Lessons from traveling abroad: enjoying stopovers

On Sarah's last night in Europe we decided to treat ourselves and go out to a nice restaurant.  Thanks to a helpful hostess we found through Airbnb, we found a charming and quirky restaurant not far from the apartment we rented for the night: VakVarju.


I greatly enjoyed a seasonal cold green apple soup, complete with a wafer of crystalized caramel.  It sounds weird, but was oh so delicious.  We also enjoyed the antics of a rather drunk man who gave an impromptu performance which involved dancing with a hat rack.  I tried to film it, I really did, but the best I got was this picture -->

The next morning, Sarah caught her plane and I set out on my solo adventure, starting with a 45 minute walk to the train station.  In those 45 minutes of profuse sweating from hauling my enormous backpack and smaller day pack in nearly 100 degree heat, I started to realize the physical conditioning I was in for that summer. When a strange older man walked up to me and started chatting with me and trying to guess personal information about me, I started to realize the safety challenges I would face that summer.  When I got to the train station far too early and wound up having the rendőrség (Hungarian police) come ask for my passport (I assume because I was loitering), I started to realize the complications that came with traveling in foreign lands when you don't know the language.  When I spent the rest of the long day riding packed in a tiny, non airconditioned car with five complete strangers, I started to realize how lonely this trip could actually be.  
And I started to worry.

But it was also beautiful and exciting, so I tried to focus on that:



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