I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

Hello from the frying pan that is North America!

A second Category 5 hurricane is arriving on our doorsteps this weekend. That's four in three years, after only averaging one every fifteen for the past century. Hmmm... I saw a Hummer commercial last night and was trying to figure out what their marketing rationale can be? Use it to run over the competition while fleeing the natural disasters you are helping to create? Damn, I should submit that idea to them.

While watching the hurricane develop, Birgit and I got to hide in our basement last night as twisters and the scariest storm I've seen in a while -- much worse than those which Spielberg could concoct in his latest effort at making a shit film with Tom Cruise -- hovered overhead and wouldn't leave for several hours. Hail the size of eggs was flying down and trees a meter in diamater were uprooted and blown around. We had Category 1 straight winds last night at 90 m.p.h. (~140 km per hour). Brilliant stuff. The sky was non-stop lightning -- just crackling for hours and lighting up, snapping and popping like Malta in World War II. (Which for the record, had more conventional bombs dropped on it in WWII than any other place during the war.) It would have been exciting, but since we had to hide in the basement in case our windows blew in and started shooting glass shrapnel everywhere, it was kind of blah. We didn't lose power here, which was nice, as it allowed me to watch...

The first episode, series premiere of a new show called "Invasion." It will be the last episode I ever watch of this shit! The irony was it was about a huge storm in the guise of a hurricane hitting some all white town somewhere in the all Christian area of the Gulf. The problem is, it wasn't a hurricane, it was an alien invasion. If this isn't a blatent ripping off of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's godawful "War of the Worlds" flick... The show is slow moving, not very well acted, and insanely predictable. I think it is trying to pose as a contemporary version of "V," but it fails utterly. It wasn't scary. It wasn't mysterious. And it wasn't good in any sense of the word. I'm so glad I just happened to be stuck in the basement so I could see just how shitty television has become! No wonder it is all reality television shows these days! If that is the best ABC can come up with, give me Donald Trump hitting on interns while Martha Steward illegally sells stocks in a back room any day!

So that was the evening. I spent the rest of the night playing Madden football in the basement with the storm raging outside. Birgit went to bed early -- exhausted from work and a suddenly rigorous physical activity list -- including kick boxing and running. I moved the Minnesota Vikings to Mexico City and made the playoffs last night. At around 12:30 I decided it was time for bed. I feel rested -- Madden is so thoughtless it helps me get my mind off of governmentality, what I'm going to lecture about on Europe, how lonely living in a big city can be, and also, just how shitty the world has become because of Hummers.

So the first day of teaching came and went. Basically, I quickly realized, that I have always disliked TA-ing, because I am not my own boss. I was far less nervous today lecturing than I typically am when TA-ing. Of course, this lack of nervousness did not mean I was overly confident -- I couldn't sleep the night before and was up until nearly 5 a.m. tossing and turning, checking my fantasy soccer team's results online, etc. (By the way, my team is getting slaughtered by Colin Flint's, Trotsky International III, and some other British friend of his. Plus, Colin's two kids are even beating up on me. I'm in last place. It is disgraceful. I may need to solicit the help of some British friends of mine that are into this stuff, as I don't know squat about soccer... or football, or whatever.) I digress...

Birgit and I have really become addicted to this new game we bought last Friday evening, when we were too lazy, tired, and stressed to meet up with friends, go out and do anything, or leave home. The game is called "Carcassonne." Brilliant stuff! The type of game geographers dream for. You lay tiles and create the landscape as you go. You must strategically place your seven players so you get the most points by thieving people on the roads, etc. Very easy, fast, and fun. We basically play the game every night now and just chat... getting all the stress off of our chests, so to speak. We never used to play games much before, except for Sequence (which we received from my former advisor at UMD, Gordon Levine, for our wedding). Recently, though, after playing a game of Settlers of Catan with our friends Steve and Sandy and putting together a puzzle with my Mum and Chris up at their cabin, we are hooked. Strategy games are really good at helping me destress. I'm thinking, but not about my lecture tomorrow or New Orleans or my dissertation or the fact that the lawn is up to our knees because our mower is broken. Instead, I'm thinking about how to crush Birgit's kingdom!!!

Back to lecturing -- I'm not sure I even discussed the syllabus. I just went over it very quickly and haphazardly. I hope they understand it. Or even read it. Because I didn't feel like reading it to them. Instead, I was focused on making the class laid back and sociable. I started the class off with some Russian Ska music that my friend Gerhard gave to me in Vienna this summer after watching one such band at a free concert there. That brought several of the students up to my podium after class offering to "rip" me some Gypsy Punk and other Russian Ska. So that was cool. I had the students get in small groups and introduce themselves to one another -- they actually chatted and had a decent time overall, and I think it already made a difference. I'm going to throw them into a simple group project tomorrow or on Monday with different people, so by then, every student should know at least seven to ten other students in the class.

Back to life... I just IM-ed Birgit at work. Good day for her over there. I'm debating going out for a pint with her coworkers at Macalester College this evening. It might be better if I don't bother, as I'm stressed. But if I don't get out of the house... well... yeah. Hmmm... I suppose I should get back to work here. But basically, I'm keeping this page up and running now, indefinitely. Partially, because I can't be bothered to start yet another blog. But also, because my research continues on, even though I'm not in the "field" as such anymore. So here I am. Back in Minnesota. More confused about my research than ever before, and hoping to God I can figure out "who" I want to interview before December. I am now thinking of attempting to do a mixed case study of Hungarian translators working at the EU -- as a community of Hungarians living outside of Hungary within the EU, but also as a group responsible for translating neoliberal policies for Hungarians in the country to understand -- modern day Martin Luthers?! Creepy thought! Then, I was thinking of interviewing members of the state bureacracy within Hungary that are responsible for putting some of these policies and regulations into action. Get their perspective on it all -- the good, the bad, and the ugly of belonging to the EU. The geography of it all? Oh yeah, as one of my committee members mentioned to me yesterday, I should probably remember to include geography somewhere! :)

[Note: this was originally an earlier blog entry. I promised to finish it, but as I returned home to Minnesota and quickly succumbed to my addiction for peanut butter, I never got around to finishing the story. Now clean for the past seven days, here is the rest of the damn story. Not story, event! Yes, I swear, this is true -- though, it may have been embellished by my drunken cousin.]

My cousin Peter landed last Friday evening. I almost missed meeting him at all, because I only had a day's warning that he was coming, and we hadn't set up a very "exact" meeting place or time. Luckily, right as I was about to leave and give up hope of finding him that night, an airport MiniBus pulled up and dropped him off at my doorstep. This began a week of testing my skills of dealing with a 19 year-old. It feels like yesterday that I was 19 and on top of the world. I can tell that Peter feels much the same way, but with the hindsight of 10 years, I now realize that when I was 19 I was really naïve, and I would never wish being 19 on anyone else unless they were a bitter enemy indeed. (To be honest, I have always said that 19 was the worst year of my life. In fact, I recorded a tape with my friend Shawn where for 90 minutes we just chain smoked and discussed how much being 19 sucks. It was really boring. I don't think I ever listened to it after recording it, but I couldn’t muster the strength to throw it out either... I never want to forget just how bad being a “young adult” was, and in case I ever succumb to Alzheimer’s, the proof remains.) But what am I talking about?

I only have two hours of sleep, because Peter was surrounded by the mafia last night in a high class, businessman-style brothel bar, then bumped into some French tourists who helped him escape from the mafia, before he accidentally hailed a group of gypsies who then surrounded him and started leading him away from the apartment where he was trying to go (and where I was trying to sleep) and were in the process of mugging him (okay, just stealing his camera), before he was rescued by several Hungarian 16 year olds that hated gypsies and joined by several Hungarian skinheads, who hated gypsies even more than they despised lost, drunk teenage Americans with backward baseball caps and bright white tennis shoes. It is a long story, and to be honest, it isn't mine. It is the story of being a foreign teenager in Budapest. I think it is universal, just with different idiosyncratic twists pending the person.

