First Impressions

I have now been in Budapest for a little over two days, and so far everything has gone very smoothly. My trans-Atlantic voyage was the least complicated one I've ever had. No delays, no weather problems, no lost bags. In fact, my flights to London and Budapest both arrived earlier than expected at their destinations. I also got fed well. Both dinner and breakfast on the flight to London, and then breakfast again on the flight to Budapest. Unfortunately this meant that, between having the lights on to feed us, and the turbulence on the trans-Atlantic flight, I did not get very much sleep. However in some ways this was a good thing; by eight o'clock Thursday evening I was ready to crash, instead of being wide awake and thinking it was only two in the afternoon. Other than simply being tired from traveling, I have had absolutely no jet-lag problems.

Two people on the same flight as me turned out to also be BSM students. We all exchanged contact information, then split up with Bryan taking a taxi with one of the people who were there to meet us and Tyler and I getting in a taxi with Anna, who is in charge of the students. She handed me my transportation pass, and then began to explain what we needed to know for the next few days. Tyler was dropped off at his apartment with directions to local grocery stores and the like, and then Anna took me to the castle district, where I will be living for the next five months.

I could not have been more blessed if I had had a choice in host family. Eva is the host mother, and the only member of the family who still lives in this four room apartment. She has two daughters: Monika and Erika, both of whom are married. Monika has three children; the oldest is five years old, the youngest only 8 months. Eva speaks only a few words of English. We communicate mostly with body language or, if this does not suffice, by calling Monika or Erika and getting them to translate. The entire family is very kind, and Eva has been hosting for years with this system. She has every girl she hosts write a letter in this journal at the end of her stay with helpful information about how to work the shower, where to get eat, what professors to avoid or to be sure to take classes from, and other necessities. All the girls have raved about Eva, her cooking, and her family. I can see why.

The apartment was initially two separate apartments. When their neighbors moved out, the family bought the apartment next door and knocked a door in the wall separating the two apartments. Now the place has four rooms, two bathrooms, and two kitchens. My room is probably larger than the bedroom Jane and I share at school, and includes a desk and plenty of storage space. If I go out of the apartment building and turn left, I can see the Fishermen's Bastion and Matthias Church. They're about a five minute walk away. It makes finding the apartment again easy. As long as I can get to the scaffold covered tower of Matthias Church, I just have to go downhill to get back.

Castle hill has a walking trail which runs along just inside the fortifications and gives an amazing view of Budapest. I spent Friday morning wandering around the area. I need to go back and take more pictures once I figure out if my camera is running out of batteries or not. It keeps changing it's mind. I also visited the Marzipan Museum which is in the basement in back of the Hilton, right by the Fishermen's Bastion. There's a shop and cafe in there, and for 400 forints you can go look at the marzipan sculptures. Some imitate Hungarian needlework, several are of major Hungarian monuments. There's a life sized statue of Sissy, and several scenes from fairy tales or popular culture including Ariel, Shrek, the Goose Boy, 101 Dalmatians. After all this it was hard to resist the temptation to buy some marzipan I could actually eat, but I resisted.

When I got back to the apartment Tyler called to ask if I wanted to meet him and Bryan at the language school so we'd know where it was, and then explore downtown Budapest a bit. I set off in plenty of time, realizing that it would probably take me a while to find the school. Unfortunately I got off the metro one stop early, and spent twenty minutes going in circles trying to figure out why the surrounding streets were not matching up with the map. (In my defense, the metro stations are not labeled above ground with the actual station name, and inside I was uncertain which label was for the station name and which was for the next station. I also thought Erika had said that the metro station to get off at for the school was a major junction, which the one I got off at was. In retrospect, I think she was talking about the school for the BSM program.) Once I did figure out what the problem was, it took me another fifteen minutes to get to the right intersection and then find the right small street which the language school was off of. By that time it was 3:20 and I didn't see Bryan or Tyler. I went through the gates, and found that the school was off of a small gate tunnel which connected two separate streets. Tyler was waiting at the gated entrance on the other street. He'd been there since three and hadn't seen Bryan at all. We eventually tried calling Bryan's home, but Tyler spoke to someone who must have been Bryan's host mother, who only responded to Tyler's questioning "Bryan?" with Hungarian and the information that he had taken the metro.

According to Anna, my host family is the one who lives closest to downtown so it would take him a while to get there, but we didn't know how long to wait. By 3:40 he still hadn't appeared, so Tyler and I gave up and left without him. It was interesting walking around downtown and it was my first English conversation in almost twenty-four hours. We walked to the Danube and the chain bridge. There are lions on both sides of the bridge and the story is that the sculptor forgot to give them tongues. When they bridge was opened someone pointed this out, and the sculptor was so humiliated he drowned himself in the Danube. The Michelin guidebook, however, debunks this story and says that the lions do, in fact, have tongues. They're just too small to be seen without actually climbing onto the lions. According to Erika, a few years ago some students took large red socks and put them in the lions' mouths.

Tyler and I ate at a gyros place. Anna had told us in the taxi that we were allowed to eat at McDonalds, etc this first week, but after that we were not allowed any more American junk food, we'd have to learn to eat Hungarian junk food instead. I wonder how many students Anna has to actively persuade to eat at places other than McDonalds. Apparently Tyler is like me in that he very rarely eats fast food at home, and thinks it would be ridiculous to start doing so more frequently now. After dinner I took the metro back to the apartment. I was quite proud that I found my way back to the apartment so easily, although it really isn't that hard. I just had to go uphill and head towards the tower. I spent the evening reading in the living room while Eva watched TV.

I slept late this morning, and woke up with a cold. I didn't say anything, but Eva could tell (her ability to do this was mentioned in some of the letters from previous girls, along with the fact that she will make a fuss, and that she used to be a nurse so she knows what she was doing.) She fed me breakfast, tied some flannel around my neck and sent me back to bed with tea and cough drops. She took my temperature later, but it was normal. The family came over for Lunch, and so Eva let me get up and get dressed at eat and talk with them. The older two boys are really funny, and the eight month old girl is very cute with huge eyes. She just sprawls across whoever is holding her at the time and watches her surroundings very seriously. All five of the adults are likely to start humming or singing randomly at various points in time, which I enjoyed. Monika's husband helped me get the internet working. Eva has internet because she got a skype phone but neither Erika nor I could get the netbook to connect. Or rather it would connect, say the connection was very strong, but it wouldn't be receiving anything so I couldn't check e-mail or sign in to skype. Obviously that is fixed now.

Tyler called to say that he and Bryan were going to meet again, but between the cold and meeting the family I knew I wouldn't be able to join them. Apparently the language barrier meant Bryan had more trouble than he expected getting directions, and it was nighttime before he finally found the language school. At least now we all know where it is though. I'm now trying to figure out what to do about Church tomorrow.