The long discussed love/hate list

Things I love about Budapest
1. It is culturally acceptable to blow your nose in almost any situation. This is awesome for a girl with perpetual allergies. Also, everyone sounds like a moose here, so I don't get mocked quite so much.
2. The staring taboo does not exist. And everyone dresses like a crazy person. So metro rides can be quite funny, and you don't have to pretend not to be looking at the crazy lady or cute boy.
3. Everyone speaks beautiful, charming English. This makes my life easier, and I love Euro-English, with its weird terms, sometimes awkward phrasings, and lovely accents. Hungarians speaking English sound happy and old-fashioned, and I understand them perfectly.
4. Transit. Good for the earth, the wallet, and Hungary's lack of drunk drivers. Also good for random anonymity-time, where I ride around, listen to my Ipod, and am "alone" for awhile.
5. I have an awesome group of friends who can be counted on for a fun night out, company for dinner, funny text messages, and laughter.
6. Lyla and Bence, my dysfunctional little Hungarian family.
7. Cheese rolls, powdered soup mixes, and breakfast cookies.
8. My jobs. Both are really entertaining, not too hard, and rather rewarding. I am (mostly) respected at both, the students are hardworking and fun, I have several really awesome colleagues, and essentially I'm paid to do what I do anyway, which is chatter on in English.
9. Fruit and vegetables are actually available only according to seasonality. Which means I'm also learning about seasonality and actually living according to what the earth wants.
10. Two dollar beers, two dollar ballet tickets, a week's groceries for two costing around thirty dollars, three dollar gyros, three dollar bottles of decent wine...
11. Night buses which pick me up regularly from downtown and deposit me basically at my door a fleeting thirteen minutes later.
12. Ok, it's not really anything to do with Budapest, but every time "The Way I Are" comes on Lyla's Itunes I feel irrationally happy inside.
13. Wine drinks! Spritszers, wine with coke, mulled wine... all of which are not weird old-lady drinks but perfectly ok, depending on the season, of course.
14. All food is covered with sour cream and paprika.
15. Hungarian. It's unique and interesting, and really something else to listen to.
16. Hungarians. At first glance they're a reserved, seemingly unfriendly, kind of depressive people. But they will go out of their way to help you, they're all blessed with really great dark humor, they work like freaking dogs to scrap a life together out of less than favorable situations, they make out with each other unabashedly in almost every location and at almost every age, they find even the saddest attempts at their ridiculous language adorable and charming, they're incredibly attached to their history and families, they're self-effacing, and just generally nice people... once you force them to actually talk to you after weeks of mono-syllabic responses to your smiley American attempts at friendship.

Things I less-than-love about Budapest
1. It is culturally acceptable to blow your nose in almost any situation. This means people are constantly blowing their nose, then touching you. Or kids just honk away while you are teaching them. And everyone's pockets are constantly full of semi-used tissues. All of this is gross.
2. The staring taboo does not exist. So creepy men feel perfectly justified in spending an entire 45 minute commute staring unblinkingly into your face. And old ladies glare with impunity.
3. Everyone speaks English, and as such does not want to deal with me and my god-awful Hungarian, which therefore does not improve as fast as it otherwise would. And it's just sort of annoying to mentally prep a little speech, stride bravely to a counter, request your food and all its details in Hungarian, and have the clerk sigh at you, smirk, and ask "Is that all?"
4. Transit. It eats hours of my day and involves standing in the cold and rain and being harassed by ticket inspectors.
5. Missing my friends from home, and finding it rather hard to make new ones in the big city.
6. Missing my real family and my dogs.
7. Hungarian cheese straight-up sucks. And there is an entire aisle of hot dogs in most supermarkets.
8. Being the new novelty teacher, and not speaking Hungarian, and nobody (except Balint, bless his heart) telling me what's going on... ever.
9. Fruit and vegetables are only available according to season. This means I couldn't get broccoli for the first few months I was here. And it means that now I cannot get lettuce. LETTUCE!! No lettuce. Or non-citrus fruit for that matter.
10. Really expensive clothes and shoes. And the cheap things are less impressively cheap when I remember that I'm paid in HUF.
11. Night buses full of drunk idiots with drivers that get an evil kick out of aggressive braking and accelerating.
12. I haven't heard a new song in over three months. And we have no tv, no internet, no radio... I also don't know what's going on in the world.
13. Unicum, the ubiquitous Hungarian schnapps, is one of the most horrible things I've ever put into my mouth. Blech.
14. All food is covered with sour cream and paprika.
15. Hungarian. It's really, really, really difficult.
16. Nope, not going to say Hungarians. Except old ladies, most of whom really are just jerks.

Interesting side note: I went to the ballet yesterday. During the applause, the audience starts applauding in the way I am used to, a random cacophony of claps. Within a few seconds, however, it settles into a rather unsettling (honestly, creepy) simultaneous, rythmic clap. I guess that over forty years of forced clapping in unison has long-lasting impacts, even over a decade later... I wonder if they even notice that they do it.