HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY MOM! May God bless you with patience for your daughter's unreliability in the following year.
Oh wow. Ok, so I am actually sitting in class right now, blogging out into my word processor, waiting for a movie that we are watching to recover from its DVD death so that we can finish it. Its called “The Cruise”, and is about this crazy guy who works as a tour guide on a double-decker tour bus in NYC. This is the most hilarious thing I have seen in ages.
“Looking at this building, I feel like I am running through a meadow. Naked. Chasing after a strange woman, who is also naked. Its like an evil, primordial chase of man…As you look up the building, can’t you feel the undulation of her curves?”
“Then men who designed Central Park were transcendentalists….No sweating allowed in Central Park. Those people you see playing baseball, roller blading, jogging—they are not historically accurate.”
“H.G. Wells said that to tell the history of New York City is to tell the history of the world. Fasten your seatbelts.”
Its brilliant.
I have had a crazy week so far, but last night was one of the most random and completely fun nights I have had in a long time. So, I am going to revert to one of my most tried and true formats and provide you the run down of my evening with lists of things that are awesome.
*There are two girls from Bavaria staying with us right now. They came in from Germany early yesterday morning after taking the night train. They are way cute hippie types, and they juggle. Excellent.
*We have another guy from Patagonia coming tomorrow. He lives in the place that the company that makes those backpacks is named after. I can't seem to get off of that fact. Yay cultural sensitivity! Gold star, Jen.
*I have heard back from 5 different groups in Ukraine now, all of whom seem interested in writing this grant. I am sending out another e mail today. We'll see what happens. This is all happening really fast, but money talks. So, I hope we can get something pulled together in the next week. I may have to call the woman at the OSI office in NY to see if we can't get an extra few days for this proposal. Do people do that? Blah. We'll see.
*I finally made it to the post office in Joszefvaros to pick up my Mp3 player. Its a little Creative Zen V. Its rad. Its my new favorite thing ever ever. I have been listening to the Murder City Devils all morning in the library. I am so in love with myself this morning.
*Both Tyler and Brigette came over last night (again). We went out to Szimpla to meet up with Sasha and a friend of his from Belarus who is visiting for the week. What a blastie.
*Budaman made us wait, but he came through, as usual.
*We actually managed to find a table that would sit all 8 of us. In the back too. We rule.
*Tyler, it turns out, is a sucker for Rock Paper Scissors for Pain. Do you know how long it has been since I have played an honest game of RPS4P? Since I last saw Kasia or Ligaya. It was so much fun. We started playing double throws, two on two, and then at one point, we had an 8 person 1-on-1 table wide game going, with 16 hands throwing at once. There was spitting. There was slapping. It was mayhem.
*Tyler and I have also started on a new social experiment. Sometime around 1am yesterday, we decided that it would be a good idea to sign up for a Hungarian online-dating service, and see who we get matched with. We will be keeping detailed records of all ensuing events. Tyler insists that he can get a diary of random Budapestian dating published in a poli sci journal. Whatever. Its still brilliant.
*Despite being out at the bar till super late and blowing off all my homework yesterday, I actually got to bed about 2 hours earlier than I have any night in the last 3 or 4 weeks. Even though I had class at 9 this morning, I am so super energetic from sleeping more than 4 hours. Holy crap last night was so much fun. I have been wigging out over this grant. I really needed it. But now I dont want to start working again. Its a vicious cycle.
*I have finally FINALLY found a way into iWiW.hu, the invitation-only Hungarian myspace-like online thingy. Did that sentance make any sense? I dunno. But check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwiw
*Bill is coming out in like 3 weeks. I am so F'ing excited. I can't even tell you.
*I just found out about a student conference in L'viv at the end of March. It is actually taking place over 3 days in which I do NOT have friends or family coming into BP, which is nothing short of a miracle. The cost is only 5 euro for participating (did I say student conference?) which includes accomodation and food. The only thing I would have to cover is travel, which by train to L'viv is about $25. Sweet. I am trying to talk everyone I know into applying. It sounds super rad.
