!Yo Diggity!

After the weekend in Bratislava, Carol and I decided that we would venture to a similarly named country, to more of a nature weekend. So we headed to Bled, Slovenia.

We rented a car and hit the road. This is exceptionally fun for me because it is an opportunity to drive a stick (if you’ll remember I just learned to do this last summer on Christie and my European road trip). I can now officially that I am capable. Of course, you can ask Carol for her opinion but please keep in mind that I am not a ‘good’ driver in the base case.

Back to the trip: so on Friday morning, we got in the car and DROVE! I’m not sure why I always have my mouth open in pictures… I think it has something to do with my cheerleading days….

We stopped for a quick lunch at a petrol station (gas stations for you Americans) in Slovenia. The beauty to come was already apparent.

I had a not so healthy lunch.

The sandwich was a prosciutto sandwich which is an Italian favorite and many people really like prosciutto. But honestly, it’s just flat meat with lots of fat. I don’t get it. I keep trying it but you know, I just do not like it. I ended up spitting out lots of little balls of fat because I just can’t swallow that. Who knows how long it will take to digest in there!!

So by my internet directions our drive was supposed to take 6 hours. It took us 9. I can’t honestly tell you why it took us so much longer. Ok, we didn’t follow the directions exactly and Slovenia does not have really what we would call Interstate Highways so that maybe slowed us down. Anyway it was a lovely drive and when we arrived at dusk the lake at Bled was just BEAUTIFUL….

First thing we did was sit down on the edge and put our toes in.

The water was so clean and clear. So peaceful. No motor boats are allowed on the lake and the atmosphere is so serene and peaceful. We knew that were in for a great weekend!

So in the mornin’ we woke up and headed out to that little church on the island.

On our way out to the boat… that darn Carol had to peek her head into every shot!!

The stairs up to the church…

As the story goes… something about some princess who was trying to get a bell to the bell tower for her love who was lost in a battle. There was a storm as the princess tried to get it there and she died in the storm and the bell never made it. Some king then, in honour of this women finally got a bell into the tower. If you ring the bell and make a wish, supposedly…. it will come true. Let’s ask Carol if this worked out for her….

Did I mention that it was beautiful there? The view from the front of the church.

The water was really so clean and clear.

This is the gondola guy that took us out to the church. He has big muscles.

And one more time…. just beautiful!!

So later in the morning, we went on a hike in a gorge. I think perhaps the word ‘gorge’ is some dirivative of ‘gorgeous’? I think you’ll agree….

The place we stayed in was a guesthouse. This means cheap, clean and free breakfast. Was a really great place. They even dried our towels out on the line!

I can’t believe I’m posting this picture on the internet because it is soooo bad, but it is the only picture of us in our dorky wet suits. We went canyoning in the afternoon and you have to wear these retarded, but totally necessary get-ups. Cayoning is like jumping off cliffs into little pools of water, sliding down rock slides and repelling off of cliffs to rock pools below. Ohhhhh yeah… fun stuff!!

We wanted to do paragliding as well on Sunday, but unfortunately, the wind conditions were not right. So instead, we went up to the castle. More beautiful views….

The drive home was slightly better at just 7 hours. But we did get in another pleasant petrol stop!

And back home in Booty….

So recently, I’ve been traveling to nearby places on the weekends. Places in which I would likely not travel across the ocean to see, but are certainly worth seeing while I’m here. Three weekends ago I traveled with some gal pals to Bratislava, Slovakia. This is the booming captial of Slovakia. I think the population is something like 400,000? Decent sized. The cool thing about this town was it’s unique architecture. For example, these army guys’ heads on the top of this random building.

Cool, huh?

It had other cool stuff… fountains….

… Pointy steeples….

… cool statues of some famous children’s author….

…. some BEAUTIFUL old buildings …

… gorgeous views from the castle …

… and up to the castle…

…. some statues with… is that? …. no….

Luckily, we managed to find our way around the city. Sarah kept her head in the guidebook and Ana was the commander and chief.

Look at what this dynamic duo even found!

Do you realize what a rare find this is? I don’t honestly remember seeing even a McDonalds there in Slovakia, so I can’t imagine that it is so popular that this McD’s knock off would actually entice MORE people to come to it…. or maybe that is why it works here….

One thing we could not be guided correctly to unfortunately…. the train. We got to the train at the right time, unfortunately, it was not the right train.

So we got to spend another few hours in the lovely city of Bratislava with a dark, Slovakian beer. Was not so bad!

One of my favorite things to do in Houston with my girlfriends is get a pedicure. In Houson it’s especially nice because there are so many pedicure places that the prices are low and there are lots of fun places to try. Here in Budapest, I have yet to found or even try a place yet. Well last week a friend of mine gave me a place to go. She said, “Here’s the number. They don’t speak English so if you want me to I can make the appointment for you.” I thought, gosh, I think my Hungarian is good enough to try. So I called all day today and no answer. But my other friend had successfully made an appointment so I went to meet her there and try it out in person. Well it turned out to be a mother and her son sitting there doing my friend’s toes. Ok, the son was not actually participating but he was sweeping and helping out. We all (yes, all 4 of us - my friend, the pedicure lady, her son, and I) akwardly figured out that she could do me after my friend. That was great! So I sat down and after some time my friend went home. This left me to the 13-year-old son, David, and his mom, Tunde. This is when the conversation really got interesting. I would say that David’s English was just about as good as my Hungarian. He knew lots of words but putting them together in the correct tenses… well…. no. Not so much. Tunde knew even less than he did but I could tell when she looked at us like we were crazy that his guess at what I said could NOT have been correct. It was funny to me that the both of them were really interested in talking with me, even though our conversation was so very limited. We actually talked the entire hour and fifteen minutes I was in there.

