Felipe and I hopped on the train to Budapest at 9:16 Friday morning. As soon as everyone on the train found out we were exchange students, they became very curious about us and asked us about ouselves until they got off the train. Of course, they didn't speak a word of English between them, which made communicating a challenge. We did well enough, or, I should say, Felipe did well enough since he tended to dominate the conversation. It's not that he understood any more than I did, or knows much more Hungarian than I do, he just tends to be a bit more outgoing than me, and I'm convinced that Hungarian men are more sexist than they give themselves credit for. I got the feeling that I was being shunted aside for most of the conversation. Oh well, it's not really important.
We got to Budapest in good time and met up fairly quickly with the others. I saw Axel first, and Getti, then we met up with Katrina and Haley and Kate and Andres and Calvin at the Starbucks. God I've missed Starbucks. It seems odd considering how rarely I drank Starbucks coffee before but I think I just miss American coffee in general.
At noon, we all met at the MacDonalds in the mall next to the train station and it wasn't long before we'd piled in the bus and were on our way.
It was a couple of hours to the Austrian border and another hour or so to Vienna where we would be spending the night in a youth hostel. Given my sole experience in a hostel was a disgusting, abandoned shack that called itself a hostel in Cancun, Mexico when I was nine, I was surprised at how nice this place was. We only stopped there long enough to drop our things and get changed before we went back out to the opera house. The show that night: Kiss Me, Kate. I'd seen the play before, when South Kamloops Secondary had performed it at the Sagebrush Theatre. This was something completely different. For starters, it was in German. It was also done entirely in neon colours, which seems an odd palette for a show about a Shakespearean play, and I wish I could say that they pulled it off but I'm not sure they did. Either way, I'd forgotten my glasses so it didn't make much difference what colours they were using. I couldn't see much and I didn't know what they were saying.
After the play we went out for dinner. It was about ten o'clock at night at this point and all of us were starving. They'd given us each a packaged sandwich at the hostel but they'd, shockingly, been somewhat less than satisfying. I'd told the organizers of the trip that I was a vegetarian, mostly just because I'm getting a bit sick of meat. It's all we eat in Hungary, and it's tasty, but for the past two years I've gotten very used to living without it. It's been one of the hardest things to adjust to. That, and the Hungarians, again shockingly, eat a lot of Hungarian food. I probably should have seen this coming but I had expected a bit more variety. In Canada all we eat is food from other countries, it never occurred to me that my host family wouldn't eat curry or tacos or Chinese food or chili.
That being said, the food in Austria was a nice change. It was delicious, filling, and didn't make me feel as though I'd just eaten a cup of lard.
We didn't get in that night until very late. It was at the earliest two in the morning when we got to sleep and they got us up at seven the next day. We strolled through Vienna for a while, taking in the city, before heading to lunch with the exchange students who were in Austria, two of which are from my district back home. - Edit: I should mention the fact that we also visited this giant old church (which was fantastic and beautiful and haunting and amazing) and we toured parliament, where I may have taken a highlighter out of one of the parliaments member's desk. To be fair, he really should have locked his desk, and I wanted my souvenir to be unique. Somehow I forgot about these things when I was writing this the first time... - I pitied the restaurant that took us on, since there were over a hundred of us altogether. The food was, again, amazing.
After lunch we headed to Schönnbrunn a.k.a the Imperial palace of Austria. It was interesting. There was so much history in the palace-turned-museum. And if the palace was nice, it was nothing compared to the gardens. We were there for a few hours and I didn't get to explore them nearly as much as I would have liked. From the palace to the far end was probably a kilometre long, with a flat stretch of paths and flower beds ending in a pond with a giant statue before turning into a steep incline up. At the top of the hill was another building from which you could see the whole city. It was perfect.
After this, we got back on the bus and went back to Hungary. It was only an hour's drive to Sopron, a small town on the border between Austria and Hungary. We didn't get to see much of it, unfortunately. We went to dinner that night at this cozy little restaurant where I, being vegetarian, was served the hungarian staple of deep fried things that should never be deep fried, with cheese sauce. This included deep fried cheese, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms (spoiler alert! They fed me the exact same thing for lunch the next day). And who said being vegetarian was a healthier option?
We got in to our next hostel at about 10 pm and curfew was at midnight. It was fairly annoyingly obvious that they just didn't want us getting into trouble, which to some was extremely irritating. I understood they're reasoning behind it, there were four chaperones, three of whom were under the age of 21. I understood the need to be strict, but no one likes being treated like they've already done something wrong when they haven't.
The early curfew aside, I had fun. We hung out, chatted, generally just did what we'd all wanted to do in the first place an spent more time with each other.
The next day we were supposed to go to some kind of museum or something, but that didn't work out so instead we waited outside in the cold for an hour and then went and got lunch. After lunch we went back to Budapest and from there I came back to Dabas.
It was an excellent trip, and it taught me something, which is important, I guess. I learned that no matter how much I complain about Hungary, or about the people here, or the food, or whatever (I like complaining), I came to right place. Or at the very least, Austria isn't the right place. It was beautiful and the food was amazing, but it lacked something. Budapest has this undeniable character, this bold sense of knowing exactly what it is, even if what it is is a jumbled, confusing mess of eras andarchtecture and technology. Vienna didn't have that for me.
The other thing I learned was how nice it is to be with other exchange students. Before I came here, everyone was always saying how I should try to limit my time with other exchange students and ath e time that made sense. I should be immersing myself in the culture, not spending time with people from my own culture. What I couldn't predict was how hard that would be to do because, at the end of the day, exchange students are the only ones who truly understand exactly what other exchange students are going through. No one else, not friends and family back home, not friends here can begin to grasp how it feels. I'd know, before I came here, I was like them. I remember talking to the exchange students who were at my school and thinking how exciting it must be for them. Homesickness was, at the time, a real possibility, something that was bound to happen, but it could be conquered. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, no matter how much you try tounderstand how hard something is for someone, you don't really get it until you've been through the same thing yourself. That's why this weekend was so important, I guess. It gave all of us a chance to talk to people who not only speak the same language as us (which is much more important than you'd think), but also know exactly how we're feeling. It makes me feel even worse for Felipe. At least the people here speak English to an extent, even if it isn't always easy to communicate. But I could count the amount of people I've met here who speak Portuguese on one hand.
Anyways, it's nice to know that I have real friends here, even if they're scattered across the country. Hopefully I get to see them again soon.
Yesterday, I went to karate for the first time in almost a year. Or maybe it's been over a year. I don't remember. It's been a while, either way. Anya's friend's husband is an instructor so I went to class with them in the nearby village of Bugyi.
It was interesting, and certainly not what I'm used to. It was much more impromptu than I was used to. Not much teaching happened, just a lot of hitting targets. And Ákos, the instructor, has a very different style than Jim Doan, my sensei back home. It was fun though, and a bit of a relief. For the first time in ages I got that little voice saying 'oh yeah, I'm good at this.' I go back tomorrow and I can't wait.
Until next time my lovelies,
Moira Ann
Fun-garian Fact: Bugyi is both a village in Hungary and the Hungarian word for underwear. I wouldn't bring that up in front of the residents of Bugyi, though. It's an old joke and one they don't appreciate.
No comments:
Post a Comment