June 1, 2005. First welcome.

I saw Budapest few times before. As a tourist. I flew to Budapest due to business meetings, I could enjoy the following pictures:
- view: Danube and Buda of Marriott and Intercontinental conf rooms
- walks: Chain Bridge, Buda Castle and St. Stephen´s Basilica
- "entertainment": Vaci utca and few restaurants in the evening
- bed
- hotel reception
- taxi
- traffic jams on the way to the airport
- and Ferihegy
That´s all what you can usually see on your business trips - except the conference rooms :-)

June 1, 2007 was my first day in Budapest. First day of the time period which I am going to write about. June is always hot and dry in BP. That is something you have to accept if you live there. If you look around, you cannot see any green. Just buildings, concrete, rubbish, traffic, parking cars, running annoyed people, heat, dust and smog. If you are not in the "tourist area", you can see (and smell) hundreds of homeless people everywhere around.
If you want to see and enjoy the beauty of Budapest, you have to know where to go - to find green, calm, silence, relatively clean air... But you will explore the beauty of the town later... most probably only with the help of new local friends...

I found the office very quickly. I didn´t take a taxi, I used the public transport. With my suitcase and most important stuff for a week. The first day in the office was interesting - everything I could see there was the smaller picture of this country. Mainly people´s behaviour. Various. Surprising. I noticed this fact only later. I had the miniature and representative sample of Hungarian people + culture here, on these 525 square metres.

I didn´t stay for my first nights at any of BP hotels. I could stay at one very nice old man, Havas Frici, not so far from the city centre. He was the only one person there who took care about my feelings, first impressions and wished me good night and sweet dreams. Of course except my family or friends who did the same via phone or sms.