Final Math Schedule, Library, and Kadar Eatery

I'm now in the third week of math classes and the final week of the pre-registration period. I officially register for classes on Thursday afternoon. I plan on taking combinatorics, intro to algebra, analytical number theory, and mathematical problem solving for a grade along with auditing graph theory. I'm also going to take the intensive intermediate Hungarian language class for a grade. That may seem like a lot -- it is -- but the BSM class registration is super convenient. Auditing means that I have to attend most of the classes but don't have to turn in any homework or take any tests, and my transcript shows that I attended the class. Additionally, I can switch any class to audit up to the second to last week of class, right before finals. So, worst case scenario, I can't handle four math classes, then I switch one to audit and concentrate on the others. I still want to attend the classes since the BSM offers such a great opportunity to learn from amazing professors and be exposed to math topics that I couldn't get back at UT, which accounts for nearly all those classes listed above. That course schedule makes my school week look like this: 

Monday

10am - 12 noon: Intro to Algebra

12 noon - 2 pm: Mathematical Problem Solving

2pm - 5pm: Intermediate Hungarian

Tuesday

8am - 10am: Combinatorics

10am - 12 noon: Graph Theory (audit)

Wednesday

12 noon - 2pm: Analytical Number Theory

Thursday

10 am - 12 noon: Graph Theory (audit)

12 noon - 2 pm: Analytical Number Theory

Friday

8 am - 10 am: Combinatorics

10 am - 12 noon: Intro to Algebra

12 noon - 2 pm: Mathematical Problem Solving

My Mondays and Fridays are going to be hard, but I have an easy middle of the week to make up for it. I got the last textbook that I needed today, so I'm ready to go.

Another thing that happened yesterday: my bed got fixed! I have an IKEA-style bed with a wooden bed frame that supports a ladder of wooden slats that the mattress rests on that rests loosely on the frame. The slats were shifting around while I slept and eventually fell through the bed frame. While I waited for my landlady to nail the slats to the bed frame I had put my mattress on the floor, cluttering my room as you can imagine. I came home Monday to find my mattress back onto my fixed bed frame and my room suddenly spacious and expansive. (So much room for activities!) My room was as good as new. About time too. My homework is getting incredibly hard and I can't think straight when I'm in a cluttered area. Some of you might not believe that having seen my bedroom from time to time, but trust me, I would go work in the library or a coffee shop whenever it was THAT messy. Anywhere but there.

Speaking of coffee shops, I'm in the middle of a quest to find a suitable location for studying and doing extensive math homework at late hours on weekdays and weekends. There doesn't seem to be a late night study area or cafe or coffee shop anywhere. All of the coffee shops here also serve hard liquor and beer and turn into beer joints or smoke filled lounges at night. For those familiar to Austin, I have yet to find an Epoch Coffee or a Cafe Bennu 24-hr coffee shop. The weather in Budapest has taken a turn for the better -- also, about time -- so it's more amenable to walking around outside aimlessly in search of a such a place. For the mean time, though, I've found a very acceptable temporary solution. 

The school where I take math classes is not a proper university. I think it used to be a school for Jewish deaf and otherwise handicapped students, and has its own interesting history. It has a small reading room, but no library. Plus the building closes at 6pm every weekday and isn't open on the weekend. While walking in between classes, I saw a flyer for a library near downtown and closer to where I lived. Yesterday I walked over there after class to check it out for myself. Turns out its not just any library, but the National Library of Foreign Literature and it has an extensive collection of English language books for loan. They charge a student reduced price of 3,150 forints ($15.80) for a year of use and access to the entire collection, which includes music CD's and DVD's, books, and a language studio, where you can use a computer and headset to practice over 80 different languages including Hungarian. The library is open until 8 p.m. on weekdays but is closed on weekends like everything else in this country. It's in a very old building and has wooden tables, a large reading room, and group study areas. Today I bought a library pass, did some math homework there, and checked out Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian author and one of the Jews profiled in Kati Marton's book The Great Escape, which I talked about in a previous post. 

