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Basilica in Esztergom
This is the front of the basilica. The balcony that we walked on wrapped around the aqua dome at the very top! Wow! So a lot has happened since my last entry. A good indication that I have been busy is that it's been since march... The time is going by so fast and I have a hard time believing that it's already the end of May and it's bringing on stress, sadness and also a bit of excitement. Stress since I feel like there is still so much to do, and only a month to get it all done before my parents arrive! Sadness as my year is coming to an end and I have truly grown to love it here and saying goodbye to some amazing friends is going to be extremely hard for me, but also excitement as I'm going to be home at the end of July and see everyone whom I haven't seen in a year!!! So here I go filling you in on my latest adventures over the past 2 1/2 months!
In the middle of March, my host parents took me to Esztergom, a city on the Hungarian/Slovakian border. Esztergom is the home of the largest Basilica in central/eastern europe and yes, it was big. The basilica is right on the river, and
on the other side of the river is Slovakia (I can't remember the name of that town). So we toured around a little bit, climbed to the top of the Basilica and went out on a little balcony that went around the very top part. It was so high and we had to climb so many stairs and when we got out to the top, every thing was fine and calm and you walk around the little dome part and when we got the other side it was extremely windy and this balcony looked like it was going to break. The weather was not so nice that day, so when I took picture they didn't turn out so clear but that's ok! Afterwards, we walked accross the bridge into Slovakia where we ate lunch, the went back home as it started to rain! Yes, we went to Slovakia really only to have lunch because even though it's just accross the river, it's significantly cheaper.
During Easter break an exchange student from Alberta who is on her exchange in Paris right now came to stay with me in Budapest for a week. Easter Sunday was spent at my host
View From Top of the Basilica
This is looking onto the river, and the other side is Slovakia. That is the bridge we walked accross. grandparents house in a hungarian village, and Easter Monday we went to a traditional hungarian village called Hollókő (hall-oh-koo) where every year they hold an easter festival! I was told before we left to bring a change of clothes because there is two very common easter traditions in Hungary. The first is guys will carry around bottles of perfume and spray the girls hair, so while in Kenderes visiting my host grandparents, before we left, sure enough my host grandpa took out the perfume and sprayed about 5 times in all of our hair... it was the worst. The second tradition is guys will also pour water on the girls! After having perfume put in my hair, my host grandpa went to get the water hose but my host mom convinced him not to as we were about to start a 2 hour drive back to Budapest. So monday I brought my change of clothes, but thankfully it wasn't needed! Upon arriving to Hollókő, we walked up a hill to see the Hollókő Castle. The name "Hollókő" translates to "Ravenstone" as there is a legend about this castle that I will insert here:
The Legend Of Hollókő Castle
"According
Climbing the Stairs
This was a good portion of what the stairs were like that took us all the way to the top. For the first part it was normal straight stairs, but then it turned into this. to this ancient legend a warlord captured a beautiful young lady and locked her in her nearby fortress. Unbeknownst to the warlord was that the young woman's nurse was a witch. The witch discovering what had happened, sought the help of the devil himself to free the "damsel in distress". The devil transformed his offspring into the shape of ravens; after rescuing the beauty, the ravens demolished the fortress and constructed Hollókő Castle on top of the cliff above the village, using stories from the ruined fortress. The ravens, as guardians of the beautiful maiden, watched over her as she ruled the area from her castle. The women of Hollókő are the descendants of that beauty, and it is said that they have magical powers over men. What we know forsure is that women are safe while in the vicinity of the castle, since the ravens protect them from unwanted male overtures."
So that's what was written upon entering the castle, personally... I didn't see one raven there. Afterwards, we went down into the town where there were booths set up with lots of traditional hungarian foods, souvenirs etc. We watched some traditional hungarian dancing and listened to some
My Host Mom
She's afraid of heights. traditional music, watched some hungarian ladies make rugs, and looked in a doll museum which was pretty neat! Apparently this village is so traditional, that most of the people who live there wear the traditional hungarian clothes every day... maybe I'll have to go back when a festival isn't happening just to make sure!
