Belgium. And Getting Home.

These are some very out of order pictures from my time in Belgium. Mostly we just hung out at Elizabeth's.

My new amazingly delicious favorite snack. Good with peanut butter too. Elizabeth said she would send me some soon.

Fancy schmancy home made ice cream from an ice cream shop nearby. Hands down the most delicious meal. And it was served to us with menus and a French waitress. It's ice cream.

Some treats we made, Nutella cupcakes,

And pepper jack cheezits.

A very pretty avenue to the airbase.

Look how miserable (but great) this weather looks. Also admire the crookedness.

And our dog sitting adventures:

These are just a few that I remembered to take pictures of. We had our hands full my entire stay. 

We did plan a day to train to Brugge, a very beautiful city about an hour away. But the one day we can make it work, a torrential downpour appears ALL DAY. And since neither of us have umbrellas, well, it's not really an option anyway. And it's so fun to touristy around while soaking wet. Belgium just didn't want me to go anywhere this time. Next time.

So I left Belgium and started on the very long ride home. I'm now in Mass with family, so I'll consider this home for now and say the journey was for the most part, hassle free. It did help that most of the way was in English, but here is a little how my endless day went.

Catch 10:17am hour-long train from Jurbise to Brussels Airport and arrive two hours before my flight leaves, because early is better than late.

Farewell weird leprechaun singers of Belgium. I got video too. But I don't know how to post that in here. 

There was an encore.

3 hour flight from Brussels to Reykjavik.

2 hour layover.

6 hour flight from Reykjavik to JFK.

Now it's 7pm local time, and 2am my time. And I haven't spoken in like 12 hours. (I really don't like traveling alone.)

After getting on the wrong train and circling the airport terminals for a good half hour despite all the signs in English...I get on the right train and make it to the place where my hotel shuttle picks me up. Finally check in the hotel at 9pm.

I fall asleep at 10pm and set every alarm I have to loud and repetitive, because who knows what jet lag will do. Alas, I wake up almost each hour, and by 4:30am I'm just wide awake and decide to get up. I have four hours till I leave the hotel, so I get ready and eat breakfast with the utmost slowness.

Take the E Train from nearby station alllll the way to Penn Station which takes about an hour. Then realize I'm still too early for my train, and so I people-watch at the station for two hours. The announcer for the station sounds like Dave Foley, so the wait is rather enjoyable. 

The train has wifi and outlets, and I take a moment to appreciate traveling in a first world country once again.

Oh! And I have working cell service.

4 hour train ride later I arrive in South Station, Boston. And it's been raining all day along the way. My aunt picks me up and I'm with family!

So as long and boring as that small part of my journey was, I'm very glad there were no crazy stories to relate, because I'm so done with those.

Budapest

Is it really arrogant to say I've been here before? Well I have. And it's a beautiful city so I'm glad to be back. In our original plans, (wow "original plans" we had no idea what we were getting into....) Budapest, Hungary was not on our list. But since it's halfway between where we were in Romania, and Prague, we figured it wouldn't hurt to look around for a day.

For the first time in weeks, we did not get lost at all on our way from the airport to the hostel. We even made a run, backpacks and all, to our favorite grocery store, Tesco. We missed you Tesco, and your Wally-World-type qualities. Mostly Tesco stores are in Western Europe, because we certainly didn't spot any in Romania.

The hostel we are staying at is called the Black Apple. There are stencils of black apples painted on the walls, but they really look like funky shaped cherries. It's a nice place, but the kitchen is smaller than one in a New York apartment; we're just glad it has one. Even if the stove is built into the top of the toaster oven.

We booked a dorm with five beds, since it was cheapest. And we had some nice roomies, a French girl who was going out for her birthday, and the Aussie dude. 

We talked a lot to Aussie dude when we arrived (but never got his name) since it was way too hot to actually leave the place. Oh, and this hostel doesn't have A/C. This hasn't really been a problem in the trip until now, but you just need more than a standing fan for 93 degree weather in a city. Also these ceilings are 14 feet high. Which is sort of eerie.

I got off topic. Aussie dude has a guitar with him, which gets him points on the backpacker scale of coolness, along with his green roll of duct tape, another point. But he also put on deodorant half a dozen times during our conversations that evening, so that may lose him points. (Note to self: I will write a post soon with our Backpacking Scale: Rules and Regulations. You guys will like it.) 

Despite the cool room and people...we changed rooms. The whole place had lots of windows, but it also faced the main street. And with ambulances screaming by every ten minutes sounding like an alien space ship, (I really worry for the health of this city's people) we knew there would be no sleeping that night. Our new room faces a slightly less busy street.

Well, we are off to take advantage of the free city walking tour like we did in Bucharest. We have our bottles of mineral water to fend off the heat, no worries.

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I forgot, a few pics from our last day in Targu Mures, Romania:

We got pizza!!!!! It helped with the homesick a little. But it also had corn on it, which was new.

Tessa broke the room.

One of the foods we will both miss are "cocoa shells" which are about ten times more awesome than cocoa puffs. And on this particular bag had the ingredients listed in no fewer than 20 languages. That is a record for this trip.

