Oh Mountains, My Mountains!

(I have survived a one-week absence from the Internet. I was not whole as an individual. On Saturday night, I was actually salivating -- my mouth was seriously watering -- at the prospect of all the news I could read, all the people I could e-mail.)

Monday, January 23rd - THE APPROACH

Austria, or at least our little piece of it, is a long, long bus ride from Hungary. We journeyed, for the better part of a Monday morning through Budapest, Szekesfehervar, and Western Hungary - all the way to the Hungarian/Austria border. A non EU-citizen, I was the only one who caused a stink at the border, but also the only one to secure that delightful click of a passport stamp.

For the better part of a Monday afternoon, we journeyed through a landscape and cities somehow significantly more advanced than Hungary. The border is a time warp, a money gap, a development bridge. Graz, the highways leading in and out of it, and the mountains lazering straight lines through the mountains that seem to stretch across the whole damn country, are testament to a sort of standard of living and national development that Hungary can only dream about.

But the highest of high mountains, standing a snow-covered bright white against the forests below, came into view as our bus raced on. I smiled. I like the mountains. And I had actually never really seen mountains in winter before.

The sun was yellow, hanging above the mountain. The yellow of the yellow bulb on a stop-and-go-light. The mountain grew and grew, and the sun reddened and reddened as we got closer. By the time sun was touching the side of the now impressive mountain, that yellow light of caution had changed quite perilously to the bright red of a stop light. The mountain was looking damn trecarious. trecerious. treccarious. trecharous. trecheraous. treacherous. tracherous. whatever.

I was scared. Wisconsin has hills. Even Lutsen is just hills. These were real mountains.

Tuesday, January 24th - THE CROSSES

Austria has a higher altitude that Hungary, and they do seem to be closer to God. Roadside alters and pictorial shrines stand testament to this sort of higher religiousness.

But the crosses on the mountain, right next to the third of three lifts we used to get to the very top of the peak, we of a different sort. The smiling pictures and two dates below, usually about twenty years apart, gave the markers away. The mountain was really starting to scare me.

But at the top Geza Bachi, Zsofi and I could do nothing but gasp at the view. The whole Karnthian valley opened in front of us. Little Austria villages speckled the snowy fields below. Across the wide valley, snowcapped mountains as far as the eye could see. Spectacular.

Then our cell phones, all at once, started to vibrate. Text messages. We were standing so close to the Slovenian border that we were using Slovenian cell towers. The text messages were our welcome, courtesy of T-Mobile, to the beautiful country of Slovenia.

I skiied down the hill, in wide, sweeping arcs. And did not die. Confidence built.

After seeing the beauty of the top, first hand, my first stop after arriving back at the hotel in the evening was to buy a camera. I wandered to a convenience story, and mustered up the triumphant apex of my linguistic abilities: "Grüss Gott. Haben Sie ein Kamera, dass man wegwerfen kann?" (Greetings - a particularly southern greeting, as we were in the very southernmost stretches of Austria. Do you have a camera that one can throw away?) She pointed me straight to the disposable cameras.

Wednesday, January 25th - THE EUROPEAN COLD SNAP!

On the news, there were reports of people dying in Europe this week, it was so damn cold. Normally that wouldn't much faze this boy from the winter-wonderland of Wisconsin. But on the slopes of Petzen, I was by far the most layered man in all of Austria. I counted, at one moment, 6 layers on my bottom half and 7 on the top. The scarf and gloves, borrowed from Gitta, were my saving grace.

Bundled almost as much as the hordes of 3-4-year-old Austrian children who were learning to ski, I was a hot sight. Coupled with my size 12 1/2 boots (not sure why they had the English measurement), I'm not sure how the ladies of the mountain were able to keep their hands off of me.

Perhaps it has something to do with the blazing speed at which I raced down the 12 km descent to the bottom of the valley. (Actually, I'm rather slow. I don't have much of a need for speed, and am fairly content to meander my way down any steep slope.)

Thursday, January 26th - SKI AND SLEEP

My world has been reduced to ski and sleep, ski and sleep, ski and sleep.

Have settled into routine with ski partners Geza Bacsi (Uncle Geza) and 9th grader Zsofi.

