Home sweet home

I'm finally here!  The city is quite different than I had originally imagined.  Anna (one of the program coordinators) picked me up from the airport yesterday evening.  The weather was awful (cold and really foggy), and probably lent itself to a negative first impression of the city.  Fortunately this morning was a lot nicer.  It's a bit warmer here than in Minnesota (~40 F), but at this time of year, that's not hard to do.

I have an apartment, too!  Anna is letting me rent her apartment for the time that I am here.  It's not much: a small kitchen, bathroom, washing machine, and main room with my "bedroom" being a simple loft above the main floor.  I probably won't have a roommate, but there are a few BSM students who live in the area.  I'll post some pictures when I remember to bring my camera with me...

The traveling to Budapest wasn't too bad.  I was a bit jetlagged when I arrived and discovered I was still nearly awake at 3 in the morning.  It's a 7 hour time difference, so I guess it could be worse.  Fortuntely I didn't have any complications with flight delays or getting lost in the Munich airport.

I'm at the BSM school right now.  It's pretty nice.  It reminds me a bit of Northwestern at the moment, but that's probably an unfair comparison considering I'm only familiar with about 5 colleges in the US (and one of those is a little...Norwegian, shall we say).  I'm definitely going to miss the openness of St. Olaf; I'm not in the heart of the city, but all the buildings are at least 4 stories tall for kilometers around (not that I've been that far away from my apartment, but I'm imagining so).  Not too many people speak English, that's for sure.  I've heard some of the students hear speaking English, but some also speak German and Hungarian (obviously).  I will try to meet up with the St. Olaf students who are here for the Interim class to see how things are going, etc.

Now that I'm here it doesn't seem like I have much to do!  I have absolutely nothing scheduled until Wednesday, which is when the Hungarian Language course starts.  I should probably start unpacking.  I also need to buy groceries (eating is important!).  Like I said before, I don't have a meal plan, so I'm on my own for everything.  The BSM school has a cafeteria, but it's a bit pricey (250 for tiramisu!  oh wait, that's only about $1.30...).  Hopefully I'll be able to eat the food here.  I don't know why I wouldn't be able to, but it's nice knowing that they have some of the same things here that they do in the US (except lutefisk, but I don't think I'll miss that too much).

My apartment doesn't have any internet connection, so I'm going to talk to a guy that Anna knows who will set me up with a wireless card.  I also got a booklet of public transportation tickets that can be used for almost any sort of PT: bus, trolley, subway, train.  It's pretty amazing how much public transportation people use here (and how small the cars are).  I'm sure I'll get used to taking the trolley around.  Then again I'll have to if I don't want to walk about 30 minutes to the language school everyday.

Well, the hard part is over!  I'm definitely less overwhelmed now than I was yesterday, so I'll work on unpacking and getting things organized.  Until next time!  Feel free to comment and ask questions and stuff.