June 30th 2016
I landed in Budapest and before I even knew it, I was hugging Bettina! I believe it was the fastest airplane pick-up ever! In only 15 minutes after the wheels hit the ground, I was in the car with Bettina and her mom. I'm so excited to see Bettina again. I came to Budapest to spend time with her and enjoy a few summer days there.
Also, her family is always so welcoming to me. I love spending time with them and getting to talk with them as well.
We got in, caught up for a bit, had a snack and then went to bed. We have a lot of exciting adventures ahead of us!
July 1st 2016
On our first full day, Bettina and I met up with her God-mother, who was giving us a tour of the city. She is a reporter, so she has inside access to a few things. Our first stop was the Budapest Google office. Every Google office decorates their building slightly differently to identify with the city that it is in. This was nautical themed. The big conference room looked like an Olympic swimming pool and arena. There were two smaller conference rooms that looked like a wet and dry spa. The main area had a swing and a cool grassy set up. It was certainly a unique thing to see in Budapest.
From there we walked around the city! We saw Olympic Park and the Parliament. I was at the Parliament a year and a half ago when I was last here, but that was the middle of the winter, so now in summer it was quite different. There were some flowers and everything shined a bit more. Bettina's Godmother also walked us around to a few Holocaust memorials in the city. The first is one that has statues of shoes on the side of the riverway. This is supposed to represent how the Nazis (or the Hungarian government) lined Jews up by the river and shot them right out of their shoes. It was very emotional and I thought the memorial was a very real and honest way to display the horrors. This was a big contradiction to the second memorial that we saw. This one displayed the Hungarian government as innocent in the Holocaust and barely mentions the victims. This monument is actually being protested by a lot of people in Budapest. They have been putting up their own living memorial about people who were victims of the Holocaust and are having events multiple times a week to remember the Holocaust. It is very clear that the history of the Holocaust has not been settled in Hungary.
We then went to the oldest theater in Budapest and got a backstage tour! The whole theater was beautiful and we had a blast playing on the stage!
We were very hungry, so we went to an Israeli restaurant for lunch (funny, right). The owner brought us out a whole array of food to taste, and it was delicious. The food certainly had a mixture of influence from different countries, which was fun. The food was delicious and it was a really fun time.
Oh! We also had dessert. We went to a fancy bakery to get dessert and it was incredible. I got something with a seaberry sauce. Seaberry is a fruit I had never heard of, and that was the best translation that we could come up with. They are very tart, unless of course they are made into a delicious sauce. And this dessert was delicious. It was a layered cake with poppy seeds and mmmm it was so good.
In the afternoon we went to Margarite Island, a place that I'd been the last time we were there. However, on my first visit it was so cold that we walked down, took a picture and left. This time, it was gorgeous! We made it there in perfect time for a water show. There was a fountain show with colors to music in the park and it was really fun!
To finish to trip, we took a picture in the exact same spot that we did last time I was here. To make it back, we took a boat ferry up the river! It was so beautiful, we sat on the top of the boat and enjoyed the view. It was very nice.
It was such a long day that we were exhausted by the time we got back.
July 2nd 2016
Today we went on an adventure with Bettina and her mom and siblings. In the morning, we went to the hospital in the rock. This was a hospital used in WW2 along with during other points of history. The most interesting thing was seeing the Cold War, WW2 and the Hungarian independence war from a completely new perspective. For a snack, we stopped into a bakery and had a capuchino and some ice cream! But this wasn't any ice cream, this had so many special flavors. I had two traditional flavors, a sweet cottage cheese and poppyseed. It was so delicious I was very happy. We then walked around the Budapest Castle grounds. This is another place that I'd been before, but it was completely different. Instead of hot wine there was lemonade, and all of the fountains were on. It was beautiful and enjoyable.
We then went on a tour of the mountains. We went up the hill, went on the children's railroad and then down a chair lift. It gave us an incredibly beautiful view of Budapest. It was such a fun afternoon.
We rushed home, because we had tickets, curtsy of Bettina's Godmother, to recirque, which was like a circus soleil in Hungary. We got all dressed up and went to the theater. The show was incredible! The had elements that I'd never seen before! Like a tight rope... that wasn't tight. So it was like a thin slac line, but he had two of them to use! It was incredible. My favorite act was the simple one with two people doing acrobatics. Overall the show was so incredible and I'm so thankful that her Godmother got us the tickets and I had the opportunity to go with Bettina. It was very memorable.
After the show, it was still light out! So we took the opportunity to go outside and take pictures. We did a whole photo shoot! We enjoyed setting up different shots and taking beautiful pictures. It was a ton of fun and we really enjoyed each other's company. I couldn't have asked for a more special evening with Bettina.
July 3rd 2016
For our last day, we decided to spend some time just hanging out. My mom likes to say that Bettina is the girly girl friend that I never had, cause we lived so far apart. So, what did we do? We went shopping! I loved having a personal stylist! Bettina is quite a shopper and we found so many fun things. I got a new romper and a dress. I was a very fun afternoon. Every time we are together, we like to exchange recipes to learn a little more about each other's culture. I taught her how to make my mom's pasta and cheese. She and her family loved it! Bettina taught me how to make apple pie. However, this apple pie is not like the American apple pie, this is a Hungarian pastry and it was delicious. |
We spent the end of the evening drinking Palinkak and wine and gossiping and sharing stories in her hot tub. It was the perfect way to end the fantastic few days.
I can not express in words how special this friendship is to me. Having the opportunity to stay connected to Bettina and be fortunate to see her three times within the last two years. We have such a special opportunity to get to learn and stay in contact with each other. I hope one day she can come visit me in America and that we stay in touch for a long time.