home away from home: back in budapest

After arriving around 3:30 pm local time (9:30 am Grand Rapids time) yesterday we've been reacquainted with our apartment, slept, and seen some familiar beautiful sights.

If you are unaware or just confused about where I am, for how long, or who with read this paragraph - if not skip to the next one. My dad works for Calvin College and is leading the semester abroad program to Budapest, Hungary. Which means, I will be living in an apartment downtown Budapest with my mom and dad (we left my brother home to go to college - his blog is boumanbythegrand.blogspot.com ) for 5 months.

Synopsis of the last few crazy days: Day One Sunday August 3, 2014 we went to the GR airport around 3 to say goodbye to Bastian and Grandpa B, who accompanied us, and to get through security before our 5 o'clock flight. Then a quick flight to Atlanta and a transfer to our 8 hour flight to Paris. On the long flight there was no sleep for me as I watched four movies: The Lego Movie, Endless Love, Divergent, and The Little Mermaid. After arriving in Paris we had about 30 minutes of wait before we boarded our final flight to Budapest. On this flight I fell asleep hard for about an hour so I don't remember much. Finally we were in Budapest! I had a proud moment of having 300 forints (the currency, 1 dollar is about 230 forints) in my wallet to pay for a trolley to put our luggage on. We took a taxi into the city to our apartment and started feeling really excited when we could recognize things and places from last time. After settling into our apartment we headed out for dinner to Jubilee Cafe (a favorite from before). After supper we walked to the Margit Bridge and down towards St. Istvan Ter (ter = square) and got some delicious rose gelato (gelato shaped into a rose not flavored like rose). Then feeling quite tired getting only like 2 hours of sleep out of the past 35 ish hours we headed back the apartment and to sleep.

Today was lovely and relaxing. I slept til about 2:30 pm (only 14 hours) and relaxed around the apartment with my mom for about an hour until my dad came home from lunch with his great Hungarian friend Zoltan. Then we all made our first trip to Aldi! (which used to be a couple metro and bus stops away but some time in the past three years a new one has arrived just around the block from us). Then back out for a quick dm (drugstore) stop and an early dinner at Hummus Bar. After which we bought our public transportation passes. Then we met Lena, a student who lives in Budapest but had come to Grand Rapids for interim. With her we walked to St. Istvan Ter and then over towards Deak Ferenc Ter where she had gone to high school. There is a festival called Sziget Fest that is coming soon to Budapest and in anticipation there is this ferris wheel called the Sziget Eye at Deak Ferenc Ter that we rode and saw quite a good view of Budapest. After that we walked through some streets with restaurants everywhere heading towards Szimpla a place I'd only heard of but my parents and the (2011) students had gone. Lena told us the theme of the place was decoration out of trash. One booth was an old car converted into a booth. It was loudish and dim but kinda nice - I had a freshly squeezed lemonade with oranges in it. Now its midnight, but only 6 pm on our bodies, and we are back in our apartment both mom and dad tucked into bed.

I've never blogged before so I'm not sure how this will go but if you want me to keep going (I probably will even if you don't) or want more information about the semester just message me on Facebook or comment if thats an option I suppose.

Goodnight.