Budapest Day 2

Today we walked over 9 1/2 miles so we're a bit tired. However, we did upload all the pictures we've been taking, so check them out here if you have time. (Normally I edit them before they go up, but it is rather late and I am rather tired, so forgive the unedited versions.)

Budapest - First Impressions

After a long day of walking through the streets of Castle Hill in Buda, John and I find ourselves tired and back at the hotel with time on our hands. For this reason (and because I suspect if we wait until we return there will be too much to say) we thought we'd give you an update on day 1 in Hungary.

The hotel is great. We were warmly greeted by the couple that runs the place and the husband sat us down and gave us a very helpful map and orientation to the city.

We spent the day wandering on the Buda side of the city, staring dumbly at all the Hungarian signs and information. While the Hungarians are very friendly, their language is a beast to understand and we find ourselves missing the "familiarity" of German. (Who'd a guessed, huh?)

In the afternoon we came across some very loud Hungarian music which turned out to be a performance of traditional folk dancing. We had a moment of "Oh well, why not?" and sat down for an hour of interesting dance and some singing. Or what might have been considered singing to the Hungarians. I leaned over and asked John if the singer was really the best they could find. We eventually decided that she was intentionally yelling, because there seemed no other plausible explanation for the noises she was making.

I've put up some pictures below from day one. I'm sure there will be more than you care to see in the days to come.Tomorrow we're headed out to a Soviet statuary garden and then in the afternoon we're taking our private tour of the city.

Thanks, Jill, for the baths recommendation. We're looking into it, for sure.

And, Momma Casey and Graeber: we are actively seeking out cute Christmas ornaments for you both. :) (Mom, tell Kristen that if she'll read the blog, she gets an ornament.)

You're looking at the Hungarian Parliament building and the beautiful Danube river.

Firmaments of Castle Hill in Buda.

Little Hungarian girls dancing around wine bottles. In the back you can catch a glimpse of the screecher.

A Quick Update

Hello friends and family,

My apologies that it has been so long since we last updated the blog about all that is going on. We had guests this week - the illustrious Careys, with whom we spent a fabulous week touring Berlin and Potsdam. A few thoughts on the last week...

-Potsdam is a very pretty little town just southwest of Berlin. It is the home of some very impressive castles and an adorable city center. I'm going to put up some pictures of the trip after I finish here.

- Jason brought with him a new word for John to use excessively - "premium." A number of things this week were premium: bowls and cones of Eis, Döner Kebab at Hasir, the bike tour of Berlin, beer gardens.

-Things not premium: Jason's plate of meat "from around the region" that included what appeared to be a raw meatball. The stinky cheese on Shannon's plate that looked like fruit.

-We did a bike tour around Berlin Monday evening. (Note to my family - I was an excellent cyclist. No person, animal, or object in Berlin was in any way injured by my driving.) Seeing the city by bike is absolutely the way to go and we've already started talking about doing a bike tour of Paris when we're there. The tour made us want bikes so we may look into that when we return in a month.

So now we're getting ready for the month of travel. On Sunday we're off to Budapest. (If anyone has suggestions, let us know.) The next Sunday begins our tour of Germany. I am sure John will want to give you his own update when he gets back from his last day of class. But until then...much love to you all!!!

Schönes Wochenende in Schwerin

This Saturday we set out for the town of Schwerin, Germany which is hosting the 2009 BUGA, the annual German flower and garden festival and also happens to be the home of one of the most beautiful castles in the country. To say everything was beautiful doesn't really do it justice, so we suggest you just check out the photos we've posted on Picasa by clicking here.

The title? Schönes Wochenende means "Nice Weekend." It's what you say to wish someone a good weekend and it was also the name of the train ticket we used to get to Schwerin.

Well, you can't have it all.

Many of you know that we moved into a new apartment this week. We have been VERY excited about this new place and all it has to offer - cute old building, great neighborhood, central location in the city. Our excitement continued when we officially moved in yesterday and saw the place up close. Yes, there were some unsightly (sometimes unsavory) knicknacks and books to hide, but with those stowed away, the place has a certain eclectic charm to it.

Then John took a shower. We knew there was no shower curtain, not even a rod to put one up. But hey, other people have lived here and made this work; we would too. By "making it work" I mean we soak the sink and everything around it every time we bathe. We are headed to Ikea for a solution, asap.

Then I tried to cook dinner tonight. I went confidently into the kitchen, ready to cook. I had spent the afternoon cleaning and rearranging so I felt like a cooking queen entering my fiefdom...until I turned on the oven. Or thought I turned on the oven.

My first clue should have been that the oven doesn't have temperature options; it has settings 1-8. I thought "Well, that's different." and chose 6 because it seemed like a good place to start. Five minutes later, however, the oven had not warmed up and 10 minutes later I'm deep into the German-only oven instructions. I spent a lot of time trying to translate the instructions but to no avail. I looked up the make and model of the oven but I'm fairly certain it comes from Romania and there's no website for this piece of classic machinery. Thirty minutes later John is home and we've decided we may need to manually light the oven and stove. There appears to be no pilot light anywhere on the machine. The oven is still a mystery that will require an embarassing phone call to and demonstration from our landlady. We managed to light one of the eyes, but only after multiple matches and a lot of frustration/laughter.

