The Journey to Prague

Getting to Prague

Today we (Samir, Danilo, Victor and I) left for Prague. We are all pretty tired because the bus left at 7am. I am really tired because I didn’t go to bed until like 2 and got up at 5:30. I really need to fix this sleep schedule. Speaking of being tired...I accidentally had booked our tickets to Prague for one week later (March 20th). Whoops. Luckily I was able to change us to be on this bus for 2,000 forints (about 8 dollars)! Our tickets for the way back were fine because we had booked two one-ways (Budapest-Prague on OrangeWays and Prague-Budapest on Volanbusz) and I didn’t book our return tickets incorrectly.

The bus was pretty nice. It’s kind of funny-they played Wedding Crashers dubbed in Hungarian with English subtitles. Great movie but I slept most of the time. The bus only made one stop (in Bratislava, Slovakia) so it made pretty good time (though we left a little late).

There were a bunch of exchange kids from Corvinus (another school here in Budapest) on the bus. Funny enough, I already knew one of them. A couple of Mondays ago at Morrisons (the bar all the exchange kids go to on Monday nights), my roommate was hanging out with all the other Brazilians and this pretty girl walks by him. He shouts out loud “GOSTOSA!” (Portuguese slang for “really hot girl”). The girl gave him a funny look and so hey said to the other Brazilians, “hey, she’s looking at me weird...” She then turned around, looked right at him and said “I’m from Brazil; I speak Portuguese!” Wow, was he embarrassed.

When we got into Prague (around 2pm) we asked the attendant at the bus station about what times the buses left for Český Krumlov. Both Kerry (the girl working at the hostel in Belgrade) and Yusuke (the Japanese kid that we met in Slovenia) highly recommended it. Supposedly it is a cool little town that has a good castle. Unfortunately, the lady working at the ticket booth told us that this was “impossible” on that day because the bus left earlier in the day. She was really mean and cranky. The people who work at the ticket booths at the Budapest train stations are really rude too so we were kind of used to this kind of behavior. I was thinking that we could spend Friday (since we only had part of a day there anyway in Český). The Brazilians didn’t seem like they really wanted to go there anyway but were willing to follow me there.

Since we didn’t know where we were going to stay we just followed the Corvinus kids to the hostel at which they had reservations. They had an open four-person room which was nice. It was called Hostel Downtown.

After finding and checking into the hostel we went to go look for some food. The Brazilians didn’t want to go to the Czech restaurant that the guy working at the hostel suggested because it was a little expensive. We ended up going to KFC. Awful decision. I felt sick and couldn’t seem to get rid of the KFC smell after washing my face and brushing my teeth. I don’t usually eat KFC in the U.S. just because it is really unhealthy but I will admit it is good. Not here though. It was like a McDonalds with chicken. It had a very simple menu (like most of the fast food restaurants here in Eastern Europe) and was chicken burgers and fries. No mashed potatoes and stuff like that.

Sightseeing

After the KFC we went sightseeing. We went to see the famous Charles Bridge since it was near the hostel. It really is a beautiful bridge but it is kind of hard to appreciate it because it is swamped with people. It’s really hard to even get a lot of good pictures while you are on it because there are really just so many people.



We then went and climbed up a hill to get a better view of the city. Unfortunately this hill was covered with trees so you really couldn’t see much. There was a mini-eiffel tower thing on the hill but it looked closed so we didn’t go up it. From things that I heard later it probably wasn’t but whatever.

We took a nap when we got back (we were still exhausted from the early bus ride) and then got some food. We were too tired to go out so we just hung around at the hostel with the Corvinus kids for a while.

I have been really bad about keeping my blog up-to date. I am going to try to be better about it. This entry (along with many others) are written after the date they happened.

Budapest

Budapest is a beautiful city.


Here are some more pictures

My Birthday

I have been craving Mexican food really badly so for my birthday we found a Mexican restaurant and went there for dinner. It was actually pretty good!

