My six month party has ended.
Back to reality.
I have a long list of things to do.
I’m in debt up to my ears.
I need to go get a real job.
Need to go back to school.
I miss all my friends in Budapest, and all my friends from the tour.
I hope I can come back sometime soon.

This will be my final travel blog post. For now.

Today is my last full day in Budapest, tomorrow I leave for London. I will be staying at a friends house in London, and bright and early Wednesday morning I leave on my tour of Western Europe. After my two week tour I will have one more night in London, then will be coming home on the 16th in the evening. I will try and update on the road - but no promises. I started missing Budapest about a week ago, and I’m sure this feeling will only grow. Everyone was so welcoming and I’ve made many friends who I will never forget. I wish I could bring all of you with me, even the man on the bus who wears grocery bags for shoes and yells at me in Hungarian on my way to work. Hopefully, I will be able to come visit soon and see everyone again. No good byes, I’ll see you all again soon.

I wish this party would never end.

Back home, I’ve always been friends with people either my age, or younger. Here, in Budapest, all my friends and co-workers are older then me, this has forced me to look at myself in a new way. Before, I would judge myself on my younger, often less mature friends. Here, I judge myself on older, much more mature and experienced people. These older people see me not as a young adult, but as an equal, which requires me to make a greater effort in how I act around them. I am learning how to properly greet people, how to formulate a discussion, hosting others in my home, behaving at work, and just being a friend with another adult. I now realize how far I have to go in becoming an adult, and becoming a member of adult society. I have met many people that I hope I can come close to achieving their level of maturity and I think my new state of mind will bring only positive rewards for me in the future.

Hungarians pigeons are crazy. They have no fear, obviously they still have some Red in them. One of the Soviet Pigeons walked in front of me as I walking towards it today and it didn’t move out the way - I had to walk around it, I had to get out of the way of the pigeon. Unbelievable. I think they might be planning some kind of uprising. I can hear them talking to each other outside my window every morning.

I am 25 tomorrow. The big two five. I feel old.

I’ve been corrected twice now on separate occasions that I was shaking hands with people wrong.

1.) I often shake hands with my gloves on, which is rude, apparently.

2.) I often don’t give eye contact to the person I’m shaking hands with, which is also rude, apparently.

Well live and learn I guess?

A joke about Canada as told to me by my Turkish friend:

“At the founding of the nation, they decided to draw letters out of a hat to make the name of country, a ‘Newfie’ was chosen to draw the letters, he read out: C eh? N eh? D eh? And thus Canada was born.”

Hope you heard your email on Jeff O’Neil Mail this morning at 8:15!

Thanks for listening all the way from Budapest!

Charis
Morning Show Skirt
Jeff O’Neil Show
99.3 The Fox
Western Canada’s #1 Modern Rocker
Vancouver, B.C.
http://www.cfox.com
Is it just me, or does Madonna look like a pale Bruce Lee?

—–Original Message—–
From: email@scottelliott.com [mailto:email@scottelliott.com]
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 6:19 AM
To: CRVAN CFOX Morning Show
Subject: VIA WEB: Song Request - CFOXFM - Vancouver Market -

Hey Guys. My name is Scott E. (The REAL Scotte). I am a Surrey boy
currently living in Budapest, Hungary. I listen to your show every day
(9 hours difference its 3pm here). Can you play me “Lilly Allen - Oh My
God (I’ve never been this far away from home). Thanks a bunch!

This is the typical process I go through ordering food from a non-English speaker. This conversation happend this morning.

Me: Can I have a Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McMuffin?
Her: ^&(&^*(^&*(^?
Me: Um. Sausage?
Her: Ah. Bacon?
Me: No, Sausage.
Her: Ah! &*(&^($^&*?
Me: Uh. Sure.
I pay. She gives me a plain Egg and Cheese McMuffin.
Me: Close enough. Thank you!

At least she was polite and patient. I often get quite the opposite sometimes.

It’s a seven hour train ride from Prague. At least this train has electrical sockets for my laptop.

Sometimes my mind convinces me I am somewhere else. Riding on the bus to work, I think to myself that the city streets of Budapest are actually the city streets of Downtown Vancouver, that the rolling hills between Budapest and Bratislava are the Canadian Prairies, or that the small forests that dot the landscape between Budapest and Prague are the outskirts of Montreal. But then I quickly snap out of it, and I realize how far I am from home.

I woke up after my first night back from Prague with the over whelming feeling that the last three months has been one long party, and that I was tired. I go to new places and see new things every week, if not every day. I thought I had settled down to life in Budapest, but I think I am just settling in on the wild ride I am still taking. Austria or Croatia next? Who knows.

The year has almost come to a close, and my Christmas is Budapest was a successful one. Christmas morning I went to the home of my Canadian friend and supervisor at the ERRC. With her boyfriend and another Canadian friend, the four of us had a nice Canadian Christmas brunch. Later that day I went to the home of a Hungarian friend and co-worker.  Together (mostly her) we prepared and cooked a Turkey, along with Potatoes and other fixings. It wasn’t a quiet Christmas, but it definitely had a different feel then previous Christmas’ back at home. This Christmas was a slower, more relaxed one, a simple day of friends and festivities. I enjoyed it very much, and might try to emulate it next year, somehow. 2008 is almost upon me and in mid-January I will reach the half-way point of my adventure. Its all downhill from here.