After spending this morning trying to squeeze in our last bits of Budapest, we boarded a train to Vienna and arrived in about three hours. I know it’s a terrible comparison, but in the States, in three hours, I couldn’t even get from New York to Boston. My train ticket would cost over double the approximately $40 USD it cost to get from Budapest to Vienna. This trip further accentuates how terrible train travel is back in the States.

Vienna is a modern city — shinier, glitzier, and richer than Budapest, and unfortunately, much more expensive. When we got on the train, I knew I had about 550 Hungarian Forint left to spend that I wanted to use up. I also had some leftover Euros from our Germany trip last year in my wallet. When I went up to the counter to ask for what I could potentially buy, I could barely get an apple juice and a Toblerone and needed three extra Euros to get me there. Five hundred Hungarian Forint just at the train station in Budapest got me two large, good-quality pastries and a coffee. It’s quite a contrast, but I’m excited for the Christmas markets and the Viennese cakes and desserts we will be seeing and eating for the next two days.

If I weren’t traveling to Budapest, I’d probably never have known that Budapest came about because of two cities, Buda and Pest, that united, separated by the Danube River. People still refer to the Buda side of Budapest and the Pest side of Budapest. It feels very quaint to hear of the city being spoken like this because it’s almost as though people are embracing its rich historical past while also enjoying it for what it is today.

It’s a stunning city to me mostly because of many of its old, still standing and otherwise restored architecture; the Danube River separating the two sides adds to its European charm. Many buildings have retained their original facades, such as the Four Seasons, the Gellert Spa, and even our hotel, the Nemzeti Budapest, but the interiors have been completely renovated and modernized. Both day and night, the city is beautiful, particularly from high viewing points such as from the Fisherman’s Bastion and the top of Gellert Hill. After we walked up to the peak of Gellert Hill to see the Liberty Statue, we also got to see and photograph Budapest from high above. I felt very thankful during those moments; today is Thanksgiving after all, and I know how lucky I am to have what I have today. These are the moments where I think, I can’t imagine for a second anyone coming here and not being impressed by this city and these views. If you can’t appreciate this, you probably can’t appreciate anything in life.

After a grueling 24 hours of working, commuting to the airport in what looked to be early Thanksgiving traveling traffic, taking an overnight flight from New York to Helsinki, then a connecting flight from Helsinki to Budapest, and finally spending our Wednesday (six hours ahead of New York time) exploring mostly the Buda side of Budapest, we decided we wanted to have dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel. We walked in two different directions to try to find a place, and somehow, we failed. The only spots we seemed to find were cafes (with no real food), bars (with no real food), takeout spots, Burger King, and McDonald’s. We finally settled on a Turkish takeout spot. They were a typical takeout food place that had different dishes in big metal trays behind a glass wall. We chose a moussaka and Turkish fried rice, and brought it back to our hotel.

When we brought it back, we realized immediately that it was all cold. Those metal trays that are set up that we are used to knowing there are burners beneath — well, those clearly do not exist here. I brought the food back to the takeout spot and asked the guy to warm it for us. “You didn’t tell me to warm, so I didn’t warm!” he said, half apologetically, half defensively. He warmed each for about less than a minute and gave it back to me. It was still cold; I was annoyed but didn’t feel like asking him to warm it again. So I asked our hotel, which warmed our food adequately.

What I’ve learned during our short time here is that not only will takeout food spots not warm your food unless you either tell them you are eating it immediately or explicitly ask, but restaurants do not serve your food piping hot like I am used to back home or in other countries. When we have eaten out here, I’ve noticed that the food is a comfortable temperature for eating, but as I am eating, it’s getting colder far faster than anywhere else I’ve been to. It’s not the best situation, but I’m fine with it since we’re only here for 2.5 days.

Tonight was my first night in Tampa, and my friend insisted that I meet his friend who lives down there. His friend picked me up from the airport and took me to dinner with a few of his friends and colleagues. Before even meeting him, I was so surprised by his warmth and generosity. He originally planned to pick me up and take me back to his house (which apparently I found out is like a castle, complete with a moat!) so that I could have a home-cooked dinner with him, his wife, and his 2.5-month old baby, but because his wife wasn’t feeling well, there was a change in plan.

