So, I’m two weeks into my move to Budapest, and it’s safe to say it’s everything I imagined it would be. The city is gorgeous, the nightlife is like a European Vegas and the baseball folks realize they’re behind the 8-ball, but are willing to do whatever necessary to develop young players despite a limited budget provided by the government and private investors here.
My apartment (pics coming in a post later) is on the Buda side of the Danube River in the 11th district. I’m about a 15-minute tram ride into downtown Pest, home to the Parliament building, the famous Opera House, popular shops, bars, clubs and other attractions. For my Virginia friends and family, a good comparison would be living in Rosslyn and crossing the Potomac into Georgetown.
I’m a 10-minute ride to most of the fields I’m coaching at, five-minute ride to a local mall in my district and my gym and within a block of a grocery store, a 24-hour convenience store, pool and basketball courts. The tram station is literally in front of me when I walk out of my building. I like the location, at least for the first six months I’m here (the duration of my initial lease), and may move downtown in December once I get a better lay of the land.
I enjoy is that there aren’t any tourists around my district. It’s almost exclusively locals, so on days where I don’t have baseball and haven’t gone into downtown, I can go a full day without hearing English spoken. Those are the days I challenge myself to communicate in the little Hungarian I’ve learned to order lunch, say hello to the front-desk girl at the gym or to someone I may pass in my building. This is great for now, but I certainly have times where I miss sitting around talking baseball with my old roommate, Morgan, bumping into someone I know, being around coworkers, picking up the phone and calling someone, etc. I’ve considered maybe getting a dog (the city is very dog-friendly, you can see them all over, laying under tables on patios at restaurants and running around in the parks), but with all the traveling I’ll be doing with the national teams and vacationing, that probably won’t happen.
The people, well, you can tell the decades of being under Nazi and then communist rule took its toll. Many appear to be unfriendly, tend to have a dazed look and stare down at their shoes when they walk or sit on the tram. Tattoos and smoking are definitely in. I’d guess that more than 75 percent of the women here smoke. There’s talk of them banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but apparently it takes awhile for anything to happen here, so I doubt that happens during my stay here.
That being said, once the locals hear me speak and realize I’m an American, they are usually very friendly and curious as to where I am from, why I’d leave the US to come to their country, how long I’ll be staying, and on a number of occasions, the conversation has ended with, “You will love the women here, they are the most beautiful in the world.” So far, I have no argument with that sentiment.
My role with the national program is pretty varied. I conduct clinics during PE classes at the schools throughout Budapest, drop in on summer sports camps that each district is required to provide free-of-charge to their students to recruit kids and give demonstrations, run twice-a-week combine-like practices with 50 or so kids ages 8-14 and starting next week, will be running our summer baseball camp. In addition, I’ll be spending the summer going around the country recruiting kids and holding tryouts to form Hungary’s first junior national team, which we will select in late August and I’ll serve as the head coach of. I’ll also be working with the senior national team at its next camp in mid-July and then travelling with them to Barcelona at the end of July for a qualifying tournament for the European Championships, which are being held next year in the Netherlands.
The kids absolutely love
having an American working with them. I’ve probably signed 100 autographs (I could be Chipper Jones for all they care), and despite the language barrier, seem to be very receptive to the instruction. By and large, the kids here are athletic and pretty tough, but upper body and hand-eye coordination is not something they excel at, as it isn’t required as much in sports such as soccer as it is in baseball. That has yielded some pretty interesting moments during the clinics. My first day at one of the schools, three kids got squared up in the face, one suffering a busted lip. To their credit, not a tear was shed and they just picked the ball up and threw it back to their partner. That was the first indication that this was a pretty tough society. Decades of being ruled by Nazi Germany and then communism I guess will toughen you up.
Last week, I was able to sit in on a meeting with the president of our baseball and softball federation and the director for Little League in Europe, Africa and the Middle East as they made an agreement to bring LL to Hungary starting next year. That was a great experience and will make a good contact down the line.
The every-day things you don’t consider when moving to Europe have taken time to adjust to. They are not as liberal with electricity as Americans are, so I have no dryer or dishwasher, and using high-voltage power strips to I can plug in electronics I brought over with me is out of the question, even with the converters you can buy. I learned that the hard way when I plugged one in and I was left to light my apartment with candles the rest of the night and into the following morning before I could get a hold of my landlord, who told me where the outside fuse box was located.
Some other adventures include washing my first couple of loads of laundry sans detergent until a Hungarian friend that was over explained to me it was in fact fabric softener I had sitting next to the washer and had been using, not detergent; My first night meeting some new friends downtown, I jumped on the wrong train and probably was halfway to Greece before I realized I was heading south and needed to be going north; I initially was a disaster with the currency here (forints, also known as HUF) and drove the poor lady at the 24-hour shop at the bottom floor of my building nuts when I paid for a box of cereal and milk with a 10.000 HUF bill (roughly 55 bucks), then she noticed I had coins in my change holder thing (“change purse”, I guess) that would have covered it. We’re cool now since she see’s me there every day buying a new kind of beer (I’m experimenting to see which are best for when you all come visit!) and other groceries, then can actually pay her competently.
An adventure that isn’t as comical was getting my cargo here, which took two weeks. Let’s just say I’m not a huge fan of DHL or Hungarian customs, and I’d recommend highly that if any of you move overseas, just bring the bare minimum on your flight with you, and don’t ship anything. Just buy it all here. As a result, I’ve now got a pair of Euro-style jeans that choke my thighs and I worry may tear when climbing stairs and some shirts that aren’t met for anyone with any meat on their bones. That’s enough for today. I’ll be better at posting more often, and not as long. Hope everyone is doing well back home.
Pictures of Budapest