We had our third to last day of lectures on Monday. The bittersweet thought that our wonderful time in Germany was soon approaching its end started to steadily creep into our minds. Having finished lecture early, my group of friends decided to enjoy an afternoon beer at the Hofgarten then head home to do our last-minute laundry and pack for Vienna. Somehow I managed to take all night and part of the morning to pack for five days of travel. I was very impressed with my ability to finally pack small for trips. For the previous weekend vacations I had used my large duffel bag, which made for a pretty heavy load just for two days. When traveling a bit for vacations at home I had used a medium-sized suitcase for two or three days of travel. So, needless to say, I was very proud of myself for fitting five days of clothes and stuff in my carry-on luggage. By the time I finished packing, I decided to take a shower and get dressed in the next day’s clothes. After that, I took a one-hour nap before having to prepare myself to be picked up by the taxi to meet with the gang. That was all the sleep I got for the night. The airport is a whole other story; let’s just say I very much understand the liquid rules for carry-ons now. Tuesday, our first day in Vienna, was jam-packed with cultural and historical immersion. We had a three-hour tour with the world-renowned physician Dr. Schnabel. Dr. Wasser was nowhere to be seen. He was probably taking a nice little nap or preparing for the rest of the week. I felt a little bad for Dr. Schnabel, because of the thick, black, long-sleeved robe he was wearing for three whole hours. (We all instantly knew Dr. Schnabel was Dr. Wasser in disguise even with the mask on. Again, Dr. Wasser would make a killing giving tours.) Our first method of protection against the Black Death was chewing cloves. I had cooked cloves into my food before, but I had never swashed them around my mouth. My tongue did go a bit numb. During the bit that we had to consume little boys’ pee, I was actually concerned that we were in fact having to do so given that Dr. Wasser is a die-hard medical history fan. To our relief, it was some delicious German soda. The vinegar-tasting was not so fun. I was hoping Dr. Wasser wasn’t serious about that one, but he was darn tootnins. I tried calming down my disgust with thoughts like, “it’s like pickle juice haha yeah just like that.” At around 4 pm we had our tour of St. Michael’s Church. Thank God that we were split into two groups and that I was in the second group to tour the church. I used our break time to take well-earned, much-needed nap. Apparently I looked like I was praying, which was my goal. Our tour guide was a little, old spit-fire of a woman. We were only allowed to tour a small section of the church catacombs, which was a slight bummer. I had never seen so many beautifully painted wooden caskets and ornate metal caskets. Some people were creeped out by the bones of 16th century (??) Viennese citizens; they should’ve seen the Paris catacombs and the 6.5 million bones there. I took my second nap at the Goulashmuseum where we had our group dinner. I was disturbed by a napkin ball that Connor somehow managed to throw right at my face from 10 feet away. Impressive. The goulash was extremely satisfying and fulfilling, and the three bottles of wine our table sampled were quite tasty. Thank you, AIB!! Wednesday was the drug museum visit. Even though I had gotten enough sleep, I guess my body was trying to compensate for the night before, and I dozed off a bit during the tour. Our guide wasn’t to blame, of course. The information he was providing was very interesting, and I tried my absolute best to stay awake. The collection of herbs and other pharmaceutical artifacts that the museum had was pretty impressive. They even had the head of a mummy! The poor mummy didn’t look to be in very good condition. I am not sure what its previous owners were doing to it in order to treat people. The rest of the afternoon was free of any other plans. My friend group used this time to do a little souvenir shopping and a tour of the Albertina art museum. The museum boasted its possession of a works from the likes of Picasso and Monet, but they only actually had a few paintings from each artist. From the small collection of Picasso they had, I was still able to notice the changes in Picasso’s art style as time passed. We sampled a few pastries from the Demel bakery who at one time made luxurious treats for the Hapsburgs. That was nap time #2 for me that day. We later ate dinner at small restaurant in the market area. Sadly, the apparently authentic weinerschnitzel I had was not worth he $17 I paid. On Thursday, we visited the Narrenturm, the Moving Freud Museum, and St. Anna’s Church for a string concert. I could have stayed in the Narrenturm the whole day; the collection of wax casts of diseased humans and of diseased skeletons was especially interesting. Most of us could not believe that the human body could be afflicted by such things as the things we saw. Even infants were morbidly disfigured by many prevalent diseases of that period. Before visiting the Freud Museum we were given a small lecture about the one, the only, Sigmund Freud. That man was an interesting individual. He’s not my favorite famous figure in medicine, but if he had perished during the holocaust along with his sisters the field of psychology would have definitely been lacking in serious development.The string concert was very pleasant; I am sure it would have been more pleasant if I had been sitting in the acoustic sweet spot, which was probably somewhere in/near the center of the church. I tried my best not to fall asleep, but I did for a few minutes; I would like to think I had my head up the whole time, but I know that my head did fall a couple of times. Our last day in the beautiful and charming city of Vienna involved visits to the Haus Der Musik museum and the Vienna Natural History Museum. If I had not been so hungry I would have stayed in the music museum until the group had to meet for the natural history museum. The museum had a small exhibit about Mozart that I would have really loved to explore amongst the rest of the building. Instead, I tried some Viennese Mexican food; of course it was different. The elote was basically one of those four inch (??) pieces of corn-on-the-cob with the thinnest little stick. I don’t know if we were expected to be able to actually hold the corn on that stick. The corn was also sprinkled with a different seasoning. My friends and I had beef tacos; they weren’t half bad, but they were overpriced. The three of us were eating the tacos with our hands, while the nearby Viennese were eating their tacos with forks and knives-poor people. The natural history museum was a treat. I had never before seen so many meteorites (I had never before seen a meteorite). I took several pictures of the meteorites found in Texas. The museum was vast and smelled of old wood, but in a good way. I had also never seen so many different kinds of birds before then. All the taxidermy animals did slightly disturb me. So many animals were shot and killed back then for the sake of building scientific collections-cute animals, tiny animals, baby animals. On another note, I wish my time in Vienna could have been extended, but my friend and I made last-minute plans to travel to Budapest; soon after we arrived in Budapest, we thought of how glad that we did.
