Touristing Times

Szia buds.
In the past two days, I have learnt two things. One, that there is nothing wrong with the Hungarian language but there is something wrong with my phrasebook, because, as you may have noticed from the first word of this entry, there are Hungarian words for 'Hello' and 'Goodbye'. Two, I'm moving to Budapest.

I'm not sure when I'll do this, but preferably before I turn thirty, and I probably won't be able to live here very long as I'm a solid sixth generation New Zealander on all sides thanks to sixteen unpatriotic immigrant great-great-grandparents, which means a maximum two year visa. However, I know I am going to do this, because even though I've only been here 4 nights, I've fallen in love with this city.

And by love, I mean LOVE. You may agree with me that this word is so overused these days. I mean, people can say they love their new hairclip because it has sparkles on it. I honestly think they should invent a new word to represent love of possessions. Love, is a word meant for people, places and passions. That's what I think.

So yes, I've had a pretty action-packed last two days, and two pretty lazy last nights. Yes I know, I'm in Budapest and should be experiencing the awesome nightlife, but everyday by sunset, I'm always really tired. In the past three nights, I've watched 'Toy Story 3' twice, I watched the shitty American remake of 'Death at a Funeral' (it sucks), I've watched 'Public Enemies', 'Revolutionary Road' and just now, 'Inglourious Basterds'. Not that these all aren't very good movies, but I know I should go out. Tomorrow however, I'm not having a lazy night. Tomorrow night, I'm going to a dance show at the Opera house. I'm not sure what kind of dancing it is as the ticket seller's English was only so good, but I don't care. The tickets were stupidly cheap too. Something around five euros.

However, my days have been epic. Yesterday, we kicked it off with a free walking tour where the guides work off tips, however, the downside of these tours, is that you feel obligated to tip. The whole reason for me doing the tour anyway was to learn some Hungarian history so that I wouldn't go to a place and not know what it was about. So we started at St Stephan's Basilica, a rather stunning Cathedral in the centre of Budapest. We didn't go inside but (conspicuously because I hate looking like a tourist) got some pictures. St Stephan by the way, was the first Christian King of Hungary. The people here seem to like him, kind of in the same way the Jews like Moses, if you catch my drift.

So from there, we headed over to the hilly, but beautiful other side of the city on Buda. (They used to be two cities, Pest and Buda, divided by the river. I might add that it was while we were in Buda that I decided to move here). Anyway, we walked up a hill, which I was not very happy about, learnt heaps of Hungarian history on the way and ended up seeing Buda Castle (outside), learnt about the caves and baths, and here's something interesting, in 50 years, Hungary will be very rich because there's so much water underground. so people, when you find that the world's going to hell from lack of water, then would be the time to move to Hungary. We finished the tour right next to Walt Disney's inspiration. The castle you see on a blue background before every Disney movie. Well it's not actually a castle, as it is way WAY too small, very adorable though.

So after the tour, where I tipped, and had some places marked on the map by our lovely tour-guide, we backtracked to the caves and adventured through perhaps the most creepy labyrinth of all time (creepier than the Faun's one because it's underground and you can't get through without a lantern, and creepier than David Bowie's because the only thing creepy in that movie was the Goblin King's sadistic obsession with that girl). It was very cool. Dark, drum beats coming from hidden speakers, carvings on the wall of animal-man hybrids.

So that concludes day one, and believe it or not, day two required even more walking. First, we went to the Opera house to get tickets to whatever was on, as we were told by our tour guide that it was easy to get cheap, last minute tickets to stuff, and there was always something on, from there, we went back to St Stephan's Basilica, this time going inside. I have to admit that it's not quite as stunning as the Berlin Cathedral, however, this one housed the mummified hand of St Stephan, so that earns it some points, and if you'd never been to a European Cathedral in your life, you'd probably think you'd died and gone to heaven walking in there, it may just be the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen.

Then nerdy, historian Kate took over my body and decided that we would hit the museums, so from the Basilica we went to the 'House of Terror'. I know it sound's like some kind of funfair ride, but it's actually a museum about Nazi and Communist Hungary. It was a prison (there are cells down in the basement. I stood in some of them and imagined how insane I'd become living there for a few months, being tortured in the Commie soldiers' spare time and knowing I was going to die). So I wandered around the creepy basement, saw the cells, torture rooms, execution rooms, and lots of video footage of survivors being interviewed. On the upper floors it was equally depressing but not as scary. We learnt stuff needless to say, for instance, I learnt to hate Nazi's and Communists. LIBERAL THINKERS FOREVER! INDIVIDUALISM! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! etc etc.

