Budapest

I'm in Budapest! and have been since Sunday, but the internet connection here is precarious, so this is the first chance I've had to post. It's cold and rainy here, so we haven't done too many outdoor touring activities. We are also back to school, unfortunately. Yesterday I started French 101 and Microeconomics. The French is a bit intimidating, because I've never taken it before, and our professor speaks only Hungarian and French, with a few words of English. Other than that, everything is good. Today we went on a tour of Parliament and the House of Terror- a wonderfully done but depressing museum all about Budapest under both Nazi and Soviet occupation and all of the horrible atrocities committed.

On a more positive note, Budapest is home of the first underground (subway) in continental Europe (England was first, as our English tour guide of sorts bragged to our Hungarian school advisor on our bus tour in). It's easy to use, and we've been using our train passes everywhere. I found it interesting that there is no swipe card system of payment to get on a train or tram- you show your pass to a guard standing at the entrance, and if there's no guard you could technically get on free.

We're living in apartments, so we're going to the market around the corner to by groceries. When you don't have a recipe, and you can't really cook, it's hard enough to buy groceries. Then you put all of the labels in Hungarian.... shopping gets amusing. Butter is surprisingly hard to find, because some of the tubs look more like cream cheese. Laundry detergent was also impossible to distinguish from stain fighter and fabric softener (there is a tiny washing machine in every apartment).

It's very busy, with classes and settling in, and on top of that wanting to go out and see the city. Hopefully it will all be better in warmer weather, if it ever gets warm here.

Well, I've got things to do, and little internet (I'm in another apartment right now).

I'll post pictures if and when the connection gets better!