Four Blurts of Happiness

Two of my German-speaking colleagues, Tamas and Adel, had a baby last weekend! (Adel did most of the work.) It's the first time I've ever had a co-worker or nearby friend have a baby. Everyone at school was so excited, in their own Hungarian sorts of ways. A true European, he weighted in at 3500 grams and was 55 cm long. His name is Marci.

In one of the greatest events ever to hit Heves, Wedding Crashers will be playing in the movie theatre this weekend! I think that fact, alone, is enough to encourage me to stay here this weekend, alone.

And walking past the theatre last night, I peeking into a wind and saw a list of English prepositions!! Never before had I been so excited to see grammar!! I walked through the culture building and knocked on the meeting room door before bursting in with a smile and a hello. A half-dozen adults sat around a table, learning English with a teacher named Agi. Apparently they do it every Tuesday, for two hours. They were quick to invite me and I very seldomly refuse friendship.

Most promising, in terms of friendship in my mind, was a cute blond in one corner of the room. But today, one of my students, a rather pretty blond-haired girl herself, came up to me and asked if I had met some English learners the night before. I said I had, and immediately pieced together the connection. Alas, Erika informed me that her older sister was a married student of the English language.

And yesterday, I was a substitute geography teacher. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, as I love maps. Except, of course, we're in Hungary. Class 10B, the dancing kids, is divided into three groups. Two study English - I work with the better group once a week. And then another third is a German group, I work with them, too. I had to speak first in English, then repeat myself in German (relatively tough, but getting SO much easier!), so all the kids could understand.

On the spot, I invented "trilingual tri-orshag geography-erdkunde game." I drew a map of Hungary (a pretty good one at that) on the board, and gave three pieces of chalk, one to each linguistic group.

Then I shouted "Hol van Mezobereny?!" I expected a mad dash to be the first to pinpoint THE MEZ, the little city where another American teacher lives, on the map. I was disappointed. The kids sat there twirling the chalk, thinking "huh?" so I repeated myself. "Mezobereny varos van. Hol van?" Nothing. Finally one kid came up to me. "Mezobereny hard. We should with big city play."

Oops.

Incompletions and Touchdowns

After spending most of the afternoon prepping for "school," I was ready. I'd ran around Heves to buy football-shaped loaves of bread, I'd cut orange flags out of old bed sheet with Gitta, and I'd invited all of my favorite classes and students to the Green Club's go at American football.

When it was all said and done, the four usual members of the Green Club loved their intro to football.

Attila, Martin, Winnie and Janka sat huddled around the chalk board as I diagrammed quarterback, interception, touchdown and the rest of the prerequisite pigskin lingo. We tucked the foot-long flags into our pockets, and I tossed them the first loaf of bread. I explained the end zones, and said that I would be all-time offense.

By the first play of the game, I realized the rules-explanation had probably been a little short. The most important missed concept: the incompletion. I'd thrown the ball to Winnie, who attempted to catch the ball by shrieking and shrugging her shoulders. As the loaf of bread spun and sputtered on the ground, all four dove on top of it, fighting fiercely for possession. I called the play off, re-explained that a dropped pass is no good, and then proceeded to lead an impressive offensive march down the field that led to the first touchdown ever scored on the Eotvos Jozsef Kozepiskola field.

The game had to be simplified in some ways. First downs, for example, were simply called "the special bonus." But by the final play of the game, the kids were catching on. While Janka's team was losing badly at the end, I said that the game would end in a tie if she scored a touchdown. Janka smiled, snapped the ball by saying "hike!," pump-faked beautifully, and found me streaking into the end zone for the game-tying touchdown!

While I have not yet cleared the plan with her parents or immigration control, I fully intend on bringing ninth-grader Janka home to America as a souvenir, to be my little kid sister for a year and to perfect her English at Fondy High. She's marvelous. Friendly and bubbly and curious and wonderful.

But the best part of the game? When one of the old hags from the office came outside and yelled at us. It was, of course, in Hungarian, and I had no idea what was going on. After she left, the kids were laughing. She said that God was angry at us for playing with food, they explained.

Now THAT'S a Happy Thanksgiving

Sorry. I was a bit pessimistic last week, feeling battered down by Hungarian negativism, without much joy of any nationality to build off of. And in truth I felt a little guilty for feeling sad for myself on Thanksgiving -- that's not what the day's for.

But in Nyiregyhaza, with a roomful of Americans and even some authentic Hungarians, I found that happiness. It was heartwarming to return to thankfulness.

Some people started arriving on Thursday to begin preparing for the feast. It's a rather gruelling task in a country where ovens are the size of microwaves, microwaves are non-existent, and American staples are difficult to find. Kat and I met up at Liz's house, half way to the gathering point of Nyiregyhaza. Over the course of a bottle of polish honey vodka (which my father should begin brewing asap), we baked two batches of chocolate chip cookies, six at a time. I was in charge simply of chopping dark chocolate bars into chip-sized portions, as they don't have chocolate chips in this country. But my task grew to biking across the cold, drizzly city in the dark when we realized someone (Liz!) forgot to buy baking soda.

