Pre-travel joy

here i am.
tomorrow right now, i'll be in Asia.
probably asleep after a full travel day to Istanbul. i feel so fucking good because of that.

my world here in Hungary is full of people who love me. i keep receiving good travel wishes.
i've just came back from a very tasty goodbye dinner at Mazel Tov, and a very deep and tight hug.

life feels great.

Philosophers

i'm having the opportunity to meet a lot of different people.

today i was speacking with a friend at a Hungarian Easter Party organised by the ELTE Faculty of Humanities. he told me that during his experience as Erasmus student he met few people he could have a dialogue with. 

that assertion reminded me that i felt just like that and i posed him some other questions to know what he tought about that. 

in fact, his point of view was something sensibly different than mine on this matter.   he was complaining much more about the lack of culture, rather than the lack of real interaction. he actually believed that most of the people are, i quote, "empty" and the main cause he mentioned was the lack of reading,

i didn't felt he wanted himself to have a "real discussion" on that matter, so i dropped the conversation. i do not feel the need to give unrequested lessons to people. if somebody does not want to compare his point of view with mine in an honest dialogue, all that i could possibly say would be just a loss of my limited amount of time on this Earth. 

usually the main reason why someone exposes her/his ideas in a one-sided way is insecurity and fear. that must be respected.

altough, that has never stopped me from reflecting by myself and asking me questions on the issues that the others were unwillingly to reflect upon, if the issues caught my attention and curiosity. 

i do not believe that there is such a thing as an "empty person".

i do believe that people are much more than what they know, what they read and the studies they chose. 

the reason why i don't think that people are empty, is that everybody is a philosopher. 

Aristotle cleverly affirmed that everyone philosophizes: even the choice of not philosophizing at all is already philosophy. why? because we can't help the human pursuit of knowledge. 

when we see something we automatically look for an explanation and a category in which it may fall. and if we do not want to think about it, that is already an answer to the question "why?" or the question "what?". 

from my point of view, empty people are just superficial. and that may be perfectly fine. the important thing is not to bear the burden of explaining everything to myself, the important thing is to be happy. the art of living is more the art of knowing when to concentrate my energy on something, and when to let things happen. 

the grounds on which i disagree with my friend are also those concerning the standards of judgement on people. it would have been great to find someone to discuss upon this issue. 

it is very interesting and very subjective. 

what i do believe is that the beauty that i saw in humans does not come solely from the cultural knowledge, the culture is the consequence of something bigger: the way we live our feelings. i have always been more interested in what is common to all human beings rather than what makes us different. the type of feelings we choose to cultivate, and the moral answers we give to ourselves to keep living and not become crazy are more important to me than the kind and numer of books a person read. 

everybody heard sometime the sentence "she/he has a great mind but is an awful human being". 

that is my point. it's so nice to meet someone who can talk about science, general culture, movies, books, politics, current events, and whatever in a polish way. it is more important to see how she/he relates with others and her/himself, the elegance, respect and kindness she/he chose to develop. 

that's not written on books. 

what may be found on books are the answers that other people gave to themselves and shared to the world. which is beautiful, amazing, extraordinary. 

but the truth is that your personal, unique answers are not written in any book in the world. 

your job as a human person is to find them. sometimes to create them. that's exactly what scares us, and on the other hand that's something we cannot escape. i'm scared. that's why i respect people who are afraid to discuss their answers. i know how they feel. 

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” 
― Brown Taylor

#JeSuisAriadne

my life is so full of events and invitations here in Hungary that is difficul to keep track of everything and manage to do two of the things i really care to do: write my notebook and my blog. 

i've always liked to write. i write on diaries since i was seven. i started with, you know, those cute little pink diaries with daisies on the cover. 

i ended up writing a blog, but i don't feel that i can just turn my back to the white empty pages i write my notes on. i wrote three notebooks in Central America, i love those notebooks. i read them to remember not only the places, but most of all the person i was.  she endured so much to grow and make me the person that i am, and i think i owe her something. i owe her my forgiveness and memory. 

actually, during this little time lapse between International Criminal Law and White Collar Crime courses, i wanted to write about my first Strauss "Ariadne auf Naxos" i attended last week in Budapest Opera house. 

it was a both funny and revealing experience, in fact. 

after dressing up properly, i realized i was late. i was supposed to show up half an hour before the beginning of the performance. 

i rushed out of my flat on my dècolletè heel shoes. i walked hurriedly towards Oktogon Square. 

once there, i didn't wanted to mistake the direction turning in Andrassy Utca, i didn't have time to repare it. i asked a guy standing by his metallic push scooter. 

me: "hi, is Opera House on the left?"

Ivan: " yes. are you going to Ariadne?"

me: "yes, how come that you know it?"