Anyway, I think my Dad would really find that museum interesting, him being a bit of a war-history buff and all. So from there, we went to see the Art Gallery, and saw a bunch of Renaissance art, mostly involving Biblical characters or Greek gods or heroes. I know it's not a very enthusiastic description, but I did really enjoy myself. We finished the day with Chinese food and 'Inglourious Basterds' (inspired by our House of Terror trip).

Excellent fun.
Sziasztok bros.
When I move to Budapest, I'll send you a bottle of water every week in the post. Just give me your address.

Budapest Beginnings.

Normally, I would begin this post with the Hungarian word for hello or welcome or something, but I have searched and searched through my phrasebook, and I swear to God, there is no Hungarian word for Hello. What the hell? But honestly, Hungarian is a strange language because there's no other language in the world like it, except Finnish, only slightly.

So yes, I'm in Hungary, and what a voyage it was getting here. I stayed on in Krakow for a couple of nights before coming here, because otherwise I would have been awake about 26 hours. The train trip from Poznan to Krakow was exhausting, and it took all day. I mean it, I was up at 7am, got on the train about 10am. So that should mean I get off in Krakow about 5pm right, since it's a seven hour train trip. Wrong, because I did something really really dumb. I got off at Katowice, an hour early. I don't want to say it's not my fault, because it totally was, but everyone else was getting off and there was no direct signage of where we were. So I got off, and by the time I realised where I was, the train had gone.

Needless to say I was pretty annoyed at myself, but I got over it because the train from Katowice to Krakow was only about 7 zloty (pronounced: zwoh-tee), and that's about 3 dollars. It's stupidly cheap.

And it's funny how fate works, because I made a new friend on that later train. His name's Marek, he's 22, he works in construction and he's moving to Poznan in three weeks. Now it's interesting how I could learn all of that about him because he barely spoke a word of English. We drew pictures, we showed each other photographs, and heavily relied on the fact that we could understand each others languages better than we could speak it. Then when we got off the train, he pointed me in the direction of the city centre, and we parted. I miss him already.

I was talking about this on skype with my best friend. She believes we were destined to meet and should get married. She went to an all girls school, so she doesn't really understand the concept of friendship without romance. Sorry Miro, if you're reading this but it's the truth. I went to an all girls school too, and to this day I still don't have many male friends, I've never had a boyfriend, unless you count the two I had (at the same time) when I was at kindergarten. Their names were Royce and Duncan, and they kept getting into fights over me. But despite my male-less teenagehood, I'm not really that bad at socialising with guys.

I blame the media actually, because in every TV show and every movie they can't seem to put together a platonic friendship between a boy and a girl, unless they're related, or one of them is gay, and so all those kids who go to single-sex schools think that life is really like that.

So anyway, back to the journey. I stayed in Krakow for two nights. I don't need to tell you again how magical the city is... but it's magical. Then, I got on a bus to Budapest. It was seven hours, we had two pit stops, and while we drove through such magnificent Slovakian countryside, homesickness, my mortal enemy, attacked me and wouldn't go away. I really hate that stupid thing.

But eventually, I got to Budapest, and now I've been here two days. I haven't done anything touristy yet. Don't judge me, I've got a whole week and I'm waiting for my Australian friend to get here from Prague. I don't want to do anything without her, not because I'm pathetic and can't do anything myself, but... actually that probably is the reason.

However, I've had a good time still, just doing random exploring, and I've met the coolest people. There were two Australian backpackers at the hostel when I got there and we talked. They left yesterday. I met and hung out with this really cool American girl (she's not one of the loud obnoxious ones, I have a theory that most of those types of Americans don't leave America much), and one of the hostel workers is probably one of the most funny and fascinating men I've ever met. He was an extra on 'Titanic'. I'm serious. I didn't believe him at first but he actually looks familiar and he knew all this stuff about the movie while it was in production. He actually hung out with Leo DiCaprio. He has this idea for a movie called "Jesus' Revenge". The title's pretty self-explanatory, but the basic punchline of the story is, Jesus is back, and he's pissed, so he goes off and kills all the terrorists and destroys America. I really think that since I'm probably going into the film business later in life, I'm going to have to make that film.

So that night was fun, we hung out. We watched 'Seven Pounds' with Will Smith. If you haven't seen that movie, I seriously recommend you do. It's really sad and quite intense, but beautiful. We also watched 'Grand Torino'. I think that no matter how old Clint Eastwood gets, he'll still be kickass.

