A Végén: The End

So, I suppose this is my last post, and I also suppose that I am a little late in writing this considering I have been home for about 3 days now.  I got into Philly nice and safely and cleared customs just fine, even with the sheep skin that I brought into the country without declaring.


There are still some things that are a tad bit strange to me since being home.  Everything seems so far away and large.  Pretty much every time I have gone into a store to buy something I almost always say köszönöm before realizing that I need to say thank you.  I haven't ventured behind the wheel as of yet, but things are feeling more and more normal and less and less surreal each day.


Even though I believed that I wouldn't, I am already missing Budapest.  More than anything I miss living in the city, but despite the awful food, I miss the city of Budapest nonetheless.  And, now that I have had some quiet, I am missing those noisy, yet wonderful Bilos that basically lived with me.  I'm sure some of you are reading this thinking that I am perhaps a little hypocritical, but I do strongly believe that going there or even just going away was something that I needed to do.  I also want to clarify that it was not the place that I am from that I missed, but the people that were there instead of with me.  If I had the choice, I would have flown everyone over there, but that was obviously not an option.


I also thought that appropriately enough, "Eat, Pray, Love" was the movie that was played (in addition to IRobot, which I mainly watched for Will Smith's body).  It was sort of a premise and theme that I took with me while preparing and being abroad, and it just seemed to be a little more than coincidental that it was the movie the airline had chosen to play.  I feel somewhat refreshed since being gone, and was really able to confirm some ideas or thoughts that I had been having, but needed clarification on.  


I hope everyone had a bountiful end of the semester ( in grades that is), and is enjoying being home with family as much as I am.  Thank you for reading this semester and giving me feedback, your interactions were always friendly distractions from my minimal homework.  I hope you all will join me in my next blogging endeavor, which I hope to start with the new year, and my birthday.  I'm still trying to work out some kinks with what to write about, or if I should have anything set at all.  And, honestly, it doesn't make much sense to start something new when so much comes to an end.  Or, maybe it does since the new year is really the start of something at the end of something old.  Is that redundant?  Theoretical thoughts tend to get that way with me.  Anyway, enough babbling from me.  Hope to see a lot of you soon now that I'm back!


Kellemes Karácsonyi Ünnepeket és Boldog Új Évet
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  

Blueberry Muffins Never Tasted so Good

So, my flight did leave Budapest, and I am currently watching the sun rise over the alps in Zurich.  On my way to the airport I had a wonderful taxi driver who spoke pretty good broken english and we talked the whole time.  I remember that Bryan had written on my list of things to do while abroad, "Listen to the cabbies stories, they may look hard on the outside, but they have fascinating stories."  well, something to that effect.  And I'm thinking to myself as I read it, this is never going to happen in Hungary.  But alas, on my last day it did.

I met some nice British ladies at the airport who were on my flight to Zurich and were then going to Hong Kong.  And, I ran into Seth and Priyanka before their flight as well.  I'm pretty sure there was some sort of bomb scare, maybe drugs, while I was there.  They made me move from my seat, only to close and block off a whole restaurant and then bring in about 10 police and a dog.  Not the most comforting ever, but the dog didn't seem to find anything.

I spent the night in the Zurich airport, which has a lovely lounge area for overnight guests.  They have a mini-hotel type deal that I wasn't able to get into since it's been booked due to the weather in Europe right now, but the lounge area with cots, water, and sheets FO' FREE!  So, i gladly helped myself and slept for about 6 hours, and oh was it glorious.  Never again will I fly through Heathrow.  The Swiss know how to do it up right.  Especially since my cot here was more comfortable than my bed in Budapest.  I was not pleased about this fact, but quickly fell asleep.  I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and found my way to my gate relatively easily.  And, I got to eat a blueberry muffin for the first time in four months.  Hence, the title.  I should be boarding in about 1 hour and 45 minutes, and will soon be landing in Philly.   Thank you all for the well wishes!

Around the World in 24 Hours

Well, thanks to some snow and London's incapability of dealing with said frozen water, Autumn, Erin, and I are about to take a grand journey that British Airways has set up for us.  This includes flying to Istanbul, then Tokyo, then D.C.  So, this is the plan for now and while I was pretty upset earlier about the whole thing, it's seeming pretty ok now.  Especially since I get home only a day later.  Hopefully this plan doesn't fall through and I have fun things to tell you all!

***EDIT*** Flights cancelled again.  Who knows where I'll end up and when I'll end up there.

True Life: I'm Leaving Budapest

Well, I wrote this blog post last night, and then my internet just decided to stop working right before I posted it.

For the past 36-48 hours I've been going on a "True Life" binge since finding out that it is one of the few shows that MTV will let me watch out of the country.  And, while many of you have already judged me on this, but let me defend this.  There are exceptions, but I do think that overall the show gives a way for those within my age bracket to find out about different things that not only affect the population at large, but shows that they do affect those within our age bracket.  Not only that, but a lot of them are pretty interesting.

Other than watching tv I've pretty much just been studying and getting ready to leave.  And although I've been preparing to leave it hasn't really hit me that I'm about to leave for good, as far as living circumstances go.  I guess I'm feeling pretty similarly to when I was leaving the States to come here initially.  I know that it's happening, but until I'm into that awful fifth hour of the flight, I don't think that I will actually believe that I'm going back to Carroll County for quite awhile.  So, I suppose I'll spend the last four days doing who knows what until I do leave at an ungodly hour on the twentieth.

