Budapest, part II

This post is going to be mainly photos. I'm meeting Chiawei later, the weather's awful and just the way I like it, and I'm not hungry in the slightest.

I visited St. Stephen's Basilica, which was close to the metro station Deak Ferenc ter. Walked around it a bit and took a couple photos and didn't do anything else since it was just too effing hot.

Went around some more and saw this rather nice church. I have no idea what it's called. The colourful tiled roof reminded me of the cathedrals I saw in Sibiu, which makes sense since Transylvanians are mainly ethnic Magyars, after all.

Then I went and took a bus uphill to the famous Fisherman's Bastion. I got off at the wrong stop and found myself in the ruins of what must have been a rather beautiful church. I took a few photos and hopped onto the bus again.

This time, I did get off at the correct stop, and the first thing I said was "Wow." I believe this is the Matyas Templom. It was simply teeming with tourists, mostly Asian.

And behind it, the spectacular Fisherman's Bastion.

A close up of the statue.

And prepare to be bombarded by pictures.

A simply breathtaking view of the Parliament building from the Bastion. A pity that the air that day was pretty bad, hence the dirty-blue skies.

Going off to my next destination, but one last view of the lovely square.

Introduction + Budapest, part I

I have more than 3000 photos spanning 6 different countries and 16 different towns/cities. Holy eff. I didn't realise it was actually 16 cities, I never really counted before this. OK, 16 cities. In 22 days. No wonder my eyes were so bloodshot during the latter half of my trip and I was tired as hell.

I am back at Rene's in Hammersmith and I love this place. It feels like home. I'm also exhausted as eff. I think I already mentioned that. I'm tired from all the travelling and all the people I met. I'm tired from not travelling and actually being stationary. I'm still trying to work out all my feelings, all the emotions I absorbed from all those people who I met/slept in the same hostel with. My 'footnote friends' as Jake calls them, acquaintances, and people who didn't go back to being parallel lines.

It's hot and stifling in London. When I first went over to the Continent, it was much hotter than England, but now it's the other way round. I think it has something to do with the fact that Britain is an island and that the continent is, well, a continent. A giant land mass. What were my favourite cities? Budapest and Prague, although these were also the two hottest cities. I nearly got sunstroke. If I wanted heat I would have stayed in Asia. Budapest was beautiful because of the Danube, the impressive Parliament building adorning the Pest side of the river, and the famous Fisherman's Bastion. Prague's old town centre was gorgeous, although what made it stand out was the castle on the hill. One of the fanciest cities I've ever had the fortune to see. Was disappointed in Germany, didn't like is as much as I thought I would. Thought everything was overpriced and that the quality was not that great. You had to pay for everything: the lockers in the hostels, the "bedsheets," the keys even. It's not a country I feel like going back to. My favourite German city was, surprisingly, Frankfurt. I never realised how much of a city person I am, and the fact that Frankfurt was so metropolitan, with its towering glass buildings and skyscraper horizon, was oddly comforting to me. I also liked Nuremburg a lot despite the horrid weather. Its old city centre was wonderful and reminded me of all the books I read when I was younger, the ones set in medieval Saxon Europe. The clock towers, "glockenspiels" they call them, the thatched roofs, cobbled pavements and winding pathways.

Favourite lot of people: the Wroclaw bunch. Brutally honest as always since we're serendipitous strangers who weren't supposed to encounter each other, and didn't expect to meet or hear from each other again. Trying to sound smarter than we really are and having loads of fun talking about what we call deep stuff.

Flight to Budapest from London Luton was bumpy and uncomfortable. I loathe flying. Not so much the flying itself but the idea that I'm whizzing through the air at an altitude of 35000 feet in what's basically an aluminium tube, with my life in the hands of a faceless, nameless stranger. Tough looking Hungarian boy sitting across from me with that typical eastern European buzz cut, tattooed and smelling of cigs, praying during the whole 3 hour duration of flight and crossing himself when the aeroplane went through an especially rough patch. He was terrified. We all were. The more you know the less you like. Ignorance is bliss. I loved flying when I was a kid, now it's a horrid but unavoidable experience for the greater good, as it were.