Hungary

Trip

Things are going well here so far (I've been here since February 3rd). The trip here was a little crazy. I was stuck in London for a day because every flight was canceled due to snow. Then they couldn't find my bag for five days...after about five or six days in the same clothes (because I didn't have my bag while stuck in London either) I ended up buying some clothes because my mom was worried about me not being able to make new friends when I was wearing the same clothes everyday. The clothes were in general pretty cheap but the weird thing is that every article of clothing cost about the same (1000-2000 forints or $4-8 dollars). That is cheap for pants. It is quite expensive for boxers!

Not much to see from London. I spent most of my time in the airport and when outside of the airport it seemed pretty much like an expensive version of the U.S. where people talk funny.

It's interesting though that British Airways serves wine on the flights (for free). This Italian kid who sat next to me, Andrea, chugged two (maybe it was even three) of these little wine things...some people are just built to drink. I realized after about a half bottle that I am not one of them. I just wanted some water!

Hostel

I stayed in the Hostel (Hotel Ventura) for the first eight nights. It wasn't a bad place but after a while you are pretty ready to get out! It was cramped and living out of a suitcase makes it hard to stay organized (as you can see in the picture). It was also a long way away from everything. We were glad to get an apartment.
Apartment

Here's what my apartment looks like




I was living with a kid from UW, Brett and a guy from Turkey named John.



Unfortunately, John had to go back to Turkey because of some class scheduling conflicts that would delay his graduation back home. It's too bad because he became a good friend while living here (him, Brett and I were also in the same room in the hostel). Brett and I hope that we can go visit him in Turkey sometime this semester.

A guy from Brazil, Mauricio, took John's spot when he left. He's a cool guy too and we're good friends.

I didn't know Brett before studying abroad here but he's a good guy. He goes to UW but is from the Boston area.

Friends

Everyone here is pretty nice. There are seven of us from UW. Many of them are friends from back home so they hang out together a lot. I hang out with them sometimes but not all of the time.

Since this is a technology-orientied school mostly everyone is in engineering or architecture. I think that this gets a pretty good group of kids because anyone who is going to study abroad is somewhat social and engineers who have people skills are often very fun people. Just ask Lisa, she loves engineering boys! (We'll see if she's reading this!)

I play soccer with the Brazilian guys once and a while. It's a lot of fun. In the U.S. soccer is really rough and dangerous (lots of knee injuries). When they play it's almost more like basketball where passing is more important than just kicking it really hard.

Language

Hungarian

The Hungarian Language is kind of crazy. It isn't related much to any other language in the world only distantly to Finnish and Estonian. Only newer words like szenvics (sandwich) which is pronounced "send-veech" are anything like English. Also, multiple words are sometimes concatenated so if you see a word you don't know, it can be very hard to look it up in the dictionary. Either way, I'm trying to learn a little bit of the language. I feel like it is rude to go somewhere and not at least learn to say "Hello" and "Thank you" in their language.

Spanish

There are some Spanish kids here so I get to use my Spanish while talking to them. Spanish is an awesome language. It just flows so nicely. I really wish I could have studied abroad in a Spanish-speaking country but it just didn't work out with my summer plans.

Portuguese

My Brazilian friends have been trying to teach me a little Portuguese. I don't know if you have ever heard Portuguese but it is a really cool language. It sounds like a smoother and softer version of Spanish. I would say Spanish makes English sound ugly and Portuguese makes Spanish sound ugly. If you know Spanish you can read some Portuguese (a decent number of words are spelled similar their Spanish counterparts) but when spoken it is much different. It is not "the same thing as Spanish" as many people say. The pronounciation is quite difficult because like English (and unlike Spanish) the same letters don't always make the same sound. Also, at least in Brazilian Portuguese, many words can be pronounced a few different ways.

