Tuesday was an interesting day.
I was tired and so decided to sleep in and miss the first hour and a half of class. When I arrived at class, I discovered that most of the people in my section had had similar ideas, because for the first hour or so there were only two people (out of fifteen) present. More people showed up around when I did, so by the end of the day we had made it up to a grand total of six people. People are getting tired of the class and several of the people in our section had taken the day to go into the countryside to eat the Hungarian crepe-like pancakes and drink wine. So, that explains the low attendance...
Lunch was a sandwich I had brought from my apartment, and so relatively unexciting. With sandwiches, I believe, the focus is always on the meat and cheese. But the important thing is the accoutrements. Determined by your focus, but critical to making an enjoyable and interesting sandwich. I went with mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes and arugula to flush out my sandwich of salami and cheese (an unidentified mild white cheese), and it was rather successful. But much less exciting than the lunches I've gotten when I eat out.
After class, I met with a connection, a Hungarian graduate student studying English at ELTE, one of the two big universities in Budapest (the other being BME, which is associated with our program). We went to a bar with one of his friends and discussed Budapest, what I'm doing, what they do. I got a large number of recommendations of places I need to go, from concert venues to bars to restaurants to parks and everything. They also told me about a wonderful sounding festival the city holds. It's called Gluttony Thursday, and on that day most of the restaurants in town offer everything on their menu for half off. It happens some day in spring, typically in March, and reservations are absolutely necessary on that day. So I need to scope out some places that are normally too expensive and make a reservation as soon as I find out what the date is...
I also talked to them about the places I had been, and said I had been over to the Four Tigers Market. They laughed and said that they've never been because it's an extremely sketchy place, like a ghetto or a shantytown and they're always scared of getting their stuff stolen from them when they pass by. I thought this was funny, because it really didn't seem too bad, but it's interesting to hear they're views of it.
I returned to my apartment, stopping to buy some groceries on the way, for a brief amount of time before turning around again and meeting up with people to make dinner. One of the guys on the program had volunteered to cook, and so made delicious chicken alfredo for about 7 of us. It was delicious, and we accompanied it with brie, wine, and palinka. It was my first time buying wine from a store to drink and it was...okay. The wine was very cheap (about 2.50 to 3 dollars a bottle) and not very good, but definitely better than you would expect for that price in the States. Plus, it was nice to have a glass of wine with dinner.
The apartment we were in was very nice. It was a one person apartment, but still very spacious, and the kitchen was incredible. Plus the building it was in was really cool looking and it was about a block and a half from the tea shop I had found the day before. All in all, it's pretty great. It's interesting to see different people's apartments and compare what we all got. Some people just got screwed in certain respects, but most people seem to have a nice place. The only thing is the rent...they seem to be all over the place. And don't really make sense, either based on location or on how nice the apartment is. It's kind of confusing.