4. You start talking to yourself in Hungarian, as limited as your language skills may be. Hát, az nem jó.
5. When you hear someone talking in Hungarian or even Russian or another eastern European language, it instantly makes you feel like you are at home and you have to strongly resist the urge to ask these strangers to be your new BFFs.
6. All you can think of while facing the Irish spring full of storms, hail and rainfall, is how your friends back home are enjoying the warm spring evening, sitting on the waterfront of the Danube, drinking the first fröccs of the year, watching the sun set behind the Buda Hills.
7. You start to see Budapest everywhere — even the new series you decided to watch, which in fact is set in London, turns out to have been filmed in Budapest. Wait, up there in the left corner of the TV, was that just the window of your old apartment?
8. All these pictures of the Etyek Wine Festival, the Pálinka and Sausage Festival, and the opening of the newest bar in Kazinczy utca your friends keep posting on Facebook make you cry.
9. You haven’t been drunk for months, because the alcohol prices just seem to be so ridiculously high. Even the ones in Southeast Asia, and especially if you are a wine drinker.
10. You kinda start missing even the annoying couples on Margitsziget.
11. You keep wondering why you can’t find sour cream in 1kg pots in the supermarket.
12. All of your friends know how amazing Budapest is. ALL of them. Even the ones that didn’t want to know. By now, you only get to “You know, in Bud…” before they kick you out of the party.
13. Listening to the noises of the trains and trams makes you really miss the fruity and jolly whistles of the Budapest network.
14. No matter what you write about, it contains the word ‘Budapest’ at least once, even if it is a scientific essay about the reproduction of penguins.
15. Even Túró Rudi suddenly seems like the most delicious snack ever.
16. Your friends are pretty tired of you trying to convince them to put sour cream on their pizza.
17. You’ve seriously considered transforming the neighbours’ BBQ into your own private kürtöskalács maker.
18. You’ve tried to remove your last forint notes from your purse already several times. But they are still there. Staring at you, judging, waiting to return home and to be spent.
19. Pálinka is still your weapon of choice, no matter if you suffer from an upset stomach, you feel a bit under the weather, or if you have a bad cold. But all you get now is Wick Daymed.
20. You suffer from panic attacks that you’ll never see your friends again; they’re slowly starting to leaving the city, returning to their home countries, or just moving on. Then you take a deep breath and remind yourself that they will return one day, just like everybody does and just like you will do. 