Graduation Photos
Im too tired and lazy to be blogging for real these days, so this is what you get.
Robing up in the monument building. Stephen says our department's hoods made us look like nuns.
Ola (poland) and Florin (romania), sociology&anthropology.
Marko (croatia, political science). poli sci got cool blue hoods. I might be jealous.
Judit (hungary) and her daughter Sonja. Judit didnt come to the graduation with us, but i did learn that her daughter recently named her doll "Jennifer". Which is way awesome.
Stefan (bulgaria). Sociology&Anthropology. This guy definitely has the best laugh of the whole department.
Brigette (Texas) and Luci (Romania). Sociology&Anthropology
Drago (Croatia) does his best imitation of the Ghost of George Soros
Drago. Sociology&Anthropology
Stephen (Ohio, Political Science) looks way too sharp. I can't handle it.
Man. Those shades were awesome. And I still had the laurels.
Aungo (Kenya. Sociology&Anthropology). He hates these pictures that I take of him, but I love them.
Agi (hungary), Brigette, and Ola. And Artyom (Russia) off in the background.
Aungo, Colin (who is NOT british) and Brigette.
Cera (Romania), Ola, and Brigette. Sociology and anthropology.
Ballav (Pakistan) and Aungo. Sociology and anthropology.
Aungo and me.
Ola and Asa (Israel). Sociology and anthropology.
This is ALMOST all of us. We were missing Gergő and Judit (hungary), Mariya (Bulgaria), Damir (Croatia), Austin (Nigeria), and a handful of professors. Everyone had a rough morning because defenses ended just the day before. I had never seen some of us so hung over. goodness.
And so we stagger into the future!
Labels: Agi, Asa, aungo, Ballav, CEU, drago, Florin, grad school, graduation, Luc, Marko, Ola, photos, stefan, Stephen
Group Pics from Rackeve
These are some of the shots that colin took on the dock, mere moments before that storm swirling behind us sent us sprinting for cover and took out a few nearby trees!
Labels: Brigette, CEU, Colin, Damir, l, Luc, Ola, photos, rabble rousing, rackeve, stefan
Rackeve=A Day in the Sociological Life
oh man, half of the department went to rackeve today, a village on the south island and hour outside of budapest, and swam in the danube, diving off of docks in the water, in between cat tails, then saw a thunderstorm start on the other side of the river, and watched lightning from the grass, then took a bunch of group pictures in front of the crazy sky, then ran for it as the temperature dropped like 5 deg celcius in an instant and the rain and wind started, and as we were dashing out of the way, the wind blew down one of the 30' tall trees that we had just been sitting under! and we hauled ass through the rain and took cover in the hotel that was immediately across the street that used to be a castle! and we had beer and hot chocolate in the cellar of the giant castle and had free coffee from a physics conference that was 5n the castle, and the walked all around this city and saw a serbian orthodox church compound that was breathtaking with golden steeples and wells and dogs and tombstones, and we ate cherries off of the trees in the street and then bought bags of them off of two kids who were picking them out of their yard who had this hilarious dog named cameron. thats not even the half if it, and it was awesome and we slept the whole way home. oh man. today was good.
Labels: aungo, Brigette, CEU, grad school, Luc, Ola, photos, rackeve, stefan, thin justification for my existace, travel
Day of Indulgence and General Piggery
Today was the most gluttonous day I have had in ages. I am totally wiped out from it, but it was oh, so good.
I woke up at like 11:00 or so next to Brigette, who had been over for a fabulous slumber party at my place the night before. It involved lots of
Israeli juice products,
Polish Vodka,,
Bulgarian transvestite Gypsy pop stars, lots of Turkish food, and an Afro-Cuban dance party. It was a truly international evening that we brought to a close on Stephen's fold out couch somewhere around 3am. Behold:
Anyway, I got up at about 11, made (and drank) a huge pot of coffee, and started by day be cleaning the kitchen. It was amazing. The boys were still asleep, so I didnt have them to navigate around, I just cleared everything out of the room and mopped and scrubbed everything down. I even took a steel wool to the counter tops. Oh my god its so clean. Mwa ha ha ha.
Then we hit the road. We rolled out of the house at about 1:30. I had plans to go to Szecsenyi Baths in City Park with Brigette and Asa, and we managed to talk Luc into coming as well. We also met up with some of the new exchange students from Bard who came along for the ride: Nancy and Alex, who went to the baths and hung out with us for most of the day, and Max and Zoltan (best name ever? yes.) who meant to join us but ended up in a world of snafu and therefore were little seen all day. Anyway, here's a shot of some of my most favorite people ever on the way there:
The baths were amazing. Imagine an entire swimming pool at bathwater temperature. I mean hot, turn your skin red bath water temperature. With bubbles. So awesome.
And in the winter, it gets all steamy:
There was also a steam room that was so thick, that you could barely see in front of you. The steam in there was nearly 50 degrees celsius. You couldnt breath in through your nose, because it burned the inside of your nostrils so badly. Hardly anyone could stay in there very long, because it burned, but I loved it. They kept saying they couldnt breath, and I just had this shit-eating grin on my face the whole time, taking big gulps of hot air. It was an asthmatics dream come true. Seriously. I may have to go back just for the steam room.
