i'm back and i don't think home has ever been this sweet.

i love america.

alrighty. i'm outta here at 5am tomorrow.

i'm nervous.

see you soon.

:*

all packed up. yeah, it's starting to sit in...

:/

okay. ice skating time.

has anyone seen the new civic yet?? i think it look pretty awesome. it looks like a cross between an accord and a lexus is300...



oh, and if i had a civic, these are the headlights i'd put on it...



it's not fair that civics get all the cool accessories.

oh yeah. boondock saints rules.

worst fokhagymaleves cipoban ever

well, john and i just got back from saying "goodbye" to franziska at the bus station. i'm going to miss my german neighbors. even though i know that i won't be seeing these people ever again (within all probability), my mind can't seem to grasp that fact. it's still thinking, " yeah, okay, bye. see you monday." i said "bye" to a lot of people last night. it's really been hard with several people, like we must have said "bye" to each other 4 or so times because it was so hard to let go. . .

yesterday, instead of traveling to Pecs, we stayed around town and went to a bath. it was so worth. i've almost completely lost my initiative to travel. i'm sure it'll return quickly once i get back into the swing of things, but as for now, just take me home. i'd type the name of the bath, but i don't know how to spell it. it was so great. there was a large swimming pool outside and the water in it was 38 deg C (100.4 F) and of course, the air was somewhere around freezing. there was so much steam coming off the water. at times you couldn't even see the edges of the pool. it was one of the most beautiful things i'd ever seen. i also heard more english yesterday than i have in a very long time in hungary. i think it was possibly due to it being saturday and close to christmas. i met a guy from california that's been working in Georgia (asia) recently and a couple from australia and scotland. we sat out in the pool for about 3 hrs. it was way better than walking around some city in the freezing weather. i was uberpleased.

went to have cheese soup for the last time (and so i could get a picture of it). yikes. it was so garlic-ie that i couldnt finish it. ugh. even coke didnt help. i've been through 2 pieces of orbit and i'm still tasting it.

i'd like to publicly apologize to todd for my comments about work. i mean, what can i say? i've never even had a real job! everything thus far has been me goofing off for 8 or more hrs a day and somehow getting paid for it. therefore what could i possibly have to add to such a "discussion" about employment. the answer: absolutely nothing.

worst chili dogs ever

much ado about . . . everything

i went to lunch today by myself in hopes of getting some cheese one more time. "sajnos, nincs" (unfortunately, there was none). which is probably for the best since my body is screaming for nutrients. so i got some sort of meat. maybe pork. i don't know. it was fried, so i didn't care. as i sat there eating in Sztoczek (which was virtually emtpy), all i could think about was how thankful i am. for everything. i think perhaps i've learned more about the world in the past 4 months than i have in the past 4 years. all i've dreamt about since i heard about studying abroad is going somewhere completely unknown and just being completely submerged in a different culture, a different world. and i got it. my dream has come true . . . and it's been one of the best ever. man, i've learned so much. do you have any idea how small this world is? it's incredible. i love the fact that i personally know another human being in spain or germany or france who's carrying on just as i am, who's going through the same things as i do day in and day out, who's going through completely different things as i do day in and day out, and who's just come away from a once in a lifetime experience just as i have. i dont know if i'll ever see any of them again . . . and that breaks my heart. ...i can't get over how many amazing people there are in this world. i think we get caught up in our own little worlds after a while and just develop paradigms about others and how we live. and of course this is only natural. how could it go any other way? if you're ever allowed to remove yourself from that, if only for a short period of time, do it. you won't regret it. i can remember talking with sam about me going (or wanting to go) abroad and i remember telling her that i felt like i had to. for myself. i had to know what else was out there. i had to know that there was more to this world than what we see everyday. and now i do. now i know that this planet is full so many differences that only God could do more than scratch the surface of seeing it all. You are truly astonishing, God.

i don't know if any of my fellow exchangees will ever read this, but if you do, i want you all to know that i love you so much and wouldn't trade my time with you for anything in the world.

jesse, my family, guys, get the enchiladas ready, because i'm comin' home.

that's all she wrote

well i'm done today. i finished my film paper on HUKKLE, got it printed off and attended my last class (which was film class; we watched Sunshine; it was an awesome movie). yeah, it had Ralph Fiennes and other people in it. also, it was a Hungarian film. The thing with so many hungarian films (that ii've found) is that they're so depressing. they always have the unhappiest ending possible. and it's not that i can't see where it comes from. i mean, hungary has had one of the most oppressive pasts i know of, but that doesn't mean EVERY movie has to reflect that, does it? i mean, good things DO happen everynow and then. geez. but Sunshine rose above that and came out strong with an uplifting ending (not necessarily "happy", but uplifting). so i was more than happy to have sat through all 3 hrs of it.

so i'm sitting here contemplating what to do. i was going to go to the opera Don Giovanni but the guy with the tickets is too sick to make it out there to sign for the tickets. so that's canceled. and i told john i'd be back at 10.0, so now he's wandered off somewhere and left a note saying he wont be back till 10. great. dave it gone to visit Europe and franziska went over to someone's house. there's no one. and i'm hungry.

i guess it's time to get a gyros and watch one of the 20 movies i have taking up space on my hard drive.

so do you guys know that i haven't gotten a haircut or shaved since i left? i've trimmed the side of by beard, but not the goatie area. it' so long. the hairs have to be around 1.25" long. and my hair is longer than it's been in a LONG while. maybe since high school. i dunno. the hair is semi euro, but the beard ain't. actually, most people in europe are really clean cut looking. no one has any sort of facial hair, so i stick out like a sore thumb (particularly when i when my sandals nowadays; i definitely see people stare and say stuff to their friends; turds).

ah well. i hope all you dungheads enjoy LoTR III. did you know that hungary doesnt get it till Jan 8th (or 20th; i can't remember)??

retarded.

job's done.

so my debate it over. some might say that it was a waste of time. okay, so everyone said it was a waste of time, BUT i don't regret it. it was interesting. and gave me some insight into the true ingnorance of the kkk.

always a pleasure.

g'day

:/

well, i was afraid of this. my debate with the kkk guy has taken a turn for the insane. according to him, everything Jesus said was directed at the "White Adamic race", not the "non-whites." i'll respond, but it's hard to get anywhere with someone who lives by speculations.

oh well.

i think katie givins' blog infuriates me to read. not so much the content (although it doesn't help), but her horrible shorthand internet writing style. i started reading it and just stopped after she wrote the word "u'll". that was the last straw.

still discussing matters with the kkk guy.

all i ate yesterday was candy and potato chips. i felt not so great last night. i can safely say that josh's sugar diet is not for the faint of heart.

i just finished writing a really long letter to the kkk youth guy. it was probably a waste of several hours of my day, but i feel better for it.

so 'we got him.' that's unbelieveable. it truly is. man, that's a really . . . good . . . thing... in so many ways.

i have to study now. crap.

now THAT'S a thermal lake! (mostly)

we went over to the Lake Balaton area today. it's nice. then we took a bus over to a town called héviz. and that's where the thermal lake is. there's inside water and outside water and a big temperature difference between the two.



yeah, outside was . . . chilly. just kidding. it was FREEZING. there were some patches of water that were liquid ice. i don't know how, but they were. and you could go from the inside (where it was nice and warm) to the ouside through a little door in the water and the temperature change from in to out was like night and day. wow. so i jumped outside several times and swam as far as i could. that's brisk, baby. my biggest fear was that some giant mutated (and radioactive mind you) catfish was going to swim up from the depths and bite my legs off. but that didn't happen, so that's good. apparently there is a bit of radioactivity to the water. go figure. i felt kind of heavy in the water. that was . . . weird. AND it said somewhere that the water in the lake completely changes ever 36-48 hrs (or something around there). that's pretty amazing considering this lake is easily several acres in size. this is due to the large thermal vent at the bottom (about 100ft down).

so that was fun. but i'm really tired because i only got 3.5 hrs of sleep last night. and i have a lot of studying to do tomorrow. i hope i still know how. ah boy. this could be bad. it almost seems wrong for them to not require anything from us the whole semester and then try and make us take tests at the end. it just ain't right.

hasta pronto.

incredible

i just finished watching this guy beat super mario bros. 3 in 3min 11sec. wow. that was amazing. i'm just blown away. you have to watch it. it's unbelievable.

watch it.

now.

okay. change of plans. we're not going to sarajevo because it costs double what we had anticipated paying. that sucks.

yeah. so i think tomorrow we'll head to the thermal lake instead. ah well.

almost

i woke up this morning to the sound of all these voices and for a minute there, i really thought i was at home hearing everyone downstairs (maybe for christmas or something). i think i was kind of disappointed when i realized it was just some loud doofuses out in the hall. so i think that's a good thing, right? that i was disappointed?

i hope so.

i'm going to sarajevo tonight and i'll be back sunday morning. i'm pretty sure everything will be perfectly fine. but if you feel like praying for me (and my friends), i'll (we'll) gladly take 'em. it's funny. i wasn't going to tell my parents about it until AFTER i got back because i didn't want them to freak out and worry a lot or anything (because it really will be fine down there), but last night on the phone my dad asked me, "so what are you up to this weekend?" and i was like, 'ah what the heck', "i think me and few others are going down to sarajevo for a day." and he was like, "ah. cool" (well, he didn't say "cool," but it was something to that effect). anyway, i totally wasn't expecting that response, so that WAS cool.

i guess that's it. we went to an "irish" pub last night. that was fun. best music in town.

it's what the French call a certain 'I don't know what'

i guess i don't really know anything worth writing about today.

um, i think i'm gonna try to make it sarajevo before i head out. 13hr train here i come.

and... i... dont know... what else.

i have exams on monday and tuesday. so thats scary. i guess it's time to learn... stuff.

yeah.

just for kids!

huh. i just emailed the kkk youth corp requesting they hurry up and finish posting their writings on the specified youth topics.

i just can't wait. what an amazingly ignorant organization.

i love it.

okay, show me the "computer not restarting and erasing my blog again"

okay. just wrote an entry, my computer freaked out and restarted itself, and now i have nothing...

alrighty then...

i went to krakow this weekend. it was really fun. and really cold. see?



