An unusual thing here in the United States is that people actually travel, they don’t just talk about doing it. Almost everyone I talked to went somewhere for Spring Break and that includes me.

We left Saturday morning and we drove into Louisiana where we stopped for a night to see the remains of a 3000-year-old civilization and just relax for a while after the 7-hour drive there. I get motion sickness easily, so driving for long isn’t one of my favorite features of a trip.

The next morning, we had a less pleasant experience with the breakfast… because there was none, even though there was supposed to be. Anyway, after another five hours and we made it into New Orleans.

That night we went on a tour in the French Quarter about ghosts, murders, vampires, and voodoo history. Our tour guide was amazing, and along with her stories about New Orleans, I made sure I was walking right behind her so I could sneak in my questions and get some insight when it comes to… I don’t even know… literary anything interesting. I found out she is the granddaughter of a Hungarian duchess and she ended up in the US as an engineer. She later decided she didn’t like it anymore and started doing ghost hunts with her friends and investigations of the city’s history. After a while, she started as a tour guide, and now, 20 years later, she enjoys teaching people about the unsettling stories of the place. She also told me that one of the other tour guides is from Romania. He was actually passing by not long after, so I exchanged some (Romanian) words with him.

The next day, my host parents took me to see Jax Square, hoping there would be street performers even in these times, so I could get some insight and experience more of the city’s atmosphere. There were some of them, singing or, as appropriate, dislocating their shoulders. I also got to see the History Voodoo Museum, which was pretty strange. I have my own weird affinity for serial killer psychology, forensic science documentaries and other, not so widely enjoyed subjects, but the whole time I was there I had a really peculiar feeling. Maybe a considerable factor contributing to that would be all the money and cigarettes left by people to the Voodoo gods. It’s such a different religion and it carries so much history, more than just some weird inserts in TV shows or cartoons. We also went to a restaurant with live jazz music. It was so beautiful and relaxing, especially since I love listening to jazz anyway. The day was concluded with a 20-minute storm which I got to experience in its entirety, since we’d just gone out for a walk.

On the third day, we went on a swamp tour. When it comes to exploring a new place, I rarely choose to do lots of activities in nature, since most of the time nature looks pretty similar everywhere, but this was a cute little change to my usual trip choices. It came along with interesting stories about pirates and I got to see raccoons for the first time in my life (alive ones). In the afternoon we walked around some shops and I got some cute little gifts for me, my friends and my family back at home.

Of course, I couldn’t miss Cafe Du Monde. I went to a more local one in the city park. I tried the well-known beignets, the specialty of New Orleans. They are pretty good, really similar to one of my grandma’s dessert recipes.

After this adventure I have returned to my lair, I worked on some projects, I went to the beach at Texas City Dike and Galveston, I found the best coffee around here and I visited the Holocaust Museum where a friend of my host mom was so kind to give me a tour since she does research regarding the subject.