Ivan:" i'm going there too. i was waiting for a friend, but i must go too."

me: "i think we're a little late, then"

Ivan "let's go on my push scooter, you'll see we can still make the grade." 

next thing i know, we were the most elegantly dressed push scooter drivers on Andrassy. the poshy people chatting in front of the Opera stared speechless for a moment staring at a boy and a girl arriving at the Opera door on push scooter and parking it. 

we entered together in this red and golden palace. 

it was a magic place. i was glad to sit on the high dais. i've never been able to understand why they are considered the worst. i love to see everything from high above. maybe it's just a matter of acoustic. 

the lights went down, the performance begun. 

Ariadne is both a comedy of opera buffa and a serious opera. the main character is Ariadne, the sister of mythological Minotaur, who helped her lover Theseus to kill the magic creature and get out of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur lived with the help of a filament she held. 

let's just say that our Theseus wasn't a grateful or either faithful man at all. he eventually got tired of her and he abandoned Ariadne on the Island of Naxos.

she was stubborn, she loved her man deeply and wholly.  she was so heartbroken she got mad. 

Ariadne loved an illusion.

...how many times did it happen to me? wao, countless. 

and i'm not speacking of guys, i'm speacking of every time i wanted desperately something without seeing it for what it really was: loving an illusion, an inconsistent image i created. 

Ariadne was stubborn in her love. even if it was an illusion. 

she was proud too. she couldn't bear this offence to her feelings, not even willing to realise the inexistence of the object of her love since the beginning. 

it stroke me that i am like her. in the past i used to be like her even more. 

i loved deeply, stubbornly. 

the kind of love that human beings are supposed to give just to themselves, i used to give it to the world. 

Ariadne ended up wanting just one thing: to die. death was the only thing that could wash away the treason of her only love. 

and when she really wanted to die with all her heart, the god Bacchus showed up. 

she confused him with Ades the god of the afterlife, but Bacchus fell in love with her and did what she wanted: he brought her in paradise and let her pass away. in that very moment she rebirthed as a goddess, ready to love again, to pass the eternity with Bacchus.

let's replace for a moment physical death with a change in perspective. 

it's the very moment in which a stubborn, an therefore inconsolable, sufferer choose that just a change in the way she/he sees the world can make her/him live again.  maybe it was not a coincidence if i was named after her too. in fact my middle name is Arianna, the Italian version of the greek Ariàdne. 

the comedy character i enjoyed the most was Zerbinetta. she was a woman who lived freely her passions, who loved life. she tried to comfort Ariadne telling her own quite funny life stories. 

in the end, she was the one bringing the moral of the story after Ariadne started her new life with Bacchus:  every new lover looks like a god.  

The Hungarian way to welcome spring

i know... spring is definitely coming, but i can't help to tell something about winter Mohacs Carnival.

i do it now, because the purpose of this ancient Croatian community born festivity was to scare the winter out and eventually warmly welcome the spring. as far as i can see, they succeeded.

Mohacs is a town located in the southern part of Hungary, a few kilometres away from Croatia boundaries. Mohacs is a quiet harbour centre on the Danube bank, that wakes up for Busojaras Day in the end of February, when over 4000 visitors pour out in its streets and squares to see the Busos cross the Danube and parade in Mohacs avenues.

well, first things first.
who are the Busos? they are local men masked with sheep fur coats all over their body and frightening or otherwise extremely funny wooden masks, all with the same fashion traits, shaped by a long tradition of winter-frighteners.
it must be said that Busos take pretty much advantage by their anonimity. they use to strongly hug girls while passing the streets or pressing them to their chest to dance an imaginary music. i speack for personal experience, i came back to Budapest with all my girls telling me that i ended up having a wooden wig on my bun after a dozen of those hugs.

the local girls are masked in a more classy way, with masks that recall very much the Venetian ones. they just wear the local women custom with heavy wool stockings and red skirts on their body.

the core of the celebration is the bonfire in Szecheny Square in the late afternoon. a big bonfire indeed. nobody seem to care too much for safety even tough the crowd stands practically one metre away from a huge fire, and pieces of hot ash fall on their heads brought by the wind.
the Busos dance around the fire to ultimately scare away the winter.
i found myself dancing with dozens of people in circle around the bonfire, singing Hungarian songs i didn't even know, hugged by unknown people, laughing with little happy kids.

folk musicians came from Balcan countries and from all over Hungary to play their cheerful instrumental music practically all day long in Mohacs squares to amuse people. folk dancers danced almost 2 hours on a stage in the main square before the bonfire, with their colorful dresses flying in the air whith their pirouettes.

i saw some of the Great Beauty in all this.

Memento Park

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Hidden Memento

Memento Park is a stock place.

as you come over you realize that this place put 10 kilometres away from Budapest city centre in a quite ugly suburb and surrounded by a brick wall has one purpose: hide away what it contains.