Geza Bacsi is awesome, this man would be your hero if you could meet him. He's probably about 65, he's a Szechyi from Transylvania. I have no idea why he is skiing with us. He wears awesome old-school skis and cold-weather gear. My favorite part is the red, blue, and faded white winter hat bearing the logo of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. He flies past me on the slopes. He's gifted with no English beyond "go," "yes," and some numbers, but that's fine. That's all you really need on the mountain.

The girl, Zsofi, is a nice kid. She's a German student, so I don't have her in class, but she takes private English lessons. We communicate with an odd mutt of German, English and Hungarian, and it works well enough for the both of us. When facing her, the lower one-third of the right side of her scalp is shaved. I think it's fashion, not medical. She, too, skis past me with ease.

Friday, January 27th - THE LAST RUN

By the fourth day of skiing, I guess I was ready to do anything to make it fun. So I timed myself, from bottom to top.

From the valley of 680 meters, I used three different lifts (a poma, a gondolla, and a t-bar) to ascend to the maximum height of 1900 meters. It took 28:49 minutes. On the race down, a combination of blue and red runs (as their color codes go here) took 17:36. I'm no Alberto Tomba, but it was a good gallop.

I am finished writing this story. I apologize for the lack of punchline. It's just that I got timid at the end, keenly aware that I had not injured myself during four full days of skiing, and had no intentions of busting my uninsured body on the final run of the final day. A wonderful trip, one that left me content to return home. Not a bad prize in these parts, or any other.

Dino Days

Dinosaurs, if there's no default American holiday, are an awesome ESL lesson plan. Because the frightful lizards are inherently fun, kids (almost) forget that they are using English if you can get them on a dino-track.

Rather than attempt Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. with some of the little folk this week, I stuck with dinos.

My personal dinosaur knowledge has receded significantly since second grade, and I can now do little more than recite triceratops, stegosaurus, velociraptor, pterodactyl, brontosaurus and of course a different King, Mr. Tyrannosaurus Rex, but that's all it takes to get kids going. Some classes practiced the simple present tense and the present continuous tense, but others got the green light to explore their own dino-tale in a story telling adventure.

The best comes from Bagi, the pi-memorizing ninth grader who is the assistant to the vice president of the Green Club.

Picture 1, a well-drawn triceratops next to a cheesy T-Rex.

The dinosaurs fighted.

Picture 2, another skillfully-drawn triceratops, laying on its side, next to another poor T-Rex.

The T-Rex killed the Triceratops.

Picture 3, a mis-formed T-Rex, now with an extended jaw like an alligator, ripping flesh from the carcass.

The T-Rex eated the meat of the Triceratops.

Picture 4. A ridiculously poorly-drawn t-rex, squatting.

The T-Rex dropped dino doo-doo. (Some phrases were pre-introduced by the teacher...)

Picture 5. A small, scribbled t-rex and a giant flaming ball.

The meteor comed.

Picture 6. Two hastily drawn dinosaur carcasses laying next to each other.

The mass-extinction of the dinosaurs happened.

Ah, the poetry of a ninth-grader summarizing 250 million years of pre-human history. But perhaps next week we'll work on the simple past tense.

Off to pack for ski trip in Austria. Ding ding ding. I'm prepared, now that Heves has received another two inches of beautiful snow.

But the real thanks must go to Gitta, who has sewn four (of five) buttons on my second-hand European-to-the-Tee Swedish-made leather coat, and has given me a scarf and a pair of gloves. Nothing like winter clothing and friendship to warm the body and soul during a cold, dark winter.

Bring it on, winter and the Alps, I am Wisconsin-born and bred and can handle this blustery non-sense you throw at me!

Snowmen

Thanks to Kat and Emily for volunteering their services as guest writers, telling the stories of a Christmas in Greece and a weekend in Heves county! I appreciate their efforts to tell, wittily enough, some good stories of good travels.

Beautiful snow fall in Heves this week. Three inches, more or less, will go down in the books as the "Big Blizzard of 2006," I'm guessing. It's funny to see people shovel with a small square of plywood nailed onto a 2"x4".

