Quests. Questions. Even I don’t fully know. As I am writing this article, I am in an ongoing, lengthy process of reflection about my life up until this point.

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I have recently turned 21 in Los Angeles, then moved back home, to Budapest, to spend the summer with my family before moving again to Paris for my Master’s studies. I have seen my grandparents for the first time in a year, since I left for my exchange year at UCLA, and I was happier than ever to find all four of them in excellent health. I spent some time with my parents too, and I started noticing something that I haven’t really thought much of before. My sister moved out first for university almost 8 years ago, and is now working abroad full-time, only visiting during the holidays. Then came my time. It’s now been three full years of me studying abroad too, and the older I get the more I notice the feelings that have accompanied me during this international adventure:

1. Proudness. Proudness to be independent, to be brave enough to embrace novelty and the unknowns of a country with no relations to it whatsoever.

2. Hunger. Hunger to see more, to go further and to dive deep into a culture I have nothing to do with, only to leave it behind as a true friend, with tears in my eyes when my time comes to move on.

3. Guilt.

4. Anxiety.

Wait… what? But for what exactly, you may be asking yourselves? From the outside, and even to me personally, this life can seem like one a young adult could’ve only ever dreamt of. By the age 21, I have already properly lived in six different cities, five countries, and two continents. Grew up in Budapest. Moved to study abroad in Reims and Paris, France. Did two months-long internships in Vienna, Austria and Aarhus, Denmark. Then spent an entire year as an exchange at UCLA, in California. I have seen, lived and experienced more in two decades than some people do in a lifetime. So why exactly did I end the list with two, seemingly sad and negative emotions?

Because I’m not afraid to admit that moving in and out of places I call home temporarily, introducing myself and saying goodbye so often has had its ups and downs for sure. I still vividly remember my first night alone in my student dorm in Reims, after saying goodbye to my family who accompanied me there. I spent it feeling more alone than ever before, in a city with not a single soul that I knew. The night before, going to bed one last time at home with my suitcase all packed, all I wanted was to leave, to move out, and to be an independent, grown 18 year-old that I’ve always dreamt of becoming. Only a day later, when this reality actually hit me, all I wanted was to go home for a few days. To see my parents again. To taste my mom’s home-cooked meals one last time.

I also often felt guilt. Guilt for leaving my family and my country behind, because I wanted more, to fulfil my childhood dreams about having my own separate life. In the beginning, this sometimes felt like asking for too much. Asking my parents to finance my studies, my apartment, my trips, and so on. Asking to always go further, and to stay away longer, sometimes even for the summer, as I was completing internships.

But the deepest feeling of them all was definitely one, singular fear. The fear I felt whenever I said goodbye before a trip, and whenever I would end a call with my loved ones. The fear of not being able to greet them in person, hug them and ask how they’ve been, face to face again. Spending so much time abroad also meant spending so little of that time with them. This was especially true for the year I’ve spent in LA, where I remained for the whole year, only calling my parents, sister and grandparents occasionally, when the 9-hour time difference permitted.

Rough thoughts, huh? Tell me about it. Even so, every now and then, I can’t help but remember that all of us only have limited time on this planet.

But hell, I didn’t intend to make this into a sentimental piece where I pour my heart out to Substack. Take this more like a reality check, advice and shared experience, especially if you’re moving out of home and abroad soon. Also mind you, I’ve only gone in detail with the negative stuff so far. Weighed against this stands an enormous list of the happiest, most memorable moments of my life that I have predominantly all lived during my time away at university, in cities and with people that once were complete strangers to me. And no, I’m not being two-faced when I say this even if I’m a Gemini, but mark my words: living abroad is the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me. This past year at UCLA was the best year of my entire life so far, while also being the year I’ve spent the furthest away from home, friends and family.

Oh, and the family stuff? These thoughts are all in my head, and my head only. I know that seeing me travel so far and experience so much is everything my parents ever wanted for me, and everything they ever worked so hard for. To me, healthy human parenthood is similar to the eagles’: the elders only want to see the younglings fly higher, better and further for their own sake.

So if I can have just one piece of advice for you, if you haven’t reached this point in life yet, all I can wish for you is to travel far. To experience more. To experience hardship and pain first, and savour all the sweetness of this expanded vision of the world later. And if this all sounds a little intimidating, just know that it’s completely normal; we are beings with innate reflexes after all, programmed to fear what we don’t know. But I might have just the list of takeaways and advice from my experiences abroad that could flip the switch in your mind, and encourage you to take on that journey that you’ll always remember as the best decision in your life.

• You grow to become an independent adult. Fast. Between opening up your first foreign bank account, trying to get a mobile plan that works and figuring out the healthcare system in a language you’re still a bit shaky in, you are unconsciously building a more resilient, extremely capable version of you. Think of all these admin tasks that seem so intimidating and boring at first as exercises that condition you to handle the discomfort of new situations so much better. By the third time I moved countries, I didn’t even think of these as tasks: they became normal routine. Trust me, a little endurance can really go a long way.

