Girl in a foreign land

Vices in Budapest

3:02 AM The girl you see

One thing I've realised in Budapest, is that vices are cheap. You can get a pack of cigarettes for like 200 florints (less than 2 singapore dollars), a big glass of beer or probably a decent bottle of wine for 400 florints ( less than 4 singapore dollars). Was quite shocked when i first moved into my apartment and while exploring the back room of the kitchen, I found this huge pile of empty wine bottles and beer cans. Evidence of previous party escapades at the apartment. I think it would be safe to assumet that drinking and smoking are the two most common Hungarian past times. Smoking is pretty much rampant everywhere, and as far as I know, there are no laws prohibiting drinking in public. Furthermore, after seeing the price of such things, I'm not too surprised as well.

I didn't think that I would be hitting the bars anytime till spring, but as it happens, the teachers at Selti love to drink and hang out. So apparently payday for them (unfortunately I do not get my first pay till April) was a few days ago, so I got invited to go for a drink with my teachers. Fortunately, my flatmate Dan came along, so I didn't get lost on the streets of Budapest, coz obviously, all public transport stops around midnight and I wouldn't want to get lost in a cold city, regardless of whether winter is at the end or not. So I've been out a couple of nights, and one of the first bars that I stepped in reminded me of one word, "Bohemian"

It has all these funny kick knacks on the walls, and tables and chairs were just squashed up against each other. Everyone was talking, smoking, some jazz (i think) music was playing in the corner. There were people even bringing take away pizza from outside into the bar so that they could eat and drink and SMOKE at the same time. Obviously, coming from countries which have banned smoking indoors, I was quite unused to the huge fragrance of smoke all around. Every bar is like smoky... and the first night I came back, my t-shirt just reeeeeeekkkked of heavy smelly smoke all over. I like "OH MY GOD" when I came back home and took off my shirt. Needless to say, that shirt has immediately gone into the wash. I swear I'm like the camera girl in Selti, coz no one else whips out their camera to take pictures except me. At least my excuse is that I do look like a tourist (asian face.. hello!) and I am a tourist!

So.. teachers from Selti: Me, Sam (from USA), Mairead (Scotland), Jennifer (UK)

My flatmate, Dan, who is from the States.

The second night I went out, Mairead's two best friends from Scotland had come down to visit, so Mairead took them to this Balkan (really.. not kidding) night club, and said that I should come check their music out. Dan was quite skeptical bout it being a cool club but he came anyways... it was the same old smoky feeling and smell, but this was a lot more bigger and more like a nightclub with a live band, a fountain and a large sit down area. As the night passed, we met a lot more teachers/ aiesec members as well:

Mairead's friends, Nikola and Gemma (Sam in the middle). They could stand the cold really really well!!! Scottish people.. They only wore like two layers each, while I was still shivering in my three layers of thermol... bugger..

Aimee (Another intern from NZ) and I

Ludmilla and I (Ludmilla is from the UK of Polish descent). She had her boyfriend there as well, and the first thing he said to me when he learnt I was from Singapore was that, "My surname is Changi, just like your airport." My reaction was, "You've got to be kidding me..." and I burst out laughing hard out.

Now, something of interest to you AIESEC people who are reading this post. Now, Selti is made out of AIESEC interns and non AIESEC teachers. The current AIESEC interns are just me, Aimee and James. NOW. All of the other teachers have hung out with AIESEC members in Hungary, and their impression of AIESEC is that it's a cult and everyone is having sexual relations with one another. *Ting!!!* It was really hilarious when I heard it, but I reckon it must be all the conference stuff which they've seen. Of course, naturally, I was quick to assure them that I wasn't part of this sexual web... and I do know that I've always been clean at conferences.... lol... but can you imagine!! This is the impression that outsiders have of AIESEC!!

Anyhow... when the night ended, I was introduced to my first Hungarian Supper snack. It's called langos, but it's this HUGE piece of deep fried dough, topped with either sour cream, cheese ,etc... or you can even eat it plain. According to Dan, Hungarians love sour cream, so it's quite a popular topping. It costs only like 350 florints for one with cheese ($2.50 singapore dollars?) and it was sooo big!!!! But very very tasty and fatty... haha.

Labels: Budapest 1 comments |

Adventures on Castle Hill

1:46 AM The girl you see

So I had my first client meeting two days ago. It was quite nerve wrecking... everything is so hands on here that it really took some getting used to for me. So used to being so organized and well prepared for everything, and my boss was just smiling at me and saying, "you'll be all right". The magic sentence -> supposedly.... I can't begin the count the times I've been told that sentence " you'll be all right" in the past couple of days. However, the interview went fine (thank god) and I'll be having my first class next monday, teaching conversational english to a hungarian man who works in Johnson and Johnson. Cross fingers, hope he likes me.

