Eger, some really random occurences, and my first "gypsy experience"

Friday night Lyla and I attended a concert on the A38, a former Ukrainian stone freighter ship that has been repurposed as a club/small concert hall. There, we drank impossibly strong Caiprinhias, bounced around to a Hungarian band called small cow that featured a stuffed rabbit "singing" about the joys of being a bunny, met a Spaniard (and told him his town sucks) and a Colombian, got absolutely drenched in other people's beer, and bounced around some more. Great fun.

Lyla and I before heading out.

On Saturday I traveled to the marvelous city of Eger with the marvelous people of CETP. What is Eger, you ask? Eger is a small city twoish hours away by bus. Eger is a castle. Eger is taking your life into your hands climbing an ancient Turkish minaret that consists of a partially-lit, shoulder-width spiral staircase. Eger is delicious potato palacsinta (crepes) stuffed with various meats (including liver!) ragou. But most of all, Eger is wine. Wine for forty to eighty cents per deciliter. Thus, Eger is also dancing in the street. Eger is swearing at people rightfully harrassing your friends- who are rolling around on the ground screaming in German. Eger is running laps around the bus station. Eger is all this and more. Eger is also beautiful.

Tara in the stocks at the castle while everyone else is far too cool.

The beautiful city, as viewed from the castle wall. On an interesting side note, this was the worst-planned castle ever: it was built halfway up the hill. Good job, boys and girls.

The previously mentioned stairs of death in the minaret.

A goulash party all ready to go: just add fire and cauldron of soup!

Briggi and I being goofy on the castle playground.

So after a marvelous weekend I return to Budapest and to "normal" life. Monday was normal, very busy, with the fun addition of first grade parent nights, which I somehow stumbled through. Tuesday seemed like it was going to be a normal day as well, until the second grade parent meeting started at 5:00. First, I was sitting in the staff room a few minutes prior being all punctual and American when I overheard a very serious debate about the merits of ketchup versus mayonaisse. As I sat there and went, "Seriously?" in my head, the debate was actually translated for me. Then Balint and I headed up for the parents' meeting, where we basically made British English vs. American English jokes for twenty minutes each. I headed home giggly, Lyla and I finally caught up to the current point in Battlestar, and fell asleep.

Wednesday has been the strangest day of my life in Hungary thus far. In a good way. It started innocently enough. I was buying my breakfast from my normal pastry shop on my morning commute, and the saleslady smiled at me. I suspiciously smiled back. Then she handed me my pastry and said, still smiling, "Goodbye, thank you, have a beautiful day!" Yes, a Hungarian saleslady was openly friendly to me.

But wait. It gets better. All day long, my children were charming and perfect. In a good mood as a result, I decided to spend one of my planning periods writing their upcoming test. Balint had been complaining about having to give them another test, so I figured I would just write the thing up, and sure enough, because I am a native speaker, the whole thing took like twenty minutes. When I gave it to him, there was such a fluster of excitement that I became rather embarrassed. I said I was just happy that I could finally do something to help since I never can because of the whole language-barrier thing. The response was, and I quote, "But you are always helping, with your ideas and scheduling and making the children have fun!" Yes: a compliment on my work, AND on my bright shining face.

BUT WAIT. I leave work and head off to Wille's for my private lesson. On the bus, there are no seats, so I cram myself into a corner. An old lady, a neni, gets on. Of course nobody offers her their seat, so I try to offer her my corner, which is at least sturdy. She declines, and calls me sweet. Somehow we wind up in an entire twenty-minute long conversation, her very slowly and clearly, me with a lot of mime, which become somewhat harder after she takes my hand to hold it. She also, of course, tried to set me up with one of her grandsons, because matchmaking is the official job of nenis. That, feeding people, and being really scary. But not this one. I have acheived the unthinkable: a Budapesti neni was incredibly nice to me, and suffered my Hungarian for twenty minutes.

Yes, yesterday was bizarro day here in the BP.

I got to Wille's a bit early, so I wandered and took some photos of the fog.

A war monument to the heroes of WWI and WWII in an elementary school yard. Interesting to remember that Hungary was on the wrong side of both of those.


The road I walk down to Wille's from the bus, on which the sidewalk is a series of flat steps.

Water droplets on tree branches. Pretentious, but pretty.

Something I haven't really talked about on this blog is the gypsy phenomenom here in Hungary. Basically, the gypsies exist as a marginalized society, somewhat due to cultural choices they make and somewhat due to prejudices against them. You can recognize them pretty easily because even in Budapest they dress in a very distinctive, colorful, old-fashioned style. And they have a lot of children. Now, the vast majority of Hungarians hate the gypsies. Imagine the image of Mexicans in the United States, but infinitely more perjorative and without the American political correctness filter.

Personally, I'd never actually had an encounter with gypsies, until this afternoon on the tram. I'm sitting there, head resting on the glass, when I overhear a pretty major commotion behind me in the car. I turn, and there are four gypsies: an older man and woman, and a younger woman with a baby. The older woman is smoking, something very forbidden on public transit here. The commotion is happening because a few people are telling her that it's not allowed, and she is refusing to listen. Within seconds, the whole situation escalates to the gypsies and several people all shouting obscenities at each other at maximum volume. The gypsies got off at the next stop, otherwise I am sure there would have been a physical altercation, and the two groups continued to scream and swear at each other until the tram doors closed and the tram went on its way. It was pretty scary overall, and something that I never imagined seeing.

Since I know the gypsy story took down the tone of the post, I'll leave you with this, the most ridiculous ad I've ever seen, now plastered on billboards all over Budapest. Enjoy.

Why yes, that is a dude apparently doing interpretive dance in shiny green satin pants, a see-through spangled shirt unbuttoned to the navel with matching green satin trim, a belt made of sequins, and tap shoes. Why yes, everytime I walk to work now I do, in fact, have to stare at his left nipple for the entire route. What I understand least of all is how this is supposed to inspire me to purchase easy-install hardwood flooring.