Kat was so happy over our Italian supper, before the honey vodka had even been opened, she couldn't stop talking. "I'm drunk off of natives!" she exclaimed in joy. We all agreed.

Early Saturday we bussed to Jenna and Yerik's place in Nyiregyhaza. They're a young couple from Minnesota, married two weeks before jetting off to Hungary for a rather extended honeymoon. By ten, the place was bustling with Americans, men and women alike awork in the kitchen, while others were content to speak English and sip wine in the living room. We were only five hours from the expected mealtime of 3:30.

Two days ago, the turkey had been alive. There was no need for defrosting, simply chopping off the neck and removing some of the previously vital organs. We used the bathtub for those purposes. You can't find a frozen turkey in Hungary, it's simply not an option, that's why they have farms for. But in the oven, under Harpswell's careful eye, it was looking good.

We ended up eating at 7, long after dark, but it was certainly worth the wait. When you live as a foreigner in Hungary, apparently there can be reason to celebrate. We traded, around in a circle, our reasons for thankfulness. I must admit to a bit of a reversal of roles from the uber-optimistic late-August Jeremy that everyone here knew. I stuck to my Friday assertion that I am thankful that my reality is not living as a foreign in Hungary. Met with quiet boos, I realized that my offering was an non-optimistic, glass-half-empty way of saying that I am thankful for family, friends and a future back home.

That's when we popped the FIVE LITER BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE! Unbelievably high quality idea by the Americans abroad. We celebrated our lives and our thankfulness.

And then I let myself be captivated, if only for an evening, with an English speaker. As I confess to you that she was, again, only 18 years old, I must plead the case that I do not bring this upon myself! Allison or Ellison, I can't remember which (although she yelled at me once for being incorrect), is an American foreign exchange student here. She decided to adventure for a year after graduating high school rather than going straight to college. While looking through a book, she saw a culinary school in Hungary. Jokingly, she told everyone that she had decided upon her adventure. They thought she was serious, and it became a reality. We invited her because we thought she would be lonely, an American in Hungary over the holidays. And then we took to talking. And then some champagne. And then more talking. But she had braces, and it kept reminding me how young she was. So I could try to blame wimping out asking for her number at the end of the evening on the age factor, but I think in truth we had better blame it on me simply being a timid, timid boy. Goodness gracious.

Happy again in Hungary.

Just Me in Hungary

Yesterday, after I was kicked out of the Library for violating the one-hour policy, I became cognizant that I am alone. Quite alone.

I sound a bit like a sixth-grader, but no one talked to me at lunch today. Not one voice wished me a Happy Thanksgiving all day long. I debated becoming sad, but decided to fall asleep instead.

I am thankful that living in the town of Heves, living in the middle of Hungary, living as a foreigner, living as a teacher of English as a foreign language is not my permanent reality...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Hungary!

How about we learn some Hungarian vocabulary for the holiday?

Thanksgiving - Halaadas (or das Erntedankfest, it pays to be trilingual.)

Turkey - Pulyka (der Puter, auf Deutsch.)

That's been my week. Bragging to kids that we don't have school in America today, or even Friday! Playing Hangman until they figure out that "giving" is the second half of the word behind "thanks." Explaining the basics of Indo-Pilgrim relations. (Sticking to the essentials, like the fact that both parties existed, and that perhaps turkey was involved). Then we trace our hands and draw a primitive turkey. Good stuff.

But the better stuff will happen this weekend, when the American teachers and even some wanna-be Americans will gather in Nyireghaza for turkey and stuffing, pies and potatoes...everything but the football!

P.S. In an attempt to learn to be self-sufficent, I turn to you, the reader: Is it bad when one side of your yogurt sucks itself in and then there's green mold growing in it? Thanks for your advice.

Snow!!!

Tuesday was Heves' first snowfall of the new winter!! Maybe even an inch of snow -- they use metric here, of course -- fell all morning long. And it was good, as the first snowfall always is.

Kids ran outside, just like they do back home, sliding on snow, throwing snowballs, building snowmen and laughing. Even facewashes. The kids are optimistic that the snow will "stick," but I think they simply do not understand me. A teacher says a warm front will melt the snow this weekend.

Winter and snow and ice and the like will be good through November and December, maybe even early January, but I'm worried about the effects of a lingering cold and dark winter on the psyche of American teachers stranded abroad. Of particular concern is that there is still one month more for the sun to set early and earlier every day before things start to reverse on December 21st!

Gitta avoided me today. She skipped my class. Today was her 18th birthday, so she missed out on the copy of Hatchet, peanut butter M&M bar and a Pez dispenser that I was going to give her.

And, of particular note, significant progress was almost made on the bicycle front! Headmaster Agi talked to me today (it had been about four weeks since she'd been in school) about a bike. I even got to see it outside. It's hot shit.

Now I will be able to bike to my non-girlfriend's city, to my non-friend's village, or to visit any of my non-acquaintances!! The possibilities are endless...

Monday, Monday

Gitta's been mad at me since last week. I was late to a lesson with her because I had forgotten about it/not written it down. She used it as proof that I don't care about her. Then she threw a bomb in my lap: she said that she had talked to my 9th grade friends and they weren't going to come to the Green Club anymore because it isn't fun. I was devastated.

