First visitor

I finally had my first visitor from back home. Victoria came to visit me in Budapest as a part of her first Euro Trip. Her brother was studying in Geneva for the summer and decided to stop by Bp first before going to meet up with him. She arrived on July 17th and stayed until Sunday the 20th. We started by taking her to a nearby restaurant. It has a nice outside garden and the food is excellent. I warned Victoria of the moody weather here then she understood why. As we were eating, the sound of thunder came out of nowhere and then rain came pouring down. It came to the point where the streets flooded and on the way back we had to hop over several small puddles. Not the very best impression, but we enjoyed good food.
The next day we decided to take Victoria around the Buda side of the city. I played tour guide while Gabi was at work. We started out at Gellert Hotel then trekked up the hill to the Citadel. The view from atop the Citadel is awesome. You have a 360 view of both the Buda and Pest side. Also on top is the Hungarian version of the Statue of Liberty.

view of the Danube and Pest

Statue of Liberty

We met Gabi up there for some coffee and then headed towards Buda Castle. Within the Castle District, there's many things to see in addition to the Castle itself. Although there are several museums there, we just walked around the main courtyard and enjoyed Hungarian funnel cake. We also took her to Matthias Church and took pictures.

Gabi and I outside of Matthias Church

Later that evening we went to a kocsma (coach-ma) for Gabi's friends bday. Kocsma's are Hungary's version of the local pub or dive bar. Cheap drinks and often filled with locals. We drank a lot.....i mean I drank a lot. Lots of beer, shots of jager and some goulash.
The next day we decided to have a rest day. After the heavy drinking the night before we decided to take Victoria to a Hungarian Bath. We went to Rudas (rude-ash). Rudas is one of the older baths in Bp. It has 5 different pools with varying temperatures starting at 28 C (~82.4F) upto 42 C (~108F). In the center is an octagonal pool and above it is a dome w/ different stained glass circles. The temp was only a nice 36C. There was a sign on the 42C pool that said you shouldn't stay more than 5 mins inside. That sh*t was hot!! You can feel the heat in your bones. I swear my insides were cooking.

Victoria at Rudas

Later that evening we wanted to take Victoria to the Pest side of the city. We started by taking the tram to Margitsziget (Margaret Island). We went to an outdoor bar called Holdudvar for a drink and to people watch. Victoria tried Palinka for the first time. Palinka is a Hungarian spirit made from fruit and can be very strong. I'm not sure what kind she tried but she seemed to like it.
After Margit, we walked to the Parliament and then to Old Man's Pub. Victoria wanted to see where I met Gabi. I warned Victoria that Hungarian men are very aggressive. She realized it as soon as she got out of the bathroom there. She said she felt the eyes staring at her immediately as she opened the door. One "old man" in particular went so far as to ask Gabi about Victoria. We didn't stay long b/c we were all tired still from the night before so we left after an hour or two. But we had to have one more meal. Kinda like having carne asada after drinking, we stopped off to get gyros. That completed the night.
The next day was Victoria's last day. There were only a couple things we wanted to show Victoria before she left. One being Vaci utca, the other being Heroes Square. Vaci utca is a famous street (i believe i wrote about it on one of the previous blogs). During the daytime, it's good for shopping. At night, it's a different story. ;) Anyways, after going to Heroes Square we decided to go home and get ready. Gabi's mom had sent us some homemade Goulash and we ate that right before we left for the airport. The perfect send off.

Victoria and Gabi at the airport

Victoria and I at the airport

Lake Balaton

I had a blast last week in Lake Balaton! We (Gabi and I) were there since the 4th. First we stayed with her friends at this awesome vacation house. It sits along a hillside that overlooks the lake. Originally the family wanted to turn the house into a BnB for German tourists (back in the day, the East Germans would meet other family members from Western Germany at the lake)...but never panned out, so the family just turned it into a huge vacation house. The house has 3 floors, a basement, ground floor and second floor. It has several balconies overlooking the lake. A swimming pool and lots of space to lay out and tan.

a view of the lake from the balcony

We stayed at that house from friday to sunday, came home to Bp, then the following monday took a train back to Balaton and stayed with Gabi's sister, Katta and her fiance Andras. The two of them rented a sail boat for the week. Andras is an avid sailor. Both are die hard MotoGP fans and Andras loves American muscle cars. His dream is to drive a V8. Cool people.

I got my new cell phone (sony ericsson k660i) and it has a 2mp camera on it. So I used it to take some pics of the trip. Hope they're ok.

Captain Roncarlo

My First Mate

the pirate ship, HMS Nobody

Langos (pronounced lang-go-sh)

The langos is a piece of dough like bread that's fried and topped with sour cream, cheese, garlic and salt. Me being lactose, I passed on the sour cream and cheese. Really good w/ a beer, but so unhealthy. Oh well, I was on holiday.

school and football

I've decided to go with Corvinus University and their Executive MBA program. I thought about both programs and felt what Corvinus had to offer was much better. The university is more renowned, the alumni network I felt was better because of this, they offered to help find me a job while I went to school and overall just got a better feel for it. So there it is.

