July Recap: Our Month in Budapest or (why not having a job is hard, too)

July Recap: Our Month in Budapest or (why not having a job is hard, too) 

I have neglected this blog for some time, but I’m back (at least for now!). Today I wanted to share what I was up to in July.

I have been doing this monthly on YouTube but thought this was the ideal (and easiest?) way to restart my writing here. 

Some of the links on this website are affiliate links, meaning, at zero additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Skip to: Best Things I Ate – Content Creation – Commitments – Books I Read – Learning – Language – Money & Finances – What’s Next?

Where we were

Budapest

July was much more straightforward than June–as far as the where was concerned. While we traipsed through the Balkans in June (seldom staying anywhere for more than 3-4 nights), we spent almost all of July in Budapest. 

I’ll share more below, but I love Budapest (and this stay was no exception). 

Prague

While we spent the heavy bulk of the month in Budapest, we arrived in Prague before month’s end. We have spent the past four days/nights here, and it has been a nice change of pace so far. 

What we did

Dealt with the heat in Budapest

While I love Budapest, it was far from perfect. We arrived during a heat wave (99˚F) to an apartment with no A/C and two broken fans. With our backs pushed against the proverbial wall, we did all we could: opened the windows and tried to sleep.

I woke up around 3am covered in sweat and mosquito bites. Whether locals deal with mosquitoes or not, one (two?) thing(s) are certain: mosquitoes (and bees!) love us. 

The heat persisted the next few days, and while receiving a fancy, new Dyson fan helped, the apartment was far from comfortable. Eventually the heat relented, and the middle of our trip was quite comfortable. Unfortunately, the last 3-5 days of our trip saw the heatwave come back and complicate both sleeping and even spending time during the apartment in general. 

Fell in love with Budapest…again

At this point, I’m probably sending mixed signals re: Budapest 😅It’s safe to say that even including the awful weather, we both fell in love with Budapest yet again.

This was our third time visiting Budapest (and our second time visiting together). We had always really, really liked the city but knew staying four weeks would be a better test than our first two short stints. The city held up its end of the bargain, and we really enjoyed our time here.

It’s hard to distill exactly what I love about the city, but I think it comes down to the architecture, compactness/walkability of the city (downtown?), and the food scene. It doesn’t help that you’re never too far from water and that people are very friendly. 

After a pleasant–albeit HOT–four weeks, Budapest has joined the shortlist of places we are considering “settling down” (read: signing a 12-month lease). I’m not 100% sure if we qualify for a long term visa, but after a few brief Hooli queries it looks like Hungary has both a digital nomad visa and a property ownership visa. 

Lots of craft beer 🍺

While we have drank our fair share of beer (and wine) during this trip, we hadn’t delved into the craft realm too often (honorable mention: Master Craft Brewery in Banja Luka). July–and Budapest–changed this pattern quite a bit.

During my last visit to Budapest in 2018, I don’t recall much of a craft beer scene (maybe I just wasn’t looking). Fast forward 3.5 years and Budapest seems like a full-blown craft beer destination. 

Brewers like Mad Scientist & Élesztő not only brew exquisite beer, but have also created awesome, viby places to enjoy said beer. On the other hand, tap rooms like KEG & Beer Brothers have sourced the best beers from all over Hungary while also crafting excellent atmospheres to enjoy them. 

And…that was just Budapest. We are now in beer Mecca! In our first four days we visited six breweries/tap rooms/craft beer bars. Unlike Budapest, I did expect incredible beer in Prague. Like Budapest, I didn’t recall such a solid craft beer scene. 

Cooked more 

During June, we stayed anywhere from 3-4 nights per city/place. This didn’t exactly lend itself to doing too much grocery shopping–or cooking. 

With our “roots” firmly established for almost a full month, things changed. We were able to buy groceries and “stock” our fridge and pantry. This resulted in quite a bit more cooking. 

While in Mexico last year (and earlier this year), we typically made sandwiches for lunch. For whatever reason, we decided to spruce things up in Budapest and Yunji started making tartines (or open-faced sandwiches).

While toppings changed from day to day, we typically had large slices of toasted sourdough topped with Greek yogurt, grilled (and/or raw) onions, mushrooms (oyster when we could find them), herbs & lemon juice (and zest). Not only were these absolutely delicious, but they seemed fairly healthy as well. 

