My Whirlwind Introduction to Travel Blogging

I recently wrote about my decision to pursue travel blogging. I'll continue teaching English and writing this blog but some things will change with the content and less of my life will be in it. Of course it will still be me and my voice throughout the articles but I will focus more on the story of the places and the people I meet.

The first step in this change was attending TBEX (travel blogging conference) in Athens Greece. I'd say the stars lined up for me fairly well as the conference fit perfectly into October break from my teaching job. I have to say it was far beyond my expectations.

At the conference I was able to meet loads of wonderful people who are doing exactly what I want to do. Plus we all have the same interest in the world. It's great being able to talk about the awe of travel.

In addition to my experiences at the conference, the City of Athens truly opened it's doors to my fellow TBEXers and I. We were given passes to explore amazing ancient ruins as well as some amazing parties showcasing the beauty of Greece. Be on the lookout for my detailed posts about Athens coming up this week.

Beyond that, in the next few weeks I'm going to try to put everything I've learned into re-building this blog into a better blog. I hope on the other side everyone enjoys the new better That Time I Moved To...

And I'm off to.................................. GREECE!!!

As I've spent the past 2+ years teaching English as a way to travel I've realized some things. First, my soul mate is travel. Nothing on this Earth gives me more happiness then stepping off a boat/bus/train/plane/any mode of transportation into a new city. Second the way parents interact with their children's school is dramatically different in different countries. And third, I want to spend more time doing the thing I love the most: traveling. It's not that I don't like teaching, I just don't like staying still. Here months sometimes pass without me earning enough money to leave the country.

So here we have the problem, money. I'm not talking lots of it, I've visited countries on very small budgets before but you do need a bit. So I've decided I need to start looking into new ways to travel and make money. I'll still be teaching English however I want to be able to visit more cities in Europe while I'm based in Hungary, and that requires more funds.

So how will I do this?

I've decided to attend TBEX Athens and learn more about the world of travel blogging. And hopefully break into it.

TBEX is the leading conference for travel blogging and a great place to network. This year's TBEX Europe's conference is being held in Athens Greece next week. As I debated whether or not I should sign up I realized it fits perfectly into my Autumn holiday from school. It's like the universe pushed me towards it :-)

I'm looking forward to meeting people with the same passions as myself, seasoned travelers who want to share their knowledge. So as I prepare my business cards and pack my carry-on I'm dreaming about my possibilities.

T-minus 3 days :-)

Szent István Day!

August 20th is an important day in Hungary. It is a National Day celebrating St Stephen (Szent István in Hungarian). St Stephen was the first king of Hungary way back in year 1000 (or 1001 depending on your source). The day is filled with many events and culminates with fireworks on the Danube.

I was particularly excited to see fireworks for this holiday because of my mishap with the 4th of July fireworks while I was in the US. The 4th of July was very wet where my parents live, and although the rain had stopped I couldn't find the level of patriotism needed to go stand in the humid aftermath amongst my fellow countrymen, to watch fireworks shot off while not being able to drink alcohol in the street. So instead I settled on watching the NYC fireworks on TV. However due to misreading the TV schedule we found ourselves watching a firework display set to overlaid music with commentary about an hour after the real thing. Needless to say I barely made it through 3 minutes before demanding it be turned off. Seriously it was awful, they drowned out the sound of the bangs. What are fireworks without their noise?

So I was excited for fireworks in Budapest.

Also, this seems as good a time as any to point out that most Americans pronounce Budapest in correctly. When saying Budapest you should say it as if it was spelled Budapesht. This is because "s" in Hungarian makes the "sh" sound in English. If you want the English "s" sound in Hungarian you write it as "sz".

So back to the festivities. As I've spent a bunch of money improving my apartment over the past few weeks, I didn't want to spend much money on this holiday. So instead of setting out early in the morning to participate, I waited until after a late lunch around 3pm to start out. 

A friend had earlier warned me that I should decide which side (of the Danube) I wanted to watch from early in the afternoon or I might have difficulty crossing the river because some bridges close for the event. I'm not sure why but I've always had a soft spot for the Buda embankment of the Danube. It might stem from the first time I saw the Danube (in Hungary), experienced teachers brought me and my orientation group to see Parliament all lit up at night, we got off of the metro at Batthyány Tér and immediately saw, in all it's glory, the Hungarian Parliament building. I think that moment was the exact moment I started falling in love with this country. I just loved it's architecture.

