When I first went to Budapest I got onto a small plane in an equally small airport far away from Paris city centre. It was like I had closed my eyes and Budapest could be anywhere. I had no real sense of where it really was, what lay between my home in Paris and the city in which I had just landed. 
The second time I went, I took the train. I looked properly at its position in Europe and contemplated the major and minor cities as well as the geographic hotspots that lay between me and my destination, not because I looked at them on a flight path, but because I really experienced them.
I was whisked from Paris to Basel in comfort and luxury while the French countryside sped past me in all its glory. I can still picture the fields and the churches, the villages and hills. Then from the city of Basel (a historic location lying on the border between France, Germany and Switzerland dating back to the Roman era) I traversed the beauty of Switzerland towards Zurich. Mountains and typical Swiss houses appeared before me like living chocolate boxes. Then I was transported through some of the most awe-inspiring geography in Europe to find my way to the heart of Budapest.
I passed through the Bavarian Alps and by the Tauern Mountains, the towns of Feldkirch, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Linz and Vienna as equally chocolate-box-like homes and even a few castles revealed themselves. I gained a real sense of place and geography and felt like I was truly on a journey. I contemplated the people that lived in the homes of different sizes and stature, the creatures that roamed the woodlands and mountain tops, the stories that these landscapes could tell as well as the history and politics that had shaped it and its people. You can’t get that from an aeroplane.
When I arrived in Budapest for the second time, I felt far from home. I felt like I was in a country which was south of Paris, past Switzerland and across the span of Austria. I could picture the landscapes, the homes and the structures that lay between my destination and my home. I experienced the journey and that was worth ten thousand words.