(man i hate trying to write the same thing twice. it never comes out as well the second time.)

right, so the weather wasn't so happy our first day there (and the train got in at 6.0am after a 10 hr trip), but we went around sightseeing. all day. it's not that you necessarily want to, but you have to. otherwise you've wasted your trip. Krakow was a nice city. it had a very large square in the middle where they held all sorts of events. and their castle/cathedral was great. but i think in general, the town didn't really do it for me. (and they had an interesting Jewish district complete with Holocaust survivor (via Schindler's list) and pigeon market, where they sold . . . pigeons.)

the next day we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau. that was . . . unbelievable. it was pretty much impossible to imagine what went on there. i just dont understand how a human being could have been capable of that of anything that went on there. i mean, i don't care who you're working for, how does anyone justify smashing a baby up against a wall in the name of ethnic cleansing? i don't get it. And Franziska, my german neighbor, went with us. i think the significance of the whole thing was slightly different for her. but she's not always a big "talker," so i don't know more than that.

anywho, i took more picture there then i have anywhere, i think. we got back, ate dinner, and boarded the train with lots of chocolate. i mean, it was a 10hr ride. you gotta have chocolate.

i'm very torn about my return. as jesse put it, it will certainly be "bittersweet." i mean, i can't wait to see everyone and on top of that, celebrate christmas with family and loved ones, but i'm never going to see any of these people ever again. i mean, anything's possible, but let's be realistic. never again. that's really distressing. i've become great friends with a lot of people here. not all of them, but they've all become my friends. how do you spend 4 months with people, getting to know them and hanging out with them and experiencing brand new things with them and then just leave them forever? it just seems wrong. and i think it'll be incredibly difficult to keep in touch with most. i just dont know. i mean, all i can do is visit with them as much as possible until i leave. and then that's it. wow. i hate that.

yeah.

yup yup

yeah, i'm back. which is good.

and i still have all of my possessions. which is also good.

and that's the way the cookie crumbles...

okay, so the story behind my last entry is as follows:

i was working out yesterday (doing shoulder presses), when i hurt my neck/shoulder muscle. like, i really hurt it a lot. i tried to lay down and maybe sleep it off. but it was really painful because it's the muscle that you use to stabilize and lift you're head, so unless i was laying completely relaxed, it was wailing on me. i mean, almost bringing me to tears at times. so laying down didnt work so great. in fact, i think it may have made it tighten up. i have no freezer nor access to a freezer, so i dont have any ice or anything that could be of use. the best thing i could find was microwaving a wet towel. so after talking with my mom, i go to the non-stop store down the road (this store has helped me out many a time). i grab a bag of frozen peas for cooling comfort, the whisky (in hopes of dulling the pain until the morning when i could get to the doctor), and the bag of potato chips because i was hungry. (and the whisky was my grandmother's idea :) ) (yeah, and it helped a lot.) i got medicine today so i hope it starts doing it's thing fast.

so i happened upon katie givens blog. yeah, it's always weird when you first realize that people arent way you remember them to be.

i'm going to krakow tonight. it only takes 10hrs to get there, so that's cool. i've heard some bad stories about thieves and whatnot on the train ride to/from poland (specifically krakow). i have my knife with me, but i hope i dont have to stab anyone. that'd sort of put a damper on my trip i guess. hmmm. i'll be back sunday morning. we're gonna go see auschwitz (i KNOW thats spelled right) too. should be an interesting trip. and a cold one. possibly very cold.

have a good one.

yeah buddy

so i just got back from the non-stop. the items in bag are as follows: potato chips, frozen peas, and a bottle of whisky.

it's party time.

just got through watching another depressing hungarian film in class. geez. i'm beginning to think it's just my teacher and her choices. yep. i hate em.

i also just realized that i've wasted the last 2 weeks (essentially) and that i have so little time left here. AND how much i'm going to miss everyone. i'll never get to see these people ever again. that's incredibly disappointing. so, i guess...i have to start being more efficient.

yes.

i watched American Psycho tonight. wow. what a sick movie. not like, "sick" i cant watch, but "sick" like "holy crap i hope there arent really people like that out there." on the other hand, i thought it was really good movie. man, the main character was just . . . sick. and not sick like "ill". and not ill like "cool". it was also a lot funnier than i thought it would be . . . because i didnt think it'd be funny at all. but it was funny in a sick way. go figure.

2 sick thumbs up

(sick like "ill" (like cool))

dude, i'm gonna be so euro when i get back

so i got stuff today. like this new sweatshirt. i dig it!



and it has these 2 random patches on the back. each shirt had a different arrangement. some didnt have any.



and i got a pipe, a hungarian flag, some small hungarian flag patches, a few more gifts and . . . thats it.

okay.

::WARNING::
If you plan on seeing the movie Mystic River, you might not want to read ahead. I'll do my best not to give anything critical away.

i like to think of myself is a very understanding film critic. i can understand and accept certain endings despite the fact that they may not be what i want to see happen. it's fine. happens all the time. but tonight's endng was just . . . rather unacceptable to me. one of the characters had a really messed up thing happen to him as a kid and his whole life was messed up because of it. and the whole movie he's made out to be the bad guy, but then in the end, you find out that he's definitely not. in fact, he ends up being one of the better people, but that doesnt stop him from getting his life and his family's messed of the most in the end. and the other guys just end up "fine". i was rather angered by it. and it sucks because it was a good movie. it had a great cast and they did a great job acting. but in the end it just seemed to be a movie about the sucky life of this one guy was dealt. i dont know. but as the ending was happening, i just remember knowing that this was the end and that i hated it.

we're working on grammar and sentence structure in hungarian language class. it's getting really hard. the whole prefix and suffix thing they have going on with their language upsets me.

i've been toying with the idea of being in band next year. i may not be weighed down by classes and i hear it's a good schedule. AND i'd get to play notre dame's fight song! it's my favorite. who knows. if anyone else is joining, let me know ;).

i watched Scarface and Finding Nemo tonight. it was only the 2nd time i'd seen Scarface. i really like it. and i now know that it was the model for GTA: Vice City. holy cow. the game is identical to the movie (setting/sets-wise). crazy.

yeah. good "material" (as the french say)


tough luck on the ol' (new) burkaccord. just glad you guys werent hurt.

okay, so i can put many of the domains that my site meter records down as someone i know, but there are a few i just cant figure out. such as nasa.gov. and i've seen it several times. who from nasa is checking out my site?? tell me!!

done and done

i had an entry here, but it seems i was a bit hasty in composing it. so i took it down.

happy saturday.

oh yeah. we all (9 of us) went and had dinner at this hungarian restaurant last night. it was delicious. big portions. i'll be back. definitely.

oh, and they sold beer by the liter. how can you resist getting a glass that holds a liter of beer (or anything for that fact)?? well, to make a slightly long story short(er), we all had a few rounds, yada yada yada, now i know that 3.8 L IS, in fact, just a hair too much for me personally.

and dave, my next door neighbor, well, let's just say i thought something had died in his room when i walked past it this morning. aye carumba. (oh yeah, and i had to fight a prostitute off him last night. that was . . . new)

but i'm good ;) (as usual)

okay i'm good.

went on a parliament tour today. that was fun.

sheesh.

never again.

never . . . again.

once again i am the self proclaimed blog king (jesse is queen).

yeah me (and jess)

thanksgiving? no thank you.

there was an advertisement for thanksgiving food today at this cafeteria i hate. so i thought, "what the heck. i haven't been since early december. let's do it." never again. they just signed their "not alive anymore" certificate with me. i was prepared for the lowest, worst excuse for thanksgiving food ever. not only did they not have ANY thanksgiving food, but what i DID end up getting just pissed me off. it looked like a big slab of lasagna, but instead of the thick pasta looking layers, it was a thin layer of pasta and the rest of the pasta looking part was mashed potatoes. and it really didn't even taste THAT bad, but it was so thick and heavy, i just couldn't eat it. (the last thing i had there before i put my ban on it back in sept. was some sort of meat/riceballs and potatoes in a tomato soup. i mean, what the F!?) i think they have someone in the back with the job of ruining decent meals. i hate that place.

i watched "Ringu" tonight. it's almost identical to "The Ring." but i think "The Ring" is probably scarier. but the girl at the end of "Ringu" had a WAY creepier walk, so i'll give it that much. oh man. that walk was bad stuff.

i gotta get to movie watching. i only have 5GB of space LEFT on my computer due to all the movies. stupid.

i think tomorrow night we'll all try and eat at a good hungarian place to "celebrate" the old thanksgiving. i've got decently high hopes. we'll see. i think i hate hungarian food though. so that could be a problem.

seeeeew....road trip?

so all i've heard is that you all DON'T want to drive out west, todd is afraid of sam, and hg is afraid of everyone. so what DO you guys want to do? i'm open to suggestions, so please, let's have em.

i sewed up a big hole in my pants pocket the other day. i was impressed. and it's still holding. and i sewed the button back on my shorts. yeah me. check it...



oh yeah, and i had the crappiest nachos ever atthis mexican food place tonight. i thought i'd play it safe and get them instead of enchiladas. curse me. however, i did eat a crap load of jalapenos. you'd have been so proud scott. so proud.

picture me

so i just got a sweet package from my parents containing cookies and candy. thank you oh so very much.

oh and i got a new jacket for $8 at a second hand store, which makes it harder to spend $70 on a new sweatshirt. so we'll see. i can't decide yet. this jacket, though, is really cool. it's got pockets in crazy places and a patch that says "ZB" on it. it's slighty small, but whatever. that's in now anyay.



and this skating rink is pretty neat. it was so something out of the 20s (or something). all the people were skating around and stuff while they played classical pieces over the loud speaker. i didn't participate, but i may eventually.



okay, here are the shoes i'm leaning towards...



and these are just cool Polo boot made by puma...



and here's the sweatshirt that has caught my fancy... (actually though, i think this one's the wrong colors. the one i like is grey with an orange stripe.)



yep.

i think hayley's blog is the best. i don't even have to read it to stay updated.



what a tard.

let me tell ya story bout a man named london. or . . . something . . . like that.

