critical mastiff

It was the best pun I could think of, and it doesn't even make sense. It's three am and we didn't leave the house all day and I drank coffee around dinnertime and I think I can hear our neighbors having sex. So yeah, figured I should update. Besides the fact that we rented bikes and participated in one of Budapest's twice-a-year Critical Mass(es), this week has been more just general good drunken times and various nightlife. So maybe I'll talk a little bit about the everyday.

Our Evolution of European Political Systems professor is named Bank Boros. His first name is not pronounced like the money lending and protecting business that is currently and massively failing back in my home country, but instead like the onomatopoeia "bonk". It has become a common phrase in our vocabularly, e.g. "these french fries are bonk" or "hit the bonk!" He is a small man who wears military-colored dress shirts that are too big for him, has startlingly bulgy blue eyes, and punctuates every sentence with an alarming amount of of deep, drawn out "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh"s. He is really smart and totally badass (he's a political scientist who commentates on Hungarian television), but our entire class (of 7 students) almost completely lost it when he hit "um" number 59 on Wednesday. Kelsey tried to cover up her laughter with coughing but it was of no use, and Carolina, attempting to come to her aid, was soon reduced to giggles as well, while Andrew hid behind his notebook, and I thanked God I sat in the back of the room where my doodle of his face and a speech bubble of "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" could not be seen by anyone. I then imagined my dog dying to ensure that I would control myself.

Feri ("like a little blue Fairy, you see?"-Feri) is our Hungarian professor. He is a hilarious old man who doesn't teach Hungarian so much as tease us, make sarcastic comments, and drop mad wisdom. I love him, and am sad that class will be ending soon. However, I don't think he's ever taught a language before, so he basically stands in front of the board and asks us what words we want to know. Rather ineffective. We got him to talk about nudity and love at first sight for almost an entire class period. Egesegdre.

We thought Contemporary Hungarian Culture was going to be all fun, games, wine tasting, and goulash slurping, but so far we've just been learning about the history of Hungary. It's really interesting, but it's also really fucking depressing. The country has only had its own independence for about fifty years of its ENTIRE HISTORY. There were some in there after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and there's been 19 or whatever since the Iron Curtain fell, but other than that it's just been conquering after land cropping after communist regime. People are still bitter about losing 2/3 of their land to the surrounding countries after WW1, and it's crazy to look at all the old people on the street (and even the regular-aged people too!) and think that for most of their lives, they lived through a dictatorship that was even Orwellian at times. Speaking of the old people, for some reason the ones we've been seeing here are so goddamn cute! And they're way more out and about, you know? You'd never see some shriveled old man riding his bicycle to an antique store in a suit in the states. Or just, like, chillin on their stoop and staring piercingly at everyone who walks by. Anyway, 1945 through 1989 were some rough years, and you can tell just by interacting with people at stores and stuff, that they aren't really over it yet. Weird, too, that we can learn it thoroughly in our history class, but it's clear that we won't really ever understand what they've been through. Even the teachers sort of talk to us like "yeah, yeah, okay, I'm telling you all this, but you're a 20-year-old American, there's really no point."

Last night some guy we met on the street was like, you guys bought horrible wine. We were like, yeah, it's fuckin cheap! He was all, you could get some much better wine for 800 ft (less than two dollars more than we paid for it). So we was like, whateva, we don't give a fuck! In the past week we've drinken (drank, drunk, drunken, dranken?) exactly one bottle of wine we found on the street (opened, but full) and three beers we found at a bar and on surrounding tables(opened, but full. mostly). I have like 4 dollars in my bank account. But it's cool, I got a hamburger bigger than my face (literally) at an American style diner called Feeling. Dank.

oooooh, the gypsies are out!!

Yesterday a strange phenomenon appreared. Piles of trash and abandoned household items crowding every street I walked down. Old torn furniture, outdated electronics, forgotten dolls and stuffed animals, garage sale clothing, gutted cupboards and doors, and any other scrapped piece of home imaginable constituted piles that were bigger than trucks. Watching the pile in front of our apartment from the window, we noticed that there was hardly a moment when hunched and babushka-ed women or their male counterparts weren't meticulously picking through these piles.

As I walked to a cafe and back along different side streets today, I noticed that some of the pile-pickers (still out in full force) had settled in with their piles, and seemed to be camping out and guarding them. Though I saw some stuff (old typewriter!!, weird dolls) that I wanted, it did not seem like a good idea to reach into any of these piles for fear of being yelled at in Hungarian by a (gasp) gypsy. When Carolina and I reconvened, we talked over the situation and drew some conclusions:
-the pile-pickers were mostly gyspies
-they had left their gypsy possies to watch over their piles
-they would sort out the best stuff, and sell, haggle, or trade the goods for stuff from other gypsies' piles
-we still don't know why the trash was there in the first place

Carolina got a sick skateboard deck from an un-guarded pile though. with some wheels we might make it work. watch out.

