Home, bittersweet home

It's almost 2am, ah jetlag, slept till noon today so it's gonna be tough to sleep, and I am planning to get up relatively early in the morning, so this will be short.
It's good to be home, seeing my family and friends, but I feel a little foreign. Yesterday as I was walking around the city in the evening, I heard lots of English around me and for a moment I wasn't sure where I was. Then I saw that people were stopping at the "Don't walk" sign when there were obviously no cars anywhere nearby, and I knew it could not be New York.

When I wanted to get some cash, I quickly realized I had no idea what my ATM card's pin was. I went to the bank to try to change it and they said I needed a new card ordered, which would take 10-15 business days. Considering that I am leaving within 5 business days, this seemed like a bad idea. I can now only get cash at the bank, which is of crourse, closed after 5 and on weekends and they charge some ridiculous amount for withdrawal. And then there are the public bathrooms you have to pay for. I just put my headphones in and pretend I didn't hear, and if they bother me more, I pretend I don't speak Hungarian. It worked once. Once again I was shocked by the extreme poverty. Homeless people in New York look almost nice compared to some of the people living in the uderpasses here in Budapest. Ah Eastern Europe...

But all these are things I am just not used to anymore. America is really a country of the most convenieces. What I will never get used to is the hatred that is everywhere here. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 against the Habsburg Monarchy. It's our biggest national holiday, sort of like July 4th for the US. In the past few years, holidays have been excuses for some people to go out on the streets, demonstrate, throw things, start fires, beat up others, and so on. These people are usually considered neo-nazis, most of them are skinheads, wear all black or shirts that say "100% Hungarian" or something along those lines. Today already, the police have found some unused Molotov cocktails near a very popular tourist site. On my way to meet a friend tonight, i ran into a group of these neo-nazis, about 10 of them, girls and guys, wearing all black, funny hats, and carrying flags that used to symbolize the Hungarian nazi movement of the "Arrow cross" during WWII. They were on the other side of the street, fortunately; nonetheless, it was scary and so so sad!! I am definitely going to avoid the city tomorrow.

Happier thoughts: my friend Szidi who I've known since we were 10 cooked me this, so yummy!!



Last night, a couple of friends took me to this new spot called "Instant" that used to be an abandoned building in the old Jewish quarter of the city. Now there is bar/cafe in it. The building has a typical atrium with apartments along the sides, and each apartment has a different theme now. In the middle of the atrium there are these blue fish hanging, looks cool in the evening lighting.





One of the rooms had all this furniture hanging upside down from the ceiling while people were sitting on the floor.



The place was packed and we stood around for a while drinking this delicious Polish herbal vodka called Zsubrovka with some apple juice (really tasted like some kind of tropical fruit mix, goes down way too easliy) but I got pretty tired after that and ended up sleeping 13 hours straight last night. Ah so nice :)