our train stop in bratislav, just over the slovak republic border with hungary

the fisherman's bastion in budapest

sitting in my room in arlington heights

my oh my has it been a busy last few days. I had my last in class final on monday, and I had to finish my paper for 211 before I left (so, basically, on monday). I reviewed all of cicero's de senectute in a very short period of time, and when I took the test at 9.30 monday morning, I think I knew about 80% of it, and was able to fake another 15%. then I set to work on the history paper, which had to be about 3000 words. I was not just starting to research the paper, otherwise I probably would have shot myself. I'd been working on it for a couple weeks, and had made a good dent on the background, and had written an intro for the paper. what I did was I went through a book called "the irish penitentials," which is kind of like a collection of handbooks for priests about what punishments to give for certain sins. although the penitentials have been the subject of a lot of discussion, there had never been an attempt to systematically classify all the sins listed into general categories, so that's just what I did. I came up with twelve general topics: familial matters, fiscal, fornication, violence, church, justice, gluttony, behavior, animals, pagans/magic/heresy, and other. then I went through all (except one) of the penitentials in the book, which ended up being 15 different texts, assigning every sin to the category/categories which they belong to. this is what took me the longest, and I worked on it throughout eastern europe, though by that time I had finished up a lot of it already. so on sunday I entered everything into an excel spreadsheet, which truly is a work of art. it's not a comprehensive way to present the data, but I think that it's a pretty good start. once I had the chart, I started working on the paper. I felt that it would be important to explain my process, and between that, giving a brief background on penitentials in general, and summarizing the results for each of the document, it was the easiest 2953 words that I've ever written. I had emailed my teacher earlier to see if I good submit the paper electronically, not because it was going to be done late, but because printing the spreadsheet would have required 9 pieces of regular paper, and it really looks much nicer in excel. he said ok, so as soon as I finished the bibliography and cover sheet, off it went. this was about 4.30, monday evening. I felt like celebrating. but I still had to pack.
I was catching the 7.05 bus to shannon airport, and I hadn't really packed much. in fact, I hadn't really packed at all. so I started working on that. but we were supposed to be having dinner as an apartment, so while we watched the simpsons, tara and I tried to coordinate with elisa, who was at the library working on a paper. there was some discussion about someone cooking at home, but I suggested la salsa since it would be closer for elisa and faster for all of us. so we went into town and I sent ashley a text inviting her as well since I hadn't seen her since thanksgiving. we all kind of straggled in to la salsa and ate, then elisa and parique (her french boyfriend, whose name I have undoubtedly butchered) went back to the library and ashley, tara and I went off in search of an internet cafe, since I needed to print out my plane reservation for the next day. after that ashley headed off and tara and I went to a bar for one last pint together. we came back and I spent a long night (evidence of which is my last, slightly delirious post), packing and picking things up. I said my good byes to the roommates, since I knew there was no way they were going to be waking up before I left (I know that I sure wouldn't have). around 6.15 I called the cab company, since the length of time that it takes them to get to any given place can range from three to thirty minutes. it ended up being about five minutes, but I was ready, and with that I locked my door and said a quiet goodbye to apartment 81.
I got to the bus station obscenely early, so I sat on a bench and read faust, which was the only book that I had in my carryon luggage, so it was the only one worth digging out. I got on the bus and tried to stay awake, since I had to get off at ennis to transfer to another bus to the airport in shannon, and I almost made it, but about ten minutes before ennis I dozed off. fortunately I was sleeping lightly, so I woke up in ennis, got up and moved to the other bus.
I got to the airport around 10.15 and I checked in and went through the rigamarole that comes with carrying a laptop through security. then I wandered around duty free, and saw that johnny walker red was selling for 16 euros a bottle. it seemed like a pretty good deal, and I thought it would be a nice thing to bring home to the folks. there also happened to be a large number of american soldiers milling around the airport, waiting for their flight to iraq. one such young man was in front of me at the check-out. he asked me, would I buy some bottles on my ticket? (he was also buying j.w.r.) I said sure, no problem, how many did he want? he had two, but he said that if I was buying them, he would get more. he ran off and came back with three more bottles, so in all there was 6 bottles of scotch. he said that he didn't want one of his officers to see him getting the liquor, so as the man wrapped up the bottles he just stuck them straight into his backpack. I was all ready to pay in euros, since I would have given your man a much better exchange rate than the duty free people, but he pulled out a wad of money, which now that I think about it, he probably wouldn't have had many opportunities to spend in iraq. he paid for the whole lot, and thanked me, saying that this was going to make his christmas. he made it sound like he was going to be drinking it all, but he's going to make a killing off of selling that to other soldiers. so he got a little christmas present, and I got a bottle of scotch for free.
the flight was fine, although we actually ended up flying to dublin first, which was the roughest part of the trip, especially with this little girl who was screaming her lungs out the whole time we taxied and were taking off, though once we were off the ground she was out like a light. the flight from dublin to chicago was uneventful, if a little late. I figure that that was ireland giving me one last taste of her timeliness for a while. I got to Chicago and my luggage took forever to come off the plane (seriously, there were only 11 bags that came out after my own). then I walked out to be greeted by a teary-eyed mother who had snuck inside the barrier so she could run up as soon as I got through the door. dad didn't sneak through too, but he was right there, waiting with a big smile on his face. we drove home, stopping at hackneys for a real cheeseburger on the way. I stayed up as long as I could, then went to sleep and was out until about quarter to one this afternoon. now I'm going to watch jeopardy, and that's all that's going on in my life. cheers.

