So, 24 hours from writing this I will be 'leaving on a jet plane', in the immortal and too-often-quoted words of John Denver. Quite frankly, I can't say that I'm excited. Both David and Dan left early this morning, leaving just Haggai and I, along with a few of the kids from my program, as my close friends in Budapest. Everyone's been trickling out for what seems like weeks.
So, in the interest of a slight pick-me-up for me, and a nice round recap, here is a list of things that I will and will not miss about Budapest, Hungary.
First, lets go with the things I will not miss:
- The language. It's impossible, and although my Hungarian has improved over the course of my time here, I still cannot come even close to carrying on a decent conversation about much other than my desire for pastries. ("Hello. I want a chocolate. Thank you.")
- The dog feces (or maybe human feces?) on my street. We have a lot of homeless people who sleep on our street. This has never been scary, but does make me wonder about the fecal matter on the ground. Either way, our street is a little grubby.
- Rude waiters. Come on guys, give me my change without complaining no matter how large the bill I handed you is, and stop being so grumpy.
- Having to do the money conversion in my head.
Things that I will miss:
- First and foremost, my friends. I've made some of the best friends in the world. I'll miss you guys.
- Living in a city. Northfield, you just don't quite cut it.
- Angry people. I know this may go in direct contradiction to my rude waiters comment above, but I don't always like saying hi on the street.
- Cheap, delicious wine. Being able to legally buy it.
- Andrassy ut (a main street) at Christmas time. It's lit up and absolutely beautiful.
- The currency. American money is ugly.
- My apartment. Its beautiful. I love it. It will be quite awhile before I can afford another apartment with hardwood floors and super high ceilings located in the dead center of a major city. Relatedly, I will miss our heater, which looks like a chimney that doesn't reach all the way up and just sort of radiates heat from the corner of the living room. We like to all huddle around it.
- Potkulcs. I've mentioned it a million times. I love it.
- Learning a ton without living in the libe - one of the main things I've learned here is that life doesn't have to be as hard as Carleton makes it, and that you can learn just as much (if not more!), even in academic subjects, without working constantly and stressing out about it all the time.
- Meeting Hungarians. As grouchy as they look on the exterior, I've never failed to have a completely engaging and enjoyable conversation once you get them started.
And, finally, the things that I am looking forward to in America are:
- Seeing my family at Christmas and my friends both at home and at school.
- The English language: Easily ordering food. Having people behind counters speak English. Taking classes with native English speakers. Eavesdropping. Knowing that someone is saying goodbye on their cell phone just doesn't cut it.
- Getting tap water without getting a weird look.
Those of you at home, I'm looking forward to seeing you. I'm thrilled to be home for Christmas; to see my family and friends and those that matter and to sit around a fire with a bunch of native English speakers who I love. As hard as it is to leave, I'm glad that's what I'm coming home to.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Istanbul, not Constantinople
So, I've spent the past three and a half months in Budapest, which is about as 2nd World a city as you can find. The language, the culture and the people are all very, very different from those back in the US. Living here feels different.
Budapest has got nothing on Istanbul. Istanbul is a different world.
Hannah and I landed in Istanbul on Saturday afternoon. We went to the place where we were supposed to meet our shuttle to the hostel, and found no one. So, instead of sticking around, we decided to take the metro. We get on the metro then get off where the directions say. At this point, we get a little lost. We're wandering through a sea of 15 lira ($13) shoes, pomegranates and remote control salesmen, when we hear some yelling. We figure out that that yelling is at us. We roll our eyes, assuming that someone is trying to sell us something, when we realize that, actually, he is yelling "tramvay? tramvay?" which sounds shockingly like tram, which is what we're looking for. Sure enough, this guy is just trying to point us towards the tram, which he does successfully and off we go.
This was our first introduction to the fact that the Turks are the nicest and friendliest people in the world. This continued to be proven again and again through nearly all of our interactions. Wandering through the Egyptian Spice Bazaar, we got offered apple tea and had explanations of dozens of teas and spices given to us. This man would, of course, have loved it if we had bought some of those teas and spices, but he was in no way offended when we gracefully stepped out. An older man with a 25-year-old asian wife showed me his art gallery. Two brothers who owned a rug store invited us in for tea. We ended up talking to them for something like two hours about everything ranging from politics (they loved Bush! - the first foreigners I've ever come across with those types of sentiments... however, they ended up basically explaining that for Turks, it is a choice between the US and Iran, which does make the Bush inclination somewhat more understandable, I suppose) to drugs (one of them told us all about his time in Vietnam where he preferred one club to another because everyone was on ecstasy, not drunk...) to American houses and Vermont (they showed us a picture of a typical American house. Yes, we know what one looks like.) I can't imagine that talking to two broke students is a good way to sell rugs, but they didn't seem to care. We also made a good friend out of a man who stood outside a restaurant on the way back to our hostel, who would consistently invite us in for drinks and tea and once insisted that we use his bathroom, not the one at the hostel. Equally friendly, but somewhat less welcome interactions include several marriage proposals and/or declarations of men's bachelorhood ("I am thirty years old and unmarried!") and a particularly difficult conversation that ensued when I tried to turn around and take a picture of the Hagia Sophia. which consisted of the following sentences:
him (interpreted by friend): Hello. Where are you from?
me: America...
him (still interpreted by friend): Can I have your email address?
me: no!
him (or more accurately, his friend): What about your name?
me: umm...
him (apparently not speaking a word of English): Why not?