So as I come to the end of my post, I would love to finish this with the Hungarian word for Goodbye, but that doesn't seem to be in my phrasebook either. I'm going to have to write a strongly worded letter to the Lonely Planet guys.
So, later homies.
That's as Hungarian as it gets.

Young and Youthful

Hello people.

About 15 minutes ago, I was on Facebook. I saw all these links my friends had posted to their blogs, and made the impulsive decision to create a blog.

Impulse seems to rule everything I do. It's the reason I got a Facebook account, the reason I decided to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 for the second time back in November (best movie ever by the way). It's also the reason that I'm living in Poland for four months of teaching. Kind of like a productive gap year.

You see, two years ago, I was a little baby sixteen year old, and my idea was that after school, I would go to University, get a double degree in History and Anthropology, and become a Journalist. Anyway, it was a Wednesday, and they were doing a career seminar in the Library. I didn't feel much like going to my elective, where there were way too many Year 9s, so even though the idea of a year overseas wasn't something I was much interested in, I went anyway. There were no Year 9s in the Library.

And one hour later, I decided that I was going to Poland. That nothing in the world would stop me from doing it, that that afternoon, I went to the Bookshop that my parents own, and I told them I was going to Poland... They laughed. They didn't believe I'd do it. I showed them.

Months passed, and I didn't sway from the idea. I didn't really want to go to University, not right after High School anyway. I was seduced by what Poland had to offer. Although at that point, I still knew nothing about the country. In my mind, I imagined it might be something like 'the Sound of Music', even though it's set in a completely different country, even though it's not 1936, even though I'm one of those unfortunate people who can't sing to save my life, despite the fact that my greatest wish is for life to be like a musical.

I couldn't wait, I wanted to go to Poland then and there, and not wait another one-and-a-half years to finish High School and deal with a pile of stress over NCEA and UE and all that crap. But I waited, because I had no other choice. I told everyone I knew that I was going to Poland, and it makes my head spin how many times I was asked "why Poland?" Well why not Poland? Just because no one ever thinks of it when they think Europe. They think of Germany or France or Spain. Someone even had the nerve to ask "what's in Poland?" Obviously they've never been there. Of course, hypocritical me at that point knew nothing of Poland despite my determination to go there, so all I could answer with was "the biggest statue of Jesus in the world". Turns out all the locals hate that statue. They think it's the tackiest thing in the world although I personally think it's pretty cool.

And so 2010 was the year to plan. I applied to Lattitude Global Volunteering. I had the interview. I was accepted. Then it was a matter of waiting for my placement details. There was an orientation meeting. I met the other NZ volunteers destined for Poland like myself. I learnt of my placement. I was in Poznan, an attractive city, just over the border from Berlin. I was to teach at a semi-private Primary and lower Secondary School built just after Poland was freed from their Communist oppressors. I wrote to the school and from them, learnt who my host family were to be. I wrote to my host family. It turned out that they were the most perfect people in the world for me, and in February 2011, I left the Land of the Long White Cloud, for Poland.

Two months have past and my Polish is still very limited. I crave a native English speaker. I'm at the point where I'd even take a loud obnoxious American who keeps complaining about how much better it is in "the greatest country in the world". But instead, I met a cool American back in a hostel in Krakow who's lived in Poland for eight years and cooked us all this free food on the BBQ.

At this point, I haven't done as much travelling as I should have, but you have to understand that when I got there it was very VERY cold. We're talking minus 20 degrees on a daily basis. Slowly, the weather got better, and now, it's even green and pretty. 20 degrees everyday. So far in Poland, I've been to Wroclaw (pronounced Vroh-tswaav) and Krakow (the only city in the world I've been to that I would describe as magical). I also went to Berlin and regretted that I only had 2 days there, because you need a lifetime to see it all.

And now I'm in Budapest for my Easter break. I'll tell you what it's like later when I've seen more of it, but the hostel's pretty cool, though a bit small and crowded, and they overbooked so they should be giving some people the boot soon. Not me though, I booked 3 weeks ago.

And so to conclude, because I have been talking way too long, I love Poland. Homesickness has been a bitch to me, but I try and ignore her. Maybe one day, she'll learn to love it here as I do. I love my adorable students, my host family, the other volunteers, the woman at the bakery near the school. Even the random strangers I meet from time to time. I mean, any of you who read this has to admit that what I'm doing is cool, compared to going straight to University and waiting until you're old and boring before you travel.

Youth is for being young. I'll study next year.
Do Widzenia (Polish for goodbye).