But I am proud to report that the Green Club, after a two-week hiatus is back in full strength! Today we played Super Twister Scrabble Version with Bell and American Money. Pretty good fun. Next week they want to try American football. I will have to buy two loaves of bread and let them go stale.

One 9th grader came in with a white stain on his winter hat today. He was angry. He looked at me and said, "A fucking bird shit on my hat!" There's no way I could be angry, it was the cutest thing ever. And a perfectly constructed English sentence!

And American holidays make for good English lessons. Today was all about tracing-the-hand-and-adding-a-couple-more-features-until-you-get-a-turkey, even in three German classes. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving! Kids are struggling with the difference between "I am thankful FOR..." and "I am thankful THAT..." Perhaps I was ambitious to introduce the concept.

Question of the Day - Leave a Comment!:

WHAT ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR THIS THANKSGIVING?

Season's First Snowflakes: Gaines & Jeremy in Eger

Gaines' bus was a little late arriving Friday night. No one else but her decided to make the trip to Heves. Some excused themselves for lack-of-forint reasons, others found English-teacher conventions to attend. But Gaines and I had spent the week building a text-message-based excitement, both raring for friendship and exploration after a weekend at home.

Standing alone at the bus station waiting for the Mezobereny-Heves express, I got a little cold. The moon was bright, almost full, the night sky was crisp. Crisp like a good late-November, suddenly-winter night should be. But that's not where the story begins.

It starts back when the weather was warm, in August, in Budapest. I like Gaines. She's a wonderful person, I think you would agree. I like to use really good adjectives when I describe her. In my little boy heart, there was a tinge of romance, the hope for something more, in uber-photography, pillow fights and messages in a bottle. She makes me smile.

Her friendship was a wonderful escape from the early struggles and unhappinesses of living alone in a little village with no one to understand you. But I realized I was too dependent on it, almost headed toward an addiction, when I realized I had became dishearteningly sad because she wouldn't dance with me and wouldn't talk to me after I whapped her with a sweatshirt. (Oops.)

I became better through thinking and writing, as I always do. I shared it with you and I shared it with Gaines. I wanted to build a happiness off Hungary, not just off of a crush on a beautiful young woman. We didn't really talk about it, but reached a bit of an understanding.

We went to Romania, with a lot of people, and didn't talk much. We went to Poland with only two other people. So in Krakow, we were back to talking and walking and smiling. There is a rather soul-sustaining friendship that can be found in falling asleep while talking to a person, a friend, almost laying next to you.

When Gaines' bus did pull in, it was just us, a first. We talked all the way back to my apartment, as I showed Gaines (it took approximately five minutes) the city of Heves. I cooked spaghetti, it was a relative success -- I only swore aloud three times and started one kitchen item on fire during the process. We ate it over wine and traded the stories of who we were. When we got tired, we fell asleep talking.

The early bus took us to Eger, I think she was more excited to see the baroque headquarters of wine and tourism in Heves county than the namesake city of the county. I'd made reservations at a guest house, but things weren't looking good when no one answered the doorbell. A friendly man, keyword for Hungarian-speaker-who-is-amused-by-non-Hungarian-speakers, offered to help us, then disappeared in his car. Five minutes later, as we were desperately thinking of options, our host arrived. The plan was back on track.

It was at about that point, perhaps an hour into our trip, when I blew my nose. Gaines was shocked. I had to teach her the concept of a handkerchief. She was rather unimpressed by the saturation, quite disgusted that one might blow his nose into a piece of cloth, only to store it in a pocket and repeatedly touch the snotrag with his hand and wipe it against his nose. But I consider myself quite well-schooled in the art of battling through winter -- an arrival marked by light snowflakes drifting peacefully down from grey clouds while we were touring the castle. I marched on, blowing my nose again, while Gaines -- foreign to freezing -- posed for pictures with the flakes.

At a take-out pizza place, quickly becoming one of my favorite places in Hungary, we proved we are still vulnerable foreigners. We placed an order for two pizzas and two Coca-Cola Lites, and were set to walk out the door with a smile on our face. But they grabbed us just as we pushed the door open, treating us like shoplifters. It took a while to figure out why. We laughed when we realized that they thought we had ordered two pizzas, plus two additional pizzas, and were walking away without paying for the sodas. We straightened it out with hand gestures, and the pizzas (only two!) turned out to be wonderful as always. (Gaines also stamped tourist on our foreheads by diving across a guardrail for a picture with a wax Turkish khan, only to set off a motion sensor!)

After the day's adventures, we decided to battle the cold with a trip to the thermal bath. Hungary is a country ripe with two of my favorite luxuries, wine and hot water. Most of Hungary's thermal baths were formed when oil drillers found underground lakes of geothermal merit, not a bad consolation prize for not finding black gold.

Eger's thermal bath, building off of a tradition left behind by the 16th-century Turkish invaders, is a beautiful facility. We weren't impressed at first, the water was only lukewarm, we were hoping for better. But after we braved the cold air outside of the glass dome, we found our reward, a pool of mineral water, bubbling up thousands of feet just to warm us. Smelling just a dash like sulphur, the water felt good. Real good.

