It’s a legitimate question. The only things I do all day are trying to cook new things (veal chunks with pasta?) and work on my website.   This weekend I turned down some nice offers to visit friends out of town, but I need to bear down and finish off the beast.

If a foreigner is reading this blog, and you come to visit someone in Budapest, and your friend offers to take you to their hometown, go.   Go!   Don’t think about what you might do in a tiny place on a weekend and how it must be boring.   It won’t be.   It will be a great experience, no matter the size of the town/village.   The hospitality will be overwhelming:   home-cooked food, friends of friends to meet, events, parties, relaxing Sunday mornings, a different feel to the country you can’t get in Budapest.

Hungary is just small enough that there is a countrywide mass migration on Fridays to go home, particularly college students.   In fact, this is how I got to know Hungary.   In the good ol’ communist days of 1986 I stayed in Budapest with a family through Servas (a great organization to be explained soon in the redesign!) and I went with the daughter to her college town of Szeged.   A friend of hers invited me a tiny village where I met another friend of whom I am housesitting for right now.       This daisy chain continued  to Pecs where that family later informed me of a last minute opening for an English teacher.   I flew over 10 days later.   That job, at a salary of US$230 a month, was one of the best things I’ve ever done.