I was jolted awake by Peter’s experience when I heard this tornado of a sound charging through the apartment door -- which is about two feet from my bed in the living room –followed by a warlike voice screaming, “They’re after me! My God, they’re after me!” It was pure panic all around, as I was in a deep sleep dreaming about the Turkish invasion of the Carpathians, and immediately thought I was awaking to the cavalry. Within seconds I was relieved that I wasn’t about to be impaled on a lance, but was immediately re-alarmed by the fact that Peter was frantically trying to lock the door and screaming profanities. I could tell there was serious shit going on. Peter said he was going for a "last walk" in Budapest before leaving this morning. I guess it turned into a sprint.

I quickly locked the door for him and got the low down. It is the type of story that can wind up defining a teenager's life – defining it through college at least, until the teenager turns into a 22 year old and such tales of debauchery and near death experiences begin to pale in seriousness next to car payments, accidental pregnancies, etc. At any rate, he'll have a great story next year in the dorms. And he is the second foreigner I have known that has been cornered and threatened on Vaci Utca. (My Mexican roommate in State College had the mafia threaten him into coughing up $500 for drinks once. But overall, it seems to only be young males that get suckered into such criminal abodes, and this should not stand as a mark against Hungary as a whole.)

What? I'm not making sense. It feels great to be free of company again and able to write! I need to get the hell out of Budapest for a while. I'm so tired here. Too much company. Too much time away from home. And too much school. I'm burnt out. But at least I'm alive and luckily my cousin didn't die on my watch. The idiot started attacking the waiters in a mafia bar... but it worked! I'm kind of impressed. He kind of showed me that being a passive foreigner is not nearly as effective as threatening trouble making miscreants in vulgar English. So here is the story. It isn’t mine, but shit, I wish it were. Beats talking about car payments.

So basically, Peter wanted to go out and get ripped on Unicum – which he had the unfortunate habit of pronouncing “unie-kum” – his last night in Budapest. Peter fell in love with the drink, which was incredible as I don’t know anyone who loves Unicum except for a handful of Hungarian acquaintances that enjoy duping foreigners into drinking it. Peter stopped and had a few shots while walking toward Vaci Utca from my flat on Izabella utca near Nyugati Station. I am assuming that by the time he got to Vaci he was buzzed -- but being 19, he wouldn't fess up to that too easily. (I’ll have to rag on him more.)

Near Vaci, a man in a suit came up and suggested Peter go to this certain bar. (WARNING SIGN #1: never trust a man in a suit that is trying to sell you something, particularly a pub with many "beautiful women.") However, Peter was feeling a bit loose, I guess and said “sure.” Of course, out of nowhere, within seconds, the man in the expensive suit had found two drop dead gorgeous sex bombs to escort Peter into the bar. As he went into the bar, he asked how much the beer was and heard the astronomical price of 1200 Ft (US$6) a pint. Peter, who was surrounded by two flirtatious women, figured it was worth it and sat down at a table with his escorts. MISTAKE #2: Peter trusted what the wait-staff in the mafia bar were saying, rather than looking for a price in print. The women ordered drinks -- on him, of course -- and Peter ordered a pint. Three quarters of the way through his first pint, as Peter was about to order another, they brought him the bill.

God damnit! This is all so cliche... so well known to anyone who has lived in Hungary for any length of time, and in a way I am cursing myself for not making sure Peter was paying attention when I warned him about this stuff repeatedly on our earlier jaunts through the city. I swear, I told him at least three times about the dangers of such places – places where the food, drink, and women seem a little too easy to access; where prices are scarce and the servers are built like members of the Serbian Army. But I guess, the best way to learn these things is not by listening or heeding the advice of an older generation but, rather, through personal experience and so... basically, they had him. They had baited, caught and reeled my cousin in. And he was fucked.

