Joining the masses...

I’ve succumbed. I’ve published a blog.

I have gotten encouragement from my adoring fans (read: bored friends at home) to create a blog about my experience in Hungary and elaborate on my rushed emails and gchat statuses (statements like “BUDAPEST YOU WIN” and mistyped complaints about the mosquitoes are not so clear, I admit). I want to update all of you and respond to all of your questions, and this is simply to the most efficient way to do so (and let me tell you, here in Central Europe I am learning ALL ABOUT efficiency.) I also realized that I need my own log of my 7 bizarre weeks here in Hungary, a way to ensure that my visit doesn’t become a series of clubs, coffeehouses, Cold War chronologies and the search for the air conditioning, but an experience on which I can reflect meaningfully.

(Also, now that Mary is leaving Paris and marydee retires from the blogosphere, I am filling a void in some lives out there across the Atlantic. Zoem, you're welcome.)

Also, dear reader, I am here alone. Wow, that sounds dramatic. Let me rephrase: I am living alone for the majority of my time in Budapest, and while I am at a center with many interns, it is not a set program and we are all “doing our own thangs.” I am having such fun, and people have been absolutely wonderful about getting me settled, setting me up with friends and the like, and I am thoroughly enjoying a few solitary adventures. But sometimes after something absolutely ridiculous happens, you just need to turn to someone and burst out laughing and shriek “OHHHH EMM GEEE, did you see that?!!?!?!?!” So that, dear reader, is you. When I am wandering up Andrassy utca and see something bizarre (and this being Central Europe, it happens quite a lot) or pondering the differences between the US and Europe on my commute to work on the Continent’s oldest metro system (WHAT UP YELLOW LINE!), or lost somewhere in the Jewish quarter (if I can barely figure out Manhattan’s grid, you know its just not a fair battle), I will reflect on it with you, dear reader.

People always say you need a travel buddy, a partner in crime. I have gone through life with a few faithful ones—sisters, roommates, friends. Now, however, I find a new one: Hungary. Or in the native tongue, Magyarorszag. Forgive my cliché, but for the next 6 weeks, the noble citizens of Budapest, and the very city itself, are my new travel buddies—every waiter in every café, every sketchy woman drying laundry in my apartment building courtyard who just stops and states and refuses to even wave whenever I walk by, every statue in Heroes Square that I pass at least twice a day on my way to and from work, every unsuspecting passerby who is subjected to my pidgin Hungarian and amateur miming skills for in my attempt to get directions and figure out where the hell I am, everyone.

I can’t promise to update every day, and frankly , I don’t think you want me to-- you’re welcome in advance! And I don’t intend for this to be a day by day account of everything I do, because a. that’s boring and b. I want to reflect on the big moments, the ZOMG THAT WAS INSANE moments, the sociological epiphany moments, the “THIS. IS. EUROPE” moments, the stumble-upon-the-coolest-tidbit-about-Budapest moment, that I would want to share with you in person. But since you’re there and I’m here, for now, it’s just me and Magyarorszag.

So. Let’s do this.