Budapest Day 2!

I woke up early (thanks to the sun not by choice) and had a small breakfast at the hostel consisting of cereal and toast (what is this thing called toast? You put bread in a small machine and it comes out crispy and brown?!) before heading out  to the Terror Museum. The museum opened at 10am and I thought I would just start there being able to go visit other museums as well. Well, when you go visit non-Balkan countries there are apparently these things called crowds and lines. Yes, for the first time EVER since I started this journey, there were not only more than one other person in the museum, but there was also a line to get in! We’ll we all waited to get in as I took a few pictures of the museum itself and the surroundings. It felt a bit wrong to take a smiling “Look I’m in Budapest!” picture in front of the museum, but the road was so pretty!

The Terror Museum is located in the old “House of Loyalty” of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party (the Nazis) and then the communist secret police headquarters. “In the cellar of the ‘House of Loyalty.’ Members of the Arrow Cross tortured and killed hundreds of people. In expectation of Hitler’s secret weapon, teenage boys were drafted for useless battles on the Nazi side and innocent Jews were plunged into the icy Danube.” Then the Hungarian Communist Secret police took over the building in 1945, “they reduced people to subjects: thousands of citizens feared them, and they in turn, feared each other. If ordered so, they killed without hesitation, or on the strength of confessions exhorted during brutal interrogations, they sent their victims to the gallows, to prisons, and labor camps.” The communist regime “seized, mistreated, or crippled one person from every third family.” (These are quotes from the booklet they give you at the entrance.) I also essentially have a small book about the Terror in Hungary that I think I will be putting in sheet protectors and placing in my classroom. The first two floors were interesting, but I felt they were a bit revisionist compared to what I had heard about the Hungarian communists in my history classes, but they claimed (and since this is the domestic view, it does deserve some credit) that the Nazi’s and Communists were both unwelcome occupiers who killed indiscriminately during the reign. And the Hungarians never wanted or supported them in any way, ever. (This is the part I have a problem with.)

But the cellar. Man, I’m getting chills and tearing up just trying to write about this. There is something different between going to a memorial museum and being in the place where they killed people that is just chilling and almost indescribable. When I got down into the cellar, I walked past a few rooms, just thinking “man, they kept people in here.” But then there was one room that was so tiny that you could only stand. I walked in, turned around and realized I barely fit. Then it hit me. They used this room for torture. They shoved grown men in here. They starved people in here. The drains in the floor were more than likely not for water. And then I had to get out of that room. The realization that I was standing where someone had died, more than likely for nothing- a wrong word said or not believing in the party line, or just happening to have been born Jewish. That there are things that I have said that if I were born under a communist regime that would have gotten me killed, or at the very least sent to a labor camp. The rest of the time in the museum was just chilling- there was a padded room that I walked into that was so chilling, I had to leave rather quickly. There was the room where they hung people. There was the room with the torture devices. Then there was the memorial room- with candles flickering and pictures and crosses. I’m not sure I can explain how different it is to visit a memorial house, rather than the place they actually killed people in. I’m not sure you will be able to understand until you stand there and have that realization yourself.

After this chilling start to my day, I went and got deliciously recommended (AKA they gave me a discount card) macaroons. One with chocolate and one with caramel. Oh so good!  It’s called La Delizia, and is located really close to the terror museum. Put this place on your list if you are going to Budapest go here for a yummy snack. A bit on the pricy side, but they were the first cookie shop in Budapest. After this, I went to the National History Museum. Where, apparently, relics of the past 1100 years fill up the four floors of the museum. There was the St. Stephen’s Coronation Robe (supposedly the most valuable…) and is one of the oldest examples of European Embroidery in the world. But for me, besides the general history of the museum, the best part/coolest part was Beethoven’s piano. No joke, they had his piano that he gave to  Listz (most influential Hungarian composer of the 19^th century, celebrated pianist, outstanding conductor of his day). It was just cool to see this piece of history. There were a bunch of other random things in there from way back to the Ottomans/Austrian-Hungarian empire/ communist times. It was neat. There was some interesting things in there, that you might not see elsewhere.

