Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren! I went to Budapest. Some friends and I decided to rent a car and take a long weekend to reward ourselves for all of the hard work we were putting in at the university (we're actually not doing any hard work, ever). But, we found some good deals on a rental car and an apartment in the city center, so we capitalized on the opportunity. We chose to go last weekend because it was a holiday weekend. If you've ever lived in Austria, you should know that there is at least one holiday what seems like every week. Holidays mean no university classes, and we usually go somewhere on the days we have off.
I went with three friends, two girls from Ireland and one guy from England. The drive was a short 5 hours for the American, but it seemed to be devastatingly long for the Islanders who could cover their whole country in that amount of time. We eventually arrived, got lost, asked for directions, received no directions due to our inability to speak Hungarian, yet somehow pulled up to our apartment perfectly on time without a clue how we got there. The flat was wonderful because it had a bathroom, two large beds, a full kitchen, and a beautiful balcony where we spent most mornings and evenings eating home-cooked meals.
The day after we arrived, we wandered through the beautiful architecture of some enormous buildings, which included embassies, hotels, castles, cathedrals, and parliament. I know that probably sounds like every European capital city, and it is, but Budapest is particularly beautiful because of it's location on the Danube River. The view of the river is really something from atop the hill on the Buda side of the city looking toward Pest. I think the two sides were named Buda, for the rich people on the high side of the river, and Pest, for the poor people on the low side. Maybe I just made that up, or somebody made it up and told me.
I think that somebody famous wrote a song about the view of the Danube in Budapest, so it's gotta be beautiful, right? The next day we started out by wandering again, but soon found ourselves caught in the storm of storms, so we took refuge in a restaurant that we thought looked nice. The unfortunate thing was that the restaurant we found was rather expensive, and in order to stay out of the rain, we had to order. Oh well, Budapest's currency is worth considerably less than the Euro. After the storm passed, we headed home.
Most of our time in Budapest was spent in our apartment either eating something unhealthy or drinking tea (the British love tea). We also went out to explore the nightlife one night. Being in the city center, we thought it would be fairly easy to find a place to hang out, and it was. Across the street from our apartment was some sort of outdoor entertainment place. It looked friendly from the outside, so we went in and found out that it was the exact opposite. The unfriendliness of the place that appeared to be so nice turned our smiles upside down, so we decided to go home. At the foot of our apartment building, one of the girls noticed that there was some sort of club/disco filled with people inside. After walking through the security, which consisted of huge men big enough to block the entire doorway with just one body, I felt like I was in a movie. There were crazy lights, music pushing out the walls and windows with every thump, and people who come out from the woodwork at night after spending the entire day sleeping due to their last party. It was like a movie.
After 3 days, the rental car had to be returned, so we made the journey back to Austria. I got the opportunity to drive, even though none of us was sure if it was legal. It was fun, though. The others were tired, so we figured it was best to have the one awake person driving. I got nervous, however, at the Hungarian-Slovenian border because I wasn't wearing any shoes, so we had to switch back. The driving was fun while it lasted, even if I wasn't supposed to be doing it.
