Glorious Day of "American Food"-like Food
Yesterday, I woke up on the couch in Stephen's room next to Brigette, wondering if Tyler was still asleep with his shoes on in the living room. This has all been known to happen before, and is always a sign that last night was a good night and today will be a phenomenal day. Seriously.
So, I may not have mentioned this earlier, but Brigette brought back a bunch of goodies from Texas after Christmas break. Its fabulous. I love the fact that she is from Texas and knows all the right things to buy. When Stephen is on the phone with parents and friends in Ohio who are sending care packages, he always asks what I want. Brigette and I scream out a slurry of "Oh! Oh! Masa! and corn husks! chipotles! and nopalitos!" Stephen usually tells us to go stick it and to order something that is American and that the average suburban can find in Canton OH. So so sad.
But Briga brought back a few excellent things, not the least of which is a prayer candle with the Virgin of Guadalupe on it, which totally makes me nostalgic for our old house in Portland with the Revelation and Our Lady of Guadalupe themed bathroom (coolest domestic space I have ever had the privilege to inhabit). She also brought back a can of chipotles, and can of jalopenos. So, this morning, for breakfast, we made a huge batch of scrambled eggs with onions and sour cream and jalopenos. And it was SOOOO GOOOOOOOD.
Look, Stephen's camera phone was able to reach out and capture my joy:
(All these images are really low res because my digital is in Berlin with Ben right now, so all we had was Stephen's Razr to capture the moments as they came.)
Brigette gasped when she ate it and said, "Oh my gosh. Its hot. I forgot what hot tastes like. Oh my word I love it. Real hot food!" In Hungary, 'spicy' generally means 'not creamy'. Its a sad state of affairs if all you want is some chili. Marko couldn't even handle a single bite of mild heat. We are just made of spicier stuff I guess. I miss hot, spicy food so very very much. And tamales. I miss those too.
Later in the evening, I tagged along with Stephen and Sanida, who were had plans to go to this Burger place that Petya had found sometime last term. I was skeptical, but this place allegedly had really really good burgers, and even though I don't eat meat, sheer curiosity and the hopes of some honest french fries lured me along on their adventure. We were also able to recruit Zoltan at the library. I mentioned the burger plan to him, and I watched him hover over his feet, eyes glazed over for a moment, then, with a sudden rush of blood to his face, say, "I think I'm going to invite myself along..." Ha.
So, the burger place is called "Gyros es Burgers" (original) and is just be Keleti Palyaudvar. I was astonished by what they offered. They had a menu of like 20 different burgers with bacon, cheese, fried egg, goose liver, cabbage, mushrooms, anything you could think of. They even had one called "fitness" which was a burger doused in every drippy, oily, cheesy thing they had, but with out meat. And here's the kicker. They even toasted the bun. It totally kicked the In n Out Burger grilled cheese sandwhich's ass.
Stephen and Zoltan each got a burger called The Lenin:
And I don't even remember what Sanida got, but it was gone fast.
This place also had Lowenbrau
which is totally not that great, but which I will forever defend as the only reliable beer in a can in this city (take that Borsodi!).
The food was nutritionally useless and totally good. Stephen and I trucked home after this, curled up around our pot bellies, and watched Twin Peaks. And it was a very good day.
Course, I am failing to mention the long hours of work I pulled during the day and after all this nonsense that had me up till nearly 5 am. I am really starting to stress about the phenomenal amount of work I have to stay on top of. Its kind of blowing my mind. But I am meeting with Yuriy (Юрій!) tomorrow to go over letters that I am sending out to harm reduction clinics in Ukraine, and Russ has been schooling me on how not to freak out over this grant, which I have no idea how to even start, and I got my funding for April, or at least some of it. 200 Euros is better than no Euros, and thats enough to float me through April for my field work. So, things are happening, just not in a very steady or timely fashion.
Ok, enough of this. I got stuff to do....
Labels: Brigette, Budapest, CEU photos, food, procrastiation, Sanida, Stephen, thin justification for my existace, Zoltan
Thanksgiving
A very unorganized attempt at dinner that started with a thought no deeper than "Hey, Its thanksgiving. Should we, like, eat some stuff?" turned into a fabulous house party a la Americana.
We had to do the best we could with what incredients were available to us. We ended up with the following menu:
Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy (thank you very much)
Corn
Real StoveTop stuffing, compliments of Kim, who is visiting us from Rammstein this week
2 rotisserie chickens from the szupermart
Lots and lots of cheese
Bosnian meat
Cherry pie-type thing
Lots of bread and rolls
about 12 bottles of red wine
So, we had accepted the fate long ago that canned pumpkin just DOESNT exist outside the US. But we couldnt find any real pumpkins (too late in the season) or anything even remotly close to cranberries anywhere. And no one from anywhere in eastern europe that we could find even KNEW what a sweet potato was. Such sadness. But we made up for lost dishes by making a lot of everything else and basically suffocating ourselves. It was good.
The potatos have affected me.
Sasha helps cook.
Stephen is ready to eat. Like, now.
Peter tortures the dog. Charlie, the pup, is staying with us for the night, andis contribting by licking fallen scraps up off the floor. It is so nice to be cooking with a dog in the kitchen again. Peter contributed a Pizza Hut pizza to the dinner.
We actually kind of got in over our heads. We didn't have neraly enough in the way of plats, forks, or chairs. But the sheer quantity of carbs on the table pretty much took everyone's attention away from that fact rather quickly.
The gorging begins.
We can actually see the food colleting in our eyeballs, giving us that glazed over look.