They also had the benefit of not getting too boring too quickly. We frequently swapped out the veggies used and/or the herb complements as well. 

Struggled with being a creator/creating content

Not having a “regular” day job and/or creating “content” has been different and challenging. While most of my life has had clear milestones/points of progress, this chapter has been a bit different. 

With that, I’m typically at the mercy of vanity metrics like views, likes, and subscribers. It has been very challenging for me pivoting from purely Mexico (City) content to filming my travels in Europe. A lot of my viewership has fallen off, and I’ve frequently questioned–and continue to?–if “this” is worth it. 

Began our Prague chapter 

This is likely quite clear after the first two sections, but if not, here we are! While I always enjoy a change of pace, the change of temperature has been extra refreshing. The weather here has been very mild, so much so that I’ve even worn…pants! 

While our apartment in Prague isn’t as nice as its posh Budapest counterpart, I have quickly fallen in love with its surrounding neighborhood: Žižkov. While I enjoyed the single day we spent out here during our trip in 2019, the surrounding neighborhood is even better than I could have expected.

From parks to cafes, restaurants to breweries, this neighborhood and its neighboring hoods to the north and south, are my favorites in Prague. On the other hand, I find Old Town too touristy, crowded, and soulless. 

The Best Things I Ate in July

When I do my monthly recaps on YouTube, the food (or best things I ate) section is always by far the longest. Because I imagine most folks don’t care about (read: obsess over) food as much as I do, I thought I’d break this out into a separate post (coming next week!).

Check it out now: The 13 BEST Things I Ate in July (Budapest & Prague)

I also need more content if I’m going to hit my weekly blog goal 🥴

Content Creation

Published 9 videos 

The reason I wanted to highlight this is because I typically post two videos per week. Given most months have roughly four weeks, one might assume I would always post eight videos.

This was not the case this month as the way the calendar shook out, I posted nine videos. Here are a few “noteworthy” of the nine: 

Best performer: We’re Back: Mexico City 

This video was confusing as many viewers thought we left our Europe trip to return to Mexico City. That was 100% my fault as the thumbnail was misleading, and many people knew things were challenging in Europe. 

It is little to no surprise that this video performed best as the heavy majority of my subscriber base joined during our time in Mexico. Additionally, my Mexico City videos have always consistently outperformed every other Mexican city I’ve published videos on.

Worst: Budapest Jewish quarter 

I had high hopes for this video that were soon squashed. The poor performance was likely due to two things: 1) change in thumbnail style; 2) disinterest in Europe (or Budapest) content.

Transitioning from creating purely Mexico content to publishing our Europe trip has been, in a word: challenging. As mentioned above, the bulk of my subscribers subscribed for Mexico content. 

My hypothesis is if your subscriber base doesn’t want to click on your videos, YouTube is much less likely to share impressions of your video with new users. This has put me in a tough place: do I continue pushing ahead with my current channel, or do I “start over” with a new, fresh channel and see how it does? 

Favorite: Budget or feels 

My favorite video is a toss up between two. First, I love budgeting, numbers, and spreadsheets. As you can imagine, I don’t have a ton of people in my life who love discussing budgets. Because of this, it was refreshing to create a video about my budgeting process and have some people watch it.

Second, the aforementioned challenges with scaling/growing my YouTube have taken a toll on me mentally/emotionally. It was very nice to be able to be vulnerable and share my struggles and have such positive feedback. I’ll talk a little more about my plan going forward below in the “Learning” section.

Wrote 0 posts

July saw me repeat what I had done in months prior: write nothing. I’m currently remedying this by writing my first monthly recap post. 

I’ll talk more about my plan for writing/this blog below under “Commitments”. 

Short form

This is something I had been talking about doing for months. In July, I finally shut up and started doing. 

Created 23 Tiktoks

I surprised myself by quickly finding a rhythm and creating/posting a lot more TikToks than I imagined I could. TikTok will be my main platform for experimenting, and I will repost what “works” on Instagram and YouTube Shorts.

6 Instagram Reels

I think I posted the least to Instagram because it impacts the people I actually know. I got self conscious about clogging friends’ IG feeds with my new, experimental content. After writing this out, I think I should get over it. They can unfollow me if they want to.

