My First Week
January 23, 2007
Jó napot kívánok!
I have been taking a “survival” course in Hungarian for the past week or so. We had class from 9-4 during the week and a shorter weekend class. I can now order things at restaurants in Hungarian (well, easy things). Hungarian has 14 vowels, which are pretty hard to pronounce. I think I missed my critical period for that! It also didn’t help that my right ear was popped for a week from being sick and from the airplanes. Now that I can hear in stereo, I hope my pronunciation of Hunagarian words will greatly improve. Learning Hungarian is difficult, because it is not an Indo-European language, so there aren’t very many cognates for common words.
I’m just starting to do things with other people on the program. It has been hard to coordinate things with limited internet access and no phone (though now I have a cell phone). The past two nights I have gone to dinner with groups from the Olaf interim trip, which has been fun!
We had class this weekend, so we didn’t really have a break to rest or do touristy things, but we did go on a bus tour of Budapest on Sunday for class. I took a lot of pictures that I will post in the next few days. We saw the City Park, Parliament, Fishermen’s Bastion, Castle Hill and Gellért Hill. I took some quick, freehand panoramas of the city from the hills in Buda looking onto Pest. I think these panoramas give you a much better idea of what the city is like compared to a single picture. I’m hoping to go back on a clearer day with my good camera to take some really nice panoramas.
For class one day we also took a walking tour. We walked to the Central Market, which is the largest market in Budapest in a huge building designed by Eiffel. For lunch I tried some lángos, which is deep-fried dough with toppings. I had it with sour cream and cheese, and it was excellent!
I’ve just started using the public transportation. It has been fun using the public transportation…I would be happy never owning a car! Some of the subways are hundreds of feet below the street. The stations have the longest and fastest escalators probably in the world (at least what I have seen in my vast experiences :) ). If you don’t believe me, watch the movie Kontroll, which is a film that takes place in the subway system of Budapest.
Anyway, I have some homework to do. I’ll put up more pictures soon!
Viszontlátásra!
Daniel