This will be one of my rare travel posts. Though I love travelling and have ambitious plans to take advantage of my proximity to all sorts of great places while I am here in Europe, I am terrible at travel writing. I am not sure why, but I do know that in my previous blog of the same name (link), I was almost prolific when it came to writing about sandwiches, but less than adequate when it came to writing about my travel adventures. And I was living in Siberia… the sandwiches are terrible in Siberia, by the way, but that is another post.

However, I do want share some of the cool places I am visiting, and as I am sure that MIIS would like me to do some good advertising for their programs, it seems only natural that I share some of my adventures, to convince would-be graduate students that they should pay $30,000 to come to Europe for a semester!

So, let’s get down to it. Budapest is awesome. Or as they would say, Budapesht is Aweshome! Located lessh than three hoursh by train from Vienna, I knew it was a musht-shee while I am here. However, I can shay without a doubt that the city is totally worth it even if you have to travel further. Besht deshcribed as an “edgier version of Vienna” Budapesht has all the great architecture and feel of a great European city, but shtill has enough grime and grit to make it intereshting and unique. Plus there’s communishm!

Okay, that’s it with all the extra h’s, but if you are ever looking for another dose, whiskey always works best for me… and Sean Connery.

I think the most interesting part of Budapest for me personally was how foreign the language felt to me. Though I don’t really consider myself a polyglot by any stretch of the imagination, I can speak passable Russian, know a lot of German and have been to enough Spanish speaking countries to know the pleasantries. Despite all that, Hungarian is a complete puzzle to me. After a little research, it seems less surprising, considering that Hungarian is one of the few languages in Europe that isn’t Indo-European.

All of this becomes more important though when you arrive at 11:30pm in an empty train station and must find a way to your AirBnB. Of course, I did find it…eventually. I spent 20 minutes buying a bus ticket, then got on a bus that drove two blocks and kicked me off. In the end, I walked the remaining 8 blocks by foot. Fortunately the AirBnB was close to the train station…

Despite these troubles, or maybe because of them, I had a great time. I do have a Hungarian friend who I hung out with most of the weekend, which helped, but the experience reminded me how challenging, but valuable, it is to feel completely helpless at times. I wouldn’t choose it as a constant condition, but every now and then, I think, it is useful to feel completely lost. Or should I shay, completely losht.

Anyway, that’s it for now. You may notice this entry is coming a long time after my last, but I promise another will follow it very shortly and hopefully they will become more regular after that. Until next time!