The trip to Budapest was one of the longer trips I've made since I've been here, because I usually only go out for a day or two, but it actually seemed quite short. The highlight of the trip was definitely the balcony. We spent many hours sitting in the sun, watching our neighbors across the way, and chatting about our experiences in Klagenfurt. All of our times here our coming soon to an end, and there is a general feeling going around the exchange students that we don't want it to end. Like any good thing, the ends always seem to come too soon. Our main topic of conversation on the balcony was exactly that, how much fun we've had in Austria. Not only have we had fun, but we have loved life. I'm sure that this will be a common theme in my writing from now until the end of the semester, so I will leave space and time for me to think. I have a little over a month left here before I return to the United States. I plan on making the most of it with new friends in new places. Ciao.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Bled
Yesterday, I went to Bled. My friend Tim Dodd is here in Klagenfurt right now. He's enjoying himself on a 3 week tour of Europe, traveling the whole way in a rental car. The nice thing about a car is, you don't have scheduled departures and arrivals like plains, trains, and buses. We woke up yesterday and decided to drive somewhere. He's taking photos along the way, so we chose to go to Bled, a city less than an hour away from here, but just happens to be in a different country, Slovenia. We weren't sure about the legalities of bringing the rental car into Slovenia, but we went anyways. The trip started at 11 am, and I had to be back by 2 pm in order to finish writing an essay. The drive was beautiful, passing through the Alps along the Loiblpass. I would highly recommend taking that pass if you ever get the chance because your mind will be blown by the beauty of mountains and hillsides unlike anything you've ever seen. We arrived in Bled, took some pictures of a castle at a lake, then turned around to get back to Austria. The trip was short, but it's pretty cool to arrive at class and say that you were in a different country that morning. I like it, at least.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
16. Mai
Sorry sorry sorry. It's been two weeks since my last post, and I've received several messages asking for updates. I'm always surprised by how many people actually read what I write. It really puts a smile on my face when I get an email from someone saying anything about my blog, so thank you for the feedback (even if it's just you telling me that I need to write).
I can tell you that life in Austria is not slowing down at all, and the speed is picking up with the end of the semester looming in the distance, which seems to be creeping closer and closer everyday. One of the main reasons that the time here is flying by is because of the seemingly ever-constant movement of my body. I'm always going here and there, to one country or another, to football tournaments and practice, and to class. I'm not actually spending that much time on the campus, rather, I'm moving around it a lot. My most recent adventure was a trip this past week to Bratislava...the capital of Slovakia...the unlucky half of what used to be Czechoslovakia...a country you've probably heard of but had no idea that it was split up and the capital is now Bratislava.
Some of you may have heard of Bratislava because of a film that came out within the past few years, Hostel. It's a film about youth traveling through Europe, who decide to spend some time in a little-known city called Bratislava. They stay in a hostel, which eventually turns out to be the worst decision of their lives because crazy scary people are waiting at the hostel to kidnap them and kill them. Nice, huh? It's a fairly grotesque film, so I don't really recommend it. This film was the only picture of Bratislava in my mind when I arrived in the Hlavna Stanica (main train station). You may be asking why I decided to go, and the answer is simple: I had a free return train ticket from a friend. Why not?
After exiting the station, I searched for the correct cable car I needed to get to my own hostel. I must've had a confused look upon my face, or maybe I just looked innocent and naive, because a strange man, carrying nothing but little slips of paper in a large duffel bag, asked me if I was interested in finding a hostel. Upon hearing his question, I pondered the possibility of the film actually being true, but I decided it was best not to see the truth for myself. I politely told him no and headed off in a direction that I only knew was away from him. I thought that was a great start to my trip to Bratislava.
The thing about Bratislava is, it was under Communist control for quite some time. The roots of that so-called equality can still be seen today in the dullness of the buildings, the public transportation straight out of Orson Well's 1984, and the lack of life in the people walking the streets. Everything was a bit cold and unfriendly. I'm sure the people were great, but they looked like they'd rather stay inside in stare at the wall all day than crack a smile every once in awhile.
We wondered the streets, snapping photos of old buildings, strange statues of humans placed randomly throughout the city, and groups of teenagers celebrating their high school graduation. It was a quaint city with not much of an atmosphere. Nonetheless, it was beautiful, something very different than anything I'd seen before.
Only two day were spent there, before we headed home. As we waited to see which track our train was, the same man approached us with the empty duffel bag. He asked us the same question without a hint of recognition, as if we were blank faces with a mouth to speak and money to give. Strange. The trip was short, but sweet.
