I’m not exactly sure how I should start writing about the last two days (or is it three days?—I’m still a little confused with the time change).  But since airplanes and airports and baggage claims and for some reason not going through customs nor anyone asking to see my passport are such boring introductions, I’ll just start at the place where G parked her car on the sidewalk.

It’s seemingly quite normal here.  After we left a little delivery truck took the space, and it was nearly three times the size of G’s car.

The streets are narrow and in my neighborhood, the Castle District, they are also stone.  So if people didn’t swing onto a sidewalk now and again no one would be able to park or drive down the roads.

Here is an example.  And this car, the Trabant (originally manufactured in East Germany but exported to most of the communist bloc back in the day), is a real auto treasure of Hungary.  Especially the green ones.

Yesterday I was at the Vásárcsarnok and the big grocery store there SPAR, by the Batthány tér metro station.  It’s a bit overwhelming to realize that you have no idea what the labels say nor can you really take a good guess since the language is so unfamiliar.  But, I didn’t get too discouraged.  I did see another American girl who walked up to a young Hungarian man and said:

Girl:  Hi, do you speak English?

Guy:  Yes.

Girl:  Okay great.  Do you know where the tortillas are?

He didn’t.  But, it can’t hurt but try and ask where the comforts of home aisle is.

The truth is that I’m still suffering a bit from the jet lag, so instead of writing too much, I’ll let the pictures I took last day and night from the neighborhood tell the story of my first days.  It’s remarkably beautiful here.  All joking aside about Hungarian stereotypes, horses, folk dresses, Jesuska decorating the Christmas tree… it’s really so beautiful here.  And it’s not just the architecture, which from the pictures you can see is stunning, and probably the first thing to hit Americans as being distinctively different from home.

It’s the way the light edges the stone and the colors of the homes on the hills setting in prismatic hues.  Of course all around there are people with cameras and big telephoto lenses, but it’s seems almost impossible to capture I think.  Anyway, here is almost what I’ve seen the past few days: