Top 5 From Cities I’ve TEFL-ed In

At the end of a school year, a co-worker of mine sent out an email with her personal Top 10 of the city we’d all been working in. I’ve been around the block a few times as far as Eastern European cities go, so I won’t commit to a full Top 10, but here are my Top 5 from the cities I’ve worked in. Choose your own Top 5 or 10 and either post them as comments here or post them on your blog with a link! [Update: I’ve pilfered these from TEFLtastic: https://www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/307]

Budapest

• All of the bridges at night
• The amazing variety of international food, yes, even including the canteen
  
• That language. Egeszsegedre!
• The easy transport system (well, easy as long as you have done everything right with your ticket)
• The underground market at Nyugati Railway station

Bratislava

• It’s an hour from Vienna
• My Tuesday Night Club
• Both western conveniences (coffee to go, Tesco that stocks tortillas) and a cute traditional old town
• The Christmas Market
• The nice couple I taught and socialized with

Sarajevo

• The food
• My little old landlady
• Culture, such as the film festival and Bosnian music, which is modern and traditional at the same time, and which people do actually listen to.
• Black humor in jokes, and more generally, people willing to tell jokes, sometimes about themselves.
• The landscape – not only mountains, but socialist high-rises backing up to some of them, and the hills surrounding the city which light up at night with house lights.