tíz kilenc nyolc hét hat öt négy három két egy budapest budapest woohoo

tíz kilenc nyolc hét hat öt négy három két egy budapest budapest woohoo 27 aug 2002 hi all! it's me again =P... here's the latest on my budapest adventures... i think my head is already getting mixed up -- i'm typing again on my laptop, with the american keyboard, but i keep hitting a lot of the keystrokes as if i'm using a hungarian one and having to go back and fix -- ack! =)... in case you're wondering, my subject merely says; ten, nine, eight, seven. six, five, four, three, two, one budapest budapest woohoo! -- the entire lyrics to a song i heard at the budapest parade this weekend.. more on that later =), but for the record, i can count! =P at any rate, here's the outline for this week, followed by my spin on life in general =) *more goofy european oddities =) *adventures in shopping *hungarian food (the saga continues!... beware the paprika! =P) *language lessons (going to tomato?) *our hungarian reading list =) *music (surprisingly, it's not all about techno!) *my weekend (budapest parade, mátyás church, tour of the town, and st. stephen's basilica) *visontlátásra! more goofy european oddities =) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ just random observations yet again: i now understand *why* water closet is another name for european bathrooms... (the common name here is actually vécé which is how you pronounce WC in hungarian)... there's not really a such thing as bathroom stalls... generally toilets are literally in a closet with a floor-to-ceiling door that from the outside looks like it's just a storage closet... ah the logic =P it's one thing to light a gas stove (just bunsen burner-esqe, right?), but it's a totally different thing to light a gas OVEN, which i'd never even seen done before... for now, the oven is a team effort on the part of amanda and i because whoever actually has the match jumps back about a mile in shock when the whole bottom of the oven lights up in blue flame, and *someone* has to hold the gas knob on for a good 30 seconds after that to keep it lit! =) i've also noticed i need to watch my own habits... walking around places back at valpo or in memphis, i have a tendency to smile at people when i pass them in a store or on the street or whatever and see if they'll smile back... i don't even think about it -- natural reflex!... here, i *have* to think about it because no one smiles back!... when you're talking to someone, they get all animated and friendly, but there seems to be some unspoken rule that, unless you're actually communicating with someone, you ought to mind your own business, and that includes not smiling! - ack! adventures in shopping ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ i guess the main thing i've learned so far is that things are generally never what you expect! =) for example, in looking for school supplies, there's no such thing as pocket folders here -- instead they have these small paper size boxes that tie up with ribbon, but hey, it works.... another thing is notebook shopping... as just referenced, i've gradually been picking up school supplies when i see them... in trying to grab different color notebooks of the same brand, though, i've ended up with a couple notebooks that are full of graph paper instead of lined paper!... these mistakes are a LOT easier to make than you'd expect.... when buying 5 of the same thing, you tend to take it on faith that if i check out one, the others will all be the same, but, um, not so much =P similarly, with food, although pictures and simple words on packaging help, things still aren't always what you expect either (never bad, just different!)... for example pepperoni pizza doesn't just mean pepperoni and cheese-- it also means kernel corn and paprikas (peppers)! hungarian food (the saga continues!... beware the paprika! =P) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ so, you'd think i'd have listed enough last time about this, but nope, there's more... believe it or not, my first adventure with food since last email actually had to do with language classes!... they told us at the start that class would involve walking tours of town and a concert (more on concert shortly), but i totally didn't expect this: last week, we spent one whole morning learning food words -- then, for our lunch break, they had 2 hungarian students walk us to the big market downtown on the river and set us loose... basically we were forced to order our food from market vendors in hungarian, which was slightly intimidating but cool!... it's an extremely wonderful feeling to get your point across on the first try when you don't know much at all of a language!... it was really spiffy -- booths would either have meat, or dairy products, or just fruits and veggies and you'd have to go to each one separately to find what you wanted... if you wanted to cheat, there was a big supermarket in the basement, and the 3rd floor had vendors that sold already made hot food -- but the market was definitely an adventure in and of itself. =) i've also been busy trying foods that i've never heard of before... another day, we ate at a pub called greensz that our language teacher recommended... they did have a separate pricy menu in english, but we exercised our hungarian skills and ordered off of the cheaper hungarian menu this stuff called főzelék... it doesn't really have an english/american equivalent... it's basically a vegetable puree/soup that you can order with a slice of meat on top... so the first time i had paradicsomoskáposta főzelék which literally means tomatoey-cabbage főzelék... it was really good -- and cheap!... i've also tried spenott (spinach) főzelék, and bab (bean) főzelék, and we plan to go back and try all the other kinds throughout the next several weeks =) in case you know nothing about hungarian cuisine, hungary takes great pride in their paprikas, which basically covers a whole range of peppers... you can have anywhere from a nice happy zöldpaprika (green pepper) which can be nice and sweet to a bogyiszlói paprika, which is named after a village in southern hungary especially known for their HOT paprikas... i guess again, my thought on paprikas follows my main theme that things are generally not what you expect them to be!... after many meals of nice happy sweet paprikas with my meals, i trusted the paprika that came with my meal last sunday to be a nice happy sweet pepper, took a bite after i had finished all my drink, and had a very distinct fire-y sensation in my mouth for the next half hour!.. spicy is good, but spicy when it's unexpected and there's nothing to drink -- ahh!... we'll just say they don't joke around about paprikas here! =) oh!.. and fried ice cream -- here they actually pour a cup of rum over your dessert and set it on fire in front of you... how exciting is that? i've also tried unicum, which is a legendary hungarian liquor... it's all herbal and at least 100 proof, and known to be very bitter... a few of us were brave enough to try just a shot of it this week as everyone, teachers included, keep telling us, when in hungary, you must try unicum - it's a rule!... it wasn't as horribly scary and bitter as everyone makes it out to be, and was worth trying -- i think next time just shouldn't be on lunch break from class!... i was sure very much awake for the rest of the afternoon that day! and finally, a note on water again, just because it's funny... as explained last week, mineral water is all the rage here and it's not like regular tap water at all... one guy in our group read somewhere that to order tap water, you should ask for dunavíz, literally danube water, ... however, he's tried it on several occasions and the waiters and waitresses just laugh hysterically at him... there *is* a separate word for tap water (something like csopviz), but it generally slips our minds when that's what we actually want =)... so for a good laugh in budapest, ask a restaurant for danube water and see what happens =) language lessons (going to tomato?) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ so, after all of last week and all of this week of language classes, we're all learning LOTS of words, etc.... i think it's somewhat overwhelming because it's the same class for 8 hours a day instead of 8 different classes for an hour each in a day, so it gets a bit intense at times.... but still, we're learning lots, so yay for that! =) last week i asked if anyone could name the only word english got from hungarian... just so you can feel enlightened now, it's coach (as in the buggy, not as in sports =P)... back in the day, the coach/buggy was invented in a hungarian village called kocsi, which here is pronounced coach-y, and there you have it =P.. speaking of different spellings... sandwich is basically the same word, only in hungarian spelling here.. so instead of a sandwich, here you want a szendvics =)... words here just *look* cool, eh? =P other fun fact -- there are two words for potato in hungarian: burgonya and krumpli... the way our teacher explained the difference is that classier restaurants will use burgonya where as krumpli is used for the rest of life in general, thus (direct quote here), "burgonya is a formal respectable potato" -- maybe you just had to be there, but i found calling veggies respectable and not respectable was a really funny distinction =) normally you think of yourself as speaking normally and the rest of the world as having an accent, but paying attention here has made it really funny to think again about how i speak!... our teacher does this *hilarious* impression of american pronounciation that's actually pretty accurate, but you don't think of how funny we sound here as english speakers until you hear the contrast... i've also noticed that when we have at least 3 american/canadian BSM students together chatting, we have to watch it, because, as a habit, we talk much much louder than european speakers here... (as do american tourists -- you can spot them from a mile away regardless of how they look, just because they're soooo loud!) quote #1 of the week from class "and what do you think this word means?" (someone blurts out the word subdivision) "um, no.... not a subdivision, this word means little street... you americans... oh! a subdivision, let's go back to our little cells... somehow, i don't think so in hungary"~ádám, our language teacher quote #2: "so the hungarian word for tomato is paradicsom... what does that remind you in english?... ah yes! paradise!.. and in hungarian it's the same word too.. so if you're a