Pictures from Near September 21st

This is just another picture of Keleti pályaudvar, the train station near my apartment, but I liked how it turned out so I decided to include it anyway.

Some delicious, fancy gelato that I got with some other BSM students near the Basilica!

St. Stephen's Basilica, exterior

St. Stephen's Basilica, interior

This is one of the nicer streets in Kaposvár, lined with super pretty, interesting shops. We had a great time walking down it and trying to find the bus station.

One of the administrative buildings (city hall? I actually forget) in Kaposvár.

Vegetarian Lescó ft. My Best Friend Bread

The central area of the lescó festival, where everyone was eating. The various groups cooking lescó were arrayed around the edges of the square.

Kürtőskalács (chimney cake) is a traditional festival food in Hungary :)

The countryside in southern Hungary is beautiful and my pictures don't do it justice.

A herd of deer on the deer farm!

In case you didn't believe me when I said they also had emus on the deer farm. They also had a kangaroo or two!

A nice tower near the observatory that we visited, Zselici Csilligspark.

The view from the top of the tower! The forest extends to all sides of the park, making for some incredible night skies.

The observatory itself, as seen from the top of the tower. It's hard to see in the photo, but the benches and fences in the field are arranged into the shapes of various constellations.

Lángos! They're basically fried dough, covered in sour cream and cheese. Definitely not good for you, but very tasty. :)

The church in Bőszénfa

Fireworks! I'm bad at photography but that's my best attempt to capture them.

A nice pond near the observatory that a bunch of us hiked to Sunday morning.

A small statue in Krishna Valley, illustrating the concept of karma.

A small section of the shore of Lake Balaton!

If you want to have more context for what these photos are of, keep scrolling to the post where I actually write explanations of what I've been up to. :)

A Trip Out of Budapest

Hello again,
It's afraid it's been rather longer than I meant it to be since my last blog post. I've finally started to accrue significant homework assignments in all of my classes, and that work has kept me from writing up the more exciting happenings here in Budapest. But now I'm done with classes for the week, so I finally have some free time! I've started to make more friends in the program, going out to get lunch or dinner after classes a few times. One night we went to St. Stephen's Basilica, which was absolutely stunning. I still haven't gotten used to all of the beautiful old architecture they have around here--it blows me away every time.

By far the biggest news of the week is that I went on an awesome weekend trip to the countryside with 12 other BSM students! We all gathered at 7:45 to catch a train out of Budapest under the supervision of our guide, Emese. The train took us to Kaposvár, a smaller city in the Zselic region of Hungary (towards the southwest). The city was incredibly beautiful, with lots of nice pedestrian areas and small shops. We were only there for an hour or so, but we got to go through a small culture festival happening in the city center, which was particularly pleasant. We got on a bus a bit before noon to go to the village of Bőszénfa (which translates to "full of coal and trees"), which is nestled in the middle of some amazing hills and forests. They were having a lescó festival (lescó is a traditional Hungarian stew made with tomatoes and peppers), so there were lots of vendors competing to cook the best dishes and we were able to sample freely. Visitors then donated money to their favorite chefs, with the proceeds going towards a village fund to build a new school. Many of the dishes were meat-based, but I went around with the two other vegetarians and found a few options that we could eat, which were all delicious.

We ate and enjoyed the music and festive atmosphere for an hour or so before getting back on a bus to visit a nearby deer farm run by Kaposvár University. We went on a tour of some of their land, which covers about 5 square miles in total and is home to many different species of deer, as well as donkeys, horses, cows, goats, pigs, and a couple of emus. It's the start of deer breeding season right now, so the deer were calling to each other as we went by and it was very fun. After the deer farm, we visited Zselici Csillagspark, which is a wonderful dark-sky observatory (csillag = star) on top of a hill in the middle of the forest. It was still light out when we visited, so we weren't able to see the stars, but there was a tall tower from which we could see almost all the way to Lake Balaton in the north. The hills and forests around here actually remind me a lot of the countryside in southern Wisconsin, which made me really happy.

