March Break Madness (2019)
It’s Pisces season folks and that means...nothing because I don't believe in astrological signs. However, Mercury is supposedly in retrograde so I can blame all my wild actions on that!
It was hard celebrating my birthday away from all my friends and family. My exchange birthday was great though because of my exchange wife, Camille. She baked me a cake and took me out to brunch at Vasgota Nation.
Let me define a few terms:
Exchange wife = a person who you become extremely close with within a short amount of time due to both being on exchange. Any word can go in front wife though: you can have a work wife, a school wife or even a sports wife. They are your go to, your confidant, your person.
Nation = Lund University has an extraordinary student life network. There are things called nations and they are student-run organizations that host different activities during the week like cooking classes, soccer games, and lunches. the nations are also the only type of nightlife that Lund has. All the clubs are at different nations that each offer a different experience and only Lund university students can get in.
March was a big month for travelling. Everyone had time off class to study for exams and since I had no exams that meant I had time off to explore Europe. From March 15 to 24th I visited Prague, Vienna and Budapest. I’m going to keep each play by play of the cities to under 100 words because I'm not some travel blogger.
Two words: red roofs. I was surprised by Prague. I honestly thought Prague was a place with lots of beaches. Prague sounds like a place where people go for their summer vacation to get away from the cold. It is the opposite of that. They have great medieval style architecture. Lots of tourist traps like the ice bar and museum of torture. The rose of the trip was going to a chocolate museum that oddly had a section just for chocolate in the shape of male and female genitalia. The thorn of the trip was that it rained most of the time.
Three words: less touristy Paris. There is a big Parisian influence in Vienna when it comes to architecture. I loved Vienna for that reason, it reminded me of being in Paris but it was less crowded. The architecture makes Vienna an elegant city to walk around in. Our hostel was right in front of the famous Naschmarkt so we had great cheap food every day. We were boujee on a budget in Vienna. we saw an opera for 3 euros but we had to stand the whole time and most of the time I was looking at the tall man's shoulder in front of me. We also saw a concert but again we were in the standing room area packed together like sardines. But it was all worth it for the cheap memories. The rose of the trip was seeing the opera-folks I love a good opera! The thorn of the trip was that the man in our hostel was snoring so loud it was reaching noise levels of 90 decibels, we downloaded an app and checked! For reference, a lawnmower reaches noise levels of 90 dB which is not a healthy noise level for your ears.
One word: budabest! The sun was shining every day we were in Budapest. It was even shining on the day that we got a $170 fine for not validating our train tickets. We were only in Budapest for 2 hours before we got kicked off our train and were forced to pay 24,000 HUF on the spot. Not even my Canadian charm could get us out of the situation. We stayed at the hive hostel which is in an amazing area with lots of bars and cheap food places that are all walking distance. Hive hotel, however, is not a place for people who want to sleep. The club right below the hostel closes at 6 in the morning and there is no sound insulation in the rooms so bring drugs that will knock you out. The rose of the trip was going to the Széchenyi Thermal Bath at 6 am. Who wouldn't want to start their day of soaking in a hot mineral bath? The thorn of the trip is that I didn't take enough pictures. Another thorn is that you had to pay to walk around in the fisherman bastion which I think is dumb. They charge you to walk up a few stairs to get a view of Budapest that you could get for free somewhere else.
Fun fact: I ate kebab almost every night on that 10-day trip. I probably still have kebab in my system!
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
dededos
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind