Submitted by Melissa Jerome on the 2016 spring semester program in Rome, Italy…
This past weekend, I traveled to Budapest! I didn’t think it would happen, but I was a little sick of pizza and pasta. Hungarian food was a nice change! Budapest is also a more modern city which was a nice change from Rome. Budapest is called the “city of baths” because it has many natural thermal springs. I went to one of these baths and relaxed in the mineral water. The baths themselves were beautiful. The architecture of the city is really amazing. Many of the buildings have a neo-renaissance/baroque style. It was interesting to compare them to the architecture in Rome. I was able to see first hand how far the Roman influence spread.
This was my first trip outside of Italy since I have been here and luckily everything went smoothly! In Italy, I felt like I could integrate fairly easily because I had studied the culture in Italian class and I am conversational in the language. But of course my experience in Hungary was very different. I didn’t know any of the language and very little about the culture. My friends and I discussed how lucky we are that many people speak English. It makes it so much easier to travel to entirely new cities. I sometimes felt bad assuming they spoke English, but everyone was very friendly and willing to help us. We shared a table at a busy restaurant with a Hungarian couple who ended up giving us recommendations on places to go in the city. Although we were only there for the weekend, we tried to learn as much as possible about the culture, people and of course the food.