Hungary’s been getting some bad press lately. That doesn’t mean it’s not still a nice place to live. Although I’m tempted to say one of the coolest things to do in Budapest is to take to the streets and attend a big, peaceful protest, let’s get away from the politics and look at 10 reasons Budapest is cool, in my opinion. Here are two for today…
1. The chaos. This is why we moved here from Holland, where everything was orderly, beautiful and well-organized. Tons of fun, but not much of a challenge. Budapest is the perfect blend of exotic and familiar, former-Eastern-bloc and civilized-West, urban grunge and glittering glamor. You never know whether you’ll have to wait 10 minutes or three hours at the doctor, post office or city hall, but at least whatever needs doing will get done, eventually. Hungarians are crazy drivers, but not as crazy as Italians. And if you need some of that order, beauty and organization I was talking
about, you can just pop over to Austria.
Oh, and by the way, when we moved here in 2000 we called it “dynamism” instead of “chaos.” Given the economic situation, the latter is more appropriate these days. And still cool.
2. The language. Some may say that the Hungarian language is the most frustrating thing about living here. That doesn’t mean it’s not cool! It sounds really awesome. Remember during the Bosnian conflict there was an email going around saying President Clinton was planning an emergency airlift of vowels? Truth is, Hungary has been hoarding all the vowels in this part of the world for centuries. Any Hungarian will tell you that the language just lends itself to poetry, and they will gladly recite at least 100 of them to you whenever you like. It’s also nice to have a language so completely phonetic that you can read
anything on sight, even if you can’t understand it. And it’s also a language in which it’s important to pronounce everything precisely, unlike sloppy English. Still in doubt? Read my related post, How I Learned Hungarian, here http://wp.me/p1Mrmn-22.
Stay tuned for tomorrow, and may you enjoy the sunshine… another Budapestian benefit!
adriknows 
Holland is orderly beautiful and well organized?!?! I suppose I can understand why you’d say that but it still prompts a big “HA!” from me. 🙂
And that would be orderly COMMA. 🙂
Well, Melynda, everything is relative! I suppose I should’ve used Japan as an example, although when it comes to Japan these days, “tsunami” comes to mind, rather than orderly, poor dears!