Pestilog

I am totally writing papers right now.

Who knew that marko and i both have an uncanny resemblance to chaka khan?

Labels: internet, Marko, photos, procrastiation, Stephen, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 4:32 PM 0 comments

The Roommate Has Landed!

Internet be damned!

We have been having the worst time ever getting the internet to work here. We even got all of our portforwarding and ping issues straightned out. We are wireless network geniuses at this point. Which totally doesnt help us because there is no juice coming out of the actual cable internet line. I actually got an error message in Hungarian telling me that the cable company's server was offline the other day. Christ. And our download speeds have been down in the gutters. Even google was timing out. But, somehow, it all came back this morning. In a flood of bandwidth. And I got to wake up to see this:


Look at that swarm! I love it.

So, in a fit of foresight and serendipity, used this new found internet tour de force of connectivity to scan craigslist for a new flatmate, cause Stephen was pacing around stressing about it.

Oh, have I mentioned this? Wyatt is moving out. He's going home for Christmas and staying home. I TOLD Marko that he wouldn't think the horsehead in the sheets was funny...

But anyway, we have pouted and cried to the limits of our abilities, and still Wyatt has decided that he will be happier at home. So, we need to find someone who can pay rent. At this point, anyone with heartbeat and a checkbook will do. No one from school wants to move in with us cause our apt is on the slightly more expensive end of things that are available. I mean, the difference between what I'm paying here and what I could be paying if I lived on a smaller street is like maybe 70 Euros. Maybe. But that's a lot when you are on a student budget and living entirely off of George Soros. So, the anxiety level about finding someone to live here has been high, escalating something like this

So I did a quick search on budapest.craigslist.org, and found only 1 ad for a person wanting a room to let. It was from Ben. Ben is Australian, is moving to Budapest, and wants a room for about 200 Euros per month to rent from January to June. Sweet lord amighty. We need someone to pay us about 200 Euros a month for a room from January to June! Its like Jesus himself brought us together.

So, I email the guy and tell him what's up with our room. He replies in a matter of minutes, asking if he can see the apartment today, cause he happens to be in town apartment hunting, and leaves for London again in a matter of hours. So he comes over, takes one look around, and says "Hi. Im Ben. Y'all are great. I want to live here."

Rad. Oh, but it gets even better. Ok, so Ben is no ordinary 28 year old dude. He is a concert conductor who is coming here to start an apprenticeship with the Budapest Festival Ensemble. A conductor! Sheet music scattered all around the apartment a la Immortal Beloved! How luscious is this going to be? He's a rather proper fellow, but was really excited to be living with a group of students (somehow) and was just thrilled to find a place that has already been set up, got the internet connected, bills going, etc. He's only going to be here 2-3 weeks of every month, and then in London for the rest of the time, but I think this thing is going to be beautiful.

And the moral of the story is: don't stress about change and responsibility. Just wait for the forces that be to tell you "Hey, now would be a good time to take care of your shit." and then proceed to arrange everything for the future in a matter of hours under the graces of serendipity, divine providence, and falafel. Oh yes. There was falafel involved. And I am not at liberty to divulge those details. I can tell you, though, that I am a happy little camper right now.

So, here's a tasty little treat, just from me to you, to help bring in the cheers for a new roommate. Huttah!

Labels: house, video, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 6:18 PM 0 comments

Home Movies

So these videos are a little old, but, seriously, could we be any more hilarious?

Labels: Marko, Stephen, video, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 4:23 AM 1 comments

Halloween!

Mom, Dad, I live with these people. Send peanut butter and money

Pirates.

Becoming a zmobie

Making Sasha dead.


Yar.

Brigette got mad skills.

Damir, Mariya, and Colin. or: creepy count, nymph, mormon elder.

Christine = best assasin ever



Trouble.

Brigette and I being totally awesome to Sasha, after he passed out in my bed.

Jen, Kate and Brigette.

Nada and Peter playing with blood in the bathroom.

Um, yes.



Elder Delmore gets down with his bad self.



I never managed to figure out who that guy was.


dead love claps.



You dont even want to know what my apartment looks like right now. Oh God. So many people crashed here...I slept in a chair. and Brigette's arm still says "knob". Ha. We rule.

Labels: Asa, Brigette, Colin, Damir, house, Kate, Marko, Ola, party, photos, procrastiation, Sasha, Stephen, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 11:24 AM 0 comments

Tatras

Finally got the group shots from the Tatras Mountains.
This is definatly the best picture that I never posted.

Labels: Colin, Peter, photos, Slovakia, travel, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 4:12 PM 2 comments

Slovakia, MF

Ok, so in case you didn't read Kasia's comment from last week, a group of us went to Slovakia last weekend. We travelled to Poprod, in the north, and trained into the Tatry mountains for the weekend. It was beyond beautiful. The pictures that I gleamed off the net 2 posts ago do not lie.
Here is a map, so you can orient yourselves. Poprod is just to the right of the marker for the Tatra National Park.

I went with Wyatt, who I live with, Colin, who is in my department, and Peter, who lives down the street. Peter is currently an undergrad at Lewis and Clark here on exchange. His roommate Eli owns a Reed "communism atheism free love" t shirt. Its a small world. We stayed our first night in the nearest, cheapest hotel with vacancy. The four of us crashed in the tiny double room below. It was cozy, and olfactorally familiarizing, to say the least.

