I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

Miskolc as seen from a Communist... cell phone tower?!

It has finally cooled down a bit in Budapest. The gray clouds are beginning to remind me of Duluth or State College, and they make me happy. This past week was interesting. I began my second session of Hungarian language classes. I have a new teacher, Kati, who seems a little more involved and intense than my last one. (Not that the last one was bad, but he didn’t really assign much homework and didn’t really let us practice speaking. He just went over grammar and vocab and it was all mostly memorization.) Kati is more into having us speak to one another in Hungarian and after reading a section on calling a repair person for a washing machine, for example, she has us role play different scenarios that are similar – making us learn how to use the language in a real situation. It’s kind of nice, actually, but a lot more work, and therefore more exhausting.

The other students in the class are about as eccentric as a new incoming graduate student class. Total nerds for the most part, but there is one person I’ve bonded with quite well in the first week – a German from Bremen named Durte. (I don’t know how to spell it, but this is how they pronounce it in Hungarian.) As the Dutch men go on tearing apart Hungary and questioning the origins of particular words in Hungarian – asking the teacher why Hungarians say “durva” instead of the Dutch version of the word which is much more Hungarian sounding than the actual Hungarian word, etc., it is nauseating listening to these people at times – Durte and I just roll our eyes and wait for the coffee break. But the coffee break doesn’t always come when it should, as the Dutch don’t drink coffee and don’t want a break – they want to learn for four hours straight! And they are kind of outspoken about this, even purposefully glancing at their watches in an irritable fashion when Kati starts wrapping up the class with 10 minutes left. One of them actually said – but we still have 20 minutes – when Kati started going over the homework. Northern Europeans… they live by the fuckin’ clock!

As for the coffee breaks, it generally means that the group reluctantly saunters out of the little apartment we use as our makeshift classroom, and start shuffling down to the local Mini ABC (basically a kiosk with junk food). Even though two of these people don’t even want to take a break, they move at a snail’s pace and then stand on the street talking about how far behind Hungary is, etc. There is a Northern Irish guy too. He is nice, but he can’t seem to stop telling stories from his life, even though they are quite unsolicited. His Hungarian is going to be better than any of ours, as he tells these stories in Hungarian even if he doesn’t have the vocabulary, so it normally takes the whole break. But Durte and I have gotten out of this groove. On Friday we both ran… watching the group move really slowly behind us, and having sat for three hours without getting up, we both just started running to a café about two or three blocks away. It felt great! It is the first time I’ve run in months, and to get away from the incessant, banal chatter was relieving. We ordered a couple of espressos, but then before we knew it, the group was outside of the café and came in. They sat near us – we were at the bar, so to speak – and then went about ordering lunch and tea, even though it is only a short break. We were quite trapped at this point. But well… I don’t know where this is going. The people in my class drive me insane. One of them is cool. I like my teacher. I don’t know how she deals with us. Done.

Last week I pretty much spent all of my time outside of class sending desperation emails to the people I would like to interview – not receiving anything in reply – and working on my Geography of Europe course. I have a syllabus outlined, a website started, and I’ve begun making a bunch of flash card maps in Flash for students to study with next semester. The country name one is done, and now I’m working on capitals and cities. Luckily, I happened to spend my first summer of unemployment – in 2000 – digitizing a map of Europe in Freehand. The fjords in Norway took days alone. But I did the whole damn thing, rivers and everything, and now I have my very own, Macromedia/Adobe friendly map of Europe. Of course, it was a complete waste of time now that you can import shape files, etc., but I can honestly say that every map of Europe I am going to use I made from scratch, which makes me feel pretty powerful… although, really it should only induce thoughts of a wasted summer.

Thursday evening I met up with Krisztian. After he got done with a tedious meeting at 5:30 or so, we met in the Nyugati metro, and then went over to his apartment. I was hauling a bag of dirty laundry. We had dinner and drank a couple of beers while my clothes were in the wash. He had downloaded several seasons of South Park, so we sat and watched a couple of the better episodes. He has an excellent DVD player, as it plays DIVX… I need to get one of those, but I suppose I’ll have to persuade Birgit that we need one first. (I suppose “need” is a bit strong but…)

After my laundry was done, we went and met a couple of his coworkers (okay about eight of them) at a pub near Moskva Square. It was a nice outdoor, garden pub. But I was really fried, so to speak, and Krisztian was exhausted, so we left fairly early, at 11 or 11:30 and headed home. I fell asleep watching repetitive coverage of the London transit bombings.

Friday… Friday… class was bearable. Afterward, I went to my new favorite Internet café, run by a really friendly lady that doesn’t treat me like the scum of the Earth because I’m a foreigner. (The place really close to my apartment, and the international train station, noticeably hates pretty much all foreigners and even a lot of Hungarians. The service there is comparable to that of a State College diner, which is to say none at all.) I spent the afternoon writing futile emails, surfing the web a bit, and waiting for my cousin Peter to arrive. On Wednesday evening, Thursday morning for me, he had written that he was coming to Hungary on Friday! I wasn’t really shocked, but it didn’t leave much room for planning.

The directions weren’t very clear on where I should meet him. So I was grumpy all day from nerves – coupled with a hangover from the night before. I had given Peter my address, but then I had also told him that maybe it would be easier if he just told the Mini-Bus to drop him off at the Hilton nearby. I told him if he wasn’t at my apartment by 11:30, I would go to the Hilton to meet him. At 10:25, I began waiting outside on the street corner, which on a Friday night is inundated blue collar workers tossed off their asses, drinking beer outside of the little non-stop shop on the corner. At 11:30, I started getting a little nervous. I went into a pub half a block away that has Internet access and checked to see if Peter had emailed – perhaps he had missed one of his three connecting flights, I figured. Better to know than to stand waiting until five in the morning, I figured. I came back out and decided to wait until 11:45, as I figured maybe he hadn’t had enough time to go through customs, etc. And then… the Airport Minibus pulled up! I waved the driver, he pulled over. Peter hopped out. It was surreal. We came up and dropped his bag off and then went off to find him some food and get him his first Hungarian beer. He had some goulash – we got there just in time, as the kitchen was closing – and we downed a “korso” of Dreher each. He was totally zoned out. He hadn’t slept in two days, had layovers in Detroit, Paris, and Rome, and suddenly found himself in the center of Budapest at midnight on a Friday. There were roving bands of drunk teens, 20-somethings, and drug addicts running around like mad dogs. It was really interesting to watch my beleaguered cousin’s face the whole night. He said he had no idea what to expect in Hungary, but from what he was seeing – mostly hot women dressed up to go out – he was impressed!

He just woke up. It is 1:50 p.m. Saturday. In the meanwhile I went and bought him a towel, worked on my Flash maps for the class, and stitched together some panoramic shots taken from the television tower in Miskolc and at places in Budapest. Boring life this past week, but the next week promises to be entertaining – showing the seedier sides of Budapest to my cousin!

Oh yeah, one last thing! I'm pumped! I have now gone six days without a cigarette! I don't even crave them anymore, except for when I'm stressed, which is all the time, but... at least when I'm sleeping I don't think about them... unless I am dreaming about drinking, in which case I am always smoking. But... well, yeah, it isn't that bad quiting this time. Easier than any other time. The addiction aspect is so overblown!