We made it back to Klagenfurt in time for the final leg of the University Football (Soccer) Tournament, in which my team was lucky enough to have made it to the quarterfinals. In our quarterfinal game, we played against a team from Chechnya, barely pulling through with a win after two halves, two overtimes, and five penalty kicks. The semifinal round was against a team of refugees from Afghanistan. Again, we squeaked by with a close 1-0 win. For the first time ever, the dorm I was playing with made it to the finals. Our opponents were a group of Austrian-Slovenians (I felt like it was a mini-World Cup with participants from every continent, including whole teams from Slovenia, Germany, India, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Austria). Our streak ended in the final, losing 3-0, but it was great to participate in such a tournament.
My movement does not stop here, though. In a couple days, I will be renting a car and driving to Budapest, Hungary. I'm traveling with 2 friends from Ireland and a crazy guy from England. We will be staying for a long weekend, returning to Klagenfurt for a couple days, then I will be making my way to Venice, maybe Berlin. Crazy traveling. I may also be seeing a couple friends of mine in the next couple weeks. Two of them are making separate vacations throughout Europe, and one is studying in Italy. So much to do, so much to see, and so little time left. Before you know it, I will be back in Cedar Falls. So fast. I wish all of you a wonderful week, and remember to smile.
I can tell you that life in Austria is not slowing down at all, and the speed is picking up with the end of the semester looming in the distance, which seems to be creeping closer and closer everyday. One of the main reasons that the time here is flying by is because of the seemingly ever-constant movement of my body. I'm always going here and there, to one country or another, to football tournaments and practice, and to class. I'm not actually spending that much time on the campus, rather, I'm moving around it a lot. My most recent adventure was a trip this past week to Bratislava...the capital of Slovakia...the unlucky half of what used to be Czechoslovakia...a country you've probably heard of but had no idea that it was split up and the capital is now Bratislava.
Some of you may have heard of Bratislava because of a film that came out within the past few years, Hostel. It's a film about youth traveling through Europe, who decide to spend some time in a little-known city called Bratislava. They stay in a hostel, which eventually turns out to be the worst decision of their lives because crazy scary people are waiting at the hostel to kidnap them and kill them. Nice, huh? It's a fairly grotesque film, so I don't really recommend it. This film was the only picture of Bratislava in my mind when I arrived in the Hlavna Stanica (main train station). You may be asking why I decided to go, and the answer is simple: I had a free return train ticket from a friend. Why not?
After exiting the station, I searched for the correct cable car I needed to get to my own hostel. I must've had a confused look upon my face, or maybe I just looked innocent and naive, because a strange man, carrying nothing but little slips of paper in a large duffel bag, asked me if I was interested in finding a hostel. Upon hearing his question, I pondered the possibility of the film actually being true, but I decided it was best not to see the truth for myself. I politely told him no and headed off in a direction that I only knew was away from him. I thought that was a great start to my trip to Bratislava.
The thing about Bratislava is, it was under Communist control for quite some time. The roots of that so-called equality can still be seen today in the dullness of the buildings, the public transportation straight out of Orson Well's 1984, and the lack of life in the people walking the streets. Everything was a bit cold and unfriendly. I'm sure the people were great, but they looked like they'd rather stay inside in stare at the wall all day than crack a smile every once in awhile.
We wondered the streets, snapping photos of old buildings, strange statues of humans placed randomly throughout the city, and groups of teenagers celebrating their high school graduation. It was a quaint city with not much of an atmosphere. Nonetheless, it was beautiful, something very different than anything I'd seen before.
Only two day were spent there, before we headed home. As we waited to see which track our train was, the same man approached us with the empty duffel bag. He asked us the same question without a hint of recognition, as if we were blank faces with a mouth to speak and money to give. Strange. The trip was short, but sweet.
We made it back to Klagenfurt in time for the final leg of the University Football (Soccer) Tournament, in which my team was lucky enough to have made it to the quarterfinals. In our quarterfinal game, we played against a team from Chechnya, barely pulling through with a win after two halves, two overtimes, and five penalty kicks. The semifinal round was against a team of refugees from Afghanistan. Again, we squeaked by with a close 1-0 win. For the first time ever, the dorm I was playing with made it to the finals. Our opponents were a group of Austrian-Slovenians (I felt like it was a mini-World Cup with participants from every continent, including whole teams from Slovenia, Germany, India, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Austria). Our streak ended in the final, losing 3-0, but it was great to participate in such a tournament.
