It took me all week to finally get used to waking up at 6 am, and now I'm heading east, back on my own.
On Thursday I took a train to a tiny village called Mnichova Lehota in search of a hiking trail. I thought I had my bearings straight and would be able to find it no problem, but when I got to the village things were different. I crossed over the main highway and walked down it for a bit, back the the way I had come from, looking for the trailhead. I started to think maybe I had walked the wrong way, but was not in the mood to walk all the way back, so I started walking up a muddy gravel road just to see where it lead. It was sort of in the area that I thought the trail would be, so I had the slightest inkling of hope that it might lead me in the right direction. I walked a ways, passed fields and houses, and over some train tracks. After walking for about 45 minutes, the road became more of a foot path. I started to think that maybe I had, in fact, found the correct path, but I still wasn't convinced. Further up, the path turned back into a very muddy road before it split into two very muddy roads. I took the one to the left and it led me to a paved road. I walked back to the other road and it lead me to a gravel service road under some power lines. I kept walking and, after crossing over another paved road, noticed a small foot pah that veered off to the left. I followed it and had a very nice hike up a hill through a maple and beech tree forest. After hiking up this path for about an hour, I came to another gravel service road. By then I had ascended to an eerily quiet and misty altitude. I followed this road to where it was intersected by another road and turned right. Basically, I followed this road up until I came to a very misty meadow. I'm not really sure where I was or if I had even found the path I was originally searching for. I walked back down to the village. I got back to the station too early so I decided to explore the village. The village was quiet. I ended up walking past a family of goats up an old logging road. There was nothing up there.
When I got back to Banovce, I walked to Janka's parents' house and they fed me a massive amount of food.
The next day I explored Banovce a bit. There's not much there, but I was able to take a nice long walk along the Bebravou river to another nearby village and back. After that I went to some more classes at the high school. I spent much of the afternoon trying put together a family tree in order to better understand how I'm related to Janka and her family. I'm still a bit confused. I know that Janka and I have a common great great aunt. On Saturday I went on a nice walk with Janka and Ebby. In the afternoon we went to Janka's parents' house to celebrate her father's birthday. Then we went to a really nice town in the hills and took a walk around a park for about an hour.
Sunday was pretty laid back. I was able to play quite a bit of guitar. I took a bike ride around to some other villages and then, later in the afternoon, took a long walk to a dam and a small lake with Janka, her two daughters, and her parents.
Today I got on a train to Poprad. I'm still on that train. It has free WiFi. It feels like I'm kicking off the last leg of my Euro trip, and I have high hopes.
Monday, May 25, 2015
I Must Be Movin' On
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
I Feel More at Peace Than I Have in a While
Last week was almost completely filled up by the Angloville program, which was good. It gave me a chance to break away from the "one hostel to another" routine I was in. The program was quite mentally exhausting. I spent almost 10 straight hours every day talking to native Hungarian speakers in English and trying to help them understand me and understand the English language as a whole. The program also gave me a chance to talk to all sorts of people from different walks of life and hear about their lives, their experiences, and their views on the world. The motel that we stayed in was out in the Hungarian countryside on a small farm. Their were several goats, some chickens, some geese, a pair of turkeys, a few sheep and a lamb, horses, a dog, and a cow with her calf. I spent my free time playing ping pong, playing cards, listening to music, writing, lounging in the jacuzzi and sauna, walking around the farm and down the road a ways, and drinking palinka, wine, and beer. The week went by very quickly.
On Friday we got on a bus and headed back to Budapest. I decided to stay one more night there. That night I went out with a couple of others from Angloville and went to a couple pubs. I was able to try some really great Hungarian craft beer, including a smoked IPA, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The next day I caught the train to Slovakia. After a few hours on 3 different trains, I made it to my Slovak family's house in a small village on the outskirts of Banovce nad Bebravou. They are one of the nicest and happiest families I have ever met, and they have a great dog. When I got here on Saturday they fed me dinner and then we went for a short walk around their village. After that we headed to the center of Banovce nad Bebravou to get some ice cream. They really like to feed me ice cream.
On Sunday we took a steep hike up a tall hill. At the top was a great view of the valley below. After that we went to Trencin to visit the castle there. We took a tour of the castle and then went back their house. The rest of the day was pretty mellow.
On Monday I got up early to go sit in on the high school English classes that Janka teaches. That was a fun and interesting experience. Since I am a native English speaker, I was the main subject of most of the classes. The kids that were brave and confident enough asked me all sorts of questions. The main questions, though, always concerned college parties in the states, and women. I had a good time, although Janka was worried that I was bored. I think that's just how my face looks...
After school I spent an hour or so alone with Janka's parents, who dont speak any English. We spent that time mostly sitting around and trying to figure out ways to communicate. Although we are unable to have a conversation or really exchange any thoughts, it's easy to see that they are incredibly nice people. Just before Janka came back to get me, they gave me a couple shots of their home made plum brandy that had 52% alcohol. It was quite strong. After that they took me to the bar up the street and we had a couple beers.
