Tape-delayed from Budapest, it's Saturday night!
Hey peeps! At the moment, I'm chillin' in an internet café near Oktogon, a big intersection in Pest so that means all of y'all are in for a review of what I've been up to here in Hungary for the past week or so.
Starting with the most recent stuff, today's our free day so some of us headed out to lunch and then over to Budapest's fairly new Holocaust Museum. The most in-depth exhibit was "Auschwitz Album," a display of photos taken by SS personnel of the arrivals, selection, and waiting there. It was somewhat powerful but in an understated way. It provided a view of life before deportation through a video loop and displayed photos that depicted only the prelude to the ultimate terror.
But on a much lighter note, the reason why our activities didn't begin until after noon today is because last night most everyone got home rather late from a night of clubbing over in Buda. We started the evening with some lengthy dinner adventures. For George, Dustin, and I, this included the worst and slowest service ever and my realization that the people who make Theodora mineral water aren't kidding about the mineral part! My .33-L bottle that I had last night had .82 grams of calcium in it. Seriously, people, it was like drinking rocks!But anyway, after dinner we packed into a few night buses and headed across the Danube to a free club that was way too packed and then paid 100 Ft to get into a much cooler (and quirkier) club and proceeded to dance the night away. Towards the end of our clubbing adventure, I took a little side excursion from our group circle and when I got back the group enclave had disappeared. Luckily, it only took two or three quick circles of the club to find Keren by the exit, who along with Michael Barnes had stayed back to find me after everyone else headed home on a night bus.
And although Budapest has been the dateline for almost all of the events I've discussed thus far, some of the best times I've had were on our Thursday/Friday/Saturday trip down to Pécs, a university town of about 200,000 in the southern portion of Hungary. There we had our first homestay of the trip (Number two is tonight in Budapest.) I had written some mighty awesome stuff about our mighty awesome excursion down to Pécs to post here, but my Blogger login expired and it disappeared. So those details will have to wait for later since I need to get back to the hotel and do some laundry before heading out tonight. But be sure to keep up with Brian.Indrelunas.com and also our trip blog on FlinnScholars.org. (Yours truly is writing Monday's entry!)