Budapest, Easter, life...

It was wet, rainy, even a bit snowy, and rather miserable on and off for a couple weeks, but whenever the sun comes out, I am utterly in awe of what a beautiful city I live in. The gorgeous old buildings are now framed with a rainbow of flowers in the parks and on the trees. Even though I've been here for seven months now and walk through the center almost every day, I still find myself stopping to take pictures.

I celebrated Easter with my host family. We dyed about a thousand eggs, and they thought it was funny when I tried to dip them in multiple colors of draw designs on them. I didn't do a very good job, as my draying utensil was a scrap of paper folded into a point, but I had to try. All of you know how I'm incapable of doing things how everyone else does... The Croatian custom is to bring an egg whenever you pay anyone a visit around Easter, so I saw that I wasn't the only one to try to make designs on my eggs. Someone made a really cool Indian-looking pattern using wax.

Shortly after, I left on a spontaneous trip to Budapest. We got the idea less than two weeks before we left, and the day before, we were still iffy on some minor details like who was coming and where we were going to stay, but it all came through.

We took the "brzi" train, which took a good 7 1/2 hours to traverse what should have taken about 3. Brzi means fast, so either it's someone's idea of a joke, or it's brzi because it only stops in every 3rd village.

Upon arrival, I was immediately awed by the city. I think it's one of the most beautiful cities I've seen; it certainly has the most beautiful architecture. Zagreb's ornate facades look plain in comparison. I missed, however, the lounging atmosphere of Zagreb. It seemed much busier and noisier, and lacked Zagreb's plentiful parks and cafes, where people linger to talk, watch people pass and enjoy the day. I loved walking along the Danube at night and watching the reflections of buildings ripple in the water, but the cars whizzing past spoiled the tranquility.

We met up with some Brazilian exchange students who showed us around the city. It was nice to not have to worry about where we were going and how we would get back, and they told us about life in Hungary. Croatian may be difficult, but after hearing Hungarian, I feel quite lucky. They have to learn 20 cases, as opposed to our seven, and I can't even get my mouth around many of their words. Ironically enough, the word for "hi" sounds like "see ya", and "hello" means "bye".

still plodding along

I'm not sure I'm actually making any headway on the gap between what has happened and what I've written about, but at least I'm trying... and I finally posted some pics from Turkey, so check them out.

I went skiing again, this time for a weekend in Austria. The skiing itself wasn't remarkable--though it might have been with fresh snow--but the sceneray was. Coming from CO, I am not unaccostomed to impressive views, but in Bad Gastein, there wasn't just one or two snowy peaks to be admired from a vantage point at the top--we were completely surrounded by spectacular panoramas. Pretty much every place I stopped to look around warranted a "slika break".

I am still in awe of the fact that I was able to hop on a train in the morning in Zagreb, and and be in Austria by lunchtime. The train brought us practically to the doorstep of our hostel, which was a five minute walk from the ski lift. The hostel was really clean and nice and it was fun to meet people from all over. There was a strong international flavor to the whole town. Just walking down the street or riding up a ski lift, I could hear about five different languages. I was able to ride up a lift in one town, ski through another, and end my day in a third. Most of the mountain was above treeline, so as someone put it, the groomed trails were more like sugestions, though the spring conditions made them strong sugestions, as I do not care for heavy untracked crud.

more catching up

I finally went skiing! Though it only partially qualifies, as there were a whole two runs, only one of which I actually skied. It was covered with world cup ice, and my skis were so dull that I fell multiple times when I wasn't even skiing. However, my real prupose was to interview a local junior team for an article, so it was interesting to tag along at their training and meet the kids, and it was nice just to be out again.

I also went to the world cup race that was hosted on the local mountain. We got there at 8, when the temperature hovered just above zero (It sounds way more impressive in celcius: -17) to hike down from the top and stake out our spot on the racecouse. By the time the race started, we had been standing there for more than an hour. My feet were fully numb, and Bruna and Hannah were on the ground huddled under a Brazilian flag claiming they couldn't moove their legs. Skiing is not a great spectator sport, but the Croatian fans were worth watching. They came in droves, decked out in red and white checker patterns and carrying flags, horns, whistles, clappers, and all other manor of noise making apparatus. They were united in their support for any Croratian, but particularly Ivica Kostelic. Whenever his name was even mentioned, the hillside erupted, and the rest of whatever the announcer had to say was drowned out in whistles and screams.
And there was no leaving early in the second run. The wild crowd watched expectantly until the penultimate run, when their favorite came down the course to take the lead. Horns blew, balloons flew and everyone chanted “Ivo, Ivo!” When the final racer came up ahead at the timer midway down the course, the entire hill went dead silent as everyone waited in suspense to see if Kostelic would keep his lead. He wouldn't, but a silver medal was cause enough for celebration, and the party was still raging when the sun was starting to sink and we decided to head home before we froze.