My movement does not stop here, though. In a couple days, I will be renting a car and driving to Budapest, Hungary. I'm traveling with 2 friends from Ireland and a crazy guy from England. We will be staying for a long weekend, returning to Klagenfurt for a couple days, then I will be making my way to Venice, maybe Berlin. Crazy traveling. I may also be seeing a couple friends of mine in the next couple weeks. Two of them are making separate vacations throughout Europe, and one is studying in Italy. So much to do, so much to see, and so little time left. Before you know it, I will be back in Cedar Falls. So fast. I wish all of you a wonderful week, and remember to smile.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Osterferien pt. 2
I realized today that I forgot to tell you about the second part of my Easter vacation. I remembered because I was in Munich this morning, which seems to be a fairly common place for me to be recently even though it's 5 hours away from Klagenfurt. I was only there for the airport, though, on my way to Herrnhut, Germany for the weekend.
I left off telling you about my Dad and I in Munich at the concentration camp. We left Munich the next day to head off to Salzburg. I was excited because it was the first time I was going to ride on the high-speed train. I had never been on one before because they are the expensive ones, and I always choose the cheapest option. Luckily, my dad was there, so we took the fast one. We spent one day in Salzburg walking around, sitting in the sun, and mostly just relaxing. That night, we met up with a friend of my Dad's, who he had met during a pilgrimage in Assisi, Italy 5 years ago. This was the fun part of Salzburg, at least for me. I don't know how they did it 5 years ago in Italy, but the only way for the two to communicate to each other was through me. It was my first experience translating for people in an actual conversation. Of course, there were things that I couldn't get from one language to the other, but it was fun anyways. We spent the evening with him, then headed off to Vienna in the morning.
Fun again. We took the high speed train one more time. I think it was traveling around 200 km/h. You can try to figure that out for yourself in mph. Vienna was absolutely beautiful. The weather was magnificent, which made for a couple nice days walking around the city, viewing the palaces, enjoying the parks, and wandering through the market. The city was seriously amazing. If you ever get the chance, you should visit it. After two nights in Vienna, we headed off to my hometown of Klagenfurt.
Klagenfurt is the capital of the state of Carinthia, but it is an awfully small town, meaning there's nothing really to do. I showed him the highlights of the city, and we headed back off to Munich in the morning. Our last day was spent walking around Munich again. This time we took no free tours, we just relaxed. My dad left the next morning, and I stayed in Munich for a couple more hours waiting for my train.
The whole two weeks were amazing, and I can't say that I ever expected to spend a week in Europe with my dad. I consider myself very lucky to even be able to have the chance to do that. We learned a lot about the dark history of Nazi Germany, saw quite a few century-old palaces from distant empires, enjoyed hours in the sun on the grass, and filled our bellies quite graciously.
My last couple hours by myself in Munich were spent exploring parts of the city we didn't see. My walk ended, however, at the very place where our free tour had once ended. It was a square where Hitler used to hold demonstrations. On one end of the square was a stage, guarded by two massive stone lions. To the left of the stage stands a large cathedral, and to the right stands the government. We were told how the leader used to rally the crowd with powerful words spoken from that very spot on the stage, so I went up to see what it was like for myself. Standing there, it was easy to see how a feeling of power could be absorbed from the pulsing crowd. There wasn't even anybody in the square cheering for me, but it was still evident. I walked down the steps of the stage towards the center of the square and thought about what it must've been like to stand in the crowd during those speeches. The words were presented perfectly, so perfectly that even the opposition bowed to the evil that spoke them. I looked up at the stage, and a song came to my mind. It's a song called "Pain" by Aaron Strumpel. The end of the song says:
It's just around the corner, when every knee will bow,
and the freedom will come.
