Getting Acclimated

Budapest has not come up in many of my conversations about worldly travel up to this point in my life, compared to the likes of London, Paris, or New Zealand, for example, but boy how I wish it would. The city which we 21 students and professor are calling home for the remainder of the month has already displayed immense beauty and frustration in just the first few days we have been here. By now everyone has at least the transit route to class memorized:

Find the 47 or 49 tram, take it to Astoria (underground station), ride the metro two stops to Keleti (a popular city plaza currently under renovation), then walk four blocks to McDaniel college where we hold class for two hours each morning, followed by two more in the afternoon.

It is safe to say we know this route well, but others have posed problems for myself and even some other group members. The good news is that although we have been tricked by the transit system and lost our bearings, we end up finding beauty in both the adventure and our adjusted destination. Michael posted yesterday about an adventurous afternoon in which we wound up having a coffee (Hungarian for undersized american beverage) in a wonderful restaurant a few blocks from our hotel. In at least two other incidents I have been with a group, gotten "lost," then found a restaurant with wonderful service, food, atmosphere, or a grand combination of all three. I cannot help but remind myself how truly blessed I am to be able to spend a month studying math in a beautiful city with wonderful people, or "friends" as they are now called.

Below is a picture taken from the inside of a bus, that of the House of Parliament from across the Danube River. To cut a long story short, a contest was held to choose the best design for the House of Parliament.The shown picture is of the winner and the 2nd and 3rd place designs were used for the buildings right across the street and are used as other government buildings.

Szia!
Christian and Jiahao