• Distance makes you better at love, not worse at it. It’s easy to just go scroll on your phone for 30 minutes a day when you live with someone. But when a 30 minute call is all you get with them, you will want to savour every millisecond of that time, like the sweetest dessert ever. You start listening harder to everything they say, from their intonation to their breathing pattern. You ask better questions, the ones that keep the conversation really going, wishing you could stretch the call out forever, because you know exactly how much thirty minutes with a multiple-hour time difference actually costs.

  Distance is also one of the most honest filters you could ask for. The people who make the effort to pick up your call despite the time difference and the bad connection tell you something revealing about who was actually going to stay in your life either way, distance present or not.

• The more you know, the better. You don’t choose your city of birth, but you absolutely have a say in where you’ll spend the rest of your life. And it’s a choice far more important than most people think: your homebase determines who you’re going to meet and work with, what feels normal or not, the public resources and opportunities you’re going to have access to… Humans naturally absorb the elements of the environment they are surrounded by, so making the right decision here could really make a big improvement in your quality of life. And… guess what? The more you see of the world, the more the unknown options shrink. Somehow, having experienced the American Way of living makes me less anxious about the future choice of settling. Even though I absolutely adored California and have always dreamt of living there one day, I don’t know if I could see myself staying there long-term anymore. Something about the lifestyle and the system didn’t feel right to me, and that’s completely okay! At least now I can go to bed stress-free every night, without having to ever wonder how my life could’ve played out if I ever stayed in LA. I am absolutely planning on returning very often for the friends and nostalgic moments I made along the way, though!

• Home is where you build it. After enough goodbyes, housewarming parties and strenuous move-outs, you learn what “home” actually means, and it stops being a place. Home becomes a feeling you can recreate anywhere you are, with a specific routine, some room decorations, meals you cook and so much more. If you ever feel lost or lonely abroad, a routine you are used to is the best way to regain control of your life, no matter where you are. This is a strange kind of freedom nobody warns you about, but being able to turn a 10 square meter dorm into a cozy home through your disciplined actions is one of the strongest powers you can have.

There you have my takeaways of living abroad, take it or leave it. This article may have been a little overwhelming to read, but it was never meant to be perfect or catchy. It wasn’t even meant to be published anywhere in the first place. It’s a collage of numerous Notes app thoughts that I jotted down every now and then over the summer, and that I have finally pieced together into a coherent text. It’s honest, and hopefully helpful to you, if you’ve made it this far. I truly hope this will be the last nudge some of you need to say yes to a life outside the one you were born into, and to those I say bon voyage.

After spending an entire year in California, returning to European supermarkets and drugstores almost feels like no packaging will ever catch my attention again. Walk into the “organic” or “natural” aisle of any American store, and you’ll be met with the same visual language of aesthetic, soft green titles and a horde of non-toxic, environmental-friendly logos and labels.

It almost feels like the U.S. is going through a silent revolution of its health, food and domestic product industries. It’s hard to think of a single brand that hasn’t launched a separate line of products with no added sugar, no preservatives, or made entirely from organic ingredients.

The product next to it with no appealing, overly green signs? Same category, similar formula, usually even made in the same factory, while it costs a third less and doesn’t bother with any of the extra advertising or packaging. This is the price difference that is presented and sold as the cost of safety and personal health. Except for the fact that mostly, it isn’t. It’s the cost of marketing around words that, in the United States, doesn’t mean much legally.

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As of now, no American federal agency regulates the use of words such as “clean,” “non-toxic,” “natural,” and “green.” Not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). A brand can print these words on a label and have whatever meaning they want associated with it, as long as it doesn’t qualify as an outright false or deceptive claim. No third party checking, and no legal consequence for getting it wrong.

Your average European consumer would most likely experience a panic attack hearing this looseness around legality: whereas the FDA restricts or bans around 11 ingredients in cosmetics, the EU has prohibited more than 1,600 (!!!) with hundreds of more under restrictions by volume. This is because the EU works from a precautionary framework, restricting ingredients suspected of harm even before it’s definitively proven, with no market entry allowed. On the other hand, the FDA doesn’t require pre-market safety approval for the majority of ingredients, largely trusting brands and consumers to self-police and flag issues themselves.

But so what does this really mean for product safety and composition? Simply put, when an American brand markets itself as clean against an unregulated baseline, it isn’t legally promising consumers a safer product than what the EU already legally requires of every product on every shelf, including the cheapest, in-house brands of stores with monochromatic and boring packaging.

