One Night in Budapest

There are pros and cons to military life and how you feel about those pros and cons is mostly dependent on whether you are a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty person.

For example, on the one hand you may have to live in far-flung places like Asia. On the other, you get to live in far-flung places like Asia.

On the one hand you have to pull chalks and move your family every couple of years. On the other hand, a new adventure is always just around the corner, and if you happen to hate the place you are living, at least you know you won’t be there too long.

One of my favorite things about military life is the fact that you are always running into people you’ve met in other places. This can be a good news/bad news scenario, depending on how you feel about the people you keep running into.

Take what happened to me this summer when I was signing my kids up for Vacation Bible School at the Chapel. I run into a woman who looks very familiar to me. I get the feeling we’ve met and spent some time together. This is not an uncommon experience for military folk and the reflex is to go through the mental rolodex of places you’ve lived, searching the grey matter for clues. When this fails, you have no choice but to ask the person who they are and where you've met, which can be awkward.

Finally, I introduce myself, which prompts her to do the same, and I’m stumped because even the name doesn’t jog my brain. I come clean and tell her she looks familiar and we start doing the inventory of stations. Florida? No…. Northern California? No…. Rhode Island? Nope….. Alabama? No….. D.C? Yes, when were you there? Yes we were there then…what were you doing? No, it wasn’t D.C…. Germany? No…

Then she gets the look which tells me the ah-hah moment has arrived, “We had dinner with you and your husband one night in Budapest.” And it all comes together.

Jenny and her husband Steven were in Budapest because he was an Olmstead Scholar (he’s exceedingly bright). We were living in Germany and wanted to visit Hungary. A mutual friend suggested we meet them since visiting a city with someone who lives there is much more fun than going it alone..

Which brings me to the next thing I love about the military--it makes for an connection with people who are otherwise strangers.

Steven gave us a tour of the city and Jenny met us out for a dinner, which was distinctive because they served us delicacies like whole cow tongue (hairs intact). This may be why I just barely remembered Jenny—I was scarred by the tongue experience. We went back to their place and spent a pleasant evening together.


Eight years and several moves later, the Downs and the Renners collide in Korea. It's their second visit to the Pen - Steven passed up the chance to get his Ph.D at Oxford to come here. Pause and reflect on that for a moment.I'll wait.

The upside is that because they are here, we reap the benefit of getting to really know them, far better than we were able to during one night in Budapest. And we know that even when our time in Korea is over, and we go our separate ways, we won’t say good-bye, just “See you somewhere…”