I was able to get some postcard here and the lady said the post office located in front of the Nugati train station would still be open. Considering that I really like to send postcards from the country I live in, it was important to me to try to find this place. And since everything would be open tomorrow, this would be fine, I had plenty of time (note- the directions and happy go lucky foreshadowing!) So I hop on the metro and get out at Nugati. Then I cross the street and look for the post office. It is no where to be found. So, I continue looking down a few of the side streets figuring maybe across means beside. No luck, after about 10 minutes I give up and decided to go to the Fine Arts Museum. They had an interesting looking exhibit “The birth of Art Photography” going on. And I got a discount. I got to walk past Hero’s Square (There is the Archangel Gabriel- who told the first king he would be king-the 7 tribal  leaders who formed the Hungarian empire, 14 statues of kings and famous people, war/peace/wealth/labor grace the outer edges.) on my way to the museum. The museum had three different exhibits (and a MAP!!!!). They only hosted foreign art there, but man there were some good paintings. A lot of “Madonna and Child” and “saints” and “kings” and oh-dear-God-the same old same old things that people painted. I am not a big people person in paintings- give me scenery all the time and I will be happy. Also no still lives of dead animals, kind of disgusting! But there were some amazing paintings in there. The photography exhibit = not as cool as it sounded. It focused on the very beginning of photography as it became more widespread and less regulated to studios. And it told this history of photography, but without any really cool photographs that I was hoping for. The mummy exhibit was really interesting- they CAT scanned mummies to show a 3-D version of the mummies as well as the normal x-rays. They also commented about testing the mummies to make sure that we wouldn’t get sick, we wouldn’t by the way.

After leaving this museum, in which I had spent about 2 hours or so, I walked across the Hero’s Square and went to the other random museum there, since I was already here and wouldn’t make it back to the other museums before they closed. There was an exhibit my this Serbian lady about “8 lessons on emptiness” which I thought was to be a photography exhibit, but turned out to be a video installation that lasted about 30 minutes or more. Not as cool as it originally looked. Mostly because everything in the museum was SUPER modern- the modern where no one understands but the artist, and then sometimes not even them. The Serbian artist, Marina Abramovic, created this work in 2008 in Laos with children representing the military. The other exhibit was “European Travellers: Art from Cluj Today.” Cluj is apparently a region in Romania where a new art scene has taken over since 2000. But it is all really modern and new age, so not my thing. So after quickly walking through both of these, I decided to go check out the castle.

No joke, there is a castle in the middle of the city. It even used to have a moat! Basically I was able to take a bunch of pictures and walk around the courtyard, but everything else was closed, the moat was even dried up. (Although apparently you can have a wedding there- as one was going on.) Then I wondered into a random concert/police showcase. There were fire trucks, bomb squads, police, etc. there showing the people what they regularly did/ the equipment they used. Kind of random. But the park was pretty.

Then I hopped back on the metro to go back to the hostel to quickly rinse off before going to the folklore performance and dinner cruise. But I met up with another girl at the hostel, Claire, who decided to go with me! So off we set to find the place. We got there right on time only to discover that the folk performance was cancelled. Sad face. We still decided to do the river cruise, because why not? But this meant we had about 2 hours to kill in down town Budapest. We ended up walking around, looking at souvenirs (who knew this would come in handy tomorrow) and then getting a slushy. We just sat and drank our slushy and just chatted. It’s always nice to get to know someone, even if just for a bit. Then we headed back to the dinner cruise. Which, I do not recommend. You don’t really get to see a lot of the city, as it is only 1.5 hours long and dinner takes about that long. But we did get free wine and champagne, and really delicious food! It was a really awkward dinner, as they placed us with others, but they only spoke Spanish. So basically Claire and I talked to each other with a little bit of her speaking to them in Spanish as they spoke to each other. After dinner, we went up and watched part of the city go by as we talked about how we never would have guessed that we would be in Budapest at this point last year. After the cruise we waited about 20-30 minutes for a tram that was supposed to still be running before giving up and just walking the 20 minutes back to the hostel. Where a much awaited shower and sleep were necessary!

