Destination: Pecs

 Friday August 31^st, 2012                                                                               about 2:00 PM

@ Boszorkany Dormitory, University of Pecs, Hungary – rm. 206B

 

Well it has been a veritable roller coaster of ups and downs in the past twenty hours. First of all, the internet does NOT work unless you have a username and password - neither of which any of us students will have until Monday at orientation. There were some definite waterworks over this unforeseen development, as I had promised my mom, my dad, and my little sister that I would email/Skype them when I arrived here in Pecs. 

But to fully catch up since yesterday, we must return to Brussels. It turns out I should have been more worried about missing the plane, and less so about Hungarian Customs. I very nearly could have spent another 7.5 hours in the Brussels Airport waiting for the next flight to Budapest. Thank goodness I could actually understand all three departure announcements by the time I left yesterday! I heard the first one (in German) come over the loud speaker and say that the Budapest plane was leaving and any passengers should come quickly to the gate. My initial reaction was shock - but I'm still waiting at the gate! How could it be closing if no one is here?! So I grabbed my backpack and sprinted off to the nearest gate with an actual person in it and asked which gate the Budapest flight was leaving from. Apparently they'd switched it on me, and as my flight was 30 minutes early and they didn't announce it over the loud speaker, I had missed the board change. I asked if he could tell them to hold the gate for one more minute - and I turned and ran towards the other end of the B wing. Not the best way to start off a relationship with my seat buddy or the rest of my flight I kept thinking to myself. I pelted down the stairs to get to gate 36 and as I rounded the corner I heard the guy at the desk yell at me "Bradley? Bradley?" Oh crap. Did they already leave? "Yes that's me! Is the plane still here?" I rushed over and handed him my boarding pass and noticed that there was a bus outside the window not a plane. He just nodded and gave me back my ticket, and gestured to go out the door. My problem was actually finding the door which was made of the same glass as the window so I couldn't tell which one was which. He had to come over and help me, and to make it all even more peachy everyone on the bus was staring at me trying to walk into the wrong solid pane of glass. It made me remember back to my first day of 6th grade when I couldn't find my bus and I held up the entire line of buses for about 10 minutes. I had to walk all the way down to the front of the lineup and everyone was staring at me. Not a pleasant way to start off at a new school....ANYWAYS

I finally got out the door and on to the bus, and despite a few more glances in my direction nobody spoke to me. Ah well. The important thing is that I made it on the plane! The bus ride to the plane took about 2 minutes, in which time I almost fell on a small child as I had no handles to grab onto for support as we went around a few sharp turns. The nice thing about the plane ride though was that I didn't have a seat buddy at all and I even had a window seat for the second time! I promptly fell asleep once we were in the air, and didn't wake up until we started making our slow decent into the airport. But as we came down I was able to gaze out the window. Wow! It was so fascinating the difference between the landscape of Brussels and Belgium and that of Budapest and Hungary. Brussels was neat, orderly and flat with lots of greenery, whereas the land surrounding the Budapest airport was like a wild patchwork quilt with hills everywhere and the Danube River snaking through like a shining silver thread. Needless to say it was absolutely breathtaking. Again I was stupid enough not to have my camera out but I didn't want to miss anything. Just to give you an idea though, I have an image from google that doesn't do it justice, but is better than nothing.

                                             http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7350855

I even saw Budapest from my window! It was crazy - I even recognized it before the other people on the plane. Must be from all those guidebooks I read. The descent was still a bit too slow for my taste, but was slightly less painful...I'm still not quite sure why. I was surprised by how small the airport was though. For how large the city of Budapest is, I was expecting something around the size of Newark/Brussels, but it might even be smaller than the Rochester airport! The only baggage claim carousels for the wing were in one room and were probably half as wide as those I've seen in the States. 