kate and tara's excellent adventure, part 4, the finale

this is one of my little breaks from studying for the northern ireland exam tomorrow. I was going to just put up a short note, but I realized that the next couple days are only going to become more hectic, and my memory will only become more hazy.

monday was a bit crazy (just like every other day of this trip, now that I think about it). we checked out of the hostel in the morning and brought our suitcases down to the train station and put them in a locker so that we wouldn't have to worry about them later. then we went up and booked our seats and went out for one last wander around prague. we went to the national museum, which was kind of like the field museum in chicago, with lots of zoology, botany, anthropology, and other similar exhibits. it was free (woo hoo), so we got our money's worth, one way or another. we took one last spin through the markets, then returned to the train station, rounded up our bags, and made our way to the train. we found our car without too much trouble - only one was going to zurich, so it was kind of important that we be on the right one. a little while into our journey the lady came around asking for tickets, and tara gave her the card that we had gotten earlier. 'this is only the booking for the cabin,' the lady said, 'this isn't a ticket.' well, tara and I were flabbergasted, since we thought we had bought tickets in prague, but apparently all we had done was reserve our seats. we had thought we were buying tickets, but the price was suspiciously low... so there we were on a train whizzing through the czech republic without any tickets. the lady was very nice, and she explained that we would have to buy three different tickets, one for each country we went through. oy. we asked if we charge the tickets, but unfortunately that wasn't an option. I still had enough czech crowns to get us out of the czech republic, but between the two of us, tara and I could only scratch up enough euros for one ticket through austria, and then there was still switzerland.... fortunately, when we crossed the austrian border there was a bit of a break before the train left, so I ran into the train station and got out money so that we could travel to zurich. tara and I had both run into trouble because our bank of ireland atm cards don't have a visa or cirrus or mastercard logo on them, so we couldn't use them outside of ireland. I ended up tapping into my bank one account, but tara couldn't get into her home account because she only has a savings and not a checking account (something that I had to deal with when I spent the summer in furstenwalde). I came out to our track and the train was gone. it was one of the scariest moments of the whole trip, but I knew that it wasn't supposed to leave for another ten minutes. I asked a couple station workers who were standing around what happened to the train, and they pointed down the track. turns out that it had moved so that the other cars, those not going to zurich, could be disconnected. whew. I got back on the train and we paid for the other ticket through austria. then there was a very long ride through austria, during which we tried to sleep on the bunks provided, which kind of tilted up, so that you tended to roll into the wall. our cabin was also sweltering, so tara and I didn't get much sleep before 5.30, when we must have hit the swiss border because a new ticket person came through and we had to pay him...
we arrived in zurich at 6.30, and let me tell you, very little is open in zurich at 6.30. we changed some euros and sat in a cafe for a while, then locked up the bags and went out to explore the city. we were waiting for the tourist office to open, since that's generally the best place to find accomodation (especially since our 'bible' didn't cover zurich). unfortunately, it didn't open until 8.30. so we wandered around a rather dark, rather foggy zurich, until we came across a starbucks, and tara suggested we go in there, since she hadn't had starbucks in months, so we did, wasting as much time as is possible over small drinks. eventually it was time for the tourist office to open, so we went back, found out that there was really only one good hostel option in the city, then I bought tickets for a bus tour of the city, because I knew that we needed something to keep us awake. we joked that it would be funny if we were the only ones on the tour, until we found ourselves on a bus with only one other lady. we saw lots of the city, and heard lots of facts about it via the pre-recorded tour guide, but I doubt that either of us remember much, if any, of it. the tour ended by dropping