Two Days Travel

Twenty of us began our trip by meeting at MSP at noon on Monday, January 3, a great time to be at the airport as the security line went very quickly. We only had a couple bags searched--power strips are apparently red flags to TSA. We had some time to wander and eat at the airport before boarding our 8 hour flight to Amsterdam.

Though many of us had big plans to sleep through, or any of, the flight, only a couple were so lucky. Fortunately, Delta has so many movies to choose from in-flight. All in all, the MSP to BUD flight went by quickly--at least seemingly quicker than our layover in the Amsterdam airport, Schiphol.  Luckily, the group did not need to go through customs in Amsterdam, just a passport check with a long line. That left almost four hours to kill in Schiphol. Our bodies were certainly confused that it was 6am in Amsterdam but 11pm in Minnesota, especially because the sun did not rise until 9am!  The layover was made even longer when, after boarding, we sat waiting for the airport to find employees to load the baggage.

After finally arriving in Budapest, we took a shuttle into the city, enjoying our first sightseeing along the way. We did get dropped off at the wrong hotel, but was thankfully only a couple blocks away. One student, Zareef, traveled other areas of Europe before the trip and met us at our hotel.  We all rendezvoused after getting into our rooms for a hike across the Erzsébet bridge, over the Danube, and up to the Citadella--a beautiful view of the entire city on the first day. The long, steep hike, zigzagging up the cliffs certainly kept us all awake. Everyone tried their hardest at not sleeping until after dinner, to make the jet lag easier. This made our first dinner at BorLaBor Étterem (étterem means restaurant in Hungarian) comical with our zombie and slap happy states. We had to prop Pove up a couple of times, but even he made it through with a smile.  We filled our stomachs with Hungarian cuisine and, after a very long wait for dessert, headed back to the hotel to FINALLY sleep. We can already tell Budapest is going to be well worth the long trip to get here!

 The students are taking over the blog now, so stay tuned to hear from them! They tell us they are very excited that Day 2 includes the start of the actual number theory course.

Catherine and Adam