A Caesura in Quixotism

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Photo Finale (~December 16)

Here's my last photo-dump post of the semester! As usual, these photos correspond to the events described in the text post immediately preceding it, i.e. they are photos of things I did during my last week in Budapest. I'll try to give everything descriptive captions, but if you're confused you should be able to find context by reading the previous post. Enjoy!

The Fisherman's Bastion is super pretty! One of the best things about living in Budapest is that I can take a 90 minute break from studying and see places like this

Still the Fisherman's Bastion, still beautiful

A replica of the royal coronation mantle of Hungary! It has a lot of detailed inscriptions and stuff on it that you can't see very well here

Grace came to visit and we ate Fancy Oatmeal!

This is my street on one of my last nights in Budapest :)

A ruin pub that I visited Wednesday night with a bunch of BSM students

This room doesn't need to have paintings to be featured in an art museum! :)

Some of my favorite pieces from the art museum

Travis hasn't cut his hair in four months and he was given this dope hat to reflect his new skater-boy persona

I went out at 2:00 AM, just a couple of hours before I left the country, and walked out to an empty and foggy Heroes' Square. It was very pretty!

My flight out of Hungary!

Some nice views out the window from my trip over the Atlantic

My dad was very excited about his ability to track my flight home and said I should post this photo on my blog, so here you go

My home! Featuring snow and Christmas lights and apparently a dragon

The Last Days

Greetings from Urbana! I returned home safely just under a day ago, and as much as I enjoyed my semester in Budapest it feels amazing to sleep in my own bed once again. My last week in Budapest was stressful but filled with many good and/or bittersweet things in addition to the tests that consumed the bulk of my attention. My current plan is to summarize those events here and then post photos separately afterwards, with one final reflection on my time abroad to follow in the next week or so.

I spent almost all of my time in the weekend before finals studying, dividing my work evenly between the two hardest classes (commutative algebra and functional analysis) and trying to work both individually and with others. These are probably the hardest math tests I've ever taken, and the functional analysis final in particular was brutal. I did take a couple of breaks in between study sessions for meals and such, and sometimes I traveled a bit to revisit some of my favorite sites in Budapest, like the Fisherman's Bastion and Buda Castle. I also found one or two opportunities to do Christmas shopping for my family, which let me see some of the larger markets again.

My final exams took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week, and they went okay! I was terrified going into them, so it was a huge relief to be done and see that I had survived. Immediately after my last final got out at 14:00 on Tuesday, my friend Grace arrived in Budapest to spend the day with me. We went to pick up some ingredients for dinner from the grocery store, and then I took her to see Heroes' Square. I actually had to go to an end-of-the-year BSME potluck from 16:00-19:00, so I recommended an art museum and a Christmas market to Grace and then went Buda-side for that. It was a small event, with just the BSME professors and about eight students, and we had a great time playing Salad Bowl (apparently also known as "Fish Bowl" and a bunch of other things) together. The Pósa Method professor also gave each of us a little note, which was super nice. After the potluck I rejoined Grace and we went to grab some food with Rowan and Caledonia, two of the BSM students I sing with sometimes. We spent most of the time complaining about the stress of finals, but it was a nice meeting and everyone seemed to enjoy getting to know each other a little. Grace and I went back to my apartment afterwards and made a second dinner together, combining various foodstuffs she had left over from Vienna with some good túró we had bought from the dairy store earlier. We spent the night eating, relaxing, and catching up with each other.

On Wednesday I took Grace to Fågel by Artizan, a really good oatmeal bar near the Parliament building, before seeing her off to Vienna one last time. I spent the rest of the daylight hours doing Christmas shopping for my families and attending one more folk singing lesson from Emese in the BSM building. It was all very quiet and peaceful, in contrast to the near-constant panic of the weekend. In the evening, things got more lively as I went out with my friend Tanmay--we hung out in his apartment for a while before going to a small party hosted by another BSM student and subsequently going to a ruin pub where about 30 BSM students were gathered. It was great to get to talk to so many of the people I've met this semester at once, although my introvert self got tired pretty quickly. I left around midnight and went back to Tanmay's apartment, where we stayed up until 4:00 talking and showing each other music. It was great!

Thursday was my last day in Budapest, and I started out by going to an art museum on Heroes' Square that I hadn't visited yet. It had a lot of great Hungarian art, including an exhibit that just consisted of the decorations of one of the huge rooms. I also saw a bunch of medieval Christian art, as well as some pretty landscapes and things. Afterwards I went back to the Vörösmarty Christmas market to finish my shopping to finish my shopping before taking the M3 (only metro line I hadn't taken yet this semester) to get lunch at Hari Kebab (a good restaurant across the street from BSM) one last time. From 15:00-18:00 we had a farewell party in the BSM building, where we received our final marks from the professors and had time to chat with them and our fellow students. I had a great time talking to all of the people I've gotten to know there, although it was strange to say goodbye without knowing when (if ever) we'll meet again. The math world is small, so with luck we'll run into each other at many conferences in the future. :)

The end of my time in Budapest flew past. I spent the evening packing up everything in my apartment and stayed up through the night, since I had to leave for the airport at 4:00 and didn't trust myself to wake up on time. I went for a 2:00 stroll to Heroe's Square, which was completely abandoned and shrouded in fog and beautiful. I made it to the airport without much trouble, and my flights all went without a hitch (in stark contrast to my bumpy ride to Europe back in September!) There were 5 BSM students on my first flight to London, which was a nice way to close out the semester. Customs were surprisingly easy to navigate, and I touched down in Champaign-Urbana around 19:30 local time. It's so good to be home! Between Monday morning and Friday night I only got about 12 hours of sleep total, so it was a huge relief to collapse in bed at the end of the week. All in all, it's been an amazing semester!

