Hungary

While I should be doing schoolwork in preparation for the looming end of my semester I choose to blog. To be honest, I don't have a whole lot to say about Hungary. We spent the majority of our time (about 3 days) in Budapest, but this photo is from Szentendre, a small town about an hour outside the city. This is the town's plague column. You can find one in every Central European city or town, usually in the Baroque style and meant to commemorate the horror of the plague as well as to give a sort of thanks for its end. We've seen a ton of these columns in our travels as a group, and most are very elaborately decorated with saints, angels, etc. In addition to being a monument, then, you can also say they stand as a sort of offering or appeasement to the God (not the gods) to continue to keep the place plague-free. After seeing the impressive columns of Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, etc., a fellow student looked at this relatively barren column and noted that in this town, "they must not have been very scared of the plague." Our program director thought this was great (as all plague jokes are?). I'm also blogging for the program as a "student correspondent," so he told me, still laughing, "That should go in your blog!" Here it is. (I will tweak the entry before sending it off to him.)

The most notable of my Hungarian exploits involved traveling to a park on the outskirts of Budapest with three of my flatmates. A free afternoon on our hands, we decided to go the the park where all the communist statues from the country (I think) were collected. The whole thing turned into quite the funny fiasco. Involving multiple buses and missed stops, expired tickets, being ignored at certain stops, crossing the city border about 4 times, and ultimately traveling for 3 hours in order to get to the park half an hour before it closed. The statues were cool. My camera battery was dead.

(A story better lived than read, as most are. We were all in that funny hysterical state that arises when things go awry like that. It made Hungary more fun.)

Now, back to the chores I should complete before I get to play hostess tomorrow. Gina, hurry up and get here!