It's home to soviet propaganda statues and anchors, dedicated to Lenin, Marx, Bela Kun and other "heroic" workers that in other former socialists countries were indeed destroyed.
some of these statues are gigantic. it's an impressive place to visit.

the real socialism style is obsolete. the subjects were musculous men with rather frightening serious expressions on their faces made by steel or stone, matron-like women with strong arms and abundant hips, portraits of real people curiously different from those "types" above mentioned.  the real people statues were mostly of men. i don't recall any portrait of a real existing woman.

i loved the dynamic postures of several statues.
i was almost expecting some steel giant to move for real.

my love for Imre Varga style is official. i've already passed almost an hour in the park of the Great Synagogue admiring his art piece "Tree of Life" in January. now i was enchanted by how he managed to make a propaganda statue of Bela Kun speacking to Hungarians interestingly beautiful.
he makes the steel move lightly, as if it's painted in the air, but with all the strenght of a statue. Imre Varga plays with light. the statues seem to move altogether in the direction indicated by Bela Kun from his 'pulpito'.

i was accompanied by a talented photographer. half of the fun was thinking about realizing something original.

those statues means bloodsheds and sufferings to Hungarians. you won't find any watchmen in the museum park telling you not to jump on the statues. you won't find any written panel forbidding to take photos or touch the art pieces. nobody really cares about their destiny.
the only trace of a Stalin representation are the boots belonging to a former statue of the dictator that was destroyed during the revolution of 1956.
on the way out, there is also the chance to enter in a "sovietic car" one of those cars where nobody fits in. i can't remember the name of the model, i will ask my Czech photographer.

there was a superb light. a softly March twilight behind the enormous forgotten statues.

Freedom cockades

the past Sunday here in Hungary it was an especially important national celebration.
each March 15th Hungarian people remember the sacrifice of their patriots to free the nation from Austrian imperialists and gain independence.

Budapest commemorates this day with parades, a public flag-raising,  a chief of State's speech, and a  big crowd in cockades in Kossuth Lajos ter in front of the Parliament, and free entries to some museums and to the Parliament itself.

it's still an experience to see how much respect is payed to those ones who dared to dream a better future for the humanity.
the people were singing Sandor Petofi "National Song":

“On your feet, Magyar, the homeland calls!
The time is here, now or never!
Shall we be slaves or free?
This is the question, choose your answer!
By the God of the Hungarians
We vow,
We vow, that we will be slaves
No longer!”

Wear a smile

i have always wondered if the personal style is a choice or not. 

in the end, most of the times is about fashion trends. it's exactly like Meryl Streep says in her speech, starring as Miranda Priestley in the movie "Devil wears Prada". 

i didn't like particularly this movie, but i enjoyed this speech:

Miranda: Something funny?
Andrea: No. No, no. Nothing's... You know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I'm still learning about all this stuff and, uh...
Miranda: 'This... stuff'? Oh, OK. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

i always had the impression that fashion has to do with the choice of a restricted group of people, followed by a much bigger one. a matter of social psychology.
what is the space for our individual tastes in all this mess?

ultimately it must be the idea that we have of ourselves. between a closed number of choices, we tend to choose what's closer to the social image we give ourselves.

i grew up in a family where nobody has a particular taste for elegance, except for (maybe) an aunt.
nobody in family in fact cared about the things that i've always cared about speacking about image and personal style, and i had to discover everything by myself, pretty much experimenting and with my friends's help and example.

what i do know is that most of the people consider me a person with a taste for elegance.
i do not spend money for expensive clothes, i just have many many ways to find out fashion and cheap clothes. it's nothing difficult, just a couple of websites that directly sell online what we find in shops in Europe, but with higher prices.
given the fact that most of the things that we find in shops come from China, and few other Asian countries, if you manage to contact Asian clothes manufacturers websites, you may sensibly contain prices. of course, you also need your personal insightfullness to guess what is elegant, what has quality.

feeling beautiful BEFORE i put on anything or think about anything to buy, is not only the best part but for me is the essential one.
i learnt that i am not beautiful because i put a certain outfit on, but that the outfit is beautiful because i put it on. that's all the pleasure of care about what i put on, because in fact i'm worshipping my beauty. when you do it enough, you are ready to admire the beauty in others, instead of feeling bad because you are not like them. our souls need love. no matter how we give it, but we need it. giving love to yourself, is literally giving it to the world.  

soooo... love's the best outfit, as well as a warm smile to yourself.

new york cafè - Budapest

the pursuit of negation

all the poetry and pleasure of taking a cup of chilly flavoured coffee having actually a good discussion with somebody can't be rendered in few words.

it's a quite rare gift to find someone who developed the pleasure to discuss about topics without feeling the need to always agree with you.
i'm grateful for that. i think that if the person in front of you doesn't feel at ease to say that she/he doesn't agree with you, it can't be called a real discussion.

interesting note: this will be my Opera week. on Friday i'm going to the "Ariadne" of Richard Strauss, on Sunday i'm going to Mozart's "Don Giovanni", both at Budapest Opera House in Andrassy.
instrumental music and human drama in a wonderful luxurious frame.

#budapestgoesviral

Thou shalt fear the solo traveler

i don't know why, but most of the people around me seem scared by the people who dedicate openly some time to themselves in solitude.

"why do you live ALONE?" 

"why did you decided to travel ALONE?"

"what are you doing there ALONE?" 

they seem incredulous when i invite them in my flat. i should be living with 2, 3, 4 flatmates during my Erasmus. i left some friends shocked when i announced that my travel in Turkey will be an alone trip. in the end why should i travel by myself? i could get bored. i could be in danger. 

we are losing also the consciousness of the pleasure of the "promenade", that's to say: the freedom of stroll with no special destination, usually by ourselves. because 1-why are you walking alone? don't you have friends? and 2-why are you walking nowhere? don't you have something better to do?

the question here is not why everybody wants to live, travel, amble by her\himself. the question is why she or he should have problems about or because of this. 

i have always felt the urge to pass some time relaxing by myself. thinking, taking care of my body, writing, observing...or whatever. 

after all, the first and last relationship that i have is with myself, with my soul. all the other relations that i have and the way i manage them depend upon this important one. 

travelling by myself is something that fascinated me since i was a teenager.

i read the books of solo travelers, describing their travels as a spiritual experience that i have always felt calling me too.  Annie Hawes traveled alone in Morocco and Algeria describing victories and struggles of the solo traveler in an amazing book. i also read blogs of solo female bloggers, like Dangerous Businness that really talked to my heart: 

 I'm just a small-town Ohio girl trying to balance a "normal" life with a desire to discover the world beyond my Midwest bubble. I'm here to prove to people that traveling (and especially traveling as a woman) doesn't have to be scary, lonely, or out of anybody's reach. - Amanda, Dangerous Business @dangerousbiz

for sure, traveling alone requires more attention. that's exactly why i waited so long before doing it.
i was scared, i didn't felt ready to bear this both moral and common sense burden all by myself.
staying with oneself requires courage per se.
people are so scared by staying alone exactly because of this.you face the dragon. you face your worst enemy, and you don't like to think about yourself like that.
if you are a girl, you have also to think about the kind of world you live in. God knows i saw what kind of inhuman patriarchal culture made my gender become socially handicapped. because out there there is human garbage who buys and sells women, rapes and uses and objectify female persons, i have to heavily limit my freedom.

the thing is: i am ready to handle it.
i feel ready to ride the dragon.
i know that it is another level of attention. it is also another level of deepness in a  travel experience.

statue representing The Freedom- Citadel, Budapest

YOLO: theory and practice

i didn't use to feel comfortable with me.
i was thinking about that this morning, while preparing to go to the Hungarian language lesson.

a lot of things change over time. usually in my life it happens very rapidly.
i didn't use to feel bright, or either beautiful.
in fact i passed a lot of time judging me when i related with myself. i just didn't have the fun that now i have when i think about me.
i was always wondering what other people would have thought about me. there was this vicious little voice in my head telling me that i was too nerdy, too unfriendly, too unpopular, and so on (proof of the fact that we can REALLY become the worst enemies of ourselves).
i had friends that kept telling me that the only important thing was what i think about myself, but i committed the mistake to think that they were telling me that just out of their love for me, and that in fact i had to keep pursuing outher's admiration in order to succeed.

i'm stubborn. when i am persuaded of something,nobody can stop me. i had to realize by myself that the important thing is ultimately to feel good, because really, life is far too short to keep snipping the soul with those foolish thoughts.
i just had to ask truthfully to myself: "whose opinion may change my day first?" to realize that it was my opinion that mattered the most. the other people's opinion has an importance as long as it is given with heart and rationality by those who can actually see me. period.

i do not want to depict it as an easy thing to do. it isn't.
i just think that the same amount of energy put in judging me can be put in trying to make a habit to observe my worth, intelligence, beauty, splendor. i want to try to see every mistake i do as a step forward, i want to try to laugh at my mistakes, to joke with myself rather than giving to my mistakes the power to hurt me and making me feel bad. it is a power that they are not suppose to exercise. i am.
when i did those little things inside me for a while, i found the strenght to change step by step what i didn't like in my life. i started changing by concentrating on what was the nearest project that i could realize that made me progress towards what i wanted for me.
i am fond of  Stephen Hawking's sentence  "wherever you are, there is always something that you can do.". even a little thing can make us feel better when we are doing it towards our inner passions.

