Captain’s log, Day 3: Last day in Budapest

Dorm rooms at the University of Pécs. Way cool.

It’s our last breakfast at the hotel so we make it count: eggs on eggs on eggs, yogurt with mad granola, and a heaping slab of the coldest of cuts. A few of us headed to the market to buy hand-carved chess sets before the long drive to Pécs.

Time for the drive. We bustle in to spacious luxury shuttles equipped with Wi-Fi and fueled with love, and we start our trek to a new home. The drive is a sea of hills and fields, grassy knolls, and it looks like something out of Toy Story. “Picturesque, to say the least,” reports Dan. We stop at a gas station along the way to stock up on grapes, the loveliest fruit in the land. Nick buys a pastry that turns out to be an undercover steak, but he’ll live. (We hope)

Dr. Zsuzsanna Schnell showing us all the cool historical stuff in Pécs.

Entering Pécs. Sarah scours the streets for dogs, or “good boys,” as she’s taken to calling them. We’re surrounded by hills lush with greenery and beautiful architecture. We get to the dorm building, our home for the rest of the trip, and slog our luggage up the stairs like worker ants vigorously transporting bread to their anthill.

It feels like college move-in week all over again, but without any stress or responsibility. We make the discovery that our windows open up in a way that allows us to hang out on the roof and talk between rooms, all the while staring at the gorgeous city ahead of us. The Box has truly blessed us on this day. Amen.

We decide to get a taste of the city with a visit to a local cafeteria, where the food is unfamiliar and the language barrier is strong, but we press forward with valor and might. Next up is a tour of the city with Dr. Zsuzsanna Schnell, professor at the University of Pécs and celebrity superstar from our past semester’s “COIL” course (Jamie maybe insert link to your article here). We visit more places than we can remember, mosques made into churches, cathedrals, fountains, and a wall of locks.

See the umbrellas – an amazing ice cream joint called, Ciao Bella Cukrászda.

Most of the locks represent a couple pledging their love to one another, but we can already tell that we’ll be needing to leave one for the city of Pécs at the end of our journey. After the tour, we all felt the same: a strong desire for ice cream.

“Not just any ice cream, but soft, creamy… soul-saving goodness… that you can just suck in… I can’t talk about it anymore,” raves Dan, who has been steadily consuming cones ever since. While attempting to prevent Dan from getting another scoop, we have a long chat about the trip, our thoughts so far, and the truth about the moon landing. Before we pack up for the night, a Pécs student named Justin takes us to a local grocery store to stock up on food for the week ahead. Sarah continues scanning the premises for good boys. We return to the dorm, where Dan and Nick engage in a violent battle of mental warfare on their newly purchased chess sets.

Like the wise Mr. Miyagi before him, Nick teaches Stew how to play, and sets him on a path of destruction the likes of which has never before been witnessed. Dr. P, our father, reminds us to write this blog, so we decide to play cards instead. All goes well, and by the end of the game our throats are raw from screaming at each other like jackals in the night.

Finally, we sit down together to write the blog. Truth be told, we were dreading doing anything that resembled work, but after we started, we just couldn’t stop. All of our fun memories came back to us like scorned lovers, and if our laughter could be translated into written words (in Hungarian), we would outsell Shakespeare himself (though he might not be very popular here).

Days since Sarah has last pet a dog: 3.

Led by Christopher Podeschi, associate professor of sociology, a group of Bloomsburg University students spent 10 days in Hungary this summer studying first-hand the Hungarian culture, history and identity. The study abroad trip was part of Podeschi's spring collaborative online international learning course, Seminar on Identity and Locality, which included videoconferencing during the semester with a class from the University of Pecs. The abroad experience also featured visits to Budapest and a rural Hungarian community that provided social and cultural context explored during class discussion earlier in the spring.    #CollaborativeLearning #HuskySummer #HuskyAbroad