Okay, I know I have been a bad girl and haven't posted anything for a very long time. As unfortunate as my busy life may be for all of you readers, my lack of free time has been really great for me lately. My life has been filled with visiting and traveling, which is just the way I like it. I have been away in a different city every weekend for the past three weeks. 3 weekends ago, my friend Alexandra, a fellow Canadian and I volunteered for the Canadian Embassy. There was a huge exhibition in Budapest about secondary education and the Canadian Embassy had a booth representing all of the universities in Canada. Alex and I handed out brochures, attempted to speak Hungarian with those people that had questions, and took silly pictures with the cardboard Mountie posed beside us. We worked both Friday and Saturday and the embassy was very happy to have the extra help.
Saturday after work, Alex, a couple of other exchange students and I went to the "Terror Háza" in downtown Budapest. The Terror House was the headq
uarters of both the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party and the Hungarian Nazis, and then the headquarters of the Communist terror organizations ÁVO and its successor, the ÁVH. The building housed not only the offices of the people in charge of the above organizations, but the basement was a maze of torture chambers and holding cells for those who didn't agree with the party's ideals. Unfortunately, the museum was only in Hungarian, so it was very hard for me to follow what I was seeing, but it was still chilling to see what terrible torture hundreds of Hungarians were put through.
The next weekend was spent in Komárom, a city approximately 4 and a half hours from Nyíregyháza where my friend László lives. László was preparing for an English language exam so the weekend was spent watching movies and having conversations in English. Komárom is an interesting town because it is split right down the middle by the Slovakian border. From László's house it only takes about 10 minutes to walk across the Danube into Slovakia. Needless to say, I felt the need to cross the border (in defiance of Rotary's "no travel outside of Hungary" rules) to visit an "Irish" Pub (does a Guinness sign outside the pub qualify it as and Irish pub?) which was filled with musicians singing famous Hungarian songs.
Hungarian train workers have been striking every few months since I arrived here and I thought that my weekend plans were going to be ruined by the strike that started on Thursday evening, but luckily the strike lasted only about 9 hours, so by the time I arrived home from school last Friday I was able to pack up my bags and jump on a train to Szolnok where the Rotary Club there was holding a Farsang (don't ask me, I don't know what it means) Carnival. Everyone was required to dress up for the carnival and my friend Skyla and I had planned that we would go as a pair. Skyla dressed as a tree, and I went as a bird. Unfortunately, since I hadn't thought that I would be going to the carnival, the first train that I could catch arrived 30 minutes late, so I ended up putting my costume on in the tiny hotel bathroom. Believe me, when you have to put on fake eyelashes adorned with feathers, you don't want to have to do this in a public bathroom with 3 angry Hungarian woman waiting behind you so that they can wash their hands. Luckily, in the end my costume came together much better that I had hoped, so the evening was a success.
I know I owe you a bunch of pictures, but unfortunately, in the move from host family to host family, I have misplaced my USB cable. As soon as I get it back I will upload a bunch of new photos for you. In the meantime, please feel free to laugh at Skyla and I in Skyla's photos of the Carnival. (The girl wearing the polka-dotted t-shirt that says Pöttyös on it is Christine, who was dressed as a Túro Rudi, the famous Hungarian chocolate bar that I blogged about a few months ago.)
All of last week, from Monday to Sunday, I was skiing in Austria with 3 other exchange students and 5 or 6 Rotary families. We were staying in the small city of Mariazell, where there are 4 or 5 ski hills within a half hour drive of the city center. We skied for 5 days of the 7 and were treated to almost perfect weather. While the mountains in Austria reminded me a great deal of the Rockies, I would say that, in general, the Austrian mountains are smaller.
There are no big monster resorts like Lake Louise in Austria. Each resort takes up only one mountain and will have maybe 3 chair lifts and a t-bar at maximum.
