This weekend featured the most overly-complicated visit to Tokaj ever.

Baldur and I were scheduled to take a train which would arrive in Tokaj at 6:10 in the evening, after which time we would meet Sarah, who was already there. At 6:08 the train stopped very briefly. We were indecisive about whether or not it was actually a train stop. Just before we could make up our minds to stand up and check it out, the train started moving.

I began acting clearly distressed, to the point where the man across from me asked where we wanted to get off, to which I responded, "Tokaj," to which he responded, "That's what I thought" (all in Hungarian!). He mentioned that, had he known, he could have helped us... My Hungarian was not sufficent to provide a response other than "Thanks."

We got off at the next stop, twenty minutes later. There was another train headed back in the direction we wanted to go in scheduled to leave in ten minutes. Being two square to hop on the train and wing it, we ran to the ticket counter, looked agitated for a couple of minutes, decided to get on the train sans tickets after all, ran back to the train, only to arrive at the platform exactly when it was pulling away... Fortunately for us, another train was leaving in an hour, so we got two tickets (each for less than you'd pay to take the metro once in NYC) and drank some train station beers (cheaper than the tickets!).

At 8:45 our local train chugged into Tokaj. This time I was smart enough to ask the friendly conductor which stop was ours (the fifth). We met up with Sarah, ate bean gulash soup (yum!) and drank some delicious Tokaj white wine. That part was good.

Sunday morning we woke up and enjoyed a leisurly breakfast in the Bacchus etterem, the only one in town that was open and that we hadn't visited yet. Before drinking more wine, we decided to scope out town... This took forty-five minutes, or approximately half the time it took to eat breakfast. When I pictured Tokaj, I imagined verdant vinyards stretching far as the eye can see, and rows of wine cellars, and dozens of restaurants serving hearty Hungarian cuisine. It is very cute, but really nothing like that at all. The three notable things about Tokaj are: 1. The cute houses, 2. A 500 meter high hill, 3. The site where the Bodrog (a small green river) flows into the Tisza (a larger, brown river). There are also some nice churches and a museum, but, it being Christian Europe and all, everything was closed.

We drink more wine! This was also a good part.

Around five or six, we think that maybe we should head back to Budapest... However, living in a city and being spoiled as a result, no one had thought to check any of the train times. So, we showed up only to find out that the last train had left twenty minutes before. Oops! This was more or less not a problem except for the fact that Baldur was supposed to be in class at 8:15 the next day... The only train that would sort of get us there on time left at 4:18 and involved one change of trains. Horry!

We had to find a new place to stay -- because late March is not tourist season, the one where we had stayed the night before had been more or less unheated. Certain members of our party were too cold; hence, plan B. From what we could tell, the first hotel had no space but their neighbors did. It was unclear whether we should call the neighbors or just show up, so we called another hotel instead. This place had space and wasn't too expensive, so we agreed to stay and started walking over.

On our way back to town, a car pulled up on the side of the road. The man inside (who spoke no English) said he had come from the hostel to pick us up. Seeing that we were skeptical and unwilling to hop in a car with a complete stranger in a small Hungarian town at night, he phoned up a woman who spoke some English... She and I negotiated; we were still skeptical; she also mentioned that the hostel was quite a ways out of town. We said no thanks and set out to find someplace else.

Eventually we passed one in town with the lights on, and things worked out well. It was a bit more expensive, but they had heating, comfortable beds, towels, internet access, and even breakfast in the morning (although this was moot for those of us waking up at quarter past three). We go to bed and sleep well.

There were two guys in the train station at four in the morning. One of them was just snoring a lot, but the other came over and tried to strike up a conversation... He might have asked where we came from, but I was understandable unwilling to talk to the kind of guy who wears grungy camouflage and sleeps in a train station before dawn, much less talk about being American. He didn't bother us anymore; the train came; we arrived in Budapest before eight. I slept from nine to eleven and have been on another planet ever since.

The end!

So -- I got back from the Fulbright's Berlin Conference Thursday afternoon, and subsequently enjoyed the shortest week ever. The Conference was really great, although admittedly moslty thanks to the people and the location. A lot of the panels were extremely German-centric, which I suppose makes sense in light of the fact that over four hudred of the five hundred plus participants were from Germany. There was one grab-bag panel with the touchy-feely title "European Dimensions" which seemed to be for everyone else. One of our Hungarians spoke, as well as a guy from Slovakia, someone in Spain, a woman from Sardinia (who is an archeologist! How cool is that?), someone from Norway, and (dull and out of place), a man doing research at the LSE. The topics discussed were wide-ranging; my favorite, and one we should have spent more time on, was the issue of language, and how important it might be to speak the language of your host country. I think another audience member put it best when she pointed out that professionally, she was doing a disservice if she did not speak English. Socially, however, you lose a lot by not speaking Hungarian (or, fill in the language of your host country here).

A topic which we also spent a great deal of time on (much too much, in my opinion) was the racism/descrimination/immigration aspect of the host countries. I don't mean at all to imply that it's not important -- quite the contrary. Discrimination is a *huge* problem accross Europe, albeit one that varries substantially from place to place. However, the nicest way I could describe forty-five Americans talking to each other about descrimination abroad is "worthless and futile." I get immensely cynical when I think about how many Fulbrighters get money each year to come to this or that country and study the Roma problem, or the Turkish problem, or pick-your-favorite-immigrant-group-in-your-favorite-country problem, and how little actually changes. I'm sure a lot of people start nice academic careers for themselves, and maybe some of them end up working for non-profits or what have you, but at the end of the day no number of do-gooder Yankies can increase anybody's tolerance, or further anyone's integration into society: the impetus has to come from within the communities themselves.

Another problem I see with Americans, based purely on my own limited experience, is the failure to recoginze that while race in America does have many superficial similarities to race problems in other countries, the substantial differences are what set them apart. Discrimination is bad; everyone should have equal access to quality education; hating people based on their racial or ethnic backround is not okay. Etc. etc. However, Americans coming in and screening videos about Martin Luther King Jr. or preaching about the Civil Rights Movement are worthless because Hungarians see no parallels whatsoever in this regard between the United States and Hungary. None.

Sorry about the rant! I'm sure I offended somebody.

In other news, my great plans to have a delicious sandwich for lunch went terribly awry when I made it last night and put the tomatoes in. It was really, really soggy.

Things are grey in Hungary!

We went to Kecskemét on Friday with Fulbright -- it's a small town (okay, there are maybe 120,000 people there, so it's more of a small city) with a ceramics studio and the Renowned Kodály School of Music. Apparently the Kodály method is very influential and unusual, although I have to admit that from the presentation we attended I couldn't totally gather what the method entailed... I think the belief that everyone should have access to music, and more singing in classrooms? I would support that. My early music education was more or less mediocre (although I did learn a number of patriotic American songs, which I remember to this day).

I leave for Berlin this Saturday. There is a Europe-wide Fulbright conference, although the participants are predominantly from Germany (there are SO MANY German Fulbrighters!) I think it will be good for me to travel. I am lazy and not good at organizing such things myself.

What else? I'm more or less set on staying in Hungary next year, although I have yet to line up a job... My friends here seem nonchalant about it, but talking to my parents stresses me out. I don't know how I will pay for health insurance, or where I will live, or how I will afford a ticket back to the States, or when... Oi vey.

Now I have to go try and talk to the registrar... Again... I have been trying for three weeks... The office is open two hours a day, four days a week, and the last time I went the woman I needed to see had taken an hour and a half coffee break. I don't get it.

Strange things about learning a new language: punctuation!

It wigs me out that not everyone uses the same punctuation I do. For example, Hungarians use the semicolon sparingly, if at all; however, they are extremly profliage with their exclamation points. For example, you use an exclamation point to begin a letter, even a formal one. You would also use it at the end of a statement like, "Prove this is true!" It makes my homework sound really exciting!

On the other hand, without the semicolon, we couldn't have English-language academia; how would people write their pretentious titles?

[Did I use that correctly? I thought it might be a stretch.]

I've been back in Budapest for three weeks now. It's been snowing on and off for most of that time, so things are pretty beautiful (and also rather cold). I walked home last week around two and things were perfect: big globules of snow everywhere, clinging to cars and buildings and blocking out the sound. I woke up the next day hoping to take pictures, but it was gone...

First thing's first! Here are degu:


I am getting one, pronto.


Classes this semester look like they'll be more or less good -- the ones that aren't shouldn't be complained about online. It's nice that I'm getting to a point where most of the material I'm covering overlaps; I feel almost competent.

Bullet points:
- I'm helping a friend with English. Teaching is hard!
- She is helping me with Hungarian. That's hard, too. I'm really going to put a lot of effort in this semester, though. I'm talking flashcards, workbooks -- the whole nine yards. I am going to be fluent in this language some day.
- I'm also going to take lessons once a week with some people from the Pecs summer program. Woot!
- I am working on making Hungarian friends. I went to a concert last Tuesday. It was great! Also a guy from class invited me to watch a seven-hour Hungarian art film at some point in the indeterminate future...
- February is getting a little slumpy, similar to November... I need new, fun things to do! Suggestions are welcome.
- Last but not least, we went to a pork festival:

Three days of Pechsi language school left to go... I can't say I'll be sad to stop waking up at six every morning, or throwing myself futilely against the Hungarian language, but I will be sorry to leave Pecs. I actually made a friend! Or, another friend, and one who is neither American nor a math student. I'm also learning a lot more Hungarian than I will next semester.

Apparently the director of our program gave my name to someone who works for the University newspaper -- she wants to interview me about the Winter Language School. In Hungarian. We'll see how it goes? If she asks me where I'm from, what my family does or what kind of beer is my favorite, I'm in the clear.

My other project for today is eating ostrich in a vaguely Western-themed restaurant with straw on the floor and two degu (a rabbit-sized rodent indigenous to Chile; it looks like an oversized gerbil) on display.

Still in Pecs at the moment. I was wrong about McCafe being the only place with internet cafe -- it turns out that cafes don't advertise internet around these parts is that all cafes have internet broadcast from the main square. Silly us!

Language courses are going well. The teachers even refuse to speak English to us (more or less), which is a treat. It does mean I'm pretty exhausted after six or seven hours of class. The main downside is perhaps that I eat breakfast around six and we don't eat lunch until two, but if that's the worst that's happened I'm doing pretty well.

We're also getting to know one or two (actually two) of the students -- I wish both of them lived in Budapest, rather than just one of them.

Today was a BAD Hungarian day. I went to the post office to pay for the language course (you pay bills at the post office) and tried to use a credit card, but they wanted a pin code... I had forgotten that American credit cards don't have pin codes but European ones do, so I just got flustered and confused and ended up paying with a different card I hadn't wanted to use.

I then went to another woman. I wanted to 1. buy stamps for two letters and 2. see if she had any tape I could close one of my letters with. I don't know the word for tape, or glue, or stamp, so I mimed some stuff unsucessfully. At least I understood when the woman got an attitude and said, "I don't know what she wants" to the man behind me in line. It's a post office, woman, and I'm waving letters around! What do you think I want! I did manage to get stamps but I only had enough change to pay for one letter... Hopefully it gets sent.

Over and out!