This program taught me how important it is to support other countries in their pursuit to explore space. It is a collaborative process, much like The Fulbright Program.
During the next two months, we took a walking tour of the Art Nouveau sector of Budapest and the Parliament. I was memorized by the intricate designs of the paintings and architecture of both trips. In particular, I loved the stained glass of the Korossy Villa. Even though I work with a lot of dark colors and gruesome motifs because of my monster research/design, I really love bright colors and floral symbolism, something the Art Nouveau era promoted.
Finally, we just went on another trip outside of Budapest to Veszprem. This trip was similar to our Debrecen trip in which we stopped at a local church, visited the university, and walked around the historic part of the town. However, something rather unexpected happened. We accidentally ran into an event for the upcoming election, which is on April 12th, and while observing it we saw the current prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, walking his way through the streets to give a speech. It was wild to see such a high ranking political figure walk around with hardly any visible security. Later that night we went to an observatory/planetarium. Sadly, the weather was extremely cloudy (even a little snowy!) and so we just stayed inside and watched the presentation in the planetarium.
The next day we were taken to the town of Pápa and we explored a former blue dye factory. Hungary is extremely famous for its indigo-dyed fabric. They would dye fabrics using large vats built into the ground and then dry the fabric in the loft of the building. While there, I bought my own blue dye bandana as my souvenir.