At this point, we made a feeble attempt to explain that this was just not done, and moved on. Like I said, a different world.
Our week was jam-packed. However, highlights include:
Hamam (Turkish bath): Budapest says that they have Turkish baths. I love the baths. However, this was a totally different experience. In Turkey, you walk into the bath and are given a sort of table cloth to wrap around yourself. After undressing, you head into basically a huge sauna where the middle is a massive heated stone on which you lounge and begin to sweat. Eventually, a bath attendant comes to get you. This old Turkish lady proceeds to remove every stray piece of dead skin that has ever come in contact with your body. You get SCRUBBED. Then, she soaps you up and scrubs some more. Then, she washes you down and massages - except really, its more of a scrub. Then, she washes your hair. And scrubs. It was completely outrageous and the best pamper I've ever received. We also splurged on an oil massage there, which felt great at the time but unfortunately didn't really have any lasting effect. The bath was a really, really worthwhile experience and a great choice for my Christmas present to myself.
Blue Mosque: Beautiful. In order to get to our hostel, you had to walk between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, so I saw both of these at almost every time of day. My favorite was night.
Sunset wasn't too bad either.
In the evening picture, if you look very, very closely, you can see sea gulls flying above the minarets. Its an absolutely magical sight. Also, the inside of the Blue Mosque is certainly nothing to be scoffed.
Hagia Sophia:
Okay. This building was built in 532. By this I mean not that a building was built on that site in 532. I mean that this building was built in the year five hundred and thirty two. Before that, two other churches (the first one built in 360, and both destroyed by riots) had stood on the site. That is an age that is almost completely beyond my capacity to imagine. Additionally, it was originally built as an Eastern Orthodox church, and was then, in 1453, converted into a mosque. This means that both Christian and Muslim decorations can be seen.
next to
.
Here,
, if you look closely, you can see a cross beneath the Muslim pattern. Also, although we didn't realize until too late, there is Viking graffiti! We couldn't get upstairs to see it because the upper gallery closes earlier than the lower, so a picture of a picture will have to do.
Asia: We went to Asia. Istanbul, as many of you will know, overlaps both Europe and Asia. This means that you can take a boat tour up the Bosphorus, weaving between Europe and Asia. The final stop is in Asia at a tiny fishing town called Anadolu Kavagi.
We got off there then spent our three hours between ferries having a delicious seafood lunch and hiking up to an old castle ruins. I'm not sure how old this castle was, however it, along with its sister castle on the Europe side, Rumeli Kavagi, served as Byzantine fortresses to guard Istanbul/Constantinople against unfriendly ships from up the Bosphorus.
Here is me, in a hammock, in Asia.
Tea: Turkish tea is delicious.
I drank somewhere between three and eight cups per day. Then, I forgot to buy some to bring home. Oops.
I know that everyone says that Istanbul is a mix between ancient and modern, but let me tell you, I really, really don't think they're lying. In many ways, it was more westernized and modern than Budapest. However, right next to these new, shiny, glass hotels and fluent english speakers is the Hagia Sophia and the Cistern, another 532 AD invention (and another highlight). The Cistern is, well, a cistern (lots of water). But a really, really old one. It also has two Medusa's heads, one upside down and one sidewise from some ancient Roman something or other. Pretty cool, I thought.
The Grand Bazaar was overwhelming.
The Egyptian Spice Bazaar was colorful, and cool.
Thanks to my Aunt Kristin for informing me that she did not want a postcard from anywhere in Budapest, but if I saw the Hagia Sophia... causing me to even consider this trip. A great top-off to my study abroad.
Budapest has got nothing on Istanbul. Istanbul is a different world.
Hannah and I landed in Istanbul on Saturday afternoon. We went to the place where we were supposed to meet our shuttle to the hostel, and found no one. So, instead of sticking around, we decided to take the metro. We get on the metro then get off where the directions say. At this point, we get a little lost. We're wandering through a sea of 15 lira ($13) shoes, pomegranates and remote control salesmen, when we hear some yelling. We figure out that that yelling is at us. We roll our eyes, assuming that someone is trying to sell us something, when we realize that, actually, he is yelling "tramvay? tramvay?" which sounds shockingly like tram, which is what we're looking for. Sure enough, this guy is just trying to point us towards the tram, which he does successfully and off we go.