The following weekend I went to another city in Hungary called Miskolc where we had another rotary get together. On the Friday, our first night there we went to these famous cave baths in Miskolc where what used to be a cave was turned into a swimming pool by tiling the bottom, building a building around it and putting in clean water etc. The roof was all still stone and there were little areas you could go through and it was just like swimming in a cave... only really modern and clean of course! I never got any pictures on my camera although I do have a pamphlet with pictures in it! It was really cool! The next day we were split up into groups and went to different schools to give presentations to talk about our country, and also our experience so far
Entering into Slovakia
This was a sign on the middle of the bridge. Half of the bridge is Hungary, the other half is Slovakia. in hungary. Afterwards everyone met up where we toured around Miskolc for a while and did some sightseeing, and also saw another castle! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with my so I still have yet to get pictures sent to me which means there wont be any shown in this entry.
The next weekend I went to another hungarian city, Szeged where I stayed with Jessica (exchange student from Ft. McMurray) and I went wakeboarding for the first time! Ok, so I wasn't the best and I maybe got about 30 meters at the farthest before falling over but I had fun, I got to swim in a cold lake, and my arms got a really good workout!
Then the next weekend I went with my host parents and a bunch of their friends to a small village on the Hungarian/Romanian border. My host moms best friend was there and she mentioned to me upon arrival to this town (population 5000) that "now I will see what life is like outside of a city" and when I heard this, I realized she had no idea I was from a small town. Throughout the weekend, there
were small references made to "small town" life and I just laughed to myself. I also heard countless times them talking in hungarian and saying something that sounded like "Laura laura" in the middle of their conversations, when I later learned that "lóra" means to ride a horse. Ló = horse, ra = to ride, or go somewhere. They finally clued me in on this joke and mentioned how funny it would be to see "Laura lóra" as in, see me ride a horse. On the second day, we drove into Romania and went to a city named Arad. We got there, walked down a street, stopped for lunch, walked back up the other side, stopped for coffee then left Romania... I was in the country for all of 3 hours so I didn't see a lot! Where we were in Romania is actually a part that used to belong to Hungary. Hungary used to be huge, and some hungarians feel that the land should still belong to them and often I will hear them remind me that as much as we are in Slovakia, or in Romania it wasn't always like that, and that this land used to belong
to Hungary. It's always a history lesson no matter where I go! The next day we went into a hungarian city near the border called Gyúla (Jew-la) and we visited a village museum with lots of old farm equipment and other old stuff, then around the museum was all farm land where they had horses, cows, a donkey, some goats, deer and a peacock (that seemed random to me). Sure enough, upon arrival to this farm one of my host parents' friends made arrangements for me to ride one of the horses and to finally see "Laura lóra". They were surprised that I actually would, and the lady who made the "small town" comment to me seemed thoroughly disgusted. So I rode the horse in a little circle for my entertainment, and what I think was more for theirs as well. Afterwards, we went over to see the other animals. When we got closer, the smell of poo got much stronger and I continued to walk and the women all stopped and got grossed out until they finally dealt with it. We got there when the same lady says to me "these are cows" in english. She didn't even bother
to teach me the hungarian word, she just figured that I needed to know that those large animals were infact cows. I laughed, told her I knew, then she said "imagine living in a town like this? I don't think I could ever live outside of the city" then made a refernece to the fact that I'm probably not used to seeing animals. This is when I felt the need to break to her that I am infact from an even smaller town that is largly agricultural, and that I saw cows every day on my way to school! I couldn't tell if she was more embarassed or disgusted, but after that the comments stopped. hahaha
The first weekend of May brought not only my birthday, but also a trip to London for 5 days with my host parents! May 5, we caught a 6:00 am flight leaving Budapest and arrived in London where we stayed with 2 hungarian friends of my host parents who have lived there for the last 2 years. The first day, we toured around and saw the London Tower, the Tower Bridge, the London Bridge and toured around that area for a while.
