First Friday in Budapest and last Hungarian class

The Hungarian Parliament building over the Danube

Sziastok!,

Day 6 started like every other day: a typical European breakfast, consisting of juice, coffee (nicest Nescafé machine ever), cold meat and bread, at the Professor's Guest House in Buda followed by an approximately 30 minutes commute to McDaniel College in Pest for our daily classes. However, today was going to be our last Hungarian lesson, unfortunately.

 

The hallway outside the classroom at McDaniel College

Overall, it seems like everyone enjoyed learning this new language. Hungarian, Magyarul as they call it here, is unlike any other language that people in the group have studied or know. But as difficult as it may have seemed at the beginning, everyone put great effort into learning it, which undoubtedly pleased our teacher Erika. As it is custom here in Hungary to thank people with flowers, we presented Erika with a bouquet of roses for everything she had taught us. It was probably a day of surprises because after class was over, Professor Berliner generously provided the class with two delicious cakes as Amadou's birthday was approaching (January 12th).

So the group enjoyed a good piece of cake before heading out to lunch. After that, it was time for some Number Theory and the introduction of mathematical induction. The lesson went really well, it was very easy to understand induction. Induction is a fairly easy concept to grasp for most people with a decent mathematical background, and it turns out to be very useful in proving important statements or theorems. 

Tram 19 on the way back to the hotel

Later that afternoon, back at the Guest House, most of us spent their first Friday afternoon in Budapest doing the maths homework due the next Monday. This was a really good idea, given that this enables us to spend more time away from the books, wandering around the city over the weekend and most important: celebrating Amadou's birthday!

Ferenc Puskàs outside Burger's Bar

Like most nights, people go to different restaurants for dinner. A group of us headed North along the Danube to a gourmet burger restaurant called Burger's Bar: a must have in Budapest, although it is not Hungarian food. After a replenishing burger, we decided to wander around the area: restaurants, bars (billiard, poker, sports), clubs were everywhere around. Since we had to wake up early the next day, we decided not to stay out too late and so we retired for the night.

- Matt Van Koevering & Amadou Gueye