BeerBike and EscapeRoom -- (1 of 4) The Birthday Month in Budapest.

As some of you may know about me, I've adopted the "birthday month" to celebrate my birthday, instead of settling for a single day, or even cramming it into a weekend.

For that matter, I strongly encourage each of you to do the same and let me tell you why.

My birthday is on the 11th of October.  This means I have a solid ten days of building up anticipation for the birthday in October.  It gives you just a few more opportunities to get 'your way' in the inevitable domestic "conversations", I get to select 'my' restaurant when dining and listen to 'my' music at home.  I'd really be short-changing myself if I only celebrated my birthday for a day.

Because several of our new school friends were going to be out of the city for my birthday weekend (they are lucky we are still friends), we decided to celebrate together the weekend before my actual birthday.  Since we really celebrate the entire month, it made perfect sense to begin the month celebration.

When Fancy asked what I wanted to do or get for my birthday, I immediately ran through the catalogue of Budapest experiences I wanted to try.  I've learned about myself that I tend to find experiences much more rewarding than any gift, especially enjoyed with friends.  This is not to say it would be too late to send a gift.  Mail in Hungary works perfectly well...if you're curious...

Todd Perzel
ATTN: Todd's Birthday Month
Hajos Utca 31, 1/1
1065 Budapest
Hungary

But I digress...

There were two unique experiences that I knew I wanted to try -- The Budapest BeerBike and an EscapeRoom.

(1) The Budapest Beer Bike

Imagine riding in a carriage with 12 of your closest friends, but you must pedal like a bicycle to move the carriage.  You get to navigate some Budapest's most famous streets and landmarks, all while being served unlimited draft beer from one of your friends (that is now a bartender). He or she pumps and serves for the following three hours because it's important to stay hydrated. 

This old guy just biked right up to the BeerBike and demanded a beer.  Here's a beer for your boldness, sir.

This has nothing to do with our BeerBike but it was the largest Limo in the history of limos.

What do 4 Americans, 2 Canadians and 1 Spaniard have in common?

Todd's Birthday Month Celebration.

Up, up and away at Hero's Square.

At this point, we were turning into "those people".

A bottle of Hungarian Palinka has appeared.

More beer giveaway!

"I'll give you one, because you're sweet old ladies and my grandmother would expect me to be generous."

(2) The second experience was a  Budapest Escape Room.

A growing trend across Europe that began in Budapest is an hour-long "Escape Room" puzzle.  There's over 20 different Escape Rooms across the city and growing in popularity each year.  It's explained: 

Real-life room escape games are a type of physical adventure game in which people are locked in a room with other participants and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles, find clues, and escape the room within a set time limit (60 minute).

It was really fun and an experience I highly recommend in Budapest.  However, I don't recommend completing an Escape Room after three hours on a BeerBike - it leads to some fuzzy thinking and lack of overall cognitive ability, as you'd imagine.

For those that are keeping score for the night, we were able to divide into two rooms -- boys vs. girls.  The guys had a room called "Madness" and the girls had a room called "Mirrors".  The girls said they won because they escaped the room with 4-minutes of the 60 remaining.  I say that we we won because we stayed in the room for the entire 60-minutes withgout escaping (obviously, getting our full 60-minutes worth of value where the girls 'wasted' 4 minutes).  Since it was my birthday weekend, the guys were deemed champions.  Plus, our room was much more difficult to solve.

Sziget Music Festival -- Outkast / Calvin Harris

Sziget Music Festival 

'Sziget' is Hungarian for island.

Europe’s largest music festival takes place every year in Budapest, Hungary.  Named the "Island of Freedom" the festival is held on an island in the Danube River and lasts 7 consecutive days. For the entire week, the city is swarming with braclet-wearing, festivals goers. People rock their Sziget bracelets like girl scouts rock their badges.

The performers are spread across 8 different stages and features everyone from up-and-coming bands, random djs, to some of the most popular groups in the world.  Each day, the shows begin at 10am and the last show doesn’t stop until 5am in the morning — however, in my opinion, the super late shows are for the weirdo raver people.  It's usually a massive crowd at the main stage.

Tickets are sold by the day, for any of the 7 days. Or, you can purchase a weeklong ticket and camp on the island for the entire week.