i want to give thanks to my teachers.
thank you to the great loves, thank you to the children that laughed at me in kindergarden, to the friends that are gone, to those who will always stay, to the people i didn't choose, to the people that rejected me, to the cats, to the family that taught me that blood is less important than spiritual bounds, to the morning, to the nights spent awake, to the girl friends, to the coffee, to the Carribean Sea, to the people i chose, to my travels, to the horrors of the Worls and his Great Beauty, .... and many many more.
everything and everyone were my spiritual teachers. they were always with me. i could perceive them only when i was ready, the teachers always come when the scholar is ready.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection."  Buddha

a new sunlightkeeper adventure

spring is definetly in the air.
in 20 days the month of March will come to an end, and a new adventure is starting.

sunlightkeeper is heading south to Turkey, to the magic Istanbul, its glorious history and its enchanting twilights on Bosphorous.
it's kinda a dream come true, like most of my travel adventures.

what most attracted me was that this is the only city in the world that lies between two continents, and had played the role of capital to consecutive Christian and Islamic empires. i guess that you can pretty much breathe history and magic over there in your lungs.
Istanbul develops on seven hills, just like Rome. its former name for hundreds years was Constantinople, after the Roman emperor who converted to Catholicism the Roman Empire.

now, first things first.
as i always do before traveling, i bought my guide book. this time i purchased it at Bestsellers, the biggest English books bookstore in Budapest. i know, i know.... i'm old fashioned.
nowadays everybody uses apps, ebooks, or whatever can be contained in a smartphone and can keep well away from printed paper (which is considered both unpractical and not politically correct towards Amazonia Forest). ....my apologies, but i can't help it!
i LOVE guide books. i love the feeling, the smell, the consistence of the printed paper. two weeks before traveling you can be sure that i'm carrying it in my bag wherever i go, no matter if i have time to read it or not, just to be sure that i'm not wasting this possibility. i like to read the history of a place and its highlights before actually arriving there. basically, i always feel to do it for two reasons: to be well aware of dangers as well as the most beautiful things to do, second, and more important, because i hate to have the impression of being wasting time.
there are travelers that love to wander for the streets of the city center lost and happy, completely uninformed about attractions, prefering a spontaneous approach.
i love to wander in the streets too, the difference is that i want to decide if it is really what i want to do, i think that destiny has enough space in my travel without letting also this part of my admiration of the Great Beauty of the World to it. it's my way to participate and provoke destiny as well.

my favorite guides are Lonely Planet guides and Rough Guides.
well, they are actually the best ones.

back in 2006, i remember the first serious travel of my life. i went abroad with a scholarship in Honduras to spend the 4th year of High School studying in Central America. before that period started i had to pass also a week in Miami. it was a lot of first times for me! the first time i left my family for so long, the first time in another continent, the first time in the US, the first time i felt so free... the first time i was so frightened about me.
what would become of me? what if my new Honduran family does not like me? what if i can't understand the teachers? what if... what if...?
i found comfort thinking that the Rough Guide could have helped me to learn about the local culture somehow at least. but almost nothing was written there proved to be of any use on this respect.

a culture must be felt on your skin if you want to cach its inner rhythm. you can't read it anywhere, although you can sense it everywhere.

i learned also, and not at all effortlessly, to not listen to all this pressing questions that my fear whispered in my soul.
risks are part of the game. you can manage the risk-benefits calculation, your brain was designed to do it, but you can never eliminate risk factor from life. i had to accept it.
fears have a place in ourselves. fears tell you that you're a human animal. they have their specific place inside us.
that was particularly important to mind to me. if you put fear at the center of everything, trying to fight or justify it, you will die inside everyday. if you put it in a place when you can't sense it, you will suffer the consequences of it.
fears are always at the second place after what makes your life woth to be lived: love, passions, projects... after a risks-benefits calculation, you can put it where it belongs. and live. and love. and be the best of yourself. and allow yourself to be happy.

Wine-cellars marathon

last Saturday i joined a trip of the local Erasmus Students Network to Eger.
Eger is a nice and small town located in eastern Hungary, famous for its Castle, its Cathedral, and most of all for the production of some of the better Hungarian wines( together with Tokaji region).

to be honest, this famous Castle was maybe momentarily absent when we reached it. 

in fact just a few external walls on the top of the Castle Hill still stand, and a small and a little sad museum. what's really special up there is the amazing view on the city of Eger, which is pretty rare in the flat and plain Hungarian territory. i enjoyed the feeling of the spring sun on my white wintery skin, and the wind blowing on Eger hills. 

i enjoyed less the theft of my adorable, new smartphone, which somehow happened there. 

it's amazing how the people of my generation (including me) can feel TRULY lost without something connecting us to the world. i tried my best to recover from this huge loss (most of all of my beloved SD Card full of my photos, videos and downloads, my Italian SIM as well as the Hungarian one) and enjoy the rest of the trip. 

the centre of Eger is nice. it felt like a quiet, regular, clean place... if this town is to be compared to a person, it would be a lovely catholic grandpa enjoying a glass (or more) of good wine in late afternoon. 

