So much 2 say, so little time

First, a clarification. My long silence on the blog is not, in fact, an indication that something went horribly wrong while I was in transit between Banyuls and Budapest; rather it is simply due to the fact that my life has been a crazed whirlwind of activity since I left the tranquil shores of the Mediterranean. I suspected that, upon arrival in Budapest I would post less often, though I assumed that it would be due to a lack of activity to post about, not a lack of time in which to post it. I'm finally back on the blog, though, and so, with feelings reminiscent of Shel Silverstein's poem, "Overdues," here’s a belated recap of last week.

On Saturday, I woke up early (at least by my standards) and caught the train from Banyuls to Barcelona. Everything went smoothly and I arrived in Barcelona with five hours in which to see as much of the city as I could. After ten days in France, it was refreshing to be in a setting where my Spanish was stronger than most people’s English, and my linguistic efforts were met with gratitude rather than prideful scorn.

First up was the FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou. Access to the stadium unexpectedly included the "Tour Plus," which, in addition to behind the scenes access to bowels of the enormous stadium, also featured the latest in tourism technology to fully enhance the FC Barcelona experience. Eager fans were given FCB 3-D glasses, through which we got to watch a seven minute synopsis of the club’s storied past, a futuristic animated montage that I fully expect to serve as inspiration for EA Sports’ FIFA 2014.

Tourists were also offered the chance to have their picture taken with Barcelona’s star players. Well, sort of anyway…


I’ve never really followed European football, but it was great fun to see the impressive stadium and witness the fervent fans, be they Barça faithful on a pilgrimage to the sacred pitch, or supporters of rival clubs, come to joyously sing their team’s cheers in the very lair of the enemy.

I wandered through, La Rambla, the main street running through Barcelona’s lively downtown looking for a place to have lunch. The ancient Spanish wisdom (according to my modern American guidebook) is that Que comer es muy importante, porque de la panza, ¡nace la danza! Seeking to maximize my danza, I filled my panza with a fine tapas spread of mushrooms and calamari.

After lunch, I stopped by one of Barcelona’s best known landmarks, the Catedral de la Santa Creu. The famous cathedral was, from the outside, largely masked by scaffolding, but this did nothing to spoil the view from the top of the spire nor the beauty of the building’s interior.


Moving quickly, I continued with my tour. I stopped by the popular Chocolate Museum but, pressed for time, I skipped admission and headed straight for the gift shop, where I stocked myself with two large chocolate bars.

Passing by the city’s Arc de Triomf (not nearly as grand as the one I had seen a few days before in Paris), I continued on to my final destination, Gaudi’s famous Sagrada Familia. One hundred and twenty six years after construction was begun on the magnificent church, the project is nearing completion and is, today, “the world’s most visited construction site.”


Having to satisfy myself with this brief look at the city (and resolving to return at my next opportunity), I returned to the Barcelona train station, retrieved my backpack, and resumed my journey towards Budapest. I caught a train to the airport and boarded my plane to Paris. The flight was unremarkable, unless you count the young French couple sitting next to me who spent the 2-hour flight ardently expressing their love with amorous dexterity that surely only the French could possess while thus constricted by the spatial confines of an economy airline. Upon landing, I made it from the airport back to Oops Hostel without any difficulty and surreptitiously entrenched myself in the common room, chatting with the latenight revelers and helping myself to the hostel’s free internet. At 4:30, I set out once more and, after two night buses, an airport shuttle, and a distressingly short mile-high nap, I finally touched down in Budapest Hungary shortly before noon on Sunday.

I was met at the airport by Karl Hall, co-director of my study abroad program and a history professor at Central European University. Karl brought me to the CEU dorms, which would be my home for the first few days until I could find an apartment. The dorms are situated on the fringe of the city, a modern building fully furnished with all the facilities (and charm) of your typical Holiday Inn Express.


I was given a large single room with a private bathroom, furnished with two twin beds, a desk, and a television, on which I could watch CNN, the BBC, or any number of doubtlessly fascinating television shows whose dialogue consisted of a rapid stream of Hungarian gibberish. Being rather a fan of hotels, I found myself quite comfortable in the dorms, and would have been happy to remain there were it not for the 45 minute commute required to get to the CEU campus in downtown Budapest.

And so, while the evenings of the first week were reserved for group bonding, I, along with the 11 other students on the CEU program, spent the days learning my way around Budapest via apartment searching. Never having rented an apartment before, I was very grateful for CEU's contacts in the real estate industry, though it was still an odd sensation, finding my first ever apartment in an unfamiliar city and negotiating rents in an unfamiliar currency (the Hungarian forint is currently worth $0.0059, and the fact that I pay for lunch in bills marked 1000 is disorienting enough, without having to apply the conversion rate to an unknown quantity like rent). Last Thursday, after much searching, the apartment hunt finally came to a close.

I'm now living at 87 Izabella utca in a lovely three bedroom apartment with two of the girls on my program: Poorva and Irina. Poorva is a student at College of the Atlantic, though she originally hails from India. She also knows how to cook, which is especially wonderful in tandem with her Indian heritage. Irina is, coincidentally, also an international student. Well, technically, I guess we're all international students here, but even when she's attending Mt. Holyoke, Irina is a long way from her native Georgia. Irina is liable to break into song at any moment, which, in my book, makes her a great roommate. Living with non-Americans in a foreign country is certainly an unfamiliar experience for me, and I'm excited to see how my international living environment shapes my time abroad.

As for the apartment itself, I love it. We're located 20 minutes from school by foot (less by metro), just a few blocks away from the cultural hub Oktogon, and within two blocks of two other apartments full of CEU students. And even were it not for the location, the apartment's interior would probably have been enough to sell me on the place.

Sure, there are some aspects of apartment life that are alien to me (like paying fistfuls of monopoly money in rent, or not being on an all-you-can-eat meal plan), but in the end, a living space is a living space, and I've quickly managed to make a mess and feel right at home.