When Janka's husband, Rasto, got off work, we headed back to their house and had some really nice dinner. After that we took their dog, Ebby, for a walk around the neighborhood. Their village is surrounded by hilly farmland and we took Ebby up a hill to a field and let her off the leash. The surroundings here are so open and beautiful. If you find yourself even a little way up any of the surrounding hills, you can see for miles.
Yesterday I got up early again to catch a bus to Bratislava. I spent a few hours there just walking around. After all the places I've been, I was pretty unimpressed by Bratislava. Its a really nice city with a really nice center, but its very small and there's really not much to see. I walked up to the castle and then found a book store that sells books in English. After a long train ride to Salzburg I realized that I really needed a book to read. I found a bookstore in the train station there, but realized that all the books were in German. Since then I have been searching for something to read in English. I found it in Bratislava. I thought I might buy Game of Thrones, since everyone at home is watching it, or maybe Lord of the Rings, since I've never actually read the books. Both of these books looked far to thick and I thought to myself, "I'll end up reading half the book and by the time I get home I'll be bored of it and never finish it". I settled on a much shorter book by Charles Bukowski called Post Office (I know, it sounds boring). I ended up reading half of the book on the train ride home, which is strange because I'm not known for my tenacity in book reading. I should have gotten a longer book...
Somehow I ended up missing my train stop. That was the first time I've done that, and hopefully the last. I tried to speak to someone who worked on the train but she only accosted me with the Slovak language. Fortunately, I was able to find a girl who spoke English and in the end I caught a bus back to Banovce.
Today I couldn't decide what to do with myself, so I stayed at the house while everyone else went of to work and school. I ended up borrowing one of their bikes and taking a really nice ride around the village and in the hills. I found some really great views of the village and of the surrounding valley and hills. I made my way up a street behind a church, to a cemetery at the end of the pavement. I spent a few minutes loitering there before I decided to venture up the dirt road behind it. I followed it through a massive field next to a mass of shrubbery and brambles until I came to something that surprised me. It was another cemetery. This one looked quite old and unkept, and was in disrepair. The headstones where the stereotypical shape of those you would expect to find behind a church in an old black and white horror film. None of them were standing up straight. They leaned over precariously between low lying bushes and dead branches. Almost every one had nothing but Hebrew writing on it and only a few were another language, which to me looked like German, but was probably Slovakian. These were the only ones with legible dates on them with two from the 20s and another from 1915. After a few minutes a car drove up the rode and its passenger spotted me as it passed. I started to think about how nobody except for those two strangers in that car knew where I was, and how that could be a bad thing. I headed back down the hill and made my way back to the house where I played guitar for a bit and am now writing this blog entry.
I have no clue what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm just taking it day by day. I've started to realize how much of a luxury that can be.
I'm not going to post any pictures. At this point its just laziness. There is a certain amount of effort that goes into putting pictures on this blog, and I don't feel like exerting that specific type of energy right now.
I think I'll stay here for the rest of the week.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Photos 4/29-5/7
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Vienna and Budapest
I wrote half a blog three days ago, but for some reason I'm not able to open it to edit it, so I got frustrated and decided to write a new one another day.
This last week has been a good one. The hostel I was staying at in Vienna had its own bar with a pool table, so I spent the evenings there playing pool and getting to know other travelers. I met a lot of really fun and interesting people there.
On Monday I took a free walking tour of the city. It was pretty boring and long, but it gave me a chance to meet some more travelers. After that I went to Saint Stephan's Cathedral in the center of Vienna's old town. The church itself is amazing architecturally and I was able to climb the 330-some steps of the spiral staircase to the top of its southern tower. There was a great view from the small gift shop at the top. I also decided to take a tour of the catacombs beneath the church. The first part of the tour went through the older part of the catacombs that looked newer because they have recently been renovated. Inside were the coffins of Vienna's bishops and royal family with all of there organs taken out and put in many metal urns. The next part was the newer section of catacombs. They were much darker, colder, and creepier because they have never been renovated. We entered into an arched hallway of old bricks lit only by very dim industrial style lights. The tour guide led us into a large open space and informed us that the catacombs had been the location of many mass graves during the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Vienna. There was a pit and several rooms literally filled with scattered human bones. In one, prisoners had been made to clean and neatly stack the bones of hundreds of bodies. I left the catacombs feeling a bit dark for how fascinated I had been with them. I spent the rest of the day wandering around Vienna and admiring the architecture before returning to the hostel for a night of pool and drinking in the bar.
The next day I went to the Schonbrunn palace. It was huge and I decided not to pay to tour the inside. Instead I explored the vast gardens that surround it. After walking around the gardens for quite a while I ventured into the palace's three separate labyrinths. From there I went to the palace zoo. It was a very extensive and well laid out zoo and I spent a few hours there. After that I headed to Vienna's central cemetery. It was massive and had every sort of crazy head stone you could imagine. Then I went back to the hostel. My feet were quite sore after that day.
