First Impressions

Unfortunately, my expedition to Hungary began on a more or less sour note, when the flight (May 28) was delayed for two hours due to the plane having some engine trouble. Eventually I did board the plane (a different one from the one having the issues, thankfully), and was excited to see the seat next to me remaining empty throughout the boarding process, getting ready to spend the next 8-9 hours with a considerable amount of elbow room. Unfortunately, a Hungarian girl asked if she could take the seat, her two friends sitting in the seats behind me. I grudgingly obliged, a decision I would regret once she began talking quite loudly in Hungarian to her friends for the first hour or two of the flight. I told them to keep it down a few times, though I didn't get much peace until they all fell asleep... Other than that, not a bad flight once I managed to fall asleep myself. Arrived in Budapest a little before noon local time (May 29), and made it out of the airport without any issues, Zsuzsi and Tibi already waiting to pick me up.

I was a bit groggy from the plane ride, but I was excited to be in a foreign country that was so far from the US. Driving back through Pest, I could immediately feel a difference in the figurative atmosphere. Having gone to school in Brooklyn for a year now, I've more or less developed a sense as to what a city is like, from the way people act, to the way buildings are built, to the land which the city resides on. Pest just felt different. It's definitely a city- but it feels older. It's an experience I really haven't felt in the US, but you can rea

lly feel the history in the city, from the architecture (which was the most obvious

to me) to some of the customs and traditions that I would learn about later on.

Anywho, I had lunch with Zsuzsi, Tibi and Tusi and crashed for a few hours, still tired from the plane ride. Afterwards Zsuzsi and Tibi took me to an old castle in Buda. I'd like to go again, since I

don't remember a lot of what I saw (was still messed up from the plane...) and because I didn't have my camera with me. Took some pictures with my BLACKBERRY though. Didn't go insid

e of any of the buildings. I would have liked to go inside t

he big church though. I like churches/cathedrals. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do that next time I'm over there.

Sleeping that night was a trick though. Since I'd taken a 3 hour nap earlier that

day (whoops.) I was having a hard time falling asleep for the night. It was probably around 2 AM (May 30) by the time I actually knocked out, but I woke up several times that night anyway for half an hour at a time (6 hour time difference between Budapest and New York by the way).

Got up the next morning to hit the bikes with Zsuzsi a

nd Tibi. When I left Jersey, I was a good 185 lbs. There's a lot of traffic around Budapest, so there are a lot of people who bike around, or take the trollies/trams/subways. Zsuzsi and Tibi like to bike, so I'm hoping to lose some weight by the time I get back to the US. Anyway, we were going to go meet Fanni around 3 in Pest, and we left the house around 10 AM. We also passed by some of the buildings that I'd seen/been to when I was in Hungary two years prior for Fanni's wedding, which was pretty interesting for me. Then my camera died =[. On our ride, we took a look at some fort ruins, passed over the Danube, and had lunch outdoors.

Anyway, we met Fanni and her one year old son, Shebi (sp?) after biking for a few kilometers in a sudden downpour of rain. We went on a walk, and checked out one of the churches that was around. It was pretty interesting. Zsuzsi knows a lot about the architecture of the buildings around the city, and it's pretty much impossible to remember everything that she tells me.

The church was pretty cool though. All the designs inside of it were designed by the original architect apparently, from the wall patterns to the stain glass windows. Took the car home since it was still raining/I was tired.

Hung out with Tusi and some

of her friends that night. Went to a Starbucks-esque coffee place and then walked around the city for a little while. I can't get over how cool the parliament building is. Eventually went home because it started raining again.

I started working in Zsuzsi and Tibi's studio the next day. It's actually two different offices, with Zsuzsi running the structural engineering end, and Tibi running the architectural end, so I set up camp on Tibi's en

d, and met the other architects, two of whom speak enough English to put forth conversation, which I was happy about. I was also pretty happy that I was able to put my Autocad skills to use. Got to work drawing up some plans for a garden shop. It's strange, working in the metric system now. My sense of size is completely thrown off...

Anyway, studio here reminds me a lot of studio at school. Granted, it's not nearly as crowded, but I get into the same mindset when I start working where I get completely focused on whatever I'm doing and I draw lines for hours on end. But this is the kind of thing I've always enjoyed, watching things build up from nothing. Used to play with legos a lot when I was a kid, and this is a similar concept.

Another difference from studio at school - people start heading home between 4 and 5 PM. First few days, I felt a bit off. Leaving studio so early at school is basically like signing my own death warrant, since there's no way I can leave so early and still finish whatever I'm doing for the deadline. I do think though that if I can handle studio at Pratt, I can handle anything. Grandpa said once that the hardest part of architecture was actually becoming an architect, and I think I see why.

So I worked during that week every day for different amounts of time based on what Zsuzsi and Tibi wanted to do with me, though every day Zsuzsi would take me somewhere new, and would tell me something about every single building we passed by, whether it was some building related to Papa Jozsef, or how it used to be something else when she was little. It's really hard to retain everything she tells me, and after a point, I just start forgetting things on the spot. She's really knowledgeable though, and everywhere we go is really interesting.

The power in the studio went out one of the days, so we went to a Hungarian folk museum. It was actually pretty interesting to see all of the old clothes and renditions in the museum. Of course, Zsuzsi seemed to know something about everything, and she was able to bring a lot more to the table than the museum on its own was able to.

We also did some more biking- about an hour and a half, mostly uphill. The hill kicked the crap out of me. Stopped at a little bar type place and I was able to get my first glass of Coke in almost a week.

Monday (June 7) I didn't work- Fanni had stayed over the night

before with Shebi, so I was keeping them company. I keep trying to make Shebi laugh, but none of the normal tricks have been working =[ Also got to chat with Fanni for a while, which was nice. We'd also taken a walk with Zsuzsi and Tibi the day before through the woods behind the house, which I'd walked through two years earlier. Slowly working on getting in shape...

Tuesday (June 8) was different- Zsuzsi and Tibi took the

engineers out to Lake Balaton (sp?), the biggest lake in Europe, to celebrate having reached a big deadline. I actually had a lot of fun. The lake was pretty cool, and we saw some cool scenery along the way. We also took a look at Zsuzsi and Tibi's "weekend house," which was pretty interesting architecturally. I did a bit of manual labor when I was piling up some dead grass so we could build a

fire. It was good for me. Zsuzsi then took the engineers and I out to some special hotspring which is supposed to be good for your body or something. I don't really know too much about water or health or anything, but I enjoyed it anyway. I totally felt younger by the time I was done with it...

Anyway, we got back to the weekend house a few hours later and Tibi had cooked up a stew which we ate for dinner. At the same time, I was being eaten alive by mosquito's, and I'm still itchy from that... We drove home afterwards, and didn't arrive until around 11 PM. I enjoyed the day.

So since then, I've been working in the studio. We checked out a house that had been damaged by the Danube's flooding (which is reported to be the worst it's been in a hundred years or something) which was interesting, and today (June 10), Tibi ran out of stuff for me to work on or something, so I figured I'd start up this blog... By this point, I'm on an American food deficiency, and am craving a cheeseburger or a hotdog or something pretty badly. Hungarian food is really good and all (and Zsuzsi is an excellent cook), but I miss the unhealthy foods from back home =[ Other than that though, so far so good, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the trip. We're actually going to Rome a month from today for a week, which I'm really excited about, and there's a week-long bike trip at the end of my stay which I'm trying to get in better shape for too. This summer is quickly looking like it will be one of the more memorable summers in my life.