June 11, 2008
Our first full day in Budapest! We started off the day with class and a tour of the Academy of Music. Getting to the Academy required taking the Budapest metro systems, which was quite different from any other metro station we’ve been in so far. Buying tickets took about thirty minutes for the 50 of us because most of the machines only took coins, and we only had thousand dollar bills to pay with. After everyone got their tickets, we had to validate them and then ride down the most intense escalator experience of my life. The stairs were going about twice as fast as any escalator I’ve ever ridden; I’m sure it was hilarious to watch all of us get on them. You had to get a running start to get on, and then you had to run to get off as well. The actual subway seemed to go faster as well. They mean business here in Budapest!
We had to switch lines in order to get to the east side of the city, but we had all bought the wrong ticket so we ended up just walking as group the rest of the way to the Academy. It was interesting to see the city and the locals…they have a very different sense of fashion than any other city we’ve been in so far. I saw a very fashionable pair of “man”-pris (what we call capris that guys wear) overalls and another guy wearing Daisy Dukes. That is one European fashion that I hope stays in Europe!
The Academy ended up being pretty cool. We got to tour the apartment of Franz Liszt, and our professor got to play on the same pianos that Liszt played on. The little Hungarian lady that led our tour was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. When Dr. Haydon started to play, she blushed and closed her eyes and swayed back and forth. She spoke pretty decent English, but whenever she needed to speak to another museum worker she would switch over to Hungarian…which is the strangest language I’ve ever heard.
We had a couple hours of free time after the Academy, so we did what every good American would do: we went to McDonalds. It was cheaper here than its been in any city so far, and it had been a very long time since we had eaten completely normal food. I got a cheeseburger, fries, a coke, and a salad for 990 HUF. It was awesome. We walked down to the Chain Bridge after lunch and took lots of pictures and then just chilled next to the river for a while. It started to rain (what else is new?) so we hid under a tunnel until it let up.
We toured the opera house in the afternoon, which was interesting to see. It was very similar to the opera house in Paris, but without all the legends. The opera house was in a really neat district of Budapest, all around were shops and stores with really interesting things to look at. We found an antique shop run by three old Hungarian ladies who loved to talk. We spent a lot of time chatting around and looking at everything in the store. So cool!
We walked all the way back to the hotel instead of trying to figure out the metro system again, and just as we walked in the bottom fell out of the sky and it poured. We chilled in the hotel for a while, and then went to a restaurant to watch a soccer game with some guys. From there we went back to IF to take advantage of free internet again. It was a good first day in Budapest!
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