What I've been up to this last semester

Hey everyone! A lot has happened in the last few months and I haven't talked to some of you who live far away in quite a while. Here's a little update:

I'm studying abroad in Hungary!

Why Hungary?

It actually wasn't too much of a choice. Since I am studying abroad as a second-semester senior, I will be in school an extra semester (now I'll graduate in December 2009). Since I'm going to be in school another semester, I also get another summer break. Unfortunately, many schools in other countries have school schedules that go much later into the summer than schools in the U.S. I decided that at as awesome as study abroad sounds, doing a summer internship (see "This Summer" below) has also been a great experience and that I should fit study abroad around that. Mexico and Hungary were the two places I considered. UW-Madison has an engineering study abroad program with a similar school schedule in both of these countires. Mexico would be cool because I could use my Spanish and Hungary would be cool because I would be in Europe and could travel around to other places in Europe. Eventually I decided that I wanted to go to Hungary.

This Summer

I am going to intern at Facebook. I guess this means I have to get better at responding to wall posts!



I'm really sad to leave Intuit. The people that I have met there the last two summers (maybe you who is reading this) were so much more than my co-workers. They are great friends and they also often felt like family away from home. I'll still be in the Valley this summer and so I will still get to hang out with all my old friends. Even the ones who now work at Google. I won't mention any names!

I bought a mac!

When Apple came out with the new MacBook Pro I bought one of the old ones (because of the several hundred dollar price drop). It has taken a little while to get used to but it's pretty awesome.

One of the best features the mac has is that it comes with a program Apple created specifically for easily and efficiently downloading Firefox. It's called Safari!



I hope that all of you are doing well and that you are now up to date with my life! If you have a blog or personal website make sure you put a comment with a link (or e-mail me it). I'm in the Chicago airport right now so I will write more when I get to Hungary!

Jacó

We took a boat from Montezuma to Jacó this morning. It was a cool boat ride. I packed my camera away in my bag because I didn't want to get it wet. (It got wet in La Fortuna and didn't work until the next day). They had us put all of our bags in plastic garbage bags so I figure we would be getting wet. I was wrong. I should have kept it out since it was a really cool ride. We saw a big turtle swimming in the middle of the ocean!

Jacó isn't very nice. It is very Americanized and kind of dirty. We knew it was going to be like this but we needed to cross over from the Nicoya peninsula (see picture in last post) to get back to San José.

We are probably going to just surf a little this afternoon and then go to bed. I am tired and ready to be back in the US.

I miss all you guys and I miss Madison. See you soon!

-Elliot

Last couple of days

Saturday

Bus

We took the public bus to Montezuma this morning. It took a little while to get there because we had to transfer buses in Cobanó. I think that backpacking is more "adventure" than "vacation."

Once we got to Montezuma we started looking for a hotel. We wanted one that was cheap so we looked in our Fodor's travel book about Costa Rica (thanks mom!) and found a place called "Hotel Lucy" that was supposed to be cheap and clean (our two criterion...in order of importance). They had one room left (good news) but with only "una cama" (one bed...bad news). We thought we might as well take a look at it (maybe it would be a really big bed). It wasn't. It also had a silk tent thing hanging over it from the ceiling. I like Chris a lot but not that much.

Most places were booked but we found another "hostel" type place that was cheap but had two beds. It wasn't very nice. At all. The kind of place where you don't know if showering will make you cleaner. (Sorry mom!)

The beach in Montezuma is pretty. There aren't good waves for surfing (it is in sort of a bay, look at the picture I drew on the map). Here's the beach:


Waterfalls

After getting to our hotel and eating, we went running to go find the waterfalls. We didn't take a tour or anything and it took us a while to find where to go. Once we did, we ended up taking a way that was a lot more work than it had to be but it was fun (and steep) hiking through the forest. I really wish that I had brought my camera but we didn't since we were running. We thought that the waterfalls would be close enough that we could just go back there later or the next morning with a camera before we left. Unfortunately, we didn't have time. While we were walking there, we saw a squirrel monkey in the trees on the side of the road! That was really cool. Again, since we didn't have a camera, I don't have a picture (sorry Lauren!).