There can be a candor to a two-person conversation in 37 degree water, surrounded by a continuous cloud of steam and ears that can't understand but a word of what you say. With only our heads left above the water in the cold night air, we talked for three hours, about life and love and living and loving. And we talked about theories. I have many theories. I enjoy feeling like I understand a part of the world, and am romantic enough to think that I can apply any kernel of wisdom I learn to any other part of the world. For a long time, one of my central theories has been that the nature of life should be a delicate balance between thinking and feeling. Oftentimes mutually exclusive, happiness and healthiness can be found only in a zero-sum balance of the two pursuits.

So we talked and talked and thought and thought. The conversation was intense and thoroughly wonderful. We both thought so much that I, for one, wore out my mind, my powers of thought, by the end of the night. I could hardly formulate a correct English sentence. I switched, 180 degrees, and traded thinking for feeling. We had already agreed to take late buses out of Eger on Sunday, and turned off our alarms to sleep late. By the time we fell asleep, we were talking again, almost next to each other.

Sunday morning was lazy, a perfect way to spend a weekend morning. We woke up and talked and smiled. There was a happiness, a contentedness in the air. I liked it and wondered. I didn't think that I should, but I felt like I should - so I asked Gaines if she wanted to be my girlfriend. She paused. And so did my breathing. Then she spoke. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to answer that question?" I didn't, of course, but I did know how difficult it was to ask the question. I listened through a long story of factors I hadn't heard of before and a desire not to lose her best friend in this lonely country. The story seemed to have the fairy-tale ending of "probably not."

I thanked her for her story. I was glad that she shared it, and I was glad that I understood. And I thanked her for being a person who inspired me to be a better man and brought happiness to me. She smiled. We packed and walked through beautiful vineyards, just a short hike from the hotel, feeling like friends. I smiled and announced a new theory. Gaines helped me realized that I liked both thinking (and the twin processes of conversing and writing) and feeling far too much to do both only half way, to find a balance that required only half of each. Instead, why not try living both full tilt. Think and feel to a maximum, and find healthiness in the simultaneous excellence of both.

What a gal, gifting me with theories and friendship. I hugged her a goodbye and blew her a kiss as her bus pulled out of the Eger station and began its slow ramble out of Heves County.

(As a thoughtful individual, I reserve the right the modify all theories at all times. That's what makes it fun. Thanks!)

Heves Plays Host

Woo woo!! Roll out the red carpet!!

Heves and I are welcoming our first guest this weekend. :-)

Miss Gaines Greer, photographer extraordinaire and partner to all sorts of shenanigans, is the winner of the finest bottle of wine Egerszalok's Kolhari vineyard has to offer. Every inch (there aren't too many of them) of the apartment has been masterfully scrubbed and the kitchen tidied.

Gaines is a planner -- you know that type of Southern belle -- and insisted on an itinerary. I went to the great length of reserving a guesthouse room in Eger for Saturday night. We've decided to splurge and feel like "adults." The best part? The reservation conversation was conducted exclusively in Hungarian!! Promises to be a delightful weekend. I'm smiling.

And last night, while I was cleaning? Only the biggest thing ever, apparently, to hit the German-speaking world. MTV had been advertising it for weeks. An hour before they had a countdown show, complete with countdown timer in the corner:

DIE TOTEN HOSEN...UNPLUGGED (World Premiere!)

And it was nice, in honesty. Download "Hier Kommt Alex" or "Zehn Kleine Jagermeister" and give it a listen for yourself.

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

Yesterday was an important day in my on-going Europeanization:

I SCORED A GOOAAALLLL!

For almost ten weeks now, I've run around the gymnasium on Wednesday afternoons, merrily playing a game that I have next-to-no-interest-in. To me, soccer -- here they call it "foci" -- is simply a game for the masses of Europe, Africa and South America to play. I much prefer the keen dichotomy of the strategy and smashmouth-edness of football; the pace and momentum of basketball; even the storytelling and legend of baseball. I haven't legitimately played this game of soccer since age seven, and can do little more than run around and swing my foot.

And for ten weeks now, the other teachers -- at least those who speak English -- have encouraged me. "You play football good for American!" I know, though, that they are excited when they see me walk onto the court wearing the opposite color. But every week they smile and welcome me. They always say something polite in Hungarian when I congratulate them with a "Good Game!" afterwards. And every week they assure me that perhaps next week will be the week that I score.

But yesterday, I wore white instead of a color. I faced a new goal. It seemed a bit bigger already. I was feeling optimistic.

Just as shocking that I scored was how I scored. This was not a measly goal at the end of the game when no one cares anymore, especially about something as trivial as defense. Oh no, folks, this was the first point of the game, in the first possession of the game!

Janos -- he speaks a bit of English -- had the ball on the right side of the court. He shuffled his feet a little, doing all these fancy European-like things with the soccer ball, but then kicked it towards me as I sprinted along the left sideline towards the goal. Miraculously, ball came to foot, foot was angled to the proper degree, and I slammed -- walloped, punched, kicked, motored, propelled, fired, shot, sank, boosted, jacked, rocketed, hammered, flung -- the ball into the goal!

