Fall break, part five.

City number six: Budapest, Hungary.

I'll put up some pictures first... Budapest is beautiful, so enjoy.

 Parliament!

Szent Istvan Bazilika

View of the city and the Danube from atop Gellert Hill.

Heroes' Square by night.

We flew into Budapest from Milan, entering the country without even going through passport control.  (Disappointing… I kinda like getting stamps in my passport.  They’re fun to look at later.)  We had arranged to meet up with the Calvin semester students and stay with them for two nights, and then to spend our third night with Steve Michmerhuizen, a CRWM missionary who is supposed to be in Lupeni but is currently living in Budapest with Romanian visa issues.  I was excited about living with people for a few days—as much fun as traveling can be, I’ve decided that I’d much rather be rooted.  Maybe my current desire to just stay in a place and really know people comes out of the fact that I’ve been outside of the United States for six months of this calendar year… in Vietnam, Cambodia, Austria (that barely counts ‘cause it was only a few hours, but they are marked hours of independence in my memory, so it’s making the list), Bosnia, Romania, Italy, and Hungary.  Ridiculous.  I’ve been at home in Iowa for a grand total of about three weeks—spring break and week or so at either end of the summer.  I spent spring semester at Calvin, where I still feel most rooted, but the summer was spent between Pennsylvania and Ann Arbor (plus the month in Bosnia), and now I’m here.  Whew.  It’s hard for me to talk about it with people back home, particularly in Iowa—I feel like if I mention it, those good people who’ve never left the Midwest just look at me like I’m some crazy high-falutin’ girl and we’ve immediately lost everything we had in common.  But I’m rambling.  And exaggerating.  The point of the story is this: as thankful as I am to travel, I’d much rather have roots in places.  So staying with people we had connections to was a real joy.

I could give a play-by-play of our time in Hungary, but I’m sick of typing, and I’d rather have some stories left to just talk about!  So instead I’ll just describe the highlights and put up a few pictures.  Budapest is beautiful—it’s my favorite among all the cities we’ve visited, seriously.  I only wish I could speak Hungarian!  What a relief it was to come back across the border and feel like I could communicate!  (And how funny it is that, compared to Hungarian, my toddler-level Romanian feels comfortable and secure!)  Anyway… the highlight reel.

The most fun part of the whole trip for me was folk dancing.  We had spent the whole day exploring Budapest with a couple Calvin students (woooo!) and in the evening headed down to this club to do some folk dances.  I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what I imagined: a huge room full of people of all ages, an amazing live band with a fiddle and a flute and other strings and percussion playing lively music, a middle-aged man grinning and sweating through his button-down shirt, demonstrating steps to the crowd, all of us laughing and watching and tripping over our own feet.  We danced for a long time, sweating and laughing (it was hot in there, and the dances reminded me of some Nordic Dancers dances… ha) and generally having a blast.  I loved it.  If only I could find folk dancing in the Jiu Valley…

For me, Budapest was life-giving.  I hadn’t realized how much I missed Calvin folk until I was around them.  I hadn’t realized how hungry I was for conversations about new topics, with new personalities, until I found myself staying up until 2:30 every morning talking to whoever happened to be around.  It was a time of great joy for me, and I’m really grateful to the Calvin students for hosting us.  The time with Steve Michmerhuizen was the same way—how nice it felt to be in a home, having a “dad” prepare us dinner, staying up late talking and laughing and getting to know each other!  It felt comfortable and beloved, and I loved it.  Community.  Rootedness.  I have to seek that here, too, even though it’s much harder to find. 

Late Saturday night we boarded a train headed to Bucharest and left Hungary.  We crossed the border at about 2 AM, the doors flying open and a loud group of Hungarian border guards stomping in.  They brusquely examined our passports, stamping them loudly and eventually clomping back off the train; we curled up under our coats again and tried to fall back asleep as the train pulled out.  About 15 minutes later, though, we were stopped again, this time by Romania’s border patrol—they were much quieter, though, and moved efficiently through the cabin, barely looking at our passports before stamping them with the mark of official approval.  The difference was striking to me, especially as morning dawned and it became light enough to see Romania.  Granted, we’d been in really modern and Westernized cities all week.  But when we got off at 6 AM to switch trains, in the tiny little Romanian town of Simeria, I had to smile.  The station was old and run-down, without any heating; the tracks were rusted; stray dogs wandered in and out.  It was cold and dark and there were no signs anywhere.  And it felt like home.  Oh, good old rural Romania… how I love thee.

It’s good to be back in Lupeni.