Election Day

Another weekend has ended. How productive was I? Depends on your prospective. Many of the math kids had midterms and homework due on this past Thursday and Friday. I myself had my algebra midterm on Friday. Let's just say that I'm glad its over with and I can move on to making a strong second-half semester push towards that A. While I studied for test in the days leading up to it, I realized that I had clearly allowed the lecture material to slip away over the past few weeks without understanding it. I will try not to make the same mistake in the coming weeks. So, after the test was over I joined dozens of other BSM'ers letting off steam around the 7th district on Friday night.

Our first stop was the "basement bar." It was a tiny, smoke-filled room with a couple of tables occupied by students. There are many places like this all around the city. They are characterized by their claustrophobic interiors, disregard for second-hand smoke, and cheap drinks. Many people were drinking pints of Arany Sozok, the Hungarian Bud Light (but worse), for 200 forints, 1 dollar. I sipped on a shot of Johnnie Walker Red for 350 forints, $1.75. It was severely watered down which made it taste too-smooth-to-be-true. Later we left the basement bar to go to our old favorite, Mumus, which had just opened up its courtyard for the Spring. The Mumus courtyard was a real treat. There were many tables with heat lamps positioned alongside a long bar with a handful of bartenders. A projector displayed static psychedelic images onto the blank wall of the adjacent apartment building, casting a trippy glow over the crowd outside. Cool. Just one more reason why I love coming here.

Saturday I woke up late and went with Christy and Mike to the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Glenn Brown exhibit. Glenn Brown is an artist from the UK that I had never heard of until two months ago when prints of his paintings started appearing at tram stations advertising the special exhibit at the Ludwig. This was the last weekend of the exhibit so I wanted to go check out the guy who had the weird paintings. See for yourself.

 

Suffer Well

His paitings are full of swirls of color, providing a sense of motion to the pictures. Many of the scenes and objects he paints are surreal or futuristic, and in fact he mimicks Salvador Dali's technique and expands on it, at least that is what the brochure said. I had a great time spending a Saturday afternoon looking at pretty pictures and checking out a neat museum on the Danube. 

The Ludwig Museum

View of the Danube from the Ludwig Museum

Hey! You found me!

Sunday was election day in Hungary. Since I've arrived here I've tried to understand Hungarian politics in order to gauge how people view policy here. There are campaign posters scattered throughout the city. Hungary has a parliamentary government so there are many political parties each vying for your vote. On the sidewalk outside my apartment in the 9th district there are campaign posters on every street lamp and every kiosk. Many posters are ripped down overnight and a rival party's poster is put up the next day. I have been looking at online news and blogs about Hungarian politics to get a feel for the local political climate. A good website is www.Politics.hu. 

However, I couldn't vote and had different priorities on Sunday afternoon: cleaning my apartment and my room and finally washing a load of laundry out of desperation. For those in America reading this blog: appreciate the convenience of your huge washers AND dryers. I do now. My room now clean, my clothes now hanging on the drying rack, it was time to do some homework. I had to catch up on some combinatorics and attempt the MPS homework so I headed out with Andy to eat, study, and check out election day festivities. We stopped by the Humus Bar first to eat some falafel, then went to Deak Ter to see if we could find some political rallies. By now it was 7:30pm, thirty minutes after the polls should have closed, but all we found at the city's main square were a some couples sitting on park benches and kids rolling around on their skateboards. We went by parliament and found nothing there as well. Hmmm. We decided to find a coffee shop, do some work, and then come back and look for a rally. Of course, as we searched for the California Coffee Company, our favorite study area, we ran into the Fidesz rally in Vorosmarty Ter. There was a big TV screen and a stage set up for a band. There were about a hundred people milling around but nothing was happening at the moment. We left the rally, found the coffee shop, got our homework done, and returned to Vorosmarty Ter to catch the start of the election results on the TV. I suppose it was just our luck to run into the rally of the victorious political party. For more information on the recent Hungarian election, check out these links.

Far Right Could Gain in Hungary Elections - NYTimes.com

Hungary's Opposition Wins First Round of Voting - WSJ.com

Politics.hu - Election Digest

Index.hu (in Hungarian, but has lots of pictures. Use Google translate to read it in English)

The second time we came to the rally there were many more people. Many were waving Hungarian tri-color flags and Fidesz flags. Fidesz won the election with 52% of the vote. They are the center-right party, not to be confused with the extreme nationalist Jobbik party that I profiled earlier. Jobbik came in third place with 17% and the Socialists were second with 19%. I'm glad that Jobbik didn't do as well as some predicted, but its still scary to see an outwardly racist, anti-Roma, anti-Semetic, homophobic political party do so well in the first place. Many of their votes came from rural areas which have been hit hard by the economic recession. 

The Fidesz rally in Vorosmarty Ter

Me at the Fidesz rally

A political campaign poster for the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), a conservative Christian democratic party. Here they are comparing the other parties, MSZP (Socialists), Fidesz, and Jobbik to cigarettes. I don't think this sends the same message in Hungary as it does in America. I'm not sure about the exact translation. I'll get back to you on that.

Political poster for the winning Fidesz party. April 11 is election day. The caption reads: "Only the Fidesz!"

Andy and I stayed at the rally for a while to soak up the political fervor many of the supporters around us were expressing. As we left to go home I saw a guy selling various Hungarian pins. I wanted to buy one but many had the Trianon-era Hungarian Empire or the tural bird on them, both of which can conjure up some nationalist images. While I thought about which pin to take we met some American college professors who were looking to buy pins also. One professor asked the merchant how much for a Hungarian flag he was selling. He said that the Hungarian flag costs 2000 forints, the Fidesz flag costs 1000 forints. The market has spoken. The professors were from Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, and were looking to open up a Hungarian campus in a town near Lake Balaton. They all taught in the liberal arts and were a little shocked when Andy said that we were in Budapest to learn math. Some of them picked up a Fidesz button and stuck it on their coats. I wasn't ready to choose sides yet, so I chose a politically neutral pin with Petofi Sandor on it commemorating the 1848 Revolution. Maybe Austrians might take offense. Just don't tell the Governator. 

For more pictures of the Ludwig Museum, the election night rally, Memento Park, Paris, or Switzerland, check out my Picasa Web Album here or click the permanent link in the upper right-hand corner of the blog.

Week 2, Belatedly

Howdy. I'm sorry for not updating my blog this past week. I've learned that people are actually reading this, so now there's a fire under my rear to get me to post, which is nice since it got even colder this past week. A lot has happened and I'd like to share it with you, day by day. You can see all the pictures from these first two weeks in Budapest by clicking here. You can also view my entire collection of pictures from the trip by clicking on the permanent link on the right hand side of the webpage. Feel free to comment on the pictures as well as the blog posts. I'll try to write descriptions for each of the pictures, but this will be hard since I'm putting them both on Photobucket and on Facebook. But now, here goes the long post, so get ready.

Thursday, January 21

Thursday was the second day of the language course and my roommate Mike's 21st birthday. During a lunch break a few friends and I went on a hunt for a Hungarian birthday card. There are several bookstores (konyvesbolt) near the language school so headed to those first. After Brittany, who was part of our cohort, managed to communicate "birthday card" to the bookstore employee in French (it was only our second day learning Hungarian; we had just learned how to pronounce the words, not understand what they meant), the employee said that they didn't have any cards and that we should check the Kaiser Supermarket down the street. We went to Kaiser's and found a card that was themed with the Pixar movie Cars. We figured it was a birthday card since it was right below other cards with numbers on them, such as 30!, 40!, 50!. Our Hungarian teacher, Erika, confirmed for us that it was a birthday card. So I then managed to get most of the BSM'ers to sign the card for someone that they had barely met.

Later that day, about a dozen of us walked over to Brittany and Bridget's place to have birthday cake. They baked a delicious strawberry cake and covered it in candles. They weren't able to find easily-distinguishable icing mix at the grocery store, however, so they used Nutella instead. For those that haven't tried Nutella, its a chocolate spread with the consistency of peanut butter. You can get it in America, but its very hard to find peanut butter over here, but that's another story. Anyway, so the cake was great and Mike had a great birthday with people he had just met the day before.

We decided that we should go out to eat at a restaurant that night instead of going to a bar again. We would save his birthday drinks for the next day when it wasn't a school night; we are still math majors. Mike didn't care what kind of place we went to, as long as it wasn't Hungarian or Indian or otherwise ethnic food. We consulted Budapest guides and online searches for reasonably priced non-Hungarian restaurants in the city. Plagued by indecision, which I am finding at least for these first few days is a common disease among BSM'ers, we discovered a listing for a Tex-Mex restaurant called The Iguana located in downtown Pest, right next to the Parliament building and a metro stop. Perfect.

I was excited to see American vehicle license plates lining the walls and a large marianet hanging in the corner of the ceiling. The decor was spot on. The food was good, too. They had chicken fajitas, quesadillas, enchiladas... the works. What this place did not have was spicy salsa (they said it was spicy; it wasn't) or tres leches desert cake. It didn't matter because everyone had a good time and Mike had a great birthday.

Friday, January 22

After three days of Hungarian language school we were all exhausted. Good thing it was Mike's "official 21st birthday drinking night", so it gave everyone a great excuse to go back to Katapult bar. The bar was especially packed. It's already very tiny and a lot of floor space is taken up by tables and chairs, which you don't see much in Austin on Sixth Street. They have a small upstairs, which is just an open lofted balcony-type area with a few tables and couches. BSM'ers kept pouring into the bar and soon we had the entire upstairs to ourselves. I was able to meet nearly everyone in the program and they are all cool people. I hope the second batch of kids to show up after the language school is just as awesome.