we visited also the famous Cathedral.... sometimes, and this is one of these times, i'm really sorry to be Italian. when i enter into churches all over the world, i never get impressed.
i appreciate them. i enjoy the frescoes, and the huge barrel organs, the statues and the atmosphere.
but i just can't get really impressed. like when you can't talk not because it's forbidden but because the beauty of the place can actually silence you.
truth is that my Country has the most amazingly beautiful churches that i have ever seen.
but since i'm waiting to visit more churches in France, the competition is still open.

finally we went to the so called Szepasszony-Volgy "the Valley of the Beautiful Women" , one kilometer away from the city center. in Szepasszony there are dozens of wine-cellars carved in the hills stone.
the twilight lightened softly Eger hills, in a dreamy air. i liked very much walking up to the Valley.

once arrived there i appreciated why Hungarians love this particular place.
as i mentioned, it's a place full of small, stone-carved, and old fashioned looking wine cellars, one after the other. you can enter into each one of them, if you just have a whole afternoon to dedicate to this endeavour, and a very high resistance to alcohol.
moreover, a glass of Rosè, Chardonnay,  Kékfrankos, Cabernet, Merlot, Kékoportó, costs around 200 Ft, less than 1 euro.  
i went around the Valley with a troop of other Erasmus students determined to mix every kind of wine. 
usually you can find also heavy Hungarian dishes offered in the wine- cellars, and some nibbles resembling very much Spanish tapas, to help you resist to the alcohol effects as long as possible. 
they call the various wine-cellars by their civic number, not by the name written on the wooden signs outside the cellars. the best one we had the chance to try was the number 43. 
the setting was preciously decorated, there was a ceramic Stube heating the cellar. the tapas served were delicious, but more importantly there were old Hungarian musicians playing gipsy music with violins and an instrument that i really could not classify.... an hybrid between a piano and a very big xylophone. i promised myself to figure it out, but Google can't read images in the reasearch window. 

the Day of Miracles (episode 1)

according to Tibetan Lunar Calendar today, March 5th, is the Day of Miracles.
today the effects of positive and negative actions are multiplied 10 million times. the tradition and celestial bodies movements tell us that this Day of Miracles starts now that i'm writing, 7:06 pm.

it's interesting that Tibetans consider thoughts as actions.
today my own Day of Miracles is starting, and if this ancient tradition is to be believed, even what i'm thinking can strongly affect my future.

the spontaneous question that arises is: what do i want to multiply 10 million times in my life?
i feel like i've always had the answer on my lips: travels.
i love the moment when i realize that i'm going to travel somewhere. the organization which follows has some poetry to me, but that moment....  i know that i was born for those moments.
i was born to see the Great Beauty of the World. i found it in the eyes of the people walking hurriedly in Marrakech Souk, i sensed it in the fancy Cafès in Vienna, i caught a glimpse of it in the dirty hands of Honduran kids playing in their Barrio.
in this moment i'm following just the beat of my heart, nothing else. i do not have any idea of how this pure and unconditionate love for travel adventures could be transformed in a profitable activity in the future. it doesn't matter. when you love something you can keep wanting to do it no matter what.
i know what i'm speaking about.
it's not like that nobody ever pointed me a handgun at the head. they did.
it's not like that nobody ever tried (luckly just tried) to rape me. someone did.
it's not like that i haven't had my complications, or that i've always had everything under control or that i've never experienced a Carribean earthquake, and even a tempted coup d'etat.
when i was a student living with a family in Central America i was thrust out of home in a Third World Country at 17.

i could follow my own horror tales much much longer, believe me.

but it's the Day of Miracles. i told that because i want always to remember that despite all of this i kept loving, worshipping and searching the Great Beauty of the World.
 not only because my heart knows that there is much more in my adventures than danger. but i know that i love something so beautiful as travels exactly because i lived all this, i know i can survive this, and i still want something more of this.
the only writer that i've had the opportunity to read that caught the feeling i experience about travels is Elizabeth Gilbert.

"Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. i have always felt, ever since i was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money,that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. i am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as i have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. i feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby- i just don't care what it puts me through. because i adore it. because it's mine. because it looks exactly like me. it can barf all over me if it wants to- i just don't care."   ("Eat, pray, love" E.Gilbert)

i feel that i was born for the moment when the airplane takes off, the train leaves the station. because when i feel that moment, nothing has importance except the present, everything is in order and in harmony, and just an almost tangible certainty remains deep in mky soul: i am exactly where i was supposed to be.
if i have to multiply something 10 million times in my life in my Day of Miracles, i'll start with this wonderful feeling.

