Day 4: Scavenging

Today we started our orientation. As is proper with orientations, it began with a scavenger hunt. Teams were directed from place to place to perform tasks with some side goals to perform throughout. The side goals were to find people named Béla (which nobody found, though my team called ourselves Team Béla and we found a shopkeeper who had a facebook friend named Béla whose picture we photographed; to find mustaches, as Hungarians are famous for their mustaches; to find a statue of a US president in a particular square (it was Reagan); to name all the bridges in Budapest; and to name films shot in Hungary.

Our first stop was to a strudel place to sample various strudels while blindfolded and to guess their flavors. My team did pretty well at this task which was also delicious. 

The next stop was to a market to but supplies for our lunch. This is where we learned that a Hungarian won a Noble prize for discovering vitamin C in paprika. 

Stop 3 was in a Starbucks where we learned of Hungarian inventions which include but are not limited to soda water, safety matches, the Ford Model T, the BMW diesel engine, and the Von Neumann computer architecture.

The next stop was at a pub. We were given five shots of various types of palinka (a Hungarian specialty) and asked to identify which type was which. We did not do well at this. We were also given a stein of Hungarian beer and a glass of wine and soda water and told to finish it all.

Because my team had some extra time at the end, we went to get the most beautiful ice cream I have ever eaten.

The scavenger hunt was followed up by a visit to AIT. As a fun fact, the business park that AIT is in has the first statue of Steve Jobs. So that's fun.

Later that night, we all met up at a pub, students and coordinators both and had a round of drinks on AIT. This is also when we discovered that my team won the scavenger hunt by a significant margin and we were awarded with a boxes of matches, vitamin C, and fake mustaches. Also a giant bubble maker and a cake, neither of which I know what happened to.