*amended: we got the sickest street art on tabletop from a pile.
tomorrow we're goin pickin

PRAHA

Even two nights in Prague is a lot of nights in Prague. We took a 9 hour charter bus there with all the other Erasmus (study abroad) kids from France, Spain, Italy, and Finland, who take themselves too seriously and throw trash away in storm drains. A good omen welcomed us as soon as we stepped off the bus--the smell of marijuana. In fact, a group of homies was blazin it right in front of our hotel. If they hadn't been missing crucial teeth, or been Czech wiggas, we might have asked them for a puff, but we stuck to our senses and took it only as a good sign for the weekend to come.

One of our traveling friends from last weekend, Kyoo, an Army Ranger from San Jose who just finished his tour of duty in Iraq, told us we had to get to a place called Cross Club. He told us you could buy spliffs at the bar. When we looked it up online, it was said to resemble "the inside of a giant, robotic, sci-fi whale". Well, that's all you needed to tell us, we were determined to find this place. After crossing the Charles bridge, we stopped at the American Embassy, aka Starbucks, and asked the guy working there how to get to Cross Club. He told us that "people who work at Starbucks can't exactly go to places like that, if you know what I mean." We knew what he meant alright, and it was then that we pinky promised each other we would make it to Cross Club that night no matter what. But we started out by following Starbucky's directions to a bar called Shadow, nearby. Beer and alcohol are pretty cheap in Prague, or at least it seems like it when you can pay with 30 in coins. After drinking a bit, we once again smelled the aroma of DANK. Carolina, in a stunning display of No Shame '08, drew a weed leaf and a question mark on a piece of paper, and started walking around showing it to people until we came into possession of a roach. Extreme fun ensued. With more shmoozing, we got directions to Cross Club and the Czech words for "250" to tell any cab driver that would take us.

Cross Club was absolutely insane. We bought weed very quickly, then proceeded to move from awesome outdoor area to zen indoor area to crazy indoor area--what I would call the belly of the whale--smoking at every stop. There was a bumpin' concert going on so we decided to join it. I really don't know how to explain what was going on in there. Basically, crazy techno house beats while a guy rapped incredibly fast in Czech. He sounded like a digeridoo. All the while there are mechanical moving light machines and a generally outer-spacey atmosphere. It was awesome until we realized how fucking freaky it was. Then we were spit out of the whale, and left to wander the streets at 5:30am, realizing our hotel was in the red light district. (Later we got to see a homeless guy shooting up on the corner in broad daylight! It was beautiful).

Some sort of normalcy was restored the next day, as we wandered through the incredibly clean, disneyland-like tourist streets surrounding city center. It was definitely beautiful but (as there is a bit of a rivalry between Prague and Budapest), I would have to say the dirtiness of Budapest is much preferable to the tourist swarmed, souvenir shop studded streets of Prague. At the castle/church in the palace, there was about a 40 minute wait to go see a statue of baby jesus.

Carolina and I tried to meet up with our group, but ended up at the Museum of Medieval Torture alone. After more stumblings through the streets, and a newly purchased bottle of Jim Beam, we ended up on public transportation to our friends' hostel, following a 14 year old's directions, that he gave us in exchange for a swig of whiskey. Even in Europe, that kid looked to young to buy booze. Realizing 15 minutes later that we had no idea where we were, we deboarded the bus to find ourselves, once again, in front of Cross Club.
What followed was a sort of... I guess we'll go in again.... I guess we'll buy more weed... I guess we'll smoke out this ladybug... I guess we'll go dance again.... we should get the fuck out of here...
luckily, a friendly Prague coupled scooped us out of the hands of what looked to be a serial killer roaming the streets, and let us ride in their taxi to the hostel.

The bus ride home confirmed that all the foreign Erasmus kids think we're absolutely nuts.

sweating balls

What a weekend! In reality it is more of a week, since we only have three days of classes. I'm learning how easy it is to make new friends... in some cases it is as easy as saying "jo este" and waving to everyone you see. We ended up spending all weekend with a group of guys from Britain, Canada, Ireland, and San Jose, who met each other at their hostel. The Canadian (who it is fairly safe to say is insane) quickly developed a bromance with Baber, and spent all Friday (after crashing on our couch) getting wasted with him. From the moment they woke up at 4pm, they drank, drank, went to the liquor store, drank, got gyros, drank.... until passing out again around 1 am. I'm all for benders, but all they did was yell about midgets, Big Macs, internet LOLspeak, and how they're going to hell.

