Gamecocks take Europe..

I was going to attempt to include the two weeks of my friends’ visit to Europe into a single post but after writing for a few hours I have decided to divide it up into two parts, Bremen and Budapest in one, and Salzburg and our last days in Amsterdam in the other. So far, only a few hours have past in time since my last post, where I left you, as I was just about to board my flight back to Bremen where I would be meeting up with a few friends for the next 2 weeks. I met all of them while at the University of South Carolina. Sam and Zack I met playing club baseball and who I would eventually end up living with in my last semester at school, Josh I met through Zack while playing co-ed intramural slow pitch softball (which we of course won…), and I met Chloe through my friend Haley who I studied abroad with last year.

Chloe, Sam, Josh and Zack

We had been planning this trip ever since I graduated last December, and we were all so pumped to get started. The plan was originally to do Amsterdam, Bremen, Munich, Budapest and Salzburg, but the budget wouldn’t allow all of that so we crossed out Munich as it was one of the more expensive parts of the trip. My friends actually arrived in Europe while I was still in the states, flying into Amsterdam and as Sam would say they “spent a week there one night.” Actually, Sam arrived a day before everyone else for some reason… Not sure how that kid gets through his day to day life, more on this later. I met up with them Monday afternoon at the Bremen hauptbahnhof and decided that the best way to spend your first afternoon in Germany was at a biergarten on the river with a liter of fresh, German beer. It was a great way to all catch up and for them to tell me all about their first leg of the trip.  It was just like we were all back in Columbia at our little house, drinking beers around the bonfire. Except this time, we weren’t drinking cheap gas station beer, and instead of a bonfire we got to watch the sun go down and the river barges traverse up and down the Weser. It was a good first night, but because I had work in the morning we couldn’t stay out too late.

Sam and Josh with the Bremer Stadtmusikanten and the Schnoor viertel

Over the course of the next week, after I’d finish work I would pick them up from my place and we would head into Bremen or Bremerhaven and explore my region of Germany. Actually on a run one day, Sam discovered a small biergarten back in the moors on the Hamme River called Melchers Hutte. I had seen signs for it and tried to find it before but somehow Sam found it within being here for 48 hours.. Anyway, it’s a great little place and it’s a stop for “torfkahn” (a type of river boat only used in my tiny region of Germany) to take a break and have a beer and a bratwurst before continuing on their journey. So when the weather was nice we’d go there, soak up some sun and have a beer or two before heading into Bremen for the evening. I tried to show them all of the sights and experiences I could here, from the Schnoor (the old fishing quarter), to the Weser Stadion (home of Bundesliga team Werder Bremen), the Bremen Alt Stadt (old town), the Schlachte (biergarten area along the river), german foods (and the occasional kebab), as well as a trip up to Bremerhaven to watch the sunset over the North Sea.

North Sea sunsets in Bremerhaven

The week flew by and on Friday morning I dropped the group off at the train station in Osterholz-Scharmbeck so that they could catch their train to Budapest, where I would be meeting them that night after I got off of work and flew there. The plan seemed simple enough, what could possibly go wrong… No sooner had I dropped them off and arrived at work did I get a text message from Chloe… “Sam missed the train in Bremen… not a joke, he actually missed the train.” I almost didn’t know how to respond… The train from Osterholz-Scharmbeck arrived in Bremen (which isn’t a massive train station, maybe 8 platforms) and had a 15 minute layover before their next train left. How could he have possibly missed his connection.. But sure enough I get a message from Sam, explaining the situation and how he was now taking a bus, yes a BUS, from Bremen, to Budapest.. To put that in perspective, Bremen to Budapest is about 1,150 kilometres, or 750 miles. Which is about the distance from Columbia, SC to New York City…

Sam’s bus route…

My day went as planned, my flights were smooth and easy and I arrived at our airbnb in Budapest around 10:00 that night and I ask what time Sam is getting in. Chloe and Zack tell me “10..” “Oh so he’s probably just arrived, does he know how to get here from the station? Should we wait for him to arrive before going to the bars?” “No Vince, 10:00 am… tomorrow.  He missed a bus on his route.” I couldn’t believe it… But all of our frustration with Sam seemed to fade that night after a few Hungarian beers, and laughing about the 26 hour bus journey he was having to endure and how that would be punishment enough for wandering off for breakfast and to buy earbuds for his music in Bremen instead of catching the train like the rest of the group..

