Sunday Sept. 2nd, 2012 about 1:30 PM
@ Boszorkany Dorm - Room #211B
My excuse for not writing yesterday is that it was a fairly chaotic for the entirety of the day - I made some new friends, found WiFi (what a relief!), and successfully navigated my way to the city center and back in the dark. All in all a pretty full day!
Catching up since I last wrote, Friday afternoon I decided to use my guidebook to navigate my way down into the city in search of WiFi and a currency exchange booth. It was a bit frustrating and at points tricky as the map in the guidebook I was using only covered the city center and I was coming from the outskirts. But I sort of followed the general flow of people and struck out down the hill, going left when in doubt. I did find that I appeared to be going in the right direction, as there were now restaurants on the guidebook map that were appearing in the right order.
I found a sidewalk map of the city, but since streets have a habit of going unnamed here that didn't help much. Fortunately, there was a man with a camera that I decided must be another tourist so I asked him firstly if he spoke English (thankfully he did) and if he knew which direction Szechenyi Ter (the main square of the medieval part of the city) was in. He pointed me in the right direction and I walked down the street, a bit awestruck by how beautiful the city turned out to be. So many fountains and colorfully painted houses, cobblestone streets and courtyard gardens, mosques and churches and everything in between! As it is the fifth largest city in Hungary I should have expected it to be larger than I thought it initially was. But for all of its immensity it is relatively quiet - even though the drivers here are just as crazy as the taxis in NYC and make use of every square inch of the narrow streets, including the sidewalk at points.
First things first, I needed to find the exchange place listed in my guidebook. Luckily for me it wasn't too far away from Szechenyi Ter. Unluckily though it looked like it had been closed down for quite some time and wasn't going to be helpful to me in the slightest. So, I returned back to the main square to reconnoiter. I decided to go back down the road I had come from because I had seen a small exchange booth back by the sidewalk map, but had ignored it as I was sure that the one described in the book would have a better rate and would be more trustworthy.
I found it again without too much trouble and quickly exchanged my dollars for forints (pronounced for-eent) so I could attempt to find one of the internet cafes I had seen in my guidebook. None of them actually turned out to exist, but despite my growing frustration I got to see a good portion of the old city. Even through my haze of desperation it was gorgeous. I went back to Szechenyi Ter after deciding that it wasn't worth getting heat stroke to find a WiFi signal. There are three main fountains scattered around the square there and I had noticed lots of children running around in them, so I decided to follow suit and put my feet in. Ah! Sweet relief! So nice and cold and soothing. It cooled my internal inferno down to a slow sizzle - I would have jumped in and taken a bath but I came to the conclusion that that might have crossed a few lines so I thought better of it. Upon cooling down, I decided to head back to the dorm as I had no idea where WiFi was to be found as it was not publicly advertised in any way.
On my way back to Boszorkany, I decided to use a different route that I had seen that seemed shorter than my previous winding one entering the city. It was definitely shorter, but there was plenty of construction on both the road and sidewalk. There were even a few points that the pavement simply fell away and there was a gaping hole down to the plumbing! As I was walking along the precarious sidewalk area I managed to snap my flip flop, completely severing the plastic part that holds the shoe together. This day just kept getting better and better! At that point though I thought screw it and I walked barefoot for the rest of my journey up that road and up the hill to the access point I'd used from the dorm to the road. It was basically a park with a pool and a food stand that I'd previously seen from my window. I hobbled over to the food stand and asked if they spoke English ("Beszél angolul?"), which one of them thankfully did, and got two water bottles and an order of french fries. I must have looked like quite a state at this point with only one shoe, sweat dripping down my body, and panting from hiking back up the hill. That, and like a dope I had not had anything to drink since noon; so, as it was going on 5:30PM and as it had been about 90° F all day, I was definitely dehydrated.
I drank both waters in less than 3 minutes so I definitely needed it. But as I felt much better after that, I decided to go back to my room and eat my wonderful dinner of french fries in peace and quiet. Another interesting thing I've learned since coming here is that a lot of Hungarians prefer eating their fries with mayonnaise versus ketchup. They do have ketchup though, unlike France. After devouring the french fries I ate the last of my peanut butter M&Ms and decided to hit the hay even though it was only 7:30PM.
Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of pounding on my door. It made things interesting as I was practically in my underwear and was running around frantically finding clothes to throw on to answer the door, still coming out of my sleep. When I went to open the door, I expected to see my roommate or even my next-door neighbor. But instead it was this big burly Hungarian man who told me in broken English that I must come downstairs in the next 30 minutes with my papers to formally check in to the dorm. I just nodded at him, as I was half-asleep and rather shocked to see him, and he lumbered off down the hallway.
When I did actually go downstairs to the ground floor 0 (another small difference - they start their floor numbers with 0 and -1 is the basement) there was a huge crowd gathered stretching out the door. Sooo many people!! Definitely a bit of a jump to go from 2 people on my floor to 100+ people all over the place. I saw Gabby - the platinum blonde girl I had talked to Friday - and made my way over the sea of people to ask what I was supposed to do now. She looked very surprised to see me there, and immediately told me that I should come back at 3:00PM because that's when all the ERASMUS/Exchange students would be meeting for a dormitory orientation. And she also told me that if any strange man came up to my room again I should tell him: "F*#! off! I don't need this!" and close the door.
