The best services to use when moving to Hungary

We landed there in 2001 and never intended to stay much longer than our 90 day allotment at the time. However, back then crossing the border into any other country, reset the clock.

When we both were offered university positions, we decided to give it a try for a year. We had to hire a service to aid us in getting our one year Visas. In the middle of getting the paperwork done, the company we chose, was sold to another company. It took us almost 8 months to get the first Visa and then within a month, we were told we needed to start again for the next year's Visa. However, the second company went out of business, so we had to find a third company.

By the time we became eligible for the permanent residency (5 year duration), we had gone through four different companies, but none of them exist today.

The problem with many 'services' are they try hard to be a start-up, but never last long. We have seen 100s of various companies and services come and go over our 15 years.

I'm lucky because I speak hungarian,have a cousin and some friends here.I also belong to a couple expat groups and occasionally attend some of their events and stay in hostels when I'm in Budapest where I also meet a lot of people and I ride my motorcycle a lot.

The language is an obvious hurdle.  I'd spent quite a while studying on my own before I got there, but there's obviously nothing like hearing (or using) the language every day to help you really learn.  Best of all is a good language teacher.

If you're in Budapest, I highly recommend Ulysses Language School: http://www.ulysses.co.hu/en/.  They're located just behind BME on the Buda side, just off Bartók Béla út.  The teachers there have an ease and confidence that comes from long experience of teaching.  A lot of hard work (Hungarian grammar and vocabulary just is way different from other languages), but also a lot of good humour about the inevitable difficulties.

As far as I remember the prices seemed high, but that was in a context where I was earning too little in HUF.  I didn't make a comparison with other teachers or schools, because I was very happy with what I got at Ulysses.  When I stopped having lessons there, it was because my money was short, rather than because I wasn't getting anything out of it.