(WARNING!! the following entry may contain profanity and/or mention of alcohol!)

wow. what a trip. that was easily the best trip ever. (and simultaneously the most EXPENSIVE trip ever, however, considering what we did, i think we got off with a fairly light bill.)

SATURDAY
got up at 4.0am, did the hour trek to the airport, got successfully checked in and on the plane in plenty of time. and on top of that, i got the seat (1 of 2) next to the emergency exit which had no seat in front of it, therefore providing me with more than abundant leg room. excellent. got to london only to find out my money was only worth half as much there (i will curse £'s until the day i die) as it is at home. london is the antithesis of budapest. it's way clean and way expensive. everything literally costs (at LEAST) 3 times as much as it should. i realize this very shortly after arrival, as i'm paying £14 for a 40 min train ride (and at this point i'm loving hungary more than ever. i saw several advertisements for visiting hungary. i think they could have had a better ad campaign had they gone for a slogan such as "come to hungary! where we won't charge you your first born son for a Big Mac." or something like that.). anywho, john and i trek around london all day seeing the sights and taking pictures like they're going out of style. and holy crap! saturday and sunday (and wednesday in salzburg) were the most beautiful days i've ever seen, i think, in my entire life. i wasn't really sure what to expect from london, but whatever it was i had in mind, london exceeded it. it was a beautiful city. it was clean, well kept, and everyone spoke english EVERYwhere. it certainly was a site to see. it was such an odd change to not have to decipher everything someone said to you (and i had to be careful what i said around people since they could now understand it). so whenever i needed to find out some information, i just asked! ANYONE! so great. and i thoroughly enjoyed all the various UK accents. there really are a bunch. let's see, yeah, so we saw everything except for buckingham palace saturday. nothing really "in depth" persay, but you really have to limit yourself when traveling like this. you just can't hang out at one place for too long otherwise you'll miss the rest. we were fortunate enough to have 4 days to sort of take our time. so that was great. so after a VERY long day of sight-seeing, we began our path home. this turned out to be a bit of a problem due to a mix-up on my page of phone numbers and whatnot. fortunately, i figured out the correct # to call on the train ride "home". and then i got to meet my family. they're awesome. Cullen is my grandfather's brother. he and his family live about 40 min outside of london (in a place called cobham). Apparently, i've "met" them before, but i must have been very very young because i don't recall a thing. so this made it even more interesting to visit with them. and yeah, it was just really enjoyable. we sat around saturday night and talked for an hour or so, catching them up on family and whatnot. Mary (cullen's wife) is just the nicest person ever. and she's irish, so that makes her even that much more fun to be around. after this, we all went to bed... in our BEDS. i got to sleep in a full sized bed with covers that fit the bed and me and it was awesome.

SUNDAY
we slept in a bit and then went with camille to Hampton court. (oh, and we also met camille and her friend the night before. they're characters, i'll tell you that much.) i was just amazed at how beautiful the whole place was. there was so much green and birds and stuff. really great. after wandering around with her, we came back and prepared for cullen's surprise bday party. it went really well. apparently, he was very surprised. which is good. and all the guests were people of an older . . . persuasion. this one lady referred to john and i as pianists and i was like "uh, i hate to burst your bubble, but uh..." yeah. but we did end up playing a few songs for them (because mary and cullen had a TUNED piano! and every morning i got up and played it for a little while. it was great. have i mentioned that there are no in-tune/good sounding pianos on this campus?) and after the party we watched X2. it was so fun listening to all the UK "sayings" and "lingo" and stuff. it was a nice time of getting to know everyone.

(i really miss playing trombone. does anyone still play an instrument? (scott, todd?))

MONDAY
today we had the worst weather yet. it was just raining all day, BUT we managed to make it out to good ol' Greenwhich and stand on the prime meridian! it was sweet. and we got into all the museums for free (more accurately, the tickets were free. for some reason we still had to get tickets and were actually asked by one lady if we in fact DID have our complimentary tickets. go figure). i think japanese people are the only ones that can get away with taking the really touristy pictures (like with london cops and stuff. stuff you wouldnt dare do. or at least i wouldnt). anyway, that's pretty much all we did monday. then we went out with camille that evening to have a few brewskies. she wanted to show us a few places in town she normally went to. at one place john and i had a beer called "old english cider" or something like that. camille said it was really lame to like it, but dangit, it was pretty good. it was like apple beer or something. i mean, it really was kind of good! and then i had some beer labeled "TEA" at another place. yeah, NEVER get that beer. it was tea and beer mixed together. it was horrible. never again. well, maybe. . . no, never. they sell beer in pints and 1/2 pints there. basically a pint is 0.5 L. you know what really pisses me off about europe? well i dont know if the UK does this, but in my part of europe they do. they switch commas and decimal points in numbers. like the other day i saw something for 21.000, Ft (twenty-one thousand Forint) if THAT doesnt piss you off, i dont know what will. or you might get coke in a restaurant and the size is 0,33L (1/3 of a liter). freaking ridiculous. i mean, a decimal is symmetrical. it says, "i belong in the middle, separating integers and fractions." not the stupid comma! it belongs down there in the thousands. that's it's home! sometimes i think i'm surrounded by morons. ANYway, john brought this to my attention and i think he's probably right. he said the altitude youre at changes the intensity of alcohol's effects. i think i believe him because we must have had 2 liters of beer that night (and a shot of something camille gave us (she said it was really strong and i'm like, "you dont know strong until you've have unicum, becherovka, or absinthe.") (yeah, and it wasn't that strong) (oh, and in case you're wondering, just because i'm typing the words "alcohol" and "beer" doesn't mean i'm an alcoholic, so get a life.) . . . but yeah, we actually felt alright afterwards. interesting. and the 2 liters was over the course of 4 hrs or so. but i also think the fact that london is really close to sea level has something to do with it. right, and that was that.

TUESDAY ("bluesday")
the weather was better today, but still overcast. so we went to Wimbledon! we kept getting bad directions to get there and we ended up walking about 2 miles (one in the wrong direction) to centre court (rather than just taking the bus). but it was worth it. i thought the tennis museum was pretty cool. for some reason the tennis and it's history actually interests me. so that was fun. we finally left wimbledon and went and saw buckingham, which turned out to be not so grand since it was being heavily guarded by tons of police due to g.w.'s visit on wednesday. but it was worth it. and we finally got to meet up with leanne. i really didnt think we were even going to get to see her. i would've felt bad if we hadn't have. but she was just really busy and we were living 40 min outside of town, so it wasn't always convenient. after returning home, and watching the last half of K-PAX, i washed (AND dried!) my clothes and watched vanilla sky. it made me miss jess a lot more. this whole trip did. it's funny because before this i never even knew this section of my family, but i really felt at home with them like right away. i hope they felt the same with me.

WEDNESDAY
got up at 4am (again), rode 1.5 hrs to the airport with cullen (thanks a lot cullen), got stopped at security due to me trying to carry my gerber tool onto the plane (fortunately the guy was really nice about it and let me take it back and get it checked), boarded the half empty plane, yada yada yada, we were in salzburg. salzburg has got to be one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen. the view from the fortress was literally breathtaking. and it was so green there. i can't even imagine it in the summer time. truly an amazing site. and lucky (again!) for us, the weather was absolutely perfect (as you can probably tell), and the sunset was no exception. we finally left the fortress to got our hostel (which ended up being set at the top of a very steep hill. we had a blast trying to find it by the light of my LED headlamp.). our hostel was actually someone's house, which was . . . cozy? we were going to get up early and head to Munich, Germany for the day, but well, upon waking up, rather than seeing the incredible overview of the city below, i could only see the tree in the front yard. this is because one of the thickest fogs ever had set itself down on top of austria. well, half the reason we were going to go o munich was for the view along the way, but since we couldnt see anything, we decided against the $50 trip. so we get our ticket home and head to the train. according to the info board our train is on track 3a/3b. "no problem. it's the main track." it's 30 min till our train takes off and it appears to already be there. we get on, there arent too many people onboard, maybe 5 or 6 per car. makes sense, it's still got half an hour before take off. i mean, if it wasn't our train, it wouldn't have been on the board yet. (and we've done a lot of train travel, so we kind of know the routine.) so we sit our stuff down and relax. well, john decides to get off the train for a bit and look at something. no more than a minute later, the train begins to roll. "that's funny," i thought. "i guess they're just rolling it forward? i mean, i didn't hear any whistles or bells or anything." about this time i look out the window and see john jumping up and down giving the ol' "cut throat" sign, which i immediately took as "i got some bad news josh. you're on the wrong freakin' train." "holy SHIT!" the panic begins to seep in. i turn around, grab everything (mine and john's stuff) and run to the door. (on hungarian trains, you can open the door whenever you feel like it.) however, on this particular train (and ALL german trains) the doors are hydraulically sealed. "holy SHIT!" i exclaimed. and so help me, had that door opened, i was fully prepared to jump (and it was easily going 15-20 mph at this point). "okay okay. plan b." i see a red lever above the door. "that's GOTTA do SOMEthing!" so i pulled it (breaking a safety pin, i think). i hear a little buzzer go off! "GREAT! a buzzer! now they HAVE to stop!" much to my chagrin, i see no one coming to inspect the alarm and even worse, the train is NOT stopping! "ohhhhhhh shit," i said in a stupefied stupor. i'm actually really panicking at this point. not enough to freak out and not know what to do (because i rule too much for that), but it's the most panicked i can remember in a long time. "okay . . . okay. plan c. find the conductor of this here train!" so i'm off, running up the train trying not to nail some old person in the back of the head with one of my 2 backpacks. three car's later, i happen upon a girl talking with the a train attendee. after some brief, hectic talk, i discover that the girl and i are in the same boat. up until this point i had thought this might could work out. "perhaps i can just stop at the next station along the path and john can catch up to me on the next rain. maybe?" well the first bad new was that since we were on one of the nice train, it probably wouldnt be stopping for another 50km. what was worse was that this particular train was going to Munich, Germany which is in the complete opposite direction of Budapest (approximately 2.5 hours in the wrong direction, in fact). "oh dang. that's . . . really . . . not good." then (finally), some god came our way, they decided to let us off at the next train station (which they wouldn't have done for only one person). and thanks be to the Almighty Lord, this girl spoke german. after finding out that the next train back to salzburg didn't leave until 5 min AFTER the train i was originally to catch left, we ran outside and grabbed a taxi. and frankly, i believe it was only by the grace of God that we made it back to that station on time. the traffic was terrible and it was taking forever, but we made, with no more than 1 min to spare. so i'm there holding the train while the girl runs to get there (i beat her up the stairs. yeah, i know. i rule.) and john is no where in sight. "not now." right then i see him across the station reading train times. "JOHN!" he doesn't look. "holy... YOU WILL HEAR ME!" i'm thinking to myself. sure enough, he heard the next cry. so he bolts over to the train and we're aboard. i know. wow. the train took off about 30 sec later. we sat down and had a drink with the girl (while we caught our breath). then we sat in our seat and chilled till we got to vienna. we had some close call train transfers in vienna and had to pay extra for our seat after we crossed the hungarian border. but those were fairly minor in comparison. we just wanted to get home, but we never did. i mean, we did.

