By the River Danube I sat down and wept

There are only two days of May left, which feels like utter madness to me. It seems like mere moments since I was having a great whinge about this being the longest term, and how there were weeks and weeks left before the wonder of summer holidays. Those halcyon days that make all teachers feel like their students when the bell rings on the last day of term. That day is flying towards me, and I don't know how I am supposed to do everything that I should in the next 4 weeks. One whole week is in Strasbourg and Freiburg anyway on a school trip, so that should really be 3 weeks. I can feel my pulse racing as a type.

I thought that all I was thinking about was work, that I was so ingrained in my routine that I had no time for Budapest as a city left, that nothing could happen outside of pure survival of these last weeks at school. But as I slowly get organised packing, looking at the things in my apartment, I find that a nostalgia creeps over me that I simply did not expect and was certainly not ready for. I've here for three years, and God knows it took me long enough, but I really do like it now. I especially love my Jewish district, I walked to the shop this morning, past the little stalls that spring up on a Saturday in Klauzal Ter, and a sadness washed over me. Life will be so different next year, Eastern Europe has been my home for over half a decade, what will it be like to be English in Engalnd next year. It all just sounds so normal.

Old News

So, I suppose that I have not really made a secret of the fact that it was my intent to leave Buadpest this year, and, as always, I have held off writing anything on the blog until it was all definite and sorted. As I finish the first week of my final term at school, I guess that it is all over now bar the shouting. I handed in my notice a few weeks ago and have decided that I am off back to the UK after 7 years living abroad.

Now, I'm not rich, not even what you would call 'well off', and this year is going to be a real struggle financially. But, it is something that I have wanted to do for a while so I will take the hit and live off beans on toast for a year. In September I will be returning to a Northern University to study for my MA in Theology. This is so far away from the day to day routine of workinng that I am both excited and terrified about having a year as a student again.

So, while I wait out the last few months in Budapest, I am buying course textbooks and telling myself to save every last penny I have while I still have the chance. As with every time I have decided to move on from a country, the place you will leave suddendly takes on a sheen that you have never noticed before. Budapest really is gorgeous in the Spring and Summer and so the blue skies and greenest of trees start to open the spirit of Hungary and make me miss it before I have even left. 9 weeks of work to go, and a week in the middle of that in France and Germany, I'll be back in the UK before I know it and all the culture shock that will entail. I've been away for a long time now...

A Billion People

Before I visit some-where I read a lot about it, buy guidebooks, look on the net, ask people who might have been there already. I've read a great deal about China, am aware of their human rights record, am appalled by their treatment of the Tibetan nation and have seen movies from The Last Emporer to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I think that travelling all around Europe, a few Muslim countries, and the US, I have never really under gone what I would call 'Culture Shock'. I had a friend who went to Mumbai and spent the first 48 hours in her hotel room as she was just so amazed and confused by the noise, smells, and crowds she saw when she arrived. Obviously, my trip to Beijing was not that extreme, but I did find myself simply staggered by the scale of the city.

The first moment came when I stepped onto Tiannamen Square. The scale is out of this world and images of mass rallies came sweeping trhough my mind. I was surrounded by huge groups of Chinese tourists, apparantly, it is very common for villages or towns to make pilgrimages to see Mao, and see the Forbidden City. In my youth I used to frequent rock concerts, seen Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica and been to summer festivals of a hundred thousand people, and yet shuffling through the square felt massive on a scale I have never seen. Follow this up with a trip on the Metro on a random Wednesday afternoon worse than Paris in rush hour, and you get an idea of simply how many people there are around you all the time.

Beijing is almost too big to explore, you couldn't walk from one end to the other. But it is exactly this that made it such a fascinating place to visit, huge spaces, a self contained secret city that took hours just to walk though, streets that have been there for years, some that seem to have popped up in a matter of weeks, it's all there. It took me a few days to get my bearings, there are so many taxis, metro changes and buses to get anywhere it seems like you are travelling across country to get to anything. I still don't know if Beijing is heaven or hell, but I know that it was a wonderful experience, one that is going to leave me thinking for a while. In the mean time, Budapest seems so much more friendly, more walkable than ever before.

A Picture of China

Jet lagged

I was desperate to blog when I was in China. I sort of knew that blogger was banned in China, as is facebook, but it was still strange after all these years of having instant access to posting my thoughts online to not be able to do so when I had so much to say. China was confusing, incredible and bewildering. I have always been desperate to travel and while I consider myself to have seen a great deal of Europe, trips on the long haul have not seemed to be that frequent, and visiting cultures which really are amazingly alien has eluded me thus far.

My trip to China was unusual from the outset, as I was staying with my brother, sister in law and nephew. It made the whole experience both familiar and other worldly at the same time. I have a familiarity with Chinese food, culture and language through my family ties there and some things I felt quite connected to. There were other aspects of my trip that simply blew my mind. Seeing the Great Wall of China was one, it didn't matter that there were tourists of all nations around me, I just couldn't believe that I was standing on there, gazing over centuries of feudal rule.

I have a lot more to say about this trip, but most of it will have to wait as I am so tired, so behind on my sleep. I know that the one reason that I haven't planned trips like this before is because I don't like the idea of long haul flights. Ten hours on a plane seems like an eternity, and I still can't believe that the flight home is over, it was the journey that lasted forever. Mind you, it can't be that bad as I am starting to think that this going to huge life-changing travel stuff may the way forward, Easter 2011...India anyone?

Aller Retour

I landed yesterday at lunchtime, and went straight into my meeting pretty much. When that was all over, I waited for D by taking the Metro straight to Trocadero and onto that Platform where all romantic comedies end up when the characters go to Paris. You know, the vast white marble space that overlooks the Eiffel Tower. I lived in Paris and had never been there, but I went yesteraday. My patent black shoes clicked their way over the what must be one of the most famous veiws in the world. I stopped, sighed and thought 'That's why'.

Here I am now, writing from the Internet cafe on the corner of Rue Soufflot, the one that I blogged from the entire time I lived in Paris. I am looking at the same things across the street, feeling some familar feelings and looking forward to a few more days in the city that seems so full of light and life. After today, G and K will arrive in the morning and I will start all over again, tours on buses and hidden corners that I found when I lived here, although very little of Paris remains undiscovered these days.

I don't know where I am going, and I know where I have been, but this has been the most glorious of breaks. It has given me a chance to breathe at a time when I felt I had no breath left, and has reminded me that where-ever it is, it is not there.

Everyone loves a list...

So there are lots of things on the horizon and I know that as soon as I have a new place to go, life will breathe a sigh of relief and settle down before it speeds up.
Mostly in the European region, at the moment there are The Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK on the list, with a crazy left field China steaming down the wings.

The years already seems to be whipping past, and I can't believe that it is already February. There has been a million tons of snow over the last week and there is more to come. This will be my third move overseas and this time of year, the January and the February and the looking make the waiting period seem like it lasts as long as the winter seems to. All I need to do is tuck myself in, get a hot water bottle and wait for the Spring.

Oh, and to go with my new start and return to the blog, I got myself a lovely, shiny, new camera for my birthday last week.