"So....where did they hide the castle?!"

Schizophrenic castles, Turkish baths, crazy girls, goulash, Roman ruins, 1000 year old hands....yeah, Budapest is cool.

On Thursday night, Chen, Caitlin, Keshia, and I set out for our favorite train station (well, at least, the one place in Venice that we spend the most time at) after scarfing down half a dinner at the mensa and running straight across San Servolo to catch the vaporetto as it was pulling away. That's when I realized I very intelligently forgot to pack socks. Good thing I brought my Reefs with me. On the plus side, when we got to the train station we had enough time to walk around a bit outside before the train left. Luckily, Chen, Keshia, and I had our own compartment, and Caitlin was a few compartments down from us in the same car. We finally settled down around 11pm, and I was just getting to sleep when we heard a knock on the door, followed by, "PASSPORT CONTROL!" The three of us fish through our stuff, find our passports, and I'm the first one to hand mine to the border patrolman. He looked, stamped, and grabbed Keshia's, where he did the same thing. Then Chen's turn came. And he looked. And looked. And asked for a secondary ID. And consulted his book. Finally he told us that Israeli passports are easily forged, stamped it anyway, handed it back, and left us in peace. We slept until at 3:15 we again heard "PASSPORT CONTROL!" Same situation. Fumble through the bags, American passports first, problem with the Israeli one. Again at 4, 6, 6:30, and the last time was at 7:30. By the time they finally left us alone, I was livid, but snuggled back up under the blanket for a catnap since we weren't scheduled to arrive in Budapest until 11. No such luck. An hour later, our compartment was opened yet again, this time by the conductor, who said in a rather cheerful voice "dormire e finito!" And with that, he took away our sheets and pillows, and left behind three sleepy, rather confused girls. Then Caitlin came in and started singing, which is never a good thing to do to me when I'm angry and sleep-deprived. I take no responsibility for my actions when I am in such a state. When we finally got to our hostel in Budapest, I was exhausted and would've liked nothing more than to take a nice long shower and a nap, but we couldn't sleep away our first day, so we met up with Caitlin (who was staying somewhere else) and went to Castle Hill. Our first stop was of course for food, because by this time we had been up for countless hours and hadn't had anything to eat since the half of dinner we ate in 5 minutes the night before. Chen, Keshia, and I all tried goulash, which I quickly discovered is my new favorite kind of soup. It's probably very fattening, but it's delicious (the two could be related). When we reached the top of Castle Hill, the first thing we saw was a big church, and it took us a while to discover that it was Matthias Church, started in the 12th century and finished in the 19th. Then we stumbled upon a fortress wall with pretty views, which we found out later was the Fishermen's Bastion (all these places were in my Lonely Planet guidebook, but they weren't actually labelled so it was hard to know what we were looking at). When we finally discovered that the "castle" was an unimpressive building now housing a modern art exhibit, we wandered down to the Danube and walked back over to the Pest side of Budapest. We ate dinner at a place called Menza, which was amazing. I had a steak with two eggs and french fries, and it made my belly smile.

The next morning Chen, Keshia, and I met up with Caitlin at St. Stephen's Basilica, which is enormous. My favorite thing about this church by far was the fact that they had St. Stephen's 1000 year old hand enshrined there. Then we walked to Varosliget (the city park), and on the way, Chen and Keshia decided to climb all over some statue. It was pretty funny because the base was taller than Chen is. I'm still not sure how she made it up there. In the park, the first thing we saw was Vajdahunyad Var-- the schizophrenic castle. It's called that because it was built in four or five different vastly different architectural styles (Tudor and Gothic are two of them). It's a gorgeous castle, complete with a moat and its own lake where people go sailing in the summertime. On the far side of the park was the Budapest zoo, so the four of us amused ourselves for several hours with that. Next door was Szechenyi Furdo-- some of the Turkish baths. Keshia, Caitlin, and I spent a too-short hour in the thermal spa while Chen walked around outside. When we came out, we were wrinkled and rather relaxed. We found a little restaurant for dinner, where I ate a milanesa (it wasn't quite up to Lelo's or mom's standards, but it was still a milanesa), and then we walked around outside. We came across the city's Jewish quarter and the rather imposing synagogue in the process. After reaching the Danube, we turned around and went back to the hostel for the night.

On Sunday morning, the four of us took the suburban railway to Aquincumi, which is the most complete ruins of a second century Roman civilian town left in Hungary. It was pretty cool- basically, it was a playground for big kids. Who can resist climbing all over ruins and taking awesome pictures? We spent a good portion of the morning there, and after lunch, Chen, Keshia and I went to Vaci utca, the main shopping street, in the hopes of finding something cool to bring home (but unfortunately I didn't have much luck with that). I did see an apron with the goulash recipe on it, but it wasn't very well made, and it wasn't cheap either. Our train left Budapest at 5pm, and the trip back was rather similar to the trip there-- we got our own compartment again, and were also woken up 6 times for passport control. So now I have 12 useless stamps in a passport that already has stamps on top of old ones. We arrived in Venice at 7:15 in the morning, exhausted, hungry, and grimy, and had to shower quickly and get to class by 11. That was fun. Here are the pictures from the weekend:

http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015590&l=2989a&id=3901306

http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015591&l=774db&id=3901306


I got back my two midterms (from Italian and Representing Renaissance Venice), and I did pretty well so I'm happy. I've got two papers to write before I leave with Tia on Friday for Spanish Guy, a response paper to write for Massimo, and I have to pick a topic for my final paper (8-10 pages) for Representing Renaissance Venice. I don't think that these professors really understand what "midterm break" means. Clearly, in their vocabularies, "break" means "assign more work." At least I've got these first two days to get it all done, and hopefully to find a summer job too.

In other random news that I feel is important to share, there was a bomb at Williams last weekend. Apparently it was three Williams students, who, according to the e-mail, "were curious as to such a device." They lit it and fortunately it failed, so no one was hurt. They're going to court sometime over the summer for delinquence and making a weapon, but my favorite part was that they "may or may not be suspended from the college." So basically you can set a bomb off at Williams and still only get a slap on the wrist from administration. That amazes me. That school is absolutely rediculous. I'm so glad my time there is almost over.

Speaking of Williams, I enrolled in classes for next semester. I'm currently in Psychology 401 Senior Seminar, Psychology 332 Cognitive Development, Psychology 352 Clinical and Community Psychology (my personal favorite), and History 225 The Middle Ages (because Professor Goldberg is my favorite teacher ever and I would take any class taught by him because he can make absolutely anything fascinating).

Well, spring break has officially started, and I've got tons of work/packing/laundry to do. So of course I'm going to enjoy the fact that I am roommate-less for tonight, and I'm going to have a gloriously long and uninterrupted sleep. Good night!