This was our first introduction to the fact that the Turks are the nicest and friendliest people in the world. This continued to be proven again and again through nearly all of our interactions. Wandering through the Egyptian Spice Bazaar, we got offered apple tea and had explanations of dozens of teas and spices given to us. This man would, of course, have loved it if we had bought some of those teas and spices, but he was in no way offended when we gracefully stepped out. An older man with a 25-year-old asian wife showed me his art gallery. Two brothers who owned a rug store invited us in for tea. We ended up talking to them for something like two hours about everything ranging from politics (they loved Bush! - the first foreigners I've ever come across with those types of sentiments... however, they ended up basically explaining that for Turks, it is a choice between the US and Iran, which does make the Bush inclination somewhat more understandable, I suppose) to drugs (one of them told us all about his time in Vietnam where he preferred one club to another because everyone was on ecstasy, not drunk...) to American houses and Vermont (they showed us a picture of a typical American house. Yes, we know what one looks like.) I can't imagine that talking to two broke students is a good way to sell rugs, but they didn't seem to care. We also made a good friend out of a man who stood outside a restaurant on the way back to our hostel, who would consistently invite us in for drinks and tea and once insisted that we use his bathroom, not the one at the hostel. Equally friendly, but somewhat less welcome interactions include several marriage proposals and/or declarations of men's bachelorhood ("I am thirty years old and unmarried!") and a particularly difficult conversation that ensued when I tried to turn around and take a picture of the Hagia Sophia. which consisted of the following sentences:
him (interpreted by friend): Hello. Where are you from?
me: America...
him (still interpreted by friend): Can I have your email address?
me: no!
him (or more accurately, his friend): What about your name?
me: umm...
him (apparently not speaking a word of English): Why not?
At this point, we made a feeble attempt to explain that this was just not done, and moved on. Like I said, a different world.
Our week was jam-packed. However, highlights include:
Hamam (Turkish bath): Budapest says that they have Turkish baths. I love the baths. However, this was a totally different experience. In Turkey, you walk into the bath and are given a sort of table cloth to wrap around yourself. After undressing, you head into basically a huge sauna where the middle is a massive heated stone on which you lounge and begin to sweat. Eventually, a bath attendant comes to get you. This old Turkish lady proceeds to remove every stray piece of dead skin that has ever come in contact with your body. You get SCRUBBED. Then, she soaps you up and scrubs some more. Then, she washes you down and massages - except really, its more of a scrub. Then, she washes your hair. And scrubs. It was completely outrageous and the best pamper I've ever received. We also splurged on an oil massage there, which felt great at the time but unfortunately didn't really have any lasting effect. The bath was a really, really worthwhile experience and a great choice for my Christmas present to myself.
Blue Mosque: Beautiful. In order to get to our hostel, you had to walk between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, so I saw both of these at almost every time of day. My favorite was night.
Sunset wasn't too bad either.
In the evening picture, if you look very, very closely, you can see sea gulls flying above the minarets. Its an absolutely magical sight. Also, the inside of the Blue Mosque is certainly nothing to be scoffed.
Hagia Sophia:
Okay. This building was built in 532. By this I mean not that a building was built on that site in 532. I mean that this building was built in the year five hundred and thirty two. Before that, two other churches (the first one built in 360, and both destroyed by riots) had stood on the site. That is an age that is almost completely beyond my capacity to imagine. Additionally, it was originally built as an Eastern Orthodox church, and was then, in 1453, converted into a mosque. This means that both Christian and Muslim decorations can be seen.
next to 
.Here,
, if you look closely, you can see a cross beneath the Muslim pattern. Also, although we didn't realize until too late, there is Viking graffiti! We couldn't get upstairs to see it because the upper gallery closes earlier than the lower, so a picture of a picture will have to do. 
Asia: We went to Asia. Istanbul, as many of you will know, overlaps both Europe and Asia. This means that you can take a boat tour up the Bosphorus, weaving between Europe and Asia. The final stop is in Asia at a tiny fishing town called Anadolu Kavagi.
We got off there then spent our three hours between ferries having a delicious seafood lunch and hiking up to an old castle ruins. I'm not sure how old this castle was, however it, along with its sister castle on the Europe side, Rumeli Kavagi, served as Byzantine fortresses to guard Istanbul/Constantinople against unfriendly ships from up the Bosphorus.
Here is me, in a hammock, in Asia.
Tea: Turkish tea is delicious.
I drank somewhere between three and eight cups per day. Then, I forgot to buy some to bring home. Oops.
I know that everyone says that Istanbul is a mix between ancient and modern, but let me tell you, I really, really don't think they're lying. In many ways, it was more westernized and modern than Budapest. However, right next to these new, shiny, glass hotels and fluent english speakers is the Hagia Sophia and the Cistern, another 532 AD invention (and another highlight). The Cistern is, well, a cistern (lots of water). But a really, really old one. It also has two Medusa's heads, one upside down and one sidewise from some ancient Roman something or other. Pretty cool, I thought.
The Grand Bazaar was overwhelming.
The Egyptian Spice Bazaar was colorful, and cool.
Thanks to my Aunt Kristin for informing me that she did not want a postcard from anywhere in Budapest, but if I saw the Hagia Sophia... causing me to even consider this trip. A great top-off to my study abroad.
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