We left the observatory around 17:00 and returned to Bőszénfa for dinner, where the festival was still happening. Most of the BSM students there got lángos together, which was great fun. Some live music featuring many Hungarian bops added to the party, and at the end of the evening there were fireworks! It was a great festival, and I had a good time talking to the other BSM students as well as a couple of locals who started chatting with us. We spoke to the mayor briefly, and then departed for our guesthouse in a neighboring village. We stayed up until 12:30 or so talking with one another, then got some sleep before making ourselves breakfast on Sunday morning. We returned to the observatory to hike around in the hills for an hour or two, and then departed for Krishna Valley, a Hare Krishna settlement a little bit to the north. We stayed there for about three hours, walking around the valley, admiring the cows and gardens, and eating a delicious vegetarian lunch. I also got to have some milk fresh from a cow. :)

Our weekend trip ended with a short visit to the shores of Lake Balaton, the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe. It was super pretty! We had less than an hour there though, so we just walked along the shore a little ways and admired the view before hopping back on a train to Budapest. I returned to my home around 20:00 Sunday night, leaving me with just enough time to get my homework done before classes resumed Monday morning. Overall, it's been an exciting week! I'll post pictures from my trip in the morning.

Pictures from Near September 14th

The Shoes on the Danube are a memorial to the people who were shot into the Danube as part of the Holocaust. I don't really have anything to add to the statement they make.

There are a LOT of equestrian statues in Budapest, and I can't read the plaques so I have no idea who they are. They look pretty though!

This is one view of the Parliament building, which I briefly mistook for the basilica that I was trying to find.

Another statue that I couldn't read the plaque for. There are so many statues and hopefully by the end of the semester I will know what more of them mean.

This is a neat statue on Margaret Island! It was built in the 70s to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest (and Óbuda) into Budapest. This photo didn't capture how cool the texture of the sculpture was, but trust me, it's pretty neat.

Today I learned that trains in Hungary go Csi-hu-hu!

This was a huge fountain in the middle of Margaret Island that did water shows choreographed to music! When I walked by it was playing "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel (they play a lot of English language music in Budapest) and it was a lot of fun. I tried to record it but the only thing I can upload to my blog is this one exceedingly bad photo. Ah well.

One of the many pretty gardens on Margaret Island

A beautiful pond in the middle of Margaret Island

A cool little tower on Margaret Island! So many pretty things on Margaret Island.

A picture of about half of Market Hall from the inside. It's enormous and so beautiful!

There were lots of cool, interesting things being sold but for some reason the only wares I took a photo of were these.

A view of Market Hall from the outside, on Fővám tér.

Classes!

I've been in Budapest for 11 days now, meaning this is now the longest I've ever lived in a large city. The adjustment has not been as difficult as I thought it would be--although there are tons of people here, I've found a number of nice green spaces that feel more open than the city hubs, and my apartment provides a good space for me to be alone when I need it. I've definitely been experiencing some culture shock over the last week or so, but overall I'm feeling pretty happy in Europe.

Classes at BSM started last Monday, and I've spent most of this week attending as many of them as I can. We don't register for classes until three weeks into the semester in this program, so that students have time to shop around and find the classes best suited to them. I had a tentative schedule prepared before classes started, and after this week I feel fairly confident that I'm going to stick to it. In case anyone is curious, I'll describe each of the classes below:

1. Beginning Hungarian: I'm living in Hungary, which is a great opportunity to learn some Hungarian! Although I'm mainly here to study math, I'm also interested in linguistic anthropology, and Hungarian is interesting to study because it is one of the few non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. For the first week we focused on learning pronunciation and some basic phrases, but I hope to learn as much as I can before the semester ends. 

2. Discovery Learning (The Pósa Method): Hungary is famous worldwide for its methods of math education, and this is one of the primary techniques. I don't know much about it yet, but the basic idea is that the teacher creates "problem threads" for the students. These sequences of exercises lead the students to independently rediscover important mathematical results. It's a unique way of teaching math, and I'm excited to learn in the very place where it originated.

3. Algebraic Topology: I've wanted to take a topology class for years, and now I finally have the opportunity to do so! Topology is a sort of "rubber-sheet geometry" that examines the ways in which different objects can or cannot be transformed into one another, and algebraic topology aims to do this by establishing connections with group theory and other areas of abstract algebra. It's a little bit difficult to explain but it's awesome.

4. Commutative Algebra: Commutative algebra is an important branch of modern algebra, and it is very closely related to algebraic geometry, the field in which I did research this summer. This class is rumoured to be hard, so I expect to be collaborating frequently with my classmates, which is another important part of my mathematical education. :)

5. Functional Analysis: To be honest, I know very little about what functional analysis is. It combines some different ideas from linear algebra and real analysis and involves infinite-dimensional vector spaces I think? Mathematics can be roughly divided into algebra (which mostly considers discrete things) and analysis (which mostly considers continuous things), and I know much more about algebra than analysis. The professor for this course seems great though, and I'm hoping it will help balance out my schedule, since the other two courses I'm taking are on the algebraic side.

