August 17
Here is Robbia and Gerhard. Robbia helps Gerhard out (aka. does all the cooking and cleaning) and she is the hardest worker I have ever met and an incredibly sweet lady!
I sat down and took out the note Kimberly gave me when I walked out of the treehouse. She woke up with me at 7:30 to say goodbye.
"In order to be, you must do. All great things start from adventure, that one dream, that one idea, that one step. To adventure is to find yourself, to adventure is to have a story at the end of all this.
The places you see, the things you make and the people you meet will fuel you forever..."
She wrote this on the back of the note and it describes perfectly our week at Grünau.
No longer do I long looking out the window because I am living the dream I have always wanted.
Traveling from place to place meeting new people and not really having a destination. I finally am traveling the world out of a backpack. I finally bought a one way ticket to a place i have never been. I finally have stepped out of my comfort zone. Many things I have on my bucket list, I have finally checked off. I sit on this train looking out the window, listening to my music or talking to a stranger, so happy with my decision to travel. It is a pretty awesome feeling!
I had to switch trains 2 times to actually get to Budapest. When I switched the first time, there were these guys drinking beer (it was 9am) and playing all the music I had listened to with Marike and her friends! They were singing so loud and dancing around the train and falling over. It was cracking me up. It was one of those things though that since I was by myself it was awkward laughing at them so I had to try hard. It made me excited to go back to Denmark :)
The next train I sat next to a lady from Moscow, Russia. Her name was Natalia and she was 67 and just retired from being an English teacher. She was such a lovely lady and I really enjoyed my conversation with her. I found it really interesting how cultures are so different and you can get a sense of their values from the start of your conversation.
For example, I have noticed when I begin talking with anyone from Scandinavia one of the first few questions is oriented around career or what you went to school for. (Which i really don't like because I don't even know. I end up just putting my "cAreer" in easier terms so I don't have to explain forever. I say social work. Haha)
Whereas Natalia's first question was "are you married" and when I said no and laughed, she then asked "do you have a lover?" (Which I didn't like either) haha
It is so intriguing to see these cultural differences.
We had very great conversations and she bases her life soley around love and God. One of the next questions was "Do you people in America believe in a sort of God"? It was sweet.
She told me she was married but her husband left her because he liked other women. She said all she wants in life is a daughter and granddaughter and that she had an abortion when we was younger and "God has punished me for it"
She was traveling with a student of hers and the students mom. She said she was so grateful when they invited her on this weeks vacation because she doesn't do things like this alone. Although she said it had been so hard on her body and her knees so this will be her last trip. That broke my heart to hear. She told me what I am doing while I am young is amazing because someday I won't be able to.
We had quite a deep and saddening conversation for the 20 min we talked but I once said "everything happens for a reason" and she kept repeating it and said how much she likes that saying.
She had to get off so we hugged goodbye and she said "God Bless" and she said she wishes she had a daughter like me. It was quite sweet but really made me sad for her.
I fell asleep and woke up in Budapest 3 hours later.
I stepped off the train and all my great thoughts of traveling quickly shot down the drain. I had no clue what I was doing there and really I just wanted to hop back on a train and cancel my flight. I instantly felt nervous and not secure. I knew I looked scared so I really made myself concentrate on looking confident.
There were all these men standing there right when we stepped off the train with "taxi" badges. I was watching them and they would just eye women up and down until they were out of sight. I just felt the eyes on me and hated every second of walking through the train station. It was dirty, smelled like pee, and pigeons were flying everywhere inside. Icky!
I made it outside as soon as I could and went to buy a ticket to the metro to get to my hostel but I am an idiot and tried to pay with euros. Whoops. It shows how much I know about this city.
I ended up having to go back inside and waited in the ATM line for 45 minutes. I was just people watching and watching these taxi drivers just linger and stare at people. I later learned to never get in a taxi here (only if your hostel calls a company) because nothing good happens from it. So scary!!
After sweating my butt off waiting for the ATM, listening to an
security guard yell at tourists in hungarian, I finally got my ticket, got on the metro, and made it to my hostel.
I was sitting in the lobby, using wifi, figuring out my plan tomorrow with Maren. I was starving and figured I should go walk around since I was going to be in the city for no longer than 18 hours. I wasn't going to go far because I was a bit scared to be alone.
This boy came up to me in the lobby and asked if he could use my wifi password. We got talking and I said I was from Wisconsin (you can spot an American from miles away). Turns out he went to UW-Madison. Such a freaky small world.
We ended up walking around the city together and of course I saw an outdoor market when I arrived so we shopped around there for a while. We ended up sitting and having a few beers at this outdoor venue and listened to this awesome guy sing and play the guitar. It was nice we had a ton to talk about, both having gone to school at Madison. It was fun to hear his stories and travel experiences.
We walked to the Széchenyi Chain Bridge while the sun was setting and had a beautiful view of the castles in the distance (Iglesia de Matias and Palacio Real).
I started to have a much better view and opinion of the city after tonight. I feel bad I didn't give it more of a chance at first. It's a very beautiful city!
We both are feeling a bit tight on money so we just wanted to find a cheap local place to eat. We ended up walking past another band with grills and all this yummy stif fry food. We figured it would be relatively cheap and the beer was pretty reasonable so we decided on this. Evan ordered first and really didn't have a say with what he wanted and we were struggling to communicate with the guy. His plate turned out to be 4,000 forint ($18) for not that much food. We ended up just splitting it and filled up on beer. We sat around listening to the band and chatting. It turned out to be a much better day than I was expecting it to be.
We went back to our hostel and played a few card games. I felt like a Debbie downer but I really had no desire to go out. Everyone at the hostel was at the bar all fancied up, going out and it was midnight.
I went to bed shortly after. I was in a room with 5 other boys, the room was probably 75 degrees (felt like 100) and they didn't get home until 6:30 am, just hammered. It was pretty funny.
I felt great waking up at 8:30 am, knowing those boys will probably be sleeping all day. It's weird how we shared a room and I never met them/ don't even know what they look like.
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