Eastern Europe Experiences #HogsAbroad

Well it feels like I’ve been non stop traveling for the past 2 months. I was late posting that last blog because I had like 3 days in Aarhus (which consisted of class, unpacking, laundry, and repacking) then left on another trip with some friends to Budapest, Hungary & Kraków, Poland. And now as I’m writing this post I’m on the bus heading back to Copenhagen to fly to Berlin. My roommates in Aarhus cannot believe the amount of traveling I have been doing, but they are mostly all from Europe so they don’t understand this is one of my only chances to travel all around Europe like this. Also, most of my classes are ending now so by only having a couple classes a week and some all in one day, it is easy to be gone traveling for multiple days at a time.

We were in Budapest for 3 nights and Kraków for 3 nights, so it was a good length trip. I never really thought I would go to Hungary or Poland, they just aren’t really countries you hear much about. But I would definitely now recommend everyone to go to both places. Budapest was absolutely amazing!! It was so gorgeous and had a great atmosphere. Something I first learned while I was there was that Budapest was split up into two cities, Buda and Pest, separated by Danube river. Buda is the older city, with my history and is also more hilly. On the Buda side we saw Buda Castle, Matthias Church, and the Parliament Building. There were many lookouts at the tops of the hills to look down at Buda, Danube river, and Pest. It was absolutely gorgeous.

The Pest side of the city is younger and more modern. On the Pest side we saw St. Stephen’s Basilica, the Great Market Hall, where we ate multiple Hungarian dishes and lastly my favorite the Szechenyi thermal baths. Theses baths are the largest medicinal baths in Europe and have so many indoor and outdoor pools. We spent a whole day there and it was so relaxing and enjoyable.

Overlooking Buda

Matthias Church

Great Market Hall where we ate Goulash & Langos

Danube River between Buda & Pest

St. Stephen’s Basilica

sweet langos, a traditional hungarian dessert

We stayed on the Pest side in Carpe Noctem Vitae Hostel, which was such a fun hostel. There were always different events at night that you could sign up for at the hostel so there was always something to do and many different people to meet. One night we went on a boat river cruise down the Danube. We got to see the same sights we saw during the day lit up in the night. It was beautiful. One of the nights we went on a pub crawl all together to old ruin bars. Each bar was different and each had a lot of character.  

Parliament Building lit up

From Budapest we took a seven hour bus to Kraków, Poland. We had to drive through Slovakia to get to Poland from Hungary. Slovakia sounds like a scary country that you really wouldn’t want to be in, but it was the total opposite. It was absolutely gorgeous, with green hills, mountains in the distance, rivers and cute little towns. Kraków, Poland was also a city I didn’t know what to expect to see. But Kraków was a very well developed and pretty city.

There was an Jewish Quarter and Old town, which is where we stayed in Greg & Tom’s hostel. We paid $15 each a night for this hostel and we definitely got our money worth plus more. The hostel was very nice and clean and our room was for 6 people and for 2 of the 3 nights it was just us 4 in the room. They also offered SO much free food. And what college student can pass up free food?? We got free dinner, free breakfast, and free snacks. It was such a great deal for so cheap.

In Kraków we explored the old town, Jewish quarter, seeing many synagogues, and saw Wawel Castle. Kraków was a very walkable city and we were able to see everything we wanted to in about a day and half, could have even seen it all in a day.


On a serious note, the main reason we went to Poland was to go to Auschwitz. Nothing can prepare you for what you see behind the gates of Auschwitz. We saw two concentration camps, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau. We took a guided tour around the camps for about 3 hours. Everything was very heavy on my heart and very emotional. This experience really made me fully understand the statement “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It is very important that we do not repeat this terrible event that occurred in our history. My friends and I didn’t really speak until the end of the tour. After the tour we were very emotionally drained so we stayed in for the night.

The next day we had an afternoon to see more of Kraków then we headed to airport to go back to Denmark. We had a 10 pm flight back to Copenhagen then had a 2:50 am train back to Aarhus because we had a presentation for one of our classes at noon in Aarhus that day. We did not have the best of luck with transportation this trip. We started out with our bus from Aarhus to Copenhagen breaking down on the side of the highway and having to switch buses and then we ended the trip with our train having a problem in Copenhagen.

So we didn’t end up leaving Copenhagen for Aarhus until 3:30 am… It was definitely a late night but we made it to our presentation and received great feedback from our professor. Overall it was an amazing trip and now I’m ready for my next adventure in Berlin!
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Read more from Kelsey at https://kelseyindenmark.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the Walton college exchange program in Aarhus, visit http://studyabroad.uark.edu/exchange/wcobaarhus/