In addition to these five courses I plan to take, I also attended two courses that I won't have time for later in the semester. One was an introduction to topology, and the other was a problem-solving course called Conjecture and Proof. Both seem great, but sadly they don't fit with my schedule, so I cannot take them.

In addition to all of the credit courses here at BSM, there are four non-credit courses, all of which are interesting. The only one I've attended so far is Classical Algebra, which covers some techniques for working with polynomials and complex numbers that aren't usually taught in American schools. The professor is absolutely hilarious, and it's worth going to lecture just to observe his teaching. The other three non-credit courses are a GRE prep course, a Putnam prep course (the Putnam is a very hard math test undergraduates can take for fun), and a Hungarian culture course, and I hope to attend all of them as long as I have time.

Although this week has been dominated by taking classes and adjusting to the pace of school life again, I did find some time on Friday to explore. I took the subway to Fővám tér, which is right in the middle of the city, and then walked north along the Danube towards the parliament building. I meant to visit St. Stephen's Basilica, but I got distracted watching the boats on the river and somehow missed it. I did see a lot of statues and the parliament building though. After walking for a while, I crossed a bridge onto Margaret Island, which is a huge park in the middle of the city. I walked the whole length of the park, seeing lots of interesting statues, gardens, and fountains, before crossing back over to the Pest side of the city. At that point I realized I had walked roughly eight miles, so I found a bus back to Fővám tér and then caught the subway back to my apartment. It was a great time!

I had planned to go on more explorations this weekend, but I came down with a bad cold and decided to lie low for a few days to ensure I'm healthy enough to go to classes again on Monday. I did go out to Market Hall with Mykhaylo on Saturday morning though, and we bought some bread and spices to liven up our cooking in the apartment. Market Hall is huge and kind of touristy, but it's also a lot of fun to explore, and I loved seeing all of the produce, spices, cheeses, and textiles that people were selling in the stalls! Overall everything is going very well here, and I'm excited to see what the next few weeks have in store now that I'm becoming more comfortable with the city!

Pictures to follow immediately.

Pictures from Near September 8th

I realized that if I add more than a couple of pictures to any of my blog posts they get wayyy too long, so from now on I'm going to start putting text updates and captioned pictures in different posts. These pictures correspond roughly to the the events I wrote about in my second post, "Getting Oriented."

Keleti pályaudvar is the main train station in Budapest, and it's a 15-20 minute walk from my apartment! There are lots of nice restaurants around it, as well as the subway line to the heart of the city.

Széchenyi gyógyfürdő is the largest medicinal bath in Europe, and it's also about a 15 minute walk from my apartment! I haven't been in yet, but it's one of the many beautiful structures in City Park, and I'm sure I'll go back to look at it later in the semester.

The subway in Budapest is amazing as well as beautiful! This photo does a poor job of capturing the view as you go up the escalators to Fővám tér. 

Szabadság híd (Liberty Bridge) is the bridge across the Danube at Fővám tér. It's pretty!

Gellért Hill is named for Saint Gerard, who was thrown off its peak. The building at the top is the Citadella, and most of the hill is covered with really nice trails for walking and admiring the views of the city.

The Liberty Statue is a monument on top of Gellért Hill. It was originally constructed by the Soviets to celebrate the liberation of Hungary in World War II, and after the Cold War its inscription was modified to make it a symbol of Hungarian freedom and democracy.

This is just one of the many beautiful views of Budapest from the top of Gellért Hill.

this is a Very Good Snail and i thought it was important to share

The Hotel Gellért at the base of Gellért Hill is very famous, and they have this awesome fountain! The water runs out in eight different directions, and it also serves as a drinking fountain for passerby.

