Regarding a Life & Death Situation, another Visitor and a Trip to the Country

Upon my return from Transylvania, I was faced with a threat to my very life: computer trouble.

This might seem a bit extreme but really…think about being without reliable access to the internet, without Microsoft office, Skype (now that I am abroad this is an essential tool), and so on.

My usc labtop has always had ‘slowness’ issues, due to “Vijay and his sons”—the IT department at USC. However, it usually worked ok anyway, until now when I was apparently riddled with viruses, Symantec was absolutely worthless, and my free download of AVG and anti-adware couldn’t work fast enough to stop the infiltration.

Anyways, point is, this is the reason I have been MIA and late on blogging about past events. I got a copy of Windows and reinstalled, then a very kind Dutch guy helped me reinstall all the necessary drivers and now the labtop is working like a newborn piece of shiny, sleek and exciting machinery. Can’t believe I didn’t reinstall earlier.

Oh the things I keep learning about with computers. It seems like anyone who is a computer expert expects everyone else to have the same knowledge that they do and they omit useful information. I am not an idiot, I will understand if you explain to me, but if you never tell me that reinstalling XP removes all the drivers then how am I supposed to know until I am left with a new XP and no drivers so no access to the internet to even research anything. Anyways, thank you Karst, my life saver! And now I know.

During this mild crisis, Celine came to visit. This was exceedingly cool for me, but I feel bad that I had to deal with all the computer stuff while she was here. She did an astonishing amount of sightseeing in one day while I was in class, and then together we went on yet another fruitless search for the Budavari caves and then to the ritzy Gellert Baths. These baths are very beautiful and the entrance hall looks like it’s modeled off of a Parliament building or a cathedral. However, the layout is rather confusing and we wasted some time just to find the changing rooms. All the other patrons were French—and as Celine put it, she spent more time with French people with me in Budapest than she does while studying in Paris. So Gellert was nice, but Szecheniy and Rudas are still my favorites.

Inside Gellert

In Friday Celine was leaving for Cairo to visit her roommate from USC who is studying there, and I left for Balaton. Budapest this weekend was deserted of Erasmus students—half went to Krakow and the other half went to Balaton. While being the largest lake in Europe and a favorite summer vacation destination, I can’t see much to separate it from small town America. I even saw a town rally and cheerleading show. Still, it was nice to spend time with my French friends, get to know some others, bask in the sun, eat lots of Hungarian food and drink lots of wine (wine-tasting/dinner/party in a restaurant built into a hill, completely Hobbit style!).

Balaton photos