Don't get me wrong. We still love the place. :)

I'll put up some pictures soon.

Lauren's First Month Musings...

I have officially logged one month in Berlin, Germany. This has, without a doubt, been one of the most surreal months of my life; every experience, from grocery shopping to hiking, has been just strange enough, new enough, different enough to call all my senses into a state of hyper-focus. I know I must appear wide-eyed (both literally and figuratively) to the people I pass daily. Some of my reaction to Germany is, of course, because of the language barrier. I spend train rides, shopping trips, walks, time on benches trying to decipher the posters, signs and people around me. There is definitely something to be said for language immersion as I find I am making connections most often because of an ad I’ve seen in a store or on the U-Bahn. One of my favorite revelations was the verb ankreuzen which means “mark with an X.” This comes up in my workbook quite a bit but I wasn’t remembering it until the day I saw a poster near school for the Erotica Museum that used a pair of nude female legs to create an X with ANKREUZEN blazing across the top. Got it now.

The hardest thing about being here is the loss of my language skills. While I function pretty well in cafes, grocery stores, and H&M (because you’d be surprised how little you can say in these places and still get by), I am not yet capable of talking to our landlord, asking questions of the waitress or speaking in paragraphs with my language instructor. Yes, I know all this is coming, but in the meantime my pride has taken (perhaps a much needed) hit. I have to rely on John a lot, smile a lot and be willing to fumble a lot.

Despite all that, I love it here. I mean really love it here. The weather has been gorgeous. We live with our windows open and listen to church bells ring. I get to eat croissants and gelato daily and drink fabulous,cheap wine. I don’t watch TV anymore; instead I talk to John, read and doodle. I am able to walk everywhere. We have an adorable new apartment with all the old world charm I was looking for plus a WASHING MACHINE. The pace of life here is just slower; you eat slower, drink coffee slower, sit longer to talk to friends. It’s wonderful.

This is indeed an adventure. I try to remind myself to take risks, because why the heck not?

(One most recent victory/adventure - I used the Netty Pot tonight. For those of you who have heard John sing its praises and seen me grimace, you will appreciate the grand adventure that this experience was. Don’t worry, I survived.)

German Recreation Part II: A Walk in the Woods

Sunday was beautiful, so Lauren and I ventured into Berlin’s Grunewald, a 32 square kilometer forest in Berlin’s far west end, adjacent to the Havel River. Originally a hunting territory for kings and popularized as a living area by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, the Grunewald was almost entirely chopped down for firewood following Berlin’s destruction in the Second World War. Today the trees are back and hiking trails criss-cross it in every direction. So we set off Hänsel-style and Gretel-style (minus the bread) into the woods to see what we might find. Here are our observations:

--Germans really seem to love hiking. It was a beautiful day and a strong sense of Wanderlust brought the Berliners out of the city and into this wilderness retreat. An interesting linguistic note: Wanderlust, the loan word commonly used in English from the German wandern (to hike) and Lust (desire), is now surprisingly obsolete in German. Instead, to express a desire to travel, German now uses the word Fernweh, meaning “an ache for distance.” However they call it, I just think it's telling that their language even has a word for this concept.

--Lauren and I wore our most comfortable athletic shoes in preparation for a four-mile hike to the Grunewaldturm on the banks of the Havel. Most Germans, by contrast, were wearing Birkenstock sandals or dress shoes, and only occasionally hiking shoes.

--We came upon one of the many lakes in the Grunewald and thought it might be nice to stop off to relax a bit. Plenty of other people were already on the banks enjoying themselves, so why not? Mistake: at least half the people were nude, none of whom I wanted to see nude. The sight was too much for this prudish pair to handle, so we continued walking.

--The Grunewald was eerily quiet. Though it’s a protected natural area, we didn’t see or hear a single bird, rodent, or reptile for the duration of the day. Without people around, there were moments that were just downright creepy.

--Upon arrival at our destination, we were weary and needed to sit and rest a moment and maybe drink some water. Luckily, in typical German fashion, a Biergarten was tucked away right there waiting for us, exactly where we needed it. Of course no water was on offer; only beer and wine, and naturally, a lot of it.

The beer glass was MASSIVE and required 2 hands for Lauren to manage it.

German Recreation Part I: Fußball

This last week in Berlin gave us a good taste of recreation, German-style. On Thursday, some Boschies and I were invited to play a pick-up Fußball (soccer) game with some German men, ranging in age from their twenties up into their seventies. It was probably the first true game of soccer I’ve played in a good ten years, but I figured twelve years of experience would count for something. My skills, though rusty, were sufficient for the two long hours of action. My stamina, however, greatly diminished after years of general laziness, was not. I was both astonished and humbled by the seventy year old men running circles around my lame twenty-six year old frame. No worries though. After the game, as I attempted to breathe and rehydrate, I learned that the Germans have another way of recuperating from sport. They invited me to the local pub where we could forget the water (they don’t serve it free here) and instead quench our thirst with a liter of Hefeweizen (wheat beer). The conversation was friendly and full of laughter, though I was also struck by Germans’ directness and their willingness to discuss topics we Americans would consider taboo among a dinner table of strangers (both of which I had been forewarned about- thanks Birgit!). I'm not sure which I enjoyed more: the game or the conversation afterwards. Though my body ached for the next two days, I will be back to play again next week.