But after that, I met up with Justyna, who had also arrived around the same time as me, but has not been called up for any client meetings as yet. It was a really foggy day, but we both had the afternoon free, so we went for a hike (literally) up castle hill. First we crossed the bridge over to Buda

and then we decided to just walk up this hill in search of a certain museum on Justyna's map. It was a really steep hill! And we actually very nearly gave up and went back down.

The hill looked very gloomy and like as if some monster was going to come out and grab me while I was walking. However, while on the road, I spied this really interesting mosiac roof from afar and suggested that we walk to it as it looked near. LOOKED. It was a steep climb for another fifteen minutes and SUDDENLY, we were on the castle!!!! The view was like WOW, despite the foggy day and the cold, the city actually did look quite nice from the top. Pictures are below:

The church with the pretty mosiac roof that caught my attention

View of the parliament from across on Pest. Buda-> Pest :)

Justyna and I! Justyna is from Canada but of polish descent. So she speaks polish as well :) Notice I'm wearing all black? Just realized that most of working clothes are black... I couldn't exactly wear jeans to a work interview right? haha.

Justyna and I both agreed that this would all look so much nicer in Spring/Summer, so we're definitely to come back then, and hope do a tour or two. Incidentally, this reminds me. There were actually alot of hungarians who came up to Justyna and asked if she spoke English, and when she replied yes, they actually asked her for any small change or tried to sell her some personally typed tourist guide about castle hill. I guess being asian sort of helps coz I guess most assume that I speak neither english nor hungarian and I'm not worth scamming... but it still helps to be careful :)

Labels: Budapest 0 comments |

My surroundings...

5:59 PM The girl you see

So it's quite hard to describe where I live, so I've taken a few pictures to show everyone. It's not the prettiest of neighbourhoods haha... one thing I've learnt after staying for the past week is that Budapest is continually under construction. Everywhere I go, there's always some building being built, or some renovation taking place. It's like the entire city feels that there is some massive renovation continuous undergoing and no one knows when it will end.

So this is my street name. Utca basically stands for street, so that's kind of like an important word to know especially when you're looking for directions. The number 8 in Roman letters stands for which district I'm in. So as mentioned in my previous post, I live in district 8, which has the distinction of being the shady district in the whole of budapest. In fact, I just read an article on Romas being killed in District 8. There's been a number of racial prejudice towards the Roma (gypsies) in Hungary partly because of the poor economic state of the country, so it was a little disconcerting to read that article as I complained to my flatmate Dan on the trials of living in such a shady district haha. The good news is that my apartment block is on the fringes of District 8 and just a 5 min walk to the tram station, so I'm just hovering on the edge supposedly. The bad news is that it is still district 8.

My street... it looks pretty gloomy doesn't it? I don't think I'll actually see sunshine till the end of march. That's also why I'm not too hyped up on travelling anywhere yet.

My apartment block from the outside. There's a very code to type in... and it gets dark early coz its winter, so when i came back in the evening and its dark, i'm often praying very hard that i type it fast enough in my freezing fingers haha...

My apartment: Kitchen

Bedroom: Check out my makeshift desk. It is actually this glass coffee table which was probably one of the unwanted furniture and just dumped in the room. At least now I got a lamp from IKEA, so there's some proper reading light for me coz the yellow lights just don't cut it at night. If you notice the other bed, so obviously, someone else can also move in, but for now I have the room to myself... I don't mind sharing, just dunno how the new girl would deal with having no table and having no sheets etc etc when she arrived. The heating is non-existent in the apartment. The heater works, but the heat doesn't spread kind of thing. But thankfully it's not too cold now and as long as I sleep with a sweater I'm usually warm enough.

The toliet: This is probably the best room in the house just because it's a nice sink, big mirrors, and yes I do get a decent hot shower. The only complaint I would have is that there's no shower curtain, so I have to shower carefully...

Small lounge area which no one ever uses. No dining area, so I mostly eat in my room.

So I met up with Hilda (pic) my hungarian buddy two days ago and got my budapest sim card and bank account set up. Was quite angry (PISSED) when I got home because I think that hungarian vodafone lady locked my phone so that I can now only use the budapest sim card on my phone. When I try to insert my singapore sim card in, I can't use it anymore because my phone is in offline mode... super frustrating, so i'll have to ask hilda to bring me back to the store to sort it out. URGGGGGGGGHHHHH...