So- you will now notice that the blogs come with no pictures. I have reached the limit on pictures allowed on this google account. So until I find something else that I can use, I hear by will be providing you with links to the Facebook Page of Travel By Cassidy where I will get to share even more pictures with you that I can't on the blog. If you have a facebook, feel free to like the page so that you can be updated regularly about my travels.

This is Budapest Day 2's picture link: http://on.fb.me/IQn6mi

Once again, I will be gone...

Not only have I not done anything interesting really, but my mom will be in town for the next two weeks. And expect a bunch of posts after she leaves. Not only will we be exploring Macedonia, but we will also be going to Italy for 4 days! :)

I did go to the Vevcani Carnival, but I have to wait until I get together with Jen and Lizzie again- because I took videos on Jen's Flip camera while they took pictures of the festivities. That was a day!

See you around the globe!

Bled

We finally made it to Bled on Friday. We got up early and were going to catch the 8 am bus, but misjudged the time it would take us to get ready. So we decided to wait and go get the 8:30 bus. It takes about 25 to 30 minutes to walk form the hostel to the bus station. When we got there, we walked up to the counter and said “Bled.” We then had this conversation:

Her: The 9 am bus?
Me: isn’t there one at 8:30?
Her: Yes, but you have to change buses and it takes longer.
Me: o....k....

According to the bus station website the bus at 8:30 got us there just as quick at the 9, but who were we to argue with her. So we killed some time at the bus station waiting for the bus, when we got on it was pretty empty. I got to sit in the front seat and watch the Alps come towards me. Kinda cool. Just saying.

We stopped in a few stations along the way and I WISH I had gotten out at one and taken a picture. As we were rolling in, I glanced up and saw an add for the “bus pub.” Except for it was a bunch a elementary school kids looking out a school bus window with “Bus Pub” written in black on the top of the bus. No, you read that correctly. We stopped for 5 minutes and I debated getting out, but decided not to. So  so wish I did.

We made it to Bled in about one hour. We stopped at one stop that said “Bled” and I looked around, like...uhhh...here? The bus driver turned around and said “Here town. Next stop lake. ok?” So we waited for the next stop. At the next stop he said “Here lake. Go that road to lake, and that road to castle.” We started off going to the lake. We had planned to walk all. the. way. around. the. lake. And climb up a few different viewing points, and the castle. I didn’t think I would make it through the whole day. It was very pretty lake. Not as pretty as Ohrid, but pretty none the less. Part of the attraction was that we were in the ALPS! I mean come on! Pretty awesome! It took us a long time to walk the lake. We tried to follow the map to get up to a viewing point, and the only thing I kept thinking was “this is a really bad idea. A really bad idea.” But I couldn’t tell Jen or Lizzie that I wanted to back out because they were too far ahead of me. So I just walked really slow and tried to find my footing. Luckily I didn’t get hurt, but I slipped a couple of times.

Lizzie went up to the top while Jen and I went down. Then we waited about 45 minutes for her sitting by the lake. It was cold. Then we continued walking around the lake. We came upon the national rowing practice for the Olympics. Then continued walking towards the castle.  There were some beaches and even a water park for the summer.

We walked up this cliff to get to the castle. Inside the castle there was a print making shop (complete with the first printed book in Slovenian), beautiful views, a small museum, and a wine shop (where you could bottle your own wine for 15 Euros).

Broken? Use duct tape!

First book in Slovenian

Then we walked back down the cliff and caught a bus to this island with a church that we had been walking around (for 12 euros. eek!). In one of the houses on the island they had a small museum with an exhibition of clay dolls with folk dress from around the EU.

Then there was a church, with a bell we could actually ring! Apparently it has some significance as a wishing bell, but at the time I didn’t know that.