Getting Oriented

It's been a busy but good few days in Budapest! Both of my roommates (Mykhaylo and Ruchit) have moved in now, and we went on a couple of walks around the neighborhood together, trying to stock up on basic foods, cleaning products, and the like. After some searching, we found the nearest supermarket, which allowed us to buy all of the things we hadn't been able to locate in the smaller shops all around our apartment. We also located the school building where classes start tomorrow, as well as the Keleti train station, which is a big hub for Budapest's public transportation system as well as the departure point for many of the international trains. It's a beautiful building! I've been walking about four hours a day for the past three days or so, which has helped me get a lot more familiar with my immediate surroundings in Budapest. I've gone on a couple of nice walks through City Park, which has multiple castles as well as lots of nice grassy spaces and trees.

On Saturday at 13:30 we had a couple of practical orientation sessions, which were reasonably helpful and informative. The biggest benefit was that I got to meet some more of my classmates for the semester! I spent most of the socializing time we had catching up with my friend Travis and meeting his roommates, who all seem very nice. In the evening we went on a walking tour of Budapest that highlighted some of the beautiful structures on the Danube as well as some of the "ruin bars" that form the center of the party scene here. I'm not much for clubbing, but I did go to dinner at a nice place in that district and we had a good time.

Today (Sunday), I went on a long walk with Ruchit up to the Citadella, which is a pretty fortification on top of a big hill on the Buda side of the city. The whole hill is a park with lots of trails winding up and down, and the view at the top is spectacular! You can see the entire spread of the city beneath you. We also had opportunities to travel on the trolleys, buses, and subway lines, and the whole public transportation system is wonderful! The subways in particular are the best I've ever ridden on, and the stations are beautiful. Prices in general are very reasonable, which means that I'm able to eat out with friends frequently and use the public transportation system as much as I want. :)

I'm running out of time to make this post before I have to get ready for the start of classes tomorrow, so the rest of the post will be in bullet-point form. In the last few days these things happened:

-A person asked Travis and me whether or not it was true that U.S. students had to pay to attend state schools.

-I learned that the crows here actually have a lot of white on their bodies, with only the wings, head, and tail being totally black.

-I ran across a number of buskers as well as a capoeira group while wandering through City Park.

-I realized that smoking is MUCH more prevalent in European cities than it is in American ones. However, so are bakeries! So I guess it evens out.

First Day in Budapest

Greetings from Budapest! After spending all of Tuesday traveling, I've started to explore my new surroundings and get settled in my apartment for the semester. Travel turned out to be a bit more complicated than expected--I had three flights, and one of them got cancelled while the other two were each delayed by over an hour. I had to do a fair amount of running around to make all of the connections work out, but in the end things were fine and I touched down in Budapest at around 9:30 AM local time.

I didn't sleep on the flight over and was pretty jet-lagged when we arrived, but fortunately customs went very smoothly. I had some trouble finding the BSM representative I was supposed to meet at the airport, but along the way I met another student in my program, which was nice. We eventually met the BSM representative, who drove us through the city to our apartments. Budapest is beautiful! I didn't get a chance to take many pictures today, but the topography varies from Illinois-like flatness to rolling hills, and there are a lot of cool old buildings throughout the city. My apartment is located just a 5 minute walk from campus, and it's also very nice. Both of my roommates are arriving later than me, so I got the first pick of bedroom. All of the rooms are spacious, and in particular the ceilings are shockingly high--over 12 feet! I spent a good while today appreciating the fun echoes and unpacking my basic essentials.

As a sort of mini-orientation, my landlady (who is also the director of students for BSM) gave me a quick tour of the surrounding blocks. There are several grocery stores and an ATM in my immediate vicinity, along with a wide variety of restaurants, cafés, and bakeries. Even better, my apartment is just a block away from City Park, a huge green space in the middle of Budapest. There's a lot of construction happening near where I am right now, but I hope to explore the more peaceful areas of the park in the near future.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening in a jet-lagged stupor, going out to convert some money into forints (the Hungarian currency) and buy groceries but otherwise remaining in my apartment to relax and unpack. Around 9:00 PM my first roommate arrived, and we seem to get along pretty well. We both enjoy math, classical music, and video games, and tomorrow I'm going to take him on the mini-tour my landlady gave me earlier. Over the next few days we're hoping explore our surroundings more and to get our kitchen stocked with ingredients to cook meals with actual nutrients in them. That's about all for now--I'll close out this post with the few pictures I've taken so far:

The view from the plane somewhere near Philadelphia

My room in Budapest (no decorations up yet)

Forints are very pretty (1 forint is about a third of a cent so the bills have big numbers on them)

The ceilings in my apartment are absurdly high--this is as high as I can reach!

This is the view from my apartment window