Buda < Pest

After an 8 hour bus ride we have arrived in Budapest! It used to be two cities, Buda on the west side of the river and Pest on the east, which eventually combined. We are staying in buda on the west but pest is walkable…not easily, but possible. Its very pretty and clean. Hungarian is most closely analogous with Finnish as far as language goes, nothing like any other language I’ve seen, as a result no one here can read or say or hear a word of it. A lot of people speak English or german as well so its not so bad. The money here is a different currency so we all went to an atm to take out about 200 dollars worth of the “fiorts” or something like that, we’ve been affectionately referring ot them as farts. The ATM gave everyone two 20,000 fart bills. Which of course no one can break because its too much. The bill at dinner was so complicated to figure out. 20,000 farts are about 100 dollars or roughly 265 farts is 1 dollar. We wandered into Pest, which is more like center city and found a nice bar on the main street that was dirt cheap to watch the game. Sadly, germany lost to spain and so the rest of our tip won’t be as exciting for soccer. At the restaurant I got to try two different “Hungarian” foods, ghoulash and paprika chicken. The ghoulash was awesome, the chicken…not so much. Also, beforei forget I had burek in slovenia that was kind of like a quesidilla and a doughnut combined…I wasn’t really a fan. Beard I’m on the look out for poperkosh. Tomorrow is the first day of class, I’m not sure whats going on but let me throw some numbers at you. We have 12 classes for 3 hours each, we have 1200+ pages to read, to read law stuff is usually about 10 pages an hour. Which means 120 hours of reading…over 12 days= 10 hours of reading A DAY. Further, in a whole semester reading averages as such: Crim Law- 282 pages, Contracts-311, Torts 452. Both of my other summer classes combined was less than 450. So in A LOT less time there is A LOT more reading. 10 hours a day while we are in Europe is not reasonable. I look forward to class and hopefully there will be some understanding reached, because its beyond what is possible. We have a bowling alley in our hotel and so we are pumped for that. I’m really happy to be out of italy, I like seeing these other countries more. I’m sad that I didn’t like italy more, but already I like slovenia and Budapest 10x more. They are much cleaner, friendlier, and things seem to work better, Italians are so damned lazy. After class we have a guided tour of the city and I have about 8 things I want to see including torture museums dedicated to the secret police during the communist eras and the worlds second largest synagogue. Internet costs 9 euro a day here, so I’m not going to buy it, I’ll post this well after its outdated, but it will be new to all of you! Good night! However, being as it is 3:11a, currently and I have class in 4 hours, tomorrow might not go as well. Today we went on a bus tour of heros square, the cittadella, fisherman’s bastion and drove around the city to see all the sites, tomorrow we are going to parliament. Budapest is so nice. I discussed it with a few other people and my tour guide and everyone is in consensus, italy sucks. The tour guide was saying that is the shit position to get in the agency and I agree, these other European cities were waaaaaaay better than rome, naples, Sorrento, or Venice. We went to a little Hungarian restaurant around the corner tonight for dinner, I had mushrooms stuffed with cheese and then fried, so it was like a mushroom mozzarella stick, then I had the chef’s special which was a fried cutlet with sour cream, garlic, and cheese and an apple paprika salad. All very tasty, we also all shared os I had pigs knuckle, steak with green pepper sauce, a kebab type thing, another paprika chicken, awesome salami, and dill sauce. The appl paprika was apple peppers, which tasted like banana peppers but round, confused me because I was expecting apples with paprika on it. Later at night we went to the bowling alley in our hotel, which was a lot of fun. After that almost everyone went ot bed except for like 5 of us, and our tour guide took us out to a club, it was 1,000 forints to get in …3 bucks and beer was 400 forins…less than 2 bucks and it was pleasant, then we went down in the basement and sung all the british songs we could find on karoke (because they were English) so we sang beetles, the cure, and oasis. Tons of fun and then of course we came home via cab, it cost us 3 bucks each and so I write. Europe is great but I reiterate, italy sucks comparatively. Russia was way better as was the other countries I’ve seen. Anyone going on holiday/vaction to Europe would be better suited to go all kinds of other places, italy for very few, I’ll provide more specific details on what to see and not see when I get back. I’m so glad I did a second program to build my spirits backup, I was really downtrodden in italy and wanted to just come home, now I’m looking at places I could move to/live in …not literally but in my imagination. I cant wait for Vienna and berlin, if they are what these areas lead me to believe they are like I might not leave and liz will just have to pack up and come over. Also, hungary is known for its natural springs an has a large amount of water companies, so far everywhere I have been, the water has been fine. Europe is not what it used to be, all the water is fine to drink, same as the USA. The last questionable place might be the Czech republic but I’ll let you know when I get there. Bed for me!