*I totally failed to call my mom on her birthday. It was yesterday. I suck. I made 20 different plans to set aside a time to do it, and something just came up. By the time I got home at lke 10, it was all I could do to figure out where the couch was in my house. Major boo on me. HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY MOM! xoxo
There was indeed Christmas in Budapest (the booze narrative)
Ok, for starters, this is the first of a series of blog entries that I have been meaning to make for a little while. I'm playing catch up, so bear with me here. Second, I would really like to insist that I have actually NOT been drinking the copious amounts of alcohol that reading this blog might make you think I do. I'm not a drunk, my liver is fine, I just get really excited about liquor sometimes. Really excited. I mean, what do you expect me to do when people bring GORGEOUS stuff like this in to my life? I mean seriously. SERIOUSLY! I dont even remember what we had for dinner. But I remember every drop of liquid that hit my tongue.
For starters, I had just gotten back from my trip to Warsaw with Kasia. I had brought back an assortment of goodies, including two of my favorite vodkas ever (and I fancy myself kind of a vodka snob, so know that I take these products very seriously.) The first is Siwucha, which is apparently a Slavic word for 'moonshine'. This vodka comes sealed with a cork, and demands commitment. The first time I ever enjoyed this stuff was in Portland when Kasia brought back a bottle, and she and Lauren and I sat on the stoop of the pink house and cleaned the whole thing off in one evening. We didn't move from that stoop for hours, and had the most hilarious time ever. I am so in crazy love with that evening.
Then there is the Zubrowka, the vodka infused with Bison Grass. This stuff is so delicious, I can't even tell you. But I can try. It's sooo delicious. It is discussed in Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge:
It smells of freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it's soft on the palate and so comfortable, it's like listening to music by moonlight.
Then came the home brew. Kristina was one of our dinner guests/esteemed cooks for the evening. She brought with her a huge bottle of tuica that her brother had distilled from plums in her backyard in Romania. Oh, wait, maybe I didn't say that clearly enough....ahem DISTILLED FROM PLUMS THAT GROW WILD IN HER GARDEN IN ROMANIA. My god it was beautiful. It was a strong liquor, like palinka, but so sweet and tart, like the fruit. By the time we drank it, it had little alcohol left in it, because before she served it, she simmered it with black peppercorns and then served it hot. Here, she is going to hate this picture, but its the only one I have of the moment!
We were also serving hot mulled wine and all the beer that could be drug in the door. It was a crazy evening, what with all the food and drink. We had a lot of people over to help too. Stephen's rad girlfriend Meghan was in town: As well as Emrah, who was with us for a couple of days from Hospitality Club: Heh, that guy was a lot of fun. We didn't get nearly enough time to run around while he was here...stupid papers and whatnot.
We also had all of Tyler's family was in from California as well. It was a full house. For sure. We are still figuring out which leftovers in the fridge are from that day. My goodness.
So, a lot of the rioting nonsense of the last few weeks has died down, at least in public. November 4th was supposed to be a big day of mayhem. My University even shut down its facilities because it expected trouble in the 5th district. Nothing like that happened though. There was a huge, candle-lit march down Andrassy Utca, which went right by our front door. People crammed shoulder to shoulder on a 4 lane road for at least 45 minutes. The local news put the number of people at about half a million. It was pretty amazing. It was supposed to be a FIDESZ march, but most people said that they came out in support of a democratic government (ie, not Gyurcsani) and in protest of police violence of the past few weeks.
Police violence. There has been a lot of it. More and more videos keep popping up from the inner city here, and they are really kind of mindblowing. Like this one, where the cops swarm a single guy, beat the holy crap out of him, and leave him there:
What? Seriously...what? What the hell is that? How are people not being stripped of their badges right and left? The government is even backing police behavior, saying that they acted within their scope and with discretion to serve the public order. My ass.
There was also an incident that I found totally unbeleivable the first time I heard about it, until I found an article on Chew.hu about it.
Around 7:30 p.m. [on October 23], a police van stopped in front of the building and between eight and ten officers jumped out. Two attacked guests sitting on the terrace, the others entered the restaurant, shouting, "We'll beat up everyone's heads, you rotten filth!" They attacked the guests, including foreigners, and also the cook working at an another restaurant next door...[T]eargas was then fired into the restaurant, the door was shut in the face of the owner, a woman, and the officers left.
There is even a paragraph at the end of the article about two Americans who ended up hiding in the bathroom for hours to keep away from the police attacks. Good gravy.
AND to top it all off, I have been sick for like 4 weeks now. Its mono. Its not mono. Its bacterial. Its not bacterial. No one can tell me what is wrong with me. They only tell me to go home and rest, which I dont do. I do not rest. I do not stop and slow down. This is not my bag. And during midterms no less. I have already been to campus twice today, despite my house arrest, and that is another part of why I am in such a bad mood.
