Living in Budapest (Even Just for a Little While)

  

The short time I spent there felt like stepping into a different rhythm of life — one that’s
somehow both relaxed and full of energy at the same time.
The first thing that struck me was the weather. I got incredibly lucky with sunny days almost
the entire time I was there. Budapest in the sunshine is something else — the buildings
glow, the Danube sparkles, and everything just feels more alive. It’s the kind of place where
you actually want to see everywhere, even when you don’t have a destination.
One of my favorite experiences was going to the thermal baths. Swimming in warm outdoor
water while the air is cool around you is something I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did.
People just hang out, chat, and unwind for hours — it’s not rushed at all.
And then there’s the food. I tried a chimney cake (which I’d only ever seen online before),
and it absolutely lived up to the hype. Warm, sweet, slightly crispy on the outside, soft inside.
I’ve also tried a chimney cake class and it was fun to learn about how it’s made.
Getting around the city was surprisingly easy too. The transport system is really good —
reliable and easy to understand even if you’re new. Trams, buses, metro… everything
connects smoothly. I never felt stuck or confused about how to get somewhere, which
makes a huge difference when you’re in a new place.
But more than anything, what made the experience special was the people. I ended up
meeting quite a few people through church, which gave me a sense of community I wasn’t
expecting. It’s always a bit daunting going somewhere new, but having that shared
connection made it easier to talk, hang out, and feel like I wasn’t just passing through. It
turned the experience from just “traveling” into something more like actually living there,
even if only for a short time.
Budapest has this balance that’s hard to describe — it’s historic but not stuck in the past,
lively but not overwhelming, social but still calm. You can spend a day doing nothing but
sitting by the river, and it still feels like a full day.
If I had to sum it up, living in Budapest felt easy to enjoy, easy to explore, easy to connect.
And honestly, that’s what makes a place special.

 

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Rina’s 8th month

So this month has been a lot. Someone moving in, then out, meeting some new people, but also saying bye to a lot of people, who became a part of your life. It’s the cycle of life, but if I’m honest it’s really tiring. Expect for the end of month it has been really warm, enough to get some overpriced ice coffee to enjoy outside. Two bigger experiences I had this month was the travel to romania and the revolution day on the 15th. You can feel the tension in the air, knowing the election will be soon and I am curious how it will go. But for this blog I will focus on my travel because it was incredibly nice seeing new things and exploring new places.

 

 

So I travelled with another ESC Volunteer, who volunteers in Bucharest. We share a Supporting-Organisation and that’s how we get to know each other. The travel itinerary was 3 nights Bucharest, 3 nights in Braşov and 1 night in Cluj-Napoca and lastly him staying 1 night in Budapest. I stayed at his shared flat and I got to meet his flatmates. Bucharest was so boring, especially for a capital, so we did a day trip to a little town called Targoviste. It was cute but on the way back we missed a connecting train and we were stuck in a random village at night and it was so cold. I was so down in this moment. It felt like it was my lowest point of my life.

 

 

Brasov was so nice the centre was so cute and we even hiked up the brasov sign on the hill. Another day we took the train to Sinaia and we hiked past the Peles Castle and took the cable car to 2000m and it was so nice to reconnect with nature after spending so much time between concrete. The view was immaculate and it was the highlight of the entire trip. Cluj was by far my fav city out of the cities because it was soo lively and young. Would love to visit it again. In Budapest we were invited to a birthday party so we were really busy the whole time. Milan, the Bucharest guy, was really patient with me and organised a lot so it was really comfortable to travel with him. I’m really grateful for the opportunities I get while I am here. Hope next month will be a bit calmer but still adventurous. It’s getting a bit lonely here because most of the ESC People are leaving this month including Manal. I will really miss her. But with better weather there is still much to explore and things to do, so I am content that next month will be also a good time.

Another trip is already planned so…will keep you updated!

 

 

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Rina’s 6th month

​So this time I will just start where I just left off. So the beginning of 2026 was with my beloved friends from my homecity. We continued with sightseeing like going on the cruise and going out at night. The magical snow was becoming very annoying because it was so cold and there was almost no sun. When I was getting water for the shop the sun shined for the first time in a while and just couldn’t stop myself just standing for a second and enjoying the sun. I couldn’t wait for spring to come. 

Middle of January the second round of sightseeing seeing has begun. A Colombian friend I made in Bratislava in the hostel came to visit me and we spend a lot of time together checking the typical tourist spots out. He’s a very kind and patient person and enjoyed the together and we even met a bigger group of volunteers and we hung out at their flat. 

 Before I went to the midterm in Visegrád I spent time together with Kriszti and Barbi at the ice rink and drank some hot chocolate afterwards. It was fun and a nice way to spend time together before Kriszti moved out. 

In the last week of January I went as mentioned to Visegrad. Sadly the weather was not keeping up with us but it was nice to meet the people from the on arrival training and also a few new people. As a long sleeper I even managed to wake up at 5am one time to go on a hike with some to the castle. It was so cold and parts of the way were frozen so it was actually kind of dangerous. I would like to say that the view was worth it but well…it was too foggy. But still it was a nice time bonding with people. The Programm of the midterm was very nice and I felt really comfortable with the facilitators. The medieval evening was really fun and the food at the restaurant was nice and it was nice holding a torch and trying medieval clothes. 

On the last day of January I went to a comedy show with Manal for the first time. It was not necessarily my humor but the vibes were good. 

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Rina’s 7th month

This was the first time spending a longer time alone on the flat. At first it was really a bit weird to be alone. This short month was kind of a test of my patience: snowing and raining and then this little hope of spring starting. Therefore I didn’t necessarily feel like going out a lot. Still I spend time with people. At the start of February I caught a cold anandd I started to crave mother’s food and my favourite Vietnamese dish so I went with Manal to eat Bun Cha. And I also spend also time with my German friend I met through others volunteers and I cooked with her and just chatted for hours. 

As the month was short not much happened so let me just focus on a few things that I did. We went to the Corvinus Uni to have a workshop and as a reward we ate really good pizza! Thank you Zsuzsa! 

And I also enjoyed going to a flea market with Barbi. I found a cute sweater and cute top for night outs. The best way to spend money for me is mostly food and unnecessary expensive cafés. 

 

As a foreshadowing I am looking forward to my trip through Romania I booked this month, so I think there will be more to tell but also that a new volunteer will arrive is something I am looking forward to. (also hopefully good weather) So please wait for my update…

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Rina’s 5th month

 

So December has been pretty eventful looking back, so let me tell you how the last month of 2025 went. It started with my Highschool classmate visiting me again and even though we had an argument we managed to have fun. For instance we visited the lantern exhibition at the Zoo and we played board games for hours in the board game bar and especially the WW2 board game took so long (& I lost sadly twice).

Also in the middle of the month I got a haircut which was needed. Zsuzsa introduced me to her hairdresser which I’m super grateful for.

With Christmas approaching we decorated Store matching to the festive to the vibe with decorations like ornaments. Also the Christmas break being very soon I planned for the holiday to travel with Manal, my Moroccan friend, to Bratislava and Vienna. So this month I experienced a lot of firsts, first time spending Christmas without my family, going to a hostel and visiting those cities. 

 

We spent a lot of the sightseeing but also had night outs like joining pub crawls and so on. But my highlight of the trip was meeting a lot of different people who are living in different circumstances and countries. My favourite night out was when we went to karaoke bar with people we met in the hostel. One of the guys we met put requested a song and he tried to convince us to come and perform with him. Normally I wouldn’t sing in front of strangers and it gave me a lot of anxiety. But somehow I just said yes and it was the best decision. I haven’t felt alive in a such time and it was such a nice time. And the whole bar was singing with us and it was a really overwhelming atmosphere. From now on “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay will be connected to that specific experience.

Close of the end of the year my closest friends from my hometown visited me and we spend new years together. We spent a lot of quality time together and for new years we went to the Füge because it was too cold with the snow. Still the snow was magical. We lit up the sparklers I had prepared and it was such a nice way of celebrating the start of 2026. Looking back 2025 has been a really really long year with a lot of ups but also little downs. Let’s hope that the year 2026 will be the year for everyone. 

 

 

 

 

 

I am grateful for my friends and the feeling of having a sleepover like children was really nice. It reminded me of the lyrics of Lorde’s “Ribs”.  So as last for December I will add this here, even though I’m pretty sure you know this:

“You're the only friend I need 

Sharing beds like little kids 

And laughing 'til our ribs get tough

But that will never be enough”

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Rina’s 4th month

​Rina’s 4th month

My November started in Frankfurt where I spent time with my family and friends. If I start to think back this month was kind of quick but also really slow. This month was full of surprises and new type of work. Obviously the most of the work stayed the same as the previous months, the rhythm itself wasn’t disrupted much. Waking up, make food and go to work and start to get cleaning etc. But for the 28th of November the 10th anniversary of the charity shop the preparation was a but hectic. The little stress and tension was kind of new with me but also the excitement because I never attended a big event before. The workshop was fun and spending time with Dana, Barbi , Manal and all the people made me very happy.

This month has been also really cold and dark, which I’m quite used to but the littleness of experiencing daylight is quite exhausting. But still the cold times also brings something nice with it: the christmas market. Generally I would say I am not a big fan of Christmas but I am really fond of Christmas Markets. There is light food and happy people and good vibes. The prices are as high as in Germany which is quite a lot. But I still enjoyed the light projection at the basilica. One thing for sure I will miss is eating Raclette with my Family, even though we don’t necessarily celebrate Christmas, we also use the Christmas Holidays for spending time together.

 

Also the guy that I’m currently dating has visited me so I took a day off and we tried to do a lot of sightseeing together and it was nice spending time together. We were lucky in the unfortunate weather to experience a little moment of snow. When my mother made me go on saturdays to the Japanese school I really hated it as a kid and we had a lot of lessons about specific Japanese words that captures seasons and nature. Not much of it actually remained but one of the words is Hatsuyuki (初雪), which literally means first snow, which marks the beauty and the seasonal change. Even though I’m not really the romantic type (that’s what I believe), the thought of experiencing the first snowfall of the year next to him made me smile and so grateful . I didn’t tell him, so please keep it for you… 

Next month will be probably very busy and it’s exciting thinking about the Christmas Holidays

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Rinas 3rd month

​So update from the last blog:

The weather was unfortunately not really good as I hoped, but I had enough plans and encounters to not become gloomy in the grey city.

I spent every weekend differently in October, so let me give you a recap of what I did.

The first weekend, I went clubbing with friends and visited Szimpla Kert. This was the first time enjoying night life in Budapest. It was crazy to see how big the Szimpla Kert was, like a huge labyrinth or a jungle you could get easily lost in. 

The weekend after I visited my aunts place. I enjoyed there the slow paced life there and my highlight as a cat person is the cat that comes by everyday. It’s really friendly and its fur is really soft and it purred a lot, which made me really excited.

The third week was the elongated weekend Anett and me visited Debrecen

and Hortobágy. My bias was that Debrecen has a really similar look to Budapest because it is the second biggest city after Budapest in Hungary. But it’s really more like a small city. It’s less grey and more greener and there are more big streets that aren’t so narrow. Since it was a national holiday, we visited the Déri Museum for free and on the other day we visited a cat cafe in Debrecen. The cat’s name on the picture is Oskar. He was really calm and wasn’t bothered by anything, which really impressed me.

We visited Abdu, an Egyptian friend I made on the On-arrival-training, in Hortobágy. On one day we visited the Animal Park, we saw a lot of animals like pigs,horses,a donkey and a lot of other ones. On the other day we visited we saw a festival (I already forgot what kind…memories of a goldfish), I tried at a food stall the Debrecen sausage and palacsinta with cottage cheese and it was really good. The weather has been really windy but the festive vibes and the warm food lightened up my mood. Thank you Abdu for hosting us!

  

Not to forget to mention the very short visit of my Highschool classmate. Even though it was just 4 month not seeing each other, it felt like ages. It is really incredible how time flies. When we reminisced about “old times“, it felt like the thing happens years ago, but in reality it was just half a year ago. It was nice to show him some spots in Budapest and we went to new places as well. The feeling of having some familiar face in ESC experience has been new and also very nice. (If you’re reading this: Danke Mika!) 

So back to my weekends. The last weekend I flew back to Frankfurt and spend time with family and friends. I really missed the food of my mother and sleeping in my own bed. It was nice to catch up with friends and hearing about how they are doing in university. Hope I will meet them soon! 

Now that Christmas season is starting I’m really looking forward to the christmassy activities for November and December!

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