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
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
Chicago Brings the Mayhem.
Oi.
Alexis got here on Wednesday, after a lovely trompe de l'aeroport in London that ended up with her getting here at 11pm out of Gatwick instead of noon out of Luton. Such chaos.
This is a lovely shot of her and Agi at the bar that my whole department descends on every Tuesday evening. We ended up here after a soc department lecture about mega churches in Oklahoma City. It was surprisingly phenomenal. The lecture-and the bar.
And its Christmas season here. Like, officially. They even have a Santa to greet the kids at school and everything. Plus a sleigh for pictures, which we found hilarious. Agi brought her awesome little girl Theodora to meet Santa on Thursday, and she looked at the display and said, "Oh, look! Its Rudolph!"
"No Agi. That's a moose. Why is there a moose pulling Santa's sleigh?"
"Oh what is it supposed to be. He's a caribou right?"
"A reindeer yea."
"Oh, we Hungarians don't make these distinctions. We just call them all 'szarvas'."
Here is a picture of Stephen driving the moose:
It made him so happy...
So, yea, post moose, we went to the bar down the street. Most of us kept ourselves busy with more stories about Agi being killed one time by an italian tiger on a boat filled with monkeys.
Aungo savored Hungarian bar food:
And Asa, before he had had a single drink, shifted out of his earlier melancholy into his usual state:
After this gathering dissolved, a few of us decided to crash a poli-sci/IRES gathering that was happening at a place on the north side of Szent Istvan krt, but it was such a mess there that our group became divided and lost almost immediately, and the few of us who got out alive (namely, me, Alexis, Aungo, Agi, Brigette, and Colin) went back to the 7th district to a rad little shisha bar. I cant remember the name, but it reeked of authenticity and is right behind the KFC. yea.
Lots of fun.
Oh, I have to add one more thing, though. Brigette, Marko, Alexis and I wandered down to Szimpla for David Berliner's goodbye party on Friday night. We were hungry before hand, and some of us had mentioned pizza. The guys have been known to go down to this place called Pizza King. Marko swears that its totally good.
Exhibit A:
Marko also apparently drinks Bacardi Breezers. If only we had known how screwed we were at the time. The pizza, after OVER AN HOUR, finally hits our table, and is way sad looking. And the damn Hungarians put the dreaded corn on it. They put corn on everything. Marko, enthusiastically digs in, and says "This stuff is really good." While simultaneously smearing ketchup all over his slice.
Exhibit B:
We tried it, and this was quite possibly the grossest pizza I have ever had in my entire life. Like, ever. Even worse than that one that Sean and I ordered from JoBo's on Clarendon that had adhered itself to the box. Even grosser than that. Raw dough. No sauce. Yellow peppers. Corn!
Veni, Vidi, No Likey
So, we did the only thing that we felt was appropriate with the remains, after we had picked through all the slightly edible peices. We made a diarama.
Labels: Agi, Alexis, Asa, aungo, Brigette, CEU, clubs and bars, Colin, Marko, photos, rabble rousing, thin justification for my existace
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