The water falls were really cool. The first one was cool because you could walk behind it. If you have never been behind a waterfall, try to do it sometime. It is really cool. The water was hitting the pond underneath so hard that there was a mist of water flying up through the air. It was really bizarre to see water flying up!

After seeing the first waterfall, we hiked along a trail to the second water fall. It was above the first one. (It fell into a pool and the water from The second waterfall was the one that, supposedly, you can jump off of. Well, I guess you can jump off of either but supposedly the second one is the one that you can jump of an maybe live.

This should give you a clearer picture:


This was a little later in the afternoon, maybe three or four, and not many people were there. We didn't see anyone jump off the second one or the first (but I think that is kind of implied). A local guy showed up and said that he had jumped off of the second one several times but he wasn't doing it that day. There was no way that I would even consider doing something like this without seeing it be done. Neither of us did it.

Back at our hostel, there were some guys from Argentina and I guess one or two of them had done it. They were there earlier in the day when there were a bunch of people doing it.


Later

It is funny how small this country is. We often see people we met several days earlier in a different town. We saw a Diogo, a Portugese guy from the hostel in Monteverde, and a couple that we had seen on the shuttle from two days earlier. The next morning, we actually saw Jeff and Grant, two guys from SoCal (what my California friends call "Southern California") that we met in La Fortuna. Unfortunately, we didn't really have much time to hang out with any of these people again since we've been bouncing around so much.

There were some girls staying next door from Europe (two from Germany, one from Switzerland) who were pretty cool. We spent most of the night talking with them and the Argentineans . Around 10 or so they were all going to go to Chico's, a bar that was supposedly the happening place at night in Montezuma according to numerous sources including Diogo and some guys from West Virginia that we met in town. Those German (and Swiss) girls were hardcore. They had to catch a 6am public bus the next day. I asked them if they were going out and one of them just said "we'll sleep on the bus tomorrow." Unlike Sámara, I made the smart decision and didn't go out. I needed to get some sleep to get over this cold and, due to the cold, didn't really have the energy to be much of a party animal. If you know me well, you are probably asking, is this a more mature and grown up Elliot that doesn't give up his health and much needed sleep to hang out with beautiful women? I don't know if I would read into it too much since I really just want to get rid of this cold but maybe I have grown up a little this trip. Hopefully not too much. I don't want to grow up yet.

The Argentineans did try very hard to persuade us to come along with them and the girls (hmm...I wonder why).

When they all got back (I don't know what time, I didn't even get out of bed) the Argentineans were all really loud and drunk. (Maybe the German girls were too but we couldn't hear much over the Argentineans). That didn't really bother me that much; they had fun and I kind of expected to wake up. What was frustrating, however, was that they decided to pound, on our door as loud as possible for quite a while. I really have no idea why and I didn't feel like getting out of bed. It was funny because the next morning we were talking a little loud and they "ssshhh-ed" us (there was an open ceiling connecting the rooms). We didn't really think that they had the right to "ssshhh" us after pounding on our door during the night. So maybe it wasn't them pounding on our door. That means it was the German girls...we're just telling ourselves now that is what happened. :)

Friday

We really wish we didn't go to that party...it really didn't end very well and wasn't that much fun. We got up around 7 to eat breakfast and then get on the shuttle to Malpaís. Some German guys we met in Sámara (Mo and Felix) said that the surfing there was really good.

The shuttle was really a taxi to Nicoya (since we were the only ones signed up from Sámara) and then a shuttle from there to Malpaís. In true "tico time" fashion, it was an hour late! We were the only ones on the shuttle going to Malpaís - the others were going to Montezuma (nearby) and we split once we were closer to the two cities. The ride was really bumpy on some pretty bad roads. There were huge potholes everywhere and we drove through some huge water puddles a foot or two deep.

