Our humble abode

To get beyond the surrealism of a new city, to feel that you have actually left home and shifted your existential status in relation to the rest of the world, becomes easier with the help of local architecture. Although there is much to learn and describe about the design of Budapest, my first thoughts go to the construction of apartments and similar buildings, like mine pictured. It seems a common Hungarian solution to at least one architectural challenge is to build apartments around a courtyard, allowing more opportunity for windows. The idea may not differ so much from the shafts of Manhattan, but there is something much more thrilling about coming and going through the courtyard with the dwellings of neighbors rising around you.

Inside our apartment, though, I guess I ended up shafted anyway. My room makes dorms look spacious, anomalous to the rest of the apartment with its 14-foot ceilings, which makes me think space is poorly distributed. But I knew what I was getting into when we signed the lease, and it appeals to my minimalist tendencies. The only part I find strange is that I so easily accepted the windowless conditions, having forgotten what a fuss I made about finding a room with a view in Vietnam. No matter. I sit now in our airy living room, which if the sun were out and the blinds drawn would glow with natural light. The blinds themselves are a funny thing, too. They're heavy with wood bars to cover the large windows, so to open or close them is borderline hazardous and requires pulling or loosening a thick cloth strap.

Laundry also entails more effort than usual because most people have washing machines but not dryers, so we hang dry our clothes. I can't complain, though, about the heated racks in the bathrooms, which in many homes include a shower far removed from a toilet. Most toilets have round metal buttons (as opposed to levers) to flush, though I saw one at Central European University with a pad instead. The doors, as with those in the rest of the place, lock only by key. That always adds extra time entering and exiting (so we're screwed in case of fire), and explains why there are so many locksmiths wherever we go. Otherwise things are quite 'normal,' including kitchens, although real estate agents like to say that American-style kitchens are those that meld into a living room or some other part of a house, and everything else, I suppose, is un-American.