It has been a busy week (and a half). I've been spending a fair amount of time with Bryan and Nora. Saturday we wandered around after class for a bit before finally finding a grocery store. We bought bread, salami, cheese, water and a bottle of wine and hiked up to the top of the Citadel. We ate lunch/dinner up there and watched the sun set. Budapest really is a beautiful city. We failed at opening the wine bottle with a pocket knife, so we went to my apartment (going by the castle in the process) and went to the top of castle hill by Mathias Church and the fishermen's bastion (which were by this point beautifully lit), looked out across the city to the parliament building and the chain bridge, and then found a bakery, bought some cake and found a bench on the fortifications to sit on and drink the wine and eat the cake while looking out over Buda.
Sunday Nora and I went to church together. It was a bilingual church held in an old theatre. Almost all of the singing was done in Hungarian, although some of the tunes were recognizable from English and most songs had English translations at the bottom. It was interesting picking out differences in translations, although for the most part the two of us had absolutely no clue what we were singing. After church we met up with Bryan and went to Varosliget and wandered around for a while. Ice skating is definitely on the to-do list. After that we stopped off at St Steven's Basilica and wandered around inside there. The building is so ornate it is hard to imagine actually attending church there. After that the three of us walked along the Danube on the Pest side for a bit. The sun was setting, and some of the clouds above the castle and Matthias Church were a gorgeous shade of pink. There's a stretch of path by the Danube that's lined with statues of old, worn shoes. I asked my teacher what they were, and she explained that they're a memorial to the Jews who were shut into the Danube during WWII.
For dinner I made chicken adobo at Bryan's apartment. Although the soy sauce was too sweet, I think. It tasted weird, at any rate. It's kind of fun cooking here, although things can be hard to find. The week was mostly full of going to school, studying, walking around, hanging out with people and being coldy. Thursday Eva made dinner and had me, Erika and her husband over for dinner, and Eva was the only one of us who was completely well. The food was good though!
I met up with Nora on Sunday and went to a very very small church. Nora and I increased the attendance by 20%. They were all very very friendly, but it was a bit intimidating it being so small and us being so obviously not regular attenders there. It was also interesting how official different people's roles were considering that just about everyone in the congregation was taking part in the service. That evening a big group of us got together at Sneha's apartment to celebrate her birthday and not going to TGI Friday's to watch the Superbowl. It's fun being in Budapest with a bunch of math majors and discussing whether P=NP and what people think of the axiom of choice.
More classes and colds the past couple of days. Today, however, we have a field trip to the immigration office. We're all sitting in the hallway outside Anna's office at the international school while we make sure all the documentation is in order. It's been cold and rainy (and snowy although it went away quickly), thus the many colds, so I don't know what we'll be doing this afternoon. It's hard to believe I've been here for as long as I have, but at the same time it feels like I've been here longer.
The castle
From the square by Mathias church
This is the view down the steps to my street. My apartment building is on the right.
If I turn around from the last picture, this is what I see:
Chain Bridge:
