Its Days Like These...

Buckle up... It could be a long one...

Seeing as I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep on Friday night, I was rather disappointed to hear the alarm go off at 4:30 on saturday morning. However, after remembering that the alarm signaled the beginning of my long-awaited trip to Budapest I suddenly had enough energy to stand up and quickly get myself ready to go catch the train. But just as I was almost finished, my friend Kar, asked me a question that forced the blood to completely and quickly drain from my face... she asked, "Nicole? are we going to need our passports?" Knowing that the answer was obviously 'yes', it reminded me that I knew exactly where my passport was. Can anyone guess where it was? Perhaps in the inside pocket of my backpack with my wallet where I ALWAYS keep it when I go on trips?... NOPE!!! It's precise location was at the bottom of the middle drawer of the wooden cabinets in my room, all the way back at my house... an hour away from my friend's house, whose house we had stayed the night at. SMOOTH MOVE NICOLE!! But seeing as I'm generally a smart and sensible person I figured it would be better to go all the way back and get it, rather than risk getting in trouble at the border with the Austrian AND Hungarian police. So, after trekking all they way back for a teeny tiny little book and missing our original train to Budapest, we trekked back into the city to try and catch the very next train which would be the last train for a few hours. Unfortunately for us two 'american visitors', we are completely at the mercy of public transportation and can only drive as fast as public transportation will allow... which is NOT that fast. It was probably the most agonizing bus ride I've ever had to endure, full of impatience, early morning crankiness, and a lot of praying! When we finally got to the city, we rocketed as fast as possible and bolted into the train station, completely out of breath, just in time to jump on the train. The next three hours were filled mostly with sleepy conversations about what Budapest will be like, and failed sleeping attempts.

Upon arrival at Budapest our energy was once again restored with a buzz of anxious excitement. As we stepped off the train, we realized instantly that this was definitely going to be an adventure to remember, whether a good adventure or a bad adventure, we had yet to figure out, but an adventure nonetheless. And of course, the spazzy randomness known as the inside of my brain, stepped up to the plate to yank out an applicable reference from a movie I despise and haven't seen in years, and throw the words "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore" right out of my mouth. One quick scan of the place allows one to take in the view of the obvious lack of money and corrupt government. However, I was in Budapest fulfilling another small dream so I made a choice to keep a positive outlook and try to enjoy and learn something from any experience.

Just being in Budapest is a huge, eye-opening experience!! Around every corner is just more and more evidence of a poor, 'formerly' communist country. Homeless people begging on almost every street, dilapidated buildings pleading to be bull-dozed, and public buses that fit no description within the comprehension of any middle-class american. Yet, despite the downsides to this city, we were able to see some amazing things (see other post for details) and gain experiences that will forever burn in our minds.