We then took the boat back to the mainland and went to this Wine and Chocolate shop. Where we got to taste local wine that Lizzie really loved served to us by a Macedonian man from Prilep! I know weird huh? He came over in the army of Yugoslavia and then stayed to start a family. He goes back to Macedonia once a year. We bought some chocolate. Then with an hour to kill we went and ate Bled Cream Cake at the original place it was made. I’m not sure if this would have been famous if it wasn’t for the tourist advertisement.

But it took longer than anticipated and we had to run to the bus stop. But we made it! When we got back to Ljubljana, we just relaxed in the hostel and planned our weekend. :)

Cave-ing!

The next day we woke up early and went to the caves in Slovenia.  We caught a bus to Divacha where we killed some time drinking “coffee” before we started the long hike to the first cave we went to. It was called Skocjanske Caves, and it is an UNESCO World Heritage site.  It was granted this honor in 1972 due to being the largest known underground canyon in the world and as an an example of some really cool things that happened a long time ago (they have names, but I didn’t understand them, so you can just go look at the page yourself!).

Anyway, we started walking, looking at the map and guessing which way to walk. There were some shots needed to document that we were walking along a highway with no sidewalk. We were a little confused because the signs for the cars were saying 5 KM the opposite way from which we were trying to walk. We were also following the directions “Go through the next village, and turn right at the church.” Umm...excuse me? THROUGH THE NEXT VILLAGE?!?!?!?!? There were a few signs that were very little, but once we got into the next village, there were these signs.

It was a muddy, cold, and uncomfortable. Very slippery, but once we got up onto this hill, there were some pretty cool views. It would have been a bit better had it not been cloudy, but oh well.

 

When we finally made it to the caves, we bought our tickets and waited for the tour to start  in about 15 minutes. We were not allowed to take any pictures once we went inside the cave. But here are a few shots of the entrance and exit.

 

 

In the cave, we followed the river backwards. There were only about 10 of us on this tour. We even saw this really cool bridge over the river. It was really cool, and totally scary if you are afraid of heights. But, we don’t have pictures because we weren’t allowed to take any. However, there were some lines where the first explorers made their entry into the caves. They were oh about 300 feet off the cave floor. But I guess if you couldn’t see down, it wasn’t that bad. Maybe. In the large chamber, where the really cool bridge was (the huge one, the reason that they got their UNESCO recognition) has flooded in the entire cavern. That is interesting, at least when you see how high that cavern was.

Then we went off with a ride with some new found friends to the city center of Divacha (they left and we stayed). There we ate some lunch and caught a bus to Postojna, where we were going to our next cave. When we got there, there was no real signs about how to walk there, so we stopped and asked a tourist agency which way to go. And about how to get to the castle. It turns out it is 10 mk away from the caves. It would be nice if that would have been in the brochures. Anyway, in case you wanted to know, you turn left out of the bus station towards the town, then take the first street on your left, follow it to the right and keep walking past the curve in the road. Then there will be signs. It is about 1 KM away from the bus station. More info about the caves can be found here.

 

We walked around a bit, then bought tickets for the caves and the aquarium. The aquarium thing was rather interesting with some info about the caves, the “human fish” salamander, and even an exhibit about butterflies!

 

Then we took the 3pm tour. There was a train ride, where we were took a 2 KM ride into the caves. Then it was an hour walking tour through the caves with a English guide. When we got off the train there were these signs with “German” “Italian” “English” and “Slovenian” where people were waiting for the tour to begin. THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE! We of course joined the English tour.

 

 

It was rather interesting, but in the end, it was a cave. There were different named rooms, Spaghetti, Red, Blue room, etc. There was one interesting fact to me. There was this little bridge that they built to cross from one side to the other. It was built by Russian POWs in WW1. It was sad for me to think of it in that way, with history. I know that is a dark period in history, but to think of POWs doing forced labor just because they happened to be enemy soldiers is disheartening.  Here is an illegal movie of the inside of the cave. Sorry for the shaky camera/weird angle.

When the walking tour was over, we caught the train back to the entrance, and went souvenir shopping.

No Running After the Train?