Recent e-mail from my wonderful father read:

blah blah blah
Ease up on the self-pity on the blog. Your other writing is far more fun to read.
blah blah blah

I would offer apologies, but I feel that would be unfair to you, him and me. Simply put, living and teaching here in Hungary, alone, is an adventure in many regards. Adventures are uncertain, there's a suspicious lack of expected outcomes and easy avenues. Wouldn't I be cheating everyone, if I didn't share the hardships? If you only heard the good stories, they wouldn't be nearly as sweet. Finding happiness where you never knew it to exist before must invariably entail the yin to that yang, finding sadness, hardship, anger, difficulty, non-humor, where it was never know to have existed. What good book didn't have conflict? What good story, a story worth telling, didn't have ups and downs, a dramatic suspense, didn't reflect the realities of this world, and of even the fictions of this world. I only write what I feel. And feeling is living. Not balanced, but augmented with thinking.

Those are the thoughts I think, and the thoughts I share. Have a great weekend!

Friends Come to Heves (and Egerszalok)

"The Fervent Mouse" (guest written by Emily Handler)

Contrary to my earlier predictions (suspicions), the weekend turned out to be a relatively non-dramatic one. There were, however, multiple adventures such as fogwalks, bus shenanigans, a hostel on a hill, wine tasting, 10 liters of wine in two gasoline jugs, a midnight walk over a sketchy pipe “bridge” and down a long, dark windy road, a mutiny and a revolution, hot baths and freezing air, two people with massive bruises, and various other hijinks.

So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. The detailed version goes as follows:

Gaines arrived on Friday just before 3, and we made a mad dash through the trains station to buy lángos. We met up with Chad and all three of us got on the same bus to Heves. Jeremos met us at the station -- not beer in hand as promised, but close enough. Harpswell arrived shortly after, we picked her up and headed back to Jeremos’s place.

Small, but nice. Of all the flats I’ve seen, I would say his gets the Best Decorated award.

(This is the first time that my apartment has impressed anyone, let alone win an award. Special thanks to Harpswell for donating two frying pans and a vomit stain on my rug, just to make the place feel more like home.)

Some point later in the evening, we decided to talk a walk. Mostly for the sake of meeting Janos at the train station. It was ridiculously foggy and beautiful outside, and the walk was the better part of half an hour, each way.

At some point, Gaines, Chad and I fell behind, so we never actually saw the station. We did become intimately acquainted with a field, a tree, and the line of brush which separated us from the station. Soon after arriving home, the boys darted across the street to check out the non-bar.

(This would be the after-school children house, which occasionally hosts weekend discos. On this occasion, it was Robi and friends hosting a class 11A party. Chad and Janos thought the ladies were rather attractive, but we couldn't convince them to - legal, mind you - come to the bar with us.)

They found nothing there, so they, Gaines and I headed out to partake in the Heves nightlife. Meaning, we went to the bar. Jeremy and Janos tried their hand at darts. We explored the dance floor, which was a big, cold, lightless room at the back. Eventually, the bad music and general lack of both entertainment and sustainable drunkenness drove us home. Chad had found some new friends who were buying him drinks, so he chose to stay. (Free drinks? Who wouldn’t?).

(He also proceeded to make out with a Heves girl, don't know who she was, in front of my apartment on the walk back home. That might have had something to do with his decision.)

In the morning, after way too much argument and discussion, Janos and Jeremos ran to the store and bought a selection of breakfast foods. We ate fast and headed to the bus station for the second leg of the journey: onward to Eger. Having time to kill, we wandered around, down through the Cathedral, and met up with Kyle at McDonald's.

I headed with most of the group towards Egerszalók, a little village in a valley near Eger. After a brief jaunt in the wrong direction, we found a helpful old lady who was completely unfazed by the group of luggage-laden American tourists and set us on the right path. And despite being up a massive hill, the Kohári Pince was totally worth it. We had rooms and rooms of space to ourselves, a bed for everyone, kitchen and bathroom for each room, and one bigger room where we congregated for dinner and drinking.

As we waited for the other half to arrive, we did a bit of wine tasting, and ended up buying two massive jugs of wine to have for later. Our conversation with the proprietor went something like this:

Us: Can we pay for the wine we tasted?
Him: No, no, it’s on the house.
Us: Great! Then can we buy some wine?
Him: To take away? For later?
Us: Ha ha... yeah, later/
Him: Of course. How much would you like?
Us: Um... a lot. Maybe 10 liters?
Him: (Is there any way possible for me to record his expression at this point? Some combination of bemused, gleeful, and just a tad startled.) Of course.
Us: And how much will it be?
Him: 5000 forint.

