Return to Budapest

As you all know, I went to Budapest for the first semester of my Senior year of college. I was there for 3 months, went to school, lived in an apartment, and dated a wonderful girl (Noemi).
I had always planned to go back, but somehow never got around to it. I had been to Europe several times, but never with enough time to space to make a return visit.

In April I started to hear of a work meeting that was going to take place there. I made sure to get myself invited to it! I was overjoyed at the chance to go back.

Mimi was something less than overjoyed. Not only was I going to go back to the city of a previous girlfriend (and see her!), but also I was going to be there over our wedding anniversary. To her credit she didn't complain about it. She only had one rule - no hanging out with the ex on our wedding anniversary. That was more than fair! Actually she had one more rule. She said that Noemi had to be fat (in my friend Drew's parlance - that she had been hit by the Babushka bomb). Well she wasn't. But I stayed true to the first rule!

I got in an Sunday morning. Noemi met me at the airport and brought me to my hotel - the West End Hilton. It carries that name as it is next to the West End train terminal.

Coincidentally this is exactly the same terminal I arrived in when I took the train from Brussels 22 year previous. Just walking through it was a personal time warp for me.

Over the course of my time there, Noemi and I went back to our old apartment building, to my old school (try as I could I could not find our classroom!), on the old trams and busses I used to take, and through tours of various parts of the city we had traveled in our previous life together. It was wonderful.

Weird too though. You know how when you're with someone you have a really strong bond with that just being in their presence is enough? You don't have to have deep conversations to make it meaningful? This was one of my first times experiencing that. We would be together having an ice cream on a bench talking about the weather. And I was having a great time. I kept thinking to myself - you've only got 6 days here, talk about something important. But I didn't have to. The weather was plenty.

Obviously the last time I was there the country was under communist rule. So what has changed? Not a whole lot from my brief tour. The people don't look over their shoulders when they talk. They don't lower their voice mentioning their disapproval of the government. And they have no visible ties to the Soviet Union any more.

The biggest physical change was the buildings. I remember Budapest being a very dirty city. Not trash on the road - that was swept by the babushkas every morning. The buildings looked dirty. Like the beautiful architecture under them was of no particular interest. Many of these buildings have been cleaned up now. They are nicely painted in attractive colors. And they look wonderful. It's like someone has removed a film from the entire city. There are still visible war scars, but even they look better with this refurbishing.

Leaving this time wasn't nearly as tough as the last time around. I took a taxi to the airport again, but it was at 5am, so Noemi didn't accompany me. I think the fact that I was 1/2 asleep kept me from welling up the emotions of my previous departure. It was a wonderful visit - my only regret is that it took me 22 years to get around to it!