June had arrived and with it the end of my classes at Bogazici University. Of course there were still final exams to take, but let us not forget that I am a carefree exchange student (except for the fact that my grades actually count unlike most of the exchange students).
The final exam period at Bogazici is much longer than the exam period I was used to at Emory. Instead of only a week, the exam period lasts for two weeks. This can be both good and bad depending on how your exams are distributed. I would say that for me it was mostly good. The first three days of the exam period, I had three exams: Turkish language, EU Relations with Russia, and International Law. With the exception of International Law, my easiest exams were first. This was good because I got those out of the way early without having to stress too much. Then, my final two exams (Political Economy of Turkey and Turkish Politics). Political Econ is probably one of the hardest classes I've ever taken anywhere...so I expected that one to be ugly. The professor of Turkish politics is so lazy that I didn't know what to expect from his exam. Since these exams were at the very end of the exam period, I functionally had about 10 days off with nothing to do.
Certainly, I wasn't going to waste those and so with the suggestion of Brooks and Tyler (two exchange student friends I made over the semester), I decided to find a flight to Budapest. From there, I would meet them and we would travel to Bratislava. I decided after that that I would spend a day in Vienna (the Music major in me could not pass up the opportunity of traveling to one of the music capitals of the world when I was only 40 miles away!).
So there was the idea. I got on a Malev Hungarian flight to Budapest from Istanbul (round trip only $200) which I thought was an incredibly good deal. I met up with Brooks and Tyler at the hostel and we went out for a traditional hungarian meal. I took pictures but couldn't tell you what it was. It was some sort of red meat dish and it was delicious. There was also yogurt involved and some sort of pasta-like dish. I also had a local beer (which by the way only costs about $2 in Hungary).
Brooks, Tyler, and I went back to the hostel and went to bed early since we had an early train the next morning. We took the train for 3 hours and finally arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Once we got off the train, we made our way to a hostel to put our stuff down and explore Slovakia. We then began walking. We didn't really have a plan...we were just hoping to see cool stuff. We walked across the river under the famous futuristic disk thingy that people associate with Bratislava. One thing I did notice as I was walking across the river was the remnants of the old communist apartment buildings. They were not nearly a pronounced as they were in say Armenia or Georgia, but it was still an interesting reminder that only 20 years earlier the entirety of eastern Europe was under communist rule.
We walked to a castle (another famous landmark in Bratislava) but unfortunately we couldn't tour the structure because it was under construction/renovation. It was nice just to walk around. Walking over the Danube River, you could see a good portion of Bratislava. We then walked down a hill near the river to a main courtyard. It looked as if the area had been especially made for walking. We knew we were in the center of town because we were close to the American Embassy. It was funny to compare the American Embassy to the other embassies in Bratislava. The others looked like normal buildings, but the American one was equipped wiht metal detectors and intense equipment to keep out unwanted visitors. I was surprised because I didn't think Slovakia was known to harvest people hostile to the United States but I guess with embassies abroad the US can never be too careful.
We walked around for a bit and then decided to have lunch. Unfortunately, everything in this area was going to set us back at least 10 euros. Oh well, at least the hostel was cheap.
After lunch, we continued walking and saw some neat buildings (including the famous opera house). I definitely took some cool pictures. We also went inside a church (not that going inside a church in Europe is all that surprising). We finished off by randomly stumbling across the Jewish museum. We spent about an hour going through it and seeing Jewish items from this area. They had everything from prayer shawls to menorahs to yads and it was all very ornate.
After the Jewish museum, we walked back to the Bratislava castle and took pictures and admired the view. It was situated on the highest hill in Bratislava and allowed us to see the entire city. We then made our way to a restaurant to meet with a family friend of Brooks'. Doug and his wife had been doing missionary work in Slovakia for the last few years and had been living here. Doug was religious but a really nice guy. He suggested some authentic Slovakian cuisine for us to try (it was some sort of pasta in yogurt with meat on top) and he also suggested some Slovakian beers for us. At the end of the day, we wandered back to the hostel and went to sleep. At this point, Brooks and Tyler left me to return back to Hungary and to Turkey. I decided to take an extra day on my little excursion to head to Vienna since I was so close!
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