Erasmus has ended?!

Vienna looking marvellous!

Somehow it's now early January and I'm back in my lovely family home with a proper brew having returned to England and celebrated Christmas already. I can't deny how much I've enjoyed my Erasmus experience and although I didn't record it at the time for you, it won't be any less exciting to tell the stories. I've already noticed that I can't stop mentioning Budapest/Liszt Academy/new friends to everyone I meet, that's just a slight warning for those of you I'll see in January!

However it's not only Budapest I'm smitten with, I spent 4 days travelling to and exploring Bratislava and Vienna in late October and I just love the ease of access to these cities and around central Europe. I've got to be honest, I fell in love with Vienna. Go there, it's beautiful. Trains, buses and hostels are lots of fun and a bit of solitary exploration was very exciting and succeeded in making me feel nicely but humanly independent as well as beautifully grateful and dependent on our wonderful Creator. In a short summary, I've picked up the travelling bug giving me the desire to visit many more exciting places!

In preparation for the Varasdy Frigyes National trumpet competition I learnt skills that before embarking on this trip I'd have never thought I could accomplish and along the way I made friends closer than I ever imagined possible in 4 months. Although having friends from all over the world could be seen as difficult, I'm very excited in that I now have many countries where I can have my own personal tour guide! Speaking of the competition though, that was an experience and a half - I was privileged to perform in front of Hungarian trumpet legend, Gábor Tarkövi. Having learnt from memory 2 movements from each of the Haydn and Böhme trumpet concertos, nerves were racing high as I took to the stage. I was pretty pleased with how I played but with over 20 competitors, the competition was very strong. There was a real sense of pride when students of the Liszt Academy achieved 1st and 3rd place!

In my last few weeks there were some really lovely things that happened, particularly as a great way to say farewell before flying home. Other than getting all my courses signed off with good marks, Dad and older brother Jonny managed to come for a weekend visit in early December, ice skating in Europe's largest outdoor ice rink at Heroes' Square with my brilliant Bible study friends was great fun and a "Tim-Tams" party with all the Erasmus students ended my time in Budapest with excitement and a great send-off! Going to miss all you people a lot...

Christmas Markets with the boys!

I now don't think it's possible for me to even nearly sum up my whole time on Erasmus so you'll just have to get me chatting if you want to know all the in between bits... I hope you've had wonderful Christmas and New Year celebrations, I'm certainly looking forward to what 2017 has in store!