Budapest, Easter, life...

It was wet, rainy, even a bit snowy, and rather miserable on and off for a couple weeks, but whenever the sun comes out, I am utterly in awe of what a beautiful city I live in. The gorgeous old buildings are now framed with a rainbow of flowers in the parks and on the trees. Even though I've been here for seven months now and walk through the center almost every day, I still find myself stopping to take pictures.

I celebrated Easter with my host family. We dyed about a thousand eggs, and they thought it was funny when I tried to dip them in multiple colors of draw designs on them. I didn't do a very good job, as my draying utensil was a scrap of paper folded into a point, but I had to try. All of you know how I'm incapable of doing things how everyone else does... The Croatian custom is to bring an egg whenever you pay anyone a visit around Easter, so I saw that I wasn't the only one to try to make designs on my eggs. Someone made a really cool Indian-looking pattern using wax.

Shortly after, I left on a spontaneous trip to Budapest. We got the idea less than two weeks before we left, and the day before, we were still iffy on some minor details like who was coming and where we were going to stay, but it all came through.

We took the "brzi" train, which took a good 7 1/2 hours to traverse what should have taken about 3. Brzi means fast, so either it's someone's idea of a joke, or it's brzi because it only stops in every 3rd village.

Upon arrival, I was immediately awed by the city. I think it's one of the most beautiful cities I've seen; it certainly has the most beautiful architecture. Zagreb's ornate facades look plain in comparison. I missed, however, the lounging atmosphere of Zagreb. It seemed much busier and noisier, and lacked Zagreb's plentiful parks and cafes, where people linger to talk, watch people pass and enjoy the day. I loved walking along the Danube at night and watching the reflections of buildings ripple in the water, but the cars whizzing past spoiled the tranquility.

We met up with some Brazilian exchange students who showed us around the city. It was nice to not have to worry about where we were going and how we would get back, and they told us about life in Hungary. Croatian may be difficult, but after hearing Hungarian, I feel quite lucky. They have to learn 20 cases, as opposed to our seven, and I can't even get my mouth around many of their words. Ironically enough, the word for "hi" sounds like "see ya", and "hello" means "bye".