Here we are, just about five whole days somewhere in Budapest. Of course, I know physically where we are right now. But I haven't yet gotten a sense of
here. We are still settling in, finding our feet, orienting ourselves. These feelings of "where exactly are we?" are produced partly because we had to stay at another apartment the first night, partly because we are not living in the part of the city we usually inhabit, partly because we haven't figured out a rhythm of days for
living in Budapest rather than
visiting Budapest, and partly because we arrived thoroughly disoriented from jet lag. It is all coming together, but it's surprised us how complicated a trip like this is.
We have done lots of travelling before. But every time we went somewhere to
live, as opposed to
visit, we were travelling professionally and had a whole professional identity to fit into. Now we are living in this city in a very different way.
It took me a while to compose this post, because I just wasn't sure what the theme of Budapest no. 1 should be, and then I decided I would write about that. Just like I don't really have an image to capture our first week--just one of the many new faces I discovered.
We have had (and are continuing to have) a lot of fun. We have walked several times over to the center of Budapest and up Andrassy Avenue (our old stomping grounds). We've visited the market and purchased cheese and salami and bread for our string bags. We have eaten dinner in our most favorite Budapest restaurant from all our trips here, the Café Kor (where the hostess actually remembered us!). And last night (courtesy of our generous landlord John Farago who gave us his tickets), we went to hear one of the many Budapest orchestras play a fascinating program of Bach and Villas-Lobos in the (relatively new and (completely) beautiful Bela Bartok Concert Hall at the Palace of Music. Tonight we are going to a café down the street for jazz.
So it all wonderful, but it just feels a little bit like we're somewhere in Oz.