We were there until we were pruned up like crazy. And Asa only threw me feet first into some random elderly guy once. Never awkward. Never. And now my skin is so soft and happy. [--Hey, Asa, you remember that time we went to the baths and you threw me into some guy? --Oh yea? Well, shut up.]
After this, we all went back to Oktogon, because we were starving, and all stuffed ourselves on indian food at the Bombay Express by Jokai Ter. And I really want to impress upon you the 'stuffed' part. That was really the only meal I had or even needed all day. And oh yum. Saag paneer had never tasted so good.
Then, we trouped over to Luc's new apartment on Rakoczi Utca to hang out and have some wonderful new shisha that he got as a housewarming present.
Before his housewarming party last night, Brigette and I went roaming through the children's section of IKEA looking for gifts. That children's department, by the way, may be the most underrated shopping experience in the world, which is odd, considering that the rest of hte store sucks the will to live or the restraint not to kill right out of me. In addition to several other things, we got Luc a stuffed rat, which we thought would be a good mascot, as he lives in the eight district (Nyoker, baby).
Stephen also pointed out that we almost rented the very apartment that Luc is now in back in September. Very strange stuff.
So, we wallowed around Luc's futon listening to Flamenco music, drinking wine, eating marshmallows, and generally being decadent for a few hours, then decided that we needed to move on with our evening. By this time it was about 8:30pm. We found a
Cukraszda down the street that was open till 9. We gorged. It was so good. Cake and cappucino was all that was needed to make that evening perfect.
At 9, Alex and Aungo and I headed off to a bar on Kiraly called Siraly [shi-raw-i] (trend?) to a show that Stefan invited us to. We got there to find a group from my department already there. Why are we the awesomest people ever? We just can't stay away. In the basement of Siraly a fabulous band was playing. They were called
Chakra Hacker, which may be the best band name I have heard in ages. They were fabulous, as would be expected. I dont think Stefan has ever suggested live music that hasn't been great. He's got a perfect track record, and I have seen some really good shows that I never would have run across otherwise.
Afterwards, I came back home and watched nearly half a season of Twin Peaks. All I can say, is that I finally get it. I mean, wow. Apparently, this show is central to the early childhood trauma of a whole generation of Croatians. This allegedly has something to do with why Marko will not go into the woods.
Ok, so here's the best part. Because all this happened today, I get to spend all of tomorrow working on fieldwork methods and figuring out what the hell Bruno Latour is talking about. Chains of translation? seriously. I mean, I get it, I just dont get it. Its going to be so interesting when he speaks here on the TBAth of March. I hope he actually makes it, because my notes have been painfully absent of a sea of arrows since I graduated from Reed and left Rob Brightman's charge. I think Latour might just be the man to bring those arrows back into my life. And it will be excellent.
Labels: Asa, Brigette, Budapest, clubs and bars, hotlinks, Luc, music, photos, procrastiation, stefan, Stephen
Housewarming and the fire warehouse.
So, we finally opened up our space! We got the kitchen straightened out, hung Turkish communist party flags on the wall, and invited 120 of our closest new friends over to start spreading the love.
We had our official house party last Saturday night. It was great. Tons of people showed up. One measure of this was that there were at least 70 bottles of wine to take down to recycling the next day. I took a big long video of the flat so that we could post a virtual tour of the place while it was filled to the gills with our friends, but I am having trouble uploading it, so, for the time being, you'll have to make do with this pick of the living room, which was taken sometime around 9:00
We met a few of the neighbors, including one guy named Andrew who lives above us. He is also American (our building is full of foreigners). He is 25 and writes for Newsweek. We all openely wondered what it is like to have real job skills.
After about 12:30, we all went out to Tűzraktér, a wicked ruin pub in the 8th district.
We lost a few people at Tereszkörút, and had to wait around at the train stop for a bit, but don't you fear! The sociologists brought whisky!
Anyway, this bar, Tűzraktér, is great. The name means either "fire warehouse" or "fire space" in english, depending on what vowels you use (this varies even in the bar). It falls into a category that people here call "ruin pubs." The space is actually an old soviet needle factory that is owned by the government, but has been abandoned for years. Tűzraktér has been present in this space since 2003. The directions when we first went there were as follows: Take the blue line to Ferenciek Tere. Get off, and head south about a block. Turn right at the rubble. When you see 200 bikes parked out front, you know you're there.
The main space is the courtyard, which has been painted time and time again with murals and graffiti art. There are usually visual displays on the walls too. One night, they were playing this trippy loop of Jon Benet Ramsey. Didn't know how I felt about that. Anyway, the bar is off to one side, and has like 14 people working behind it to keep up with the crowd. There is some dude selling sausages and grilled eggs off to the side (we love this guy....)
And there is always this little camp of fire jugglers off to the other side. There are also frequent art exibits and several back rooms that serve as galleries and dance halls for trance, house, stuff like that.
The main building that surrounds this courtyard is 5 stories tall and has been taken over by artists. Some may live there, but it is mostly used as studio and performance space. We havn't done much exploring up there, but its in the works. Anyway, on Saturday, we were here till 3am.
This is what 3am looks like. We're sleepy. But its ok, cause we have cookies at 500,HUF a bag.
More videos to come....and I still havn't delivered those pictures of the protests that I promised. Soon, soon. We will have internet at our house come Friday, and this will all get much much easier.
Labels: aungo, Brigette, clubs and bars, house, Luc, Marko, party, photos, Sasha, tuzrakter
