I started to write this blog once, but lost it. I started with something about wanting roasted garlic. So Romania. I took the train on Monday night and rode with this Skiboarder girl from Prauge who was going to complete in the Romanian Skiboard world cup, which she won last year. When I get the results of the competition i will let you know how she did. When i got in to Brasov I caught a bus from the train station and found my hostel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%C5%9Fov about Brasov
The hostel was nice, not real strict about checkin times, a little dog lived there, they had american television that was subtitled in Romanian, and it was super cheap about $17 us. So i found the hostel, dropped off my stuff, and went to explore the town of Brasov. It had snowed the whole night onthe train and during that day it snowed gently, and it was lovely. Not to cold, but much colder than Budapest. It also took me two hours in a bank to change travelers checks. In the evening, i went back to the hostel, made some pasta and knit a whole fingerless glove. The next day i got up early, took a bus to the Autogarta 2 (Big bus station) and then a bus to Bran. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Castle Bran is the town that Bran Castle is in and is the castle the communists told everyone was Dracula's castle. Do you know what this means kids? Lots of stupid junk with dracula on it. I am now to t-shirts richer. Also the money in Romania is not worth much in compairison to the US dollar, so i had so much money i seemed to have trouble getting rid of it all. At the bottom of the hill that Bran Castle is on there is a little village market full of locals selling the dumb dracula stuff. But also they are selling their handknits. There were knitters everywhere. All over women were stitching. Also the first thing i bought there was sheep cheese. Nice. After all this i took the bus back to Brasov and then took the train overnight (another 10 hours) back to budapest and Julie. I awoke her with cake as a celeabatory gift. The next two days were walked all through Budapest, the jewish district and yesterday all around the castle. You should see the pictures on Facebook. Also yesterday was Big trash day that ment that people save up their bag trash like furnature and stuff for these two days of the month, and of course everyone goes through these huge piles of junk on the street. Old junk. Pre soviet junk. Junk. We also went out last night after dinner at Heather's. This included lots of talking about the importance of Pherimones and trying to convince someone that they do exsist. Did i mention earlyer that day i met with two hungarian knitters and we all knit in public, which they don't do here. We are meeting next week before i leave for Vienna. Anyway. I need a call for addresses. Send them to me.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Sometimes you just get burnt out of blogging
I happens you know, the burnt out from writing. I was doing so much and then i took a week off. Whatever. Lets catch up:
Sunday Feb 10th:
Julie has some school work to do so I went to Buda. For those of you that don't know Budapest was two citys seperated by the Danube. Buda was the town for nobals and what not, Pest was for the working man. Obuda (old Buda) is somewhere behind Buda and has sort of been tacked on to it. For the longest time, you had to take a boat to get to the other city. How about a little history:
Széchenyi lánchíd or Széchenyi Chain Bridge is a suspension bridge that spans River Danube between Buda and Pest, the west and east side of Budapest. The first bridge across the Danube in Budapest, it was designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark in 1839, after Count István Széchenyi's initiative in the same year, with construction supervised locally by Scottish engineer Adam Clark (no relation). It opened in 1849, thus became the first bridge in the Hungarian capital. At the time, its center span of 202 m was one of the largest in the world. The pairs of lions at each of the abutments were added in 1852. It is popular culture in Hungary to point out that the lions in fact have no tongues.
And julie has pointed it out to me about the toungues, and about how the guy who made the lions was so pissed because he thought they were perfect that when someone mentioned this no tongue thing to him he threw himself from the bridge.
Anyway, Buda is much better to look at than Pest so i went over their and just walked in the winding hilly streets and took pictures of stuff. After a while i went back over to where Julie's school is, sat by the Danube and ate an orange. I watched some trick bicycle guys land on things on just their back tire. When Julie was finished working we went shopping for food. This was the most difficult thing i have done since my arrival. I figured it couldn't be that hard, you know what food looks like you don't need to speak the language. No wrong. Way to many people and way to much food that didn't look quite right. Not the best time, but it was a learning experience. I love this mayo in a tube thing.