So that’s $25 for more than 13 bottles of wine. NICE!! And we did manage to polish off almost 8 of those liters (I adopted those two orphan liters this morning). We hung out in the big room, made piles and piles of spaghetti, and eventually the others showed up. Altogether, we were 12: myself, Chad, Gaines, Jeremos, Janos, Harpswell, Laura, Jenna, Mariah, Mark (the other American from Kisvárda), Brent, and Kyle.We stayed and ate and drank and talked at Kohári for quite a while. My favorite part was after Jeremos climbed on top of a cabinet. The two of us sat up there for a good long time, chatting and playing God. We had an awesome experiment planned, but the party started to break up. So we hopped down, he much more gracefully than I (but hardly a fair comparison, since his legs are twice as long at mine).

The second point of coming to Egerszalók, after the wine, was the thermal baths. Having confirmed earlier in the day that they were, in fact, open until 3 AM, we headed out in their direction well into the evening. With a confident (Here I must have been exuding a confidence that was lacking, as I had no freakin' clue how to get there...) stride, Jeremos led us across the village, up side streets and down alleys, and across this incredibly dicey “bridge” made up of three pipes laid down across a roaring gorge. 

Okay, so it was really more like a small creek, two feet down, and the pipes were flat, not too slippery, and sufficiently wide to walk on. Despite the darkness and drunkenness, no one fell in, or even anything close, although there was certainly some caution, hand-holding, and Janos bashed his leg while attempting some sort of leap.

After the “bridge”, there was still a significant amount of walking - mostly down a long, twisty road, in the direction away from civilization, in total darkness (except for the full moon, of course). Not too far down the long, twisty, dark road, about half of us declared mutiny and turned around.

(I didn't even know about the mutiny against my navigational leadership, that's how much further ahead I was with those "confident" strides.)

Halfway back, as the leaders decided to take a “shortcut” to avoid the pipe-bridge, Laura and I staged a counter-revolution. This involved us lying on the road in protest. We had convinced Brent to join us and had almost convinced Jenna when Jeremos called me, ecstatic, to tell us that they had, in fact, found the baths somewhere up ahead in the darkness. Laura made a shrewd decision and ran off towards the group going home. Jenna, Brent and I turned around for the second time and headed back to the darkness.

And, sure enough, down the long, twisty dark road, around several corners and past vast fields of nothingness, the baths materialized in a glowing, steamy oasis. After the initial horror of being almost naked in below freezing air, they were incredible. By the time we left, my core was so warm that the walk home was barely cold.

The next morning, some of the more determined people (Kyle, Brent, and Mark) got up early and left. The rest of us got up whenever, and eventually congregated in the bar downstairs for much-needed coffee. It took a while to clean up the big room and pack. Jeremy put me in charge of collecting money and paying for the rooms. Wow, if there’s anything more pleasing than being in charge, it’s being in charge and getting to demand money from people. Please God, let me be Hajni some day.

(Emily has dreams of staying in Hungary in the future as a CETP program assistant, or something of the sorts. Just as long as it doesn't involve kids in the classroom.)

Anyway, we paid, we got out, and we got to the bus stop, only to discover that for the first and only time this weekend, my Sacred Green Notebook had failed us (well, perhaps it wasn’t so much the Notebook’s fault as it was the fault of the person who wrote down the information on the internet) and there was no bus at 12:06. Hm. But semmi baj, we found a nearby restaurant and had lunch, or breakfast, for people other than Gaines and I.

It was good, but the food kept coming slower and slower. Eventually Gaines and I decided that we needed to get on a bus towards Eger in order to make our connections. So we and Chad threw down money and left.

Now picture this: we leave the restaurant. I hear Gaines, who is slightly in front of me, cry out. Why? Because the bus is closing it’s doors and pulling away. We chase after it madly. Just as we’ve given up, from behind me I hear Chad yell, “Emily!” I stop, pivot, and looming towards me at a great speed is the huge pastel green front of another bus. I squeak, step back, trip over the curb, and fall flat on my ass. Well, not so much “flat” as particularly hard on my right side. Ouch. At least I didn’t fall under the bus.

