I'm in Hungary and it's raining and the city is old and I'm loving it. Not much to say about the Aeroflop flight. It was much better than the stories I had heard from my mother in the 60's or even 10 years ago when Tanya's uncle told me the pilots are always over an hour late so that they get sped along without blood alcohol checks. But if I didn't have a drop of that countries blood in my stream, I'd say the food was terrible. Gellatinous coldcuts with huge chunks of fat and a hard boiled egg served with a sliver of rye bread and butter. Mmm! Desert was a 4 X 4 chocolate stale black forest tort. Thank God for the beverage cart.
It's been rainy off and on here but I did manage to get out and walk quite a bit. It's a beautiful city although many of the buildings look in need or repair. My housing is in an old 1810 building up on a hill overlooking the city. It's not centrally located and quite a walk from the embassy and the clinic but only a short ride on the metro. But when you're walking down old streets, smelling goulash, and looking over the castles at the Danube who cares?
But the language here is insane! It doesn't sound like anything familiar. Sort of reminds me of how we felt in Greece. No cognates. I got in the cab at the airport and showed the two addresses I needed; one to pick up the key and the other where I am staying. That conversation took about 5 minutes and I was about to get out of the car when he figured it out. Between the two of us, we tried speaking Hungarian, English, Russian, Spanish, French, and German!
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 