Yesterday was awesome, one of the USF mentors, Lazsi, took our whole group to rent giant orange bicycles that do all they can to announce that we are tourists. We then went on a 20 mile bike ride to a quaint little town called Szientendre. It was a long, hot ride, but pretty much flat the whole way. Besides being the most picturesque, cliche little European village ever, all we did was get some pizza and pickles (which are a staple side dish on many menus here, much to our delight). But it was so nice to be on a bicycle again. After getting back to Budapest around 9:30pm, the group decided to go home, change, shower, and meet back up at 11:30 at Szimpla (we need to find a new bar). Deciding to opt out on the shower/change, Carolina and I decided to ride our bikes to Margit Island (in the river between Buda and Pest) and drink a beer on the riverbank, since we had the bikes for 24 hours. It was lovely time save for the part where we were almost raped, murdered, and thrown in the river by a Hungarian tweaker. Well, I can't really be sure what he was up to, but he was completely not normal, did not have good intentions, and did have an accomplice hiding in the bushes. Luckily, we hopped on our bikes and got the fuck out of there. After our terrifying encounter, we needed another drink even though we were supposed to be meeting everyone very soon, so we stopped at B City Pub on the same block as our house, and met two British guys who had just gotten into town. We shared some Jim Beam and then tugged them along to Szimpla with us (made them run while we biked slowly).

Reuniting with hostel boys at Szimpla (which led to Baber staying the night at their hostel) solidified the three day long friendship we formed with them, and we met up with them again today at the baths to assuage the pain of the 90 and humid weather, then went out to the fanciest dinner I've ever gotten for under $20. It's really exciting to meet other people who are traveling Europe, and we'll actually be in Prague at the same time as them next weekend. At least for now, Carolina and I have altered our after-college goal to opening hostels around the world.

My goal for this week: spending no money. and sleeping more.

Egesegedre!

Last night we, against our better judgement, ended up at yet another outdoor club blasting the biggest club hits of 2005. We should have known it would suck balls when our Hungarian professor told us "that is where the high schoolers go, already drunk". In order to fit in, we chugged European malt liquor on the tram, consistently chanting the newest Hungarian word we've conquered, Egesegedre, which means cheers, and sounds like already-drunken mumbling. Anyways, Carolina spent most of her time talking to a goofy guy wearing a goofy yellow hat because he said he knew how to get marijuana, but all she remembers from the conversation was asking him whether he was the po-lice.

Which brings me to my newest second-favorite activity-- drunken skype prank calls.
First favorite? People watching. We were warned in "culture shock" class that people watching is Hungary's national pastime, and not to be alarmed if people just blatantly stare at us. Nice to know that we have free reign to stare at people as much as we want, which is an activity we practiced readily at the thermal baths today... most European thing I've ever done. Here's a picture of it, it was beautiful. I didn't take this picture though. Anyway, there are three pools, one of them is pretty warm, another is a normal pool, and the other is cool and refreshing. There's even a mini whirlpool you can go get swept around in circles in. you can see the corner of it on the very left edge of the picture.

Lots of hilarious old people in bathing suits, old men playing chess, speedos, thongs, the whole deal.

HIGHLIGHT of the day: old Hungarian men playing chess in the park, one old guy playing had his crack hanging out, and his old friend snuck up behind him and was tickling his crack with a leaf.

don't talk about gypsies

Today was our second day of legit classes, and it was pretty cool. Hungarian was fun as always, since our professor is this hilarious old sarcastic guy who just teases us (there are only 9 of us) all the time. Then we had Comteporary Issues in Central Europe, which seems like it's going to rule. Our professor is this very sweet, earnest man, and every class we're going to have a speaker on a different issue, including the former President of Hungary, and the former governor. That's pretty awesome? So after class, our professor, who clearly wanted to impress us and show us a good time as much as possible, took us to the library a block away from school. It used to be a palace, and now it's the sickest library ever. There are 15 reading rooms that are the most ornate, impressive, stately things I have ever seen. I'm going to go there and read or even just sit there, for sure (by the way, Fo Shor means something in hungarian, we can't remember what. But somethign to do with beer). Anyways, it was an incredible building to be inside of, and our professor was clearly delighted with how amazed we were by it. Then we went to an outdoor cafe to get drinks with him. Now Carolina and I are looking up flights to London for our 11 day Europe Extravaganza during our fall break in October, and watching MTV dubbed in Hungarian and drinking wine.

Oh yeah, so Carolina and I were making jokes about Gypsies stealing our stuff, until we found out that it's no joking matter. Apparently, the "Roma people", a nomadic ethnicity without a nationality, traditionally referred to as Gypsies, face incredible amounts of discrimination throughout Europe, but particularly in Italy, Bulgaria, and Hungary, where they have their largest minority population. The reason they face this adversity? Because they're Gypsies. Lying, stealing, tricky, dirty gypsies.
Well, no, not really. But I'm sort of unclear on this whole subject. Sounds like these people have been a pretty bad reputation in these parts, and have been pretty consistently fucked over. But according to Wikipedia, it's because they don't really follow laws. I dunno, they sound pretty badass to me. But we get to learn more about them this upcoming semester, so I'll be more informed.

Being abroad is draining my pocketbook.