Instagram reels was where I had my most “viral” post ~4,500 views. What’s stranger is the pop happened weeks after initially posting. 

10 YouTube Shorts 

I was also hesitant to post shorts because I didn’t think anyone watched them. This was a dumb, bad hypothesis. Given this is where the bulk of my audience is (and that shorts can grow the subscriber base I’m actively focussing on), this is the platform I should have started on. 

This is also the platform I’ve had the most “success” on. I’ve had two videos go over 1k views, and multiple videos garner me new subscribers (that I hope will eventually watch some of my primary long form content). 

Commitments

July was the first month I wanted to start holding myself accountable. Mostly because I continued to fail to write for my blog and also because I didn’t want the same to happen for my new short form content. 

July commits: 

Tiktok 1: Post 1 TikTok per week ✅

Objective plan, objectively succeeded. Posted 23 TikToks (almost 4x my commit). 

Tiktok 2: Come up with a plan/schedule for TikTok ❓

This plan was more gray. I made a plan and schedule, but I’m not sure if it’s good enough. Going forward commitments need to be clearer to more easily measure success.

Blogs: Write 2 blog posts for the whole month ❌

Objective goal, objectively failed. Wrote zero of two blog posts. 

Hungarian: No real, objective plan ❓❌

No real, clear plan. Midway through, we tried learning 3 words per day. Some days we achieved that, but we weren’t consistent enough to reach our “goal”. 

Aug commits:

The below goals are much clearer than July. The exception being the “plan” one.

4 blogs/month (1/week)

Doubled my commit from last month even though I wrote zero, but, hey, I’m on my way to finishing 25% of this goal right now. 

6 TikToks/week

This is 6x my previous commit, but it’s not too much more than I was already doing. I kicked off August (yesterday) with two posts. 

More sustainable, objective plan short form

For this, I want to call out choosing content types, which platform I’ll post when, and choosing not only days but time of day to post. 

Read 6 books

For 2022, I committed to reading 50 books. That shakes out to roughly four books per month. As the heading suggests, I read six books during July. I’m currently at 30/50 books for the year.

The Dark Forest (remembrance of earth’s past, #2) 

This was the book I ended June “currently” reading. I had initially read the first book in the trilogy, The Three Body Problem, years ago. Then I re-read it more recently in hopes of finishing the series. I finally picked this book up and couldn’t put it down. 

It’s hard to talk much about a sequel without too many spoilers. Suffice it to say this is SciFi on a very large scale. It’s extremely well written, and I highly suggest it to anyone who enjoys SciFi.

Die Trying (reacher, #2) 

After TDF, I needed something lighter before tackling the third and final book of the trilogy. Jack Reacher books are not going to win any Pulitzer prizes or Hugo awards (and likely not going to make you any new reader friends). I had previously read ~5-6 Reacher books after finishing Uni, and this was one of them.

I “reread” this one (read: Audiobook) and I enjoyed the narrator and the storyline. This is one of my favorite Reacher books. Die Trying has Reacher at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he stumbles upon a kidnapping of a federal agent (where he becomes kidnapped in the process). What’s worse: the FBI thinks he’s one of the kidnappers, not one of the kidnapped.

Red Queen (red queen, #1)

I wanted more time before taking the plunge into Death’s End and Yunji had just finished this, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. The Red Queen is something in between Hunger Games, Harry Potter and the X-men but not as good as any (lol). 

There are Reds or normal non-magic folk and Silvers or magical and rich folks. This is as much about magic vs non as much as it is about class divide. Oh, and if it wasn’t clear yet, it’s YA Fantasy. While I didn’t love this book, the way it ended made me want to read its sequel to see what happens next. 

Running Blind (reacher, #4)

Still not having the gall to finish the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, I took one final detour. This time I “reread” another Reacher book (same narrator as above). 

While I didn’t really remember Die Trying at all, I did remember Running Blind–specifically how the murder commits the inexplicable murders. I think I prefer Die Trying to this one, but both of these are at the top of my Reacher books (if that’s saying much of anything). 

Death’s End (remembrance of earth’s past, #3)

Finally! I took the plunge and it was worth it! This book like The Dark Forest was not what I imagined/expected at all, which is exactly what I expected? 

