Part 1. Love in that Room

Four months into our stay, Budapest is becoming a bit like home for us American teachers.

We're able, with very few glances at the map, to navigate the city streets. Public transportation, especially the subterranean metro, is getting easy. We have learned when it is necessary to buy tickets and when you can skimp the system and ride for free. And even the recorded voices on the Metro loudspeakers, announcing each stop along the way, are beginning to slow down and become understandable.

And even in Budapest you can still fall back on the good ole standards of American (err, collegiate) culture. Friday night, I revelled in the glory of a real hamburger at a Mexican restaurant. Saturday night, we ordered seven Pizza Hut pizzas to compliment our beers. And in the aftermath, Sunday morning, we took comfort in hand-delivered Burger King. Of course the hand-delivery process looked like Janos walking an hour and a half with four bags in his hands.

Saturday night we celebrated three birthdays (Harpswell, Kat and Mariah) in traditional Hungarian manner...a disco. We've taken a liking to the traditional Hungarian manner. But this evening evolved differently than most of our adventures in a disco or bar. It appears that four months in Hungary had gotten to us. This is where theories enter.

You surely have seen Jurassic Park. The scientific crux behind the unexpected problem in the movie is a theory about frogs (and supposedly dinosaurs). When only one sex of the species is present in a given location, an unnatural process happens and some frogs develop the sexual characteristics and abilities of the opposite sex.

Perhaps that explains -- and I hope there could be some explanation for it -- the evening. As if Janos, Chad and I were brotherly non-options, some of the girls turned to each other. Much to the amusement of the Hungarian men at tables around us, they began kissing each other. We boys could only look at each other as their game of playful pecks evolved. Hungary, eh?

And in the other corner, another American girl, only one, but coupled with a Hungarian boy. People dance in discos. The laws of friction insist that two pieces of wood, rubbed furiously enough for long enough time are bound to ignite. And the same laws demand that two bodies, ground against each other for the length of an evening combust. Alcohol, rather than a lubricant, only acts to lower the requirements for immolation.

With girls gone wild with other American girls on one hand, girl gone wild with Hungarian boy on the other, I escaped. I vowed to walk home, from the center of Budapest, across the river to a northern section of the city, alone...in the dark...in the middle of the night, seeing as "I know which direction the river flows."

The only problem was that my nearly two-hour walk left me alone with thoughts on love in Hungary, War and Peace, and in my mind. Places with perhaps an even greater craziness of love than in that room.

The post-script to the story, allowed because it took a week to write, is just as humorous: everyone is sick. What started as one case of a sore throat has spread. And it seems there's a particular danger in the popped-collar, ladies beware. Not only can it hide the status of "potential tool," but also tonsilitis can lurk behind the up-turned-downturn-of-the-formalized-male-attire.