...Let me digress a bit here while I talk about one quick thing that I have learned about life in Hungary: anywhere indoors is liable to be hotboxed with tobacco or other smoke at any time of the day. I expected it in bars at night, but I had to get used to the second-hand smoke in small coffeehouses in the morning before school. There is this one place that is only large enough for seven people to sit inside, and six out of those seven are smoking a cigarette. Besides health concerns, I'm conscious of wearing particular clothes that I know will inevitably smell after fifteen minutes inside one of these places. If you want to try to wear clothes that don't smell, you need to rotate the ones that you have. Washing them overnight isn't an option since we don't have dryers and my winter coat takes longer than one day to dry out. Anyway, let me get back to the story...

So after we had taken over the upstairs of Katapult for an hour, we decided to get a change of scenery and go to another nearby bar called Mumus (pronounced: Moo-moosh). Mumus was much bigger. The ground floor was full of tables, all of which were occupied. Upstairs was pretty funky. It probably used to be a large family apartment and was converted into a bar. Each room was decorated differently. It reminded me of the 21st Co-op back in Austin, except that this place was even more wacky. There seemed to be an endless amount of rooms and that each time you thought you had reached the end of the bar, you saw a small door in the corner that opened up into another whole set of rooms filled with people hanging out on old couches. We chatted and drank for an hour in a dimly lit blue room featuring a paper stalagtite and stalagmite; one came up from the floor in a kiddie pool filled with some sort of liquid and pointed up to nearly touch the other one hanging from the ceiling. A single tiny light bulb illuminated most of the room in the middle of the two faux rock formations. Around 1 a.m., people started to fill the small dance floor in front of the upstairs bar. A few of us danced to a handful of songs, the highlight of which was a peppy Hungarian song played with an accordion. It reminded me of Gogol Bordello. The chorus went something like "Magyar! ... Americai! ... Magyar!... Americai!" Those were the only words we knew, but it was really fun to dance to. A dozen locals put their arms on each other's shoulders and danced in a circle, singing the chorus. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I headed back to that place for a Friday night.

Saturday, January 23

The night before, Mike and I had the idea of throwing a party for all the BSM'ers at our place the next day, Saturday. We announced it at Mumus and I posted the information on the communal Facebook page the next day when I woke up, which was considerably later than I intended to. Surprise. After lazily starting my day in the late afternoon, I found myself having to scramble to go buy a Metro pass, buy palinka, buy cups, ping pong balls, beer, and clean my room before people started to show up at 9:30 p.m. I took the red metro line to the Keleti train station where the big Plaza Arena Mall was located. Inside was the Super Tesco, the equivalent to our Wall-Mart. I managed to get what I needed and get back to the apartment with 30 minutes to spare.

Of course, as soon as I walk in the door eight friends decide to show up early. Whatever, roll with the punches. After moving chairs, couches, tables and computers every which way, I take a deep breath and our apartment is suddenly filled with 25 people having an awesome time. I take great pride in being able to throw a good party, no matter the circumstances. That pride comes from my days as a pledge in AEPi, when it was our job to entertain 300 people every three weeks. First Budapest apartment party of the semester: SUCCESS. New best friends made: +25. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Sunday, January 24th

..... to be continued

Sunday, January 31st

I'm now almost caught up with my blog. Yesterday, I was determined to check out the semi-frozen Danube River along with Hero's Square. I knew a group of people were heading to a museum next to Hero's Square later that day, so I figured that I'd join them after checking out the river and Varolisget Park, which abuts the large monument of Hero's Square. I took the metro to Erzsebet Bridge and walked to the middle of it. It was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside. I wore my ski jacket and leggings under my jeans, but you can only do so much. I needed at least two more scarfs on (I had none) and one more pair of gloves on (I had one pair). Of course, the wind on the bridge made the cold even more biting. I took some great pictures of the icy water and the Chain Bridge and Palace up the river. I asked a nearby woman who was also taking pictures to take one of me since I was alone. She spoke good English and took this picture.

Now for the interesting part. She asked me where I was from. I said Texas. Then she said that she thought that the Texas climate and the Budapest climate were similar and asked me if that was true. After rubbing my hands together to regain feeling and brushing snow away from my face I said, "Not exactly." So we talked for a bit more. She wore a furry hooded jacket with a thick scarf and thick gloves and repeatedly asked me if I was cold. I was freezing, but I told her I was okay, that is as long as I could get off the bridge in the next two minutes. I told her I would be living in Budapest until June studying math. Her son was studying to be an English teacher here. Then she said that he could relate to international study since he had previously lived in Jerusalem learning languages for six months. Hmmm, I thought. I told her my brother had lived in Jerusalem studying for three months after high school. I wondered if she knew Eran who I had Shabbat dinner with on Friday night, but I didn't ask. Then we shook hands and walked to the opposite sides of the bridge.