A Week of Pecs

Saturday, September 8th, 2012                                                    4:00PM

This week has gone by at quite an odd pace - there have been days of doing nothing but writing emails and days of walking all over the city. So far I have not been able to attend a class which is fairly frustrating, but I am at least in the process of getting registered for classes. I have until the 19th of this month to get all of my classes cemented down, but I would like to get going on the whole studying part of my semester of studying abroad.

Monday, all of the ERASMUS/Exchange students had Orientation. We had to walk in a mass group formation of about 100 people from the Boszorkany Dorm to the Faculty of Business and Economics which is about a 30-40 minute trip. This was one of those times that I was glad I was not a Business major. We all filed into this huge room with tapestries hanging everywhere and beautiful parquet floors. Later on we were told by the dean that apparently this is where the Business School's graduation is held every year.

We weren't given very much information, but were told to follow our respective coordinators to receive the rest of our Orientation from our actual faculties. However, the exchange students were asked to stay behind and meet with Czeh Gabor - the exchange program coordinator. He was very nice, but was definitely in a hurry to get us all taken care of. We each got our EHA codes for accessing the internet as well as supposedly registering for classes. I met the rest of the American students as well as the four Canadians and the three Japanese girls. Once we had everything taken care of, we followed our coordinator to the university library (about another 10 minutes East) where we were supposedly supposed to eat lunch and have a tour. Lunch was very meaty so I steered clear of that and just grabbed a bottle of Fanta. The actual tour was a waste of time as the head librarian's English was extremely limited at best and very quiet, and all the other students were talking over her so no one could hear a word of what she was saying. But the library had this really cool area where the ceiling was like this oyster-shaped dome and everything echoed. It made me a bit claustrophobic after a few minutes, but it was really fascinating!

We finished our rather non-existent tour and followed our coordinator, Reka, back towards Szechenyi Ter and the center of the city. By this time, everyone wanted to go back to the dorm - we were frying in the heat and having already walked a solid hour and a half we had had enough. It was a gorgeous day besides the heat though - no clouds and a solid expanse of turquoise blue sky. Reka took us down a street to go to a currency exchange booth. Lots of people wanted to exchange their money so we waited another 20 minutes. I talked with some of the Italian girls and their Hungarian mentors for most of it. Lots of them were from Venice - another place I really want to visit! (maybe not this trip, but still)

After everyone finally finished exchanging their money, we walked the rest of the way to the Faculty of Humanities. It is fairly close to Boszorkany dorm, but is on the complete opposite side of the city from the library. The building is very pretty as well even though the grass is dead from the lack of rain. We spent the next hour in a semi-air-conditioned room filling out more paperwork and then FINALLY were able to return to our dorm. We had a few problems figuring out which road we needed to get to Boszorkany but we got it eventually.

Tuesday, I spent almost the entirety of the day inside, sending emails back and forth to Reka, Gabor, and my coordinators back at Naz. I had some growing frustrations at not knowing what I was expected to do about classes and papers for the Immigration Office.

Wednesday, I had finally heard back from Reka and had been told to go see her at 12PM in her office. I made the short walk to the Humanities school and immediately met all the other ERASMUS/Exchange students gathered outside the building. Apparently they were all waiting for Reka as well, so I decided to wait there instead of going to her office. When she came out, she was carrying some of the completed gradebooks that we need to get a student ID and obtain a residency permit from the Immigration Office. Mine was not complete as I had not been told to bring a photo with me (grr). So I waited until she had finished handing them out and then tried to approach her. Apparently she was taking the students over to the Student Office to show us where to get our student IDs, and that I should come to her office at 3. Making sure I had understood her I asked again and then she told me to come before 3 because the office was closed at 3...I decided I would just follow her with the other students and figure it out when she came back with us. So we walked and walked and walked and walked and after about 40 minutes we reached the Student Office. We all went in to get the lay of the land and figure out where we were supposed to go for IDs when we had everything completed, and then Reka came back saying that unfortunately they weren't even doing the student IDs today and so the walk here had been fairly pointless for most of us...Grumbling we all walked the entire way back to the Humanities school where I decided to go to her office and wait until she could see me. After about 1.5 hours of waiting it was 3 o'clock and she had to leave - calling back at me that I should write her an email and ask my questions there...Apparently this is her first time doing this job as she just took over from the previous coordinator. Lovely.

Thursday was more of the same - writing emails and feeling frustrated. I did however go to the ERASMUS/Exchange Program Flag Party/Welcome Night. It was a mixed night, as the presentation was terribly boring and the presenters did not know how to run their presentation properly. But I got to meet more students from all over and I had some really good champagne! I even got my flag painted on my cheek - it looked a little interesting, but it was much better than the other American student I saw who had his put on backwards. I left early on with my roommate Chiara and we headed back to the dorm.

Yesterday (Friday), I decided that stressing out about my classes and registration and such wasn't helping me headache-wise so I went out and did some sightseeing. Chiara came with me and we went to the Barbican and the old city wall ruins, the Basilica of St. Peter and Paul at Dom Ter, and we finally looked inside the Mosque Church at Szechenyi Ter. They were all fascinating and I have pictures posted up on Facebook under "Hungarian Adventures" on my profile page. I also went out last night with a group of friends to eat Hungarian goulash at this restaurant called the Cellarium. It's an old wine cellar/storage building that goes underground and you eat in the former wine refinery. I had a small helping just to taste it - there was a lot of meat that I would've had to eat around. So instead I ordered some baked Camembert squares with kroketten (basically fried potatoes that look like mini mozzarella sticks) and blueberry marmalade. It was really good - especially the cheese!

Today, I did laundry for the first time here. Too bad the dryer doesn't work, so Chiara and I have hung our damp clothes all over the room. Ah well, at least we have clean wet clothes instead of stinky dry ones. I am hoping either today or tomorrow I'll visit the Botanical Gardens and the All Saints' Church for further sightseeing and destressing after a frustrating but wonderful first week.