
I really do love the water. Sometimes I just feel like I need an escape. There’s nothing better than dunking my warm body into the icy cold water. I love watching my hair drift, weightless, tangled and messy. Throughout my stay in Hungary, the Danube was there. I visited both Budapest and Vác and the Danube flowed through both. Growing up my house had a river running through it and I would love the sound of gushing water, not only was it captivating to listen to but it was also the source of life. One of the best memories I have with my father is when we’d go fishing together. He would catch the fish and my mum would cook it up on the frying pan.
I am like my father. No matter how hard I try to fight it, I am his daughter. Maybe it’s just encoded into my DNA. I’m hot-headed and aggressive, passionate yet also irrational too. I remember the day my dad taught me to ride a bike without training wheels. I remember asking him not to let go, but when I got halfway down our driveway I looked back and he wasn’t there. Perhaps this is just another fact of life, our parents won’t always decide to stay with us in this journey.
I want to live by the river. I want to get away because I’m not built for the city. We could start a whole new life together. Maybe you’d get sick of me. Maybe it is all just genetic. My father worked his entire adult life in the city until he finally recoiled back into nature. Maybe you will be like me. Like him.

In Vác, there was a beautiful clearing and I remember sitting on a rock watching a father teach his son how to kayak. It was autumn and the leaves were turning yellow. I walked in the town by the river with a rock wall to lean on occasionally so I could absorb the beauty of Hungary and I would hear the crunch of autumn leaves on the ground beneath my feet. This is how I know you’d be just like me, going out of your way to stomp on autumn leaves. This world is scary but it’s also beautiful and magnificent. There’s beauty in the small moments, the everyday moments, the mundane. There’s beauty in a father teaching his son how to kayak, there’s beauty in a father teaching his daughter to ride a bike.
I’ll close my eyes and imagine we are both there together. One day.