Some of us lasted till 2am.
But all the excitement got the better of a few.
Labels: Brigette, house, Marko, party, Peter, photos, procrastiation, Sanida, Sasha, Stephen, thin justification for my existace, Tyler
My Kingdom for a Slow Weekend! I mean...nah.
Ok, so the weirdest thing happened to me this weekend. But I'll get to that later. First things first:
Marko and I went to a showing of The Complete Works of William Shakespear Abridged at the National Theatre on Saturday. It was as fabulous as ever. The theatre house is outside the ring road on the south side of Pest, right on the Danube. Its a crazy looking building. Imagine if Frank Lloyd Wright ate the parthenon, and then spit it out again in a giant hairball...thats kinda what this place looks like.
This picture KINDA does it justice, but you cant see the giant temple that is buried in the fountain, or the half a pirate ship sticking out on the other side. I shit you not. This place is totally nuts. Oh wait, here it is:
That shit is bananas. Who makes buildings like that? I can say, though, that you can totally crawl way out on the bough of that ship (which is really high over a lot of water by the way) and hang off the end. And NO ONE makes you get down! Its great. I love this whole European disregard for the business of others.
Anyway, the crazy stuff happened after this when we went to a house party at David's house. This is David:
He's in the poly sci department at CEU, and, because there are so many danged Davids everywhere, is commonly referred to as "David from Serbia." Anyway, I had talked to a few people about going out dancing, and had gotten a few recomendations from Agi's husband, Yusaf, about where to go. Marko was down. Sanida was down. Ciprian had voiced interest. So, I was ready to take people to this place called Kultiplex in the 8th district near Ferenciek Tere, which is right by Tuzrakter, Nagy and Kisci West Balkan, and all the other good places in town. By about 11, I was ready to head, so we gathered our troops. Me, Cip, Marko, Sanida, and Luciana, Sanida's awesome roommate from Argentina. This is 5 people, including me. Managable group, right? Wrong, cause we get out of the apartment, and Cip and I look behind us, and see this:
Can you see the people way in the background, like 3 street lights away? Yea, they are all following me. I have no idea why. Somehow I became the leader of this group of like 25 people who all left the party en masse with the misconception that there was some sort of formulated group plan. Kultiplex is a 10 minute bus ride away, and lots of people are not happy to be going so far away, so people start yelling "hey! whos in charge!" And of course, Marko is like "Jen! Its Jen Carroll! She's our leader!" Marko is a bastard.
Case in point:
Anyway, right about this point, the night bus pulls up, so Cip and Sanida and I get on, and so does everyone else. 25 people on an already crowded night bus. Cip and I were having a good laugh about this.
Now, I want to be clear about one thing. I may sound exasperated here, but I do want to emphasize that the people who came out with us are really really awesome. The group was mostly composed of the people whom I really like and the people who I actively want to get to know more. But still. It was a little chaotic.
So, we get to Kultiplex finally, and its rather empty. boo. Yusaf's predictions were not, in fact, accurate, so we hang out for one drink.
Course, by this time, a lot of people are mumbling "Why did we come all the way down here just to sit around another table? Goodness. I don't even know who some of you are. I thought I was going out with like 3 or 4 friends. I'm sorry that I ruined your evening. Sheesh.
So, me, Sanida, Luciana, Cip, Wyatt, Marko, and two guys from Princeton (names? eh?) round up and head to Tuzrakter, which is a 10 minute walk away. Sanida had never been there, so it was great. It was drizzling a little bit, but the place is beautiful when the weather is like that.
Oh, thats Ciprian. This is the guy who managed to get 30 people to follow him over to his house for a party at 4 in the afternoon on a thursday during zero week. He's a character. So, yea, we didnt get home till late.
But don't worry. I still managed to get some sleep and get up the next morning for church. Literally. I have an ethnography project to do for my Anthropology of Religions class at Szent Istvan Bacilika, which is right around the corner from my school. So I went to mass this morning. Brigette was supposed to come, but she got stuck on a bus that she thought was going to Deak Ferenc Ter, which actually took her over to the Buda side, and she got eaten alive by fate and circumstance.
This basilica is beautiful. This is a shot from the outside. The flags marking the 50 year anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution are up in this shot, so its a pretty new picture.
My school is literally 25m behind where the photographer was standing for this shot.
The inside is almost too much. Gold and gilt and paintings and gloss and marble everywhere.
But mass was pretty casual, so it was nice. Lots of tourists everywhere on Sunday mass. That kinda pissed me off. I dont mind people coming in and seeing the place, and they keep the actual nave roped off, but people would come into the seats, and then go, and then come again, and then talk very loudly in english about the tickets they had just bought at the penztar for the tour later, and were, generally, just plain obnoxious. I wanted to smack a few people, but catholics dont really keep bibles lying around the basilika, so there was nothing to beat people about the head with. The preist and I had a totally culture-cross moment when it came to communion. Apparently, I take communion like an american protestant. Who knew? But the guy was super nice, and patient withteh fact that I spoke very little Hungarian, so we were cool.
I am told that there is a Ukranian orthodox church down by Erszbet Hid. I may head there in 2 Sundays as well. Sounds like a neat place.
But now, I have to go clean, because our place is filthy, and some people from my department are coming over later to watch Rabbit Proof Fence. I have to mop, or else I am going to start screaming like Ligaya when ever someone comes over. "I live in my own filth! ahh!"
Labels: Cip, clubs and bars, David, house, Luciana, Marko, party, photos, rabble rousing, Sanida, thin justification for my existace, tuzrakter, Wyatt
