Könyvtar

I feel bad listing mundane things like "I bought bananas" or "I bought a pair of shoes" or "I went to the bookstore and bought two books" as a post of note. But these baby steps are such wonderful challenges / experiences / stories here.

Thrown into the fire, each first is worthy of celebration and a little progress made towards feeling at home. Understanding. Being a dash less starkly foreign.

The best step today, effectively reconnecting myself with the world outside of Heves and 100-character text messages, was discovering the town library! A second teacher named Peter, this one speaking German rather than English, showed me the town's "könyvtar." It's a small building across from the police station, just two blocks from my home. I paid the 800 forint ($4) yearly membership fee and got a hand-written membership card.

Internet service is glorious, although sketchy in a second-world sort of way. It fades in and out a lot. Even better, there are two whole shelves of English books, I'm confident that I'll get through all of them before my time here is done. War and Peace, for one, is sandwiched between Red Badge of Courage and something or other by Stephen King. I checked out Kerouac's On The Road, which I started in audio tape form in B-Mo's car over the summer. When I tried to finish it at home, I couldn't even get a copy of it at the Fond du Lac Public Library! I also got four copies of German books, I figure it best that I set out to improve rapidly.

And finally, rest assured that I am charming the womenfolk here.

One grandma owns a plant shop. Today, I stopped in for the second time and bought two plants. She started jabbering at me as I came to pay. I confessed that I don't speak Hungarian. "I know," she said in Hungarian with a wink.

Another 60-year-old woman owns a little pub that English Peter and I peeked into a day or two ago. Now every time I walk past I peek in again and shout out one of the seventeen Hungarian words I know. Sometimes I tell her the time, sometimes the day of the week. Each time she laughs and invites me in for a sör (beer). Sadly I have only made up excuses so far.