Katy Ettinger- July 9-10

This weekend was designated for individual trips, so a group of 10 of us went to Budapest. We took an almost 8 hour bus ride and late Friday night we got into the city, found our hostel, and tried to get some sleep that night so we could hit the ground running Saturday morning. The woman that ran the hostel suggested (in barely any English) a free walking tour of the city. We ended up splitting the group, but the 5 of us from OSU made it to the tour just in time. Good thing we did! The tour guide (Adam) was great and really knowledgeable. We saw St. Stephen's Basilica, the Freedom Square, and the Parliament building. We decided to walk around after that and found a Hare Krishna festival happening in one of the town squares. Definitely a funny sight in the middle of a hoard of tourists, but it was interesting to see.

After an unexpectedly expensive lunch, we tried to find the National Museum. We thought was had found it, and bought tickets, only to quickly realize we were in the Applied Arts Museum. Not exactly what the guys (or I) was looking for. Chris continued on to the National Museum by himself after that - he said it was actually really cool - and we went out to grab some gyros for dinner afterwards. We ran in to an Irish guy that had just checked into our hostel and invited him to come out with us that night. We were excited to see the city at night, and it more than lived up to our expectations. We must have walked at least 3 miles that night, but we crossed the bridge into Buda and climbed to the top of an overlook for great views of the city. We somehow were able to find the Chain bridge and walked back over the Pest across that famous monument. It was a long walk back to the hostel, but our senses of direction were somewhat miraculous that night. Never used a map!

Sunday was much less exciting. We had another 8 hour us ride to look forward to in the morning. Through some confusion and a sold-out food stand, none of us were able to get any food all day. We grabbed (multiple) slices of pizza in Prague before heading back to the dorm to relax. It's surprising how much an all-day bus ride can take it out of you. We decided on a relaxing night in, maybe even to get a little homework done...