New York has jaded me in a lot of ways. I rarely expect anyone to go out of their way to do anything for me; in fact, I expect the complete opposite. I barely even expect that people will respond to my text messages in a 24-hour period, much less drive to the airport to pick me up and offer me a home-cooked meal when they have no idea who I am or what I even look like. Based on my six years of living here, it’s always felt that everyone wants to project the image that they are always busy and not available when in fact, it’s really because they don’t care that much and are waiting for something better or potentially more fun to come along (or they are just fearful of commitment, even to the smallest possible things). In New York, you can be friends, even “good” friends with someone for years and never get invited to their apartment. It’s just the way things are here. And for me, it’s getting a bit tired.

Three days of traveling around the Tennessee and Kentucky area have left us wondering what ethnic groups exist in this area of the South, if any at all. We’ve been getting our fix of fried chicken, barbeque, grits, and other Southern specialties, but us being us, we want some good ethnic food. Chris did a quick search today to find out that there are Kurds, Cambodians, and Vietnamese in the area, though their populations are quite minuscule. When doing a search for Turkish food in the Nashville area, only two restaurants popped up. A search for Cambodian yielded zero results, and about eight came up for Vietnamese. We opted for Vietnamese food for lunch, although at a quite trendy and slightly pricy spot, and had our fix of pho and banh mi.

If I were not Asian and of two different ethnicities growing up in the South, how would I even begin to explore other foods and cultures? The food scene, while quite varied with different takes on Southern and budding “New American” restaurants, is quite lacking in other options that represent the rest of the globe. Like most places in the South, the area seemed quite segregated, and we didn’t see many people of different races mingling. In fact, we saw mostly white people with a sprinkling of black people along Broadway. The only place we saw Asians was around the Vanderbilt campus. We think times have changed so much, but perhaps some places never change at all.

We crossed the border today from Tennessee to visit Kentucky, a new state for both of us. I had no idea that Tennessee and Kentucky were in different time zones. Even though Kentucky is directly on top of Tennessee, Tennessee is on Central Time and Kentucky is on Eastern time. I realized this when we crossed the state border and my clock said we were one hour ahead suddenly. Then, I called the Jim Beam Distillery, and the automatic message said, “Please note that Kentucky is on Eastern Standard time.”

Everyone we saw in Kentucky was white. I don’t remember seeing anyone who was another race. It reminded me of one of the trainers at the gym I go to. He was born in Nashville but was raised in Birmingham, AL. He lives in New York now and says he never wants to live in the South again. He said he has the worst memories of driving through Mississippi with his family as a young child. He and his family are African American, and they were treated very poorly and were surrounded by whites everywhere. I remember when we were in Mississippi in the summer. Our only encounter with actual people was in a seafood restaurant, where the host eyed me carefully and complimented me on how beautiful I was. He probably thought I was an exotic China doll.

It’s sad to think that there are areas of this country that are still so deeply rooted in the racism that we study about in history books. But as my friend who lives in the South said, racism is everywhere in this country and in this world. The South may be very overt about it, but is it any better in places like San Jose where the underlying racism and hostility still exists against Asians?

I suppose I am biased, but I rather be in the latter area.

We are spending the next three days exploring the Nashville and Louisville area down south, and one of our first stops today was down in Lynchburg, Tennessee, where the Jack Daniel Distillery is. I’ve never been much of a whiskey person; I can appreciate it in well mixed and shaken cocktails, but I’ve never been able to fully appreciate it slowly sipped in a wide mouthed glass. Tequila has always been my liquor of choice, to the disgust of others. 🙂 Anyone who can’t appreciate a good margarita cannot be my friend.