Full moon in Budapest

Oh well, when Sam finally arrived the next morning we bullied him and smacked him around a bit, before telling him to put his bag away, as we were headed into the city. We only had 2 full days in Budapest and we were determined to get the most out of them. We saw the Budapest Parliament, St. Stephens Basilica and the Shoes on the Danube memorial before walking across the river to a great cafe I remembered from last Spring.

Buda Castle and Parliament

I believe it was called Delirium Cafe (I may be wrong about this, because I tried to google to double check and couldn’t find the name anywhere…), and while it had tons of beer choices, I remember it for being the cheapest place to get beers from the “Huyghe Brewery” in Melle, Belgium.  “Huyghe” makes a few different beers, like any other brewery, but their best beer is called “Delirium Tremens.” In Salzburg, a .33L glass of Delirium Tremens costs about 15 euros!! But here in cheap, beautiful, cheap (have I said it was cheap?) Budapest it costs about 2 euros. As my family knows, I love the big Bavarian beers like Augustiner, Paulaner, and Hofbraü and of course my Austrian favourite Stiegl, but the Delirium Tremens is my absolute favourite, not to mention it won “Best Beer in the World” at the World Beer Championships in Chicago, Illinois in 2008 (yes, that’s a thing). It was nice to sit outside, have a few beers, soak in the sun and watch all of the people hustling around in Budapest. But we didn’t spend too much time there as we had plans that night to go to the ruin bars, this time with Sam, which we were all eager for.

Beers across the Danube from the Budapest Parliament

That night we all went to the ruin bars, unfortunately it was raining a bit, and because the ruin bar we were at did not have a roof to cover the main courtyard the night consisted of us trying to stay out of the drizzle as much as possible without giving up our great table we had snagged. Eventually though the rain forced us out and on our walk home, my friend Josh told us about how he had been wanting to try absinthe, real absinthe, not the “knockoff stuff they sell back home.” And we just so happened to be walking past a bar called “Van Gogh’s Absinthe Bar,” so we ducked in to see if they had “the real stuff.”

Preparing our absinthe

After a few minutes of talking to the bartender, we learned that there were two styles of absinthe at the bar, French and Czech. Josh was satisfied that both styles came from bottles that still had the root in the bottom of the absinthe jar (whatever that means), none of the rest of us knew anything about the stuff prior to that night so if Josh was satisfied, we were on board to try it. Zack and Josh tried the Czech style, while Sam and I tried the French style. The French style consisted of dripping cool water over a sugar cube and allowing it to dissolve into your glass with a few ounces of absinthe resting at the bottom. This allowed you to control the strength of your drink, I thought I watered mine down pretty heavily but it still tasted awful.  The Czech style consisted of lighting a brown sugar cube on fire and letting the syrup melting off of it to mix in with the absinthe, which was then stirred together. It also tasted awful.. A lot of show for a lot of nothing, but because we had a few beers before trying the absinthe we were sufficiently inebriated and immediately hailed a cab to take us all home. Besides the fact that the cab driver definitely ripped us off, he dropped us off like a kilometre from our airbnb, but luckily we were able to figure out our way home as a team.. Never going to try absinthe again..

Szechenyi thermal baths in Budapest

The next day we woke up nursing some fierce hangovers and knew that the only cure was a nice mid day soak in the Szchenyi baths. The baths really are one of the best ways to escape the hustle and bustle of Budapest. We spent most of the day relaxing and recovering, and unashamedly eating the most american burger we could find. But, because we had been traveling and walking a lot in the past few days and as we had seen most of what we wanted too of Budapest the previous day we decided to just lounge out in our apartment that day after the baths. We got a quick kebab for dinner and later that night we found a great rooftop bar to watch the sun go down over the city.

Last night in Budapest

After this, we headed to our 2nd escape room of the weekend, we were a little addicted (but not very good) to say the least. And when that was all said and done, we decided to just go down to a small bar on the banks of the Danube and have a few beers and soak in the beauty of Budapest for our last night. Budapest at night is stunning, the way the bridges and buildings lining the river are lit up in golden light really makes for a special sight.

Buda Castle from across the Danube at night

After a few hours, we called it a night, all eagerly awaiting our train ride to Salzburg the next morning (some more then others).  Here, is where I’m going to leave you for part 1 of our eurotrip, next week you’ll hear all about Salzburg! Auf Wiedersehen!

Budapest Keleti Station, my last view of Budapest before Salzburg!