worst train incident ever.

london? i hardly know her!

i'm writing a bunch. but i have to sleep right now. more soon though.

let's see... i'm going to London tomorrow (for the first time) and i'm really excited about it. too bad i hear it stupid expensive. ah well, i get free lodging. then wednesday morning, we fly to salzburg, spend the night there, take a day trip to munich and then make our way home. okay i've used up my time doing other things so i dont have time to write now. but i should be around friday or so. everyone have a great weekend/week. i'll see you on the beach.

tUrd?

oh yeah...

and i now accept the spelling of "turd" as such. but ONLY because i watched the celebrity jeopardy skit with burt reynolds as tUrd ferguson. and he spelled it that way. but jesse realy tried hard to convince me. so she gets some credit for effort, but that is all.

:*

road trip me

so if you don't already know, i'm totally up for a road trip. i don't care if it takes 2 days to get wherever, my plan is not to go to one place and stay all break. i want to travel around with everyone before i don't see you forever (or something like forever). do you guys realize how easy it is to travel in the US?? well, for starters, it doesnt cost $50/50miles like it does here. it's really ridiculous. even if you had a car, gasoline costs 4 times as much as it does at home. seriously, it's like $1 a liter (actually just a bit more) and of course there are approx 4 liters/gallon. so i'm all about anything. either out west or NYC. i can live with either. out west is beautiful and i've only been as far as wyoming. and i've never been to NYC. so let's do it. let me know who can go. (and dont be a turd, todd. just go). huh. turdular todd. anyway...

i heard a hungarian ska band tonight. that was cool. like the magyar dig-its.

we got blog back!

what a great night at the symphony. i heard beethoven's III, vaughan williams' "fantasia on a theme by thomas tallis", and edward elgar's "enigma variations". All of which i highly recommend. beethoven's was just really enjoyable classic music. williams' piece (i'm almost positive) is what the music from stargate is based off of. and elgar's "enigma" is what that song from matrix (clubbed to death) is based on. it was so awesome. when they started playing it, my ears perked up and i was like "SWEET". and it WAS sweet. and the tickets were only $3.50. and the opera house here is beautiful.

i just got back from seeing matrix 3. with the exception of the ending, which still isn't sitting too well with me, i liked it. it was a bit different from the others. there was more massive fighting than personal fighting. i think it was pretty cool. plus, i thought the last fight was sweet. i dont know. i think i just wanted a bit more closure than the ending offered. perhaps, that was the point, no one knew what was going to happen. oh well.

so i don't know if my blog was ever not able to be seen, but now it can be. again.

man, i just really feel like writing. like...a lot. not sure why.

i don't even know if anyone else will be reading this ever or not. as of now i don't think my blog is being made public. i'm not sure how long i'll leave it that way.

ah well, this weekend i travelled around western hungary. it was pretty fun. this one "town" we went to, called Fertöd, was the dumpiest dump that ever dumped (as far as i'm concerned). i mean, a total dump. run down buildings, crappy landscape, and tons of mud. but right in the middle (if there was a middle) there was this mansion (we're talking Overlook Hotel type stuff) with a huge lawn full of enormous gumdrop-shaped shrubs. The whole place was so Shiningesque it wasn't even funny. so we stayed the night there. in the mansion thingie. it was okay. there were creepy pictures all over the place, but they had tv, but it was in hungarian, but that didn't matter, but...that's it. in the books and everything there are all these really pretty pictures of the place, but fortunately for us, it was under total construction when we got there. not only was this place being completely renovated, but i think all of hungary is. come in here in 10 years and you'll see a really nice fixed up country.

the weather was craptastic this weekend, but i got to take a really nice train ride on the nicer of the 2 days. and as i passed by all of these small agricultural towns and whatnot, i couldn't help but wonder about all of the people living in them. the lives they live. the things they do in their spare time. what kind of music they enjoy. their thoughts on the world. on God. ...on americans (huh). it's crazy to think about. and even crazier to know that God knows it all. man.

did i mention that the elementary school kids learn British english? when the listen to tapes, it's of British people. i just really think that would be a lot harder. all of this exposure to languages is so cool. like i was looking through this workbook on learning American english and it was so interesting. there are so many phrases we use that could be misinterpreted in so many ways that we never even think twice about. (i wish there was a shorter way to write the word "twice". oh well.) and in one of the lessons it was covering how we ask for stuff. and it's the little things like "don't be surprised if they pronounce the word "can" as cn. obviously, that's so simplistic, but could really throw off someone. maybe? i dont know. I thought it was interesting. stupid.

and another thing, where did we lose our accent along the way? the australians managed to keep there's. how did our's get lost? was it just because america was such a melting pot from it's beginning that it kind of just evolved out?

it bothers me a lot when people say they don't like a movie because it's not what they expected. SO WHAT? exactly when in your life did you determine that movie's were made to meet YOUR expectations and if they didn't they weren't acceptable as a good movie. like matrix 2. everyone was just up in arms about how much they didnt like it. "It just sucked compared to the first one." "I don't know. the first one was just way better." This just in: it's not a remake of the first one! it is, in fact, a different movie. how can you possibly expect to go into the second one and come out as shocked as you did in the first? the first one was obviously groundbreaking. so you go into the 2nd one knowing that it's a continuation of The Matrix and expect it to be just as crazy as the first and something totally original? i don't get it. anyway, matrix 2 isn't my favorite movie by any means, but i did like it. bottom line: people that judge movies based on other movies should shampoo my crotch.

john and i go to London this weekend. and if we can pull it off, we'll also be hitting up Salzburg, Austria and Munich, Gemany. we're basically going to just take off the week from "school". should be awesome. man, London is huge. 12 million people. 650 sq mi. dang. can we say "bus tour"?

apparently, there's some sort of music "concert" every night this week from tues-fri in the large club room beneath me. so that's cool. not.

i had a dream last night that i was home and i had forgottent to bring back Unicum. i was upset. ha. and then this morning, Franziska, my german neighbor, comes and knocks on my door at 6am. i'm like, "what the...?" and she's like, "josh, i can't open my door, please help." so i wander over to her door in a stupor and her door had slammed behind her and shut her towel in the door, creating a tight squeeze (hard to explain, but we have really stupid door handles that can only be opened by turning the key, which acts as a door knob. so stupid) anyway, so i opened it and wandered back to bed. it was pretty odd and humorous at the time.

time to work out. i've filled my need to write, i believe.

oh yeah, and i had a dark beer tonight. it tasted quite different from the light beer. not worse, just ...different.

you know, all this mail talk makes me think...

first off, like how sarah and i broke up because i sent her fewer letters than the rest of her friends while she was at summer camp and i was at home. the kicker is that i never recieved anything from her. (but that's history and done with.)

then (of course), how jesse sends me stuff all the time. and i really enjoy recieving stuff. i really do. and i try and send stuff back to her (but it hasn't been as much. it's sort of difficult mailing anything but pieces of paper here. the postal employees lack the skill of speaking english.). (also, jesse's mom mailed me toilet paper, of which i am forever grateful.)

but you know what? no one else has sent me anything. i dont even think my parents have. and frankly, i'm perfectly fine with that. some people might take that as "they don't care enough to send me anything even though I'VE sent THEM something", and, well, maybe i should take it like that, but i dont. i'm not sure why, but i could almost care less. i'm not sure why that is.

and this isn't to say that i'm not oh so grateful for what has been sent to me because i really am. but it doesn't ruin my day to find out that i haven't recieved anything from anyone.

go figure.

okay...

so did we just freakin' beat maimi!?

2 questions:

1. is that for real?
2. seriously though, is that for real?

i'm think i'm going to make my blog not public. it seems that my attempts to "communicate" with home are only hindering my relationship(s) there.

so . . . yeah.

"You piece of crap.