What’s that?
This year's Sziget Festival just so happens to take place in our second week in Budapest?

Come again?
This year's Sziget Festival features Atlanta’s own rap group Outkast, who hasn’t performed in over 10 years?

We took that as the sign that it was.  We splurged and bought tickets for the final day of the festival, which featured a British band The Kooks, Calvin Harris and Outkast, among others. While many today are claiming they are a fan of Outkast, I am true fan.  Let me take you back to 1996, when I used to listen to ATLiens while cruising on the riding lawnmover while cutting the yard at my parent's house.  I may or may not have even tried to memorize all of the lyrics (I decided it was impossible, for the record). 

Needless to say, Fancy and I were both excited for the chance to see some Atlanta in Budapest.

For anyone that has ever attended a festival, you know the type of people they attract.  In the past, I’ve always prided myself for being adaptable, easy and go-with-the-flow.  On the other hand, I’ve also begun to notice a few moments where I'm slowly transforming into a cankerous old man.  For example, last summer at the beach when I see a car full of girls drive by, hanging perilously out of the window, I still have the instinct to shout at them, but now it sounds more “you really shouldn’t hang out of the car like that, you might fall and get hurt!!”

All of this is to say, it was difficult to really enjoy the “atmosphere” of the 7th and final day of a music festival that’s been taking place on an island where the majority of the concert-goes have been camping out all week.

I think we can all agree that Europeans have a stereotype for winning in the body odor department.  But damn.  This festival would cement their place in my heart forever.

Most of the guys weren’t wearing shirts (yeah, I used to be able to do that, too).  Many dressed up in hopes of garnering attention like the guy dressed up in a full giraffe suit with some piece of plant that I’m sure he plucked from the island tucked into his mouth, carrying a sign that says “Giraffe Eat Weed”.  I mean, that’s not even grammatically correct.

On the island, I realized I've officially passed the time in my life where I can enjoy all of this as ‘part of the experience’.  My idea of fun is no longer bouncing around, elbow-to-elbow while everyone rages their faces off.  Send me to the VIP area, with air-conditioning, ice in my drinks, a toilet that flushes, please.

Not impressed.

I had to include this poor chap.

We navigated the entrance early and found our way to the main stage.



The long walk was lined with smaller stages, food vendors, but the mass of bodies lounging around, recovering from the night before and gearing up for their final ragefest.  It was somewhat surprising since it was already 4pm.  We arrived just in time for the beginning of the first of the three main acts, The Kooks.  There wasn’t much of a crowd and we were able to get relatively close.  At the end of each show on the main stage, there are a sea of people that drop back to the food trucks, mobile bars, bathrooms, etc. to make use of the 45 minute break and simultaneously there are a sea of people that push forward to get closer to the stage, willing to sacrifice 45 minutes of standing in order get closer to the stage.  I shouted "YOLO" and we rushed forward.  I’m kidding, I will never shout that, but we did move forward.

We got really, really close.  The problem was so did everyone else.  Before we knew it, we were engulfed in a sea of people where the idea of individual’s space or a personal bubble ceased to exist.

“Oh, it’s just festival” the girl that keeps ‘accidentally’ bumping into offers as a quasi-apology.

As Outkast finally comes on, I was a little nostalgic seeing the US flag on the stage, while surrounded by a bunch of smelly euros.  Of course, we were sure to let everyone around us know that Outkast hails from our same hometown of Atlanta, GA as if we both grew up on the same street.

I’ll leave the rest for pictures, but it was an hour and a half of being a human pinball, while listening to really good rap music.  For the record, we did try multiple times to throw up the “A-town” sign with our hand, to no response. It was incredible to experience the energy of the show so closely.  We would only realize how large the crowd was after we backtracked to watch Calvin Harris from afar.

Fancy snappin' away.

Left: Big Boi Right: Andre3000

Yes, that's really their names.

We raged to Calvin Harris from a safe distance.

An elevated 12-person bar you can reserve to watch the show.

Why Budapest.