So what’s with J Balvin and Budapest???
To somewhat answer the question in the title: the night that the five of us arrived to Budapest there was a festival poster featuring J Balvin staring me straight in the face. It was a VERY unexpected surprise since J Balvin is a latin musician. THEN, when we arrived at our hostel, the receptionist was playing J Balvin! Almost everywhere I went, J Balvin J Balvin. Anyways, after the group dropped off our things we refreshed ourselves and decided to venture across the street to ride the giant Ferris wheel, the Budapest Eye. The park nearby was HAPPENIN’. It was full of young people just gathering, socializing, and enjoying a few drinks. The Eye gave us a breath-taking view of Budapest at night. I am sure all of us knew that we would be having a wonderful time in the Hungarian capital the rest of the weekend. For the second weekend, we had no solid plans, so we resorted to wandering around on our way to the Parliament building. We were pleasantly surprised when we stumbled across a large structure with a very large dome atop that was practically centered at the very end of a long corridor of shops and restaurants. The large building happened to be St. Stephen’s Basilica, the Roman Catholic church dedicated to Hungary’s first king. It was very extravagant and beautiful inside. There were a few sections that had small informational signs in Hungarian, German, and English. As you entered the church, maybe a few dozen feet ahead, was the very hand of St. Stephen himself (mummified and all that of course). On our way to Parliament we took a stroll down the Danube and stumbled across another landmark-the Shoes on the Danube Promenade Holocaust memorial. It was created by the film director Can Togay and the sculptor Gyula Pauer to honor the Jewish Hungarians who were murdered along the Danube by the Arrow Cross militiamen during the second world war. When we finally arrived at the Parliament building we were disappointed to find out that it was closed to the public for the day. However, nearby there were steps leading underground to some sort of attraction. Several of us would discover that the attraction was actually an informative memorial to those who were massacred by the Soviets during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. After or brief time in the Parliament area we decided to take a hike over and up to Fisherman’s Bastion. We spent quite a bit of time there taking picture, because the complex had a fantastic overlook of the other side of Budapest. We had a delicious and super fulfilling late lunch at a local restaurant; for around 17 USD we had a three-course, authentic Hungarian meal with goulash, dumplings and stewed turkey, and a chocolate dessert. After the bastion we took a short stroll around Margaret’s Island, a large island park. There were all sorts of things to do there like: walking through the small Japanese botanical garden, see the musical fountain, visit the pool, all sorts of stuff. We decided to head to the hostel afterwords to either rest or partake in some drinking games before visiting the ruin bars with our hostel family. Palinka is very strong stuff and will put a few hairs on your chest. On Sunday we visited the Szechenyi Thermal Bath, Hero’s Square, a small local market, and a restaurant that was recommended to us called For Sale. I did enjoy the baths very much, mostly the cold outdoor lap pool, but the place was a bit too public and loud. Next time I am definitely going to visit the Gellert Thermal Bath. Hero’s Square was quite interesting as it was a memorial for all the heroes of Hungary since St. Stephen’s time in the 1000s. All the men that were featured were very Slavic in dress and reminded me of Vlad the Impaler. The local market had a few trinket booths; I found a nice, old leather watch at one of them. The goulash that we had at For Sale was incredible. I really wish I had several stomachs and a lightening-fast metabolism. One single bowl of goulash could feed around three people (the portions were massive in general). Most of us tried some more Palinka, but this time we were served whole shot glasses. We tried to sip it during and after our meal like the internet said to do, but in the end we had to shoot the stuff down. The very alcoholic Palinka and hot goulash made the air condition-less restaurant feel 20 degrees hotter. A few of us were a little toasted from the one shot of Palinka. We then headed back to the hostel to relax before having to leave to catch our flight. Because the flight was delayed I decided to try to shop for more souvenirs but instead got distracted by a cat cafe with 14 cats. Our flight was delayed a few more times and we finally made it back to Bonn by taxi-another frustrating ordeal-at around 1 am.
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