I wish I could forget you exist.


jet"


do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you do, youre always going to be about 5 steps behind some people's thoughts? yeah, well i feel like i'm about a week late everytime in catching how jesse is feeling. something goes wrong (i can only assume it's due to me), we argue, problem gets "resolved"(as far as i know), and then i think everything is peachy and running smoothly when all of the sudden BAM! "you piece of crap". wow. that's actually incredibly harsh. i can't even grasp the severity of those comments coming from this person i know better than anyone.

oh yeah! and i got this cool vest at the secondhand store here (one of the many) for 1500Ft ($6.60). huh. they had lots of stuff but most was too small.



do you wear sweaters todd?

yeah, so guitar is really hard and i dont think yudai wants to show me how to play. i asked him a question about it yesterday and he wasn't "happy" to help. i dont know. so i tried to play some last night. got frustrated and went to the piano, came back and got my tickets to london! (which i didnt think i was going to get. hard to explain. sort of)

TODAY
i went to the elementary school this morning and talked to a few more classes and got asked questions and stuff. fun stuff. and in one of them, we listened to a shania twain song and tried to pick out lyrics in it (the kids did. it was like game . . . thing). oh man. i OWNED those kids at that game. i got all the lyrics. i rule.

then i went through another 1.75 hrs of hungarian language. man. what a crazy stupid language. they really ge a kick out of adding suffixes to words. all words.

i think i may visit some places in hungary tomorrow.

oh man, i'm a regular now at this pizza place! we go to it like once or twice a week. so today i was in there and when i went to order, the waitress cut in and said my order. it was so cool! i always order a glass of sima viz (tap water) and a popeye pizza(spinach, sour cream, egg. only i always replace the egg with chicken. egg. what are they THINKing?). yeah, that was cool that she knew.

we went rock climbing tonight, but once i got there i decided against it. it was a really small room ful of guys that looked fairly serious about it. so i said "nem" to that. and now i'm here.

goodnight

holy crap i'm so freakin bored. i have to get out of this bloody place.

but WAIT! Son Yudai has left his guitar behind!

ta ta

okay GREAT news! yudai got a guitar! now i can learn!

sweeeeeet.

and i went and talked to more kids yesterday. the questions ranged from: "do you like linkin park?" to, "do you want kids and if so what kind?" kids say the darndest things.

i would've written something in the past 4 days, but nothing at all has happened worth writing about (until last night). and i mean nothing. i was going to go somewhere in hungary on saturday, but it turns out that saturday was a holiday (and everything was closed). so i didnt want to travel 3 hrs by train just to have the whole town closed. so i think maybe this weekend it will happen.

i was going to go to germany this next weekend with tunde. she is going to visit her husband in Saarbrucken, germany (right on the border with france). and at first i was all about going, but then i found out that she's traveling all through the night, which isnt bad except that i wast to see stuff on the way. so i'm going to go over to the train office this morning and ask them about the possibility of training it to Salzburg and then to Munich. i'm totally pumped about the idea. i hope it works out.

oh yeah! i went and watche the Tallis Scholars last night. man, was that beautiful. i've never heard a choir so well controlled and in such perfect tune with each other (and probably PERIOD). john and i went. it was at this church (and of course i forgot my camera. tard) and, fortunately (thanks to me :) ), we got there an hour early and got awesome seats. it was their 30th anniversary of their first performance. and they did it in Budapest. so that was cool. yeah. just beautiful.

that's all for now. gotta run. (not literally, of course)

oh yeah, and i was browsing the local magyar paper and happened across this...



any guesses? (besides scott) (i didnt know they translated comics into other languages. well, at least cool ones i didnt know about. whatever)

and look how cool my forearms look! they look cooler in person, but this was the best i could do.



(how do you like them apples, todd!?)

:)

well, it's been a long day, but i had fun.

i was up at 7.5am due to Martos needing a good fumigation. so john, dave and i headed to mcdonalds for some early morning sajtburgers and cherry pies. delicious. you know, i hear a lot of people complain a lot about mcd's and how crappy the food is and whatnot, but personally, it's not that bad in my book. in fact, i don't consider bad at all. it's cheap and tasty and they break my large hungarian bills that most people avoid like the plague. i think maybe those haters should spend a but of time at white castle. that'd make 'em think twice. anyway, then we wandered around until i went to speak to the grade school. that was pretty fun. i was sort of nervous, but not really. except it was really hot in the room, so i was sweating a lot :). but that's just me. so i told them a little about myself and halloween in america and then asked me some questions. but not many (they were a little shy). and then i read them a humorous (to me) american quiz. and THEN, for the finale, they had a pumpkin (type object) for me to carve (because apparently they dont do that here). the only problem was that it was shaped like a gord or something. it wasn't round at all. and when i finally cut into the top of it, it was solid. "dang". so with my lightning fast eagle scout thinking, i flipped it on it's side and cut it in half to reveal the hollow lower half. sweet. so after a little hollowing-out, i carved a quick homage to scott, cut a makeshift top, and BAM. you got a hungarian pumpkin/gord.



and when i say quick, i mean quick. i must have done this thing in less than 10 min. that's a record (as far as i'm concerned). but i think the kids really liked it. they all stood around me as i worked my magic.


(and yes, my eyes are closed. wouldnt have happened if I'D taken the picture.)

and then there was an old baby grand piano on one of the floors of the school, so i played that for a while for some kid. he just walked up and sat next to the piano. funny. he spoke very little english. and then i talked to the teacher until my building opened back up.

good stuff (or as the french say "good material". weirdos)

OH YEAH. and the want me to come back monday to start helping with different teachers! how sweet is that? (i dont know, but i'm excited.)

i won't be around today from 8-17 because martos is being fumigated. just a heads up for those who might have emergency questions for me.

and jess, i wish you could be here to talk to the french people. i told them about you and your studying french and they seemed interested and wished you were here (too).

harpy halloween. and trick or trort.

oh yeah.

i went to see the Barber of Seville last night. it was really fun. i've never been to an opera. and it was in hungarian. interesting.

there's so much stuff going on that i really don't know where to start.

i mean, i'm perfectly at ease about returning home, stuff is better than ever with jesse, and the weather here is gorgeous.

yep. that about wraps it up.

i was going to post a detailed entry regarding my trip to prague, but i think i wont now. i had a wonderful time. it was probably the best weekend i've had yet. Leanne and I got to talk a lot about things we didn't necessarily want to talk about, but needed to (perhaps we did want to). and it was good. i think she had a great time (i hope) too. 2 of the guys got some money removed from their possession upon arrival in prague. our pension (hostel) was the best ever and i slept wonderfully. however, the word "cold" doesnt even come close to describing how it was in prague this past weekend. wow. saw a bunch of snow as i went through slovakia and it snowed a bit in prague. it was a beautiful city. tons of things to see and buy. and i feel like 2 days was the perfect amount of time to stay. i had tex-mex my last night there. 3 enchiladas (2 cheese, 1 chicken). when i requested simple cheese enchiladas, the waitress questioned my request. and i replied, "yes. just cheese"::stupid:: they werent too bad. how could i resist prague tex-mex. i couldnt. (i've had better though). it took 9 hrs to get there (and back). so we travelled by night train and "slept" (i didnt). ALTHOUGH (and this really struck me as spectacular), throughout my life, whenever i've needed to imagine myself in a comfortable situation to try and get some sleep, it was always the thought of riding on a train in the rain. and sure freakin enough, that's exactly where i found myself thursday night. it wasnt raining enough for me to hear it, i could see it out the window. i was really taken back by this event and felt blessed to have been there.

that about sums it up, folks.

jó napot.

each day i feel more and more like i'm going to not fit in when i come back. i'm not sure exactly, but i just feel like i'm growing so far apart from everyone.

that doesnt feel great.

still dont have internet yet. went to prague this weekend. i'll post my writing once i recieve my connection back.

have a great one.

yeah, i've done a lot in the past few days. i'll write about it later tonight maybe. gotta go run 6 miles now. well, sort of. replace "run 6 miles" with "lift weights because not everyone is a natural born runner, so i do i what i can". yeah

however, a quick synopsis of KILL BILL couldn't hurt...

i loved it! i bet tarantino had such a great time making that movie. it was just so fun to watch! it looked great (like the cinematography, editing, and whathaveyou). and that end scene in the garden. BEAUTIFUL. (i think that's a reference to an old bruce lee movie (course, what WASN'T in that movie??)) and sonny chiba! you guys know who that is dont you? he's The Street Fighter! the CHEESIEST of old kung fu movies EVER. even when the dialogue (like at the beginning with uma and fox) seemed awkward or unnatural, i think that was on purpose (again, to resemble the old films). what i like about Tarantino movies is the attention to detail. the cereal box titled "KABLOOM"? particularly the dialogue. it's like he takes such care to have the characters say exactly the right thing. he seems to go to great effort to have the audience see things EXACTLY the way he wants them to be seen. i love that. i don't think there's anything especially great about the stories in his movies, but his presentation is marvelous. i mean, it completely makes the movie. and, of course, the altered time line is always an joy to put together. then at the end, i loved how it when in and out of b&w, color, and the silhouette scene. and the liters of blood was a fun touch. i think maybe my favorite shot in the movie is when the sheriff is driving to the scene of the crime and the camera is fixed right behind the dashboard and you see his selection of aviator shades in different tints. that's just great.

okay, that's enough for now.

man, i dug that movie.

one more thing i just remembered:
remember how about half of the movie was laced with dialogue in japanese? yeah, well, an unforseen (prior to this) disadvantage to seeing it in Hungary, is that Hungarians have no use for English subtitles explaining the japanese dialogue. so we sat there, listening to Japanese, trying to read Hungarian, and failing miserably at both. luckily, I had seen all but the last 30 min with english subtitles (thanks to mr. murphy). so i just looked up the script to find out what the crap they said at the end. i'm good now. i'm with the program.

stupid non-english speaking . . . people.

hey you bunch of pudthumpers. am i the only one NOT taking myself seriously lately? yeah i've got tons of time. perhaps more than others. so i cant HELP but notice things about others' stuff. and i feel obligated to joke about it. and if that's wrong, then know one ever learned me what was right. like when i read stuff about me being tart (and who's to say i'm NOT? (what's a tart?)) and what not, i think it's funny. and if that's wrong...well, we already covered that part.

