Snafus in Eastern Europe

About two weeks ago I was supposed to go to a soccer match between Rome and Sampadoria because the school arranged the trip. Once we got to the stadium, it started to downpour. The soccer players tried to make it through the rain, but they were all falling and knocking into each other. They ended up canceling the game because the grass was so wet that the ball wouldn't bounce. I've never seen it rain that hard before. The drops were huge, and my shoes got soaked all the way through on our way home. I was not a happy camper.

So because we couldn't see that game, a bunch of us decided to buy tickets to another game, just for the experience. The next game was Roma versus Chelsea (which I found out later was for qualifying for the European Champions cup aka Champions League). I kept getting warnings about speaking English and riots, but I made sure to wear a Roma scarf and not have any blue on. It was a lot of fun because the Romans were out full force. All the Chelsea fans were contained to one section that were surrounded by police and I heard that they had to stay in the stadium for a full hour after the game ended so that the police could ensure their safety. It was a good thing, because when Rome started winning, both sides starting heading for each other's sections. Everyone thought Chelsea would win, but Rome ended up beating them 3-1. It was pretty incredible.

That was last Tuesday. Thursday began my trek to Budapest which took far took long and was marked by so many failures. My friend Fiona and I booked our trip to Budapest awhile ago, and because we didn't do very much research, we thought the only way to get there without paying a lot of money was to take two planes and a train. One of our other friends booked this same trip a week later. We knew it was going to take a long time, but we thought it would be interesting. Come to find out, there is a direct flight to Budapest from Rome on a relatively cheap airline, and a bunch of our other friends booked through them.

So on Thursday, we flew from Rome to Milan no problem, got there with plenty of time to recheck in and go through security. When we're getting our boarding passes to Bratislava (Slovakia), one of our friends, who has a Chinese passport, gets stopped. They told her that her visa didn't allow her to visit countries other than Italy, because it didn't say "Schengen states" on her visa. She had already been to Spain and France without any problems, so we argued with the ticket lady for awhile and we ended up getting a bunch of people involved, but they still wouldn't let her go through. We had to leave her in Milan (we thought she would just take another flight back) and go on to Bratislava. It was really depressing.

Once we got to Bratislava, we took a bus to the train station. It was about 8pm at that point, and we thought we'd be in Budapest by 11. Turns out, the trains to Budapest stop early on Thursdays, so we had to wait until 5:44 am the next morning. We ended up going back to the airport because it was better lit and safer than the train station. Fiona slept because she was sick, but I just stared at the ceiling for a long time. Don't ever go to Slovakia. It smells like onions, vodka, and cigarettes. I was very happy to get on the train to Budapest the next morning because the seats were so comfortable. The view was also great because we got to see the sun rising over the Slovakian/Hungarian countryside.

We got to Budapest around 9, got on the metro, and went to our hostel where we were staying with our friends. When we got there, we literally dropped our stuff off and ran to meet them at a free walking tour. Budapest is beautiful and has a very different history than any of the other countries I've been to. They're still recovering from communism, and are very happy with their new freedoms, but have a horrible economy. It was very cheap for me to visit because of the exchange rate, but I would hate to be Hungarian. They won't be eligible to even apply to use the euro until 2012, but even then probably won't get approved because of their inflation rate. I learned all of this from my tour guide, who was either playing to her American crowd and hating on Communism, or was genuinely happy about it. Her big thing was that there were no colors during Communist rule, only red, black, brown, blue, and yellow. She was wearing a rainbow skirt and green shoes.

After the tour, we went 'caving', which is basically crawling around limestone caves for three hours. We went through tiny holes and squeezed between rocks and climbed over them and up them, and I was ready to die at the end because I hadn't slept the night before, and the end was when we started climbing up and over rocks.

The next day we walked through Pest up to the city park to the thermal baths. I've come to find that the best and cheapest food often comes off the streets, so I got some corn on our way up. It was fantastic. The thermal baths were amazing because they are natural springs that have minerals that are supposed to be good for you. If anything, there were about twenty heated pools to go in, and one of them had a whirlpool. It was also really entertaining to watch everyone. Europeans are hilarious and great for people watching.

Later that night we went to a Hungarian folk dance performance. It was really interesting because it was a combination of tap dancing and jumping and a little bit of ballroom type whirling. I really liked it. It got kind of freaky at the end though, because everyone started clapping in uniform, and when the main dancers came out, the clap changed tempo. I think it was from the communist times, because most of the people in the audience were older.

We left the next day, after visiting Margaret Island. Our train go to Bratislava when it was supposed to, and we got to Milan on time. Unfortunately, our flight back to Rome didn't leave until 8 the next morning, so we met back up with our friend, who had ended up staying in Milan for the weekend. She had a good time and found good Chinese food. We stayed at her hostel, and I had the best sleep I had all weekend.

On our way home from Milan, there was an emergency landing in Ciampino airport, so we got diverted to Fiumicino where there was supposed to be a free bus to Ciampino (we thought we could take the metro from there) but the bus didn't come for three hours. We all missed our morning class, and we ended up taking the only train that was running in to the train station, only to find out that there was a country wide public transportation strike happening, so the metro wasn't running. Termini (the train station) is pretty far from my dorm, and we had luggage, so we found the only bus that was running (which was packed) and got to St Peter's. We walked from there because we live very close, but it was such a long morning that all I wanted was to sleep and shower. I'm only taking direct flights from now on because I was constantly worried that I was going to miss my flights or trains or something was going to get delayed.

I was very very happy to be back in Rome. I'm going to stay here over Thanksgiving, but I decided to go to Ireland the first weekend in December. I think there are going to be about five of us going, and I might be able to fly Aer lingus, a real airline, out of a real airport. It will be cold, but great.