I asked David Berliner to advise my thesis project this year. He's rad. He's an old school, Malinowskian, emperical, field-work driven anthropologist. And he's hilarious, and smart, and great to work with, and totally loves me. AND he's fully skipping out of Budapest in January to pick up a tenure track position back in Belgium. I almost threw my coffee mug out the window I was so mad. Working with David was really going to make my year (and my project for that matter).
He is being really kind and generous and helping me work out another reasonable advisor. He's helping me piece together my whole thesis board actually, which is really helpful, especially since his pending sorti means he can talk shit about the department and tell me who to go to and who to avoid for this or that. He's also offering to edit my drafts as the year goes on. I am totally taking him up on this. If I can't list him on the official page, I at least want to mark his involvement in the acknowledgements.
But, as they say in Belgium, c'est la vie. At least I got to meet the guy. He was part of the reason why I decided to come here. I got a good semester out of him, I guess. And he described me as "a brilliant student" who is "really promising" today. I don't know if that was consilliatory pillow-talk, but hopefully that means he's down to keep in contact in the future as I go back to school and keep returning to Europe for fieldwork. We'll see. In the mean time, I'm too busy brooding about it. And I have midterm papers to write.
Ok, no more stalling. I have a long date with Appadurai for the next few hours, then I am proverbially drinking myself into a proverbial stupor when the election returns come in. Stephen and I are going to gather around the streaming NPR broadcast and cry into each other for the political sake of Texas and Ohio. Have I mentioned that Rick Perry is a major jerk wad? Well, now I have. And I mean that in the most academic sense possible. I think the term was coined by Gramsci, but don't quote me on that.
Oh, but one good thing did happen in the last week. We had Kate. Have I mentioned Kate? Probably not, cause I suck. She's in all of our Halloweed pictures. She's from Australia and is backpacking her way through Europe. She stayed with us for nearly a week. She was so rad. She became housemate #5, and its really odd and kinda sad not to have her here anymore. She got to put up with us being big ninnies who couldn't go out to see the city with her because of mid-term work, but she did manage to spawn adventures to Kerepesi Cemetary on All Saints Day, which was pretty bad-ass, as well as a trip to the flea markets by Keleti Palyaudvar, which we hadn't made it to yet. She left a big mark on the house. Not the least of which is one of my favorite pictures ever taken in our living room. My god, we're hilarious. We miss you Kate!
So, we have a house guest. His name is Emrah, and he is from Turkey. He is a student and is in Budapest for a bio tech conference. Marko met this guy through Hospitality Club. He was supposed to stay with him in Ankara when he was traveling over the summer. Now, we get to actually return the favor. We also get to offer our well honed direction-giving skills to show people how not to get to the 12th district by bus on a Sunday night. We rule! He also came bearing gifts, not the least of which was a bottle of rake, which is a Turkish liquor made from grapes and anise. You mix it with water and it turns white, like ouzo, but it doesn't taste like ouzo. In fact, it tastes kind of like heaven.
He also brought along a huge box of baklava. It was so full of amazing. We gorged on the stuff. We were in the middle of studying when Emrah showed up, so Stephen was able to grab a few shots of our working and eating, including this beaut: Ha! When will Said jokes stop being funny? Never.
Oh, ok, so I promised pictures of these damned protests ages and ages ago. I will post those soon. I promise. Right now, I have to go finish that book in the picture above. And its already 11, cause Luc, Sasha, Brigette, Spencer, Asa, and Asa's girlfriend Nurit all came over to watch Rabbit Proof Fence, and we ended up hanging out for ever because Stephen made food, and then Marko downloaded the Disney Educational Film about Nazi Germany called "Education For Death" which we just had to see. You yourself can see it here or try the viewer below. Depending on your browser, one will probably work better than the other. It is NOT to be missed, I swear.
But anyway, its late, so I will just leave you with this one of the riot cops in front of parliament. Ah, the EU flag flies high....
Location: Ukrainian Village, Chicago, Illinois, United States
I am addicted to donuts.
I love running around after dark.
I am a beer snob and a vodka nerd.
I change my hair color alot.
Sometimes junior highers make more sense to me than anyone else in the world.
I am really good at finding neat things in dumpsters.
I can fix your bike for you.
I people watch.
I keep plants.
Whatever I am doing, I would rather be in the water.
Heh, that guy was a lot of fun. We didn't get nearly enough time to run around while he was here...stupid papers and whatnot.