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Winding Down

Hello again,
This will likely be my final post made from Budapest! Less than a week from today I will be flying home, and my last post summarizing the semester will be made back in the United States. I'm in the middle of my final exams right now (two down, three to go), so things are a bit stressful, but I'm trying to take time to savor my last few days in Budapest even as I am forced to spend the majority of my time studying.

As expected, I spent most of last weekend working on my final problem sets of the semester, but I did have a couple of chances to have fun as well. I went folk dancing with two of my friends, Julia and Dipika, and it was just as amazing as last time! We learned a ton and has so much fun stumbling through the different dances together. On Sunday I also went on a half-day trip to the Szentendre Christmas market with my friend Travis. Szentendre is a beautiful little town half an hour north of Budapest by train, and we had a great time chatting with each other and taking in the sights. We're the two Lawrence students at BSM this semester, but he's decided to come back to Budapest for the spring semester while I'm returning to Lawrence in January, so we discussed our plans and what we're looking forward to in the new year and that sort of thing. It was good. :)

During the week I was once again preoccupied with my homework, but I also got out a couple of times to see new parts of the city. Wednesday was the last day of our Hungarian class, and to celebrate we went to another Christmas market in Buda. Both my apartment and classes are on the Pest side of the city, so I don't go over to Buda much, but it's very pretty! This Christmas market was much quieter than the touristy ones I've visited in the past, with a nice little skating rink in the middle. On Thursday I also went out on a little field trip led by Anna, the director of student services here, to some cool locations around the BSM building. We visited a huge cemetery where many famous Hungarians have been buried. Many of their names might not be familiar to you, but a bunch of the metro stops here are named after them, and it was great to finally learn who Batthyány Lajos, Blaja Lujza, and Kossuth Lajos were. The cemetery was also huge and very quiet, making it a peaceful respite from the business of the rest of the city. Afterwards we went to see the "Hidden Church," a large church constructed in the center courtyard of an old apartment complex, but unfortunately we weren't able to go very close because it's in danger of collapsing. The interior of the church was apparently converted into a gym years ago, and when the gym closed the building fell into disrepair. That was sad, but it was still cool to see from the outside!

And that's about it for the week! This weekend I'm trying to balance studying with revisiting some of my favorite places in Budapest, and it's going pretty well so far. Below I have some pictures of the places I've gone in the last week, which I'll do my best to provide informative captions for.

The city square in Szentendre with some of the Christmas market stalls around

I don't know if this was a holiday thing or not but I thought it was really nice

View over the rooftops of Szentendre!

One of the burial sites in Kerepesi Cemetery, which was especially interesting because the dome had weird acoustical properties. If you stand in one corner and whisper, you can be heard clearly only from the opposite corner, not the adjacent ones. :)

Kossuth Lajos was the Governor-President of Hungary during their revolution in 1848, and as such he is honored with an enormous mausoleum. Fun fact: Daniel Webster apparently admired him a great deal and wrote a book about his life?

I cannot remember who is buried here, but the statue is notably weird so I thought I would share it anyway

The Anonymous statue in City Park, where Erdős Pál and his other famous mathematician friends used to do work during college. I come and visit it whenever I feel like I need a little extra luck with my math homework.

The Christmas market at the Basilica! This one is a lot more touristy and crowded than the others I've been visiting lately, but it was still fun to go see.

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Bratislava/Vienna Photos (and others from ~December 1)

Here's another big photo dump, mostly from my Thanksgiving trip to Bratislava and Vienna this time. As usual, the photos correspond to the events discussed in the all-text post immediately preceding this one. I'll do my best to provide informative captions for the photos, but if anything is confusing then the previous post should contain the missing context somewhere. Enjoy! :)

Eötvös 10, the cultural center that hosts the folk dances I've started going to. It's an amazing place!

Going to the Christmas markets meant I finally got to take the M1, which is the oldest subway line in the world outside of England (it's 3rd overall behind London and Liverpool).

There were really cool things at the Christmas market! These were some of my favorite stalls.

I wasn't confined to the nosebleeds when I revisited Müpa, so I was able to get a better photo of the interior than last time. :)

The Wild Elephant hostel, where I stayed in Vienna. It's right in the center of the city and has a pretty crazy aesthetic--we were encouraged to draw on the walls if we felt like it. Some of the art is on display at the entrance here.

The old city center is beautiful!

This is a Holocaust memorial built on the site of the Neolog Synagogue, which was torn down in 1969.

A view down at the city from the castle

I have no idea what this building is but I could not stop staring at it

The Blue Church, one of the most famous tourist attractions in Bratislava! It was very pretty but also closed, so I didn't get to go inside. Ah well

The Slovak radio building, built during Communist times and sometimes considered one of the ugliest buildings in the world. I'm not a fan personally but it was fun to see

This Christmas market was right outside the hostel!

Apparently someone from Urbana has come to the hostel before! There was also a drawing of Illinois with a little heart where my hometown is, which made me absurdly happy. I really can't wait to come home.

Just some good lizards in the stonework of Bratislava

"Willow Mill near Nuremberg," one of my new favorite pieces of art by Albrecht Dürer.

"Wing of a Blue Roller" is one of the most lifelike paintings I've ever seen. Standing a foot away from it, I had difficulty convincing myself that it was a painting and not an actual wing framed on the wall. It's just stunning.