Departed Mom's place at 10:40 a.m. Arrived at the airport at 11:00. Registration and security went very quickly. Sat myself down at Taberna and did e-mail:

• Dropped a note to SRAS to confirm Manas airport procedures.
• Dropped a note to the 8-week participants letting them know to expect a change.
• Dropped a note to a student who was pro-active enough to inquire about those things.
• Dropped a note to Mom in case the insurance company tried a premium increase while I was gone, which is likely because I just changed zip codes.

The flight to Atlanta should be 4 hours long. From Mom's door to the airport in Atlanta will be 6.5 hours. This is going to be a longish process. How do I live it to the fullest?

Theoretically I arrived in Atlanta at 8:02 p.m. It was actually 22 minutes earlier, which meant I could walk from concourse A to concourse F, which made my glutes very happy after all that sitting. Plane departs at 10:20 p.m. Flight to Amsterdam will be 8.5 hours. Fortunately I have downloaded "Out of the Black" by Evan Currie, a pretty decent hunk of sci-fi. And of course I have my Hungarian lessons to district me.

BTW, the Pei Wei here at the airport, when asked to produce a burning hot lo-mein, vastly disappointed. I was suckled on scorpion stingers, and I'm convinced no one east of Albuquerqe has any idea what spices are. :(

So let's see. My Atlanta airport layover was 2.25 hours. The flight to Amsterdam is about 8.5 hours, so let's call this leg 10.75 hours.

We arrived here at noon. Smallest plane I've ever flown across the pond. Little kid lost her cookies upon landing, but mom and dad were on top of it with the barf bag. Had to go through passport control, so the first stamp in my new passport is Dutch. Spanish announcements here in the airport cecean (pronounce the cees and zees like the 'th' in 'think'). My plane departs for Budapest at 2:20. The flight will be short, only two hours.

Between Phoenix and here I completed two sci-fi novels by Evan Currie. He's a decent writer. Canadian, but writes more like an American in his use of military tropes. Hm. Maybe I should download another before I take off.

My layover in Amsterdam is two hours. The flight to Budapest is about two hours. Then call it 90 minutes to get to the apartment, so let's call this leg 5.5 hours.

I have arrived in Budapest. Got to my apartment. I had had a fleeting worry that it wouldn't match up to its pictures, but the place is freaking flawless. Flawless paint job, flawlessly clean, beautiful bathroom. Owner David met me to give me the key and was more helpful than I could ever have expected. Even had fresh bananas out for me, plus the fridge had a couple bottles of water, a locally produced wine, shelves stocked with tea, coffee and drinking chocolate, plus a Krups single-serving coffee-maker: all that extra stuff wasn't even mentioned in the ad. Plus not a block away is a secure ATM machine, and there at least two dozen restaurants within six blocks. Folks, I hit the jackpot on this one.

Pictures are below.

Back in 2010 just for the language practice I bought a cheapie cell phone in Kazan. I wanted phone service in Budapest this trip, but American phones use different systems and frequencies than European/Russian phones. So I ordered a Europe-compatible SIM card from telestial.com and installed it in my Russian cell phone. Voilà! European cell phone service. I'll use it again when I get to Bishkek.

This phone is a brick. I can't tell you how many times I have dropped it and had it survive. Whereas I dropped me next-to-the last smart phone once, and the screen stopped working.