During our stay we visited all the big tourist attractions that London has to offer, as well as Madame Toussauds (I think that's how it's spelt) which is a wax museum! It was an awesome trip although the weather was a little cool and rainy at times!
The 2 middle weekends were spent, one in a town outside of Budapest (Szentendre) for another exchange students' going away party, and the next weekend visiting another exchange student in another hungarian city called Szolnok. Both were so much fun! I'm really going to miss this travelling every weekend next year:P
This last weekend I went with Virág and her class to Tokáj (Toke-eye) which is another small traditional hungarian village well known for it's wine as this last weekend was the Tokáj Wine Festival! We left Friday and went to the festival where they had booths set up for wine tasting, as well as a band was set up with music and space for dancing! Saturday we travelled to another town about an hour outside and visited another castle there, then we went to Winery just outside of Tokáj where we went about 20 ft underground to a
4km long wine cellar! The cellar was about 10 degrees, so even though it was 30 degrees outside we had to carry around sweaters all day just for when we went to this cellar. While there, a lady talked about all the different wines they make, most of which are sweet wines (Tokáj is best known for their sweet white wines). The cellar was made up of long tunnels made out of brick and she explained that a long time ago during the wars, people would hide their wine underground when they discovered that the temperature and the climate was perfect for storing wine! It was fairly humid and the walls were made out of bricks but was covered with a soft, black mold! We went into a small round room where we sat in a circle and we tasted 5 wines and she taught us all about acidity levels, and why you smell the wine and how they were all made and what grapes were used for what wines etc. That night we went to the festival again where it started to rain so heavily that we had to run back to our hostel because there was no cab
company in this village. We got soaked! The next day it rained the entire morning so we stayed in our hostel, but around 1:00 the sky cleared up and the sun was shining so we went canoeing on the river! I was in a canoe with 3 other people, and in total there was 5 full canoes. We all started going upstream for about 10km (I think...) when we decided to turn around about an hour later. My group and another canoe full of people were way ahead of everyone else (we were the strongest😉) when all of a sudden clouds started coming over the hills next to the river and the sky turned black. We knew it was going to rain so we started trying to paddle faster because there had been a lot of thunder and lightning storms as well that weekend and we didn't really want to be on the water with metal paddles in our hands! So we started paddling faster even though we had about half an hour to go until we would get back to our dock. Sure enough it started to rain, and it started to rain HARD! Within 2 minutes, there was
hail coming down and because the weather was so nice at the beginning, I was wearing a tank top, shorts and a life jacket so the hail hurt and we were stuck on the water because there was no place to get out as the banks were so high. We tried putting our paddles over our head to protect our faces and such from the hail and it lasted only for a few minutes, then we started going again when sure enough, it started thundering and lightning lots. Then the wind came, and it pushed against us so the water started going in the opposite direction so even though we paddled fast, we couldn't get too far. Then about 200 meters ahead of us we saw a whirlwind/tornado going accross the water and were like AHHH:O At this point, it was only us and the other canoe, and we didn't even know where the others were because they were so far behind. The wind managed to settle down a little bit, however the rain kept coming and so did the thunder and lightning. It was a huge relief to get back to our dock and get the metal out of
our hands and dry off inside our hostel! As much as it was a bit scary at the time, for my first canoeing trip, I would have to say it couldn't have been any better!😊 The next morning we went on a 20km bike ride. We left our hostel and started on the highway for the first 3km, then we went on a trail where we passed 2 small villages and we rested at an earth castle. A long time ago, they built earth castles which, when your standing on the ground look just like a grassy hill, but when you climb the hill you can see that it's hollowed out and that people used to rest in there and hide their weapons there. I've been told that when you fly over Hungary you can see these from the sky, but when on the ground you would never know unless you actually climbed up. After resting for about half an hour, we biked the 10km back to our hostel, had lunch and came back to Budapest!
So that is the summary of my last 2 1/2 months! I have been so busy and June is also full! I
have plans to go to Spain with some other exchange students from June 10-20 which I am really excited about! The end of my exchange is going to come so fast!
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