--- title: I got... two tickets to Budapest! author: George Mandis date: 2014-08-19 tags: post, post, travel, serbia, budapest, croatia, hungary ---

I spent more time than I should admit trying to think of a parody to Two Tickets to Paradise where I could replace Paradise with Budapest. I ran into two problems:

1. I really only have one ticket. Unless you count the return ticket but that's not to Budapest either. And if you count that you might as well my connecting flights and call it 6.

2. The only part I came up with went like this:

I got... TWO TICKETS TO BUDAPEST!
I'll... come back later and write the rest!

Today I decided to take the plunge and buy the tickets for a trip this Fall with my aunt & uncle. I'll be meeting up with them in Budapest but the heart of trip is actually going to take place across Serbia and Croatia as we continue to get to know our long-lost relatives over there and get in-touch with our Balkan roots. If it's anything like the time I visited them last year that'll mean... lots of meat, yogurt drinks and rakija  (Some choice quotes from my last time visiting family there: "I do not consider a meal without meat a meal!" and "Rakija is like medicine." An even better quote I'm sorry I missed from when my aunt & uncle last visited: "In Serbia we kill men like you," said as a joke (We... think?) in regards to my uncle offering or maybe demonstrating how to do the dishes. Haha.. ha... ha? ). Maybe I should start fasting now.

I've gone back and forth about whether or not to tag along on this trip. I only found out they were going a couple weeks ago and they invited me along unexpectedly. More travel is something I want to bring into my life on a more consistent basis and this seems like a fantastic opportunity. It gives me a hard deadline to finish a grand number of projects or at least get some of them into a manageable state but I'm more motivated than ever. I noticed last year that consistent traveling had a way of keeping me more organized and on-top of my work life too — it's interesting to see this trip on the horizon having a similar effect already.

Lastly I'm hoping to use this as an opportunity to do some proper travel blogging this time. Last year, when I spent all of 2013 traveling around the world, I wrote all the time: every single day in a journal, emails, letters and postcards. I had grand ambitions of blogging as well but was never able to develop the habit, most likely because blogging wasn't something I was doing before the trip started. This year I've been quite consistent in writing on here so I think there's a better chance I see it through this time.

As I sat in my yoga class this evening silently pondering whether or not to do this trip these words skipped across my thoughts like a stone: The world was made to be seen.