Unfettered

Well tomorrow I get up, take a Combinatorics midterm, finish packing, then get on a 23 hour train ride to Greece. Hooray spring break. I intend to take lots of pictures and regale you all at a later date.

Well this entry is a week late because I only went to Bratislava last weekend, so I really couldn't have written it much earlier. Anyways Lucas, Caitlin, Kylee and I decided we wanted to get out of Budapest for a bit so we decided to visit Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. We opted for a quick one night trip, bus from Budapest early Saturday morning, see the city, spend the night, and catch a bus back in time for a late lunch in Budapest. Despite one of our number nearly missing the bus everything went pretty much according to plan. Bratislava is a lot smaller than Budapest so we did a pretty good job of seeing all the important sites, highlights of which are in the photos below. The Slovakian Equivalent of the white house. The US Consulate in Slovakia. Everyone but me on the way up to the castle, note the UFO bridge in the background. Slovak flag flying on the castle. The travelers in front of the UFO bridge. Headquarters for Slovak radio, also an inverted pyramid. Some abandon

I'm not sure why I always end up writing about the proceeding Friday on Wednesday night, probably has something to do with the fact that it is the first day when I can start to look forward to the coming weekend. And after two consecutive days spent in at Bethen G á bor t é r from 8 AM to 5PM I need it. Regardless of the reason here is the run down of last weekend. Ranjan's friend Kate, from his REU this past summer was visiting from Paris with her roommate Kate so naturally we had to show them around the city. So after class on Friday (well class for me and Ranjan at least) Kylee, Ranjan, the Kates, and I, met up and took the metro into Buda with the goal of reaching the top of Jánoshegy . From the Moszkva tér metro stop we took one of the ubiquitous yellow trams to the base of the Cog Wheel Railway . This took us up into the Buda hills themselves and deposited us a short walk from the start of the Gyermekvasút or Children's railway . For those of you unfamiliar with the

I apologize for the lack of updates but the constant partying (of the homework variety) has put a serious limitation on my blogging time. So the first major piece of news is that last Friday we finally made it to Parliament !! Ranjan, very generously, made the trip to pick up the tickets before class on Friday. After class we had some time to kill before meeting Kylee at Parliament. So we wandered the thrift stores on Rákóczi utca, but we didn't find anything to match the sweaters we had previously purchased. Once we did make it to Parliament we had to first go through a security check, not quite as bad as airports since we got to keep our shoes on. From there the tour started in earnest. It is easy to see why the building is considered the most beautiful parliament in the world, everywhere is decorated in detailed art work almost all of which was made in Hungary. One of the few things not of Hungarian origin were 8 columns gifted by the king of Sweden (I think) these are some of