Even though I have been wanting to go home pretty badly now for the last month or so, I've begun to become a little bittersweet about leaving the city, especially now that it's Christmas time since everything is much more in the spirit than anything in the states.  I think I'm probably really going to hate not having everything at my fingertips and that whole thing called driving.

I suppose that technically there is more I could write about, but I've currently got a lot of stuff going on in my head at the moment, and while it would probably be somewhat cathartic to write it out in this form, I don't think that I'm really ready to put it in a venue where anyone who read my blog has access to it.  I know I just sort of let the cat out of the bag, but I imagine that if you want to know more you already do or will get in contact with me.

I hope everyone's finals went/are going swimmingly and that you are all getting ready to go home and are preparing for Christmas.  Boldog Karácsonyt!

Finals Week

This is the week that every college students dreads, and just because I've hardly done any work this semester doesn't mean that I'm not dreading them any less than anyone else.  I have to finish reading The Master and Margarita by Tuesday, which I will probably be able to do, and I really like the book, but I'm on approximately page 100 of about 320.  So, like I said, it can be done, but not pleasantly.  I'm pretending bio doesn't exist, because the professor will probably ask questions that we didn't talk about anyway.  My culture final is a two page paper, so it's pesky more than anything.  World music will entail many flashcards and much memorization, but it isn't until Thursday.  Luckily, there is no final for my Holocaust class, I suppose that technically the final paper was, which I wrote an hour before it was due (that one was seven pages).

On top of the work I need to do, there are things that I want to do around the city before I leave, but trying to figure out when I'm going to do them is the problem, since I want to make sure my work is done, but don't want to have too much free time at the end of the week.

I've started packing, and it's looking like I'm leaving with less stuff than I brought.  How that is possible, I do not know, but it is a joyous realization.

I know this is more of an update on life than it is interesting, but, to be honest, nothing has really happened to me in the last week.  I've just sort of been focusing on going home more than anything.

Happy Finals week!  Be back in America in a mere 9 days!

Czech It!

So, I am currently located in the North Pole, otherwise known as Prague.  It is approximately 20 degrees (F) during the day, and usually below 10 at night.  The entire city is covered by snow, and not always in a pretty way.

I arrived yesterday mid-afternoon, a little later than what was scheduled.  It snowed the whole way here, pretty heavily at times, the roads were covered, with no plows in sight, and a lot of traffic.  But, luckily, I managed to sleep for most of the bus ride.  When I got here, I really had no clue how I was going to get to my hotel.  I was hoping to get a cab, but there were no cabs at the bus station, so metro it was.  I found the stop I needed pretty easily, and my hotel is right next to the stop, so that wasn't so much of a problem.

After settling in, I figured I would go and wander around and maybe go to a museum.  Yeah, poor choice.  Not only was it freezing, but it was getting dark, and I had no clue how to get to the center of the city.  My map wasn't really helping, and neither were the signs.  I retreated like a turtle into a Tesco, bought some food, and went back to my hotel for the night, where I watched "A Christmas Story" and fell asleep by 7pm.  I was pretty bummed, and worried that I wouldn't ever be able to find my way.  It was nice to sleep in complete silence though.  Because even when my flat is quiet, you can still hear the hum of the tram next to my flat, and by hum, I mean banging.  So, at least if I never found my way, I could get some work done, and sleep in quiet.

One of the markets

But, I found my way!!!  After 13 hours of sleep and some breakfast, I was able to get to the center of the city.  The snow is covering the streets and sidewalks, and no one really seems to come by and plow it, or even care.  Since so much dirt has mixed in with it, it sort of has the texture of damp sand.  It's a little strange.  And, unlike Budapest, there are Christmas markets all over the place.  I ran into two smaller ones before I got to the main one in Old Town Square.  My toes were so cold by the time I got to the second one, that I had to buy wool socks (I hate wool socks) and put them on in the street.  Perhaps embarrassing, but necessary.  I'm not sure I liked the Christmas markets better here.  Budapest seems to have a lot more variety, but they still beat the States.  I also ran into the museum I wanted to go to, The Sex Machine Museum.  I shall spare you the details and you can ask me as you want, as there are perspective students reading this :-)

Observation: Even though there are crosswalks, there are no street lamps to tell you when to go.  This doesn't bother me in the least, since I rarely pay attention to them anyway, but something that most cities have.  The only other place I didn't see them was Venice, duh.

I'm now sitting in my room, warming up for a bit, and then maybe wandering out in an hour or so to do some more exploring.

After some warmth, I wandered out again and was just really too cold to want to explore any more of the city.  I mean, it obviously didn't help that I didn't really care for the city to begin with.

After waking up and checking my e-mail the next morning, I realized that my bus didn't leave until 5 in the evening.  Great. Two hours longer than I thought.  I had to check out of the hotel, so I tried wandering around again (hard to do when you have a few inches of snow and a suitcase) and ended up sitting in the bus station for 5 hours.  Not the most fun thing ever, but not horrible.  At about 11:30pm last night, I finally arrived back in Budapest, thank goodness.


Only two more weeks left here, which also means two more weeks left of the semester.  Good luck to all those reading this who are swamped with finals and such!

Elizabeth Gilbert is More Than Just the Author of "Eat, Pray, Love"

A. I am mad I can't write the title of the book correctly.
B. I cried while watching the original "We Are the World" video today in honor of World/AIDS Day
C. Props to Steph for showing me this.  It only has increased my love and admiration of Elizabeth Gilbert.