Poprad is a nice enough town. Its small, and industrial. This is a view from the hotel balcony, which is right by the train station. This is basically the view that the tourists get:

I have never seen a city with such a "good side of the tracks"/"bad side of the tracks" divide, though. It was amazing. There was an old, rundown commuter rail that ran through the City. To the west, it was sparkly and new. The town square was renovated and freshly spackled. New fountains, stores with hiking gear and fashion jeas, and trashcans on every corner. To the east, the city is much older, communist block buildings are crumbling and there is a significant population of Roma families living in a scattering of shanties. The whole neighrborhood is glittered with laundry drying on fences dividing small earthen lots. Its eerily beautiful.
Our first night in town, we bar hopped through the touristy side of the city. We ate dinner at a restaurant that Wyatt recommended (he had been through Poprod before), and it was absolutely amazing. The whole weekend, we ate so much peroghi and pasta and fried cheese and garlic soup. We made ourselves ill on white flour and dairy fat. We also consumed a ridiculous amount of beer. Ridiculous. Poprod has its own brewery, called Tatran. We didnt realize until half way through the weekend that this stuff is 12%. Oddly, we didnt notice. I think that means we're officially European now. Anyway, this stuff goes for 20 Slovakian Krowns per half liter. That is about 70 cents.

We also hit up a dance club. A small, Slovakian mountain town dance club. Holy Jesus. I havn't been part of a scene this ridiculous since I was at The Electric Cowboy in Muskogee Oklahoma in 2000. The girls were all in heels, jeans, and funky white tanktops. The guys all wore Bball shoes, huge fubu shirts, and bandanas. One guy even had a huge Adidas scarf tied around his head. Seriously, he looked like the karate kid. Nothing was weirder than the dancing though. There were a lot of mirrors in the place, and most of the girls spent the majority of their time dancing with themselves in the mirrors. This girl was particulary fond of herself. She spent hours ignoring everyone and everything except her own hair:

There is also only one dance move if you are a girl. You step from side to side like a jr high valentines dance, and wave your arms around in front of you like a sign interpreter. Its hilarious, and only bested by the way men dance. People have described certain dancing skills before as "epileptic fits". I tell you now, that all of those people are wrong, because it is nothing compared to this:

Ok, so onto the good stuff. We trained into Stary Smokovic from Poprod, and from there, went east into Tatranska Lomnica, which is near Lomnicky Stit, the second highest peak in the Tatrys at 2634m. This is a view from halfway up:

It was gorgeous. We took a lift to the peak, and walked along the ridge. We could see the range from all directions.


This is a pan shot that wyatt took from the top. He took all these pictures actually.

We stayed the second night in Tatranska Lomnica, then went back and spent the last half of Sunday in Poprod. I took a ton of pictures with my little AE-1. Maybe I'll scan some of them and throw em up on Flickr when I get them developed.

Then the shit hit the fan.

Suffice it to say, we were supposed to get on a train to Kosice. Certain members of our party got on the first train that said "Kosice" on the door, not realizing that it was headed in the wrong direction. Before we were able to convince our comerades of hte mix up, the train started moving. We were supposed to be home in Budapest at 8pm. But, where did we end up? On a train to Bratislava. BRATISLAVA! For the love of God. Please, do me a favor, and scroll back up to that map at the top. Find Bratislava. Connect the dots. Poprod-Kosice-Budapest. Now, Poprod-Bratislava. Holy balls. And we were SO far off the beaten path, that we hadn't met anyone all weekend who spoke more than a small handful of english words like "you, cigarette?" "yes" "ticket" and "train...up....you, up." Plus, everyone in Slovakia speaks german as a second language. None of us speak german. I had gotten by with signs and menus because it is relatively similar to Ukranian, but there is NO way we can explain this to a train conductor. You cant play stupid tourist when you cant communicate at all.

So, ok, we pulled into Bratislava at 9:30pm, already an hour and a half after we were supposed to be home in BP. We soon discovered that the next train leaving for Budapest departs at 5am the next morning. So, we were committed to a night in Bratislava. So, we crabbed some zsemlis and a few bottles of coke, threw our packs on, and headed out on foot away from the train station prepared for a long night. We headed into the "historic center" of the city, which is the Disneyland downtown of the city--a place where all the sandwhich boards in front of hte restaurants are in English, if you know what I mean. But it was still incredibly beautiful. They had a bright green laser that started at Michael's Gate and was bounced all through the neighborhood by mirrors until the main strip by the Danube. Very very cool.


We also hiked up to the plateau where stands the Bratislava Castle. The actual castle was closed, but we were able to walk around the retaining wall and see the whole city. These are some views from the castle:
Ah, the lovely Danube.

Bratislava looks awesome. Colin and I have talked about coming back to see it during the day sometime, as well as visiting some of the amazing little towns that we saw on our accidental train ride across the Slovakian coutryside (which totally blows the quite scenic Hungarian country side out of the water. Its beyond words. Imagine the Columbia Gorge, with lakes instead of a river, castles everywhere, deep forest, and small towns with creepy yet beautiful clusters of communist blocks painted up like a Cuban ghetto. My God. You have to see it with your own eyes.)
We headed back to the train station at about 3:30am, after sitting in a coffee shop for a few hours. Look how happy we are to be alive right now:

We made it back to Budapest at 9:30am. I slept for about 30 minutes on the train. Then I had class from 11, straight through till 8pm. It was not my best day. But it was awesome, and almost worth the whole trip, just to get to write this to my masculinities class:

Labels: Colin, Peter, photos, Slovakia, travel, video, Wyatt

posted by Veruka2 @ 10:14 PM 0 comments

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

posted by Veruka2 @ 2:14 PM 0 comments