The one weird thing about the library is their strict security. You must either have a membership card or talk to the registrar to gain access to the library at all. You must also check your coat and your backpack: no bags are allowed in the library. A few books are immediately accessible on the shelves, but for most of them you must fill out a request form and give it to the librarian, who then sends it down the book elevator chute to someone in the stacks who fetches the book and sends it back up the chute. The whole process takes about 6 to 10 minutes. I'm not sure if this is unique to this particular library, or its a Hungarian or European thing, or maybe these books are just valuable and they need to be protected. In order to get a library card I had to present my passport and have my passport number recorded into the system. I can imagine trying to leave Hungary and getting stopped at a border checkpoint for an overdue book. The border control officer would say "Sorry sir, but I'm afraid you have a bar on your travel privileges. You need to return Darkness at Noon or pay a $35 fine. No, we don't take Bevo Bucks, and don't even think about registering for classes next semester."

However, before I went to library today I went back to the best, so far, food in Budapest at Kadar Etkezde. I first went to eat there four weeks ago with my Hungarian language class before math classes started. Our teacher took us there because it was an authentic place serving authentic Hungarian food at authentic prices. Last week my Uncle Ben Larry sent me a podcast from the Tablet Magazine website about Jewish-Hungarian food in Budapest, in which Kadar featured, not knowing that I had already eaten there. The podcast revealed how the history of Budapest's Jewish community is ingrained into the local food, particularly at Kadar, which is located at the heart of the Jewish Quarter and the middle of the old Jewish ghetto. I had only known about the amazing food on my plate, not the heritage behind it. I posted the podcast earlier in my blog and here it is again, courtesy of Uncle Ben Larry: Tablet Mag: Beyond Goulash.     

By coincidence, I'm wearing Ben's old Lone Star Beer "Texas Gold" t-shirt from 1976 that he gave me. You can see the spewing oil well of Lone Star on my blue shirt. "Etkezde" (ATE-kez-de) means eatery. To my right is Heidi from San Diego. To my left is Sarah Goldstein from Minnesota and Sarah Loeb from Washington State. If anyone want's to visit Budapest on a Tuesday, go to Kadar and order the vadas marha and the maglyarakas dessert. I dare you to leave not in a good mood. 

Oh, That's Right, I'm Here for Math.

Yesterday was the first day of math class, the primary part of the BSM program. There was a buzz at the College International Building, as everyone mentally prepared for the start of actual schoolwork. If people still used regular pencils, they would have been sharpening them. I arrived at the school for my 10 a.m. class AL1: Introduction to Algebra. The class is scheduled for two hours from 10 a.m. until 12 noon on Mondays and Fridays. The professor informed us that there wasn't as much class time as there appeared to be, since the slotted four hours per week includes three 15-minute breaks and a 45-minute period for the professor's office hour time.

The Algebra class looks promising. Its the only class that I need to take; it's fulfilling my Algebraic Structures I requirement back at the University of Texas, which I dropped this past Fall semester after I couldn't follow the teacher at all. It wasn't just myself, either. That class started with 13 people and when I left it was at 8, and I don't think I was the last to leave. The other person in BSM who is a student at UT, Christy, took that Algebra class a year ago at UT from the same professor and got an A, though she is so uncertain about what she learned that she is also in the BSM Intro to Algebra class with me re-learning everything anyway. So I guess I had made the right call. This BSM professor seems nice, well-prepared, and matter-of-fact, which are all good things when you are teaching a course as fundamental and important to math majors as college algebra.

