Thursday 25th March 2004

Location: Semmelweiss utca – 8:55 pm Local Time

Today’s first touristic tour started from Nyugati pályaudvar [Niugati páiaudvar], which means “station of the West”, although it is situated more north than west. We went there by underground (line M3), saw the shopping centre West End very quickly and then went into the station from the side entrance. Another day I will see the main complex which was designed by Mr Eiffel himself (the same one who built the Tower in Paris).

My train ticket cost me F476 (the currency here is called fiorot [fiorot], which is only one pound and something in British Pounds!

We went to the university which is situated outside Budapest in a rural, very rural[1], village called Piliscaba. The university is catholic, and the full name is Pazmany Peter Katolikus Egyetem. The one thing about this university is the new quite new, modern-gothic, allegorical and extravagant architecture. The buildings are funny-shaped with curves, column trees, airy corridors, Swiss chalet-like atmosphere. Amazing! And it is still in development. The names of the buildings are all given according to quite an arbitrary Latin (e.g. stephaneum, americanum, etc.). We had lunch in a posh canteen and surfed the Internet on Hungarian PCs with Hungarian keyboards and Hungarian Windows XP. After that I went to a Hungarian lesson and I understood very little, but some stuff is much clearer now. I met some of my friend’s colleagues, three Italians and one German, and went back together to Budapest.

This time, in order to get back home, we changed from M3 to M2 at Deák Ferenc tér and went to Astoria, which is a stop closer to the flat. The name is inspired by the old luxurious hotel by the same name (dating back to the 1920s). The M2 looked much nicer but I have been told the M1 is the best, oldest and nicest of them all – no trace of Big Brother-like architecture!

Tonight we are going out for dinner and night clubbing. Tomorrow I am going to see more of the city of Budapest. It coincides with the arrival to the capital of the Italian president, Azeglio Ciampi – wow!

VOCABULARY:

Written	Pronounced (Italian phonetics)	Meaning
banan	banan	banana
kokusz	cocus	soconut
ső	shō	salt
keksz	checs	biscuits
pályaudvar	págliaudvar	railway station
mozi	mozi	cinema
korház	korhaz	hospital
hol	hol	where?
ki	chi	who?
alma	alma	apple
paradicsom	paradiciom	tomato
saláta	shálata	lettuce
gómba	gomba	mushroom
víz	viz	water
bor	bor	wine
templom	templom	church
rendörseg	rendōrsheg	police
iskola	íshcola	school
asztal	astal	table
szék	séc	chair
abla	abla	window
ajtó	aitō	door
öreg	ōreg	old
fiatal	fiatal	young
szép	sép	beautiful
csunya	ciugnia	ugly
erös	erōsh	strong

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[1] Budapest is a great metropolis but outside of it the country looks less advanced than Slovenia or Croatia