I reached my "destination" by about 4pm and decided to have a look around. The first thing I learned is that if you go to a beer stand and ask for "alma" (apple) you don't get apple cider, you actually get some sort of strange apple beer thing. I don't know how to describe it. It was bad and kinda tasted like medicine. However I was lucky, the stand next to it was selling one of my favorite festival snacks.

Mhmmhhhmm

Kenyérlángos. Delicious. kenyérlángos is like a small pizza but instead of sauce you use a type of sour cream and you top it with onions and bacon. Lángos is a type of fried dough that is generally very greasy but this type isn't fried instead it is baked in little brick ovens. Normally it doesn't come with a bite missing, but the apple beer tasted soooooo bad. I just had to get the taste out of my mouth.

While enjoying my kenyérlángos I decided to walk along the river's walkway. Take a moment to look at the beauty of this bridge.

After enjoying a long view of the river I decided to walk to the cake tent. I haven't actually asked any of my Hungarian friends about this but I read that on St. Stephan's day the national cake and national bread is announced. So every year Hungary has a new national cake and a new national bread. I'm not sure if it's true but I definitely found a cake tent.

Cake Tent

If you wait in this line (and give them 600FT) you get a piece of the new National Cake! Being curious and a cake lover I decided to check it out. It took about ten minutes to get to the front of the line and I walked away with a piece of cake.

National Cake 2014

The cake was very good and layered in a way that we don't often layer cakes in the US. Instead of the same layers with the same icing, each layer was unique. Lets start from the top of the cake (dark brown layer). The first is a rich chocolate fudge icing (perhaps fondant), followed by a custard layer, the next layer (it's really thin) is some sort of citrus jelly, then chocolate custard, followed by some type of cake (I have no guesses as to what type). Over all it was very good but I didn't like the bottom layer, if I ate it on it's own. Now it was time to find a spot for the fireworks.

Perfect firework spot selfie :-)

My grandparents would have been very proud of me, I found a spot 3 hours before the fireworks started. They would be less proud of me for getting too bored to keep said spot but that's beside the point. I stayed at the perfect spot for about 30 mintues. Long enough to finish my beer and take a few photos of the firework barges getting into place.

Firework Barge and Tug Boat!

Shortly after watching this barge get into place I realized I was bored out of my mind. I had to do something pronto, there was no way I'd be able to sit there for another 2 1/2 hours. So naturally I decided to drink more alcohol. I bought myself some wine and decided to figure out what was for dinner. My favorite food to get from festivals in Hungary is definitely sausage. When you buy sausage at these festivals they are cooked in oil with various vegetables and chicken, and come with a big puddle of mustard and a few slices of bread. So I got dinner, talked to some fellow foreigners, drank some wine and still managed to find a decent spot an hour before the fireworks were scheduled to start.

When the fireworks did start, they were shot from three different barges and a bridge. Plus the beautiful Parliament was right there.

The fireworks went off in increments set to music that played in the background. One of the differences I noticed between the fireworks in Budapest and the fireworks in my hometown was the lack of participation from the audience. Where I'm from, you "oohhhh" and you "ahhhahhh" while watching fireworks. Here I didn't hear any "oohhhhs" or ahhhahhs" at all.

After watching the fireworks I decided to wander around a bit and enjoy another beer. I had read that if you wait about an hour after the fireworks end you can walk over the bridge in the car lanes. Being the rebel that I am (and having no desire to pack myself into a subway car) I decided that was something I needed to do. So I had another beer, spoke with some English speakers and then walked across the bridge :-)

The crowd waiting to be allowed across.

Walking where I'm never allowed to walk! Check out the view!

Guess who just walked across that bridge. Go on, guess. Yup! ME!

All in all I'd call it a wonderful National Day :-)

Where Am I?

Where Am I? What a strange question to ask, I always know where I am. However coming from my readers the question would read: Where Are You? A strange question within it's self. Did you know this is a new question? I read an article recently that spoke about the question: where are you? The article points out how before the invention of cell phones (or mobile phones as the British would say) You would never say "where are you?" in conversation because you would always know where they are. Land-lines had a definite location, if you were calling someone at home you knew they were at home, if you called someone at work you knew they were at work. However now with mobile phones and the internet it is very possible to talk to someone have no idea where they are. However, again I'm off topic.

