Alright, we're going to take this one city at a time. Starting with...BUDAPEST! [lesson number one: it's pronounced 'budapesht'.]

After Katy brought me a double short soy latte from Barriques [now that girl knows how to bring someone a cup of coffee...] i hopped on my bus to O'Hare. It was a few hours earlier than my liking, but taking the later bus would have been cutting it close. So just to play it safe by avoiding rush hour traffic, I got to the airport plenty early, found a little niche by those little zooming speed walky things and people watched.

The flight to Frankfurt was uneventful. I sat next to a nice German guy who was really into science, but I took two tylenol PMs and promptly passed out, so i didn't really talk to him much. Arrived at Budapest...no Colleen. Worst case scenarios play out in my mind for 45 minutes while I wait for her [to her credit i was early, she wasn't really late] and then i go change a minimal amount of dollars into Hungarian forints [airport exchange rates are kind of notorious for being, well, shit]. I have not yet begun to fully panic when someone throws their arms around me and a familiar voice starts talking a mile a minute. It's my little sister, hooray! Put those 9 weeks of Hungarian to work and lead me to the hostel, sweet thing. Dinner tonight is the essence of European fast food: doner kebaps. Kebap kebap! Mmmm the weird gyro-pita hybid thing that is so familiar from last summer's hopping around more Western European countries. Kebaps are cheap here, only like $1.50.

The bar next to our hostel is hopping, they have live music and it's a 24 hour joint. Coll and I sip on a few pints of the local Hungarian brew, which is ok but nothing too special. We go to bed at a reasonable hour so we have energy for the next day, but some guy from South Carolina is trying to pick up some chick from Dallas in the dorm and we all have to listen to the incredibly awkward, somewhat drunken process--introductions, small talk, leaving for drinks, coming back drunk, there's kissing noises, girl pulls the 'i have a boyfriend card', guy storms out. there is a collective sigh of relief from the 15 cohabitants of the room. Mental note: dorms are cheaper, but listening to dense American guys try to pick up coy girls is not my idea of fun at 3 am.

We get up around 8 the next morning. We eat what will become a pretty regular breakfast: bread, butter, cold cuts, cheese, and that watery sugar water they call OJ. I drink my coffee black, and it's not good coffee..but hey, it's better than nothing.

Our main goal for the day is to check out this giant renovated millinery that they transformed into a market, and then hit up the Communist statue park. We calculate rough times in order to get everything done by dusk and set off. Except, instead of like 40 minutes to get to the market, it takes like four hours. Not even exaggerating. Turns out the Vaci Ut we want, is not the Vaci Ut we are actually on, because there are two Vaci Uts in Budapest. Well,we figured that out after about 2 hours of walking. At any rate, Colleen and I ended up seeing all of Budapest [or 9/10s of it anyways] and walking the entire length of the Danube. I was pretty fine with our misadventure but I think this stretch of walking was what kicked off what would turn out to be a lot of pain for Coll in the form of giant blisters. Ouch.

So we finally get to the market, and I am starving. We accidentally order studel with cabbage, but whatever it tasted ok. Well, not ok, but it was edible. Kind of weird. Should have gotten apple. Sour cherry even. NOT cabbage. The curd cheese one turned out to be good, pumpkin poppyseed also a bit weird. Anyways. We promptly got suckered into buy a trick trinket box that doesn't open [actually pretty cool, i gave it to katy and she loved it]. Colleen and I split a beer as she informs me that there is actually no socially unacceptable time in Hungary to drink a beer. Awesome!

Ok, now off to the Commie Park. Tram tram tram, bus bus bus. Finally, the park! At this point we've seen all of Budapest...really we've seen all of Buda AND Pest. We look at statues of Lenin and Stalin in this somewhat decrepit, quiet 'park' on the outskirts of Budapest. Everything is kind of overgrown and people don't seem to care much if you climb all over the statues. The little book is very informative and provides pictures of the statues in their original, prominent locations about town. It's all very eerie, unsettling, and kind of cool.

So then we venture back to our hostel, except first we must experience a total fiasco trying to get tickets for the tram. I'm kind of a stickler for buying tickets and not free-loading on the public transport system, but in hindsight even I can say that I should have caved and just chanced it. Really, the entire situation was ridiculous. But after 1/2 an hour we did have tiny little pieces of legitimacy in our hands.

We ride back to the Danube, hop off, and climb a lookout point. At this point I'm fairly certain we have walked 10 miles. We rest a few minutes, then climb back down and troop across the Danube to our side of town. Pest, I think. We stop at a market and pick up wine, water, and marzipan fruit. Tonight we are hitting up the pubs, tomorrow Vienna!

So Colleen takes me to this Irish pub where all the expats hang out. Irish pubs are all the rage in Hungary and the Czech Republic because drunken groups of 'stag parties' from the UK come here since the beer is so cheap. So to make them feel at home, Irish pubs sprung up like McDonald's all across Prague and Budapest. We are both beat. A long walk later, we find ourselves among a bunch of rowdy Brits watching cricket. Eventually we find ourselves talking with two Irishmen [squash teachers], a Dane [knows all the ladies], and an English guy who buy us too many drinks and watch the Hungarian cover band perform Maroon 5 in an Irish pub. Weird, weird, and weird. But we talk to them for several hours, and they are funny guys.

Eventually we stumble back to our hostel where I promptly fall off the bunk-bed ladder and smash into the divider that separates mine and Colleen's bed from the 'neighbors'. I think I woke up everyone in the room.

We arise at 7am the next day, with a bit of a headache. We venture to the bar next door where our free breakfast is provided. Techno music thumps from the walls, it smells like stale cigarette smoke, and the only two other people in the room are still drinking Arany Asok, no doubt hangers-on from the night previous. The bread with butter and salami tastes delicious, and the black coffee dispels my hangover fairly quickly.