I have watched soccer highlights on tv, so I knew what I needed to do next. The shock on my face turned to the unbridled joy of the scorer-of-the-soccer-ball. No language barriers prevented anyone, even the students who were watching, from understanding the euphoric cries of "GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL!" that curdled from my lips for approximately forty seconds after the unprecedented penetration. I ran a lap around the gym, two fists held high over my head in triumph, while white-shirts and colored-shirts both applauded politely. Some even gave me high fives.

In celebration of the event? I made home-made Noodles and Beef. My bacheloresque definition of home-made is cooking noodles myself, opening a tin can of goulashy beef, successfully operating a microwave, and then mixing the two ingredients. It was delicious.

One Year of Teaching: Graded

It was a year ago, on this very date, that I was summoned back home by my alma mater to fill in, only temporarily, as a high school German teacher.

For seven months I stayed there, a non-education major first-year teacher working in an area outside of my major or even minor focus of studies. 365 days later, I've yet to escape the title German teacher, I have only added "Native-Speaking English and" in front of the moniker.

Here's a one-year reflection, by the grades:

A+

Teaching has been all about learning for me, and I've become rather good at learning on the fly. I learned how to become an educator last year, melding the best of what I remembered from schooldays gone by and the energy of camp. I've learned from the kids, often without their knowledge. And now teaching has taken me to Hungary, an adventure of constant learning, if not comfort. And when push came to shove, I even taught myself German adjective endings!

A

Being me. Only after a five-minute tirade, chanting "Carpe Diem lads, seize the day, make your lives extraordinary!" to an eighth-hour class of befuddled freshman, did I realize an important lesson. I am who I am, for better or worse. And all that I can really do is be who I am, and hope that the kids learn from that. When I caught a girl cheating, I assigned her to write an essay entitled "Who am I?" Even though it was German class, the assignment was in English. When the German III kids needed to understand why music is sung, we discussed the meaning of life. The discussion was in English. Sometimes learning is more important than the class description.

A-

Rock and Roll and the German Verb. A month-long unit, and exploration, of two topics not mutually exclusive, and my pet-project for quite some time. Unable to teach them everything they needed to know because I had never been taught everything I needed to know, we branched into areas of interest and intrigue. The point of rock and roll, if not language and life, is the verb, no? By the end of the unit, they had written a German song (of various merit), starred in a German music video (again, of various merit), and had perhaps learned a little bit about the German past tenses through the game of Four Square.

B+

The average grade the kids gave me in an evaluation last spring... The gamut ranged from A+ through C -, although one kid simply opted to give me a frowny face. Their comments were scattered, as well. But on average, they seemed to agree that I tried hard, took a unique approach and was engaging, even if I wasn't always (ever?) masterful in the subject area. And seeing as I've been supervised/evaluated all of two minutes over the course of one year, I suppose we'll have to go with the childrens' word.

B

Playing grown-up. It hasn't always been easy, after all I'm far closer in age to the average pupil than the average teacher. But when your first predecessor was fired for sleeping with a student, it helps you make better choices. A fun excursion into adulthood has been fashion. It took a while, first hour kids were good coaches last year, and I'm improving. It hasn't always been good, though. One day last spring I matched so horribly -- apparently -- that they made me put on my raincoat so they wouldn't have to look at me. It's fun to wear a tie. Even more fun with a sportscoat.

B-

Making learning fun, experiential. We might expect this to be my specialty, but I'm not content with what I've done so far. Years of camps and ropes courses are so different than the classroom. The square stagnancy of sitting in desks hinders even my creativity, I fear. But for all the drab lectures on verbs, articles and cases, there have been creative highlights: Herzblatt posters, where the kids created a blind date for me. (Most were generous.) Fashion drawings, where the German scholars decked me out in a creative wardrobe. English/German fairy tales and superheroes, dancing across notebook paper in drawing and story.

C+

High expectations. It's easy to claim to demand high expectations, but in reality much harder to enforce and maintain. I can do better.

C

Giving up on the kids who don't want to learn. It was hard to accept, but I quickly realized there was little I could do to FORCE kids to engage a language, English or German. I want to let them make the best choice for themselves -- and I know they can learn something from being allowed to fail -- but... So I let them fail. For better or worse.

C-

My ability to control, discipline. In many ways, it's a grave apathy, shrouded under the liberal concerns of being afraid to colonize, afraid to impose my definitions upon the kids. In reality, I think I'm just not tough enough, and am too willing to take things upon myself.

D

My level of play in last spring's tsunami relief teachers-vs-students charity basketball game. After much-ballyhooed promises of excellence and vertical leap, the final results weren't pretty:

zero points, 0-3 shooting (including a missed lay-up)
2 assists, 2 steals, 3 turnovers
mishandled defensive strategy allowed the game-winning bucket with 2 seconds left

F

Fluency in the German language. One might expect, after a year of "intensive study and teaching," some significant progress, if not a degree of expertise, in a language. Unfortunately for this self-analysis, watching Austrian MTV does not count as "intensive study," and it is all I can do to lead a class discussion for 45 minutes without falling over in sheer exhaustion. Some of the kids are better than me. Luckily, I'm okay with that. I blame it on my accent, and give them an asterisked 5.