If you've scrolled past my blog in the past few months you probably thought, or perhaps spoke allowed "where are you?" or "where is she?" and you were right to wonder. Perhaps your terribly pessimistic and thought I died. Wrong, still alive and kicking. Perhaps you have an interest in life beyond Earth and thought I was abducted by aliens. Wrong, to my knowledge I've never met an alien. Perhaps you know some of my hidden dreams, like trying to life off the grid and think I finally did it. Wrong, a bit of a coward here, not sure I'd want to go off on that adventure alone. Perhaps you thought that I hated Hungary and was simply enduring my time here. Wrong, I love it here! I love it some much I broke my cardinal rule about never going back somewhere. Whoa! Yeah, I know, I broke the rule. So by now you might be thinking I'm in Budapest. RIGHT!!! Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

I'm here sitting on my futon, in my apartment in Budapest, Hungary. Unfortunately you know very little about my life and experiences here. I don't know why I stopped writing, I just did. I can't tell you how many times I opened up my blog and looked at it. I tried to write something but it didn't sound like it was coming from me. I didn't like that, I want what I write to sound like me. So I didn't write.

Ahhh, but now I am writing. What's changed you ask? I don't know. Or maybe I kind of know but don't know how to write about it without sounding crazy. Or maybe I just don't want it on the internet cause not everyone likes honesty, especially when it comes to how people feel. Regardless of the reason, I'm writing now, and I hope you like it.

So back to where I am. I am in Budapest, Hungary. The other day I went on a really long walk and I documented it for you, my readers, who deserve to know what the city who stole my heart looks like.

So I decided I wanted to go for a stroll and take pictures of my life. It occurred to me that despite talking with my family and friends regularly there were so many little aspects of my daily life they knew nothing about. So this is my way of showing people what my life really looks like. When I started off the day I was quite disappointed to see that I had just missed the bus. Look at that empty bus stop, an empty bus stop is never good. If it's empty, you've just missed the bus, I didn't want to stand around for the 15 minutes it takes for the next bus to show up. So I decided to walk to the commuter train. It takes 10 minutes to get there and the stop is home to 2 commuter trains, and 2 buses that end at the same place as the commuter train. Since I hate waiting around its a good option for me.

  

 My decision paid off and the commuter train showed up just as I got there. If this happens it actually ends up being about 6 minutes faster than having waited for the bus.

The commuter train ends where metro line 2 begins and as I found myself walking towards the metro I had to decide where to go. I knew part of my plan for the day was to acquire cilantro and there are only three places I know in Budapest that regularly carry it.

 I decided that after two long weeks at camp (I might tell you about this later), I deserved something American. So I decided to go to the foreign foods shop that sells lots of American goodies. The shop has multiple locations and I decided to go to the one near parliament. This stop like many in Budapest is so far underground that the escalators (the only way out) are nearly terrifying. Look how it just keeps going!

However I'm rewarded for my perseverance with an immediate view of parliament. This is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world in my opinion, and I love walking past it.

Parliament even has cooling mist that comes out of its square. It's quite funny to see everyone literally run towards it when it begins. It often looks like a scene from a zombie movie as they run with their arms in front of them.

After enjoying the mist and the people watching I wandered towards the store. I came out with a fresh package of cilantro (score!) and a small cube of American cheddar cheese. Although I could have easily blown my whole paycheck there, I resisted. One of the things I do miss from China is my cilantro woman. She had a cart and sold cilantro for one kuai. I miss her.

As I didn't feel ready to go home yet I decided to take a wander over to Szabadság Tér (Freedom Square). It was one of the first places I went to that in Budapest back when I arrived this past winter. It was also one of the few things I blogged about. I like going to Szabadság Tér because it reminds me of that first walk there. It was cold and windy, I couldn't even say "do you speak English?" (beszelek angolul?), and I had no idea what this festival would actually be like. Now when I confidently navigate the streets there without carrying a map it reminds me of how far I've come.

The square is also now home to a rather controversial monument about the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust. I don't fully understand the issue with the monument, but from an aesthetics perspective, I just don't like it. And to end on a good note, check out these really happy oranges! 

Paprikas Krumpli

Paprikas Krumpli (Paprika Potato) is definitely my favourite Hungarian recipe. How I got the recipe is innately tied to how I got to Hungary.

Coming to Hungary was at the same time both very easy and very difficult. As anyone who's ever tried to get a legal working visa in a European Union (EU) country knows, it's ridiculously hard. For American's its usually easier to try and request citizenship if your grandparents immigrated to the US. For those of us whose ancestors came over earlier, we're kinda screwed. The difficulties comes from a pact that the EU countries follow, in order to hire someone from outside the EU, the employer must prove that no one in the EU is qualified for the job.