On the bright side, I managed to try some Hungarian food: Tejzines Gombas Csirke. It's this chicken and mushroom stew which tasted fantastic (if only a bit on the salty side) with rice. It's quite hard to describe hungarian cuisine, but i have noticed that they are into stews... and their flavours were actually similar to indian curry but without the spices (chilli), or that's how the first impression of the taste of the stew was to me... Hilda was actually baffled as to what kind of Hungarian foods foreigners usually liked to try, and I showed her the tourist guide of foods to try haha... so she's got some idea now. One thing though is that they eat a lot of LIVER here, which I don't (Memories of Martina in UCLA and her perchant for liver as well pop up)... so that's one dish I'm not going to try.. sorry.. lol.

Sometimes I do wonder whether it's fate that Hilda was my buddy because she loves to read, and while shopping for my things the other day, she pulled me into the bookstore and said to me, "I really wanted to show you this book, it's called Eclipse and I..." before she could finish, I was like "Eclipse? You mean the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer?" And before she knew it, I was excitedly chatting on and on about how great it was, because I had actually just completed the series days before I flew off to Budapest, so the story was still fresh in my mind. And hey pesto, it's actually popular in Budapest as well... and they have in translated in Hungarian:

Haha funny right.

I'm going to end my post now... but I have a lot more pictures to post of corvinus university (that's another private joke of mine) and Justyna (another teacher) and I went hiking up castle hill yesterday in the cold... crazy crazy.... but later :)

Labels: Budapest 1 comments |

First few days...

2:44 AM The girl you see

I wouldn't be lying if I did not wish to go home within the first few hours that I was in Budapest. To start off, I met my buddy Hilda at the airport and the first mistake was when I did not change any Hungarian currency (florints) as she told me that we could do it later and she would pay for me first. The reception was not at all like that in NZ where a bunch of people picked the intern up at the airport, drove them to their apartment and brought them around the city. I got none of that at all. Just my buddy, who thankfully was there and me. I had already warned her that I was dreadfully overweight the night before, but it looked like it was just me and her lugging 50kgs of luggage over to the bus. It wasn't just a simple bus ride... it was a bus ride, then a train ride (a very painful one, because I had to carry my heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs), and then a tram ride to my new apartment. LIKE PHEW!!!

Luckily, Phil and Ryan came to meet me so Phil helped carry my suitcase up the flight of stairs to the apartment (Yeah, most buildings in Budapest have yet to get lift upgrading like the flats in Singapore). I guess living in first world countries like america, new zealand, where basic amenities like heating, microwave ovens sort of upped my expectations a little when coming here. My room in the apartment, while big, is really sparsely furnished and heating is almost non-existent. Apparently, we discovered that the landlords like to use styrofoam as a substitute for real insulation wiring... imagine that. I got a bed (thank goodness the previous tenant left her beddings behind, so I didn't have to run out and get stuff on my first day), but there was no desk except for this glass coffee table... So now it is my makeshift desk while I couch on my bed everyday with my laptop... till I find a cheap desk that is...

So you can imagine, there were all these hidden expenses that I did expect, but having to deal with that on the first day was quite overwhelming. One thing I realised was that having a buddy to rely on kinda made me too reliant on her, and so when she left me that day and I woke up the next morning, I was like crap, I am somewhere in the city and I have no fucking idea where I am and how to go anywhere. This was a sunday, so I was looking for a church with an English mass to go to as well. So haha... my little adventure... I kept bugging Tess, my roommate like 4/5 times on directions on how to get to the tourist office, which I managed to get from google. I had a list of churches on English masses from the American Embassy website, so I had them down in my notebook. So... I made my way from my apartment to the city centre. I admit I was scared stiff. I had no idea of the language, no florints in my wallet and no hungarian mobile no and obviously, my asian colouring made me stand out like a sore thumb and the ideal person to rob/rape/pickpocket. But somehow, after a few wrong turns, I actually made it. haha. So I got my maps, found a money changer and had burger king for lunch. YAY!!!!! Surprisingly, the city was quiet for a Sunday. But it was also still winter and the sky was still overcast... hardly any sunshine penetrated the clouds all day long... so maybe that's why... But I had my camera with me, and I did remember to take a few photos:

There are actually heaps of moneychangers around... which was funny because on my first day here, I walked for like half an hour with my hungarian buddy and she couldn't find me a money changer... and yet here on my little adventure they were like all over the place

Macdonalds! There are HEAPS around the city. On the metro map, it actually tells you where the macdonalds are located... but for an foreign person, this place is like a lifesaver... finally, we're eating something we know!!!