First Magic

In honor of the fact that I left for my eight months in Hungary one year ago today, I am sharing the photos of my very first trip to Hungary in February of 1998. I was fourteen at the time and a freshman in high school. You can read the background story to that trip here.

It was my first taste of Europe and I became instantaneously addicted. It changed me, and I would never be the same again.

At the end of our trip, our family spent a 24-hour layover in Amsterdam. We had just enough time to take a riverboat tour through the canals of the city and then enjoy a delicious meal of the traditional foods of the Netherlands. The next day, we had enough time in the morning to visit Anne Frank's hiding house. One can actually enter the building and the hiding area where Anne and her family hid during WWII, a story now known worldwide thanks to The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne's published diary. It was deeply moving for me to be where Anne was--to see a part of her story firsthand, in a way.

The entire two-week trip was purely magical--there's truly no better word to describe it. And that magic has always stayed with me.