Monday Feb 11th:
Julie was in class and working most of this week, like you do when your getting your masters. So i went to a big ass cemetery. The Kerepesi Temeto (the kereps cemetery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerepes_cemetery Read up on it if your into it. Whatever. There are huge tombs here, and a Monument that says in Hungarian "I Died for Communisum" Um ya. Some of the first tomb were higher off the ground than the later stuff so the graves along the walls are at the most five feet off the ground. Very strange. And the grave yard is behind the largest shopping mall i have ever seen, Although Julie and I discussed it and she has seen Bigger. Then we watched this great film called "The lives of others" I slept through part of it (not because it wasn't good but because i just fall asleep all time), but what i saw of it was fanastic.
Tuesday Feb 12th:
I went to the Magyar Fotografusok Haza KHT ( the hungarian photographer museum) today. It was in this fanastic building. Not well organised through, since the plate under the photographs didn't have the name of the photographer on them. So i really don't know what i was looking at. http://www.maimano.hu/index_en.html I also went to the Arkad to hunt for yarn, and found a very little. Bad acrylic yarn. At this rate my yarn standards will drop fast. I met Julie and Heather for a drink and then Julie and I come home and ate in the cafe in the dorm. Dorm food it was been too long. Julie got some weird dessert that we really never figured out just what it was.
Wednesday Feb 13th:
I went on the great yarn hunt today. I ended up in three fabric stores with little selections of yarn. The last one had this fantastic woman who spoke great english and told me where a could find a knitting group.
Thursday Feb 14th:
Snow really? Suckers!
I finally went to the art museum. Nice museum full of Italian, Flemish, and Spanish masters, but no Hungarian Masters. That's because their isn't any. http://www.hung-art.hu/index-en.html Here is some hungarian art history. Eat it up. I am interested in what the Hungarians were doing in terms of art in their repressed setting. I am a dork. I know. We also ate mexican food. Well i had a burger. How weird is that, eating at a mexian resterant in hungary. They don't even have mexicans here. They don't know what mexican is.
Friday Feb 15th:
I had a yarn date with an american student from, get this, washington state. She is going to school in the states about two hours from the farm in leavenworth. Strange. So we went to a communist themed pizza place in Buda. I'm saying communist theme, too soon right. I guess not. Good pizza. Oh they serve the sauce on the side and chilled instead of on the pie. So this girl was a physics major and i knitter so we talked about physics, knitting, and washington. It was nice. Her hungarian was fantastic, i'm not sure how, so she could read me the menu and talk to the waiter. Then i popped in on Julie at the archive and tried to take a nap on a table like i was in high school again. I have been tired all the time, i think i'm not getting some important stay awake nutrient. I bet that nutrient is bacon. Um bacon. Sorry i'm hungary. So we went to the market, and then Heather's to make dinner for everyone. Really Julie cooked and I knitted and talked about sheep and cheese and how cool it is. Julie gets in zen when she chops veggies so she wasn't listening anyway. We all had dinner, and then went and saw the drag show. This was unlike any drag show you have ever seen. The American owner of the bar is a hermafidite (i spelled that wrong), so looks like a woman, sings like MeatLoaf, adn i do mean the overweight singer from the 90's. And i won't do that. But she would and she did, in fact she prerecored all this low-toned singing and then lipsyned to herself singing, in women's underwear. At first i thought it was she wasn't serious, it was like a farce. No mamn. Serious. Oh with a dancer in the back ground who was doing some type of intertive dance. If you remeber (or where around) for the crazy woman in Chapel Hill with the breathing noises and trip home full of bird calls, your getting close. I would rank that up there with that.
Satuday Feb 16th:
I have been doing this crap all day. And now the day is almost over, at least the sun is moving on the way down. I finished knitting the biggest floppy beret yesterday. Lord have mercy on my soul. Hot dogs it is.
Sunday Feb 10th:
Julie has some school work to do so I went to Buda. For those of you that don't know Budapest was two citys seperated by the Danube. Buda was the town for nobals and what not, Pest was for the working man. Obuda (old Buda) is somewhere behind Buda and has sort of been tacked on to it. For the longest time, you had to take a boat to get to the other city. How about a little history:
Széchenyi lánchíd or Széchenyi Chain Bridge is a suspension bridge that spans River Danube between Buda and Pest, the west and east side of Budapest. The first bridge across the Danube in Budapest, it was designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark in 1839, after Count István Széchenyi's initiative in the same year, with construction supervised locally by Scottish engineer Adam Clark (no relation). It opened in 1849, thus became the first bridge in the Hungarian capital. At the time, its center span of 202 m was one of the largest in the world. The pairs of lions at each of the abutments were added in 1852. It is popular culture in Hungary to point out that the lions in fact have no tongues.
