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