BOTTOM LINE
Now that's it's been made clear to me that this nonsense should be put to a stop, I'm pushing forward to ensure more nonsense than ever before! Starting with my recieving of the "KING OF EVERYTHING" award ceremony being held this friday at 19.0 central(europe)/13.0 eastern (it will be rebroadcast everyday for the next 3 weeks, in case you can't make it). You can catch it on www.joshhunterownsyou.com. It probably won't last more than 4.5 hours. Hope you can make it!



later puds

TO: TODD (because he has no available comment system):

there is no "break" fluid in your car. only "brake" fluid. and you can check it under your hood. after opening the hood, stand on the far right side (in front of your driver's side door) and you'll see a translucent cyclinder (about 2.5"-3" in diameter) with a black lid on it. twist the lid off. if you dont see liquid that's bad. i dont know how to check for leaks, but at least you can keep it full until you get it fixed. I don't know where your family usually takes stuff, but I always took mine to Beagley Automotive (my dad can tell you how to get there) in town and they treated me well.

i'm afraid i can't help much with the research paper.

good luck.

so does anyone do ANYthing to their WEBSITE anymore??

and no, i'm not refering to blogging.

therefore, I shant address the issue of me being king of websites (not including jeff) (because i am).

boo. ya.

okay, so what's up with todd's new burns??

is that a west TN thing?

hey everybody,

sorry. everything between jess and i is great. i just havent gotten around to writing that. my bad. yeah, we talked (for a LONG time :) ) and i think we both have at least a slightly better idea of where the other is coming from. so that's good. sorry i made you worry. it's all good.

TODAY
i'm supposed to meet with the english teacher in charge of stuff at the grade school (down the road) tomorrow. hopefully, she let me talk to the kids and stuff everynow and then. i'd really like that. a lot. AND i went and talked to the language dept here on campus and i really think that may turn out well. i tried to explain to them that i'm interested in anything whether it be tutoring individuals or speaking to classes. i think they understood. i actually went to the grade school yesterday and i left with them thinking i wanted to be a teacher (so that didnt go as planned). so i got eszter (the int'l lady here) to write me a note explaining what i was doing and then i just gave them the note today. i'm excited. this whole language this is very provocative to me recently. with all the different ones and stuff. it's SO COOL. so it's time to capitlize on my english abilities. and hopefully i can take in some hungarian (and possibly others) while i'm at it.

THE OTHER DAY
so yeah, i went to a football game! there were no riots, but i guess you can't win em all.



the polish side kept lighting red flares. i cant believe they were allowed to do that. they were so bright even from the other side of the stadium (nepstadiom: people's stadium). it was pretty cool. on the hungarian side, during the anthem, EVERYone (cept me) held up hungary's flag. kind of inspiring. the game didnt last too long. 2 45min halves. clocks dont stop. Poland won, but only by 1 point... :) yeah. and then when we were leaving to go down to the subway, there were policemen decked out in riot gear stoppin everyone. i mean, these guys looked like they were ready to throw down at the drop of a hat. turned out they were only letting in like 100 people at a time or so, so that the subway station didnt get overloaded. but before i knew that i was baffled at what was going on. anywho.

i watched City of God the other night and it was wonderful. it was so intense and enthralling. i doubt anyone else reading this has every seen it, so... it's about gang life in this tiny ghetto town outside of Rio de Janeiro. and it was just amazing. totally shocking how these kids grew up in this life and it was just a cycle through the generations. and it was based on a true story. i highly recommend it to anyone. and it's in portuguese. so the subtitles is a must.

that is all.

KILL BILL comes out (here) thursday!

so, i guess the girl i love the most is more mad at me than she's ever been at anything. at least thats what i came away with (after she said we shouldnt talk anymore). i dont know what to say. i feel really bad. my feelings are so hurt because i dont know what i couldve done to earn this. and she thinks i'm a liar. and that hurts the most. yeah . . . a lot.

i'm going to bed.

oh yeah i went to a football game today. whatever.

okay. i'm back. sorry, the king took a few days off there.

well i havent been up to much lately. i've become very interested in talking to kids and helping them with their english. so i'm going to see what all i can do there. maybe see if any of the institutes around here would like the help.

thursday i went to Richard's shindig (which was a blast. i got to smoke some black & golds for the first time in a long time. AND they had a piano in their flat! and it sounded better than the one at school! so i played on it for a few while people were arriving. (scott you couldve gone to town on this thing)) so yeah. it was just really fun.

and then last night i went to the spaniards' hubbub (actually, theirs should be called the shindig because there was much dancing. richard's was more of a brouhaha, but without all the turmoil and stuff.) anyway, it was cool because they had rented out a little disco room ...thing. and there was music and sangria and calimocho (i'm not sure if that's spelled right. i couldn't find it in the dictionary) as far as the eye could see. Seriously, these guys had buckets (like 5 gal buckets) and buckets of sangria. and the stuff was pretty good too.

it's so cool because everytime i attend one of these hullabaloos, i get to spend time talking with and getting to know someone new. so that's really great. it's really interesting. like on monday, i talked with this german guy (who looks just like tobey maguire) about wwii (among other things). but that was kind of cool because, well, have YOU ever gotten to discuss wwii with a german? yeah. i know. anywho, i thought it was cool.

TODD! check these bad boys out:



are those the coolest or what? (yes. they are.)

i'm going to try and get to a football (soccer) game today. should be cool. you know, if makes a lot more sense to call it football than soccer.

we're retarded.

check out this russian soldier's belt i got today at this antique market. i think it's from wwi. i got it for $4.



yeah, and they had these sweet leather trenchcoats that a nazi or somebody would wear. they were only $50. i think i'm going back to get it. they also had lots of russian war medals and nazi medals and stuff. they were kind of expensive. and this guy had this old trombone in his stuff so i played it for him (not much. just a bit :) ) and then he gave me a free postcard. man this stuff was old.

i think maybe i should be selling this stuff on ebay rather than wearing it.

i have no trouble concurring with todd in acknowledging jeff's status, but i hardly think that someone without simple comments on their blog (which seems to be at LEAST the standard nowadays) can refer to themself as the "king".

am i right or am i right? or am i right? or am i right?

i've had a really nice last 2 days. Sunday was wonderful. I woke up, wrote jess a good email, put clothes on to wash, worked out (which i am currently sore from. sweet), put more clothes on (and finished washing EVERYthing), went out and ate a bowl of cheese/veggie soup that comes in a giant roll, came back, hung up all my clothes to dry, posted some pictures, and then watched the movie Metropolis (not too shabby). It was the most relaxing day i can remember (and believe me, that's saying A LOT considering my recent schedule). yeah, so good day. and a good message from my QT.

I am so diggin' this Saves the Day acoustic music. "hold" and "freakish" are really just at the top of my list lately. particularly "hold". i love the way the chords sound on that guitar. i wanna learn guitar. i'll never have this much free time in my life ever again, so i have to make the most of it (and use it all up!).

i went and played piano today (finally). the piano kind of sucks, but as long as I'm able to make music with my hands, i'm thrilled. it's funny, i was playing through a bunch of stuff and after i played through that song from "The Truman Show" this guy came up to me (and after telling him "nem beszelek magyural") and asked me what that song was. he was apparently very intrigued by it. so i tried to explain thats it not really a "song" so to speak, but that he could find it on the soundtrack and stuff. kind of neat. when i went in to play (the piano is just i this hall right next to a big lounge room) there were a bunch a people in there talking and stuff and it was fairly noisy so i didnt mind playing, but once i began playing it sort of quieted down and whenever i'd stop it was really quiet so i had to begin playing again as soon as i could! but i played well, so that was good. and no one told me to shut up, so that was good too.

and i went to see a movie tonight...again! it's too cheap NOT to go. what else am i going to do on a monday night? (nothing) anyway, i saw Matchstick Men with Nick Cage and Sam Rockwell. I really liked it! i thought it was a pretty good movie! and Cage did a great job acting. he has done such a good job on his last few movies. i've been thoroughly impressed. and then i had my usual large popcorn and large coke for dinner. good stuff. OH. but i found out that they have assigned seating in the freakin theater! how communist is that?? so no matter how early i get there, i'm still going to get a random seat. i could be the last person to arrive and get the seat right in the middle. (these people make me wanna puke.) and since about 80% of the people dont arrive until the movie is just beginning (lazy europeans!) that's a very probably thing. These people have no sense of capitalism. The service in restaurants is the worst. no one cares about the customer. you dont tip much here . . . because no one earns it! if i fail at engineering, plan B is to come to hungary and open up a Mexican food restaurant with REAL service and FREE refills. these people wouldnt even know what to do with it. this would be such a radical concept here that most people would probably reject it. unbelievable. no one even cares. if you want something in a food place, YOU have to flag someone down or grab them or yell at them and then make your request because if you wait for them, you will never (i really do mean never) leave the establishment. this (so far) has been my biggest complaint with europe.

thats all for now from the josh think tank.

(man those pumas rule)

did i tell you guys about the Pumas here? they have some of the coolest shoes. i could only find one picture of the several that i like. check it yo:



yeah it looks like theres no sole at all but its actually just that the side comes down over it almost all the way. so sweet.

i also saw some Diesel ones that ruled but i havent found a pic yet.

european shoes are so leathery. i'll have to find a good example to show you guys.

went to a city on the border of hungary and slovakia today called Esztergom. it was a really nice city. it wasn't too big or anything and it had this really awesome church/castle. it was so cool looking because the town was in the hills and surrounded by them and stuff.



anyway, we stayed around there for a long time and ended up missing our train back by 5 min (there was another one but not for 2 hours. if only we hadnt of stopped for ice cream!) so i sat there and worked on my magyarul for a while. then i slept on the ride home. man i had a bad headache until about 10 min ago. wonderful aleve.

alright i'll write more later. too tired.

have a marvelous weekend in MJ, babe.

i didnt know todd's last name was "burkE"!

news to me!