And julie has pointed it out to me about the toungues, and about how the guy who made the lions was so pissed because he thought they were perfect that when someone mentioned this no tongue thing to him he threw himself from the bridge.
Anyway, Buda is much better to look at than Pest so i went over their and just walked in the winding hilly streets and took pictures of stuff. After a while i went back over to where Julie's school is, sat by the Danube and ate an orange. I watched some trick bicycle guys land on things on just their back tire. When Julie was finished working we went shopping for food. This was the most difficult thing i have done since my arrival. I figured it couldn't be that hard, you know what food looks like you don't need to speak the language. No wrong. Way to many people and way to much food that didn't look quite right. Not the best time, but it was a learning experience. I love this mayo in a tube thing.
Monday Feb 11th:
Julie was in class and working most of this week, like you do when your getting your masters. So i went to a big ass cemetery. The Kerepesi Temeto (the kereps cemetery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerepes_cemetery Read up on it if your into it. Whatever. There are huge tombs here, and a Monument that says in Hungarian "I Died for Communisum" Um ya. Some of the first tomb were higher off the ground than the later stuff so the graves along the walls are at the most five feet off the ground. Very strange. And the grave yard is behind the largest shopping mall i have ever seen, Although Julie and I discussed it and she has seen Bigger. Then we watched this great film called "The lives of others" I slept through part of it (not because it wasn't good but because i just fall asleep all time), but what i saw of it was fanastic.
Tuesday Feb 12th:
I went to the Magyar Fotografusok Haza KHT ( the hungarian photographer museum) today. It was in this fanastic building. Not well organised through, since the plate under the photographs didn't have the name of the photographer on them. So i really don't know what i was looking at. http://www.maimano.hu/index_en.html I also went to the Arkad to hunt for yarn, and found a very little. Bad acrylic yarn. At this rate my yarn standards will drop fast. I met Julie and Heather for a drink and then Julie and I come home and ate in the cafe in the dorm. Dorm food it was been too long. Julie got some weird dessert that we really never figured out just what it was.
Wednesday Feb 13th:
I went on the great yarn hunt today. I ended up in three fabric stores with little selections of yarn. The last one had this fantastic woman who spoke great english and told me where a could find a knitting group.
Thursday Feb 14th:
Snow really? Suckers!
I finally went to the art museum. Nice museum full of Italian, Flemish, and Spanish masters, but no Hungarian Masters. That's because their isn't any. http://www.hung-art.hu/index-en.html Here is some hungarian art history. Eat it up. I am interested in what the Hungarians were doing in terms of art in their repressed setting. I am a dork. I know. We also ate mexican food. Well i had a burger. How weird is that, eating at a mexian resterant in hungary. They don't even have mexicans here. They don't know what mexican is.
Friday Feb 15th:
I had a yarn date with an american student from, get this, washington state. She is going to school in the states about two hours from the farm in leavenworth. Strange. So we went to a communist themed pizza place in Buda. I'm saying communist theme, too soon right. I guess not. Good pizza. Oh they serve the sauce on the side and chilled instead of on the pie. So this girl was a physics major and i knitter so we talked about physics, knitting, and washington. It was nice. Her hungarian was fantastic, i'm not sure how, so she could read me the menu and talk to the waiter. Then i popped in on Julie at the archive and tried to take a nap on a table like i was in high school again. I have been tired all the time, i think i'm not getting some important stay awake nutrient. I bet that nutrient is bacon. Um bacon. Sorry i'm hungary. So we went to the market, and then Heather's to make dinner for everyone. Really Julie cooked and I knitted and talked about sheep and cheese and how cool it is. Julie gets in zen when she chops veggies so she wasn't listening anyway. We all had dinner, and then went and saw the drag show. This was unlike any drag show you have ever seen. The American owner of the bar is a hermafidite (i spelled that wrong), so looks like a woman, sings like MeatLoaf, adn i do mean the overweight singer from the 90's. And i won't do that. But she would and she did, in fact she prerecored all this low-toned singing and then lipsyned to herself singing, in women's underwear. At first i thought it was she wasn't serious, it was like a farce. No mamn. Serious. Oh with a dancer in the back ground who was doing some type of intertive dance. If you remeber (or where around) for the crazy woman in Chapel Hill with the breathing noises and trip home full of bird calls, your getting close. I would rank that up there with that.
