the time everything went wrong and it was the best time ever

Hey remember when I was supposed to blog regularly but then only published two posts haha oh yeah. In my defense, I do have two other posts on Amsterdam literally a month and a half ago and Prague about 80% done and just in need of some editing – they’ll be coming soon but for now, this.

They say you learn and grow when you fuck up. Up until now, exchange has been smooth sailing, but there were so many fuckups over this trip that I’ve actually learned things. Over my reading break (lol, “reading”), I spent five days in Budapest and four in Vienna. Along the way, I made a handful of mistakes – and by “handful”, I definitely mean oh my god so many.

Let’s go through them, shall we?

1. I didn’t look into booking flights until like a week and a half before the trip so obviously they were painfully expensive.
2. I didn’t book the hostel my friend Chloe (whom I was travelling with in Budapest) had booked right away when she sent me the link (because why do things on time, right?). By the time I actually looked into it, it was fully booked and I had to book a (slightly) more expensive Airbnb. Thankfully, Hungary is obscenely cheap so it still didn’t come up to too much, but unfortunately, it was about 20 minutes away by transit from city center – so there went 20 minutes of my day each way and a €15 week transit pass.
3. The return flight I booked turned out to have an 8kg carry-on limit (which, if you’ve ever weighed a carryon, is not much). So instead of my suitcase that exceeded that limit the last time I had to weigh in, I brought my school backpack, which I proceeded to stuff till bursting while still thoroughly underpacking. I was extremely guilty of outfit-repeating and also forgot a swimsuit for the famous and very mandatory Budapest baths – so I had to buy a new one, which turned out to be moderately expensive because it’s the middle of winter so the only places carrying any were fancy lingerie stores.
4. Apparently you’re supposed to pay €10 to take the metro from Paris city center to the airport (literally more than it cost me to take a bus from Budapest to Vienna) – which I was not aware of because you can get on the train with a regular €1.40 ticket and I had never been checked before. Unfortunately, I did this time and got fined a painful €33.
5. I somehow got an eye infection??? But I thought it was just something in my eye so I kept wearing my contacts so obviously it got worse and worse
6. I finally made it to a clinic where I waited half an hour to see a nurse who referred me to an eye hospital where no one spoke English and I was told to wait an indefinite amount of time which turned out to be three hours.
7. I was forbidden from thenceforth wearing my contacts (for reasonable reasons), but I had neglected to bring the glasses I needed due to the aforementioned scarce luggage space so I had to be blind for the remainder of my trip.
8. Jacqueline (who did Vienna with me) and I got scammed by a rando in a costume standing outside the St. Stephen’s cathedral into buying shady concert tickets like the naïve tourists we are
9. We also accidentally got on a train to Budapest instead of the train to the airport to catch our flight home, which was the most stressful 20 minutes of my life.

So what happens when you fuck up? You pick your ass up and learn from it. I spent way too much time moaning to Chloe about all the things that I unnecessarily had to spend money on (sorry Chloe) before I finally came to terms with a truth that was first seriously presented to me by my friend and mentor Cole: you have the unique ability to control how you react. On paper, this seems very obvious and straightforward, but for me it wasn’t that simple in practice. Cole told me a year ago about when his ex-girlfriend told him that she was seeing someone else and that she was really happy. He told me that he realized he could be jealous or angry or upset, or he could choose to be happy that this person he still cared about was happy and to wish her all the best. When I first heard this, I laughed a little – because this was so typical Cole but also because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how he could just decide how to feel and then feel that way. In his place, I would never have been able to take such a mature stance or control my emotions to that degree. Travelling is obviously completely different from relationships, but after wallowing and being upset with myself to the point where I knew it was getting on Chloe’s nerves (even though she was nice enough not to mention it – thanks Chloe), I realized that I could let myself be mad at how much money I lost for the rest of the trip or I could let go of a sunk cost (see I learned things in econ), and enjoy it as much as I possibly could. And that, indeed, made all the difference.

Budapest was incredible. It helped that everything cost pennies – the most expensive meal I had at the kind of fancy restaurant where the waiter lays your cloth napkin across your lap for you which included an entrée and several drinks cost less than €12 – unheard of by Paris standards. So on that note, let’s talk Hungarian food scene. I ate many delicious things in Budapest, but the standouts must be gulas (goulash) and langos. The former is a homey, hearty rich beef soup or stew with root vegetables and incredible depth of flavour. The latter is basically a deep fried pizza dough traditionally topped with sour cream and cheese, but we also sampled it with custard, strawberries, and nutella. Other delicious Hungarian adventures included the most beautiful flakey croissants stuffed with pistachio crème anglaise (!!!), hot chocolate from the Grey Goose (as in the vodka) restaurant that was pretty much soup, and a trip to a Sunday food market where we had fresh challah, cured meats, and a sampling of Hungarian cheeses. Budapest also had a great gourmet lemonade scene, which was unexpected but delightful, and two unique alcohol offerings that made nightlife all sorts of fun. The first is a sweet white wine called Tokaji – it tastes vaguely like ice wine except more syrupy, and is apparently the sweetest wine in the world. The other is the national Hungarian spirit, Palinka, which is very strong and very dangerous. The hostel Chloe was staying at was giving out free shots of it one night and I’m not going to elaborate any more on that experience.

Other than food, though, Budapest also has fun things to do and see. We went spelunking in some cool caves under the city which left me with hella bruised knees but was also one of the funnest things I’d ever done, climbed several hills to see pretty views, hopped ruin bars, and bathed in rooftop thermal baths. We also went on two free walking tours, which are a great thing to do in any European city that offers them. My time there was a blur of drinking, dancing, and running around the city trying to see and do everything. At one point, I befriended another squad from Sciences Po where I’m doing my exchange (small world, right?), and some boys from McGill whom I convinced to meet me in Vienna later on. Hungary was one of those experiences that you get so much more out of than expected, and my newfound optimism made for some pretty stellar times in Austria where I was headed next – more on this in my next post.