us back at the train station, where we caught a train up the nearest hill, uetlegard, or something. from the train stop you have to walk up a nice rough path where we found 'the top of zurich'. we went into the restaurant there and were thoroughly ignored. we left and went on to another place a little farther down the hill, where we were seated and got our drinks pretty quickly, then were ignored. after about 20 minutes I finally went up and told the waitress that we wanted to order. I was tired of being ignored, basically. our money is just as good as anyone elses, especially since tara and I are pretty generous when it comes to tipping (the waiters and waitresses in budapest and prague seemed to appreciate it, at least). granted that we were pretty grungy and in need of showers, but that doesn't mean that we're somehow less important then other customers. (in fact, when I went to la salsa today jens was picking up in the dining area and noted that 'the nicer dressed they are, the bigger the mess they leave.') the food came quickly once it finally was ordered, and it was very good. I had breaded pork cutlet and tara had sausage and potatoes; a good, traditional swiss lunch. minus the french fries that came with my meal.
after lunch we went back down the hill, took the train to town, picked up our luggage and headed over to the hostel. after climbing stairs for what felt like forever, we finally came to the reception, and waited while an australian woman and her son discussed their travel plans with the guy working the desk. they were trying to figure out the price of something, and the son had done some quick math in his head, so the desk guy asked him what the total would be, and the kid had to ask the other number again, and while he was figuring it out I told him, 332. they all just kind of looked at me, and the desk guy checked the numbers and said, 332. I apologized to the kid for taking the wind out of his sails, but he was a good sport about it. it's reassuring for me to do things like that sometimes, just so that I know that my basic math skills are still in order. we checked in, then took our turns in the shower, which, once it warmed up, was one of the greatest things ever.
we returned to wandering, our favorite past time, and finally I suggested that we get something to eat at least, so we began wandering about, examining our options, which included lots of italian establishments. we were pretty giddy by then, being tired and all, and at one point we saw a restaurant called 'spaghetti', which I found very entertaining, and I pronounced it 'spa-get-tiii', frightening the man who happened to be next to us examining a menu. he ran away. we didn't eat at spaghetti, but we did have a very nice meal in another italian restaurant. when we got back to the hostel it was still too early to go to bed, but there were people dozing in the dorm we were in, so we had to go to the common room for a bit, where we mingled, mostly with australians (including our young friend from the early math discussion). eventually we decided to call it a night, and went upstairs to find that we had a snorer in the room. this seems to happen to us fairly regularly, so we didn't sleep especially well then either. we got up the next day (my cell phone had finally died after one last half-hearted attempt at waking us up). checked out, returned to the train station, wandered, then spent our last hour or so in the market before catching a train to the airport (we made sure that we had tickets this time). check in, duty free, metal detectors, and a dinky airport cafe later we finally boarded our flight and headed back towards ireland. we got to dublin, caught a bus to the city center, found out that the next bus bound for galway wasn't due to leave for another 40 minutes, so we wandered off in search of food. we ended up locating a burger king about a mile away, and we ate our sandwiches in about five minutes and bagged the fries so that we could fly back to the bus station. we made it there in time, but I couldn't find the round trip ticket I had bought a week earlier so I had to buy another one; when I went to buy a new one, I couldn't find my student id, thus missing out on the 60 cent discount. I finally got it and joined the queue, only to find that there wasn't enough room on the bus for us. another one came about 25 minutes later, and several hours later we were in galway. we took a cab home and collapsed. just like I want to right now.
back to studying. I hope that everyone has enjoyed this short series known as 'kate and tara's excellent adventure'.
cheers

kate and tara's excellent adventure, part 3 (extended edition)