The bill was 12,500 Forints (about $70) for the two or three beers – brought up to his table by a bloke the size of El Salvador. Peter had a crisp 10,000 Forint note on him – recently acquired from an ATM money machine after he had blown all of his remaining Forints on Unicum. MISTAKE #3: he pulled out the 10,000 Forints, akin to putting all your chips on the table in a poker match before you have even been dealt your hand. Within seconds the burly waiter seized the note out of his hands. This is where it gets interesting. Now, I have to admit, at first glance my cousin is not intimidating. He is quite short – around 150 cm (5’2”) – and has a typical alternative teenager’s build – e.g., Thom Yorke. He’s got a little tuff of red hair and peach fuzz on his chin. To sum up, he looks young. All of this being said, it makes sense that the brothel or whatever this place was thought he would be an easy target. Unfortunately for them, what the guy in the suit and waiter hadn’t counted on was that my cousin Peter is half Irish and half Scottish. And anyone who has seen "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne knows what happens to the Irish when they are drunk and feel threatened!

The stinger was, after they grabbed his 10,000 note and were threatening him for the 2,500 Forints he still “owed” for his beer (and mind you, didn't have)... My 150 cm tall cousin hopped to his feet and began snarling at the bloke in what I can presume was a relatively loud, drunken voice.

"There are two options here. First, my dad that I’m visiting here this week is a fucking huge ecstasy dealer in Budapest. You rip me off, and he’ll fucking kill you! So, what I’m saying is, I don’t pay. Second option: we call the police right now. I show them that I am only 15 years old, and I don't pay you fuckers.”

(If I were his attorney in court, this is when I would interject on my cousin’s defense and state that, I believe, he must have downed a ton of alcohol to be have arrived at this highly aggressive disposition, as basically the insanity of the fight he was getting into can only be compared to Saddam Hussein telling the U.S. to go fuck themselves and daring them to invade, which... well... yeah... okay… bad analogy. At any rate, at this point I was at home snoring, so who knows how it really happened. This is the story as told by a terrified, drunk 19 year old at 3 in the morning, peering wide-eyed through the peep hole in my apartment door.) At any rate, I am the bouncer didn't buy into, or even think of worrying about, Peter’s dad being an ecstasy dealer. Hell, I can almost assure you that they didn't even understand what Peter was screaming in Yankee English about. They probably thought he was saying he was high on ecstasy if anything, which normally only results in thugs bringing out baseball bats to make sure they can keep a wide-eyed, high troublemaker down.

However, probably because it requires less of a stretch of the imagination and because it didn’t involve any English words over seven letters, the "15 year-old" bit definitely sank in. And this had to worry them a bit, as after all, even the overtly corrupt police force would get pissed if the mob started roughing up 15 year old American tourist kids whose parents had undoubtedly sent their kid out into the city with some play money so they could get it on in the hotel room. And since the pub was full of suckered businessmen, I have to imagine that the waiter began doing the math – 10,000 Forints from a 15 year-old probably wasn't worth having the place raided by the corrupt police and being closed for a night or two while sorting out how to best bribe an entire precinct. Luckily for my cousin’s sake, Peter does look exceedingly young for his age. (He is the first person I have ever seen carded for alcohol in Hungary, but I think this is a new policy that simply did not exist when I was 17 getting in bar fights in Miskolc.)

The waiter did a decent job at trying to keep the money he had while bullshitting himself out of the volatile situation. First, he brought over a manager – typical tactic in such circumstances, as it allows the prey (in this case my cousin) to think s/he is about to be helped by a sane manager while in reality they are being surrounded by even more thugs. The manager listened to my cousin’s pleas passively until he heard the 15 year-old bit as well. Peter said he saw their eyes do a little dance and he knew then that this was the route to go with getting out of there without getting bludgeoned. The manager was quick, swiftly building an argument that, “in Hungary,” Peter would be the one in trouble for going into a pub as a 15 year old. Of course, considering this pub had invited him in, tried to set him up with hookers – who were sitting there enjoying some show on stage and smiling dumbly throughout this whole ordeal – were outrageously overcharging someone for a pint, and were now, quite obviously, physically intimidating and verbally threatening him, even a drunk 19 year old could figure out that this argument was a desperate attempt on the part of management. As convincing as the argument that ten years of online file sharing has bankrupted record companies. What? I digress.

