Markus and I are hopping on a train this afternoon to head to the foreign lands of Budapest, Hungary. We're expecting a healthy dose of culture shock. Should be good for us isolated Canadians living in a world of french fries and resealable Cheeze-String bags -- we'll get to see what those things are called in a completely foreign language.
Anyway, I will regale you with a quick description on hostels. Hostels rock. They're essentially a cross between a cabin-filled summer camp and crashing at your friend's place because you've drunk too much. You generally stay in giant rooms filled with bunk beds, usually between 6 to 30 beds in a room, sometimes with mixed sexes. Everyone leaves their backpacks on or beside their beds (concern for theft is relatively low once you're inside the hostel). Sinks, washrooms, and showers are usually down the hall.
You pay roughly $20-25 Canadian a night, and get, outside your room, an extremely casual environment packed with other people your age, all looking to meet people and see the sites in whatever city you're in. There's usually a chill-out area where people meet, eat, read, whatever, and the more interesting hostels have bars to make the area even more social.
Here's what to look for in a really fantastic hostel:
* No curfew (that is, you don't get locked out of the hostel after 12:30am, making it very difficult to have a good time out on the town)
* Free, hot showers (some places will charge you for hot water)
* Central to the city (it's a serious pain to have to hike all the way to and from the edge of town)
* Free breakfast (almost always standard, but usually it's just bread, jam and coffee)
* Movies, chill out area, pool table, foosball table, giant novelty chess board patios, etc (for relaxing and meeting people)
* Book exchanges (leave a book, then take a book)
* Events organized by the hostel staff (generally means the staff is extremely friendly and wants to help you find fun stuff to do in town)
* Clean (there have been some rather old, dingy hostels, but have made up for it with a great atmosphere)
Only downside is that sometimes it's quite noisy in the room until everyone finally settles down to bed. Earplugs have been a lifesaver.
Any questions? You will be quizzed tomorrow!
Hello there peoples,
Since I've arrived here I've came to the realization that somewhere in the city there's a mansion with an old brooding billionaire who has traveled the world, seen that it's slowly spiraling into a cesspool of tattoos, piercings and thrash metal and before his death wishes only to save the youth of this world from itself. He will do this by offering something that any student in the world can't possibly resist. By offering them free stuff.
Okay, it's not quite free, but it might as well be. I can go and see an opera for less than what it costs me to buy a big mac at McDonalds here. Sure, you have to stand the whole time, but we're young and for now it's our duty to abuse our bodies until we're forced to replace everything with little plastic pieces which will later be relpaced by little metal pieces until we´re ready to be an extra in Terminator 17. Luckily, the play ended with the death of the lead actress (I assume that not only her character, but she herself died since I don't believe any person could possibly sing as loud as she did without their lungs exploding) before my knees did and we were left to ponder the meaning of it all.
Aside from the opera, we also went and saw this very cool sound museum. It went through the science of sound, how it interacts with our ears and our brain and also how easily we can be fooled into thinking we're hearing something when it doesn't exist. It also went through the lives of some of the more famous composers of the past such as Mozart, Hayden and Beethoven and there was even this cool exhibit where you could roll a dice to choose random pieces of music to fit them together into a waltz. This showed just how mathematical in nature a lot of the music in the past was, and I found it highly interesting. Then again, I'm a geek. And in Computer Science. In the faculty of Mathematics... maybe I should just shut my big mouth.
Anyways, today we're planning to check out this cool outdoor festival filled with music and food and lots of alcohol related activities I'm sure. We'll fill you in on it later. Until then, take it easy,
Markus