Budapest

One would think that we've got enough on our plates, what with moving a truck of stuff out of one apartment in order to trip over it in another apartment, and with cleaning and fixing up yet another apartment so we can (finally!) get renters moved in. Oh, and there's the question of preparing for our trip to the US next week, which for me may turn into a seven-month stretch rather than a two-month vacation if I decide to just change my return ticket instead of buying new ones. Because it seems that I am going to be back at my university stomping grounds in order to teach for the fall semester. Which also means finding yet another apartment to live in (will we never tire of not living in one place?), and also implies the terrifying prospect of packing a suitcase that will suffice for seven months.

But no! That's not enough, evidently, because we're leaving for Budapest on Thursday. Thursday, as in the day after tomorrow. The trip--the Mister will be speaking at a conference and I'll be a plus one--is actually a compromise, because he was initially planning to be in Budapest and then Bucharest until next Wednesday night (we leave for Philadelphia on Thursday morning). I said I didn't that would be a good idea, except I said it in a slightly more forceful manner. But after we ruled out Bucharest, compared to returning the day before our flight to the US, returning four days before from a shorter trip seemed totally doable, and I was tempted by the glittering idea of a weekend escapade in a country and a city I've never visited. So I said I'd go along, and that's how I find myself about to go to Budapest.

Maybe Budapest will be a good break, though, because all of the other stuff is, to say the least, stressful. I'm nearly paralyzed by the magnitude of "to-do" and the spiral of "what-if" and the sadness of "don't-want-to-leave." The not wanting to leave Barcelona part is not just about spending Fall Semester in the great wide midwest; it's also about the Mister being a candidate for a (really really fantastic and prestigious) job in.... Brussels. Yes, the place that sapped our energies over several years with its uncannily gray skies, and the place that we just turned our backs on in a diesel-puff of exhaust smoke.

Which is why I'm counting on Budapest, one B-city that at least has no emotional connotations in my life, to be a clean slate of a weekend getaway.