Another reason travel is an amazing thing is that it exposes you to things you never really thought you cared for or liked. The Jack Daniel Distillery tour, thorough and scenic (complete with limestone caves — and free!) ended with a tasting of three different types of whiskey (carefully measured into one-third ounce servings to prevent any unneeded inebriation). I learned that the proper way to taste whiskey is to breathe it in with your mouth open, not closed like most of us would do. A whiskey tasting requires you to actually taste — and swallow. You can’t properly taste a whiskey and spit it out. After smelling the whiskey the “proper” way and tasting all three, I started to realize that I actually could learn to appreciate and like whiskey, neat in a glass. Maybe there are things we all like that we just never give ourselves the chance to learn to like — that is a tragedy because it only narrows our view of the world. We don’t live forever, so why should we limit our already limited life?

I’ve probably lived in major metropolitan areas for too long because I always feel a little bit strange when I go to smaller towns in areas like the Midwest or the South, where it’s almost the norm to never see areas full of people walking and getting to places. Most people will drive, few people walk anywhere unless it’s from their car to a store front or office. Even in what was supposed to be the entertainment district by Riverfront Park in Montgomery, there were very few people on a Friday night. At 6pm on a Friday night in downtown Montgomery, we were the only two people walking its streets.

A friend of mine who is from Arkansas spent most of the last year in the Bay Area and has just come back to Little Rock. She said she also experienced a bit of a shock when she came back to Arkansas to wander around its streets and malls to find just a handful of people walking here and there. It became normal to her when she was living in the San Jose area to see hoards of people everywhere. But it wasn’t that normal before that.

The funniest thing about our visit to Montgomery was that the one time we saw a lot of people that entire weekend was actually at the Montgomery Center for the Performing Arts, where the center was divided into two sections: one half was a gun and hunting show; the other half was a five-hour-long evangelical Christian Sunday service. People were happily shuffling between the two and making conversation with everyone around them. Talk about a culture shock.

When people think of the South (or at least, assuming they know where the South actually is), I think Mississippi is undoubtedly one of the first states that would come to mind. Sadly, it is also one of the first states that comes to mind when we think of the highest crime rates, highest poverty levels, and also lowest life expectancy. Because of all the above, it also tends to be the state that people make jokes about when it comes to the last state they’d want to live in. Honestly, as someone who grew up in California and now lives in New York, I’ve never heard of any famous tourist spot in Mississippi that would have drawn me there.

We crossed the state line west today to visit the Gulf Coast National Seashore in Mississippi, which is in Ocean Springs, and also ate at a delicious and cozy seafood spot there. Friends of mine who live in Arkansas told me that Mississippi is actually a really popular place to visit for those in the South who want to travel, but not too far, and have great beaches and fresh seafood from the Gulf Coast. I never would have even thought about this before our visit. The fried oysters and shrimp were some of the best we’ve ever had, and of course at a price point that was more than reasonable and even borderline cheap for seafood. The hospitality overall was very warm, especially by the host, who commented on how pretty I was and told Chris, “Don’t let her go!” It seems like whenever I am in the South, I tend to get complimented more on my appearance. I’m guessing it’s because as an Asian, I’m more of an exotic novelty there.

Chris decided that we hadn’t traveled enough this summer (anyone who knows us knows this is definitely not true, as we are reveling in wanderlust…or suffering from it, take your pick), so this weekend, he has decided to whisk me off on a trip that I did not know about — to Alabama! We are staying in Montgomery, the capital (and the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement) and plan on crossing the border west to Mississippi to see what “the South’s warmest welcome” state has to offer.

One of our first stops today was at the First White House of the Confederacy. which was the first home of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and his family for just five months before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, Virginia. The tour was free, half guided and half self-guided. Our guide during the first half was very friendly and asked where we were from. We told him we were visiting from New York City, and he exclaimed, “Oh, Yankees!” I started laughing because I’ve never, ever been called a Yankee before. And then it suddenly hit me: people in the South probably still, to this day, call people in the North Yankees. It’s as though we are from another country, with our different perceptions, ways of thinking, education, culture, and of course, accents. Unfortunately, he did not pick up on any Aussie twang of Chris’s.