A Weekend In Heves

After nine weekends on the run, escaping Heves with travels across this country and four others, the momentum ran out.

After a busy and far-away break, every single American teacher crashed in their village this weekend, and I was no different. Luckily, I am proud to report that I made it alive through a weekend alone in Heves.

I learned that the S-Stop sells bottles of Miller Genuine Draft, believe it or not. A bottle sells for just under a dollar, quite a bit more expensive than the Hungarian versions.

The local gyro shop is not, as I had speculated, closed for the winter. While my palpability of all things edible is improving, I still prefer gyros of simply meat, bread and a little special gyro juice-sauce.

No where in Heves that sells hammers also sells nails. No where in Heves that sells nails also sells hammers. Bummer.

Heves has an American football club! No information other than they're called the Hevesi Crows and meet on Saturdays. The sign looked weathered.

Fog has arrived, every morning and every evening. Rather thick and un-motivational.

And if you ever dress up as Coldplay frontman Chris Martin for the school Halloween party, no one in Heves will have any idea what you're doing, but you can still have fun talking about carving jack-o-lanterns in a British accent.

On a related note, if anyone can figure out what one of the teachers was doing when she had a class sing the Sound of Music's "Do Re Mi" as a Halloween song, please let me know.

Krak-O-Mania!

In terms of most things good, it doesn't get much better than Krakow, that's why four of us -- Chad, Rozalind, Gaines and I -- set out for the promised land with the second half of our "autumn" break. (They simply don't say the word "fall" in these parts.)

Long train rides in Eastern Europe are not always good, especially those of the overnight variety. Comfort plays second-fiddle to destination around here. We were willing to spent the 60 dollars (round-trip) to get ourselves, via overnight train through the Slovakian mountains, to Poland's magnificent queen city. All the Rick Steves groupies had talked it up as their favorite city so far, and the guidebooks rave, so I was more than excited to see the city.

The girls were rather concerned with the overt sketchiness of overnight travel, and sounded suspiciously like mothers as they retold urban legends of luggage theft or other misdemeanors. In no mind to convince them otherwise, Chad and I agreed to devise an elaborate locking system in our train compartment. Simply put, we strung my backpack through the door handle and the luggage rack and found ourselves in a vault. Two people slept in the vault, two in a different compartment, we were lax enough to want to stretch out. One significant flaw in the plan emerged over the course of the evening. Seemingly every hour we would cross a new border, and new immigration control patrols would storm our cabin, banging on the doors. And when it wasn't border guards, it was ticket collectors, very insistent on not letting anyone slip through the cracks, even if it came at the expense of our beauty sleep.

But it was all to be worthwhile, as we had friends in Krakow. One of Roz's Harvard friends (how fun it is to toss that term around so casually) studies and lives in the city. And my long-lost friend Luke-Ji has been working in the city for more than half a year. He was born in Tokyo to Japanese and American parents, went to an English-medium high school before jetting off to Madison, sight unseen, for four years of study. We met in Hindi class, the only two clueless ghoras, and spent two years together sampling Indian language and culture classes. After graduation, he met a Polish girl while on an internship in India. You can see already where this story is headed. Now he's at another internship in Krakow, she lives more towards Warsaw.

I have come to pick friends well, apparently. Luke-Ji met us at the train station the moment we arrived...5:30 am. Unbelievably stellar performance. He dragged our sleeping bodies and heavy luggage through the city, and on the bus ride to his Soviet-era apartment, we watched the sun rise slowly over the city of 700,000.

The Krakovian city centre is simply picture perfect, a thing of legend. The old towne is largely preserved. City walls protected the city better than most in Europe, but they were taken down in the 1800s. Now, a beautiful series of parks and walkways completely surround the downtown area. A majestic castle stands over the river, complete with fire-breathing dragon of legend and statue. The very center of the city is a two-block by two-block grand market square, I would gladly claim the best in Europe. Churches, cafes, shops and museums line the heart of the city, it pulses with people.
(And pigeons.) We walked and talked, it was wonderful.

Luke-Ji turned us over to Dahm, our other Asian-American friend turned Krakovian thanks to a Polish girlfriend. Dahm managed to pull some strings, and we sauntered our way up to Uniwersytet Jagiellonian, one of Europe's oldest and most renowned universities, as if we belonged there. And in a funny way, we did. We had gotten ourselves invited to a two-hour lecture on the intricacies of vodka, a Polish favorite. Complete with guest lecturer, PowerPoint presentation, history, culture and -- of course -- interactive samples from eight distinct types of vodka. I was in some sort of strange paradise. This was the institution where Copernicus had studied the stars! Within these walls, Pope John Paul II studied theology! And here I was...studying vodka right alongside them. Genius.

The second day, Rozalind and Chad took the solemn trip to Auschwitz. But Gaines and I, noted Germanologists, had already been to German concentration camps, and opted to ventured to the far more merry Wieliczki Salt Mines, not far outside of Krakow. Some sort of freak of nature, the mine sits on a rock salt deposit that once accounted for half of Poland's entire GDP! These days, it is an odd UNESCO-sanctioned tourist trap. For dozens of generations, miners have carved tunnels, statues, rooms -- even entire chapels -- out of the rock salt.