Satuday Feb 16th:
I have been doing this crap all day. And now the day is almost over, at least the sun is moving on the way down. I finished knitting the biggest floppy beret yesterday. Lord have mercy on my soul. Hot dogs it is.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Who knew this country was a thief?
Yesterday was mostly a good day. I slept the whole night and felt super rested when we got up around 10am. We went to the Open Society Archives so Julie could watch silent black and white home movies from hungary in the 50's. She has to do a project where she comments on gender stereotypes from these films. We found this section that was christmas morning and this little girl of five or six is given the gift of a your first washroom set. At some point while we were waiting for the archive to retreave the tapes we went and had lunch at a cafeteria called Rosevelt's. At this point i dropped my opened bottle of 7up under the table of three unsuspecting ladies, whom all got sprayed with it one in the face. This is all Tom's fault, one of julie's friends here, because i recognized him and got excited and allowed the beverage to jump from the tray. We went back to the Archives after lunch, which has this exibit in it about taxonomy http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/catalogue/2008/linnaeus/index.html
and had some birds living in a cage their. Their chirping added to the ambiance of the building. Then we went to the Szent Istvan Bazilika and saw his shriveled, severed hand. Fun. http://www.basilica.hu/ Check it out. Severed hand of a saint. nice. Here is a whole history of Saint Stephen of Hungary if you are interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_I_of_Hungary Then we went to the Nagycsarnok, which is a big open market in a Turkeh style building. We bought lots of fruit and Vifon which is like oddles of noodles. I stood next to a gutted and possibly salted suckling pig. Then we went to heather's flat (julie's friend heather, and now my friend heather) and made dinner. I brought cheese which was complicated to buy since i know all this stuff about cheese but can not read the labels. There seems to be some local sheep cheese very simalir to the fresh cheese i made in washington. i'm not too sure yet but i am investigating. Dinner was nice and i met lots of people from Croatia. We took the night train home and someone was checking tickets on the commuter train which they seem to never do. When we got back to the dorm my luggage had arrived. Super, except for the fact that things are missing from my bag. Important things. The chargers to my camera and portable hard drive. What the fuck. So angry about this. I yelled a little bit. So i filled a complant. Oh and my pentax got beat on a little so the lens cap is fused to the lens. Great. I also remembering other stuff that was in the bag but now is not. Like my pack of Qtips, and a couple of pounds in change. Are they that desperate for Qtips here, really! So i ordered new ones so they will get here before i leave. I hope. Julie and i have a game, mainly it's my game and i force julie to play. I see a woman on the street that in america you could peg as a gay woman, and i say look she was a gay, and then julie shoots me down. But yesterday i did see one we both agreed as a gay. And i saw one black man.
so
B=1 L=1
Today i felt awful and slept most of the day. Then in the afternoon we tried to go to the geocery store but it was closed. I saw a duck sleeping on a shopping cart that is stuck in the water in this litte river right next to a camp of Roma's (which are gypsys that hungarians don't seem to like). Now i'm just trying to find a yarn store here which does not seem to exist. But i will find it it is my quest.
and had some birds living in a cage their. Their chirping added to the ambiance of the building. Then we went to the Szent Istvan Bazilika and saw his shriveled, severed hand. Fun. http://www.basilica.hu/ Check it out. Severed hand of a saint. nice. Here is a whole history of Saint Stephen of Hungary if you are interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_I_of_Hungary Then we went to the Nagycsarnok, which is a big open market in a Turkeh style building. We bought lots of fruit and Vifon which is like oddles of noodles. I stood next to a gutted and possibly salted suckling pig. Then we went to heather's flat (julie's friend heather, and now my friend heather) and made dinner. I brought cheese which was complicated to buy since i know all this stuff about cheese but can not read the labels. There seems to be some local sheep cheese very simalir to the fresh cheese i made in washington. i'm not too sure yet but i am investigating. Dinner was nice and i met lots of people from Croatia. We took the night train home and someone was checking tickets on the commuter train which they seem to never do. When we got back to the dorm my luggage had arrived. Super, except for the fact that things are missing from my bag. Important things. The chargers to my camera and portable hard drive. What the fuck. So angry about this. I yelled a little bit. So i filled a complant. Oh and my pentax got beat on a little so the lens cap is fused to the lens. Great. I also remembering other stuff that was in the bag but now is not. Like my pack of Qtips, and a couple of pounds in change. Are they that desperate for Qtips here, really! So i ordered new ones so they will get here before i leave. I hope. Julie and i have a game, mainly it's my game and i force julie to play. I see a woman on the street that in america you could peg as a gay woman, and i say look she was a gay, and then julie shoots me down. But yesterday i did see one we both agreed as a gay. And i saw one black man.