Bucharest

We took a night train from Chisinau, Moldova, to Bucharest, Romania. (Not to be confused with Budapest, Hungary.) and it's pronounced: Book-ah-rest. Long ooooo sound. Not like in book. Wow. This is why I don't write dictionaries.

Right. Train.

It wasn't too horrible. As soon as we stepped on, I felt as if I stepped into an Agatha Christie novel, and Hercule Poirot would be in the cabin next to ours. Everything looked uber vintage from the 40's or so, with original everything. And not in the up-kept way. And whoa, bonus, our window doesn't open. 

The train left at 4:35pm and arrived at 6am. And the driver/conductor?/(i was homeschooled) must have been Estonian because cars were almost passing us. Overall the ride didn't actually feel too long. What took forever was the border officials on both sides. For some reason they thought it was really weird that two American tourists went to Moldova for two days. You and me both, dude. No one I know at home even knew what a Moldova was until I explained. Nevermind why one would go to visit.

Side note: they say Estonia is the most recovered and prospurous country, from Soviet ruling. Yes. I can completely see that. And I would put Moldova as one of the worst. It's poor and shows immensely. But then random contrast with a huge five story shopping mall...it was strange to walk around and notice all the stores were pretty much empty. 

End side note.

But all was well, and we actually got stamps in our passports! One for exiting Moldova and one for entering Romania! This made us happy and receive yet more quizzical looks from the officers. We hadn't get one for Estonia or Belgium, and want as many as possible because they look cool filling up the pages. I mean, who wouldn't?

When our train pulled into the station 10 minutes early, we woke up pretty fast, threw everything into our bags, and motored out of there. (I've just been really wanting to use that word for a week now, sorry.) Now it's hard to adjust to yet another new country and language on a normal day. Now add: On four hours of sleep, and at 6 in the morning, AND while it's literally pouring buckets of water on your head and 30 pound pack.

Fast forward to 35 minutes later when finally some police officers (after asking three other people around the station) are able to tell us where we can buy our bus ticket.

An hour or so later we arrive at the hostel, completely soaked to the bone (which makes our packs 35 pounds with all that water weight. I love creating dramatic sympathy from you guys.) only to find the door locked. We had checked and they do have a 24 hour reception. Our dismay starts to roll off in waves.

...two minutes later I try PUSHING on the door and then feel very stupid when it opens right up. 

There is a bathroom inside the room, I'm happy to report! That just kind of made my day. And there is a shower in that same room too. *fistpump* and it's just a two bed room. Once again though, we have only seen one other guest in this four story hostel. I swear all the backpackers are avoiding us. Phineas and Ferb's grandfather (from previous hostel) is staying at another,more in the city; we had asked. He took a baxi, not a train. But we may see him around.

We did laundry: 

And the carrots at the grocery store here in Bucharest proclaiming their identity in eight different languages:

Some last cool views of Chisinau before we left:

Our train!

It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow. Hopefully. We want to explore!

An Unexpected Party

Today we slept in until noon, then by evening we were awake enough to go shopping at the grocery store nearby for the week. So when 8 o'clock rolled around (after another hour nap.) we wandered into Micheline's kitchen and expected to make some pasta we bought and some veggies to stir fry.

The next thing we know, Micheline appears and she is getting some white asparagus out of the fridge and saying a lot of things we only half understood. Next a man comes through the door with a plate of fish and then a woman with some more food, and there is a lot of French everywhere everywhere. Micheline hands us some silverware and plates and we set up on the back patio next to the garden, still completely unsure of what's going on. (Are we supposed to help? Eat with them? Cook something too?)

These people live down the hall and are Micheline's daughter, Carole, and her husband. They had just made food so joined us for the evening.

Tessa and I decided to just go with the flow, and soon enough we had a very interesting meal in front of us:

Small cantaloupes which we all agreed were overripe.

A blended aubergine with garlic. It's like a paste, but the sponginess goes away since its blended (with a blender), and the garlic helps, but I found it slightly bitter still. 

Small organic radishes. Carole's way of eating them were to slice the end like an X, stick some butter in it, and dip it in sea salt. Really, it's way better than it sounds!

White asparagus (previously cooked soft) dipped in truffle vinaigrette. We got a whole lesson on what exactly white asparagus was, because neither of us had actually seen it before. Look it up, it's about four times as thick as green asparagus, and it's white because when it grows, they keep putting dirt on it so the sun never touches it. I think.

And some lettuce. With vinaigrette.

After everything was back inside, Carole's husband got a ladder and picked a bag full of cherries from the tree because the birds kept taking them. They were tasty but not too sweet.

Now it's about 10 o'clock, sun setting, and in probably an hour or two, the kitchen will be busy with activity again like last night. Who knows.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

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A wall of chocolate!! We will have to get some. This is actually only one of three walls around the supermarket. And a whole other wall of biscuits as well.

View on the Eurostar: (out of order, this came first.)

This was in the street when we left the store with our groceries, and so I took a picture of it.