Yes, I did lick the walls. And yes, it did taste good. I am proud, too, that I even coerced Gaines into licking her finger, then touching the rock wall, very high where certainly no one else had ever committed a similar foul, and then tasting her finger. Strangely delighted, would be my guess as to her reaction.

An early evening stroll along the River Wiszla, nibbling on pastries, was spent in good company, alongside Gaines. In exchange for my lessons on the fine art of peeling her own orange, an exercise she had never performed before, she seemed to agree to be my wandering partner in Krakow. It's very nice to have a friend.

But as our time in Krakow progressed, Rozalind slowly fades out of the story. She was ravaged -- brutalized, beaten down -- by illness, probably the same illness that had haunted us most of our travels in Romania. We got her safely back to Budapest, but it is safe to say that she didn't enjoy Krakow as much as the rest of us.

We ate and drank interesting things at interesting places. (Hot spiced wine goes down as a favorite.) When we got desperate, we went to McDonald's. We saw mummies and Da Vinci's, but alas no Rembrandts. Krakow's piece had been sent to Milwaukee, of all places, for an exhibit! We read a week-old USA Today and considered it a privilege.

And we shopped. Amber's a specialty in Krakow and Chad's mom sent him on a specific buying mission, but I'm far too attached to one specific amber purchase to browse lightly. So I spent time walking and looking at Polish girls. It is fair to say they are very pretty girls. For some reason I seem to have an attachment to Polish girls, although I'm not sure of the origin. Perhaps I'll have to take several trips back to Krakow to research the answer...

Maybe the vodka will help, too.

Transylvania: The Notion of a Nation

You'll probably never get to Transylvania. Most of the world will not get to Transylvania, it's simply not close to any beaten path. The northwestern third of Romania, it is a place rooted more in legend and history than in actuality. Only on maps for tourists will you actually even see the word.

So what is it? Simply mention the word Transylvania, especially at this time of year, and we're all bound to envision the same picture: full moons, Dracula's castle and the like. Maybe even werewolves.

And certainly, Dracula's birthplace, the city of Segesvar (Sighisoara), lives up to that reputation. The city is strikingly Gothic. Medieval church steeples stand tall against the early dusk like upturned fangs. But the over-commercialization of the cult of Dracula, and hearing English spoken on the tourist-shop-lined streets, make it seem somehow less haunted in person.

Transylvania is the people who live there. Unfortunately, that's a complicated story.

Before the Romans came, nothing much is important. And no one argues that the Romans were there, but that's where the consensus stops. Romanians say they are the descendants of the ancient Romans, with a Romantic language as proof. Romanians are orthodox Christians, more European than the slightly Asiatic Hungarians. The Hungarians living in the region say they found Transylvania deserted and made it their home, only to have the Romanians come back later. And left out of the mix are the minority Saxons, ethnic Germans invited at the end of the Dark Ages to bring their civilization and trades into the region.

The Hungarians controlled Transylvania for much of what we might consider the beginning of modern time. But the Turks conquered the Hungarians in the 1500s, leaving Transylvania to its own device. During that time, the Reformation blossomed in Transylvania, and Unitarianism -- with a long claim to the title of most liberal "protestant" religion -- flourished. Under a Unitarian king, the only one in history, Transylvania was the first European nation to grant a degree of religious freedom, in 1568. But the Austrians defeated the Turks in Hungary and kept on going through to Transylvania. The good Catholics from Vienna marched the Counter-Reformation and German into Transylvania, dictating both. For a long time, much of Central Europe was under the multi-ethnic dominion of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

World War I didn't simply end on Nov. 11th, 1918, I'm slowly discovering. Wilson's 14 Points and the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations are the end of the story in American textbooks, but in Europe, troops were still moving. By the next year, 1919, the Russian revolution's Red Army was on the border of Poland, on the attack, and poised to sweep westward through Europe. And in these parts, Romanian armies defeated a communist-led regime in Hungary. By marching all the way into Budapest in 1919, Romania ensured Hungary's status of defeat before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. The reorganization of European borders was disastrous for Hungary. Two-thirds of its territory and one-half of its population was lopped off and renamed Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania or Yugoslavia. Ethnic Hungarian majorities were included in foreign lands, despite the era's attention to self-determination, for political reasons and "strategic interest." Transylvania was one of these regions, although to be fair, most of the territory did decide in a plebiscite to join Moldova and Wallochia and create the new nation-state of Romania.

To this day, ethnic Hungarians and Hungarian-speakers remain in pockets of Romania, upwards of 2 million. (The population of Hungary is 10 million, Romania has 20 million.) They are mostly Catholic, although there are also many Unitarians. We stayed in their villages and learned their stories, being a Hungarian outside of Hungary. They are a traditional people, subsisting off the land with little surplus. Many are more likely to ride a horse-drawn wagon to the field or factory than to take a car. Many of the Hungarian villages cater to visitors these days, from Hungary or from further abroad. The beauty of the villages in enticing, and the natural landscape of the Carpathians is breathtaking. They cook good food, share their homemade palinka with you, and then offer a bed for the evening. It's a rather nice way to see and people and the land they live in.

(To be refined. All errors are my own.)

