And so it begins...again.

I'll be honest, this is like my millionth attempt at keeping a travel blog. Turns out, I'm not good at committing to things. So here we are, I'm in my third semester abroad (of four), and planning a truly ridiculous route through the Balkans for Winter Break. Which actually is what brings us [back] here; while I wander Europe via largely sketchy train and bus routes, it seems important to be able to update all my people back home and prove that I haven't been kidnapped or murdered or whatever. Not to mention, I feel like maybe I've acquired some valid travel advice in my previous wanderings. At least, I like to think so.

I still have about three weeks in Budapest before I depart on whatever adventure may come next. Honestly, Budapest is one of my favorite places in the world. I love it almost as much as San Francisco (almost). There’s something inexplicably magical about Budapest at night, especially in the winter. It isn’t specific to any one spot in the city, it's the entirety of it. It's the yellow of the floodlights that illuminate Parliament and Fisherman's Bastion and St. Istvan. It's the mist that lies on top of the water at the Szechenyi Baths and makes everything look like a beautifully-shot allegorical death scene from an art house movie. It's the beautiful (if woefully overpriced) Christmas markets that are slowly taking over the city center. It's the seemingly endless number of adorable cafes beckoning you in out of the cold for a delicious cappuccino and a kakaos csiga. I love this city.

To be fair, I've fallen for a few cities. I fell hard for Granada when I lived there last fall. I had a torrid affair with Barcelona that kept me coming back for more (several times actually). I flirted with Berlin for two tragically short visits, before the beauty of Prague first really pulled me into Central Europe. But there's something special about Budapest; something about it that makes it feel like home. I've wanted to come to Budapest for a long time, and I'd always wondered if I would be able to feel the proximity to my ancestral homeland (my father's parents came from near Ungvar, in what is now Ukraine but once was Hungary). I like the poetry of feeling the return to the land of my father's forefathers deep in my blood. Weeks ago, when I visited the Dohany Street Synagogue, I had an acute feeling of genetic deja vu; it was like being sucker-punched in the stomach by my own family history. Having never met my Hungarian grandparents, frequenting places they may have gone feels strangely akin to holding a ghost. This is the closest I've ever come to this side of my family, and there's a definite part of my soul that recognizes it; some pattern left in my DNA that matches up with the arch of the suspension wires on the Chain Bridge and the sweeping spires on Parliament.

Maybe I'm rambling. Maybe this wasn't really much of an introduction. Oh well, maybe I'll get better at this as we go.

Until next time,
Isabel.