First Day in Budapest

I arrived in Budapest yesterday around 6:00.  After gathering my bags (both of which made it!), I found my ride to head out to the hotel.  The hotel was about 30 minutes from the airport.  It was really funny, the guy driving me had the GPS set.  Once we got on this one road, the GPS said, in english, "stay on this road for a very long time."  I started cracking up, my GPS definitely doesn't talk to me like that! 

Once I checked in  I found out that my roommate was Jana.  She and I roomed together in France so it was awesome to see a familiar face.  I had about an hour until our first meeting so I took a much needed shower and got unpacked.  Our meeting was pretty short, we did basic introductions and received our Hungarian money.  At IIHF tournaments, you typically receive half your money in Swiss Francs and the other half in the local currency.  We had $20000 bills in our envelopes which is a little strange to think about until you do the currency calculator and realize that about 226 forints is $1.  

After the meeting I went back up to the room and was asleep within 10 minutes.  All the travel and time change had finally caught up to me.  I slept a solid 11 hours and woke up this morning around 8:30.  We had our big meeting at 10 where we reviewed all of the procedures and logistics.  When the meeting was over, a group of us decided to walk around and check out the hotel.  The weather here is awesome, it was in the high 60s and sunny today.  Our hotel is beautiful.  It is attached to a waterpark so there are a ton of pools, both indoor and outdoor and boy were they busy. Observation #1 - European men definitely don't wear the same swimsuit style that North Americans wear!  Can we say speedos everywhere?!? After our little walk, we had lunch then walked to the rink (it is about 15 minutes away) to get our accreditations and check out the locker room situation.  

Following that a group of us decided to walk to the store to pick up a few things.  I found a case of Coca Cola Light so I am now a much happier person!  I found out that Malene from Denmark also shares my addiction, so we are going to be coke buddies all week!  Once we got back, a group of us decided to check out the waterpark.  It has probably been at least 15 years since I have been to a waterpark.  They have all different types of slides - ones  with tubes, ones with flat rafts and ones that you went down without anything.  Even though I couldn't read the signs, we figured out that they rate the slides like ski slopes - easy, medium and  difficult.   They also had a few that had a toilet bowl type things where you would get dropped in, spin around for a bit then shoot out the bottom on to  another slide.   It was so much fun, I need to try to get to one of the waterparks down the shore this summer! 

After all of our hands were wrinkled from the water we went up, showered and ate dinner.  Following dinner everyone headed back up to their rooms to crash.  We have an early morning skate tomorrow then games start in the afternoon.  We should find out our assignments soon, they have to be approved at the directorate meeting that is going on right now.  Looking forward  to  getting on the ice tomorrow!