Peter knew the management was backpedaling but still attempting to get more money out of him. He was also the only person in the room who knew that he wasn't really 15 years old, that if he were to get arrested his parents weren't even in Europe to get mad at him, and so he stood his ground. The real kicker was that they had a bloke checking IDs at the door, who had merely glanced at Peter’s passport with the vigilance of an Afghani drug enforcement agent and let Peter in. No doubt, if Peter was 15, it would be hard to explain to the police how they let him in to begin with. (And ironically, of course, it is simply because they didn't look at his passport that they didn't know he was actually 19 and they had every reason to mug him and get away with it. If they had simply looked at his passport to begin, which they were paying someone to do anyway, I am sure of the fact that he would never have caught his plane the next morning.) After the manager and original waiter huddled behind the bar for quite a few minutes, while two gargantuan bouncers stood over Peter and the two mafia women continuing to sip their expensive drinks, the manager and waiter came back and handed back his 10,000 Forints. Pleased that he had basically received a free beer, he sat there and finished it with the two call girls sitting next to him and still asking him to buy them more drinks. (Peter noted that the fact they the women were acting like nothing was out of the ordinary and the women were still trying to get him to buy them drinks "was very fucked up." He thinks they were actually too dumb or high to notice or care what was going on around them.)

Realizing he had the initiative, he took his time and enjoyed the dancers on stage. He would not leave quietly. Even more drunk now, as he got up to leave he threw a tantrum of sorts, yelling at the businessmen that were sitting and dancing with similar ladies -- "It's a fucking racket! Get out of here! It's a racket!" He told me that the business people just looked at him like he was crazy, which he was. Definitely! This is the epitome of insane behavior, and he is very lucky he didn't get hurt, killed, or enslaved and shipped off to the Ukraine as an indenture man servant. He should have run out of there as soon as he had the chance. But at the same time, I suppose fear overtook him, and he knew that being a weak confused, American was not going to save him, so well... yeah, whatever the insane rationality of his decision making process, it worked out for him. Being a drunk, brazen, American asshole beat the corrupt, sleazy Magyar Mafioso. I'm really kind of proud of him for getting a free drink from a place that is known for bludgeoning foreigners. At the same time, I just hope his parents aren't reading this blog and if they are... well, Peter is fine and I'm sure they will hear the story from him at some point. Maybe when he is 29 or so…

But the story doesn’t end here. And that is the kicker! I'm not doing the story justice. The pub was but only the first half. A foolish young American bloke getting duped into something that every Lonely Planet warns about. I even warned him several times, but I think he was jetlagged and not listening to me. Never order a drink without hearing the price and never trust people trying to usher you into their pubs. Especially in suits! The nicer someone looks who is trying to sell you something, normally the crappier a deal it is. That's my philosophy. (I don’t know if it's true at all, but it makes for good blog material.) I damn well warned Peter against going to Vaci Utca, where rich foreigners and the mafia proliferate – a volatile mix if ever there was one. But I can’t be too mad, as I remember when I was 17 and in Hungary (holy shit, 1993!)... for some reason the most disgusting and dangerous part of the city (the sleazy business district) actually feels safest to a teenage Westerner, an island of Western normalcy as opposed to the dive pubs full of real people talking about real things and getting charged real prices. I think it sums up how messed up capitalism has made Westerners when they venture away from the modernized, core zones behind this bullshit globalization -- because the entire U.S. works on image and veneer instead of anything real, Peter felt safest and most comfortable in the place that should have terrified him the most here. But again, I digress…

