Free like a bear

And here we go! The first of a series of flights and countries… and Hungary is really a nice place to begin with!

As I already wrote before, the choice of Budapest as a first destination was quite random. I was looking for a cheap flight to go to the United Arab Emirates and found the cheapest one leaving from Budapest! But I couldn’t fly to Budapest without spending some time there, even if I had already been there a few times. Budapest indeed offers a lot: amazing architecture, great and affordable food, loads of culture, and in particular bath culture! So I was more than happy to spend 5 full days there.

Before leaving, I was a bit worried with the weather. Central Europe in February can be quite cold, and I didn’t pack winter clothes with me. But I was very lucky and had amazing sunny weather with about 10-15 °C during daytime and 0 °C in the evening, so I was pretty fine wearing my only sweater and thin jacket.

Pictures of my first evening stroll along the Danube river should speak for themselves…

View on the castle

The famous chain bridge

Basilica Saint Stephen (Szent István)

Note: you might notice that I am quite “behind” with my blog posts. Today is day 12 already…! I still need to get into the travel rhythm. Most of the time I spent on my computer was to figure out where to sleep the next night, which had priority! Hahaha! So I hope I will be able to catch up when I will be in Sri Lanka and allow myself more time to rest!

There it is! The day 1 of my world tour, the day when it finally starts! 13th February 2019! I’ve been waiting for this day forever! But I completely underestimated how much work it would be to get ready for it! After my last day at work, I had 2 entire weeks to prepare everything and I thought this was a lot! I wanted to leave as soon as possible to still enjoy some weeks of good weather in Asia before monsoon season starts. But these 2 weeks passed by so quickly! My check lists were long but it was so nice procrastinating and watching Netflix shows instead of doing what I should do: preparing the first weeks of the trip, taking care of administrative stuff, packing, saying goodbye to friends…

The day of departure arrived quite suddenly, like it wasn’t planned! My backpacks were more or less ready… My checklist was shorter… but not completely checked! I had 1 hour left to verify that the apartment was in a good state. Cleaning the last dishes, the sinks, watering the plants, turning off the water, etc. I went down to throw away the trash 15 minutes before I had to leave to catch the train, and checked my letter box as a matter of habit! And I had a letter… not any letter… but a letter of the Agentur für Arbeit (unemployment administration) asking me to send additional documents so that they can process my case! I had been waiting for their reaction for 4 months, and they managed to send this letter on the day I was leaving! I got a bit panicked and tried to collect an envelope with a stamp and to find these documents, not knowing how I would be able to make copies! I took all that with me and rushed to the train station, worried to miss the train to the airport! But still… in my rush, I took some quick selfies to document the changes before/after the trip! Hahaha… So here I am… sweating and wearing all the warm clothes I have!

(Note: move your mouse on the pictures to read the captions)

Last pic in my house’s elevator

…in my street

… in front of “my” church

As I got into the train, I could relax and used the ride to the airport to write my answer letter. I finally joined the original documents, which I didn’t like that much, but had no choice, and took pictures of them for my archives. After arriving at the airport, I luckily found the one and only letter box and felt released!