In the US, the absence of this same baseline allows producers to repackage health standards as a premium feature. Which then inevitably begs the question, who actually pays for this premium in the U.S.? For decades and decades, Americans were known to Europeans as their unhealthy neighbours who live off fast food burger chains and gallon-sized sodas. So what makes it worth for all these brands to create a premium version of their products, like organic, sugar-free ketchup for instance?

In reality, the picture is much more complex than what a simple yes-no could answer. The “healthy food” market is projected to approach $1700 billion globally by 2030, with more and more people prioritizing organic and natural ingredients when doing their groceries or beauty shopping. There are several factors which have brought about this huge wave of popularity in “conscious consumerism,” which can simply be defined as agents who base their purchases on the social, environmental, and ethical values that they want to represent and support.

This can be for personal health reasons, as seen through the explosion in popularity of “crunchy” or “granola” influencer lifestyles focused on a natural, eco-friendly but very aesthetic way of living, avoiding synthetic materials and microplastics that would otherwise leach into the human body through clothing, food or cooking supplies. This low-waste, nature-loving approach to living is taken up by influencers to advertise anything from 100% organic cotton clothing for workouts, through stainless steel and ceramic cooking utensils, to natural ingredients-only lip glosses to eliminate all potential threats of toxic particles coming into contact with the body.

Others want to do it for the environment, focusing on reducing waste and toxins that are released back into nature, by using clean laundry detergents and toilet gels. Yet again, more and more people get interested in going all natural for the fauna: the main incentive becomes fighting the testing of beauty products on animals, or the well-being of their domestic pet which now only feasts on duck liver and quail eggs, instead of pre-packaged treats with additives.

However, one thing seems to remain constant for all of these reasons: clean, healthy and natural products are being presented and sold as a luxury. Have you ever seen an organic bottle of kombucha sold in a boring, dull bottle with no flashy advertisements or no upmark in price? I don’t think so either. Even in five-star hotels and Michelin Guide restaurants, the exclusivity of meals is often tied to their natural, local list of ingredients.

This thus brings us to another problem that Americans are mostly already familiar with: the inequality in access to health. According to a Pew Research report from last year, 69% of Americans say that the increased cost of healthy food makes it more difficult for them to eat healthy. For those who simply want to live healthier on a low budget, the options rapidly become scarce: either it’s the FDA-approved, genetically modified produce, or the organic Whole Foods section for twice the price…

Now that I’ve been complaining for the entirety of the article, you’re probably wondering:

What to actually do with this?

So I’ll give you a list of easy bullet points to make sure you’re actually buying the best bang for your buck (and your health, too!)

• Ingredient list, ingredient list, ingredient list! Not just what the front of the package says. Probably the most important advice is to always check what a given product is actually made of. Ingredients will always be listed by weight, heaviest first. If sugar, corn syrup, any oil or additive appears in the first three, you can immediately forget about all the wholesome branding.

• Sweet little lies… You should always check for sugar under its other aliases: cane juice, dextrose, maltose, rice syrup, agave nectar, sweeteners… and a dozen other names that are all still added sugar. Some manufacturers will purposely spread added sugars across multiple ingredient names so none of them appear too high up on the ingredients list.

• Distinguish certifications with value from words with none. “USDA Organic” and “Non-GMO Project Verified” involve actual third-party auditing and legal standards. “Clean,” “natural” and “green” do not, meaning anyone can print them anywhere.

• Serving size who? Ignore serving size games. Compare products by identical unit (per 100g, not “per serving”) as companies routinely shrink the stated serving size, specifically to make sugar and calorie numbers look smaller per label.

• 50g sugar? But at least it’s sustainably sourced, right? Always remember that “natural” and “organic” are not nutrition claims. Organic cane sugar is still sugar. Naturally derived doesn’t mean lower-calorie, lower-sugar, or better for a specific health goal. It only describes sourcing, not nutritional content.

So there you have it, some simple rules to live by if the anxiety of what you are consuming actually consumes you becomes truly insurmountable. Just to be clear, this article never was never meant to be a manifesto against all the logos, titles and natural products. Some brands are genuinely acting in good faith on legitimate concerns involving microplastics, endocrine disruptors, and PFAS, coming up with formulas and recipes that allow them to skip the E-additives and other synthetics. To me personally, they also represent some of the hottest new startups and brands that I’ve seen ingenious entrepreneurs come up with for the greater good, that I would wholeheartedly support over big corp products.

So none of this means you shouldn’t buy that sulfate-free shampoo or the organic ketchup. It just simply means, don’t rely on the packaging to do the reasoning. Read past the aesthetic sage green label, and ask yourself whether the same claim would survive being sold as is on a European shelf. Stay curious and stay healthy. <3

As for someone born and raised in Budapest, not a single month passes by without getting a message from an international friend asking for recommendations for their upcoming trip to the capital of Hungary.