I found my luggage with no problems, all intact and ready to go. Another shocker was the fact there were no Customs whatsoever in the airport. I just went out the door to the waiting area by the gate, and found my minibus driver. He was very friendly, but his English was pretty poor so after I told him who I was we just sort of stood there for a while, smiling at each other. Then he told me to come with him and grabbed my suitcase - apparently that's a thing here. If there's a guy around he's the one carrying the bags, not the women. Despite my views on the matter, I decided not to offend him and just followed behind. We went to the other wing and found three other people who were using the transit service as well. Then we went back to to the other wing and he asked one of the girls to translate for him so I knew what was going on. Apparently we were waiting for one more person coming in from Oslo so we couldn't leave just yet, but he wanted us to put our luggage in the van. Sounded good, so out we went with him still pulling my suitcase. For all the airport being relatively tiny, the parking lot was fairly lengthy and we had to walk from one end to the other to get to the van. And as I had packed and dressed for fall weather, making the trek in a sweatshirt and jeans in direct sunlight and in approx. 90°F was no picnic. We finally made it to the van and threw everyone's stuff inside, which was not easy as the fun-sized minivan, as I will call it, had almost nothing in the way of trunk space. Then, after some hurried Hungarian and pointing at me, the girl who had translated before told me that the driver was going to go back and wait for the person arriving from Oslo, but that we could wait in the parking lot if we wanted. 

Everyone stayed behind, including me as I was in no hurry to walk all the way back to the waiting area inside. So I struck up a conversation with the two students who spoke English. Apparently the translator girl was originally from Pecs but was just coming home for the weekend and then would be traveling back to London where she works as an EMT/nurse. Getting that job is what apparently helped her to realize that she doesn't actually like people and should have gone into a less people-driven profession. The other one was Nick from Leeds, England, who had a lovely accent and was visiting his girlfriend in Pecs. He's currently in the midst of completely his Doctorate - in what though I can't remember. After getting to know each other and hear what I was doing, they took it upon themselves to tell me all about the health care problems in the U.K., and the terrible weather they'd been having, and how expensive living in London was, and the awful metro system, and basically everything negative I could possibly wish to know about London and the U.K. 

They were nice enough, but really all I wanted to do was just jump in the fun-sized minivan and get to Pecs. After almost an hour, the driver came back with the Norwegian girl who had just arrived out of Oslo and we got in and the air conditioning came on and all was right with the world. And then what should the driver do but pull right back up to the airport and get out. Apparently there was an elderly couple that was also coming with us and so we had to rearrange all of our luggage so theirs would fit and slide over and make room so they could sit. It was quite cramped after all of that, but as long as the air conditioning was on I was a happy camper. We finally drove out of the airport and the driver, as translated by the EMT girl, wanted to make a quick stop before we got to Pecs to use the bathroom and get gas. Everyone grumbled an okay and off we went. I tried in vain to stay awake, and I eventually passed out in the back - probably on the guy sitting next to me too. We did stop at a rest area and got out to use the bathroom. The area we were in was so dry the grass was completely dead, and I asked the driver via the EMT girl if they had had a hot summer. Well according to him it hasn't rained in 2 months so I'd say that's pretty hot. My situation was looking stickier and hotter than I had anticipated but at least I was in air conditioning for another hour. We drove in to Pecs and began dropping people off - the EMT girl was greeted by her mother and a cute little kitten which made me tear up a bit reminding me of my mom and my dog. 

I was the second to last to get out of the van, and at first I wasn't sure if he would be able to accept my debit card or not as my cash was only in dollars. Thankfully it eventually worked itself out and I said goodbye and thank you to him and went up the stairs to my new dorm. The check-in girl was not very pleasant and was definitely not amused by my clumsy attempt at Hungarian. I got my roomkey though and took the elevator up to my current abode: room #206B. Almost no one was in the dorm when I arrived though, and I had no roommate so there was no one to talk to. Deciding to venture downstairs again, I tried to ask the check-in girl if there was any internet available in the dorm. Apparently that was not the question to ask as she almost bit my head off. That's when I found out about the whole no internet until Monday thing.

There were some nice aspects to moving in though - I got to the dorm around sunset and the view from room is really beautiful. And I met the other person currently on my floor from across the hall. He didn't speak much English but he was much more friendly than the check-in girl downstairs. 

I didn't sleep well at all last night as the room was boiling and I was down with a bad case of homesickness and an actual cold. But today I asked the new check-in girl, Gabby, if there was a place that I might find internet and she suggested walking into the city and going to a cafe. So that's what I'll be doing in the next half an hour. Wish me luck!  :)