(poor todd burke. you gotta get them to fix that)

well, i guess i couldve predicted it. i have a sinus infection. however, i got to it really early so it shouldnt be a problem. still though, i feel pretty rundown right now. i think i may sleep (again).

done with classes this week. this place is even better than work. when i leave my classes i'm DONE with them. no homework or anything (yet). I dont know what i'll do this weekend. I think i'll visit some places in hungary.

i cleaned my room today. i blame the dust factor in here for my sinus problem. i'm freakin living in a closet. too dusty.

dang i feel worn out.

i went out and took some pictures of stuff at night the other day. hopefully i can put those up soon on my site. and i went to the art museum yesterday. i had originally intended to visit the zoo, but they were about to close. i have some pictures of that too. it was a huge place. lots of art. there's also a contemporary art museum that i want to visit, but the next exhibit doesnt open for a few days. and i think i'll try and see the symphony this weekend. we'll see how all these plans go.



yeah. oh and i had another dream about having to leave budapest and being sad and stuff, but that was 2 nights ago. i didnt have one last night so thats good.

szia.

28 days without shaving and still going strong!



party on, party people.

I went to see a movie last night. it was nice and relaxing (once i sat down). we got lost on the way and couldnt seem to find the theater in the 3 story mall. stupid huge mall. and when we finally found it we had to go down a story to buy the stupid tickets (and wait in the enormous line). so not so good thus far. but the movie ticket (650Ft), the large popcorn (410Ft) and large drink (410Ft) only ended up costing us $6.50 USD. wonderful. especially since i had to make the popcorn my dinner. but it was good. not greasy at all like ours. anyway, we (john and i. we couldnt find anyone else) watched the movie Darkness, which i had never heard of, because it was in english. and it had magyarul subtitles so i could practice me reading skills. and for about 1hr 45min i felt almost at home. i was talking to todd about this and explaining that it's not that i'm having a bad time or anything, but i didnt really realize how much i kind of missed things. it's funny because i didnt anticipate noticing it that much. ah well. i cant ignore the fact that home is home for reason.

i had this dream last night that was interesting. and it was quite a notable dream because when i woke up i still remembered it. that never happens. actually, i woke up towards the end because i was so sad, and i knew that i had to remember it. i dreamt that i had just come back home from hungary and i was so happy to see everyone and we were all talking and having a good time, then i realized i hadnt gotten anyone anything or brought back anything cool or even any experiences. and i walked off and started crying because of this. (i'm sorry i dont have incredibly detailed dreams like everyone else; and if i do i dont remember those details, just ideas) man i was just really upset over this. so now i have to prevent this from happening. i dont think it will be a problem, but still. man, i was so happy when i woke up and realized where i was.

okay i'm going to go lift weights now.

okay so i had originally thought that my guestbook entries were genuine, but upon closer inspection (with the help of jeff) I'm leaning towards them being bogus. Ah well. it was cool while i thought they were real.

curse those terd spammers.

HOWEVER, on an AWESOME note: i went to this electronic pawn shop right next to my gyro heaven (after eating said heavenly gyros) to see if they had any cheap headphones in which i could remove the jack from and splice it to my good ones. after explaining my dilemma to the man (there are two but only one speaka the english. the other fixes stuff), he said they could repair it for me for 200Ft! Thats like $0.90! so i ran back to my room like the kid who found the golden ticket, grabbed my headphones and walked back (one can only run on excitement for so long) to the shop. i gave it o the guy and 15 minutes later they were as good as freakin new. "tubular," i exclaimed.

today i went to my timber structures class. when class started, there were 2 students in the class; i was one of them. then about 40 min late, 2 other guys showed up and then another about 10 min later (classes here are 1hr 45min long). It really pissed me off because: our teacher was this nice old lady (who said i was the first american, to her knowledge, to take this class. yeah me) and these come in halfway through class and they dont come in quietly and try to slip in, the walk in and are real nice to the teacher "good morning!" and so on, during her teaching. i'm not big on being strict on stuff like that, but this is just getting on my nerves. Even at home, i'm pretty sure people frown on others walking in halfway through class. i mean 5-15 min is one thing, but 45 mi? that's just being a faszfej.

oh and i didnt really run. phhh. duh.

figlio di puttana. it's been a great night. great.

first, i guess jesse still likes me (?), but it sort of doesnt seem that way. our recent conversations have been less than uplifting. we're talking about it now. i dont know.

and then no less than one hour ago i broke the freakin jack off my headphones. my ONLY headphones.

urge to kill . . . rising.

Unlike todd, i have all the time in the world. I have 2 classes on monday and tuesday, and 1 on wednesday and thursday. I am a machine. therefore, i must find stuff to occupy my time with. so thursday nights i go to choir. and other nights i work on my website and others i venture out. like last night. i went to this techno music place. it was a bit creepy at first because there was just this guy standing in front of everyone at an mac computer, mixing drum and bass/industrial music and everyone was just standing there. i felt like i was in a cult or something. Pretty weird. but it got better. the main guy came on (DJ /rupture (i think)) and he was pretty awesome. and finally people started dancing. but yeah, i dont know how often i'll return. man the bass was loud, which doesnt bother me at all. it's the trebble that gets me, so i'm going to have to bring earplugs with me from now on.



so yeah, i have to FIND things to do so that life here doesnt pass me by. So in a way, todd, you're lucky . . . yeah.

or something.

OH. i went to St. Stephens Basilica today. man what a church. insanely huge. even bigger than the burka's church! John and I went up to the top dome part and you could see all of the city in every direction. dont worry, i took pictures like they were going out of style.



i guess that's about it. my keys got locked in my room. and the guy who came to fix my internet today was drunk. and i think i have a phone number now. it may be 209-7289.

we'll see?

holy crap i'm HOOKED on gyros. i ate one for lunch and dinner today. they are so freaking awesome. i think it's the closest thing to a taco i'm going to find in this tacoless country. they have some chili sauce that goes on it that is wicked, but i've learned that it does a wicked number on my digestive system. so i must say nah on that. and i've mastered saying "no cucumbers or tomoatoes". "Nem uborka, nem paradicsom."

i rule so much.

well i guess i'm the only one blogging it up nowadays. therefore i now proclaim myself as the king of blogging.

suck that, scott.

oktoberfest anyone??



you better believe it!

so i dont know if i've said this before, but i absolutely get such a kick out of studying things with all of these international students. i was just looking around in today's folklore class at everyone's faces and it was just so great. it's funny because with a lot of them you can really tell where they're from. either from finland or germany or france or somewhere else. just being in the same location studying the same material or at least attending the same activity just gives me such joy.

i'm really glad to be here.

sunday we all we up to the castle in buda. it's pretty cool. it's funny, this french girl asked me why we use "pretty" to classify something as nice looking and also to replace the word "fairly" (or something) and i really didnt know. i thought about it for a while, but couldnt figure it out. anyway, the castle was a really cool place and you could see so much from up there.



and the castle was pretty great looking too





and all of this stuff in the city looks so cool at night. i just never remember to take my camera out when i go. i'll work on getting some of those.

the scenery here is just unbelievable. its almost overwhelming at times. unreal.

we stayed up there for a long time and several of the guys played hacky sack. i didnt. and then me and john...



decided to go back because we had the greasiest chinese food for lunch and it was still just sitting in our stomachs like a freakin lead weight. we chose this over the juggling festival that was going on. i'm not big into juggling. go figure.

oh and i now have a roommate, yudai (i think i'm spelling his name wrong). he's from iowa, but not originally (wink).



okay now i'm stupid tired, so i must sleep.

ta ta

hey everybody! josh here!

okay so friday i didnt really do anything. i swept and mopped my room. that was good. and i'm not really sure what else happened, but i'm sure it wasnt very exciting. however...

SATURDAY
today i got up and went to Statue Park, which consists of the communist statues (from the communist era. obviously) in hungary. rather than destroying them like most did, hungary chose to save theirs for display. Basically, they're capitalizing on communism. ironic? maybe. but who can blame 'em. anyway, my guide was really long-winded so i wandered off with a few others and took tons of pictures. i think some of them turned out really cool. i'll post more on my site. (and todd, there were statues of lenin. it was stalin that was no more.)



LATER THAT NIGHT...
Richard, the australian guy . . .



told me about this beat boxer, Killa Kela. (if you don't know what a beat boxer is, it's a guy who does a turntable routine with just his vocals.) he said he was better than rahzel. he was right. this guy was freakin amazing. we went to this docked boat and paid about $10 to get in. there was some sort of eatery on top and a dance club type thing below. as much as i hate extremely loud music, this was too cool to pass up. It was more like a show than a concert or anything. me trying to describe it to you is useless. you'll just have to download some of his music or something because it truly is indescribably cool. (and it's definitely a lot cooler in person.) yeah, so then after he got done they played hip-hop music for a while and THEN they went into drum and bass. it was so awesome. these europeans love dance/trance music. they were just dancing all over the place. i think i could get into their type of dancing. i dont know if we dance like this at home or not because i've never been anywhere, but these americans that were with us thought they danced weird. oh well. i just thought it was cool because there was nothing sexual about it. like it wasnt bump and grind crap. it was just moving to the music. i hope i get to go back sometime. yeah so we were there till about 2.5am and then ended up sitting around and talking till around 5.0am. i havent done that in a while, so i felt reasonably crappy today. (plus i had this grease with chinese food mixed into it for lunch right after i woke up. yeah, that was like a lead weight in my stomach all day.)

we didnt make it to church this morning because the girl couldnt get in touch with the people she knew (who knew where the church was). gonna make it happen next week.

well. i guess back to budapest. cause that's where i live. budapest.

jh

okay so laundry is now quite a chore. it takes this machine 1 US hour to wash half a regular load of clothes. and there is no dryer. so here's an idea of what i'm up to...



