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.
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