keskiviikko 19. marraskuuta 2014

Budapest

Hallo!

On Friday evening around 11 pm we arrived to Budapest, Hungary. We went straightly to our hostel, which was called Good Mo. We were in a all-girl-room with 10 other girls. Btw there was only one shower for all of us! :D The hostel was good, but the breakfast was just ridiculous, we have never experienced such a bad one! (for example the bread was not eatable anymore..)




 The plan for the night was to have a pub crawl, which was supposed to start already at 10.30 pm, but surprisingly we were a bit late..:D Eventually we left for the pub crawl after midnight! The cost for it was 15€ and it included 1 hour of free drinking in the first bar and 1 free shot in each of the three bars.

The pub crawl started in a pub quite near to our hostel, so we all walked there together. This was the first time that we were out of the hostel, so we tried really hard to remember the way we walked there so we wouldn't get lost.....you can guess how it turned out in the end...:D:D (we arrived to our hostel at 6 in the morning by taxi.................)

All in all the pub crawl was nice, but actually not really worth the 15€. Still we had such a great time, getting to know new people and talking in German!

Jenna, Maiju, Sergio and Daniel
The next morning luckily we had time to sleep after our nightly adventures..:D Our walking tour of the city was supposed to start at 1 pm, but actually it started at 1.30 pm. The tour guide was a bit weird..she explained about half an hour of the tradition alcohol drinks of Hungary, but then she decided we didn't have enough time to go and see the most beautiful view of the city..she was also in a hurry all the time, so we basically ran through the city and got only a short overview of the city. At one point we actually lost her..she told us to walk towards the city and then just left and the whole group were wondering around, trying to find her:D:D And now pictures from the tour!

Our walking tour group!





Matthias Church

Matthias Church




Danube river


Hungarian cars...:D

Budapest Parliament House

Chain Bridge
Finnish football clubs representing in Budapest!

St. Stephen's Cathedral


After the tour we wanted to do some shopping! We headed to the Vaci -street, which was supposed to be full of clothing stores. We found only few stores and didn't actually find anything, except Jenna bought a scarf from Zara :D We did find some souvenirs though, but that was all. Then we walked to the restaurant street to find a place to eat goulash! Luckily we found a place quickly. The food was really cheap like everything else in Budapest, our meals with drinds together cost only about 8€!

The soup was okay, but nothing special. At least we tried traditional Hungarian food!
After dinner we walked back to the hostel to get some rest before the boat party at 9.30 pm! 
The boat party also cost 15€ and it lasted two hours. The boat went back and forth on the river and we saw the beautiful sights in the night time! The party was really nice! It was something different to the usual parties we have had :D The boat had two floors, in the upper one you could just hang out and look at the view and in the downstairs there was a DJ playing and people dancing!



We were terrified that the first boat in the picture was going to be our boat, luckily our boat was behind it :'D


Nice pose! (riemuidiootit)

The beautiful Parliament at night!
After the boat party there was also an after party in a club but we were too tired so we went back to the hostel to get some sleep. In the morning we were scheduled to leave at 9.30 but surprisingly we weren't on time...There was some problem with the check-out from the hostel, so we managed to leave after 10 am. We made our way to Bratislava and more about that in the next post!

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju

Vienna

Hallo!

Last weekend we had a trip to Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava! The trip was organized by pm2am student trips and cost 149 € including transportation, two nights in a hostel in Budapest and sightseeing tours in every city we visited. The trip started on Thursday evening and we were supposed to come back on Monday morning (more about that later...!).

Thursday evening at 18 we left Köln and drove all evening and night to Vienna, Austria! We arrived there in the morning and spent the day there :)
First we had a guided sightseeing tour by walking. The guide was really nice :) We saw all the most popular sight seeings in Vienna.

Vienna Parliament


Vienna Rathaus (City hall)



State Hall, National Library Vienna


Finnish flag!