Well I went back upstairs to my room still wondering what was going on and half expecting the big Hungarian man to come up to my door again and ask me why I had not gone down like he told me to. For about an hour nothing happened; and then another knock came on the door which scared the bejeezus out of me again. Dreading that it was the Hungarian guy, I cautiously opened the door...and thank goodness - it was a girl! Apparently she had left her suitcase and bags in the other room in my suite on Friday afternoon and had come back to get them so she could move into her actual dorm room down the hall. I was so happy to see a friendly face as clueless as I was, and I immediately decided we should be friends. Her name is Serena, she's from Sardinia in Italy and is working on her Masters degree in Education. I helped her with her bags and we eventually went to lunch at this cafe up the street from the dorm. Although the food wasn't particularly good (especially since there really wasn't a vegetarian option) it was wonderful to talk to someone again! Her English was pretty decent even though she kept insisting she was awful and we swapped summer stories back and forth. I tried this cauliflower casserole dish that unfortunately had beef in one of the layers, but was better than eating no lunch at all. I also learned that she loves food and has a weakness for chocolate - something we have in common.
Around 2:30PM we headed back to the dorm to grab our documents and things for the meeting with Gabby. The meeting itself, while mainly just filling out forms, was very helpful and I got to meet lots of people from all over. There was a huge group of Italian students, but I also met 2 very friendly German girls, a guy from Turkey, and 3 girls from France. I also met three other students from the U.S. and apparently there's even more! The only other girl was from the Bronx and the two guys were from San Diego. I had the wonderful idea of asking them if they had had any luck finding WiFi, and lo and behold! they had found a signal in the McDonalds at Szechenyi Ter! Oh goodness I could've hugged them, but they seemed a bit too chill for me to grab them suddenly. I reported the good news to the ERASMUS students I'd just met, and after some deliberation decided that I should take them to the square. After we finished our room agreements, we were told to go wait in our rooms until Gabby came around to check over our rooms to see if there was anything missing. I agreed with all the girls that we would try and leave for the McDonalds around 7PM so it would be light when we were trying to find the square.
Of course though things didn't go as smoothly as that. Gabby never came around to check my room, so I had to go find her which was no easy task. In trying to find her though I met a guy from Lithuania who was incredulous that an American not only knew where Lithuania was located, but even knew the capital city (Vilnius). I did eventually track her down, but she said to find her Sunday morning because she had just finished the first floor at 6:45 and didn't want to go right into the second floor. Upon hearing that, I immediately went to the meeting place the other girls and I had staked out and of course none of them were ready to go. By the time everyone had made sure their rooms were locked and they had all the things they needed with them, it was about 7:30/7:45 and the sun was close to setting. I remembered the way to the square though, and we quickly found the McDonalds.
After a quick bite to eat, I finally got to use the internet! I saw I had several emails from my mom and the school, wondering how I was doing and if I had arrived safely. And checking facebook was so nice! I finally got to make sure my mom, my dad, and my sister were okay, and it was wonderfully reassuring to see all the messages I'd received from my friends and family wishing me a wonderful trip. I wrote back to my family to tell them that I hadn't had internet until now, but I would love to skype at some point Sunday night if any of them were able to.
The walk back to the dorm was so nice. All of Szechenyi Ter was lit up, and there was a man out on the street playing the accordion. Lots of people sitting by the fountains eating ice cream and gelato, and further along a gypsy fiddle player was cranking out tunes for the children parading and dancing around him. I felt eons better having been able to tell my family I was okay and had made it here in one piece. I didn't feel quite so good after walking back up the hill to the dorm, but I fell asleep pretty quickly after saying goodnight to my new friends.
This morning I went to find Gabby again and didn't have quite as much trouble tracking her down - definitely a plus! But when I told her what room I was in there were definite problems. Apparently the check-in girl I mentioned in my previous entry had given me a room that was already full for the semester. So I needed to change to a different room...okaaaaay. Good to know that now. But Gabby just ran down the list and gave me a new room and even picked out a roommate for me! I asked where she was, and apparently she was right behind me! Her name is Chiara and she's from a small town in Austria close to Vienna. She is a business management major, she has two sisters that are twins, and she loves Harry Potter. She knows where Rochester, NY is and she worships Nutella. All of that and she is very nice!
The only not so nice part of all of this has been schlepping all my stuff down the hall to my new room and getting my suitcase packed and unpacked for the second time. While doing all of this I also got to meet my former next-door neighbor. He's Hungarian and his name is Alex, he loves rock/metal, and he used to play American football but he had a bad car accident and injured his spine and his head so he can't be on the team anymore. He even decided to give me an awkward tour of his room in his very broken English and told me to ask him if I needed anything.
But for right now, I'm all re-settled in and waiting for Chiara and her mother to come back from their lunch, as they've offered to take me to Tesco at 2PM. With any luck I'll get cooking materials, flip flops, and maybe even some shorts since it's soooo hot out! :)