It's just around the corner, when You'll come in the clouds,
and pain will be no more.
I imagined that the stage was once filled with a voice of pure evil, but someday soon, that evil will be replaced by the Voice of love. Someday soon, that square will be filled again with a crowd, and the people will be bowing. They will be bowing because the Voice will be taking away pain, hurt, loneliness, anger, fear, evil. It won't be just that square either, it will be every square on earth filled with all of us imperfect people. I have hope that that day will be very soon, and when it comes, there will be nothing better.
I left off telling you about my Dad and I in Munich at the concentration camp. We left Munich the next day to head off to Salzburg. I was excited because it was the first time I was going to ride on the high-speed train. I had never been on one before because they are the expensive ones, and I always choose the cheapest option. Luckily, my dad was there, so we took the fast one. We spent one day in Salzburg walking around, sitting in the sun, and mostly just relaxing. That night, we met up with a friend of my Dad's, who he had met during a pilgrimage in Assisi, Italy 5 years ago. This was the fun part of Salzburg, at least for me. I don't know how they did it 5 years ago in Italy, but the only way for the two to communicate to each other was through me. It was my first experience translating for people in an actual conversation. Of course, there were things that I couldn't get from one language to the other, but it was fun anyways. We spent the evening with him, then headed off to Vienna in the morning.
Fun again. We took the high speed train one more time. I think it was traveling around 200 km/h. You can try to figure that out for yourself in mph. Vienna was absolutely beautiful. The weather was magnificent, which made for a couple nice days walking around the city, viewing the palaces, enjoying the parks, and wandering through the market. The city was seriously amazing. If you ever get the chance, you should visit it. After two nights in Vienna, we headed off to my hometown of Klagenfurt.
Klagenfurt is the capital of the state of Carinthia, but it is an awfully small town, meaning there's nothing really to do. I showed him the highlights of the city, and we headed back off to Munich in the morning. Our last day was spent walking around Munich again. This time we took no free tours, we just relaxed. My dad left the next morning, and I stayed in Munich for a couple more hours waiting for my train.
The whole two weeks were amazing, and I can't say that I ever expected to spend a week in Europe with my dad. I consider myself very lucky to even be able to have the chance to do that. We learned a lot about the dark history of Nazi Germany, saw quite a few century-old palaces from distant empires, enjoyed hours in the sun on the grass, and filled our bellies quite graciously.
My last couple hours by myself in Munich were spent exploring parts of the city we didn't see. My walk ended, however, at the very place where our free tour had once ended. It was a square where Hitler used to hold demonstrations. On one end of the square was a stage, guarded by two massive stone lions. To the left of the stage stands a large cathedral, and to the right stands the government. We were told how the leader used to rally the crowd with powerful words spoken from that very spot on the stage, so I went up to see what it was like for myself. Standing there, it was easy to see how a feeling of power could be absorbed from the pulsing crowd. There wasn't even anybody in the square cheering for me, but it was still evident. I walked down the steps of the stage towards the center of the square and thought about what it must've been like to stand in the crowd during those speeches. The words were presented perfectly, so perfectly that even the opposition bowed to the evil that spoke them. I looked up at the stage, and a song came to my mind. It's a song called "Pain" by Aaron Strumpel. The end of the song says:
It's just around the corner, when every knee will bow,
and the freedom will come.
It's just around the corner, when You'll come in the clouds,
and pain will be no more.
I imagined that the stage was once filled with a voice of pure evil, but someday soon, that evil will be replaced by the Voice of love. Someday soon, that square will be filled again with a crowd, and the people will be bowing. They will be bowing because the Voice will be taking away pain, hurt, loneliness, anger, fear, evil. It won't be just that square either, it will be every square on earth filled with all of us imperfect people. I have hope that that day will be very soon, and when it comes, there will be nothing better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)