My parents made it over the pond at the end October and after a stop in London, flew to Budapest to spend fall break with me. We spent the first part of the week in Croatia and the last part in Budapest. It was a blessing to have them here and to explore Croatia for the first time, but also to give them a glimpse into my world in Budapest. Traveling over break, plus an awareness of how quickly my semester abroad is flying by, has also led me to confront my increasingly splintered heart and the difficulty that comes with loving too many places too deeply. Plitvice Lakes National Park
At the Budapest airport we picked up a car and headed to Zagreb, Croatia (with a stop at the lovely Lake Balaton along the way). We walked around Zagreb that night and the next day drove to Plitvice Lakes National Park, and as Rick Steves describes it, “a European Niagara Falls, diced and sprinkled over a heavily forested Grand Canyon" (1). Despite the overcast, chilly day, and some flooding, it was a blast to discover the lakes and waterfalls of Plitvice, often being able to get up close to the water on the park’s series of boardwalks. When Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Croatian Serbs rebelled and within a few months held roughly one third of the country. The fighting resulted in nearly a half-million internally displaced people (IDPs), with Croats fleeing Serb-held territory and Serbs fleeing Croatian territory. On the way to and from Plitvice, we drove through numerous small, agrarian villages that still bear the wounds of the war, even two decades later. Several of the homes and buildings had bullet holes in them and many were abandoned, overgrown with grass and with gaping openings where doors and roofs used to be. Although I only got a very brief glimpse, the villages in Croatia reminded me of our experience in Bosnia earlier this semester – with a similar level of development and scars from the war still apparent. In addition to the natural splendor of Croatia, I’m glad I was able to see this side of the country and its history too.
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Every week on the Calvin College Hungary Semester looks a bit different; days are filled with spontaneity and weekends are often spent traveling. Since most of the students in our group are taking different classes and we are placed at various service-learning locations, all of us have different schedules too. Nevertheless I want to give you a glimpse into life here in Budapest and the routine I have found myself in. Monday 9-10 AM – I join YWAM Budapest for their weekly base worship. Since I’m often out of town on Sundays, I love being able to visit YWAM, talk with the folks there, and have some time to worship and reflect before the week begins. 10:15 AM – I alternate every other week either meeting with my supervisor at my service-learning placement, Református Missziói Központ (RMK – Reformed Mission Center, an outreach to immigrants and refugees in Hungary), or meeting with two students from our partner university, Károli Gáspár, who want to improve their English. 3-4 PM – I meet with Luna, a young lady from RMK, to go over her English homework and practice conversing in English. Luna is from Bangladesh, but has lived all over the world. She's sassy and fun and i'm loving getting to know her! 5:20-6:50 PM – The History of Civilizations class I’m taking at our other partner university, Corvinus, meets. Corvinus is located along the Danube in the southern part of Pest and I love leaving class and seeing a gorgeous view of the Liberty Bridge and Gellert Hill at sunset. Recently our group went on an excursion to Lupeni, a small town in the Jiu Valley of Romania. The purpose of our visit was to meet with the folks at New Horizons Foundation and learn more about the development work they do. We were able to experience New Horizons’ programs firsthand; spend time with their staff and their founders, Dana and Brandi Bates; and get out in nature and bond together as a group. I came back to Budapest feeling rested, encouraged, and so very inspired.
Two weekends ago I visited the city of Cluj-Napoca, a university town in Romania’s historic Transylvania region. The purpose for visiting Cluj was to meet with World Vision, learn a bit about their community development work in the area, and meet Emma, who my family sponsors through World Vision. Last year I wrote a research paper examining some of the development challenges Romania faces today and their potential underlying causes. I found the case of Romania, and particularly its history of communism, to be absolutely fascinating, so being able to visit the country for the first time was really exciting.
One day during our time in Bosnia we made a visit to the city of Mostar, a cultural center and UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its Ottoman-era bridge. The duration of our time in Mostar was spent huddling under umbrellas and avoiding the torrential rainfall as we went on a walking tour around the “Mediterranean” city.
Our tour guide shared with us how the war impacted Mostar. She explained how Mostar has an Austro-Hungarian side and an Ottoman side. During the war, Orthodox Christians moved to the Austro-Hungarian side and Muslims moved to the Ottoman side, to the point where people swapped apartments. It sounds so ridiculous and implausible, yet it happened. When asked how things are now that the war is over, she said that although there is now freedom of mobility between both sides, things continue to be, for the most part, “ethnically” segregated. When you hear the words Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), what comes to mind? Before learning more about this country in the Balkans, when I heard its name, I drew a blank. I knew a war and genocide had recently taken place there, but that was it. Bosnia, like many places in the world, was a country overlooked by the education system I grew up in and a mysterious place forgotten by most of the Western world.
As odd as it may sound, I've always found genocide interesting and have been drawn to regions recovering from conflict. So when I heard our group would be studying and visiting Bosnia, I was ecstatic In preparation for our excursion, we read The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway and Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass. The Cellist is a fictional story told from the perspectives of four characters living under the siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. It does a fantastic job of putting the reader in the shoes of someone daily living under war. It also wrestles with the issue of our humanity, how it can be lost amidst conflict, and the journey of the characters as they seek to reclaim it. Can the weeks stop flying by? I've been in Budapest for almost a month now and I’m begging the clock to slow down. I’m falling in love with every aspect of life here and knowing I have to leave in December is frightening. But I thankfully don’t have to think about that quite yet! This past week I visited the lovely town of Eger, started a history class at Corvinus University and two classes with Jeff (our fabulous program director from Calvin), continued service-learning, and “graduated” from Hungarian (I've never been so proud of a B+ before)!
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