Photo: A View of Budapest

So here’s a curious detail of my life during the past year: I have visited Hungary four times, most recently this past weekend, and don’t think I’ve mentioned it once here.  Such is the curious nature of familiarity, and the nature of going somewhere when the primary intent isn’t so much to explore it so much as to visit your relatives (in my case my brother in Budapest and my grandmother and cousins in Miskolc, two hours train ride east).

Not like we just sit around at home of course- in the past year I’ve toured the Hungarian parliament twice (once in Hungarian, once in English), climbed the hills on the Buda side to the old castle four times, clambered around the Bukk mountains in the northeast, took a dip in the Cave Bath (as awesome as it sounds, a thermal spring in a natural cave), sample the local nightlife as well as the local wine and palinka…

Ok I guess we do a lot of exploring but in familiar-to-us places so it never gets mentioned, so here’s a nice view of Budapest with a statue of King St. Stephen and the Freedom Bridge spanning the Danube with my brother’s university in the distance.  Cheers!