Glass Blowing

 We got back from the 5 day trip on Wednesday and on Friday we had our glass blowing day trip. We took a bus to northern Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is known for glass blowing. They've been doing for an incredibly long time. They have bountiful amounts of the material needed to make glass. The area where the glass is made was once the border area of the Czech Republic given to the Nazis by Britain and France in hopes that it would be enough for Hitler and there wouldn't be a WWII. The Germans gave the Czech 24 hours to move out of their homes in that area for Germans to move in. During WWII Britain and France scrapped the treaty giving the land to the Germans because they did not follow the rules of the treaty. After WWII Czechoslovakia gave the Germans 24 hours to move out of those areas. The areas have high unemployment because the areas are not as populated as they used to be before the war. The glass blowers do not get paid a lot, but they are happy to have a job.
All of us watched the glass blowers from a balcony looking below. All the glass blowers were men. They all drank beer while they blew glass. A lot of them also smoked. I noticed some of them would light their cigarettes on the glass they were about to blow. There were also calendars throughout the room with woman barely wearing any bikinis. It was definitely a boys club. But half way throughout the time I noticed two people came out, I'm assuming they're designers. One of the people was a younger woman informing the men what she wanted from them when blowing the glass. It was fun watching this woman tell these burly men what to do.

Everyone in our group got to blow their own vase. You got to pick a color and a design mold. The man would put the glob of molten glass into the furnace, you close the mold shut and he puts the glob of glass in and blows a little bit to get the mold. Then you go up and blow the glass and spin the stick until they let you know it's done. The guy told me I did it perfectly and that I must be a glass blower :-). I'm just really happy mine turned out well. I'm really hoping my glass wont break on the way home.

We also got to see the gallery of the finer pieces they made. They make pieces for American hotels, they made a huge lighting sculpture for a subway in Dubai, and they've done many other things with famous glass blowers. They made one glass sculpture and got permission from Mick Jagger to call it the Mick Jagger. They gave it to Mick Jagger and then made only 10 more for a limited edition event. They had a picture of Hilary Clinton with a piece of glass in the gallery. I don't know the story behind that though. Then we got goulash at the restaurant across from the glassblowing warehouse. We could watch glass blowers make things in the restaurant while we ate and could buy things. It was a pretty cool experience.

Me in my stylish glassblowing-glasses blowing my beautiful vase.

My beautiful vase.

Glass blowing warehouse.

View of the town.

You the best! No Budapest! & Bratislava

After the gallery in Vienna we were off to Budapest. Budapest was amazing. We also stayed in hotel rooms instead of hostels which was nice. We were in Budapest for two nights, which I was happy about. It was my favorite city out of all of the ones I was at during the 5 day trip. We first had dinner at a nice restaurant and had amazing goulash and wine. Hungry is wine country. After dinner we walked up around the palace. It was amazingly beautiful. Amazingly beautiful doesn't even do it justice. You could see all the lights of the city down below with the river going through it and the castle had an amazing glow to it. It was so romantic. My friend and I decided were going to Budapest for our honeymoons. We'll go up to the castle with a bottle of wine at night and enjoy the view. Walking around the castle there were a lot people that had the same idea. There was a lot of PDA. Some of it was soo cute you wanted to melt, some of it was too much and had an eww factor. But I think everyone fell in love with Budapest.

One of the people in charge of our group, Richard, grew up in Budapest and lived there for most of his life. He was really excited to take us to Hungry and Budapest. Our tour guide, Joseph, who is Czech, would talk about historical places and the history of Hungry and Budapest and would tease Richard through out the walks. Richard would tease right back making fun of the the Czech Republic. It was a lot of fun to see them joking back and forth.

The next day we walked through part of the town and went to a hot springs spa. Budapest is known for their hot springs. It was so nice. They had three pools outside. One was for laps, one had a little lazy river and was just like a regular pool, but it was a perfect temperature, not too hot or cold. The last pool was warm. It wasn't a hot tub temperature but it wasn't cool. It was so nice. There were also some pools and spas along with steam rooms inside the building surrounding the outside pools. I tried an acid hot tub. It was interesting. Most of the people at the hot springs spa were older, chubby people in speedos and bikinis. I liked that because that made me feel good about being in my bikini. No skinny girls and no cute guys to care. I liked the confidence the older people had.

We then went out to lunch, then I took a shower and went up a hike to the tallest point in Budapest. It was exhausting and hot but it was soooo worth it. The view was amazing. After that we went to a famous cafe above a book store. A friend and I shared a bottle of wine from Hungry and had dinner. It was sooo beautiful! My mom would have loved it. It reminded me of the place we went in England to have tea. They had a pianist playing too.

The next day we were off to Brataslavia in Slovakia. Slovakia and the Czech Republic used to be make up Czechoslovakia. I believe Hungry used to rule over Slovakia and now there is kind of a feud between Hungarians and Slovaks, because a lot of Hungarians live there still and speak only Hungry while the Slovaks have their own language that's very, very similar to Czech. We were only in Slovakia for a little bit of time.

We visited two castles. One of the castles was in Bratislava and the other one was 20 minutes away. The one 20 minutes away was more of ruins of a castle. It was in a little town that was just beautiful. There was a large river on one side of the castle. If you cross the river you'd be in Austria. Many of my friends swam across it. I decided to get gilato and chill in the shade instead. The castle had a very interesting history to it. I guess there was a woman ruler that died and the women wanted there to be another women ruler while the men thought there should be a male ruler. The women locked themselves in the castle and battled against the men. The men would try to poison their well water by catapulting dead bodies by the water supply. I was happy to hear they had feminists back centuries and centuries ago.

After the walk up to the castle I went and had gilato outside with some friends and it was just so beautiful. It's just one of those moments where you just feel purely happy and content. I had a lot of those moments on this trip. My mom would have loved this castle. This would be a good family vacation. Everyone needs to go to Prague and Budapest.

Oh I want to point out something. We took a bus to all these places. The bus's conditioner broke. It was horrible, especially the last day it was so hot. Everyone was sleeping with beads of sweat going down their faces. All the chocolate Ini and Pezi gave me was completely melted. But that did not stop me from waiting until it cooled down and hardened so I could eat it.

Dinner in Budapest

Amazing goulash

View of Budapest from the castle

Me in front of a fountain at the castle

The market

Another view from the castle

Hot springs spa

View of Budapest from the tallest point

The cafe

My dinner, wine, and ice tea

Bratislava. The Bridge was built by communists because they wanted to show Bratislava as being more modern. Bratislava is pretty modern now and is part of the European Union and on the euro

Cute town with the castle right outside Bratislava

Castle ruins. People are surrounding the well the men tried to poison.

Jewish magnets!! Very cute