I had to email CEU and while I was writing stating that I chose another, it felt like writing a rejection letter to a girlfriend. "...i'm sorry, but it's not working out....i've decided to see another..." :D it gave me a laugh after a hard day of football practice.

With that said, football practice was harder than usual. It seemed like the coach was seeing who was fast and who wasn't. He broke us up into 5 groups and the first in each group seemed like the fastest people. I say seemed like because he spoke in Hungarian. Anyways, I was chosen to be the first in one of the groups. It was a sprint to the other side of the field. If you didn't finish first, then you had to do 10 pushups. We did this over and over and each time I didn't finish first. I always thought I had decent speed, not necessarily the fastest, but good speed. But these guys are pretty fast. The reason I say that is they were running with full pads and all I had on was shorts and a t-shirt!! Anyways, the fastest guy beat me by 2 steps or so. So a couple of things here; reality check!, I'm not that fast. Next, I need to buy pads asap and get accustomed to running with them. And lastly, because of this hundred push up contest I'm doing with the others, doing 10 push ups after sprinting wasn't so bad. (there's my silver lining)

OH! Before I forget.....I found a Mexican restaurant here!!!! :D Now, it's not Barrio Logan or Chula Vista mexican restaurant, but I'll take whatever I can get. It's actually more like Chipotle, but whatever....they sold CARNE ASADA! Apparently the guy who owns it, is originally from California and preferred to use Chipotle's model. In any case, I've got a place to go to for my burrito fix. The place is called Arriba Taqueria and soon, they'll deliver! SWEET!!! :D

Now i'm hungry...lates.

monthly recap

here's a little recap of some adventures i've had here that weren't included in the previous blogs.

about a week ago, gabi and i visited one of Hungary's famous thermal baths. we went to Lukac's (pronounced Lou-catch). most of the baths have 2+ pools w/ varying water temperatures. it was a hot day, so we wanted to stay in the cooler waters (of lake minnetonka)...after swimming we go up to the rooftop to lay out and tan. most of the ppl there are older men and women. i look over to my left and i see this chick talking to this older dude. i do a double take b/c she's TOPLESS!!! now i've been to europe before and i know that topless bathing is no big thing here. but the reason why i did a double take was i also saw her (woohoo...) i asked gabi if THAT is normal...she said no. well she didn't seem to mind...she wasn't the hottest girl by any means, nor the most hideous, but when i see a naked woman i have to look...and look....and look. anyways, i got over it and that was that.

another story, not involving nudity, but a funny sight. we went to this all ages type of outdoor venue called Zold Pardon. they have 2 dj's spinning mainly rock music and a plethora of drunk 18 yr olds (they're legal here...to drink). of course to me, most of them looked like high schoolers still searching to find their identity and be comfortable in their own skin. your normal teenage years...anyways, we sit down and i'm drinking my beer and gabi her wine and i'm doing what i like to do...people watch. i look over to my left and i see this big girl dancing all by herself wearing a short black skirt she shouldn't be wearing. and this chick is moving! she's working her one dance move and doing it to every beat of the song, from bryan adams' "summer of 69" to queen's "we will rock you"....it was awesome...good entertainment. one guy was brave enough to ask her to dance, but i think he did it as a dare b/c his homeboys were right in front of me egging him on. i wish i had it on video.

on to running...i nearly lost the bet the other night b/c when i gmap-pedometer'd the route i wasn't sure if it was a mile or not. it was just over, 1.002 miles. i was out at this pub w/ gabi's friends watching the euro cup championships (viva espana!) and of course we were drinking. i intended on going home early to do my run right before midnight, but after a couple drinks it was hard to leave the fun. so i took a shot of jager and some water and set off to run....in my flip flops. now i've run in various conditions (drunk, hammered, barefoot, in dress shoes, etc) but never in flip flops. lucky for me i have my watch to keep time and i pretty much now how fast a 10min/mile pace is, but not when i'm shuffling my feet. it's hard to run in flip flops b/c i could barely lift up my legs w/o the flip flops coming off. so i figured i'd run and head back after 5 mins or so. i turned back at around 5:30 and hoped to god, that that was far enough. thank you gmap-pedometer!!!! i ran from the pub at KATONA JOZSEF and BORBELY to the danube and headed down towards the park on the other side of the bridge. had i not gone past the bridge and more, i would have lost my bet.

in addition to my running now, some friends issued another physical challenge...to do 100 push ups. to find out more about this bet go to thehundrepushupsbet.blogspot.com or go to hundredpushups.com. so with all the running, pushups and football practice, i better be mr universe when i return to SD. of course all of the beer and salami may prevent that. anyways, i'm up for the challenge.

so, whats up for the next week? we have plans to go to Lake Balaton w/ gabi's friends this weekend and then next monday go back again w/ her sister and fiance. Balaton is similar to Lake Tahoe and there's a big music festival going on there this month. go to http://www.sziget.hu/balatonsound_english if you wanna know who's performing. i don't know if we'll still be there when it starts. hungary has a lot of music festivals and the biggest one (sziget festival, pronounced sea-get) in central eastern europe (cee) is in august and is here in budapest. http://www.sziget.hu/festival_english sounds like fun...

well that's all for now....i make a decision on the schools this friday. i'll let you know what i decide on.