Budapest and Zurich

On August 9th Mikaela arrived in Budapest from Toronto. My cousins Lilla and Jolan came with me to the airport to pick her up. They brought us to the train station to get Mikaela´s train pass validated, and reserve seats on the train for our Zurich and Munich trip we were leaving for the following morning.
We said goodbye to Lilla and Jolan, and then Mikaela and I headed to the apartment we were staying in. After a quick nap, we set off to explore a bit of the city. I was the tour guide and I brought her over to the Buda side (we were staying in Pest). Buda and Pest are separated by the Danube River; Buda is very hilly, and had a lot of vegetation, trees and parks, while Pest is almost completely flat, has a lot more commercial developments and does not have too much vegetation. 
We started off at the bottom of the Gellert Hill, and saw the Gellert Monument.
We then walked along the river to the bottom of the Castle Hill, and finally climbed up the hill to see the Royal Palace and Matyas Church.
The gates around the Royal Palace:
View of the city:
View of Parliament:
While we were on the hill I thought I would introduce Mikaela to Hungarian Fruit soup. It´s delicious and is made with different types of fruit (apples, berries, etc), and it is eaten cold. The one we ordered was berry soup, and it came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle of the soup. Yummy!!
We then walked over to Matyas Church. It has an interesting history: originally built in the 13-15 centuries, but was modified by the Turks in 1541 when they turned it into a Mosque, then reconstructed in the late 1800s into a Neo-Gothic church, and then it was partially destroyed by World War II. Unfortunately they were doing construction on the church when we visited it.


   The following morning we woke up at 4:30am to set off for our very long journey to Zurich, Switzerland. I had unpacked my entire massive backpack in Budapest, and repacked only what I needed for the next few days. Mikaela and I decided to only bring the one backpack and share the space.
We took a 3 hour train to Vienna, had a 40 minute stop-over, and then took an 8 hour train to Zurich. The 3 hour train wasn´t so bad, but the 8 hour train was a killer! I spent the whole trip either reading my book, using my computer, or looking out the window at the beautiful scenery. We traveled through the mountains and it was so beautiful to see how green and lush all the vegetation was, as well as all the very cute towns. It was almost impossible to get a decent photo of the beauty of the mountains, but I did manage to get one of one of the many fields of wind turbines (they were everywhere!!).

Mikaela has relatives in Zurich, and she had arranged for us to stay with them, but we didn´t quite know what they looked like, they didn´t know exactly what time our train was arriving, and they didn´t speak English. So we were a little nervous when arriving in Zurich!
Luckily when we arrived one of them was waiting for us on the platform, and the other was waiting for us at the exit, and we managed to make a very smooth connection with them! I quickly learned how similar Italian was with Spanish, and by using bits of Spanish and English we were able to communicate with them decently well!
They took us to their beautiful home just outsize Zurich and fed us a very tasty and extremely large Italian dinner.
The following morning Mikaela and I set out to explore Zurich. Zurich is a beautiful and very cute city with the Limmat River running through the center. We spent all day walking along the water and through the streets. 


  We took a long walk on the Banhofstrasse, a very exclusive (and extremely expensive) shopping street. As we walked along we saw endless Swiss Banks and luxury watch stores.  Most of the banks and luxury stores have door bells with a video camera which you must ring in order to enter. We also made sure to make a stop at the Sprungli Cafe, a famous cafe known for their specialty Swiss Chocolates.
Along the water we saw the Blumenuhr Burkliplatz, a large flower clock with a 70kg radio-controlled clock and casting enclosure.
Below is a photo of us with the Romanesque Grossmunster church (completed in 1220) in the background.
We wanted to get the full Swiss experience, and decided to have a Fondue lunch! It was delicious… but very very filling!! We had to keep brushing off our inappropriate waiter who kept making jokes about how since I was an electrical engineer he would get an electric shock if he touched me, and it would be stronger depending where he touched. We were a little amused, but not too impressed.
We had a very adventurous afternoon. Mikaela had been talking for a while about getting her nose pierced, and thought maybe she would do it during the trip if we found a safe and clean piercing studio. Today was the day she wanted to get it done.
I promised her I would go with her, hold her hand, and keep her calm during the whole process. We also agreed that if we got there and we got a bad feeling about it or thought maybe it wasn´t sanitary we would leave immediately and give up on the idea.
When we arrived at the piercing studio we had to wait for about 20 minutes. We spent almost the entire 20 minutes squealing and screaming with nervousness/excitement.  I thought I would be able to stay calm and calm her down, but we both ended up getting extremely hyper. I am a very excitable person, and so the more nervous she got, the more nervous I got! Also, we tend to get extra hyper when together.
I get really faint at the sight of needles and blood, and have been known to faint when either of those are present. And she was scared she might faint because of the shock and pain of the piercing. We warned the man doing the piercing of the possibility of us both passing out during or after the piercing (this made him pretty nervous).
We were holding hands and I was trying to say calming things to her, while looking at the wall so I wouldn´t have to see the needle or blood. He looked pretty nervous, and was scared that she would move during the process, freak out or faint.
He ended up separating us and tried to calm her down alone, which was probably a very good idea.  He told her  to stay perfectly still and to take a deep breath and then he put the needle through her nose.
Once it was over we were all much more calm (including the piercing man).
As we were leaving the piercing place the lady at the front desk was kind of giggling at us asking why we were so scared about the whole process. We asked her if people didn´t normally get nervous about piercings, and she responded telling us that yes they do get nervous, but they don´t usually scream and squeal! Especially not the accompanying friend (ie. me).
We spent the rest of our time in Zurich doing some shopping. I had been noticing these very (unattractive) low-crotched pants throughout my travels in Europe. Apparently they are pretty high fashion (even though I still have yet to figure out why). We found some at this ridiculously hideous store and thought we´d buy them for fun.
  To get back to Mikaela´s family´s house we had to take a train to the small town of Aarau. While waiting at the Zurich train station we both really needed to use the bathroom. I had been used to paying for using the bathroom; all throughout Europe I have seen fees of around 0.50 to 0.75 Euros. When we got to the bathrooms the fee was 2 Swiss Franks each (which is equivalent to about $2 Canadian!!). Two whole dollars to go pee?? We had been trying to use up all our Swiss Franks, so we counted up all our leftover money and only had 3.25 Franks… not enough for the two of us to use the bathroom!!
We wobbled to the platform and decided we would run to the bathroom the second we got on the train.  When the train finally came we both raced to the bathroom and flushed the toilet. We saw a sign saying ¨Please do not use the toilet when train is stopped at stations¨, and only realized the significance of the sign once we watched the flushing mechanism. When you ¨flush¨ the toilet, a hole opens, and all the contents in the toilet are dropped onto the tracks. We laughed at the thought that as we were pulling away from the station in the train, we had left a little part of us on the tracks for everyone in the train station to see.
We had a great time in Zurich, and slept really well that night knowing that the following morning we were getting on a train for Munich, Germany!