Weather wasn't ideal when I first arrived, blustery, stuffy and cloudy. I'll start off the barrage of photos with a dusky shot of my favourite Parliament building, taken from the Buda part of the city across the Danube.

Nyugati, close to the hostel I stayed at.

The next day, when the weather had cleared up somewhat. The Parliament as seen from the tram.

Met up with Beniamin which was lovely, and he introduced me to a restaurant that I initially liked, but after some trouble with tips, Beniamin and I decided that we didn't care for it. The view and the food however was really quite good, pity about their servers. Well, one server to be exact.

Nice panorama of Buda, and the brown Danube.

And the best goulash I've tasted in this part of the world is Hungarian. I want some goulash now. So bad.

The Parliament again. Big, gothic, intimidating, and reminiscent of London Westminster. I have a thing for large buildings with spindly spires and skeletal frames.

Found a cocktail bar next to my hostel which served the most amazing - and affordable - cocktails ever. 1 euro give or take for 500ml. My favourite drink was their strawberry colada. I need to learn how to mix this.

Will be back again soon. Sorting through all these photos is a right pain in the ace.

The end is but the beginning

Somewhat cheesy title but didn't really know how else to put it. I moved out from my student halls yesterday, where I'd resided for roughly ten months. Really gave me a sense of closure, that this particular chapter in my life was now over.

So now I'm at Rene's, where I usually am when I'm not at LBG, and I'll be staying here at her place for a few till I jet off to Magyarland. I've finished everything pretty much on, if not ahead of schedule - that's my neurotic type-A personality showing up again. Still have 25p left in my account, and I just realised that I actually forgot to print some maps of Bratislava - which aren't that important, but that's just going to simmer away in my brain now. How annoying. I had too much going on yesterday, what with moving out, cleaning my room (which took a lot longer than I'd anticipated..!) cleaning the communal areas in the flat, finishing my itinerary and printing it out and all..whew. I spent most of my last few hours in the flat with my remaining flatmate - the other one was apparently sick and working on her dissertation, and had sent her boyfriend to do the cleaning instead. Me and the other girl didn't really commiserate about the past year - too many issues with this poxy residence for me to shed too many tears over leaving - but we did talk a lot about the future, about a possible trip to Cornwall together in October, and about how awfully tiring it was to pack and move. I said that I was seriously considering going back home to Taiwan just to save myself all the hassle of lugging my luggage around central London again. It's weird how I don't even have that many things, but when you stuff them all in a suitcase/bag, they still amount to quite a lot. I am not very happy.

Well..again, not that cut up about leaving LBG. Let's make a list about all the things I did and did not like. I love lists.


Things I liked:

1. My flatmates and the fact that they were Chinese, so that I could borrow condiments and stuff from them when my things ran out. My flatmates were amazing people, probably the best you could ask for - always helped you out when things were going batshyte crazy, always good for a chat, always there to commiserate with you. And by gum, did we have lots of things to complain about!
2. Watching FIFA 2014 with my flatmates in the kitchen every night.
3. The location of the student halls - living right next to the underground/train station of LBG was really convenient. Right across from Tower Hill and Tower Bridge, right next to the Shard, right next to the med school campus and its adjacent hospital (or should that be the other way round..?) Anyway, it was really easy to get to pretty much anywhere since it was right in the middle of things.
4. The halls were new-ish and people were usually pretty impressed when they came to visit. I then had to hear loads of guff about how lucky I was to live here, bla bla bla, which I did not enjoy so much.
5. The fact that there were 2 Tescos (and one of them was huge, for a central supermarket anyway!) 3 M&S', one Sainsbury's and one Waitrose within 5 mins walk. And that there was a huge, warehouse-sized ASDA and Tesco 20 mins away by bus - although I only went there about three times. 
6. There was a McDonald's right next door. I usually don't like McDonald's but they saved my life when I was doing my dissertation. I don't know why but McFlurries somehow knock down those mind blocks and get my writing juices flowing.
7. Med school lib part I - The fact that the med school campus was right next door, and I DO mean right next door. Which meant that we had easy access to its library which had an amazing grad study room with some of the comfiest chairs I've ever sat in, a nice large desk to work at, and a place to put my feet. I've been to all the libraries the school can offer - Maughan, Senate House - and the one that gets my vote is still the med school one. Nice, light, airy and not too stuffy, and probably the only postmodernist piece of architecture that I genuinely appreciate.
8. Med school lib part II - The printers in NHH. I've done many a last-minute print job in NHH, which used to operate 24 hours during term time. I still remember rushing off to NHH at 2am in the morning to print off our Romania train tickets before haring off to STN to catch the 6 o'clock plane to Otopeni. 
9. Med school lib part III - the cafe in on the ground floor which operated 24 hours. Well, not the cafe, but we were allowed to sit in their super comfy seats and work around the clock if we wished to, since NHH closes super early during summertime.
10. Med school lib part IV - the air conditioning. The student halls were unbearably stuffy/hot during the July weeks, which was also one reason why I was in the lib so much.
11. Med school lib, conclusion - I practically lived here from mid July to August and as a result have grown very fond of it. Also the fact that I finished about 97 percent of my master's dissertation here.
12. All the people I met here. I can safely say that the closest friendships I forged were all fellow residents sufferers - that goes for Rene, my flatmates, and y'all.
13. Foxes. Yes, that's what the fox said.

Things I did NOT like:

I'm not going to go into detail here since I might be sued; although I've gone to great pains not to mention any real names here, I think anyone fairly familiar with the school/this part of the city would know exactly what I'm talking about.

1. The attitude of the people in the office. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE I know who lived here, had at least 3 stories about how rude/apathetic the management was to them. 
2. The courtyard. 'Nuff said.
3. The morgue right next door. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you do NOT want to see people carting corpses around first thing in the morning when you wake up and look out of the window.
4. The sheer noise. Actually, half of what made me so sick of living here was the sheer volume of noise. Helicopters, those damn seagulls yowling all day (it was hilarious when those three foxes caught and ate one of the birds though, and woke up half the block with all that caterwauling) the courtyard, trucks..it doesn't bear thinking about. 
5. Helicopters again. This was just so disruptive that it merits a second mention and a number all to itself. They would hover around Shard for hours on end, and the noise was just unbelievable. This happened at least five days a week. The average person could see 5 helicopters a day. I wish this was a sick joke but it's not.
6. A lack of AC in the rooms.
7. The fact that each flat had a different layout, which meant that some people had huge kitchens and bathrooms while others me had tincy ones, yet we all ended up paying the exact same amount.
8. The lifts. a) they're slow, b) they creak and jolt and always sound like they're going to pull a Final Destination on you. I got stuck in one of them last year and it was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. It got stuck between the second and third floor, and suddenly there was a great jolt, all the lights went out leaving me IN PITCH DARKNESS, and the flat went plummeting down while I hit the emergency button in vain and shrieked all the way down. Of course, I did not get an apology or even an acknowledgement from the management even though I reported this issue. This has led to my developing a mild claustrophobia. 
9. People from a certain country, and their awful, flat voices and accents. Now whenever I hear people from THAT COUNTRY talking, I get a headache. They are selfish and inconsiderate. Will never forget "If you don't like it then move somewhere else!" (I was not the recipient of this remark but it illustrates quite well how they conducted themselves.) I hate to say this but by jove stereotypes are true.
10. Having to waste loads of money calling the effing hotline/London Met for noise control at 1am. Hint: courtyard and the people of THAT COUNTRY.
11. Having to wear earplugs if I wanted to sleep for at least 6 consecutive hours during the night.

The verdict: I would not choose to live here again if I had the option, or if Marty McFly suddenly turned up on my doorstep in a DeLorean.

Quote of the day: "I think it's like beetlejuice - we said his name too many times."

FIFA - good times

雨過天晴的彩虹