Whether it be for a cheap and exciting senior trip, or a brave adventure to a new region of the world, I always eagerly put a list together, including everything that could be of interest to a first-time traveler to Central-Eastern Europe, such as our gluttonous meals or strong spirits.

Once the trip is over, I of course get a warm welcome for all the advice. However, the other Hungarians encountered not so much: the same observations arise every single time. The seriousness. The stares. The eternal hurry of the Budapestians. It’s almost like describing an entire society built on depression.

The stereotype, explained

To give the harsh reality, the general foreign perception of Hungarians goes something like this: reserved to the point of coldness, quick to complain, suspicious of unearned enthusiasm, allergic to small talk, and very much uncomfortable whenever the idea that things might simply be going well arises. This can make service in Budapest feel brusque. Compared to the warm welcomes I received in Los Angeles when studying abroad, a Californian might start questioning their social skills after visiting this little landlocked country. Try asking a true local Hungarian how they’re doing, and you’re likely to end up questioning that choice until the end of your trip, based on the frowns that you might end up getting in return.

Now, this stereotype is of course very much exaggerated. People from the capital are well used to foreign visitors, and are generally welcoming towards them. In any touristic setting, people are courteous, kind and will not leave you hanging, let it be anything that you’re inquiring about (and even more so after some rounds of the infamous pálinka, a fruit spirit strong enough to be used as disinfectant that every family’s grandpa brews in their own basement).

However, there is definitely some truth to the general sensation around Hungarians, largely explained by the history of the nation.

A Nation begging for mercy

If you want the story wrapped up in a few verses, listen to the Himnusz, the Hungarian national anthem, written by Ferenc Kölcsey in 1823. Whereas most anthems are triumphant, describing glory and marching toward destiny, ours is structured as a prayer. It asks God to bless the Hungarian people, specifically because they have already suffered so much, and to finally grant them some relief after centuries of hardship. In this sense, it could even be seen as a plea for mercy by a nation that has run out of confidence that things will ever go their way.

Now try singing that at a football match and comparing the emotional register to La Marseillaise. It’s not that Hungarians can’t write anthems about pride. It’s that pride wasn’t the honest emotional starting point in 1823 for the magyars. Mercy was.

The Why: 800 years of being fought over

Mercy didn’t come from cultural pessimism or some artistic movement invented for an aesthetic effect. It was, to be honest, a fairly rational output of the historical input Hungary has received over the centuries.

The country sits on the flattest, most invadable stretch of Central Europe, in the middle of the Carpathian Basin. This territory, surrounded by mountainous areas, acts as a corridor that armies have crossed for a thousand years because of nothing stopping them in their way:

• 1241- 42: A Mongol invasion kills an estimated one-third to one-half of the population in a single campaign.

• 1526 -1699: The Ottoman Empire occupies the central third of the country for roughly 150 years.

• 1699 onward: Having pushed the Ottomans out, the Habsburgs simply stay, absorbing Hungary into the Austrian empire for almost two centuries, marked by failed attempts of independence, all violently crushed.

• 1920: The infamous Treaty of Trianon, following the Central Powers’ defeat in WWI, strips Hungary of roughly two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its ethnic Hungarian population. Borders were redrawn in a way so that millions of Hungarians ended up as minorities in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine. This one event alone still shapes Hungarian political identity today, a century later.

• 1944 - 45: German occupation, followed by a brutal Soviet “liberation” that becomes forty-seven years of occupation. In 1956, a popular revolution against Soviet rule briefly succeeds, but then gets crushed by Soviet tanks within two weeks. Around 2,500 Hungarians die and roughly 200,000 flee the country. It is only in 1991, after four decades of communist rule, economic stagnation, and surveillance that the last troops officially leave.

That’s not a hard century. That’s a hard millennium. Almost every Hungarian generation for eight hundred years just all relived the experience of watching a more powerful outside force come in, and decide their fate for them. Even today, the generations born between the 1940s and the 1960s carry this trait within them. They cannot let themselves have too much fun, or believe that things are actually going their way. They purposely make things hard for themselves before they get worse, so that if they do get worse, nobody was caught smiling.

My Personal Takeaway

Having lived in Budapest, Los Angeles and now Paris, I think I have truly witnessed it all. At the end of the day, it was pretty shocking for me to get stopped by strangers on the streets of California just to compliment my shoes. For this to happen in Budapest? Or even Paris? Simply unthinkable.

But at the end of the day, if anything, this observation was just great proof that reactions you witness while travelling or living abroad can be far more than personal. I never think of the hurriedness and reservedness of the Parisians as rude either ; I know it is probably far more complex than that, resulting from the local work culture or the strict public etiquette they grew up following.

So, if you ever visit Budapest and find yourself wondering why some older generations seem to be unable to enjoy life, keep this short history lesson in mind (or just try inviting them for a drink, they’ll open up like they’ve known you since their earliest days after some rounds, I promise).