Life in Switzerland: Budapest

On the Thursday afternoon after the last exam, as I began packing for Easter break, I realized that it was the first time I had needed to pack a bag since I arrived in Lausanne nearly 3 months ago. I couldn't believe I really not been out of the city overnight even once. I came from a life where I traveled somewhere nearly every other weekend, so having stayed three months anywhere seemed incomprehensible to me.

My flight left Geneva early on Friday morning for the short one and half hour direct flight to Budapest. The country is part of the Schengen zone, is in the EU but is not on the euro, so I had the fun of getting used to a new currency, the forint, and trying to figure out exactly how much a 10,000 forint bill was worth (answer = about $51).

My first impression when I traveled from the airport to the city center was that it was old-world Europe, run down, war-torn, and reminiscent of what I picture about Russia in the 1950s. Luckily, that was just the outskirts. The city center was bright, clean, picturesque, but still quaint. The forecast had called for intermittent rain, but I managed to get really lucky with the weather, with warm temperatures, blue sky, and no precipitation. During Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I walked all over the city, seeing all the famous sites, and my stomach cooperated nicely after I gently eased back into real food. (I even got to try some Hungarian sausage.) I went to Heroes Square, to the Castle District, to the National Museum, to a traditional Hungarian music and dance concert, to lots of wonderful outdoor fairs, on a dinner cruise on the Danube, and to the famous thermal baths, twice. It was a great city for a weekend vacation, and I managed to thoroughly and fully relax for the first time since school started. However, my hotel was located next to the zoo, so I was awakened each morning to the alarming cries of a male peacock stating his territory, and put to bed each night by the deep grunts of a lion.

I noticed especially that the city was all about artists. Every corner had a street musician playing for money, often young high-school age students, but sometimes older men and women. Every poster and billboard on the streets seemed to advertise a concert, a play, the opera, or a new art exhibition opening soon. There were many art exhibitions spread outdoors around the city as well.

On our descent into Geneva during the return trip home Monday morning we cruised down to landing speed and seemed ready for a textbook finish before the pilot suddently gunned the engines and pulled the nose high into an ascent. The passengers looked around at each other in concern as the pilot informed us hurriedly that we were aborting the landing, that it was a completely normal procedure, and that he would tell us more as soon as he knew more. After a few seemingly endless minutes, as we climbed higher and higher and flew farther and father away, the pilot came back on to tell us that the runway had been blocked by another plane, from Iberia Airlines, so we had aborted the landing so as not to crash into it. (Seemed reasonable to me). Luckily, since Geneva is a relatively small airport, we were cleared to land about 15 minutes later without incident.