Pestilog

3 Totally Excellent Things That Happened To Me This Evening

I went to Batthany Ter with Asa and Ola tonight to start our project for our Fieldwork and Methods class today. There is a group of protesters that gathers there everyday, and we are planning an ethnography project with them for the term. Tonight was our preliminary visit to see the group, and we got F-ing initiated. It was crazy. Some dude, comes up to us and was like, "Hey guys! This is great that you're here! Blahsiblahsiablasdisafskhdfkhjsfalkh!!! Oh you speak English! I'll get someone! I'll get someone!!--here. hold my flag. wave it. wave my flag!--WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH! ENGLISH! SOMEBODY COME TALK TO THE KIDS IN ENGLISH!!"
Omigod it was so awesome.
This was a group of nationalist Magyars who are SUUUPER excited about Greater Hungary and Hungarian identity that stretches across Eastern Europe. Greater Hungary is the current name for all the lands that used to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary, till there was some unabashed ass-whoopin' with the Treaty of Trianon after World War I.

You just lost World War One.
Let me see your pouty face!
They took Transylvania back.
Let me see your pouty face!
Slovakia ran off with Czech.
Let me see your pouty face!
You lost Croatia and the Serbs.
Let me see your pouty face!

Anyway, these guys tonight were super roudy and tons of fun. They told us about another protest that is being planned for Saturday. One guy told us of a good spot on the bridge to sit and watch parliament while they have a hayday on the lawn. There is also going to be another protest action in the morning that will involve cars. Lots of cars. Apparently the city is giving them the run around with protest permits, so they cant march like they want to. Instead, they have opted for plan B which is a caravan down the roads in cars. Now, this is technically illegal, so they are going to dress up the whole event like it is a wedding, just a wedding with a group of nationalist who happen to have brought their banners and theme music with them (O! Magyarorszag!)

Right, but here's the punch. Mr. Super Excited who has been introducing us to everyone who speaks 2 words of English all night fully gives us his phone number and offers to drive all 3 of us around in his car on Saturday during the caravan. He even offers to fame marry Asa and I so we can be the bride and groom at the 'wedding'. The only catch is that Asa has to play the girl.
Awesome.

After this, i went over to Ola's place for a cup of tea, because we had been standing out in the -2 degree cold listening to nationalist diatribes for over and hour, and we coudn't feel our toes. I was so thrilled by this, because I absolutely adore Ola, and I don't often get to hang out with her outside of class. I mean, we only switched phone numbers for the first time this evening, which is totally unacceptable. I went to her place and realized that (a) I am dumb and never realized that she lives with Agnes, a rad girl in my Hungarian class, and that (b) I almost rented her apartment in September, before I moved in with the guys. They are splitting a room that I was going to share with a legal studies student from Croatia named Maria. She eventually told me that two Polish girls had taken the room. Three cheers for me putting two and two together. But anyway, I got to have a lovely cup of tea and hang out with two excellent women, and there was icing on the cake as well. At her apartment, Ola busted out these:

Chocolate covered vodka. These little things are sooo good. We always have them at home too. Stephen and I absolutely gorge on them. But these ones of Ola's are of the cranberry persuasion as well. How freikin incredible are these things?

So incredible.

I finally headed home cause I needed to call my mom back for like the 6th time that day (I actually had to hang up on her earlier cause she called just as the Magyar Uber-Nationalists were starting to play the Hungarian AND Transylvanian national anthems). And let me tell you, when I got home, I found a bounty of pickled things in the fridge. I am so my gramma's grandchild. I can not get enough of pickled things. Cucumbers, beets, cabbage, anything. And I am saddened by the knowledge that when I say something like "pickled beets" you imagine something totally sad and Safeway-like, like this:

Oh man. It just makes you want to cry. No. No, screw that soggy crap that has been in the glass jar for the last 30 years. I am talking Jew-food fresh, locally encased, giant tub from the elelmiszer for $1.45, massive vat of picked beets that were crinkle cut with love in the last week:

YUM!
Oh, and in addition to a giant thing o beets, we also got some super spicy pickled cabbage. It is somewhere in between saurkraut and coleslaw, with a major punch. I cant stop eating.

Word to the wise: super-spicy pickled cabbage = double plus yum. I even want to take another picture of me eating it and upload that too, but I suspect that might be a little much. I am the love that dare not speak its name.

Ima go get some of those chocolates out of the freezer...

Labels: Asa, Budapest, food, grad school, hotlinks, liquor, Ola, rabble rousing, thin justification for my existace

posted by Veruka2 @ 10:55 PM