Chapter 16: From Budapest to Florence 🤌🏼

A couple of nights in Budapest, the gang splits up, and we hit Florence for the weekend.

Jan 28, 2022

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Recap

Tuesday, October 12th

Five dudes, five twin beds, and a five foot high ceiling. I woke up around 10:30 and nailed my head when I stood up. Tanner was doing fine post-pepper spray, and Mark apparently made it back to his bed. Not a terrible Monday night, all things considered.

In college, I had football workouts every morning at 6:45 AM. As most of you former college students know, college kids go out on week nights. A lot. When it wasn’t football season, us football guys would join in on the fun too.

We always wanted to go out with everyone else, but we had a pretty early obligation the next morning. So what did we do?

Stayed out til 3, woke up at 6, and got our workout done like everyone else. It sounds terrible, but we made it work My roommate, Chase, hit 355 on power cleans after one such night freshman year.

Occasionally we would say “screw it” and go out on a Wednesday during the season as well. Maybe that’s why we went 6-6 for 5 years. Either way, the one time Isaiah Buehler and I sang karaoke at the Bird on a Wednesday, we combined for 2 sacks, 5 TFLS, and two QBHs that Saturday. Hot take: if the whole team went out on Wednesdays, we coulda won conference.

After five years of working out while my body was in critical condition, I got used to it. So now, like Pavlov’s dog, my first instinct after a long night out is to hit the gym. Pretty weird mental conditioning, but it is what it is. I grabbed a breakfast burrito from a fire cafe down the street, and looked for a gym.

I found the most East Bloc facility in the city. This place was a dungeon. There was a boxing ring, ping pong table, and a ton of free weights and dumb bells. It was perfect.

After working out, I passed an athletic clothing store. My black Adidas shoes were on life support. They had a good three years, but those puppies were dead. I tried on some Hungarian Dorkos and loved them. $70 and 2x more comfortable than Nikes. If they hold up well, I’ll be a Dorko fan for life. I threw away the Adidas shoes at the store and wore my new kicks home.

Jason found a $25 all you can eat buffet with unlimited wine and champagne. Dinner plans were set. We show up to the restaurant, and this place is niceee. You could order steak, shark, and scallops from a grill station. I didn’t know how to pronounce half of the stuff at the buffet. This was Brazilian steakhouse meets Golden Corral, and we loved it. As you know, great conversations are the best part of any dinner.

There are two elite dinner conversations:

Retelling old stories with long-time friends
Sharing new stories with good company that you don’t know well

Ours was the latter. At this point we were all homies, but the longest-standing friendship in the group was 6 weeks. So the wine started flowing, the conversations got more ridiculous, and by 10 PM we were all crying from laughter.

We headed to the bars after that, but got a bit sidetracked on the way.

At 11:00 we tried to walk into Club Instant, the most popular spot in Budapest. This place had 6 bars in one, and we were regulars a month ago. The bouncers, stocky, buzz cut, Russian-mob looking guys, told us to finish our drinks outside. No problem. I get in. Tanner gets in. Jason doesn’t get in.

The bouncer said that he was “supposed to finish it across the street,” but that’s just not true. Tanner and I did the same thing and got in.

Jason is Asian. We’re white. It was pretty obvious why he didn’t get in. So then we try to sneak him in through a side door, but that didn’t work. Then the head security guy got pissed and threw him and Tanner out.

Budapest is an incredible city, and 99% of the people are great. Unfortunately, even great cities have losers like those bouncers.

When we got back, Jason tried to leave some bad reviews of the club online. Ironically, his comment looks like he was applauding Instant for not letting Asians in lmao. Look at this:

Asian dude happy about a club not letting in Asian dudes is hysterical.

Wednesday, October 13th

The boys were famished after a long night of combatting racism, so we grabbed brunch from a local cafe. I went back to my Soviet dungeon gym, and Tanner and Mark went to tour the Parliament building.

The weather sucked most of the day, so I spent the afternoon hanging out with Collin and Jason at the apartment and doing laundry. I also got a haircut. I have gotten two haircuts in Europe at the same barbershop in Budapest, so I guess that’s my place. Around sunset, we went to 360 Bar. The weather had cleared up some, and this place had the best views in the city. Jason had a friend from Chile, Tomas, who met us there.

We booked a reservation for a night riverboat cruise, and we headed to the pier at 8. The views were awesome. Budapest at night is gorgeous. The air was crisp, Buda Palace was mesmerizing, and every building and statue was basked in golden lights. 10/10 recommend a riverboat cruise.

Thursday, October 14th

Sadly, our road trip came to an end today. The T-Roc had to be returned to Venice, Collin was headed to Prague, and Tanner had a flight to Egypt. (He was supposed to go home two weeks ago. Now he’s going to ride camels or something. Idk.)

Tanner was supposed to go through Moscow to get to Cairo, but he didn’t have the right type of COVID test to get into Russia lol. He and Rylan are the kings of messed up travel plans.