The other class that I had on Monday was MPS: Mathematical Problem Solving, scheduled between 12 noon and 2 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays. I had tried to rush to get a quick sandwich during the 15 minute break between classes, but showed up to MPS five minutes late. I walked into the small room filled with a dozen students and the professor, who handed me a problem sheet and asked me to work on the first three. Everyone else was hunched over the problem sheet also, working out the simple number theory problems. As I caught my breath, I thought back to Professor Starbird's number theory class at UT that I took my sophomore year. I thought about the prime factorization of numbers and wrote down some answers when suddenly the professor played a little tune on the tiny wooden ocarina flute that he had hanging around his neck on a string the whole time. Time was up. We went over the problems as a class, the professor keeping us transfixed on the math at work. While I had stared at the clock during algebra, I didn't notice an hour and a half go by at all. At first I had my suspicions about registering for MPS, since I'm a senior and the problem solving techniques would be more beneficial for underclassmen or juniors. I was so impressed that I've considered keeping it which means taking five math courses along with intensive intermediate Hungarian. Looking back after a day I don't think I can handle all of the schoolwork, and if I had to drop a class it would probably be MPS even though its by far the most fun, but I would at least try to audit it.

After MPS I went up to Anna's office to talk to her about my bed frame. My IKEA bed doesn't have attached planks to lay the mattress onto. It comes with loose "ladder" of planks that are laid onto the frame to support a mattress. The problem is that the planks on my bed have been whittled down and are falling through the frame onto the floor. Now my mattress is on the floor next to my couch. But I'm not complaining. It could be worse. I could be in Serbia. Anna will talk to my Hungarian landlady and have it fixed soon.

At the end of the day several dozen BSM students sat in on the optional classical algebra review course. The review is taught Monday and Thursday afternoons for the first three weeks of class and no grades are assigned. The professor described the material as "everything that Gauss knew when he was 19" and publishing some of the most important theorems in mathematics. I thought I know what was up, so I went. Plus my algebra is terrible anyway.

I went by the post office after school to mail in my Texas absentee ballot application to the Travis County Clerk. I had already sent one last Friday, but a subsequent conversation with my Uncle Ben Larry and Papa Max enlightened me that I had forgotten to write in which party's ballot I wanted to receive for the primary election. I asked Ben Larry if the county office would do me a favor and send me both ballots. He said "No way, Jose."

Tuesday, today, ran very similar to Monday. I got to school at 8 a.m. for my CO1B: Introduction to Combinatorics. The "B" signifies the normal pace of the course, as opposed to the other "A" course which is fast paced. I initially thought I should take the fast paced course, but then I realized that I might end up taking four or maybe five math classes instead of just three, so I'm opting for the slower scenic route that takes me around the mountain instead of through it. The class appears alright. The professor likes to illustrate how the theorems work instead of just showing us the formulas, which he had given to us in the handout anyway. This class meets from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The second class I took today was GRT: Graph Theory. I had heard that the class was very interesting, that the professor was great, that graph theory is really important and applicable somewhere, and that the class was really hard. So I wasn't surprised when it all turned out to be true. The professor walked into class, said hi to everyone, and quickly passed out his contact information. He said that "students always ask me 'how hard is your class?' but I don't like answering that question because I can't give an accurate answer. It's hard for me to think like I'm in your shoes. So, let's begin." and he started lecturing immediately. He didn't speak so fast as much as not take any rest in between topics. His chalk writing kept up with his speech and I took notes as fast as I could while trying to understand what he was saying. I've had teachers that move through material quickly before, but I don't think two months of slouching over winter break got me in the mood to focus. Once I've had a few days of math class, I'll be able to keep up with him. Plus the material is all new to me. I've never learned anything close to this before so its all fresh. I definitely want to keep this class even if it means dropping something else.

I only have two more new classes to take this week. Tomorrow I have NUT: Topics in Number Theory at 12 noon and on Friday I have my first HUN2A: Intensive Intermediate Hungarian at 2 p.m. Today Christy gave back my Literary Austin anthology that I had lent to her. She said it made her homesick and couldn't read it anymore. I looked in it just now and I completely understand.