Happy New Year! I hope you all had great holidays in whichever tradition you choose to celebrate: pretty Christmastimes (as the flight attendant wished my parents upon arrival in Thessaloniki), joyous Hanukkahs, splendid Kwanzaas, and/or euphoric pagan rituals.
I have just returned from an epic adventure through Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I could write a book about the various events, people, and cultures that I experienced and observed, however I'll try to be concise for the sake of your time. At the same time, many of the experiences were indescribable, but I'll give it a whirl:
Phase One: My parents came to Thessaloniki for Christmas, then we traveled together to Budapest and Prague. It was great to see my creators after four months away from home, and we had a great time. Our three days in Thessaloniki were spent catching up and showing Mom and Pop my new scene. We celebrated Christmas on campus at AFS with Thanos, my boss, and his family. The three days flew by then we hit the road. Upon arrival in Budapesshhht, we felt very Hungary so we found an awesome outdoor Christmas festival with traditional Hungarian cuisines. After wolfing down sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes, chicken-mushroom stroganoff, rooster testicle stew, and some hot wine in Pest, we took a stroll along the Danube and crossed the river into Buda. It was a perfect night with Mama Edlin assuming the roll of tour guide, speculating about the identity and functions of the historic buildings and structures. In the morning, we were off to Prague.
After collecting our czeched baggage and czeching into the hotel, we hopped on a bus to czech out downtown Prague. As the puns flowed and the temperature dropped, we found ourselves amidst beautiful, ancient buildings and monuments. Like in Budapest, we spent most of our time strolling through the city and eating savory delicacies at Prague's outdoor Christmas festival. We walked all over the city, got scammed and challenged to a fight by a currency-changing con artist, and explored Prague Castle and the Prague Communism Museum. Overall, it was a great experience, however we found the people to be harsh and unfriendly. At one point, my mom made the accurate yet disheartening observation that we hadn't seen a single smile in all of Czech Republic. As the Prague jaunt ended, my parents and I parted ways; they headed back to the States and I hopped a flight to Skopje, Macedonia for stop numero uno on my Balkan backpacking extravaganza.
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