As Peter ran out of the pub, he felt as though one of the bouncers was following him – and rightfully so, as he had just created a scene, gotten away without paying for three drinks, and well, they knew he had 10,000 Forints on him, so why not let him go outside of the pub and mug him in the alley. Makes sense to me. Maybe I should go into the business – makes more money than blogging or studying geography. Peter says that after standing, the beer took over his body – he finally realized just how trashed he was. His heart was racing, and he had absolutely no idea where he was or where he was going. He hadn’t brought a map – just my address written on a piece of scrap paper. It was night, so there was no telling for him which was east or west. Five feet (1.8 m) from escaping death, he was lost already.

Luckily, Vaci is full of foreigners and Hungarians that speak English on any given summer evening. And of all the people to bump into, Peter bumped into a group of French tourists in their younger 20s. Peter is a Francophile, so rather than resulting in World War III – a drunk, loud American seeking help from a bunch of petulant French – it turned out that Peter couldn’t have bumped into a friendlier lot. Who knows, they had probably just finished sampling Hungarian wines themselves. Basically, he asked for their help. He had the address of my apartment and knew that it was adjacent to Nyugati station. So they all huddled in circle, looking over their shoulders. The bouncer that seemed to be following Peter quickly buggered off to somewhere and the French began leading Peter in what they thought was the right direction. Peter admits that they basically seemed concerned for this young tourist’s (maybe 15 year-old?) wellbeing. He was obviously plastered and panicked. They told him what streets they thought he should take, but admitted that they too had difficulty with the streets and directions of Budapest. They wished him well, pointed him in the right direction, and… bon voyage! Peter turned to them and shouted – “Hey guys, by the way, I’m really sorry about our President. I didn’t vote for him.” A chorus of French cheers went up and Peter began his journey back to my apartment.

Alas, after several street intersections and dark narrow streets, Peter was lost again. He had no idea where he was, and it was approaching three in the morning. He saw some people across the street, and still being a little naïve, he shouted across the street in English and attempted to hail them down. As he began crossing the street, he realized that he had made a mistake. He could tell he had just hailed a small group of gypsy men hanging out on their corner. They came up to him alright, and instantly surrounded him. He said he was amazed at how quickly three people became eight, and how all of the younger ones waited for an older, taller guy to appear and basically took their cues from him. They offered help. They said they would lead him to my flat. The problem was, they were leading him backwards. He had a sixth sense that was basically saying – they are taking me the wrong way. Moreover, they were all around him and then…

He felt one of the blokes behind him reach into his pocket where he had his digital camera. The blood started boiling again. “Fuck off, punk!” he shouted. “Ohh…” nervous laughter from the gypsy, “sorry.” Then again – wham, someone trying to get into his pocket. More nervous laughter and “Ok, ok, sorry, sorry. No Problem, ok.” Peter said that what amazed him most was that these gypsy pickpockets weren’t even good at pickpocketing. They were clumsy and brutish, and might as well have mugged him – which may be what they were fixing to do by leading him down the wrong streets – rather than poorly attempt that they were accidentally reaching into his pockets.

Suddenly, two 16-20 year old Hungarian girls walked by and Peter hailed, asking them if they spoke English. It turns out they did. They looked confused and somewhat concerned that this tourist was surrounded by about eight gypsies. As the girls began talking to the gypsies, and with my cousin, Peter continually made eye contact with the girls to let them know that this was not a meeting of friends. He asked the girls for help in finding where he needed to go. But the gypsies were pretty adament about staying with Peter too. Suddenly, though, in a stroke of drunken brilliance... Peter thought of a great defense mechanism -- using his camera. Basically, his thinking was that it is difficult to pick pocket someone when there is nothing worth stealing in their pocket. So he whipped out his camera and began taking pictures of them. This freaked them out to no end! They began darting off in numerous directions, partially, I assume because people with rap sheets don't like their pictures being taken in the process of harassing tourists. For whatever reason, this technique proved incredibly effective, and I highly recommend it to anyone else in getting pestered in the future by amatuer thugs. The gypsies upset and blinded by the flashes, the two girlsended up walking away with Peter; though, the gypsies continued following in the shadows about 10 meters back. Eventually, the girls had to turn an opposite direction than Peter. They told him how to get to my apartment… (how many times can one be in need of directions in one evening?).