so
B=1 L=1
Today i felt awful and slept most of the day. Then in the afternoon we tried to go to the geocery store but it was closed. I saw a duck sleeping on a shopping cart that is stuck in the water in this litte river right next to a camp of Roma's (which are gypsys that hungarians don't seem to like). Now i'm just trying to find a yarn store here which does not seem to exist. But i will find it it is my quest.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Where does the luggage go?
Ok the plane ride sucked. Not at first, at first it was nice. There were very little people on the plane. I had three seats all to myself. And i got to watch Rattatooe and Vanity Fair and have a nice pasta dinner. Then i didn't sleep. For hours. And right at the moment when i went out they turned the lights on for landing. So we land and i hike six miles to the terminal. Litterally. Then i have to go through security again. Then they don't post the gate my plane is leaving from. Then the plane is late. Then after i arrive in the budapest airport, no luggage. Where does the luggage go? Supposabley they didn't put it on the plane in london and it should come with the five o clock flight. They should deliver said luggage to the dorm by tomarrow morn. If not i'm going to raise hell. Lot's of it. Julie picked my up at the airport, and we had this intense moment in the airport. Both of us crying and people looking on. It seems hungarians don't really show these kind of emotions in public, but they do love to make out on public transport. She led me to your dorm through the metro and some buses. Then we talked and talked. Then i lost control and took a nap. In fact we both did. After the nap we both went into the buda part of the city (the nice part) and met some of julie's schoolmates for dinner. In this strange bar in the jewish district that had packing plant flaps over the doors and strange old furniture in it. I might have been a old factory or apartment complex. I had the fish sandwich, which was a half a baggete with tuna fish on it and then covered in cheese and warmed. Not too bad for three dollars or so. Then we sat and talked a while and then walked home. I am so tired. Why am i still awake.
*note for alanna: no blisters yet but i don't think we factored in how the boots combined with wool sock would equal the constant rubbing off of my leg hair. How were you to know, since you don't have any.*
*note for alanna: no blisters yet but i don't think we factored in how the boots combined with wool sock would equal the constant rubbing off of my leg hair. How were you to know, since you don't have any.*
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The space between car and plane
The space between car and plane
I swear the name of this post must have been a song writen by a hipster. Maybe Death Cab for Cutie. Today i leave for plane. Am I ready? i don't even know that. I am mostly pack up except for that last stuff. And i need to take a shower but i'm doing this instead. I went and hung out with my favorite person Justin the other night. He told me that he read my previous blog sort of since he mainly just scans for his name when he reads a b.l.o.g. So for you JUSTIN! I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU! We went to play pool and i saw this guy i knew in high school. I hate to say that i love being the person who has only gotten better with age. Nothing is more of a rush than being the one who has gotten hotter. Anyway. I will blog from the other side.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The trip begins
So the trip begins. Day one I break down in Virginia and my parents have to come get me. I know i told everyone i was leaving thursday morning. I didn't leave till friday afternoon at a little after 1. I drive and drive and get a little past Richmond and it starts to get dark. So i turn on my lights except that i can't really tell the lights are on. So I flash the highbeams. The radio shuts off. Really bad sign. I pull over to a gas station in ladysmith (where ever the hell that is) and the car shuts off . So i wait in the car from about 6 pm to like 10:30 pm in the cold. This sucked. So today i got to play with my little cousin and it was great. We rolled around on the floor and giggled. It was fun. I got my international cell phone which has it's own number you can call me on. +447924443107 lots of numbers. I am nervous about this trip but today i talked to my grandma about her and my grandfathers travels through these very countries and i feel better. It used to be much more difficult but now you can find hostels on the internet easy. And my uncle showed me pictures of the boat we will be on. So cool. I can jump off it onto the shore and then walk along beside it and jump back on it's so close. CANALBOAT!!!! I miss greensboro.
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