And now for the most memorable part of the trip... At the end of the day, after we had seen and done everything on our list, we headed back to the train station to await our train to take us back to our beautiful city of Vienna and our beautiful beds that are situated in beautiful homes! Being incredibly tired at this point we were looking forward to a nice, boring, and relaxing train ride home. However... our hopes of riding back in peace were completely obliterated after we had been on the train for about a half an hour and the ticket controller came to check our tickets... Knowing that our tickets were completely and 100 percent valid, I simply handed him my ticket without a care in the world and waited for him to return it to me. As he was inspecting it he mumbled something I didn't understand, but assuming it was german and that I just wasn't listening carefully, and knowing the normal procedures, I reached for my passport to show him that as well. And then, practically throwing my passport and ticket back at me he proceeded to say (in english, with a really annoying accent), "Dees teecket ees not valeed." To which I gave the response (with, of course, a sarcastic snotty accent of my own) "Yes, eet ees! Check eet again!!!! And this was only the beginning of a very long and intense argument. I honestly did try to be patient with this man at first to try and solve this ridiculous problem, but keep in mind that I have very little patience for crap to begin with, I was incredibly tired, and he was a certified, class A idiot!!! So basically the patience thing lasted about as long as Penny can keep her room clean... which rounds up to be about... 3 1/2 minutes... on a good day. (love you Penny!) After spending a few teeth-pulling minutes having a conversation full of broken english and frustration he finally asked me, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" which means "Do you speack German?" and I answered "Ja, ein bisschen aber nicht viel", "yes, a little but not much". From here I proceeded to experiment with my unpracticed german, which only resulted in the realization that I in fact spoke more german that he did, meaning that our chance of decent communication and problem solving had diminished greatly! So there I was with boiling blood and spitting fire, trying to convince a man who understood very little of either of the two languages I was speaking, that he was wrong about our completely valid tickets being invalid. And just so you know I really wasn't kidding about the 'spitting fire' thing... I was so angry with his attitude and incompetence that the poor guy looked like he was about to wet his pants. He just kept stammering over himself saying the same thing over and over..."you must get off at the next stop... I can do nothing" (remember to say it with the snotty accent) After 2o minutes of fruitless, insane arguing he finally left, actually ran out of our compartment with a final "you must go", (said with a huge hint of nervousness) and slammed our compartment door shut. So at this point I'm about to freak out because the thought of being kicked off a train in a teeny podunk town in Hungary didn't really appeal to me. But, not being sure what to do, I looked at my phone to see that I had 3 bars of battery left and decided to call Isabelle just to at least let her know what was going on so she would have some sort of clue in case we really did get ditched. Isabelle, of course, was also very angry because she also knew that we were right and the stupid hungarian weasel was wrong, and thankfully she gave me some very good advice. She told me that he really isn't allowed to touch me and that I should just stay on the train until he's inclined to call the police. Just then, my battery went from 3 bars to 0 and completely cut me off leaving me with no form of communication or s.o.s. and leaving Isabelle at home in suspenseful panic. At this point I had about 40, 000 emotions running through me ranging from blood-curdling anger to a new level of hysteria! The thought of spending the night in jail wasn't the most welcoming but I had just the right amount and combination of anger and adventure to be willing to fight everyone on that train until they dragged me kicking and screaming to a hungarian jail for the night! However, on the inside I was a lot more nervous then I was letting on and my friend Kar was also extremely nervous so naturally we were both saying about a million silent prayers! After a few minutes of sitting there trying to figure out what we were going to do when the train stopped, Kar asked me if we could say a prayer together. So we calmed ourselves for a few minutes while I said a small prayer to help us communicate with these people and get us home safely to Vienna. Once the prayer was said we both felt immediately that we were going to be ok and that the problem would be solved. So now all there was to do was wait until the next stop to see if he was going to come back with reinforcements for round 2. However, about an hour and fifteen minutes and 3 stops later, no one had come by or said anything.... and then we came to the last stop... which was right before we crossed the border into Austria. Originally we were only supposed to be stopped there for 10 minutes so we were just watching the clock praying more with every second that with any amount of luck we could make it through this stop too, meaning we could make it all the way to Vienna. But of course with the luck we were having the train was not stopped there for not only 10 minutes but instead an hour and half!! Still no one had come to kick us off, but we had absolutely no clue what was going on and why we were stuck at the stop for so long! They kept making an announcement over and over but considering neither of us speak Hungarian very well, or at all, it didn't do us much good. So eventually we assumed that the train had broken down, and just continued to sit there full of suspense, impatience, and questions. When the 90 minutes of waiting had passed and the train started moving again we considered ourselves very blessed to still be on the train and to not have had any more pointless confrontations. But I also knew that they would most likely be coming around to check tickets again soon and I really didn't have the energy to produce the would-be-needed amount of spunk and composure for another argument. Sure enough, after about 10 minutes a man came. Luckily for us it was a very different man (I really think the other was cowering somewhere with very wet pants) so I decided to act innocent and hand him my ticket as if nothing had ever happened. So when he said "Fahrkarte bitte?" I nonchalantly handed him the ticket and waited. Very routinely, he simply glanced at the ticket, punched it with his little puncher thingy and handed it back it to me and then proceeded to follow the same steps with Kar's ticket. After returning our tickets and saying "Danke Schoen" he slid out of the compartment and went on checking tickets throughout the train. That was it... really.... After all that aruging, yelling, stressing, praying, frustration, preparing etc. etc.... THAT WAS IT!!!!! I basically learned that I was in fact right all along and our tickets were, as I've already said, COMPLETELY VALID!!! Upon this revelation (that wasn't really a revelation because I knew all along that I was right! ... not that I'm stubborn or anything) I looked at Kar and we both let out a very loud... "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

An hour later we returned to Vienna in peace considering ourselves very lucky and blessed.

It's days and experiences like these that remind me that my life is incredibly blessed. I am so grateful for my relationship with my Heavenly Father and that I can turn to him in any situation! I am also so grateful for my life and my family and for the way I was raised. After seeing how people live in poor, corrupt countries and finding myself helpless in a silly confrontation, I am truly proud to be an LDS American!!!!!

A little song I made up in my state of giddy fatigue...

"I'm proud to be an american, where at least I know I'm free...

where I won't get kicked of a stupid train, by a man who's afraid of me...

and I proudly stand up... next to Kar... and defend ourselves today...

Cause there ain't no doubt I know I'm right!!! GOD BLESS THE UUUUU SSSSSSS AAAAAAAA!!!