First Impressions

This is the Buda castle, as seen from the river Danube.
 Not pictured: the chunks of ice floating in the river because it is so cold!!!

Well I have been in the city for about three days now, and it feels like I have already been here for about a month. I have met so many wonderful people already, and I am so glad that I have the time to sit down with them and actually have a conversation.

It is time to stop being a tourist and start actually living abroad!

This is the courtyard of my apartment building. 

When I first moved into my new apartment, I was met by two international roommates. Juan, who is from Spain, was nice enough to share dinner with me, so I didn't have to find a supermarket until the next day. We had a lot of fun talking about music, pop culture and the differences between the Spanish and English language. Very quickly I realized that we had a lot in common, even though we are from very different places.

Pretty soon Ahmet came out of his room and greeted us in the kitchen. He shared his instant coffee and we also got to talking. He is from Turkey, and he is majoring in translation. I was so lucky to meet him on my very first day here, because he speaks English almost better than me! He knows a lot of pop culture references from American television, and he also knows a lot of very formal and beautiful language. We had a lot of fun talking about language, and he got really excited when I used the word cheesy to describe a movie I had seen. That was the first time he had ever heard that word and he said he would add it to his vocabulary. When our coffee was gone, I found my way to bed and I fell asleep next to a warm radiator and a window that looked out into the small city street below. The city is pretty quiet a night, which is a very good thing.

Day two, I ventured out of the flat. I only walked about twenty feet before I found the small grocery store. It seems to be the only thing open on Sundays around here. I spent way too long walking through the aisles, holding google translate up to every label. The best purchase I made was a package of these little chocolate pastries, I have already almost finished the whole box! (Update: I was eating the last one while I was editing this and I am already planning on buying some more). In the evening, me and Ahmet went to dinner at a buffet style restaurant. The food was really cheap, and for now I stayed away from some of the strange looking Hungarian stews. (They eat goat lungs here...I may never work up the nerve to try it).

We got to talking. Ahmet likes Game of Thrones, Skyrim and prefers the the country to the city. We talked about world politics and a little about our good friend Donald Trump. He has some very interesting theories about people. To Ahmet, the world is comprised basically of those who are lucky enough to get a good education, and those who are not. I thought a lot about that, and I counted my blessings as I sat in restaurant halfway around the world, talking to a Turkish guy. How crazy is that?!

After dinner we rode the tram along the river. It was my first look at the "city of bridges" and it was everything I could have ever hoped for. Even though it was way below freezing, we were able to enjoy the architecture from a slow tram, and with hot mulled wine. We rode to the parliament building, and it exactly like my computer desktop background!!! That is a really silly thing to get excited about, but it is crazy to see something that you've been dreaming about finally come to reality.

The parliament building.