the Holy Grail of pronunciation

everyone learns languages differently.
a teacher can show you the way, but you can't escape the fact that it's you who has to go through it.
for the greatest part of my student life, school teachers taught me English, Spanish, and French starting from gramatic rules. to be more precise: grammar, grammar, grammar, and even in my linguistic high school (that's to say, we were kinda the lucky ones) just two hours of conversation per week.
i loved languages. but i discovered my own way to learn them quickly when i had a full immersion in them.
when i became a foreign student for a year (personally, i do not consider the so called "language holydays" of 2 weeks for middle class students as a full immersion at all), i had to talk in Spanish, and study and expose in English.
that's when my own way came to me, day after day.
i learn languages listening to their inner music.
every idiom has its own rhythm. and when i  listened carefully, i found out that the pronunciation had a particular cadence, and one day i just caught it. it happened to me first with Spanish, most probably because Italian language has a more similar structure to Spanish than it has with English.
i started believing that speaking has something to do with singing on this aspect. you may know lexic wonderfully, but the language hasn't to be thought too much while spoken. when i got the pace, i didn't have to think it through anymore.

i've been living in Hungary for a month now. i tried to read the signs of the shops while walking down the streets, to listen to people while doing my grocery shopping at the supermarket, to read the last chapter of my Lonely Planet, and even to repeat over and over again the name of the Metro stops after the recorded automatic voice pronounced them.
Hungarian is an European language spoken just by... well, Hungarians.
some people say that it belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, together with Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. some other people say that it belongs to an ancient Mongol language family, with deep influences of Turk language after Ottoman domination.
the truth is that nobody knows it for sure. what we know is that Hungarian is the language of Magyar population, that at some point in history decided to remain here in the Carpatic Basin. since then, Hungarian community history tells us that Hungary was mostly protecting itself from military as well as cultural invasions of all sorts. this people has some kind of persecution mania about being absorbed by neighbour reigns.
what happens to me to think is that from the linguistic point of view they tried hard to maintain their peculiarities instead to include terminology from foreign idioms. they protected Hungarian so hard that today is universally considered a very complicated language to learn.

today i had my second Hungarian lesson.
we're still talking about stuff like the days of the week, the name of the months, the numbers, the nationalities, the professions... all very important lexic to learn for sure. but i'm still trying to listen and catch the inner rhythm of Hungarian, and i know that even tough it will be hard to figure out, one of these days i'll catch the Holy Grail of Hungarian pronunciation.

Baking Yoga

it's amazing how much an afternoon passed baking cakes and biscuits can calm my nerves and fill me with energy.
the preparation of pastry is like a mantra to me. i repeat mentally the recipe and every action i do has a specific and pre-ordered purpose.
last week i went to a Yoga Meditation session in Buda. i really felt that it was time to introduce Yoga values and attitude in my life, since sometimes i live in what i named hurry-mind-state. that is to say, when i forget about enjoying the present and i worry too much about the future. maybe, i thought. meditation would teach me a way to calm down and let it go when i need it the most.

at the end of the meditation session, when the sweet, calm and warm voice of my Yoga teacher told us to  focus on our positive energy flowing from the Heart Chakra after the relaxing repetition of a sanscrit mantra, to send it to ourselves, the people we love, the people we are angry with, and to smile to ourselves, to give thanks for the good things we have in life... that exact state is the one i experience after baking cakes most of the times.

sometimes i live with the overwhelming feeling that i do not have control over the things that happen to me. which is true. we do not have the control over everything, and that's part of life.
but doing simple things, like preparing my daily dose of endorphynes, leaves me with the feeling that i can enjoy what i do even if i do not have any control over it apart from my goodwill.
most surprisingly, i feel that i'm grateful exactly because it's a miracle if i'm here, if i'm even able to relax in a quiet, warm and safe place, enjoying myself, in such a chaotic world i have no control on.

take your time to do something that makes you feel like this. that's the best advice i can give myself and everyone else.

When you're an Erasmus student you get to know a lot of people in a very quick time. I was already hanging out with new friends the day Mark left Budapest. That very same night I was in some Erasmus student flat playing the Ring of Fire. Usually conversations between students are not so deep. They stop at "where are you from? How long have you been here? Are you studying at ELTE or Corvinus? Do you know about this or that event? You can't believe how much I drank last weekend." Guys are here to have fun, that was as clear to me as the sun. As clear as the fact that I was feeling willing to have fun and make new friends too, but also to have some real interaction. I found out that real interactions are pretty rare around here. I felt more similar to some people I met, and once I believed I could REALLY talk to a guy that I met at a speed dating organized by local Erasmus Student Network (nothing romantic at all, it was just an initiative to know other Erasmus students), but in the end he was flirting with me. I don't know. Maybe I'm looking for real relations, even simple real relations when you can just take a cup of coffee together some afternoons and freely talk to someone, because I'm older than the average people I use to meet. Maybe it's because I live by myself, I don't have any flatmates by my own choice and I need real company. Most probably I'm looking for something true because that's me, I've always been looking for it. I started to enjoy staying with people just to hang out and tell superficialities later in my life. Now I kinda enjoy sometimes not to bear the burden of a deep dialogue that asks a level of concentration. Thank God I changed a little, I would never have survived studying abroad before! There are advantages in being an Erasmus. Nobody knows you, so you can be your favorite version of yourself. Most of the people are pretty friendly, they just want to talk to you, they really wanna like you most of the times! You can enjoy small talk, and say to yourself that is an experience. Studying abroad allows you to get much more familiar with other cultures. Everybody knows it, I know it, I've even lived this experience in Central America, but truth is that I've never lived this experience with the European cultures. We are an amazing continent. In such a small space live so many and so different histories, people, cultures. I love that it takes just 2 hours on car to find yourself in a new world. These are the pros. The big con is that this multicultural reality mixed with nationalism lead to 2 WW and several other ones. We are living now in the longest period of peace that Europe has ever experienced. I like to think that projects such as Erasmus + program help this period of peace to continue. We are the future.

