I had a truly horrible New Year’s Eve Eve, but a pretty great actual New Year’s Eve.

I can back up though, to a couple days ago when I was still in Zagreb. I woke up feeling a million times better than I did the day before- my stomach felt okay again, and I wasn’t even coughing as much as I had been, thanks to the Croatian pharmacy. Still, my friend and I slept in (which we needed) and didn’t even leave our hostel until noon.

After a quick lunch, we wandered around the city a bit, looking for cool landmarks. And then we found the ice skating rink! It wasn’t really a rink though: part of it kind of was, but then a couple paths branched off of it. The zamboni had just finished its journey, and it was time to go back on the ice! We bought our incredible cheap tickets, rented some skates, and I had my first ice skate of the year.

We ran some errands, did some shopping (found a cute New Year’s dress yay!), and sat down for some gluhwein and cheesecake at a little outdoor pavilion while it hailed right outside the tent. Which was super random because it had been absolutely beautiful all day otherwise. We headed back to the hostel, watched part of the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring (we had started the movie the day before but it’s like three hours so) and then headed to a walking tour of the city.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s stupid to do walking tours your very last day, but like whatever. It was only an hour, free, and we got a free shot as well. It’s nice to do walking tours, because you see parts of the city you had no idea even existed or were important. The problem is that they’re normally about three hours, which is just nuts. So this was perfect.

We met a cool German girl on the tour, so we invited her to dinner with us. Which was Italian because we are adults and can eat wherever we want and I had this amazing shrimp, spinach, and mushroom risotto that I’m still thinking about. And then we were totally full, but still thought it was a good idea to go to the Cookie Factory again for dessert. Just as worth it as the day before.

The goal was to go to bed early because I had a bus going out at 8 am the next day, but between talking and finishing our movie, it was probably still midnight by the time we went to sleep. And then I had to wake up stupid early and it was terrible but I did make my bus. Which STOPPED AGAIN FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF AT THE BORDER WHAT THE HELL. Other than that it was uneventful though.

I arrived at my Airbnb where my friends had just checked in, and we hung out there for a little while, I actually showered (I know, crazy) and then a couple of us went to thrifting/food buying/ATM stopping/wine shopping. We hung out for a bit, and then drank about four bottles of wine between the four of us, so we were super prepared for our night out.

I don’t know if that’s where I went wrong – wine drunk always makes me more emotional. Maybe it was just that I forgot for a moment that men are pigs. Either way, I had one of my worst nights in Europe that night.

I knew that the guy I had been whatevering when I was in Budapest was now whatevering another chick, and I kept trying not to care. And I really don’t…if I’m gone. But if I’m still going to be partying with you, it sucks. It was fine at the first bar we went to, where I made some new friends and hung out with some old. But then we went to one of the hostel bars, and they were there and I felt like garbage.

So then I naturally overcompensate by trying to meet new people, and this actually worked…for awhile. I met this really nice guy and hung out with him on and off for most of the night. We were talking and laughing and joking and maybe kissing I was really drunk so I don’t totally remember. I thought things were going well between us, but I guess not. Because then he evaporated. Poof.

And I was alone again.

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt that completely terrible, and I know it’s no one’s fault but mine. I’m seeking validation from people I don’t know, which is obviously not going to make me happy. I was way too drunk but somehow got myself home – no idea how, but it happened. My friends tell me they found me sitting up on the couch, still wearing my coat, dead asleep. They put me to bed (I remember none of this) and I woke up the next morning not in the greatest form.

We nursed our hangovers with KFC because in Budapest you don’t eat real people food, apparently. Then it was time to go to the thermal baths – something I was really excited about because the only time I went before was the “Sparty” which was not exactly a relaxing spa-like experience. Unfortunately, going to a thermal bath in Budapest on New Year’s Eve isn’t exactly an original idea – I’m pretty sure every single tourist in the city was there. Either way, we had a lot of fun, went into some algae baths (they smelled terrible) and a menthol sauna (so weird). But the best was being outside in the cold in the warm pool. That was an insightful sentence.

Then it was time to get home, shower super quick, and put on some New Year’s shit, despite me really needing a nap. Pizza was the dinner on the way to our pre-gaming at a ruin bar at an event that was all-you-can drink for a couple hours while we played drinking games. BAD IDEA HOLY SHIT. Basically, I owned at flip-cup – my team was on a huge winning streak, and then we eventually had to all compete against each other and I won a TOKEN. You get three tokens and you get a T-shirt and I get very competitive and excited about things like this. So then I had to get two more (which I did via bribery and not by winning anything else at all) and got a goddamn shirt.

THEN the drunk AF group of us headed over to one of the hostel bars to drink…more. During the night I a.) lost my T-shirt b.) threw up for the second time in Europe and c.) entirely missed the midnight countdown but kissed the guy I was talking to when everyone started cheering so it all worked out. Then some more things happened and I tried to tell my friends that I was going to his place but I COULDN’T FIND THEM. We only had two keys; I had one of them. This will become an important point later on.

We hopped in a cab (pro tip: don’t take cabs in Budapest if you don’t want to be ripped off), made it there, and had quite the interesting time. I fell asleep PRETTY QUICKLY, woke up at 7am, and realized that I had no idea where I was and that I needed to check out of my Airbnb in a few hours. I had no WiFi, but he got me to the tram, and I knew where to get off of it. Anyway, I got home, my friend said we were all back safe, and I passed out.

Only to wake up at about 10am to all of us realizing that we had about ten million texts because one of the girls had been locked out this ENTIRE TIME. She was safe, but we felt terrible. None of us knew because I had no WiFi the entire time and they were too drunk to understand what texts were.

We then tried to get the guy renting us the place to give us another hour or so to check out because we had shit EVERYWHERE. But when we messaged him, it turns out he would be coming to clean the place in about 15 minutes. It looked like an actual war zone. I don’t know how we got it so messy so quickly. Even though we needed nothing more than to sleep for the next five hours, we scrambled out of bed and packed everything up faster than I ever have in my life.

We checked out kind of on time-ish, and then decided we should get something to eat before dragging our asses back to the hostel to hang out for the rest of the day. There is almost nothing open New Year’s Day, so McDonald’s it was. Except we had to wait outside because they weren’t open yet, along with the rest of the crowd of hungover people. It took us about an hour to eat (we were dying) and then we came back to the hostel, hoping they would let us in after last night (they did, happily.)

I’ve basically been a piece of shit all day, sleeping, watching movies, eating KFC for the second time in two days, and doing a whole lot of nothing. I would like to take a moment to write an ode to KFC strawberry milkshakes. If you haven’t had them you are missing out on a truly perfect part of life.

Hark! Shake o’ milk, filled with berries o’ straw

Enter my trembling lips, fill my mouth with your cold coldness

You belong nowhere but here, upon th’ watering tongue o’ mine

But too soon you are gone, too soon.

One VERY EXCITING thing just happened as well: I decided to go back to the bar to see if my shirt was there – mine wasn’t, but a size medium was in the lost and found. I took it. So now I have to learn to cut up a shirt to make it look cute. SOMEONE TEACH ME.

In a couple hours, I’ll be on an overnight bus to Belgrade, Serbia. I’m only going because I had a ten minute conversation with a girl who told me it was her favorite city ever. I’ve done zero research, so we’ll see what happens!