Excursion No. Three: Northern Hungary (October 5-6, 2007)

Another early morning! I got up at 5:05 in order to get ready and make sure I had everything thrown together before our trip. Around 6:10 we left the apartment headed to Hero Square. We got there so early we beat our director, assistant director, and even our bus. None of us were pleased when our bus got there either—it was half the size of the last one, so almost all of us ended up sharing a seat. I was by Vin, we managed a good conversation for about half an hour and then pulled out the Ipods.
Enya: The first place we went to were some caves on the Slovakian border. They were really wonderful, and none of my pictures do them justice, mostly because they’re blurry. I was quite surprised when our tour guide led us into a concert hall in the cave. She explained that classical concerts and weddings are held there. She then proceeded to play music for us so we could hear the acoustics. The first song: Enya! Complete with a light show!

The Valley of Beautiful Women (I Guess Because of the Wine Goggles?): Our last stop of the evening was in Eger Valley for wine tasting. Lots of families grow grapes on the hillside and in the valley there are tons of wine cellers lined up next to one another. The whole group decided to stick with Elizabeth, which worked out great because first of all CIEE decided to pick up the check, and secondly because the lady at Celler no. 2 was so excited to see us all come in, she basically threw us our own little party. She brought out a number of different wines and pretty soo she was so into it that she started serving us directly out of the siphon! I think everyone had a turn, including our resident director (who sadly wouldn't allow us to take pictures). It was such a blast!

We Want to Pass It On: The lady in the celler decided the atmosphere wasn't decorative enough so she brought us a white candle stick so we could light the candles on and by our table. Adrianne was holding it and playing with the flame and I mentioned that I'd always been to scared to do that. Jacque explained that if you put your finger throught it quickly enough then you don't feel a thing. So a drink or so later I decided it was time to get over my fear of fire, even though I still have one of bees and spiders and tons of other things. And, to my surprise and pleasure, she was totally right. I was acting like a pro by the end of the night. Next I'm going to work on the spitting on your fingers and putting the flame out.

Light Table: You'll have to check the inentary post to find out exactly what this thing was and how it worked, but seeing the light table was totally one of the coolest things we've done yet. Before we even went up Elizabeth explained that you can use it to see what everyone in the town is doing, even Chris and Larissa. I love her for making sly little comments like that. It's amazing how she always knows everything that's going on even if you think she doesn't. We all had a good laugh over that.

When we actually got up to the ninth floor in the tower (no elevator) we went in and our guide played a lot of games like lifting the cars up off the street using a piece of paper and then using one of the clock towers as a watch. It was soo cool. It amazes me that they came up with that sort of thing way back when when I couldn't even do it now.

The Fortress: Next we walked over to the old fortress where the people of Eger fought off the Ottoman's basically saving all of Europe's ass for a while. Although I never thought too much about castles other than how cool they are and that I'd like to live in one, I realized how much planning they actually take. The best feature by far was the tunnels under the castle walls. Enemy's would try and dig under the walls, set off gunpowder and thus collapse them. So to conteract this they would set drums with peas or barrles of water along these underground corridors and whenever they saw movement, they knew someone was digging above them. They would then dig towards their attacker and make their own little bomb which if ignited before they invadors would force the explosion back out instead of towards the walls. So incredible.

Forced Labor Camp: This was a truly awakening part of the trip for me. It was eerie being somewhere where the Soviets took dissappeared, political prisoners. The place really could have been a summer camp it was so nice, it's scary that such horrible things happened there. I was really shocked when I went into the prisoner barracks and worst of all was the punishment center. They had a small hut dug in the ground that often filled with water that they made people stand in if they didn't meet production quotas. But often times the guards wouldn't let them sit down so they were stuck in waist high water in a weird crouching position. It's so upsetting that people could and still do treat one another like that.

Short Hike!: This one actually was a short hike. The group decided to rally and instead of going back to Budapest decided to visit the highest spot in Hungary. We all feared a hike to the top of some small mountain but instead the bus drove us most of the way and what was left was nothing at all. We got to the top, I looked over and saw the rock marking the spot and was like, "Is that is? Are you serious?" I was actually kind of diappointed...well, not really.

New Favorite Drink?: I've very much been missing my apple cider but while on our excursion I found something that is a fairly decent replacement:hot wine. I think it's mixed with apple juice, but it's pretty much what it sounds like and is oh-so-wonderful. Esp. on a cold day (or night as I ordered another cup later that evening).