I absolutely and undeniably fall more and more in love with snowboarding and the mountains every time I go. I am so lucky that Davis is close enough to do easy day trips. Even when getting out of bed can be the biggest struggle of the day…!!

Teehee. Still gotta be super cheesey tourists and find the “I AMsterdam” statue to take photos with…:)

Amsterdam is lovely so far! Such a cute little city with bricks EVERYWHERE (it was actually the first city to decide to build in all brick, even before the London fire, I believe!) and there are so many little canals everywhere! Canal tours are always going through and under all the bridges and such. Very cute! :) The city reminds us of a cleaner Venice mixed with Prague or something…Everyone is super nice here, because most of them speak English and know that Dutch is super hard to pick up, even if just for a couple words. Our walking tour yesterday taught us about all the cool historical things this city has gone through, and one thing that was totally evident is the city’s acceptance for all. Obviously there are the “coffee shops” and the Red Light District of the city, but Amsterdam was also the first city to legalize gay marriage and euthanasia. Throughout history too, not only for social matters, but religiously it has always been a place of tolerance - even when there were Jewish people living in Amsterdam who were taken out of their homes, the people of the city gathered together to protest against taking the Jewish people out of their city. This makes it the only city in Europe to stand up for the Jews during WWII. The city’s tolerance and liberal nature spurs conversations with some people (especially some of the other Americans we’ve met randomly who have been an older crowd). But I love to talk about it, I just don’t like it when people get too heated - it scares me. Talk normally about these issues…

So yes. Madison and I have done all the “quintissential” Amsterdam things to do, but yesterday we also did the Anne Frank house (and realized I have never actually read the “Diary of Anne Frank”!!), did the Walking Tour, and we are going to check out the Van Gogh museum and the windmills (which are famous in Amsterdam).

It’s been fun so far, and we love this city! We’re just getting up to finishing our 7th week abroad tomorrow…! Craaazy. Three and a half more to go…Madison and I have frequently been having conversations about going home and what we are going to do when we are home and how things will be different (if at all) and etc…Should be exciting to get home, but we are definitely enjoying our last few weeks here and making the most of it! :)

Eees goot, yaahhh!!!

Budapest is awesome so far. Went on a couple of walking tours yesterday, which again always get us so aquainted with the city - it’s awesome! The first was a tour of the “Pest” side, about an hour and a half, given by this awkward Hungarian guy who obviously did not speak English as his first language, but he was so in love with his city that it totally convinced us too. After some rude services at a couple of places in an attempt to get lunch somewhere, we went on the “Buda” tour. The woman giving the tour was a lovely 30-something-year-old cute woman, who also just loved her city. She took us up to these gorgeous castles which overlooked the whole city - phenomenal. We wandered around a little more, and ended up at our hostel to hang out with awesome people for the night.

Today Madison and I woke up early to go the House of Terror - one of the largest killing spots during WWII and when Hungary was under Soviet control (which only ended in like, 1989!!!). Super interesting. We even saw some Nazi propaganda films and watching Hitler speak was a trip…! Super animated. And the amoutn of people he had following him - really incredible…So powerful too though - there was videos of people just wheeling dead bodies to be put in lines with others…Madison and I looked over at each other so many times with our jaws to the ground. The last part kinda left me in a weird mood - we were dumped into the cellar where people were took to be hung. Getting down on the elevator, it moved slowly enough to show an interview of a Hungarian man who worked in the execution rooms and he explained everything that happened in perfect time with the ride down. After, you arrive in the cellar, knowing what had happened there, and you see all of the different jail cells people were kept before they were hung and for some reason, that was creepier to me than the concentration camp we saw near Berlin. It was musky and damp down there as well as dark and confined…Suuuuper creepy. The world seemed a little darker in general once we left the House of Terror…But we continued on and made it to these natural pools! Hungary is famous for their pools because all the water is thermal water from below, so it’s like a hot spring. In the place we went, there were about 16 different temperatures of the pools and a lot of saunas too. We walked into a sauna that was 50-60 degrees C, and turned right back around…Next to it though, there was one that was 75-90 C!!! Toooooo hoooooot. We managed to stay in the 45-55C sauna for about 5 minutes, and it felt nice to sweat everything out, but we started loosing breath after that…We stayed at the pools for about 2 hours, but they kicked our asses, so by the time we left to do some thrift store shopping, neither Madison nor I were in the mood to put effort to rummage through a bunch of clothing…So after a few failed attempts, we headed back to the hostel and went out to Mexican food with some hostel people, as it is hard to comeby abroad. It wasn’t the greatest, and as Mexican food always goes - you aren’t even hungry for it in the first place, but you eat the whole thing anyways…We’re having a quiet night in, “Fracture” is playing in the background at the hostel. But it’s good. We’ve got until Sunday booked here when we head up to Amsterdam after, so no rush.

Things we’ve noticed about Budapest:

-Everyone is not very friendly all the time…We learned on our walking tour that Hungary is not in the best economic shape, so a lot of the older generation people are very pessimistic. People only make abut 500-600 Euro a month, which in Vienna would be barely enough to pay the rent. Also, the fact that the Soviet Union only just left Hungary doesn’t leave the country in good shape, as they had to take out HUUUUUUGE loans to bring it back to the point that it’s even at today. We saw some photos at the House of Terror of the state Budapest was in just after WWII and the photos were stunning how in shambles the city was…

-The architecture is really cool, because there are so many romantic-style buildings, but there are also remants of more modern, Soviet-looking skyscrapers right next to them! It’s a lovely city to walk through though. :)

-All the food is super fatty - hard to be healthy abroad in general, but for some reason Budapest seems to be particularly difficult to come by anything fresh…

-The tourism in Budapest is not one that is outstanding in any way, but they are trying hard to bring people into the city. However, these attempts are not always recognized, seeing that most of their signs are only in Hungarian - a language that has essentially no sister language (besides some Asian roots), so almost nobody can understand/speak unless you know Hungarian itself.

We’ve got a few more days in Budapest, so we will visit some “room bars” (abandoned buildings that have been turned into bars) and go to a traditional Hungarian folk dancing party! I’m sure that will be fun, and will bring about good stories. :) More to come soon. Love to all!