They were already installing the Christmas decorations in the city center

St. Stephen's Cathedral


After the tour we had approximately 6 hours of free time! We were really hungry so the first thing to do was to find a restaurant and eat :)

Jenna ate Schnitzel

Maiju ate Gulasch
We decided to eat something different for a change so Jenna ordered a schnitzel (pork steak) and Maiju ate Gulasch (beef). Prices were affordable and the food was ok. Nothing special and not the best, but ok. Then we decided to go and see the popular Belvedere, because during the sightseeing tour we had no time to go there and the guide recommended us to go there.
It appeared to be further away than we thought and it took a lot of time for us to find the place :D Also Ana and Caio from Brazil wanted to go there so we decided to spend the rest of the day together. First some pictures taken when we tried to find Belvedere! :D


We found Mozart! ;)

and a cute bunny!


When we found Belvedere, we were quite disappointed because you couldn't go in without paying for an art exhibition. Luckily in the backyard there was a beautiful garden, so it was not totally in vain going there :)


Jenna and her new bff




Then we wanted to go and see a castle! :D Ana told us that she wants to go and see it, because every chocolate bar coming from Austria has a picture of it :D Nobody of us really knew what was it, but we asked about it from the desk in Belvedere and a friendly lady told us how to get there. We took a tram and about in twenty minutes we arrived to Schloss Schönbrunn! It is a castle which used to be Maria Theresia's (Sisi) home! Nowadays they arrange concerts etc. there.





Jenna, Maiju and Caio
After that we went back to the city centre to do  some souvenir shopping and also have a coffee in Aida, which is a cafe the guide recommended for us :) The cakes were delicious and prices were not bad! Such a nice place :) Even though the waitress was really rude: at first she didn't bring everything we ordered and blamed us for that, then she forgot Jenna's drink and in the end we needed to wait for the check a long time. Maybe a bad day...





Ana had SOME spare coins... :D
Then it was time to get in the bus and travel to Budapest! We will tell about it in the next post :)

Maiju&Jenna

tiistai 18. marraskuuta 2014

Kölner Karneval 11.11.

Hallo!

Here in Köln a carnival called Kölner Karneval is celebrated annually. The carnival itself is celebrated in February, but the carnival season called the 5th season is opened on the 11th of November at 11 minutes past 11. This happened a week ago and we of course took part in the celebration!

The tradition is that everybody dresses up and goes to the city center already in the morning to celebrate the opening ceremony at Heumarkt. We also went there at 10.30 and it was already totally full! We of course wanted to dress up like everyone else, so Jenna was a bunny and Maiju a cat.

Luckily we managed to get inside the fenced area, where opening ceremony took place. There was a stage with an orchestra playing traditional German songs. Of course everyone was there and people were just singing the carnival songs and drinking :D At 11.11. people went crazy! After that we stayed there a while and then decided to walk to Zülpicher Platz to meet the other exchange students.

A loooot of people and the stage with an orchestra at Heumarkt


Maiju, Stephanie and Jenna

Maiju, Fons and Rares
It took us some time to walk to Zülpicher Platz, but we were there on time at 12.30 waiting for the others. Everyone showed up eventually and then we walked to Zülpicher Strasse to continue the celebration and find a bar. The street was full of people, we could barely move!

Pauline, Jenna, Maiju, Andrea and Helena
Maiju, Ankit, Jose, Martina, Rares and Felipe

Zülpicher Strasse

Jenna, Fons, Maiju, Ankit and Rares

Peter and the minions! 

That guy was in every picture and nobody knows who he is...:D


<3
We spent the day at Zülpicher Strasse and went to a bar also. It was so funny that all the bars and clubs were open already at 2 pm! :D  The atmosphere in the city was really amazing, everyone was dressed up and happy! The city looked kinda funny with all the people in costumes..:D

In the evening we also went to a club and spent there few hours. We left already around 7 pm....:D:D Then we went back to Zülpicher Strasse to go again to a bar. People were still celebrating there! We spent there some time and then went home around 10 pm, because we were already tired after 12 hours of celebrating! It was nice to get the normal amount of sleep even though partying the previous day/night :D It would nice to party always like this! We had no problem going to school the next day :)

Next post is about our trip to Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava! We are doing separate post about each city.

Bis später!
Jenna&Maiju