Heat and Humidity in Hungary

I spent 5 insanely hot and humid days in Budapest, but only managed to see 5% of the sites. I did however become very familiar with the Margits island, especially the swimming pools.

Now for the part where I unconfuse you. I was accepted as a volunteer (Helping Hand) for the Allianz Sports competition held in Budapest. Every 4 years employees from all over the Allianz world come together and compete in several different sports. There's swimming, track & field, tennis, basketball, volleyball, badminton, soccer, chess, and a few more.

My responsibility was the catering at the swim location so I got to stand there in the over 100 degree heat from 7 to 6 one day and 7 to 4 the next and watch people swim. The fun part was watching the Hungarians in the other pools practicing diving and synchronized swimming. It was so much fun to watch and now I totally believe them when they say their national sport is swimming.

One extra fun part was that my colleague and I got to ride to Budapest in one of the board member's car. Needless to say he wasn't in there too, but they had to get it to Budapest to pick him up at the airport and drive him around the whole time so they figured they'd save 2 plane tickets and send us with the car. No surprise, it was a large, powerful Mercedes and had built in massage in the back seats. My kind of travel.

The first night we headed to the city center for dinner. Lit up at night, it is a gorgeous city and I only wish I had had time to see it again in the daylight too. Then only for about 3 hours on the first full day were we able to explore the city, so we headed to Castle Hill where there is the Fisherman's Bastion, Matthias church (with the best roof in the world), the castle itself, and the most spectacular views of the city. You could see the amazing Parliament building across the river in Pest perfectly from up there. What I really liked about the adventure to get there was that as we sat in the tram we realized we didn't know which stop we needed or where exactly we were going. So we asked the nice girl next to us who then not only explained it to us, but said she didn't have to be at her next appointment for a bit and could take us. So she went with us on another subway and then walked us to the bus stop. This is where we learned that during her summer breaks from school she is a model and I could totally believe it! What can I say, taken to Budapest by a car and driver and then escorted around the city by models. Nice city!

The first night of the games the only event was the half marathon and amazingly only 5 of the over 100 participants had to be taken to the hospital! But one of my colleagues from FFIC won the half marathon for the 18-29 year old male division. But he didn't even know until the medal was announced. The rest of the opening ceremony was spent catching up with other FFIC colleagues. Such fun.

The second and third days were very much the same with lots of standing, filling of fridges with water & powerade, sweating, and running back and forth between the pool and the restaurant to make sure things were running smoothly. The evening of the third day was the closing ceremony which was lots of fun. Dinner was delicious except for the part where I missed dessert because I went to the bathroom and ran into Jessie there and we talked right through the course. But the bathroom was discussion worthy. It was like a space ship or something. The stalls were like (tiny) little space portals, and the water in the sink just flowed to the floor behind a big glass panel. Just weird. Any way, later we all stood around drinking and talking and meeting more new people. Then I was finally convinced to go in to the room with the bands and dancing. We danced all night and it was fun except for the part where I had a big cut in the bottom of my foot from all the broken glass on the floor. (When I got home I used tweezers to pull out 7 large pieces of glass from my flip flops. Scary.)

All in all I loved Budapest and need to find a time to go back and see the rest of the city. Plus I didn't even get a chance to buy any paprika which is not only what Hungary is known for but is also very tasty and useful! Next time.

FirmenLauf (aka The Ultimate Patience Test)

Tonight I took part in the Firmenlauf which is basically the Corporate Challenge in Munich. There were over 30,000 people taking part and everyone of them was there to make me crazy!! Basically I hate crowds in general and this was a crowd of Germans so they drove me extra crazy. They are pushy and completely unaware of themselves on the path. Instead of a 6 km run I am certain that I did at least 9km with all the back and forth I had to do. There were so many times tonight that I was standing in a huge crowd with no one moving and then them just pushing. I got to the point where I would actually retaliate (ok, so really I would just purposefully kick the back of people's feet who were being especially rude. Sounds dumb I know, but made me feel a tiny bit better.)

It took place at the Olympic park with the finish line just inside the stadium. It was cool to run in through the tunnel into the stadium, except for the part where there was a thunderstorm going on and it was pouring down rain at that point! When running and seeing lightening strikes around me I calmed myself with the statistics of me being the one hit and not one of the other 29,999 people. The odds were in my favor. But the worst part was that the rain made the salty sweat on my forehead run into my eyes and it burned!

But in the end it was pretty fun (albeit a bit wet, cold, and frustrating). Oh and I'll never understand the desire to grab a cold beer directly after a run. Give it a few minutes people, but no, I am in Germany so your post-run options are water, some sort of pop, and beer. I think I was the only one who didn't have one, but I don't regret that one bit!