Peter ran. Ran like he never had. He could tell that a couple of the gypsies were still tailing him. I assume they were probably just getting a kick out of freaking out a foreigner so much. Eventually, somewhere around Oktagon, Peter saw two shaven head blokes in combat boots standing next to the yellow line stop, smoking. For whatever crazy reason, perhaps because they looked tough enough to offer some sort of protection – if they didn’t pulverize him due to the fact that they may have been MIEP supporters – he went up to them and pleaded for help. I can only imagine how messed up this may have seemed to these two, regardless of whether or not they were right wing bastards. While just standing at Oktagon, chatting over a cigarette after a night out drinking and playing billiards, a crazy 15 year-old looking teenager runs up to you and starts hollering in English that he is being chased by the Gypsy Kings. To make reality more surreal for Peter, one of the “skinheads” used incredibly broken English to say that he was from Iowa. Peter had a difficult time believing this, but just said “cool” and tried to ingratiate himself in a hurry. Luckily for Peter, regardless of what they had understood from what my cousin was slurredly yappin’ about, they did understand “gypsy.” And this got them into one of those drunken Hungarian tirades that often results in a slew of vulgar phrases and slogans developed over the past 200 or so years, all involving the disenfranchised minority. If there is one thing that can save a despised Western tourist from the wrath of nationalist Hungarians, it is probably these nationalist Hungarians hatred for the gypsy. If he were merely a drunk, obnoxious American on the streets of Budapest, these surly types would have just as much incentive to flatten him as everyone else that night. But seeing as he was being chased by “gypsies,” he was one of them. He became living proof that the great Magyar nation is unsafe due to a the gypsy insurgency! Suddenly, it wouldn’t have mattered if these two were members of Al Qaeda, they were now ready to help this young lad escape the bloodsucking gypsies.

To make a long story a tad shorter… they walked him back to my apartment. Peter kept looking over his back for the invisible gypsy attackers that in his drunken imagination were now lurking behind every corner and dumpster, but none popped out. He came hauling into my flat, slammed the door, and gave me his one hour version of events. He then spent another hour proclaiming:

“Tonight settled it! I love Hungarians!!! They're so fucking cool, man. Some are total wankers, but they really come through in a pinch. And the gypsies… god, man, do they suck!!!” (International bridge building the American way, I guess.)

Yet, one day before, my cousin had been insisting that Hungarians are the “rudest bastards” on the planet – at least those found as waiters in Budapest, which is a tiny and unfortunate sample size. He said he couldn’t understand how they could dislike gypsies so much, etc., etc. You know the drill – it was the standard naïve teenage view of the world that high schools everywhere across the U.S. raise kids on. And then when these kids venture away from their safe havens and go out and see how the world really works and where these – albeit intolerant and non-peaceful – stereotypes that they’ve heard about in school come from, they fall into a type of value dementia stemming from the political correctness bullshit they’ve been fed for 12 years versus the reality of their own fears and feelings.

Let me assure any of you foreigners living in Budapest, it is a mind trip to just watch this happen to someone staying in your flat! It’s worth inviting your cousins over and throwing them out on the streets just for the sheer entertainment. If nothing else, it makes for fun Blogging! It was so messed up to live with someone who acted much as I did in Hungary 10 years ago... and unlike then, when I thought I knew everything about the world and was so in control... I now realize that 19 year-olds are completely out of their minds!

Peter was out of here this morning. Caught his plane with two hours of sleep -- still totally plastered. He's off to France. I think he should do well there. Damn... I'm bloody relieved to be done with hosting in Hungary this summer. And I used to think that moving to Hungary meant getting away...