You know what sucks? Having the heel of your (crappy) boots fall apart, you know what sucks even MORE? Buying an awesome, PERFECT pair of boots that cost 100 euros, wearing them for 10 minutes and realising they're too freaking small. What sucks eeeeven more than that? Walking around in them for 10 hours and getting blisters. It gets better. What sucks EVEN more than all that? Having to find somewhere that can maybe stretch said shoes in Budapest, where NO one speaks English, yeah that's fun, HEAPS of fun, just MASSIVE amounts of fun. Okay, okay what sucks more than that? Having to wear a pair of flip-flops when it's 2 degrees outside and getting death stared by the locals. Okay, even suckier than aaaall that suckage is when you decide to J-walk across a massive road aaaaaaaand, dum dum duuum.. you trip and your flip-flop breaks and you almost get hit by a car.
No shoes, Eastern Europe, winter, frozen feet, middle of road, cars hooting, tears welling up... LESS than ideal.
And, as if the shoe thing wasn't bad enough, I went to the House of Terror, a museum and memorial to the victims of the fascist and communist dictorial regimes. You can go right down to the basement into the actual rooms where people were horrifically tortured and murdered and there are videos of people telling their stories, it was extremely upsetting. And, what was even more upsetting, was meeting an 89 year old man that was looking around the museum for the 1st time after having been through it all, he walked around with me for ages, telling me stories of what World War Two was like, and what it was like living under these terrible regimes. He could tell me who all the people were in the photos, he explained how people were tortured, he could tell me everything. He recognised all the different uniforms, he told me so many sad stories, it was interesting but almost unbearably sad, especially when we walked into one of the torture rooms aaand he recognised one of his friends and started crying. Yeah, he was crying and touching the photo and looking at me saying Stalin, STALIN. I hate it when people cry but seeing the sadness in this old man's eyes was just horrible. What was I supposed to say to that, I really don't know, I just started crying too. I couldn't handle it. He patted me on the back and said "Hungary, is good place now, no communism, good place". Wow. We went to the museum coffee shop together and I bought him some tea and cake, tea and cake makes everyone feel better, right? Wow, what a day.