To some Budapest will sound more foreign and unknown.  It’s usually not on the A-list for the 10-day vacationing, American traveler like the London, Paris and Rome's of the world.  It’s a little too far out of the way and doesn't carry the same allure.  Admittedly, it doesn't  have as many well-known tourist attractions.   By the numbers, Hungary wasn’t even in the top 10 for European ‘tourist arrivals’.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Ukraine will fall out of the Top 10 next year.

However, as recent as 2013 Budapest tied Florence for being ranked #2  in a user-submitted poll for World’s Best Cities: 

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/16/travel/cn-traveler-top-cities/

As we would say in Spain, "¡Toma!"
The equivalent for 'take that' or 'in your face' or 'we don't care about that silly little Wikipedia list where Hungary isn't ranked in the top 10'.  It can literally mean all of those things -- Spanish is great.

The country of Hungary captures enough of Europe to feel slightly enchanting, safe and historical, but still exudes the eastern European decay, grime and authenticity of a post-Communist nation.  The more one understands the context, the more fascinated one becomes with the hardships these eastern European cities endured from the brutal Nazi-led occupation until the end of WWII, and later to an almost immediate (and not much less brutal) Russian occupation, until the USSR collapsed.

Budapest in ruins after WWII.

Why Budapest?

We are asked often, "Why did you pick Budapest"?  However, more than anything, it picked us.

When Fancy was interviewing with schools around the world, we were very excited about an opportunity in Europe, or a Spanish-speaking school.    In a later post, an attempt will be made to document the conference itself, and tenacity and grueling interview process for these international teaching positions, and our personal experience at the conference.  For now, it's important to understand that teachers can only apply to schools that have have an exact match in their opening for your qualifications (i.e. Middle Grades Math).  Fancy interviewed with schools in South Korea, Costa Rica, Kuwait, Budapest, UAE-Dubai, among others.  However, it was Budapest that expressed the most immediate interest and made the first offer.

Our thought process when contemplating the offer went something like this...

Budapest would be Eastern Europe.
That's cool.
We really enjoyed our time in Budapest when we spent a couple nights there in 2012.

But, is two days really a good-enough benchmark to make a two-year decision?

At least it's not Kuwait.
That would have been terrible -- the entire country is a 'dry country'.

   =

We just bought a house.

I kind of wish we didn't just buy a house.

There’s not much more that signifies ‘putting down roots’ than making the largest purchase in the lives of many of us.

Yes, we can rent the house.
What are our parent's going to think?
How will we be able to watch football in the Fall?

This is the short version of the ideas that bounced around our head.  There was definitely some teetering back and forth.

To add perspective, in order to break into the international teaching community, the majority of international teachers may accept what some might consider a less desirable location.  It's not uncommon to meet teachers that spent their initial two-year contract in central Africa, South Korea or the Middle East.  Only after 'paying your dues' are some able to later transition to a more 'desirable' location, if you desired.   I hasten to add (as a Brit would say), the word "desirable" being somewhat arbitrary as any two teachers might wish for different locations and desire different experiences and teaching at one of these locations doesn't indicate an inferior experience or quality of teacher.  It appears to be a simple result of supply and demand.  The schools at the more 'desirable' location typically will have a higher demand of applicants, as a result, can pick from more qualified and experienced teachers.  All of this is to say, when Fancy was offered a position at a premiere European international school in her first application, we realized there would not be many similar offers.

Cue Violin Music

To wrap up, everyone has different goals in life, just like everyone has different definitions for success.  While there still remain many unknowns for us, this opportunity represented the epitome of attempting to pursue an intentional life.  It’s scary to not know all the consequences of our decisions, on the other hand, we only get one chance at life.  Shouldn't we all strive to maximize it, despite the trepidation and fear?  Personally, it’s been daunting to step into the unknown, break away from a career that I've been building the last 5-10 years.

I still don't have a decent response for, “Todd, what are you going to do?”.  Well, I'm writing this blog for all you, aren't I?  You're welcome.

As the principle was confirmed to me during the summers I spent selling books during college, understanding the fear of the unknown and still moving forward is what brings meaning to life.  It’s an example of making the decision to live life intentionally.

As difficult as it is for me, I’ll spare us all the motivational life quotes.  Nonetheless, these decisions are some of the most important decisions we make and I believe that these unknown life experiences have a tendency to create some of life's most rewarding results.

Whew, that got intense.   Let's all relax.