Thursday we actually went downtown in Metz and had some wine by the river. I wish I had been down there before; it definitely made me appreciate Metz a little more. It was so pretty! And there were swans everywhere.
Then we left that night for Budapest. Our goal of this weekend was just to go crazy and have a lot of fun. So we picked out a party hostel, Grandio. Best decision ever. Here was the hostel's weekend itinerary:
Thursday: meter beer challenge to qualify for a higher league in pub golf Friday
Friday: pub golf
Saturday: jager train and Cinetrip rave in a Turkish bath
Sunday: another jager train and open mic night
We missed Thursday and Sunday unfortunately. So we didn't get to qualify for the champion league for pub golf, but it was probably for the best. We got to the hostel and were told we had 45 minutes until pub golf, so we had to go find an ATM to get the right currency and then get back. Pub golf: 9 bars, a drink in each bar, each one has a "par" and you have to try to take less gulps than par. The higher league just meant that they could take extra shots or drinks to lower their score. And each bar had a challenge, just for added fun. Only talk to the person to your left, end each sentence with "in my pants" or "up my bum," maintain physical contact with a team member at all times, etc. The night started at 7pm and we got back around 4am. And everyone there was dressed up in golf attire, which we apparently didn't get the memo for. But it was a lot of fun!
Saturday we got up and walked around the city. Budapest is actually made up of Buda and Pest, divided by the Danube River. Pest is more industrialized, with all the shops and everything, and that's where our hostel was. Buda is more scenic.
That's Buda on the left and Pest on the right. So we walked around all day and then went to a Turkish bath for massages, which were incredible. Then we went in all of the different pools, which are all different temperatures and have different minerals in them. The best pool was the 38 Celsius pool. The worst was the 16 Celsius pool, haha. And there were three saunas that we went in: one was a fairly normal sauna, the "aroma" sauna, which was my favorite. The second was a light sauna, which had big bright lights that changed colors. It was kind of weird. The third sauna was between 80 and 100 degrees Celsius. It was insane! Just walking on the floor made my feet feel like they were burning. They had ice outside the sauna to take in and rub on yourself, which made it a lot better, but it was really intense in there. But it was probably the most relaxing afternoon I've had all semester. If I lived there I would totally get a season pass and go there every single day.
Then we headed back, got dinner at the hostel (a delicious burger, mmm), and were just in time for the jager train! Apparently every Friday night, the hostel does one of these, but for this weekend it was on Saturday because pub golf was Friday. So they lined up 155 jagerbombs and then knocked the shots in like dominoes. It was pretty neat.
Then we all headed out for the rave in another Turkish bath. It was incredible. There were crazy lights, belly dancers, an acrobat, and a fire blower. There were two main pools, one cold and one hot, with people dancing and hitting beach balls around, and a regular dance floor too. It was such a cool experience, never done anything like that before.
Sunday we woke up really wanting to stay in Budapest for the last night, but we couldn't get out of our hostel reservations in Vienna, so we left grudgingly. Vienna was awesome though. It was raining when we got there, so we didn't do much but grab some dinner. Monday we walked around exploring the city. We climbed a tower on Stephansdom for a great view -
Then we went and got chocolate cake and coffee at this fancy little cafe. I'm not big on coffee but this stuff was actually pretty good. Oh and my travel guidebook said something about this cafe/bar, and one line in the book made us go just out of curiosity: "Don't leave without seeing the bathrooms." So we went out of our way to go find this place to see the bathrooms. It was closed when we tried to go the night before, but we found it open on Monday. The bathroom was pretty neat, but it was fun just walking in to see the bathroom.
So the map showed a ferris wheel somewhere in the city, so we went to go see it and it was actually an entire carnival that is permanently there. It was HUGE, and had some pretty bizzare rides. We got lunch there and went on one roller coaster (we had to go on at least one thing while we were there).
After that we metro-ed allll the way across the city to go see Schloß Schönbrunn, a big palace. Over there were a bunch of gardens and a little market going on, where we finally got pretzels. Then we had to leave to get our stuff from the hostel and catch our train to Munich.
We were planning on taking an overnight train from Munich to Metz on Monday night, but our train reservations had been messed up and the train was full, so we had to figure out an alternate route back. We ended up taking a train out of Munich at 12:30am with 3 or 4 different connections, and got back to Metz around 9:30am Tuesday morning.
Since my birthday started at midnight while we were in Munich, we got these cool beers -
It was an awesome weekend! Then we all went out for my birthday dinner on Tuesday at Kefan, the first place I ate at when I got to Metz. :)
I leave for Rome in a week! Home in 13 days.
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