On-Arrival-Afterparty

After the training ended a few of the EVSlers still stayed in Budapest to get a better look at the city and meet up with the newly-won friends.

Shared joy is doupled joy

Because the 23rd of October is a National Holiday in Hungary and the Monday, too, is a day off in the country, a few of the EVSler who live a little farther away stayed in the capital over the weekend to get to see a little more of her.

And if you have the great advantage of having made some new friends, the opportunity to explore the city together comes to your mind pretty naturally.

A meeting is organised very fast, thanks to WhatsApp and Facebook. There are a few interesting exhibitions in Budapest right now who just ask to be visited.

But because the preferences which exhibition should be visited first are different from one person to the next, we decide to seperate for now and meet up later for cocktails and beer.

My ways lead me, together with Claudia and Barbara (both from Italy), to the Hungarian National Museum, where the World Press Photo Exhibition is slowly coming to its end. The major part of the group decided to go to the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Buda Castle instead.

Ruin-clubs - a part of the city's image

Something that is absolutely typical for Budapest and what I've never seen outside of the city so far, at least not consciously, are the so-called ruin-clubs. Night clubs or discos that have found their place in ruins of houses, under tents, improvised roofs or simply the open sky.

The most well-known of these clubs is the Szimpla in Blaha, the nightclub-district of Budapest. It's completely filled even on weekdays and opened until the early hours of the morning. Many visitors are Internationals but not necessarily tourists.

Because we visited Szimpla on Thursday night already, we decided to look for a more quiet place to enjoy the evening, and thus we meet at the HYPE for cocktails and beer. Nearly half of the original group of volunteers from the training is there and we're having a blast until someone finally looks at the time and we realise it's two in the morning already, again.

Before dissolving the round we already set plans for our next meetings - because a year goes by faster than you would think and if you can visit cities together and combine it with visiting friends, one should definitely exploit that.