While I was still searching for a job I became more and more aware of programs who could place you in Europe, however they usually came with pretty steep program fees. After a month of applying I found an opportunity to come to Europe through the Central European Teaching Program (CETP). The program fee was difficult, however I knew without a doubt that I wanted to go back to Europe and Hungary seemed like a fine choice.

Part of coming through CETP meant mandatory orientation. We stayed at a wonderful hostel near the Danube in Pest.

It came with wonderful wall art.

In the kitchen of the hostel, the recipe was written on the wall near the ceiling, circling the room. (Forgive me I seemed to have forgotten to take a picture of it). The recipe seemed easy enough and I decided it would be the first Hungarian food I'd cook.

When I moved into my apartment I was without internet or cable for about 3 weeks :-(  However it did give me time to perfect my Paprikas Krumpli. Here are pictures of nearly all the steps.

First chop up some onion, the recipe didn't actually give any quantities so I just guessed. Since I really like cooked onions I chopped up three small ones.

A fellow American expat told me that when cooking in Hungary you generally use one pot/sauce pan and just add everything to it. I can live with that, less dishes. While my onions where browning I chopped up the other ingredients.

The jar at the top left of the table is some paprika that my wonderful coworker gave me cause Lidl didn't have any. Next to it is a pepper mill, two chopped up sausage links, two chopped peppers & two chopped tomatoes, three medium potatoes sliced, and my phone with the recipe open. Also pictured are my tools! The cheapest peeler ever (yay IKEA!) and my only chopping knife.

 

After the onions were cooked, but not quite browned I added the chopped sausage. The recipe said to brown the sausage for five minutes.

Pretend this is a picture where 

the tomato and pepper has

been added and the sausage

is slightly brown. Then 

pretend there is another

picture with pepper and

paprika added.

After the peppers and tomatoes are added to the mixture it needs to cook for 15 minutes. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to mix it or not but I did cause it started to stick on the bottom of the pot. I added five-ish grinds of pepper and about two tablespoons (no idea what that is in metric) of paprika. The recipe did call for salt but I don't like salt, so I didn't add any.

After fifteen minutes I added the sliced potato and covered it with water. The temperature was then turned up so that the water would boil off, both cooking the potatoes and creating a sauce. This part takes forever.

Ta-da! Paprikas Krumpli! I did it! At least I think I did it, I don't have anything to compare it to. Maybe one day I'll get really ambitious and cook it for a Hungarian friend. Until then I'm going with: I'm awesome cause I can cook Hungarian food!

Mangalica Festival! Cause all curly haired pigs need to be celebrated!

I've been fortunate in so many ways recently. Particularly that I have lots of awesome new people in my life who've helped me get accumulated to this wonderful country. I also have a small but strong group of fellow foreigners who I've been able to work out cultural confusion with. For these reasons it wasn't until my fourth weekend here that I found myself wandering around the city on my own.

So I tired to live like the locals do, I went to a festival. It seems that Budapest and Hungary in general have a constant stream of festivals. My first was the Mangalica Festival, it celebrates the curly haired pig. Many of you, like myself might find yourself wondering, what is a curly haired pig?

These are curly haired pigs:

When I arrived at the festival I expected to see many stalls with pigs roaming about, however I found only one with the pigs sectioned off in different groups. The signs might have explained the difference but believe it or not, I'm not able to read Hungarian yet. 

Fortunately there were some random English signs.

As I continued to wander around the festival I had a serious of "damn, I just moved to Hungary" moments. I don't know how else to describe them. I think its common when you move to a foreign country, or at least it's common for me. They mostly occur when I see something that is very different from what I grew up with or when I see something that uniquely belongs to the culture I'm currently living in. 

 The festival took place at szabadság tér (Freedom Square in English) in Pest. As I was wondering I suddenly turned and saw the top of Parliament (the building I most strongly associate with Budapest) in the distance. I've also been learning a lot about Hungary's history, seeing the monument on the right helped me understand the history in a more personal way. Yeah books are great but sometimes I need to see something to bring home it's importance.

The more I wandered through the festival the more I realized the festival was like about the actual pig and more about the pigs' meat. Everywhere I turned there were stands selling bacon, sausage, fried pig fat (unfortunately I'm positive that's what it was), and a variety of hot pork dishes.

 In my research before I went to the festival I learned that the pork of the curly haired pig is supposed to be much better than regular pork. I worked up the courage to purchase some curly haired pig meat at one of the vendors. Unfortunately my Hungarian sucks and few of the meat vendors spoke English. I ended up with some delicious sausage and some not so delicious fried pork fat.