My favorite part of the conversation was when David said, “I no Skinhead. Not.” This sentence, to my knowledge, was absolutely out of the middle of nowhere. I have no idea why he said it or why they both acted like this was a completely normal thing to say! This kid had a really nice, full head of hair and did not seem in any way sort of a terrorist. So did he think that I thought he was a skinhead for some reason? Did he think I was a skinhead? haha - Not sure sure about that one.

And also during the course of the conversation, he asked me where I came from. I said Texas. And I’m sorry all you Hoosiers, but in this type of context this made sense for me to say. I’ll explain. The country of Hungary is the same size as the state of Indiana. If I took a poll and asked 50 Americans if they knew where Hungary was, I bet you that 15 or less would get it right. It’s not that American’s are stupid… because if that is true then Hungarians would also be stupid for not knowing where the state of Indiana is. The fact of the matter is, these two places are not big, and their International presence is just not that widespread. So such was in this converstaion. I said that I was from Texas and we pursued to talk about the film, Texas Chainsaw Masacre. Oh Texas, aren’t ya glad you are Internationally known for that one!? ha Then David asked me where my family was. I thought, “Uh-oh, here we go.” I repeated ‘Indiana’ 5 times until I realized he’d simply never heard of it. Then I tried with ‘Chicago.’ Nope. Never heard that one either. I tried to explain that Chicago was one of the biggest cities in the USA and then lead into a conversation of the translation of city, town and country. I couldn’t get David to understand the difference between any of them because he was not familiar with the term ‘State.’ So I just moved my family to Texas after 20 minutes. Sorry Ma!

So this turned out to be quite a good pedicure…. and I must say, some very stimulating conversation! I think I’ll go back!

My friend Carol was telling me a story of how she was walking along the street the other day and a drunken, Hungarian homeless man was babbling around aimlessly, stopped, gathered himself, looked straight at her, lifted his hand to form a gun (you know, like the sideways ‘L’), and shot right at her. “BANG”. At first, she was horrified. This man just shot me with his finger! How could he?! Then, she thought, haha - this man just shot me with his finger!! Is he serious? Ha!

It was then that she made the profound statement:

“It is simply impossible to tell if someone is crazy and dangerous or crazy and harmless.”

You see, though we’ve taken some Hungarian lessons, we simply cannot fully understand the babblings of the many homeless people in Budapest. It is a fine line that these homeless people balance between dangerous and harmless. We will likely (hopefully) never know. But, this means that we must choose. And you know, we choose harmless… ‘cause walking around think everyone’s dangerous is just no way to live.

I enjoy writing this blog to share my travel experiences - I hope to share something perhaps out-of-the-ordinary or something which you would not see in a guidebook or magazine. As I was thumbing through the 300-some odd pictures of my recent trip to Israel it was hard for me to think of what to share. It was really such a cool trip and I could probably write a novel about it… but another goal of mine is not to bore you to death. So, I’ll blog this in peace-meal fashion - as I think of something, I’ll blog it. Forget about chronilogical order or anything like that.

So, two friends of mine from Houston, Mike & Adam, met up with me in Israel.

The trip came about a bit randomly and tured out to be a bit random all along the way. Those are the best kind, in my opinion, anyway! So we flew in, rented a car, and we were off.

Our first stop was Jerusalem. What a strange and wonderful city. Well, in all of Israel, you have extremely strict Jewish people living right to extremely strict Muslim people. But in the old city of Jerusalem, you’ve got both these groups, along with a few other extreme groups, all living within confining walls. It’s so weird. So every so often, when crossing from one quarter to the next, you need to go through metal detectors and security lines. This area has been fought over for centuries and centuries… and now the people must learn to live peacefully in every day life. It’s crazy to me. They don’t mix or mingle… but they are literally walking next to each other every single day.

As we were on the Mount of Olives one day, we saw something in the distance which looked like a wall. Hmm… what is that? So, we jumped in our little blue car and drove towards it. When we got up close, we could see that there were guards with machine guns at each crossing.

It seemed to be mostly a Muslim/Arab area that we were in (see, very tiny at the bottom of this picture you can see the Muslim women).

We didn’t really know what it was at the time… but we could see this wasn’t maybe the most popular wall by the graffiti which was on it…

… and that does look really like the ‘fun’ graffiti that you see normally - like what you see in Budapest. This is like graffiti with a purpose or some definition behind it. Luckily for us, the internet (and wikipedi specifically) is amazing. I found an article about this wall and it’s purpose. In short, this is a wall that is supposed to separate the Israeli’s from the Palestinians. The wall is a controversal one (thus the graffiti) as it is putting up quite a definate barrier which is a barrier that is not necessarily representative or reflective of the true state. However, the number of terrorist incidents since 2002 when it was erected. So that was an interesting find… and another symbol of what ‘living in peace’ right next to your enemy is like. As I said… this is a very, very interesting place. If you pay attention to international news at all, I’m sure you are up-to-speed on what is going on in this area of the world because something controversial is happening there nearly every day. It’s got such a long, long history… and a long, long way to go.

More later…