Things I Did this Weekend (Craft of blog inspired by the wonderful Ms. Judith Hume)

Friday
1) I woke up around 8, stretched, and read a few chapters of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" (which I highly recommend for anyone; it is great writing, journalistic and memoir, intellectual and witty, and all about her travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia).
2) Decided that the only appropriate place for me to have breakfast on a Friday morning before a day of museum-hunting would be the home of the best cappuccino in the world. Manasi joined me, agreeing that it would be the perfect way to start the day, where we sat upon the same to stools as before at the high countertop. I had the scrambled eggs with bacon, she had the chocolate pancakes. And yes of course, we both had our own best cappuccino in the world. My eggs were yellow and scrambled and firm. The cubes of ham were mixed in throughout, somewhat hidden, like little surprises whenever I bit into one (the bacon and ham here is seriously delicious, and that comes from not a big bacon eater back in the states). Same goes with the surprise cheese. Okay but the best part about my eggs was the paprika dashed over the entirety of my small plate. Mmm-mm good.
3) Walked to the Faculty of Humanities to get my Hungarian Student ID card which I have to update every 2 months for whatever administrative bureaucratic reason. (350 forint to get the card, and 350 forint each time I update it). But hey I get student discounts on the bus and at museums and at the theater. Hopefully on the train, too.
4) Walked downtown. It was a beautiful day, blue skies, still cold but I'm actually getting use to it. From my hostel, the walk to my faculty is about 20-30 minutes. The walk downtown from the faculty is about another 20-30 minutes. Time doesn't really matter though, because the journey itself is really wonderful (small, European streets with high colorful buildings).
5) From the city center, Manasi and I followed the few signs in the direction which they pointed. They never really pointed at any specific streets to take, just sort of areas where the museums might be. We kept suggesting to one another, "how about... this way..."
6) And we found a museum. "Museum" in Magyar is muzeum (with an accent above the "u"), thankfully. Or else we probably never would have stumbled upon this particular muzeum.
7) It was a muzeum of architecture and decoration. An elderly woman sold us our tickets, and, with the student discount, it only cost us $2 each. I'm not kidding. And this was a very beautiful museum. Everything well-kept, restored, recorded, protected, explained, and lit. It was full of pieces of buildings, statues, lots and lots of ceramics, even a pond with ducks (not real-live ducks... artistic ducks), some paintings, chairs, table settings (extravagant), and my favorite part, the tiles. Wall tiles, specifically. They were beautiful and colorful and abstract. We nearly had the entire muzeum to ourselves. Only one other couple was there, that I saw. And a bored, young security guy doing the daily crossword as he leaned against the precious muzeum walls. His highlight of the day was probably when he had to wave his finger at us, saying, "no, no," when Manasi was half-way on her journey of climbing onto the fountain/pond thing for me to take her picture with the artistic ducks.
8) We stayed until the muzeum closed, at 4pm. It was that awesome.
9) Manasi and I found our way back down the labyrinth of streets and to the city center. We stopped in a little restaurant/cafe for a late lunch of goulash, a tradtional Hungarian dish. It is usually made of beef, onions, red peppers, and paprika powder (sometimes sour cream, spatzle, and finely chopped potatoes are added, maybe even some wine) and prepared as a soup.

Saturday
1) Slept in (until 9:30).
2) Stretched, read, made my bed.
3) Washed my jeans (the washer in my hall takes 2 hours for one load, not kidding). I'm lucky I caught it when no one else was doing wash.
4) Walked to the store and bought all kinds of groceries: bread, milk, butter, salt, noodles, sauce, salami, ham, cheese, frozen pizza, yogurt, bananas, granola bars, Nutella, peanuts, cooking sunflower oil, cereal... (this was fun to carry home to the hostel, 6 floors of stairs).
5) Talked to Mom and Dad on skype, then Mikey and da kitties.
6) Wrote some poetry.
7) Drank mulled wine (my new favorite, I mean really, favorite; it is basically hot wine with spices like cinnamon, cloves, orange and lemon rinds, maybe some Brandy) with my Lithuanian friends and practiced our English. I mean, their English. I listened to their Lithuanian like it's a song playing in the background. Or I stuck my head into the conversation pretending I could speak Lithuanian, too.

Sunday
1) Woke up at 9, right before everyone was leaving to go to the TV tower.
2) I will openly admit, I was a little groggy this morning (not from drinking, but I honestly thinking it was my first good-night of sleep since I got here, I nearly wanted to continue sleeping because it was such good sleep, I really only had one cup of mulled wine). But I got up anyway to go to the TV tower despite my inclination to stay in today.
3) I started coughing some pretty nasty coughs on the bus ride to the city center. It got worse as we started the hike (little did I know it was actually a hike, or else I would have been more prepared and stayed in bed). When I say hike, I mean steep hills and roads for 45+ minutes outside of the city, higher and higher, it got more difficult for me to breathe, and my coughs were relentless, pounding from my chest. My face turned red. I guess I should have stayed in bed.
4) I made the best of the situation and allowed my body to rest at the half-way-ish point, thinking everyone would be back in an hour. I sat in a really lovely park, watching dogs run by and little children chasing birds.
5) No one was back yet so I decided to walk back down to the city center and catch a bus home.
6) I took a nap.
7) I started reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.