Playing House

We are moved into our lovely flat! Thanks to the help of great friends, we had all of our belongings out of our old apartment and into our new one within 24 hours, which left us plenty of time to clean our old place. Luckily, someone new wanted to move into that flat the day after we moved out, so we got half a month's rent back - bonus!

The new place is fantastic - no one's lived in our unit before, and we love having a real television and comfortable furniture again. One thing I've notice right away is how quiet the place is, since we are directly in the middle of two busy streets, rather than right on one as we were before. I actually heard a bird chirp yesterday, and it stopped me in my tracks ...

Here's a few more photos .. the kitchen:

Bedroom:
Living room/my office, which opens into the kitchen:




Besides moving, one really fun thing I did last week was attend a concert on one of Budpest's trams, fittingly called the "Tram Jam." It was organized by an alternative country band, the Last Drops, who always satiate my country/folk cravings. The aim of this event to film a music video, so the band asked everyone to show up in '70s clothes and "randomly" hop on the same tram and jive all the way down to their venue. (They wanted it to be random so it was a slightly less illegal gathering.) I was amazed by the hundreds of people who showed up and by our ability to cram into a tiny tram car. Here are photos of the event. You can't see me, because I'm squished in the back with other revelers.

And here is the group walking to their venue after the tram jam, past the beautiful market hall.

Weekend Update

Greetings from Budapest. The last couple weeks have felt overwhelming to say the least, but I'm finally grabbing a couple minutes to myself to write an update. In the biggest news, Michael and I (well, mostly me) found a new apartment in Pest. Thanks to the help of our friend who searched some Hungarian apartment listings, we were able to find a great-priced, brand-new apartment on the same street where we live now. Because of the bad economy, the apartment's cost has been slashed in half from what it was renting for in December, so now we get to live in a little yuppie land with air conditioning, a flat screen television, and a gorgeous division with 24-hour security. Nothing wrong with being comfortable, I guess. We move in on May 15, and I'll post more photos of it when we move. The neighborhood has a cool website too:
www.gozsduudvar.hu

I am really excited about the move, but it has taken a lot of time to visit flats, sign all the paperwork and put down very high deposits on Internet and the rental itself, which I guess is a condition of living in a country with high corruption rates and little trust. Thus, I have a lot of catching up to do this week with magazine work, the two marketing projects I'm doing, and some wedding planning to boot. Michael left this morning for a weeklong trip to Macedonia, where he'll do work for his USAID project and also attend a dinner hosted in his and his boss' honor from the US Ambassador. He'll be a diplomat before we know it.

Yesterday, Michael went skydiving for one of our friend's birthdays. I didn't go, because I have friends visiting right now from Colorado, and I didn't want to leave them all day for their first day in the city. But now I am quite regretful I missed out on the experience, because it looks phenomenal. Michael bought a video of his flight, and you can see it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtkJRqejpT4