My trip started as I and another girl (who had the same name as mine, by the way) started going by bus towards Budapest. Yes, we were going by bus and it took us around 24 hours to get there. I am very thankful for my roommate that she didn't end up yelling at me, because I wasn't very good company on the bus: I ended up sleeping most time. We arrived to the bus station where we got a taxi to our place. We had another girl living with us, she was from Belarus: a tiny girl, working in Budapest (she came to study and ended up living there), but she was really passionate about tidiness and health. Now I'm not such a tidy person, so we clashed there a little bit, but everything worked out fine. We lived in a quite cold apartment and on the ground floor so we didn't get much sunlight and we had a little hunch that our neighbors belonged in mafia because they were always discussing business and turn quiet every time we would walk by and only resume talking once we were inside our apartment. It was also a bit weird that everything that was on the ground floor (or first floor as we call it in my country, but apparently in Hungary like in some other countries the first floor is the ground floor and the second floor is the first floor and that would mix us up a lot) had bars on it.
We lived quite close to Oktogon (maybe 5-7minutes walking from it) and really close to Yellow line metro (which is the oldest metro in Budapest). We were studying in Budapest College of Communication and Business (BKF) where we found a different studying culture: students were laid back, didn't care if they're late to class and lecturers didn't really care as well. We had Macroeconomics, Market Research (this lecture seemed interesting at first, but it got soooo boring), Between East and West (turned out to be very interesting as we were discussing the differences between East and West Europe and how they appeared and whether Central Europe exists and where it is and what are its characteristics), Intercultural communication through Film (we had a guy who was a movie interpretation expert so he was practically leading the class together with the lecturer), Hungarian language (I really enjoyed learning it, but since I'm not using it anymore I remember just a few words. The lecturer was really fun, teaching us slowly but effectively) and Intercultural Business culture (here we got a lot of training how to deal with different cultures and nations).
Our Erasmus started out with a get to know weekend where we had some games and drinks and of course dances. Our group was not that big: around 30 international students from Netherlands (9 were from here, so yes, I got to know Dutch culture quite well), Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Turkey, Moldova, Bulgaria, and us from Lithuania. But there were also some people from Finland and of course a lot of people from Hungary (hey, it's their country). Next day we had a race all over Budapest to get to know it better. So we had these checkpoints and tasks, we split into teams and started going. We quickly checked most things but later we came back to check it again.
Now, if I would start talking about all the things that I visited and liked there, this post would be endless, so I will try to put my experience here as laconically as I can.
People: Hungarians are very friendly and quite laid back, don't get angry if they are late. Being there we learned that "on time" you can be late around 15min, but if it's a party you can be late two hours and nobody will get angry. I found great friends, not to mention my awesome roommate with whom I shared everything and I am thankful that she didn't run away from my weirdness. I became great friends with my mentor who has a lot of talent: she can draw, she quickly learns languages, she can cook, she makes great henna tattoos, she can craft things out of wood and not to mention that she is a very warm person and we still keep in touch. I found like-minded people with who we made Sherlock, Avengers nights (and those nights not only had good movies but also greaaaat food. And we said we WILL find out what happened in Budapest, but we failed in that mission. damn it!). And of course, I became friends with my Erasmus family, who were always around, with whom we celebrated birthdays and Easter. We had movie nights at our place, lots of home parties that I loved so much (because like I said, I'm not a club girl and in a home party you can actually have a conversation, drink and dance if you want to), and we traveled together (next posts are about trips). There was a bit of drama sometimes, but that kept us interested in what's going on, but overall I can't say it was a very wild bunch, but I loved it none the less.
The places: it is incredible to be able to go have a walk next to Danube, next to great castles, next to where great kings and queens lived. The bridges there are amazing. The hills are amazing (and alive with the sound of music). We would go jogging in Margaret island (I don't jog, so I would go rollerblading) which had a little zoo (birds and deer). We would go sit in the evening at Deak Ferenc ter. We lived near Hero square and the park, so at some evenings we would go sit by the pond, listen to frogs, look at the ducks and see bats in the sky. The basilica that you can climb on top and view most Budapest. The Buda side - the more quiet and more for parents and serious people, the Pest side - the center, the place to party, the place where tourists and students gather. I also found the comic book shop (and sent comics for my sister every now and then) and the first time I came in there I felt like in the movies as the guys stopped ruffling through the piles of comics and stared at me like I was from another universe. Also, you should check out the second hand markets: there you can get not only antiques, but actually pretty cool stuff for reasonable price.
The bars: Morrison's 2 and Szimpla Kert. That's all you need to check out. Gooo. You won't regret it.
The food: if you are a veggie fan, you won't like Hungary. They like their food with a lot of meat. They are famous for goulash, which is very yummy. Another things you should try: langos (huge pancake with sour cream, garlic and cheese), kurtos kalacs or chimney cake (super yummy sweet thing). The best ones are usually next to St. Peter's basilica.
Drinks: WINE. That baby is so cheap, some nights if we didn't have anything what to do (or we would be super lazy to do anything), we would just run to our corner store and get some wine and cheese. Seriously, wine is from 1 euro. And it's good! And the next drink is Palinka. It's hard to explain it, but I guess the closest thing to it is schnaps? Well, you can have it plain or fruit flavour and it's reaaally good.
Fun facts: Hungarians start counting from the thumb (thumb - 1, thumb and index finger - 2. Was quite confusing at first). They have two words for red (voros and piros - I just remember that red hair is voros and if a ball is red it's piros, don't ask me why). They have the same word for he and she. On Sundays most of the shops don't work. They usually say their surname first and only then their name.
So yeah, it was amazing four months in there. And I'm not done talking about them, cause I said that I had some trips. I will talk about them in my next posts. Bur for Budapest I would like to say Thank You! It's been great!
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