good Christian Hungarian, when you die, you go to tomato... see, an excellent system!" ~ádám our hungarian reading list =) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ so, for as many words as we try to remember from our language classes, one of the guys in our group decided to buy a hungarian ABC book one day at a könyvesbolt (bookstore -- i find it amazing that hungarians can prounounce 'nyv' together just fine, but something like rt doesn't work =P)... everyone thought this was a brilliant idea until we learned from trying to read it that those books use a lot of kiddie-language that make them even harder to read!... so, we've all attacked bookstores again, and gone for the 1st/2nd grade reading level shelves to improve our reading skills =)... some guys have found cartoon versions of the hobbitt, whereas i settled for a nice big book of grimm's fairy tales... goal: by the end of the semester to be able to read it through wihout a dictionary! =) music (surprisingly, it's not all about techno!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ so before i came here, i heard from most of my friends who have visited europe that it's all about techno techno techno... in hungary, um, nope!... so what kinds of music are common here? of course you hear traditional folk music and classical music (hungary's really big on that), but the most popular station that i hear in stores everywhere, and that we have on in our apt. is not that at all... actually, it plays mostly american music (with hungarian djs in between, of course)... 2/3 of the songs are still in english and a few are ones that are currently top 40 in the states (i've heard a bit of pink, madonna, no doubt, vanessa carlton, etc.)... surprisingly (and a little scarily), the most popular song as far as i can tell is "it's raining men"(i don't know for the life of me who sings it, but if you've heard it, you know it just from that line =P)... i think i've heard it *at least* once a day since i've been here, on our radio, in the mall, at restaurants, everywhere -- dude, if that isn't weird or what!... of the other 1/3 of the songs we hear on the radio, a good number are from around europe in various languages, and the other bit are american songs translated into hungarian -- let me tell you: the friends themesong (like from the NBC TV show... ) is an absolute *riot* in hungarian =) CD prices also vary greatly from american ones... you can get folk or classical music CDs for $2-$3 a piece or even for a box set,... whereas the popular music is $30 a CD on up! my weekend (budapest parade, mátyás church, tour of the town, and st. stephen's basilica) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ first off, this saturday was the 3rd annual budapest parade,... and, ok, so i lied, hungary has some MAJOR techno, but it took hitting this parade to find it. since we saw posters around town ever since we got here, we figured the parade must be a "don't miss it!" kinda event, so a good dozen of us went together... what we found is the farthest thing from an american parade you can concieve and was more like a HUGE street dance party... 50 different lorries (i like that word better than semis) were parked around a square in downtown pest, each representing a different soft drink, radio station, or night club... they were basically packed with as many giant speakers and as many 20 something year olds as possible, each blasting their music so loud that they overpowered the next trucks over and dancing so as to shake the trucks to about falling over... for a good while each truck just played to the crowd and people wandered around... about 45 minutes after the start, long enough for us to be convinced this might be a "stationary parade", the first trucks started rolling, but instead of people clearing out of the way, people walked all around between moving trucks, followed the ones they wanted to hear, or just hung on the sides! once they got going, each truck threw things out to the crowd, anywhere from confetti, to flyers, to bananas, to liter bottles of fanta!... it was basically insane... (but i did catch a botle of fanta (soft drink), so that much was worth it!) =)... one in every like 3 floats was all about spraying hoses full of beer foam at the crowd, most of whom were pretty delighted about it, but we stayed away from that as much as possible... mostly, the group of us half danced half just gawked at everything because it was totally fun, but not at all what we thought it would be!... at one point, though, we got caught in the beer foam crossfire from 3 different directions and got drenched!... at that point, a few of us escaped and went elsewhere... apparently, after starting at 2pm, this parade was to last til 9, where they would arrive at another square/stadium/park farther out east and each truck would continue to blast their music, a little more spread out, for a cover charge...a few of our people went to the ending, but 2 hours was enough for the group i stuck with.... the thing that amazed me about it was that you picture an event like this and you picture younger people around my age, but this was packed also with families, including small children, and senior citizens as well!... basically like a hungarian mardi gras... an adventure indeed, but wow -- like i said about shopping, the number one thing i'm learning is that things are almost never what you expect them to be! after that adventure, emily, one of the other girls here, and i cleaned up and went to an organ concert at mátyás church... this is a big old gothic looking church in the castle district that i was outside of but not inside last weekend... although it's been destroyed to varying degrees and repaired time and again over the years, the original building dates back to 1255ad!!!... mátyás corvinus, the hungarian king for which the building is named, was married there not once, but twice, and the last two hungarian kings were crowned there back in the 1867 and 1916... for all you musically inclined people, liszt wrote the coronation mass for the next to last king and performed it here as well (also, consequently, did you know liszt means flour in hungarian? =P)... it was sooo amazingly ornate -- sculpture, carving, and painting on every square inch of the building... combine that with all the history a place like this has and you have a major case of WOW.... we read about and see pictures of these kind of buildings like in classes like word image tone when we read about giotto for example, but it's totally amazing to actually be IN such an ornate famous church!... so, yeah, quite the amazing building, and of course, hungary being known for excellent classical music, well, it was a most spectacular evening =) sunday, we had a bus tour of town required for our language class... mostly by bus, and a little by foot, we got to see the major attractions of town with a bit of a narrative... some was review of places i've found myself at already, and other places were super cool spots that i hadn't found yet... we rode to the top of gellert hill, which is a huge hill right along the danube to the south of town with the budapest citadel and their liberation monument on top... it's a statue of a woman holding a palm branch high and is basically the hungarian statue of liberty. =)... we also stopped by heroes square for a bit, where, for the hungarian millenium celebration in 1896 (when they celebrated 1000 years since the first magyars settled the area), they created a semi circle of 14 impressive statues of famous hungarian leaders over time ranging from st. istvan (yes, the man is EVERYWHERE, you'll never forget his name after this semester =) ), to kossuth lajos, leader of the 1848 revolution against austria... in the middle of the circle is an incredibly tall statue of the archangel gabriel to guard over them all,-- that, i thought, was super cool. =)... we also passed a park that's becoming more like a forest because for every hungarian olympic medalist, they plant a tree... there's been over 100 since they started the park, so it's getting a bit dense, but i thought that was pretty cool as well. =)... we also, of all things, saw a statue of george washington! -- he's within walking distance of heroes square in another park across a street,... basically there's been several periods in hungarian history when lots of hungarians emigrated to the us, and a group of the emigrants donated this statue to the motherland back around 1900, during one such era.... i just was surprised to find it there! =) on monday, we attended an organ concert in st. stephen's basilica, again for class... st. stephen (=st. istván), you should remember by now is the patron saint of hungary, and was also the first king here back in the day... the basilica is the largest church building in all of hungary... kind of like hungary's national cathedral... organ concerts, etc. are a pretty regular thing here... it was built mid 1800s, so not quite the history of mátyás, but in a class of its own... whereas mátyás was gothic and covered in painting etc., the basilica is a very imposing marble and gold 19th century building... they actually had to get permission from the pope because on the altar, where in most catholic churches you find a statue, etc. of Jesus and/or Mary, here they have a life size statue of st. istvan -- a big exception to the rule... this is also the home of the holy right (mummified right hand of st. istvan, national relic), but it's only on display until 4pm each day, and the concert was at 7, but we'll make sure to go by and hit that another time... as a random mention, on the way back to the subway station from the basilica, we came across the national lutheran church/museum -- i didn't realize until monday night that i ride the subway past it, probably even right under it every single day!... will make sure to check that out in the near future too =) i think amanda and i also plan to hit the zoo (i think it's the oldest one in europe) and finally see the holy right and whatever other sights we run into inbetween this next weekend =) also, the fireworks that were cancelled from st. istvan's day are rumored to be setoff this weekend now that the floodwater has receded quite a bit and the damage has gone further south... visontlátásra! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ visontlátásra!= your big hungarian word of the day =) it means bye... you should remember it just because it's long and cool =) and yeah, this is bye, because that's all i have to say for now.... hope all y'all have an excellent week! lara =)