Time for coffee

I love taking coffee in Budapest. It sounds weird from an Italian girl, but it's true. Here you can find awesome places to sit down, chill a little, read a book and eat cakes and cookies that in my Country would have cost a double price.

The New York Café has an incredible Neo Renaissance atmosphere.
Gold, red, marble. You can feel like Princess Sissi just entering this old fashioned palace full of red carpets and mirrors. Just don't go at New York Café on weekends. It becomes a kind of extremely crowded and noisy touristic meeting that makes almost impossible to relax in front of a cup of coffee.

If you're lucky, sometimes you can find almost nobody even in central coffeehouses. The last time I went at 68 Andrassy Café, located in the middle of Andrassy Utca (the Champs Elysée of Budapest) I was the only client. It was lucky because I could talk with Stefano, the Italian waiter that has been living in Hungary for 10 years and will tell you stories about his whole life and the history of Budapest without being asked. I tried Arany Galuska, a delicious Hungarian cake served with sour cream.

Anonymous dreamers

Have you ever find yourself starving for love? I do. As the time passes, as the experiences come in my life, I got to think that most of the times we are not giving ourselves the love, respect and comprehension we want people to give us.

It's so weird. Because on the contrary, when I achieved something true, a maturity award in life, I could give it to other people without ever remain without it.
When you truly have something, it is yours and it belongs to humanity too. True feelings ask courage to be lived, that's what we fear most about them. The trick is that if you don't walk your path and dance your dance, you will die inside... Sometimes we seem not to remember it.

I want people with dreams around me. People with eyes enlightened when they talk about adventures, but with a heart big enough to care and respect about others as well. I feel I grew up around people different than me, and now I have to find my way with people like me.

That's a cool Sunday...

Listen to Safety Dance - Men Without Hats by NcLexguy #np on #SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/nc-lexguy/08-safety-dance-men-without

Just a little work out

Budapest has such an efficient public transportation service, that you can go practically anywhere without walking more than 10 minutes. Public transportation is run by BKK.  One thing that you might like is that is also very cheap. Even cheaper if you're a student.
It costs 3500 Ft per month, practically 10€.
Public transportation is working 24h around the clock. Are you coming home at 4:00 am from the disco? You can always count on night buses and trams.
I even took Budapest tours on tram. My favourite tram line is n.2, it runs right on the Danube bank, on Pest side. It is possible to admire all the beauty of an urban panorama declared UNESCO World Heritage while going from Belvaros to the end of Lipotvaros. 
With BKK pass it is possible to take ferries, local trains, as well as funiculars, buses and trams without limits. I'm planning a cruise when spring will come... I hope as soon as possible!

Well, given those premises, you might imagine how difficult it can be to remain fit having this practical transportation system.  You don't even have to walk! 
I love to walk. I love to feel the atmosphere of a place on my own skin. To watch people's faces going by. I love to see the beauty even in hidden corners, and smile regardless of what people might think about a smiling girl walking past the street.  Walking is also a great exercise for the body. I do not really like to make a habit of going to work out sweating in some gym. I usually go whenever I want to, and I must admit not very often at all. I don't even love so much to run until my throat is so dry that I can't even speak, although I go much more often for a long run than at gym.  But walking... I love this exercise. I love hiking in the mountains, as I discovered at a very early age when I went camping in Friuli Venezia Giulia. 

Moreover, I always try to walk more than the 20 minutes per day that Dukan recommends in his books. When I started my new life in Budapest as an Erasmus student, I soon discovered that I couldn't always take public transportation if I really wanted to walk at least an hour per day. I had to make an habit that if something is half an hour near, I just walk to reach it.

let's get it started

this blog is about my life and adventures abroad, in Budapest.
for the first time in my life i'm living alone abroad, in a flat in the VIII kerulet of Hungarian capital city.
i've already lived abroad for two years in Central America, but always with someone looking after me somehow.
it's not always easy to live by yourself. it's been a month, and i found out that i just needed this to start being friends with sunlightkeeper.