We woke up at 6, grabbed the car, and headed to Zagreb, Croatia. We dropped Tanner off at the bus station there because he had to get back to Split for his flight. Mark, Jason, and I kept going to Italy. We stopped at a coastal restaurant in a small town, and the waiter barely spoke English. We had no idea what we ordered, but we ended up getting a 2 course seafood and pasta spread that was way too expensive.

I dropped them off at the Anda Hostel (same place we had stayed in last week), and I took the car back to the airport. They went to explore Venice since they didn’t get a chance the week before, and I caught a train to Florence. They’re meeting me here tomorrow.

I arrived, walked to the hostel, dropped my stuff off, and went to an Irish pub across the street for dinner. Three people from my hostel, an American girl, Columbian guy, and British girl, all sat with me. I ended up learning a lot more about Brexit than I expected.

Friday, October 15th

Mark’s brother, Matt, was flying in from Toronto that day. Matt arrived at the hostel around 1 PM while I was chilling in the lobby, and I instantly knew he was Mark’s older brother. If Mark started every day with 6 cups of coffee, he would be Matt.

Around the time Matt arrived, Shay showed up at our hostel too. Shay was a girl that Tanner and Rylan had met in Greece, and we happened to be in Florence at the same time. We all grabbed lunch (pizza #12) down the road, and walked around Florence for a bit. Florence is an awesome city. Large but walkable. Beautiful cathedrals, basilicas, and synagogues everywhere. Miles and miles of winding cobblestone roads, clothing shops, restaurants, and bars. Like Venice, it was an awesome place to explore with no real end goal.

Highlight: some massive balloon animal statue thing. With no context, I now assume that central Italy is famous for its balloon animals.

Matt and I headed back to the hostel and hung out at the pool til 6, when Mark and Jason arrived. The four of us and Shay grabbed dinner (pizza #13) down the road before hanging out at her hostel for a bit. While we were walking down the road, we saw another Volkswagen T-Roc ❤️❤️

We went to a place called “Club Babylon” afterwards, and the place was nuts. Like 200 people waiting outside.

Matt made friends with someone who allegedly “knew the bouncers”, and said we could get in faster.

Yeah that didn’t work. Matt took manners into his own hands and bought a table and bottle for us to cut the line. Dude is the epitome of Canadian hospitality, a true gentleman. We walked into a mass of locals, tourists, and study abroad groups.

Mark and Matt bounced after an hour or so, but Jason and I hung around for a while. Jason (6’4) met a Belgian girl (6’2), and I really hope he got her number or something. Their kids would be dominating the basketball court for a decade.

Jason and I headed back to the hostel and 3ish, and we grabbed some kebabs on the way. Kebabs are the ultimate late night street food. Like European Waffle House.

Saturday, October 16th

Matt, Jason, Mark, and I had a room to ourselves at the hostel, which was awesome. We were on the fifth floor with a massive balcony outside our window, so Matt and I hit the world’s shortest workout on said balcony when we got up.

We headed to a brunch place called Rooster Cafe, and it was straight 🔥🔥. I had my first chicken and waffles meal in months, and it felt like home. Most of Florence is on the north side of the river. There was a hill on the south side of the river with a massive plaza: Piazzale Michelangelo. We walked over there after brunch, took some pictures and videos of the city, and people watched. Jason flew his drone awhile to get some footage of the Italian city.

On the way back to the city center, Matt took us across the Ponte Vecchio bridge. Matt had previously visited Florence, and he was full of random Italian fun facts. Ponte Vecchio was really cool: the stone bridge was lined with jewelry and designer clothing stores, and merchants had been operating there for 1200 years.

I headed back to the hostel to nap, while they explored the city for the next few hours.

Have you ever been woken up from a nap, and didn’t know what dimension you were in? I fell asleep around 2:45, and they came in a little later. I woke up and said, “What time is it?” They replied, “4:00.” I thought I had somehow slept 26 hours. Naps are weird.

We grabbed some ‘za (#14) from down the road, and brought some beers back to the hostel. After kicking it with some French dude (who roasted me at least 4 times in 30 minutes) and his mom, we headed to a local karaoke bar.

Red Garter is freaking awesome. When we walked in, they had the UGA - UK game playing on a big screen. There were a ton of Italians there singing their own karaoke songs, and they were fantastic. We didn’t understand a word, but it sounded good. Mark and I sang Mr. Brightside, and a couple of American cousins followed us with Don’t Stop Believing.

Mark and Matt headed back to the hostel around 1:30, after we spent 15 minutes trying to get some random dude to taxi us back (he wasn’t a taxi driver. Just some guy picking up his girlfriend. Couldn’t believe he wouldn’t take $20.) Jason and I went to another place called Pink Street Club. Somehow we ran into Tim, a Colorado guy that we met night 1 in Budapest. Small world, am I right? We made it back to the crib around 3:45. Jason and I are headed to Rome in the AM, catch you guys there.

-Jack

I’m on a pizza-only diet in Italy. 14 pizzas and counting rn. Stay tuned for the rest of the pizza tracker.

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