Then we walked back to the bus station, where we sadly had a 45 minute wait. A very boring cold and lonely wait for the bus.  Then a longer bus ride back to the city because we went through the villages rather than the direct route.

Then we went to this little market to pick up some goodies for snacking on while we were there for the week.

All in all, a decent day. This is really not my thing. And the fact that we had no real plans or things decided before going, or knowledge of how to get there, was extremely aggravating to my planning self. Not to mention that I had twisted my knee some how and every step was extremely painful. I wasn’t in that good of a mood. And then when none of us together can make up our minds about anything = more wasted time and increasing aggravation. But we are still friends and we still traveled together the rest of the trip.

 

 

 

oops!

I swear I am trying to write more blog posts! I swear. I have actually been busy lately and when I get done working with NGOs, or traveling to meet with them, completing surprise presentations, and typing- I just don't feel like more typing.

Also, I seem to have developed a carpal tunnel type problem in my left wrist that becomes aggravated when I do too much typing (when you are maintaining 2 blogs, and kinds working on a third- this is a BIG problem!). So that also decrease my desire to write blogs.

But here are some things you have to look forward too:

Ohrid

Tailor

sobranie, workshop @ EU info center

Daniel's thing

horseback riding

frank discussions


SO stay tuned!

More to come

I promise!

I took all of my pictures off of my computer and put them on my external so that the back up service that I have would back up all of my files and not charge me more.

However, I did that before I uploaded them for the last few blog posts I have written. And what is a blog post with out pictures? Especially since they are linked into the writing!

So I promise they will be up soon.

And I have some good news about my research to come as well.!

To Greece?

Walking up at 4:30 in the morning is only worth it if you are traveling somewhere.

Like to Greece!

Daniel is working with a group called “Nazboram.” They are a group of Aegean Macedonians who left Greece when they were all under the age of 14. Then they moved around to different parts of Eastern Europe before settling in Macedonia. They were returning to their home villages (and apparently applying for birth certificates, which we didn’t find out until later). And they offered to let us come along and go with them. Daniel’s wife (Anjie) and two kids (Aidan and Eliana) and myself that is. The other Fulbrighters were offered it but chose not to accept.

So anyway, we left at 6 a.m. from the Holiday Inn after they picked me up from the apartment. The bus then preceded to go leisurely through the countryside of Macedonia and pick up other people along the side of the road. We didn’t get to the border until about 6 hours into the drive.

And then. Oh then.

In case you do not know the history between Greece and Macedonia- there is a case of bad blood that Shakespeare couldn’t have imagined. Greece doesn’t believe that Macedonia should be called Macedonia because Macedonia is a region in Greece and Macedonia is a name that should only belong to Greece. So Greece only recognizes Macedonia as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM. Since they don’t believe that the Republic of Macedonia is a real country- Greece doesn’t recognize their passports. And since they don’t recognize their passports they need special papers to get into Greece.

We passed through the Macedonian side of the border in about 15 minutes (since there were a lot of us). And we sat at the Greek border for almost two hours. They took their sweet little time filling out the names and passport numbers of the Macedonians. With numerous cigar breaks. And lots of questions about their families (where were you born?, where were your parents born? What are you doing in Greece?). Then the guy got to the back of the bus where we were and asked me something in Greek. And I went English? And he went American? (yes) *shrugged shoulders* You are ok! And walks away. It was so interesting.

Once we finally got moving again we drove through Greece and then arrived at the hotel for the night. Well, we thought that it would involve going back out in a bit, so we ran to a fast food place, an ATM and back to the hotel for the meet up.

Well, in true Balkan fashion they were meeting to decide how to visit the villages. The organizer thought that they were just going to take taxis to some of the villages and not the bus to all of them. This did not make people happy. At all! There was a long drawn out argument with lots of shouting on all sides. We finally escaped and went to explore this little village that we were in. Lots of cool pictures.

And Hot Chocolate! And French fries and pizza and monuments.

Then to sleep and wake up the next morning for the next day of travel!

See you around the globe!