yeah. that much fun. anywho, i'm hooked on gyros lately. they're good and cheap.

i went to a bath today. it was really cool. so old looking in parts. they were just like huge hot tubs. there were different temperature ones though. some hot some cold. it was so relaxing. it felt great to stretch out in there.

and then i went to choir practice. it was really cool, but the rehearsal was held in hungarian (which i didnt anticipate). so it's a bit hard to start where everyone else starts when you have no idea whats going on. but they sang some cool songs. i hope i can go often.

and then i had a gyro!

alright, so apparently my blogs have not adequately described the alcoholic situation here (at least not enough for some viewers). so maybe this will help...

there is a ton of beer and other alcohol here. and people drink it all of the time. at that sports day we had that was organized by students of BUTE, there were 5 crates of like 20 packs of beer. and these werent weeny US beers. these were .5 L beers. and everyone just drank them. they didnt get drunk. they just drank them. thats just how it is here. the beer and wine are cheaper than coca-cola. and the only people ive seen drunk are the americans students. the europeans drink beer and stuff, but not to the extent that a typical american my age does. so i'm not going around bar-hopping or clubbing or anything like that, okay? the bars here arent filled with tons anebriated doofuses or anything. and i could count the amount of drinks i've had since i've been here on one hand. and the place i had the absinthe was like a gazebo sandwich hut in an amusement park. it's not like i'm heading out to bars seeing what i can cook up. it's more like, "when in rome". i mean, i didnt go cuckoo for crack in amsterdam and i'm not gonna do anything stupid here.

so i hope this helps put worries to rest.

good morrow to you all.

i have internet!

prepare for pictures galore!

(and more blogs and faster email response time)

oot?

okay, so because i didnt have decent internet access during my amsterdam days, here are my thought from then that i wrote down at the time. enjoy... (it's pretty long)


Well I’m writing this on my computer sitting on my bed in the hostel. For some reason, the internet in the lobby won let me go to blogger.com. so the date on this entry will be a bit off.

What a trip. I’m so tired. Every movement just drains me. (and I’m on the third floor). At the Nashville airport I was doing everything I could not to just bust out crying. Only by sheer mental power did I make it till the end. But as soon as I hugged my dad it was over. And then I didn’t know if I was going to be able to let go of jesse. I still don’t know how I did.

The flights were great. I got to sit by myself on BOTH of them. Which wasn’t a huge deal going to Detroit, but made an enormous difference on the 7hr flight to Amsterdam. AND since I flew on a brand new plane, there were TVs in the headrests! I got to watch matrix 2 like twice (well I watched the cool parts multiple times. AND it was like a DVD. I could pause, fast forward, or rewind at any time. That was great. However, I didn’t sleep at all, which didn’t make sense to me since I have slept in much more uncomfortable places than that. But no sleep (man this seems like several days ago. I’m so freakin tired.). it’s like my night time was taken away from me. And since I only got about 3 hours of sleep the night before I left, I’m really running on fumes.(oh yeah, the Detroit airport was awesome. It had a raised monorail thing. Looked really cool) And I haven’t eaten much at all today. I had some breakfast (at 2 am home time) and then I just couldn’t eat. The thought of food makes me wanna throw up, but I managed to eat a ham sandwich this afternoon (I am 7hrs ahead of Mt. Juliet and 6 ahead of ktown (in case you didn’t know)). The guy in the deli I bought it from was so nice. Probably in his late 20s and just as nice as could be. Then I decided to sleep through dinner because I wasn’t hungry anyway. Now I’m trying to make myself eat a moon pie so that I can take a vitamin.

I did NOT pack efficiently for this part of the trip. I had to drag those heavy, huge-ass bags so freaking far and up and down so many steps. I also felt stupid carrying twice as much luggage as everyone else. (you gotta love wandering half aimlessly with two cumbersome bags) But I’m not on vacation. Buttheads.

This place is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I mean, I’ve seen pictures, but they might as well be fake until you see it in person. There are bikes EVERYWHERE. Which is not surprising since the streets are maybe 10ft wide for cars. And the thing is, is that all of the bikes look like something straight out of the Bicycle Thieves.They are all old European looking bikes. There isn’t a new looking one or mountain bike in the whole lot of them. They all have little curvy handle bars with baskets and crap. Crazy dutch. But there are so many great posters and signs that would line the walls in jesse and sams place perfectly. I guess they just look so neat because we don’t have them. Nothing at home is like it is here, except the people (generally). They look just like Americans, but you just never know what language is going to come out of their mouth and how well they’ll speak it. However, there are the ones here who dress all weird euro like too. Especially girls. I saw one on the subway who was wearing a small plastic garbage can as a back pack. And then I saw this guy wearing a sweater with a denim vest over it and a toboggan and j.lo type glasses. And the bums are very courteous. Which is good because no one like a rude bum. This really seems like a place where sam would fit in perfectly.

Yeah, I walked around talking pictures like crazy today. That was all I had the strength to do. I was going to walk around town tonight, but it’s a bit scary by myself. So I went about a block and just turned around. 

Well I’ve succeeded in getting my crushed moon pie all over me. So I’m going to shut this down (my converters work!) and shower and sleep.

Tomorrow it’s off to vondelpark to see the rijksmuseum and the van gogh museum.

Take care.

11.0 pm (my time)


okay so the name of the game is fast showering. the rules: no shower curtains. that’s right. we have no shower curtains. there are dividers, but that’s about it. not quite sure what that’s all about. especially since we’re in a coed dorm. I asked some Hungarians (because I thought, well maybe since school hasn’t started, you know? running behind, that sort of thing) and they said they never have them. so i think i’m going to try and rig up some sort of towel-curtain. we’ll see, but it’s a bit discomforting.

anyway, my second day in Amsterdam:
i got up and took the tram to the museum area where i visited the rijksmusem and the van gogh. the rijks was huge, but i think i preferred the van gogh. i like his are better. like he’ll pain a wooden table, but include blues and greens and stuff. i just really think it’s great. ESPECIALLY the oil painting. they’re simply magnificent. i didn’t feel too great that day, but i managed to find a mcdonalds and eat a bit. much to my dismay it was not called a “royale with cheese”. but i think perhaps he said it was called that in france. we’ll see about that. then, i walked over to vondelpark. it was nice. there’s kind of a small lake running through the middle of it with many people laying around it. no frisbee though. soon though. i hope. then i took a tram back to centraal station and bought a train ticket to Brussels for the next day. after this i slept until dinner.(i’ve been needing to take these 2-3 hr naps during the day). the hostel offers a free dinner and on the menu was macaroni, so i said i’d take that. they asked if i wanted cheese or not and i was like, “DUH” (i didn’t actually say “duh”). anyway, it turned out to be goulash. then i thought i would try and find my way to the proverbial “red light district”. (i couldn’t go to Amsterdam and NOT be able to say i’d seen it.) i eventually found it, due to the numerous red lights. (i cant say i ever felt “threatened” in Amsterdam, but there certainly were enough creepy people to keep me on my toes.) so sure enough, there were all the glass doors with women (i can only assume prostitutes) wearing underwear or something (not naked) just standing there. i was afraid to look for fear of eye contact. but it was all taking place along a canal (and connecting alleys) and it was like a big party and everyone was just out and about. most people, it seems, were just out to observe. so i made my way through the main canal and headed back. i went to sleep and set my alarm for early.

my third day in Bruxelles (Brussels):
i met some irish guys at the hostel. they were funny guys. i had just about as much trouble understanding them as i did anyone else. seriously. i was sort of embarrassed by the fact that i couldn’t understand my own language, but it was so slurred together. quite impressive actually. they referred to me as Tennessee. they were loud and violent with each other. funny stuff. anyway . . .
i left at 6 for the train to Brussels. it was a good train ride. a much smoother ride than i envisioned. i got to see some of the country side which was sort of interesting. each section of land was marked off with a small moat of sorts. i’m not sure why. maybe to keep animals in a certain part. someone should let these guys in on the secret of fences. i knew nothing about Brussels when i went, so my visit started off a bit slow. in fact, i experienced my first bout of cultural shock here. i was walking around looking at stuff when i got hungry. i hadn’t really been hungry on this trip yet so i this seemed like a good thing. the only problem was that i couldn’t find a place to eat. everything seemed to be closed and as far as i could tell the city seemed to go on as far as the eye could see in every direction. and i was running into more and more people who lacked knowledge of the English language. i finally made my way to a large food and shop area and it was fine from there. actually, i ate this chocolate, flaky, square biscuit looking thing with vanilla pudding/crème in the middle. it was awesome. i mean really good. and this was at centraal station, so if this was the airport food, i’d have loved to have seen the real stuff. (but i didn’t) i was tired from my aimless wandering, so i hopped on a tour bus with an open 2nd story on it and toured the city! it was fun. i never would’ve seen anything had i not. i photographed everything so everyone can just see those rather than me typing up thousands of words. but i will say that the architecture there truly was beautiful. so many remarkable buildings. apparently there was a worlds fair there at some point and the Belgians built this HUGE model of a 9 point crystal atom. i stands at 102m high! it’s freaking enormous like something out of a science fiction movie. finally, i rode the bus back to central station to arrive just in time for my train back to Amsterdam. i was ready to go back too. back to my home in Amsterdam.

the following morning...
i had to get up at 4:15 to make my train and flight. first the guy at the front desk woke me up 20min late (they told us not to use alarms because it would wake everyone else. i set my watch alarm but didn’t hear it. so was running to get out of there and catch the metro (subway), but the metro was not going to be open until 8.0 according to the closest bum. so i frantically searched for a taxi. luckily, i got one and made my train. security went through my stuff at the airport, but i don’t think it was personal. i think it’s just because my shirt (which i had worn the night before as i walked through town) smelled like wacky-tobbacky.
i was thanking God that gabor and his wife were at the airport to pick me up. man that made it easier.
and that’s all she wrote . . . or is it?

(it is.)