My European Christmas Break: The Summary

My cousin Rita and her little girl, Liepa

I took the same approach to this as my Prague trip.  Here you'll find a (somewhat) brief summary of my trip with links to more in depth posts about different topics.  So click and discover!

For the first time in my life, I spent Christmas away from my family in Michigan.  This year, instead of $1200 flight back to the U.S., I decided to take a $200 flight to Vilnius to spend Christmas with distant relatives.  For a helpful who’s who of my Lithuanian family, check out my handy dandy explanation!   The coolest thing about the trip (aside from spending Christmas in Europe with family) was how much I was able to communicate in Polish.  Three years ago, I needed a translator for everything.  Over Christmas, I was able to have dinner with Miceslovas, his daughter, and son-in-law who speak ZERO English!

My Lithuanian Christmas was a great time to relax and see more family.  We stayed pretty busy with all the eating, drinking, and visiting!  Wigilia was a smaller family meal and there wasn’t a huge family gathering.  It was really great though, and gave me a chance to really understand how the nuclear family is supposed to reflect the Holy Family.  It’s a fitting connection to make during Christmas time!

My Lithuanian lessons with Rugile and Radvile

On Christmas Day, I visited Miceslovas’s house and hung out with more family.  I even met my cousin Renatas’s new wife and her son.  However the BEST part of Christmas Day was finally meeting Renatas’s two daughters for the first time.  At the beginning, they were both super shy, but Rugile started warming up and it turns out that she speaks fantastic English for a nine year old. Rugile and Radvile ended up spending the night with us the last three nights I was in Vilnius,

One of the conclusions I've come to during my trip is that my great grandmother, Rachela, was Lithuanian.  I was treated to a couple history lessons over the week that explain better why my family including Rachela speak Polish.  Everyone was really excited that I was learning Lithuanian words and especially how to cook some Lithuanian foods! I'll be bringing a recipe or two home to share with my family.  

After Lithuania, I headed to Budapest, Hungary where I met up with a friend from back home, Anna.  Anna and my sister have been friends since they were two and met at Polish dance classes.  So Anna’s almost like a sister and is conveniently studying at Oxford University this year so we decided to meet up for New Year’s Eve.

We met up on Dec. 28^th at the Budapest Airport.  My first shock in Hungary was the monetary system.  When I withdrew 40,000 forinths at the ATM, it was less than $200!  Our entire stay in Budapest was marked with marginal bouts of hysteria over paying 550 forinths for lunch (really about $2.25) or 3,500 forinths for a solid Hungarian dinner with a beer (really only around $15).  The currency was ridiculous enough that I brought home a 1,000 forinth bill (about a buck fifty) as a souvenir!

One thing that really surprised me in Hungary was how communistic the public transportation still feels compared to Poland.  In Poland, there are modernized modes of public transportation such as electronic tickets and sleek trams.  Hungary’s public transportation operates on inconvenient paper tickets and validators that don’t work.  Plus, every entrance to the metro has men checking to ensure everyone has a ticket versus having an automatic ticket checker like in most modern railways.  For more on Hungary and communism, see the post about the communism tour we went on.

The NY Cafe

The first day, we started out with lunch in the New York Company Cafe.  It's a 19th century cafe where playwrights, artists, poets, and writers used to come together and bounce ideas off of each other.  And it was SO BEAUTIFUL!  The food was delicious (a bit pricey, but we didn't have a handle on the forinth currency quite yet) and the building was incredibly gorgeous.

Budapest was covered in beautiful Christmas lights and tons of Christmas markets still!  Not only did the markets have really beautiful handmade ornaments, but lots of cheap Hungarian food, mulled wine, and chimney cakes!   While walking through the city park (a UNESCO Heritage site), I spotted a sign for Handel's Messiah being performed at the major basilica in the city.  Soooo Anna and I walked across town and bought tickets to the performance that night.  St. Stephen's basilica became a staple in our Budapest visit.

Day 2 was the walking tour day.  We woke up early to head to the first walking tour of the day, a 2 1/2 hour general tour of the city.  First thing I learned was that the two sides of the river are actually named Buda and Pest.  A loooong time ago, they were separate cities, but as they grew larger and larger, they joined together to form Budapest.  Also, Pest is supposed to be pronounced with an 'sh' sound, not the typical 's'.

The second walking tour of the day was the history of communism in Hungary.  Hungarians had an uprising against the Soviets in 1956.  While the Soviets technically crushed the rebellion, they decided to loosen the reins on imports to keep Hungarians happy.  Therefore, post-1956, Hungarians enjoyed many Western treats like blue jeans and radios.

Our third day was Sunday, so Anna and I went to Mass at St. Stephen's Basilica.  The Hungarian Mass was SO STRANGE!  People sat during the Gloria, sat after the consecration (but they kneeled for consecration), and sat after receiving the Sacrament.  There was so much sitting that I wondered if I was in fact in a real Catholic Mass.  The nice part was having an English summary of the homily, my first glimpse of an English sermon in almost four months.

After Mass, we decided to explore Buda Castle more thoroughly.  This included the Museum of Budapest where we walked through a 14th century castle chapel and learned about the 1000 years of Budapest history.  One of the most interesting facts we learned is that the Hungarians weren't very willing participants in the Austrian-Hungarian empire.  Hungary was in fact divided in half between the Hapsburgs and the Turks and Hungarians made occasional alliances with either side to attempt to drive the other out.  In the end, the pope ordered the Hapsburgs to free Hungary of the Turks, and then the Austrians just didn't leave until the end of WWI.

The next day was New Year's Eve!  Anna's friend from Oxford is from Budapest so we met up with Lila in the morning and she gave us the native's tour of the city.  The most interesting part of our tour was when she took us to Heroes Square and Lila explained the stories of various heroes in Hungarian culture, mostly kings from the 13th-15th century and generally fought heroically against the Turks or Hapsburgs.

Later on, we met up with some of my fellow Fulbrighters (Michael from Bulgaria and Christine from Germany) and two Peace Corps volunteers from Bulgaria for dinner and NYE festivities. It was awesome comparing stories with other ETAs and finding out the struggles and frustrations are pretty similar.  One cool part was when Michael said "I don't know" in Bulgarian, and I understood what he said!  Apparently Bulgarian has similar words and phrases to Polish...who would've known?  More on my Hungarian New Years' Eve.

On New Year's Day, Anna and I woke up early to check out of the hostel.  I trucked it across town to find the souvenirs I finally decided I wanted.  Then, we went to Mass at St. Stephan's Basilica to celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.  In keeping with good Catholic traditions, I treated myself to a hearty Hungarian dinner from the Christmas market (golabki with goose!) to celebrate the solemnity.

We arrived in Warsaw in the evening, but at the wrong airport!  Apparently, all passengers were supposed to receive emails, but we had not.  Luckily, I still knew where I was going so we headed to our hostel where we spent two nights.  On Wednesday, I showed Anna around Warsaw a bit.  We toured the Royal Castle and the Warsaw Uprising Museum.  The museum was nice because they've added quite a few exhibits over the last few years so there were new things to see!  The hostel in Warsaw was probably one of the worst I've ever stayed in, but Anna and I had some weird experiences with hostels this trip.

It all ended after a five hour Polski Bus ride back home to Gdansk!

Now Anna is staying with me for a week to experience Polish life.