                              

I do have to admit fault in me ending up with a bag of fried pork fat. I was becoming embarrassed by my lack of Hungarian and decided that I'd just buy what everyone else was buying. After having luck in purchasing two links of sausage without saying more than köszönöm (thank you) I figured I'd just buy what everyone else was buying. I went to the stand and selected a small bag of what I thought was cubed bacon. I purchased it and eagerly tasted what I expected to be bacon, it was fried fat. What does one do with a bag of fried fat? Everyone around me was eating it, I was gagging. So I did what any expat would do, I controlled my gag, smiled at the woman I bought it from and quickly put the bag in my pocket.

Needless to say I was concerned about my ability to purchase food after the pig fat incident but I heard many different languages spoken near the hot food stalls and assumed someone there could probably understand me.

The choices were endless however it seemed most appropriate to eat some curly haired pig sausage since that's what I had read about before. And of course it would have been a travesty to pass up some dark Hungarian beer.

Lunch Time!

The sausage is one large link, sorry the bread obscures it. I still don't know why the guy looked at me weird when I asked for half. As for my beverage I found the best dark Hungarian beer. Really wish I would have written down the name.

All in all the festival was quite eclectic, with an emphasis on the random things that had nothing to do with pigs.

Cause nothing makes you think of curly haired pigs more than strangely colored brooms and children's toys. Still I look forward to many more Hungarian festivals. These people do know how to do it, I think for every toy stall there were two selling alcohol.

That Time I Moved To Hungary

I've been here for nearly a month and still I haven't posted anything about actually being here. This comes from a variety of reasons, but mainly that I didn't have internet at my apartment for 3 1/2 weeks. I can't complain too much I did have ample access between my school and Starbucks but I need to write in a place where I'm totally comfortable. If not it just doesn't sound like me.

Of course there were also all the other things that go along with a trans-Atlantic move. Suddenly I need to learn a new language that I know nothing about, adjust to a new school system, learn how to shop for necessities. Don't get me wrong, these are the things I live for. I dream of waking up in new places, I plan on learning new languages, traveling is something I've come to expect from my life. Yet still they are things that take time and effort, there were many a days in the first few weeks when I was exhausted by 8pm just because everything I did that day was entirely new to me.

However I can happily report that these things are past me now. I can easily navigate "my grocery store" and my school no longer feels like a labyrinth. I've even memorized some bus and metro routes so I'm not constantly double checking my map.

A large part of me wishes I would have made myself post something during those first few weeks, I think it would make me feel less awkward about this one. I'm now ready to write about specific things but I've never written about basic things. Something occurred to me the other day when I was speaking to my Aunt; everyday in China I was actively trying to survive, everyday in Hungary I'm simply living. Of course things are still new and sometimes difficult but I haven't once worried about surviving a situation. I think that's why I haven't experience much culture shock here, why I'm ready to write about specific things so soon.

So what do I write about? How do I focus? I don't know. I suppose I'll just start with orientation. For those of you who don't know I elected to come to Hungary through the Central European Teaching Program (CETP) which I highly recommend, but I'll write more about that later. Part of teaching in the program is going to a mandatory orientation in Budapest.

My room in the hostel was filled with beautiful murals of locations in Budapest. CETP rented out the entire hostel so we could use the common rooms for classes.

During orientation we were taught a lot about Hungarian culture and history from two Hungarians who have been working with American's for a very long time. At first I didn't think that was relevant but I realized during the classes that because they are so familiar with American culture they were tailoring their lectures to things they know we need to know. We also learned a bit of the Hungarian language including some grammar parts.

On our first and last night we were welcomed to Budapest with a Hungarian dinner at this famous restaurant. In between we made use of our personal hostel and made pizzas!

Since I started in January our orientation group was small only six people! Two of use were destined to teach in Budapest, two in Debrecen, one in Makó, and one in Salgótarján. I'm glad we had such a small group, I think if there were more of us we would have naturally broken up based on our geographic regions, instead we were a group. I can happily say I have some interesting places to visit.

Our last night we went sight seeing along the Danube and took in some of Budapest's wonder. Night walks like this remind me why I came to Europe.

The end of orientation was bittersweet, on one hand I was excited to finally get to the school I had heard so much about. On the other I was weary of leaving the people I had come to know. But all good things come to an end, and I couldn't be happier with where I am now.