Friends
Friends - in the homeland
Leaving a land or a home most of the time means leaving friends, too - even if it’s only for a limited amount of time. You already experience that when you move inside of a country and the distances suddenly grow from half an hour to four hours.
I already kept in contact with many friends only via the internet while I did my apprenticeship - Skype, WhatsApp, Steam, whatever worked best. Irregularily we also managed to meet up in person on the weekends.
The distance added now that I am in Hungary is quite something else, though - 14 hours of train- or busride from here to my parents, a little more if I wanted to visit my friends in the surrounding areas. Even a short weekend trip would need a lot of careful planning - besides the fact that I decided not to go home during my stay here.
So I can only stay in contact with my friends back home via the internet and hope that we won’t grown apart too much not to be able to find back together again.
A stay abroad like this can be a trial by fire for old friendships.
Friends - in the foreign country
What’s one of the best things about staying abroad is getting to know and to like the people of a different culture. A year abroad is no holiday where you usually have little contact with the local community, but a try to live a culture that is not your own.
And an important part of life is making friendships.
It was never really a problem for me to approach strangers and talk to them - which, admittedly, turned out to be a little more complicated in Hungary because of the language barrier. Still, you can find people everywhere ready to try to talk to you.
Thus, I already met two Hungarians about my age during the first two weeks of my stay, in the Youth Exchange, who also spoke English pretty well. And I stumble upon more English- or German speaking Hungarians all the time.
Of all these people, my Baranta group holds a special place in my heart - mutuals in interests and tastes, and even if communicating with them isn’t always that easy, we make it work. Many of them are my age, or a little younger, and hunger for a chance to test their knowledge of the English oder German language.
If you spend time abroad and try to connect to the local community, you have to dare joining local clubs - and I hope very much that I will stay in contact with a few of these people for a long, long time after I return from Hungary.
Because many Hungarians still use Facebook as main way of communication I have finally decided to open an account there, too - youn can find me as “Frauke Chasing TheRainbow” if you want to!
travelling_evs · evs · people_evs · aboutme_evs