In Malpaís, we grabbed some lunch and then found the hostel that the Germans in Sámara had stayed at and said was nice.

Malpaís is a little sketch. We went looking to rent a surfboard but a lot of places weren't open in the late afternoon and one wanted an $800 deposit ($400 for each board)! No thanks. Finally, we found a guy who would rent us boards without an outrageous deposit as long as we promised to bring them back (our IDs were back at our hotel and this town seems like the kind of place where someone might not bring back a board). He also needed them by 5:30 because he had to go somewhere.

The surfing was pretty tough. The waves were huge, frequent and powerful. Even to just paddle out a decent ways took all of the energy I had. A wave would knock you back a ways and by the time you got ready to paddle out farther, another wave was there ready to knock you back a again. We also tried a shortboard for the first time which is a little more difficult to stand up on but was a little easier to paddle out on. It was fun but hard. I don't know if I have ever seen waves that big.

We would like to stay here and surf another day but it's not going to work out. Our flight leaves Monday afternoon at 2:30pm and we can catch a bus from Jacó to San José that morning that would leave early in the morning and get us to San José plenty early. To get to Jacó, we would need to take a boat from Montezuma, which only is in the morning. Which means we have to take a public bus or private shuttle from Malpaís to Montezuma. The public buses are much cheaper so we take those when we can. The public bus from Malpaís to Montezuma are in the morning and afternoon. We want to see the waterfalls in Montezuma so we are going to take the morning bus.

Here is the plan to get out of Costa Rica by Monday afternoon:



Thursday

We got up a little later today (around 9) and by the time we ate breakfast and such the waves weren't good for surfing so we just swam. Also, by the time the waves were breaking far enough out again to surf, it started to storm. Bummer.

We met a girl from Slovakia who was living in Baltimore and visiting with her friends from there. They all seemed pretty cool. We were all going to meet up later at some reggae party that a bar on the beach there was having that night.

I really should have gone to bed instead of go to the party but I went to the party anyways. It didn't end so well with some local guy getting mad at us (long story) and us leaving.

Wednesday

Sámara

Like I said before, we are now in Sámara, a small beach town on the Pacific Coast. After a day and half or two in Monteverde, we decided that we were sick of really touristy spots and wanted to mainly surf and swim in the ocean the rest of the trip. It rained a bunch in Monteverde and was actually somewhat cold during the night. After a night or two of being cold and wet I started to get a cold. This made me want to leave Monteverde even more.

Here in Sámara, we are staying at a pretty nice hotel called Hotel Belvedere. It is run by some German people who moved to Costa Rica. It has air conditioning and free breakfast but is definitely the most expensive hotel we have stayed at so far ($65/night). It is nice to get some good sleep though to get over the cold.

We been surfing a little here in the unbelievably warm water and have been swimming a bunch too. The waves are big and the beach is beautiful.

Tons of things!

This is from a couple of days ago, I guess I didn't press "publish":

Here´s what we have been doing lately...

Wednesday

Sámara

We are in Sámara now. It is a really cool little (pretty much two streets) town. The beach is really beautiful and the waves are huge! The water is almost hot! The warmest water we have felt all trip (including showers) is the ocean here. It is truly amazing.

More pictures (and words) to come. Make sure you check out the video of the rope swing that I added to the last post.

Tuesday

Hostel

We stayed in a cool hostel last night with a bunch of people from all around the world. It was also really cheap (only $6 for each of us). We shared a room and bathroom with four other people. Three of them are from L.A. and we didn´t meet the other guy...I think they said he was from Japan but we didn´t see him. We went out to a bar with some of the other people who were staying at the hostel last night and the girl who works there. One of the girls staying there was from Israel and knew how to Salsa dance (I guess that used to be popular in Israel) and she taught us some moves. We were pretty tired and headed back around 11:00, which really isn´t that early since most things happen in the morning (since it rains in the afternoons).