well, tara is out on a 'ghost tour,' seeing all the spooky sites of prague, so I have an hour with which to update the blog.
I believe that I left off with lots of wandering in budapest, though I don't think that I mentioned all the places that we went to that ended up being closed. the history museum was closed for some private function, though we didn't know that and we just kind of loittered in the lobby wondering why there were so many people who were dressed up. we gave up on that and went next door to the national gallery, which was open, but something in three of the five halls were closed for restoration purposes. but, it was free, so we went in and explored the two halls that we could get into, and saw a lot of classical sculptures and medieval religious paintings. I love the medieval period and all, but they weren't exactly known for their artistic abilities (outside of ireland, that is :) ). after that....I really don't remember. we ended up back at the hostel that evening, with every intention of going to bed early so that we could wake up early the next morning and get down to the train station. unfortunately, the room we were in was right next to the kitchen, the only real meeting place, and if the door was as thick as cardboard, I would be surprised. I try not to be anti-social (well, most of the time I do), but I had been avoiding the kitchen all evening because there was this really obnoxious canadian girl, who even though I hadn't spoken with her directly, just by listening to the conversations she was having with others, I disliked her. anyone who uses 'the simpsons' and 'postmodernism' in the same sentence is bound to be a snot. the comments got better as she talked about michael moore, american culture, and all other kinds of pretentious crap. she was talking about things like she wanted to sound educated and worldly, but she's taking a year off from college and travelling are europe on daddy's (canadian) dollar, working on her writing. I avoided talking to her, since I obviously felt that we wouldn't hit it off, but tara went in and was trying to talk to her about michael moore and whatnot, but apparently an american's opinion on questions of american culture were not welcome. as if that wasn't bad enough (and trust me, it was), she had a rather piercing voice that had none of the charming canadian accent. verdict: floundering, spoiled, would-be-intellectual. I'm done being catty now.
we got up the next morning and headed to the main train station, where we found out that the next train was going to leave until just before noon. thus began our day of waiting, getting on trains, waiting, getting on trains, etc, etc, ad nauseum. I think we actually left on time (which is always exciting), and then we had about four hours on the train through hugary, into the slovak republic, out of the slovak republic, into the czech repulic, finally stopping at breclav, which is just over the czech-slovak border. we were there for an hour, during which time we changed money (into czech crowns) and checked the internet. then onto another train, which got us to prague around 9.30. we then had our first experience in getting ripped off by taxis (it seems like it's mandatory for everyone who travels abroad), but we got to the hostel we were looking for safe and sound (incidentally, two nights at the hostel cost the seme as our taxi ride). then we wandered around the city, as is our custom, and consulted the 'let's go - eastern europe' book, which tara has dubbed 'our bible', to figure out what to do on saturday.
saturday was great; we went to prague castle, which is an accomplishment in and of itself, given the number of stairs and steep incline that must be traversed to come to the summit. once you get up there, you know that you better spend your time well, because you're sure as hell not going to make it up that hill again. we walked around the towers and churches and went down gold street. gold street earned its name because it was formerly the home of the town's alchemists. it was also for a time home to franz kafka (number 22). there was an excellent display of medieval armor and weapons, and unfortunately we arrived during lunch time, otherwise we could have fired cross bows for 50 crowns (about 2 euros) for 5 shots. alas and alack. we descended the hill and began to fight our way over charles' bridge, which even though it's not more than 150 yards had taken us 30 minutes to cross on the way over. did I mention that prague has been busy this weekend? the bridge is lined with statues (and venders and hawkers of various sorts), and one spot is marked by a cross with five stars. this is the site from which st. jan nepomunk was thrown into the river (he had apparently already had his tongue cut out, the silver replacement is now on display in his church). supposedly if you put your fingers on all of the stars and make a wish, it's guaranteed to come through. I think some people must have been confused because there was a statue about 20 yards away which had a long line of people waiting to rub what looked like a broze cast of a dog..... oh, before we left for the bridge we stopped for a visit at the museum of medieval torture instruments. lots of exciting things, from the good old fashioned rack to witches chairs (looks like an electric chair, but with nails instead of electricity), pikes (oh vlad tepes, aka the impaler, aka count dracula...), and other, more imaginative contraptions. those kids had too much spare time on their hands.
today we were going to go to terezin, which is the site of a former nazi concentration camp. (we really are a rather morbid pair, tara and I.) but we had bus troubles, so it didn't happen. instead we went to the museum of communism, which was far more uplifting, no doubt. it was serious, yet self-effacing at the same time. it could have taken itself too seriously, but they did a nice job with it.
now, I must go hunt down tara, make sure the headless horseman doesn't get to her.
tentative schedule: one more day in prague, than an overnight train trip to zurich. we decided that travelling was taking too much time, so we cut out vienna. oh well.