This novel grows even more in scope (and time?) and does a great job of creating finality with the series. I enjoyed book 1 most of the 3 and potentially enjoyed The Dark Forest more than Death’s End, but I liked (or loved?) each of the 3 books. Again, highly recommend this series to anyone even open to SciFi. 

The Enemy (reacher, #8)

After finishing the series, I needed another light read. This time, I was unsure if I had read this one before or not. It took me a while to realize, but I had not.

The Enemy finds Reacher in a mess (what’s new?). He is being set up as a fall guy in a recent murder of a special forces soldier. I found the premise interesting but everything was solved too easily/neatly (except the end which I’m not sure how anyone could guess).

What I did love was you got some backstory on Reacher (this novel occurs before books 2 & 4) during his MP days. You also get to experience Reacher traveling outside of the US (e.g.: Paris). The narrator in the two aforementioned books is replaced with the “main” Reacher narrator, and I liked him less.

This was my least favorite of the three Reacher books I read this month but still better than the one I read a few months ago (Better Off Dead; co-written with the Author’s son).

Worst: Red Queen (but want to read #2 lol)

Pretty self explanatory I think. I might’ve enjoyed it more if I paid more attention.

Best: Dark Forest or Death’s End 

These were a cut above not only the Reacher books but most books I’ve read in general. I think if push came to shove, I’d choose The Dark Forest.

Currently: A Wild Sheep Chase (chose between rereading this vs Killing C & WUBC)

After needing a Reacher break at this point, I wanted to dive back into some Murakami. For some reason, I wanted to dive back into Killing Commendatore or Wind-up Bird Chronicle, but I ended up settling on A Wild Sheep Chase.

I think I chose AWSC for two reasons: 1) it’s way shorter than the other two; 2) I first read it on a trip to Bend visiting a friend who is visiting us in Prague in the next two days. Like the above Reacher books, I’m “rereading” this book via audiobook. 

Learning/WIP

This is a bit of a strange section. Am I the only one struggling to continuously learn something? Here are a few things I’m at least working on:

How to measure success

I’ve talked about this in a roundabout way above, but I think measuring success is one of the things I’m working on the most. As someone who creates content for a “living”, I think it’d be easy to measure success in revenue, views, and/or subscribers. 

I think the way I want to measure success is by creating content I enjoy making (and/or watching?) and/or am proud of. I don’t think I’ve looked at things this way yet. I’ve been more concerned on getting the title or thumbnails right or growing as quickly as creator X. 

Going forward, I want to think more about what I enjoy filming/making/editing. I want to invest time in making “things” I’m proud of regardless of if anyone else watches it or if it ever makes a cent. 

Living in the moment 

This is another thing I’m working on/struggling with. While I don’t have as many issues dwelling in the past, I’m a serial future live-r? While in Budapest, I’m thinking about what to eat in Prague. In July, I’m researching places to go in October. During lunch, I’m figuring out where to get a beer next or where to have dinner or dessert. 

I really want to focus on being present. What do I want to do now? Where am I right now? How can I be more fully present? 

We will see how the above two things go, and I’ll try to remember to revisit both in next month’s “learning/WIP”.

Language

This Europe trip has been humbling on the language front. After spending ~10 months in Mexico, I was pretty happy/confident both in my Spanish and my ability to acquire language. While I still think I’m above “average” in learning new languages, Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian and Hungarian have knocked me down a few pegs. 

Hungarian

As I mentioned above, I didn’t set a formal plan for learning Hungarian. Midway through our trip, we aimed to learn three new words per day. At one point, I planned to download audio and do flashcards for pronunciation, vocabulary, phrases and grammar? That certainly didn’t happen.

Here are some useful words/phrases we picked up:

köszönöm 🙏🏽 (kuh-suh-num) thank you

Jo napot 👋🏽 ☀️ (yo-nah-poht) good afternoon

Csapolt sörök 🍺 (Chah-polt Shuh-ruhk) draft beer

Bocsánat 😞 (bo-cha–naht) sorry

Korsó (kor-so) 0.5L/large? (for beers)

Finom! 😋(fee-gnome) delicious

Egészsé (gedre) 🥂(eh-geh-she-geh-dreh) cheers! To your health 

Sieszto 🙋🏼‍♀️👋🏽 (si-ehs-toe) ciao (hi/bye)

Plan for Czech?

