived at My Place Dublin Hostel and Hotel after dark, so we were tired from flying and just wanted to put our bags down to relax for a little while and regroup before we headed out fort the night. We did no such thing. We paid for the room and the girl at the front desk may as well just said "good luck" and pointed in the general direction of the maze we were about to go through to get to our room. We went down one flight of stairs, through an underground tunnel that was dripping from the ceiling, around a corner, through 2 doors, up a flight of stairs, down two, around another corner, down a crooked hallway, and finally we found our door. We definitely reserved an all female dorm so you can imagine our surprise when we pushed the door open (the lock was broken) to see a guy hanging out among the sea of bunk beds. It reeked of body odor and old shoes, and the muddy glass doors at the back of the long room looked out into a construction site that looked like it hadn't been touched in months because the particle board that was leaned up against one of the sawhorses was soggy and sagging. The man left, we found the beds that looked the least slept in, and sat in shock for a few minutes. There were at least 4 bottom bunks with butt huts set up, and there was one bed with a space heater pointed toward it. The combination of space heaters, butt huts, €8/night price, and old shopping bags with clothes could only mean one thing; we had just checked into the local homeless hostel.
What we did next was the only thing we knew how to do. We packed everything of value into our purses, did our best to hide our bags, and left to look for a bar, all the while fully expecting to see our wardrobes walking down the street throughout the night.
We found a place, ordered Shepherd's Pie and Guinness and decided that this would be our first of many beers that night, because we weren't going to return to the hostel until it was light out. One of the funniest things we noticed that night was how many teenagers were wearing 'Sue Sylvester-esque' tracksuits around the city. We assumed this was the latest poser trend in Dublin, but later learned that they wear them in order to "run away from the police faster." We made our way to Temple Bar, where there are multiple bars and touristy shops for a few beers, and before we knew it we were leaving a dance club called Copper Face Jack's at about 4 am wondering what to do next. Alyssa had bought a new hat while we were in Austria a few days prior so she made a point to wear it as often as possible to justify the purchase, but a random guy stole it off her head and wouldn't give it back. A few guys standing nearby saw the whole event take place and quickly returned the hat to its rightful owner, and after talking for a few minutes they politely invited us to come with them to another party. We ended up walking for what seemed like miles to one of their apartments and we confided in them our plan to not return to our homeless shelter of a hostel, and they graciously offered us their place to stay until the morning, when they would help us find another place. We told them all about the place, the maze to get there, the homeless people, the €8 a night, and as soon as we mentioned Gardiner Street, they knew it had to have been bad because they advised us to not even walk around after dark in that area. Instead of helping us find a place, they offered to let us stay in the apartment attached to their father's home in the suburbs and they came with us to get the bags that we hoped would still be there.
We still owe those boys our lives for saving us from our horrible hostel and allowing us to stay with them at the recently founded "Dad's Attic Hostel" and showing us a few good places around the city.
In the weeks after we left Dublin, we kept in contact with our new friends, and the last weekend in January, Tiarnan, (the younger brother) came down to Budapest for the weekend and the tourist/host roles were reversed while he was here. Unfortunately though, I had to leave after only one night in Budapest because my High School had its annual 'Szalagavato' for the senior class on Saturday at 6 pm. So, after being 'that' girl running (and falling) up the escalators of the metro, and hopping onto an already moving train and being yelled at for it, I was on my way back down to Szeged for the Eotvos Szalagavato.
Szalagavato is the Hungarian version of prom, usually held in early spring and the 'school leavers' are pinned with ribbons and perform formal ballroom dances in big white gowns and tuxes for their families and teachers. I could not believe how grown up my 12A students looked all done up, and also how oddly proud I felt. I actually almost got teary seeing them dance, but just before I could feel an actual tear form, they had changed into matching black and red outfits and the girls were carrying folding chairs out onto the middle of the floor to do their 'sexy' dance. Yes, the girls were grinding on chairs, and on each other in front of their families and teachers. It was incredible. Also, though, there were 2 bars inside the event. The 'school leavers' were being served at the bars that were inside their prom instead of being pulled to within smelling distance with a cheap souvenir necklace by teachers 'welcoming' students to the dance. Culture shock of the century. That is, until the teacher who was serving as the DJ called me up to the stage to take shots of his home made palinka, and soon enough I was on my third shot of palinka on stage at the prom, watching some of my favorite students with drinks in hand grinding on each other, as well as with a few of the teachers. Madness.
For those who scrolled to the bottom just for the pictures, they can be found here:
Fall Break:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2341893&id=27213693&l=7297ce9fe8
Thanksgiving:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2348900&id=27213693&l=b121567c2b
Christmas and New Years:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2354657&id=27213693&l=d71ffec1e9
Hungary Album #1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2298480&id=27213693&l=908e896646
Hungary Album #2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2361501&id=27213693&l=e178efaf82