kate and tara's excellent adventure, part 2 (brief)

we're in prague, which is amazing and we're going to be here until monday, when we think we'll take the night train to zurich. short but sweet.

kate and tara's excellent adventure, part 1

yes that is a reference to a bad 90's movie...but tara came up with it, so I'm not totally to blame.

currently tara and I are in budapest, typing our little fingers off at a rate of 200 hungarian forints per fifteen minutes. not bad considering a euro is worth 242 forints. tara and I got to dublin on tuesday evening and went into the first hostel we saw (which just happened to be right next to the bus stop). as soon as we walked in this rather noisy, rather drunk group of americans came in after us. the passed us by and pretty ignored us, but one of their group straggled in behind them and stopped to talk. he put his arm around tara's shoulders and was yammering on about something until the two girls behind the desk finally convinced him to go down to the living room. they were very apologetic, and we got a quad room which had just the two of us in it for the normal quad price. we went out to a bar with the desk girls who were nice: one from canada and one from america. we left them after a bit and wandered into another bar in the temple bar part of town where there was some live, semi-traditional music being played, and we sat there and had a pint and talked for a while before going back to the hostel and going to bed. we woke up early the next morning and after a breakfast of toast and milk (somehow just that managed to make me ill for a short while), we walked over to trinity college, where the book of kells is housed. anyone who knows me knows that this is a big deal to me (especially since I had never had a chance to see it before). unfortunately, the 1st of december just happened to be a day that it was not on display for preservation reasons. so I didn't get to see it, only a facsimile (which is still worth more than my life). the library was interesting anyways, and after we had contented ourselves with this we walked back to the hostel to pick up our bags, then went to the airport. airports are always exciting, and the dublin airport is no exception. after doing the awesome self-check-in and wandering into the shop area, we noticed that the flight had been delayed for a bit over an hour. apparently there was a security check being done in milan. what are you gonna do. so we spent a couple hours loitering in the shops before we finally got on the plane. we had to go down onto the tarmac to board, which was very exciting because tara had never done this before. two and a half hours later, we were in budapest!
the question is, what do you do once you get there? we looked around the airport a bit, changed some euros in a brilliant (if pricey) cash machine, and after about twenty minutes we worked up the nerve to ask some taxi guys where the bus was. once they had established that no, we did not want to spend all of our freshly converted cash on a taxi ride to the city, they pointed us to the bus stop. the bus took us to the end of one of the metro lines, so we got on and went for a ride to the end of the line, then back another 7 or 8 stops. oops. it was dark and raining and the place we were looking for was tucked away in a dark corner, but we found it eventually and found two beds for two nights. we went out and explored a little, looked for some food, failed, and went back to the hostel and to sleep.
I woke up early this morning (for me, that is) and had my first experience with hungarian showers, which are actually easier to deal with than irish ones, minus the lack of overhead handle thing to hold the nozzle. we set out around 10.30 and spent the next 8 hours wandering around budapest. about 6 of those hours were spent walking, and our feet were less than happy with us when we got back afterwards. we went to castle hill (after going over the bridge near gellert's hill [which is named after st gellert who tried to conver the magyars and was thrown off of said hill] and walking the kilometer or so to the proper bridge). we rode a fenicular up the hill, where we saw the impressive buda castle. we decided that food was high on the priority list, so we found a cafe where we had grilled pork, fried onions and french fries, and I bored tara with all the lurid details of my 'poland and its neighbors in the middle ages' class notes which I had brought with. after that we checked out the fishermen's bastion, st. mathias cathedral/church and walked over to the palace which houses three or four museums and the national library. we wanted to go into the history museum, but after 5 minutes of standing around with no one at the ticket counter, we found the sign that said that they were closing early today. fair enough, we'll go the art museum. admission there was free, but half of the galleries were closed. I would continue, but besides much walking and getting lost not much happened. we came back to the hostel, I wrote a slew of postcards, and then we wandered out in search of food. instead we found an internet cafe where I am spending the money that was meant for food. not that we'll have troubles finding something within our limited budgets. but now I've been keeping tara waiting for a good twenty minutes, so I'm going to go.
tomorrow we're off to prague with a possible stop in bratislava on the way.