The next morning I went to a museum with a couple others from the hostel. It was a museum that focused on music and sound and how we perceive it. There were also some sections on different famous composers. It was very interactive and I enjoyed myself very much. After that I parted ways with the other travelers and went to the Shmetterlinghaus (butterfly house). It was a large greenhouse full of tropical plants and many different types of butterflies. It was a really nice and relaxing place to hang out for a while. From there I went to a couple other museums. One was like three smaller museums in one. It had a section with weapons and armor, one with historical musical instruments, and another with artifacts from ancient Ephesus. With the purchase of a ticket to this museum I was given admission to the nearby art museum, so I went there next. It was huge and also had artifacts from ancient Egypt and Greece.
On Thursday I took the train back to Budapest. I had quite a bit of fun in Budapest and met some really great people. The hostel I was staying at had a guitar that miraculously had all its strings and tuning pegs, so when I got there in the afternoon I spent some time just relaxing and playing it. Later on I took a walk around the Pest side of the city (Budapest is made of of two former cities, Buda and Pest, that are separated by the Duna river). I found a store that sold exclusively Lego's, which was exciting to me...
Later that night I did a pub crawl with several different people from different hostels. The night was pretty fun and crazy. We spend a lot of time in some of the ruin bars, which are old run down soviet era buildings that have bars/clubs in them and often have no ceilings and many random rooms. They are definitely a thing to experience when in Budapest, especially one called "Instant". I got back to the hostel as the sun was just coming up.
The next day I walked all around the Buda side of Budapest. That evening I met up with some people from the night before. We went to a ruin bar and there was a rockabilly band playing. We spent some time there and then went to another pub before things sort of spiraled out of control again. It was another fun night.
I'm participating now in this program called Angloville about an hour and a half outside of Budapest. I met another guy in the hostel I was staying at in Budapest who is also participating. On Saturday we were given a tour of Budapest and lunch by the program coordinators. The rest of the day was pretty laid back.
Yesterday we got on a bus to a motel out in the Hungarian countryside. So far the program has been good. I have one-to-one hour long talking sessions with at least four Hungarians a day and we discuss different topics. Their English abilities vary from one person to the next and its mentally exhausting to hold a conversation with them and help them to understand new English terms and phrases. It is enjoyable though, to talk to so many different types of people, including the other native English speakers. We have periods of free time throughout the day and I spent the yesterday evening playing ping pong and cards with other participants.
I'm on my midday break now and so far the day has been great.
Sorry, still no pictures...
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Osterreich
I, again, will not be posting any photos because it costs to use the computer here, and I'm trying to save money (I'm not doing a great job of it). Everything costs about twice as much here as it did in Eastern Europe.
I'm staying a few nights in a hostel in Vienna. So far I have really enjoyed Austria.
Wednesday was really just a day of traveling. I spent most of the day on a train from Cluj to Budapest. I stayed for a night in Budapest and didn't see much of it. I'll be back on the 7th and, beginning on the 10th, will be participating in a 6 day program where I will help native Hungarians developed their English language skills, so I figure I can see this city then. Hungarian currency, forints, is very confusing. Every 300 forints is equal to 1 euro (fairly close to the US dollar at this point) so its very difficult to get used to. I ended up going to an ATM and taking out 4,000 forints, only to realize later that I had withdrawn the equivalent of less than 15 US dollars. Everything is super cheap in Hungary, so I only spent half of that in the time I was there anyways.
On Thursday I caught a train to Salzburg, Austria. The train itself and the station I arrived at was such a contrast to what I had experienced with trains in Romania. The train was clean and comfortable and very fast. The station was well kept and clean and the people there looked like they were happy to be there. I found my hostel very easily and basically just hung out there for the rest of the evening.
The next day I caught a bus, just over the German boarder, to visit the salt mines. The hills around Salzburg are so beautiful and the Alpine mountains are incredible and often reached into the clouds. The mines were very cool and I had a lot of fun on the tour. Later that evening, when I got back into Salzburg, I was hungry and decided to seek out the Augustiner Brewery for some food and beer. I found it just below a huge Gothic style church in the city center and ventured inside. I was expecting the bar type atmosphere that I'm used to in the breweries back at home. The first door opened into a large and quiet hall and this made me a bit uneasy. I walked a ways in and approached a set of large wooden, double doors and could hear the muffled roar of a crowd of people. I opened one of the doors and found myself in an all out Austrian beer party. There where people dressed in lederhosen drinking beer by the liter out of ceramic mugs. It was a large area with different places to buy all sorts of traditional Austrian food. Around the corner I found myself in front of a rack of ceramic mugs in half and full liter size. I grabbed a half liter mug, paid a few euros, and got it filled from a tap out of a barrel. I had a few beers and some schnitzel and then headed back to the hostel. There I met and English and an Australian guy and we made our way back to brewery to play some English drinking games.
I spent the next day exploring Salzburg. I went into some awesome churches, saw some Christian catacombs, climbed up to the fortress in to center of the city, saw Mozart's birth place, explored some of the trails up in the hills, etc. I really liked Salzburg. It was the first city I've been to so far in Europe that I felt like I could really live in.
Today I caught the train to Vienna. It seems nice so far. I went to a really cool brewery called 1516 that reminded me of home. Tomorrow I'll take the free walking tour of the city through the hostel and see what I can see.
That's all I have for now...