The Old Country

On very short notice, I had to flee the old country (Hungary) and immigrate to Vienna due to changes in my project. Although I love Austria, I was very upset because I was really looking forward to spending the summer in Budapest! While the winter is a bit dreary, everything comes to life in the summer. I finally completed setting up my apartment (even the utilities!) and got my official visa and working papers from the Hungarian Consulate (that was a pain!)... but I’ll never be able to enjoy my private roof-top terrace again!



I had the top floor in the above photo, the apartment below mine was a manager’s, and a few floors down were an architect and a developer... I found out later that they said it was a physical representation of the org chart... funny!

I even got fluent in Hungarian... well, not completely, but I learned a lot of vocabulary and phrases and got a very convincing accent (props to my linguistics crew!). I have lots of memories about learning this very unique Finno-Ugric language (I already shared one in my first post). Another is from my first day in my new apartment. I couldn’t figure out how to lock my apartment door. After trying for 20 minutes, I finally went to the doorman to say “nem zár” (meaning “no lock”), accompanied by a physical interpretation of my words: turning the key with a positive nod, closing the door and pulling out my key with a negative nod. He looked at me very strangely. What was his problem? He had to have understood my Hungarian, but probably just never saw someone speak so fluently with body movements. Eventually, he finally said, “ah, nem zár... igen, igen...” He finally understood, and proceeded to answer with his own interpretive dance of turning the key and door handle at the same time. Mission accomplished, I understood the trick. Well, a few weeks later, I figured out that I was actually saying “nem szar” (that means “no shit”)... I guess the look on his face was justified after all. And that’s the story of how I learned about the importance of accents and dipthongs.

Since none of my American friends were able to visit me at this apartment, I’ll let you enjoy what could have been:



I’m really going to miss my terrace! In any case, this was in the hippest neighborhood: Budapest's version of New York's Greenwich Village or Chicago's Old Town neighborhoods.

And I really liked my Ikea kitchen! OK, it was no match for my super-extravagant Hudson County, New Jersey-style kitchen, but it had great character (and was proven in my Determined post).



The courtyard kind of looked like the block, from which a ship could have been carved:



Coincidentally, the night before receiving the shocking announcement that we had to move to Austria, we had a HUGE PARTY! (yes, all caps = screaming!) The building manager said it must have been a great party, because he got numerous complaints via voicemail, email, and SMS! He made us promise to invite him next time. All together, we had 5 apartments in the building. Party central was, naturally, right below me. Here’s the view down to the 4th floor on that infamous night:



I celebrated (or rather, mourned) my last night in Budapest with my two personal vampires... er, I meant my buddies from Transylvania (Gyula on the left, Lajos on the right).



... and this is where they were debating whether or not there was sunlight on the other side of the door:



Sorry, just kidding!!! Please don’t bite my neck!!!

I have to share a photo of me and Babsi. She was the brains behind the infamous “Babsi’s Database” (which we believe could invoke Armageddon with a single query), and was also my kick-boxing partner in the EU. It wasn’t often that we hugged like this, we were usually throwing kicks at each other!



Egészségére Magyarország!