A Halloween in Transylvania

Imagine spending six days in Transylvania, a land of legend, and a culture a hundred years behind the Europe we think of as modern. Twenty American teachers packed onto a bus and drove off to Romania, to explore the land and the people who live there, led by guides, of course. Here are some of the highlights.

Best Quote:

"We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. (Or America!) Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things" (21).

Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula, which is on my shelf, but I have yet to read.

Best Sight (Tangible):

The medieval city of Segesvar (Sighisoara). Better known as Dracula's birthplace, the city is an old-school Saxon settlement, with an amazingly well-preserved old town on a hill, surrounded by intact city walls, a rarity in Europe.

Best Sight (Less-Tangible):

An early morning solo hike (despite the bears...) up the western hillside just past the village of Zetelka (Odorheiu Seciuese), watching the sunrise over the eastern hills.

Best Sight (Unexpected Surprise):

Waking up the third morning, opening the door and seeing the sheer white cliffs stand tall above our little mining village of Torocko (Rimetea). Breathtaking!

Best Role Model:

I don't know the man's name, but a European man-of-note stayed in the same guest house as the single boys (as we were always lumped) on the second night. He was born in Germany of Dutch and Scandinavian parents. Calls his current home Venice, but studied in New York. He works as a writer, only when he's not doing something else. I'm sure he speaks more languages than I know words in Hungarian. Despite German and Italian passports, he considers himself of the "European" nationality. His current project, the reason he was in Romania? A four-year long assignment to scout out Romania, as a visitor, to help an EU minister best decide when Romania should be fully admitted into the European Union.

Best Heartbreaker:

Little Bogi. I'm in love with a seven-year-old. Our third morning in Romania, I made a friend. Bogi was the little daughter attached to the guest house where some of the girls were staying, and she came out to play as we loaded the bus. Health concerns kept us from leaving right away, so we went for a stroll. Bogi came along. Half way through, I could no longer resist. I taught her the English word "piggy-back-ride" and galloped away with her on my back. For an hour she taught me Hungarian words, and I taught her the English. Just before our bus pulled away, I gave her a quarter and a penny.

Best Emergency Guideline:

Guideline #1 in a Romanian hotel's emergency procedures in event of an earthquake? "DO NOT SHOW THE FEAR!"

Best Dance Party:

When you invite a gypsy band onto your bus, after being fed palinka and wine for an entire evening, can the result be anything but spectacular?

Best Sing Along:

And when a hotel allows American twenty-somethings to commandeer their lobby, turn on the disco lights and seize control of the winamp playlist, can the results be anything other than spectacular?

Best Eyes:

I dared make eye contact with one gypsy beggar, a little girl, in Dracula's hometown. The grey of her eyes was among the most amazing colors I've ever seen on this planet.

Best Bird-Flue Scare:

My roommates, Chad and Janos, were down for the count with flu-like symptoms two of the six days on our trip. Janos was even rushed to the hospital at one point. (Guidebook recommends avoiding Romanian hospitals...apparently they don't meet "Western Standards.")

Best "Oh" Moment:

Kat was reading a book as our bus climbed a hill outside of Kolozsvar (Cluj). She looked up at one point, took one glance at the rows of white apartments in the city below us and said aloud with disdain, "Oh, communist..."

Best Souvenirs:

Anything that wasn't tacky, mass-produced for the plethora of tourist-trap souvenir stands in Transylvania. You'd think that a million miles from anywhere you'd be able to escape feeling like you were in a Wisconsin Dells indian shop, but apparently it's impossible. Among the better items there, though, was a purse made out of mushroom skin.

By far the best souvenir, though, were the twin orthodox icons Mariah and I bought in Marosvasarhely (Tirgu Mures). The iconography of the religion is spectacular, moving even if not convincing. Hers is of Saint Stephen. Mine is of Mary and Baby Jesus, with a radiant gilded background. I like to look at it.

Best Recommendations For Your Future Trip to Transylvania:

Go with someone who knows what's going on.

Best "Lei" Joke:

The Romanian currency is the Lei. It's a rather confusing currency, as Romania is in the midst of a massive revaluation, but both sets are rather cool. Colorful, waxy in feeling, complete with window. Just like arriving in Hawaii and being lei'd, this creates the obvious opportunities for "lei" jokes. Unlike Hawaii, however, which has beaches, in Romania the jokes don't get old. It would be impossible to select a single best joke or saying, here are some winners though:

"So wait...you can get three lei for a dollar?"

"I'm not even sure what a lei is worth...I just hold out my hands and let them take what they want."

"I think I will always keep a lei in my pocket, just for emergencies...When I really need a lei."

"One new lei is as good as ten-thousand old lei."

Best Conversation Partners:

Two seventy-year old men in a smoky pub is Szentmiklos, our very first night in Transylvania. One was able to count to ten in German, the rest of our conversation was conducted completely in Hungarian and hand gestures. They were shriveled and old, but were willing to be my friends, so I bought them a beer. They were brothers. Their father fought for Hitler's SS, I believe they were trying to tell me, at least. And I believe they were bragging.

Best Mountainry:

Cheile Bicazului (Bicaz Pass and Gorge National Park). Wow.