Zip lines

We did the zip line canopy tour. It was pretty cool but not nearly as cool as the rappelling.



Bridges

We also did the canopy bridge walk thing...it was ok. You just walk on some bridges through the rainforest and look around.


Monteverde

We don´t really like it here that much. Maybe it is all of the tourists or just that it isn´t as fun as La Fortuna/Arenal. We want to swim and surf in the ocean so we are going to take a shuttle tomorrow to Sámara, a beach on the Pacific coast. We were going to go to Tamarindo but changed our mind. A bunch of people said that Tamarindo is really dirty and is a bunch of tourists and that Sámara is better, or "tranquilo" as they described it.


I have a lot to say but it looks like it cleared up and there is an hour left to surf...I´ll write more tomorrow

More fun stuff!

The last two days have been really busy!

Monday

Rapelling

This morning, we went rapelling (falling with harness) down some waterfalls with the same tour guide company as the volcano tour. This was a lot of fun. There were a few different waterfalls and we hiked through the rainforest from one to another. At the end, we had some really good homemade food they made for us.


Rope swing

While we were on the ride back from rapelling, we spotted a place where some locals were swinging from a rope into a pool of water at the end of a small waterfall. When we got back, we booked our ride to Monteverde (where I am now) and then walked over to the rope swing. There were some other tourists there (who had a local as a private guide who showed them the spot). It was one of the most fun things that I have every done! Also, it was totally free. You just had to walk over.

Jeep-Taxi-Jeep

Once we got back from the rope swing, we started took the Jeep-Taxi-Jeep thing to Monteverde. It was a van ride and then a boat ride and then another van ride. It was through the same tour company (the roads from La Fortuna to Monteverde were incredibly dicey). We are in Monteverde now and I better go because I'm not suposed to be on the internet very long (to give others a turn).

Note: the connection here is incredibly slow. If you e-mailed me I will get back to you in a day or two. Also, the connection is not good enough to upload a whole photo so I will do that when I next get a chance.

Sunday

Bus

After flying in Satuday, we woke up and took one of the public buses from San José to La Fortuna, where the Arenal Volcano is. It was about a four and half hour ride and we slept a lot of the way (it left at 6:15am). The roads were really sketch and all but a few of us on the bus were locals (no inglés). It was a pretty cool experience.

Volcano Tour

Our bus got in aroundWe bummed around La Fortuna for a little while and then signed up for a volcano tour. We could see the volcano pretty clearly early in the day (before noon) but by the time our tour left, it was raining. We took a walk through the rainforest and then they drove to the side where you can sometimes see lava. We didn't however, since it was too cloudy. No big deal; it was a lot of fun.

Hot springs

One of the cool parts about Arenal being an active volcano is the natural hot springs that it creates. They are pretty much natural hot tubs! Our volcano tour took us to them for a couple of hours and we just hung out there.

Kap's Place

Not much to say about today.

• Very tired (pretty much all of our sleep was on the plane rides).
• San José is ok but not the coolest place ever. Supposedly it is ok during the day but after "las diez" (10 pm) it is full of "ladrones" (theives), "putas" and "travestias" according to our taxi driver. I'll let you translate the last two yourself...
  
• We are staying at Kap's Place. It's a pretty cool hotel.

• Barely anyone speaks more than a little English. I must say I was expecting a bunch of English-speaking people (since so many Americans visit here). I hear that more people speak English in the more touristy areas (San José is not one). Either way, I enjoy practicing (ok, more like resuscitating) my Spanish. I'm glad that I know even as much as I do.
• It's the rainy season.
  

We're here!

We're here! It is really exciting to be in another country (this is my first time)! That's all for now...time to go out in San José while it is still safe!

I'm starting a blog

I'm going to Costa Rica and so I thought that this might be any easy way to tell about it!