I arrived late last night in Budapest, the land of my ancestors. Well, the land of some of my ancestors, anyway. To my knowledge, the family of my paternal grandfather emigrated to the States from Hungary – he was the first of his family to be born in the States.
I didn’t decide until Friday to come to Budapest. I was waiting for clarity – I had many options, but no overwhelming draw to any of them in particular. I was actually thinking about going to Casablanca, Morocco. I found cheap airline tickets on Thursday and almost bought them, but I was on my phone and the website wouldn’t let me purchase tickets from my phone. I decided perhaps I should think on it just a bit more. After some research and talking to women who have traveled to Northern Africa, I decided against it. I mean, I know Muslim countries have very different cultures from western countries with respect to gender relations, but the more I learned, the more it just sounded beyond what I really wanted to deal with. Apparently, it’s fairly common for men in these countries to publicly grope foreign women, even when they’re dressed modestly by local standards and even when they’re with men. Women travelling alone are assumed to be “easy,” and it is incumbent on the woman to prove she is not available for sex by avoiding eye contact and other behaviors normal human beings might normally engage in with other human beings.
So, Casablanca was out and Budapest came to mind. I’ve always wanted to visit Budapest. The price was right and the exchange rate favorable, so here I am. I bought airline tickets and arranged my AirBnB on Friday and I flew on Saturday.
Remember when I wrote about how scary it was not knowing what comes next? Over it. OVER. IT. Oh, do you detect pride in that statement? Yes, I’m a little prideful about letting go of that fear, it’s true. In fact, I suspect my pride is really a mask for a deeper fear and that life is going to reveal that to me with dramatic flourish in due time. That’s usually how it goes when we get too big for our britches – life comes along and reminds us in exactly the measure we need that we’ve got a bit left to learn yet.
Initial observations of Budapest:
- They speak a lot more English here than I would have expected;
- They apparently use 3 currencies here – the Hungarian Forint, the Euro, and the Dollar;
- Their radio stations play an odd selection of mostly old (like at least 15 years ago) English language music – today I heard Phil Collins’ “I Can’t Dance” and Touch and Go’s “Would You Go to Bed with Me.” I didn’t hear a lot of modern music, and I wonder if this has anything to do with IP laws making modern foreign music too expensive for Hungarian radio stations. In Brazil, I heard a lot of (what I assume were) non-authorized remakes of currently popular American pop music for (what I suspect are) the same reasons.
That’s really all I have to say right now. I still have symptoms of the Herräng flu, and it rained here today, so I enjoyed a quiet, lazy day of nothing here in the cute little studio I’m renting. Don’t judge me, but I’ve been sustaining myself with the popcorn, chocolate, coffee, tea, and fresh squeezed OJ my host left for me 🙂 I’ll go shopping tomorrow! Right now, I’m enjoying being truly ALONE again, washing my own clothes in my private washing machine, and taking a HOT shower ALL BY MYSELF! I’m in a fantastic location though, walking distance from all the major sites in Pest (the eastern side of the Danube River is known as Pest, while the Western side is known as Buda), so I’m looking forward to exploring this amazing city.
TL;DR: Looking forward to what Budapest has to teach me.