For Czech, I’m going to be more realistic. Unlikely I’ll go down the Anki rabbithole, but I do plan to do 3 words/day. If I fall behind, I’ll make up with new words to stay at 3/day.

Money/finances

This has been an interesting month. On the positive side, this is the first month my portfolio is up since doing these recaps. On the less positive side, this is our most expensive month living abroad to date. 

Portfolio

July was a good month portfolio-wise! I ended the month up $83,372. Being positive at all would’ve been a win in my book since June, May, and especially April were so…not great. While July was up, I am still down ($266,650) YTD.

In late June, I finally sold almost all of my individual stocks (mostly tech losers) and my more fringe ETFs. While I don’t know if this was the ideal move for gains, it dropped my stress level by 90%. The bulk of my portfolio is now just $VTI, with some $BND, $MSFT, $AAPL, & $GOOG. 

I do have a larger cash position than usual because I didn’t want to immediately reinvest it all (this was probably the wrong thing to do). Trying to time the market is basically always the wrong thing to do. I’ll be DCA my cash into more $VTI weekly.

I also finally bought some I-Bonds (Series I bonds?). It was a massive hassle. The website was down for maintenance the first two times I tried to buy. Actually, I should say I think I bought as the order should go through some time today. I bought the max $10k you can buy and it will yield ~9.6% for the next 6 months before we see the new rate.

Wealthfront just raised their APY to 2.0%, so I will also offload some cash there to more or less match my old $IEF position. After doing that, I actually won’t have too much cash left so I don’t feel as bad/dumb. 

tl;dr: 💹 $83,372 (doesn’t even make up for April, lol); 🔻-$266,650 YTD

Spend 

While the portfolio had a good month, our spend hit an all time high (since living abroad), and we finally went over budget ($2,500) 🥺

Total for me: $1,286

Accommodation: $803.50

The bulk of our spend for the month went to accommodation. We “splurged” on a nice, “design” apartment in Budapest that could not have had a better location. While it was a beautiful, large space in a great location, it did not handle the heat well. 

We typically budget $1,200-1,250 for accommodation ($600-625/pp), so this was 28-33% over our typical rent. I also learned overspending on accommodation is the easiest way to guarantee going over our overall budget 😅

F&B: $376

Because we overspent on accommodation we reduced our monthly F&B budget. Typically, we budget $500/pp, but this month we reduced it to $450. We still came fairly under that figure (probably because I was subconsciously trying to keep us under our overall budget). 

The Budapest dining scene is fantastic and offers meals across all budgets. Our most expensive meal was a $36.25 dinner at Hungarikum Bistro (more on that in ‘The Best Things I Ate in July’). Our cheapest meal was a $10.27 lunch at Szeráj (also in the upcoming writeup). Guess that goes to show you don’t have to spend too much to have some quality, memorable food. 

Transport: $104

Transport was basically bang on average for July. The bulk of the expense was the amortization of our flights to and from Europe. The residual was our train from Budapest to Prague and our tram tickets from our flat in Budapest to Budapest-Nyugati (train station). 

Activities & misc: $2.50

This was a very light month both for activities and miscellaneous. We didn’t do any paid activities, and our miscellaneous expenses were on library cards (admin fee), toothpaste, laundry detergent, and a loose beer. 

Total for 2: $2,573

The end of an era. We had successfully gone 13 straight months under budget. I actually fully anticipated us going way over in June, but somehow we dodged that bullet. I expected this Europe trip to be much more difficult on our budget than Mexico for several reasons, but so far I think we’ve done a great job. 

We will have multiple friends visiting us in August and September, so it will be interesting to see if we can stay under budget without being wet towels. 

Where to next?

More Prague 

This was alluded to previously, but…we’re here! We will be here for the next few weeks and have friends/family in town more days than not. I am very excited to eat and drink my way through Prague and its many neighborhoods. 

Bratislava & Vienna 

After Prague, we have two more stops before heading “home”. I have been to Bratislava once 12 years ago and have been to Vienna twice (once on the same Bratislava trip and another time with Yunji three years ago). 

Both will be quick stops, but I am looking forward to each for different reasons. We will end our Europe trip in Vienna and will see some friends there before flying back to California.