6 posts tagged “budapest”
My lovely sister Laurel arrived here on Saturday via Athens. She and three other friends had a great time visiting some spectacular Greek islands--including "Meteora" which has some amazing monasteries perched on top of humungous cliffs, "Rhodes," which has a fabulous medieval walled city, and then the spectacular volcano island of "Santorini". Her pictures from all three looked fantastic and Agi and I would love to visit those islands some day. I think the very end of the Bourne Identity is set on Santorini--with gorgeous blue and white architecture and a brilliant deep blue ocean.
Laurel and Agi just stepped out for yoga class at the nearby "Sportmax" gym and both are glad to get away from the endless loop of Coldplay I have going on in here at home. This past weekend we took Laurel to the top of the hills overlooking Budapest and went on a great hike there and very relaxing "ski lift" ride down the hill with great views. We also took her to our favorite outdoor cafe on Margaret Island on Sunday night and Agi took her up to the big castle overlooking the Danube (I stayed home to work, which I definitely need to do!)
But the best part of our time with Laurel is about to begin: we're heading to Salzburg, Austria for three days and plan to hit the beautiful Alps lake regions for some serious hiking. This is one of the most beautiful areas of the world (so we hear--we've never been there) and we'll be ready to soak it in.
We arrived here yesterday--Wednesday afternoon--and it's great having a place of our own that we can immediately settle down in. I saw "Fool's Gold" and "The Bucket List" on the plane. The former had some very nice beach and yacht scenes and a pretty goofy story but it was a fun plane movie. The Bucket List was highly recommended by my parents and I liked it a lot--great actors and a great message.
My sister Laurel is joining us for about ten days starting this weekend. She's currently having a marvelous time at the beautiful Greek island of Santorini. Apparently they're sleeping in some kind of cave hotel tonight. She's a teacher and can take these monster vacations (though we're all feeling the pain of the bad exchange rate with the dollar).
We're back in Budapest. We had a smooth flight in on British Airways and I enjoyed four back-to-back films on the initial leg to London. I never can sleep on the plane but don't mind when there's lots of movies and reading to be enjoyed.
It was nice to have a place of our own here to arrive at and there's lots of snow on the ground. We're going to get out this afternoon and take the tram into downtown to run some errands and enjoy the city with its winter theme.
Here's an analogy I came up with recently--the similarities between Facebook Friends and books on your shelf: there's a certain amount of satisfaction you get when you buy a book you want to read, just as there is when you and someone else become "friends" on Facebook. And you get a bit of comfort seeing a list of friends just as you might when you look at those books on your shelf. But the (rather obvious) key is actually talking with, and meeting up with these friends, just as it is to actually read the books.
If you visit Budapest one of the first places you need to go is up on Castle Hill. It overlooks the Danube and the Hungarian Parliament building. We took our friend Rebecca up there this weekend and here are some pictures. I took a video which I'll throw in there as well.
Friends Kalen and Melissa F are staying with us and on Sunday night we saw something pretty funny. We were sitting outside at a cafe in the "Oktogon" area of Budapest in the evening and a dude rode his bicycle right through the middle of where everyone was sitting (there was a fairly open path for him to go through). He had music playing out of a small boombox on the front of his mountain bike, but the best part was that he also had a German Shepherd-mix dog riding on TOP of him (its paws were on his shoulders and hind legs were on his back). The dog looked around like he was riding in a car and hopefully was enjoying himself. It was very funny and reminded me from something out of the Far Side. Too bad it was dark and happened fast so I couldn't get my camera in time.
We arrived this past Saturday in Budapest. Things went very well and Agi (name switch since we're in Hungary...) did a spectacular job masterminding the logistics of our departure. She is incredibly organized and detail-oriented and she oversaw all our packing and could tell me what was in each of the nine! bags we brought over with us on the plane. She easily could be a supply-chain manager at a fortune 500 company.
At the airport Friday morning, one of our big bags was 10 pounds over the 70-pound limit. Since the "penalty fee" would be $360, we opened up that bag and scrambled around stuffing books and electronic cables in our other luggage. We pulled it off and it was well worth it. (By the way, our rental car had GPS with it on Thurs/Fri and it was fantastic. It would easily be addicting and hopefully with whatever mobile phone I end up with over here, I'll be able to add a GPS module to it).
On the plane I finished off Benjamin Franklin's excellent Autobiography and watched "The Pursuit of Happyness" (very good) and half of a good movie about gang kids in an English class with Hillary Swank ("The Freedom Writers"). Besides the time zone change, I really like flying internationally. Since I like to read and watch movies (and eat airline food actually) I'm content sitting there for the 10 hours. I can never sleep, unfortunately, but that's allright if you don't fly internationally all the time (unlike some of the brutal travel schedules lots of executives have the endure--then you want to be able to sleep).
We flew into Frankfurt and I was tempted to get a Frankfurter just to say I did it. Was struck by how much I like the draconian no-smoking policies throughout the U.S. because a lot of smoke was wafting around throughout the airport despite the specified "smoking sections".
We then flew into the small and classy Budapest airport and were picked up by Agi's brother Miki, and Mom Marie (everybody calls her "Nyusko"), Miki's fiancee Aniko and Aunt Eva and Uncle Peter. Aniko gave us both some tropical "lei" flowers to wear and it was great seeing everyone. We dropped all our luggage into the cozy Euro cars and were off to our new place in southwest Budapest: Peter's place! ("Peter" is pronounced "Pay-ter" by the way, for the full Euro flavor).
Peter, who happens to be an architect, has a sweet place and we are thrilled to be here. Beautiful hardwood floors, gorgeous wood floors, cabinets, stereo linked throughout most rooms and tasteful decorations everywhere. He is incredibly generous to let us stay here for free for as long as we need it till we find a new place. (Agi and I are both extremely appreciative of how both our families have been helping us out throughout the move and transition).
On Sunday and Monday we spent time with Agi's extended family to celebrate Easter--the biggest holiday in Hungary after Christmas. We had a great huge lunch banquet on Monday (a national holiday) which Agi's grandparents also came up to Budapest to enjoy. Every Easter, a fun tradition here is that all the women line up and the men recite part--or all of a poem to them--and then drop a bit of perfume on them. The men get a chocolate in return. I enjoyed getting the women's hopes up by telling them that I was going to recite a poem by one of Hungary's great poets (e.g. Sandor Petofi, or Attila Joseph) but spoke just a line of Hungarian instead... But people love it whenever I speak any. (I'm planning on taking a class starting fairly soon, by the way, to improve).
On Tuesday, Agi and I walked around the city some more and checked out possible places to live and then worked from home for a while with our computers. Working remotely is awesome in so many ways. We're both continuing to work for our old companies and this is great as we transition over here. We both have a laptop (hers is supplied by her company) and technology is so good that we handle basically everything online (e.g., paying our final bills from our U.S bank accounts through automatic "bill" pay). I also love how I just use skype in the evening to call up who I need to in the U.S. for pennies a minute (e.g. I cancelled my U.S. cellphone yesterday via skype).
I woke up early a few days and spend several hours reading a book I got from my sister Melissa called "The Secular City" by a Harvard professor and theologian named Harvey Cox. It's very good and thought-provoking. I'll say something about that later. It's good to be here and things are going well.