So we made it to Eger, Chad and I made it back to Szolnok, and Gaines made it onto her bus and I assume home. The others? Don’t know. We tried to speculate who will get home the latest tonight. Votes were cast for Janos and Harpswell, since their routes are the farthest and most difficult. Possibly also Laura, since she might stay overnight with Jenna. But as I told Gaines, whatever stories I make up in my head, I’m sure the truth will be much more mundane. Well, time will tell.

(As for the others she mentions? We waited for the next bus. I never came. So we plunkered down in the restaurant again, over sodas and coffees, to wait more than an hour for the next bus. We did finally make it out of the Egerszalok valley alive, but not before planning out which wine cellar/cave we would make our home in if it came down to the fact that we couldn't escape such a delightful place.)

Mid-January Status Update

Little Janka, president of the Green Club, will be coming on the ski trip to Austria next week. Pretty excited about that news. She'll be a good translator.

Gitta has the internet now and reads these pages. She's one of two Hungarians who know about it.

I have self-diagnosed myself as being in the critical fourth-stage of living alone abroad.

The first is excitement, pure and euphoric. For me, that honeymoon lasted a month.

The second stage comes as you realize what you've gotten yourself into. I walked around for two months, amazed at the differences between "here" and "there," wondering how the heck I was going to find an indigenous happiness without the tool of "inventing fiction and happiness."

The third stage came as I realized a little bit of happiness could be eked from the surroundings, even if they aren't your usual, comfortable setting. Helped a bit by the trip to Greece, it lasted a month and a half.

Last weekend, err, two weekends ago, I entered the fourth stage. It begins with a recognition that the happiness might be a bit superficial, and most certainly temporary. It began with the notion, cemented during the course of two back-to-back nights of walking up to random tables at Hungarian bars and introducing my lonely self, that to everyone here I am simply a "passing curiosity," a valuable 15-minute distraction or English language practicing tool.

"But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one: men know him not -- and to know not is to care not for..." Dracula (25).

It's a bit diheartening, when you realize it. But at the same time, I just sit and watch, content to observe and bemoan that problem, rather than cling to the first thing to befriend me. I suppose that's because I'm an American, where even a conscientious liberal is a conservative worrier according to world standards, and think it best to hold the world and children that I'm observing this year only as close as at arm's length.

Perhaps it's best. Perhaps it's not.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

(P.S. - Apologies. Another symptom of this stage is a strange reluctance and limited motivation to write stories, any stories at all. Perhaps it will pass.)

In 2006, I Will...

Last week, the first of the new year, and today were resolution-creating days for the English and German students under my tutelage. But we all know how little fun it is to create resolutions for yourself, it is much more enjoyable to create them for others.

Enter the brand-new set of celebrity cards I made last week, featuring the most famous folks in the world. Despite my initial expectations, David Copperfield, Tiger Woods and the Pope had to be removed and are no longer in the set. They are simply not "famous enough." Jackie Chan and Jim Carey have been causing problems of late, too.

We always start with the same example, Michael Jackson. The fodder is simply irresistible for even those with limited English-language skills. In 2006, I will find my nose. In 2006, I will not catch the little boys. In 2006, I will stopping being pedophile. Etc.

MJ not withstanding, the best resolution so far?

Headmaster Kerek Laszlo, pictured as Georgian politico Zenn Miller on the card, has vowed in 2006 to build three "lifts" in the school, put a cigarette machine in the canteen, and reduce the number of penalties that bad kids face. He also has promised to "like the water," as opposed to liquor. At least three kids made similar comments, so I'm beginning to wonder.

Caught in Heves over the Weekend

Big news around the halls of Eotvos Jozsef High and the new computer in the teachers' office today was that Tanar Jeremy was recently captured, in film, enjoying himself at the local disco!

Luckily the photo wasn't that incriminating, as we had all known beforehand that I'm simply a long-haired American hippy living in a little Hungarian village.

The hair, though, has since been cut by a hairdresser who doesn't speak English. I will wear my hot outfit next time and remember to be smiling at all times...

More Greece Than You Can Handle

Kat's Take on a Christmas in Greece (by Kat Kocisky)

46 some odd hours on a train, early morning stops in various Balkan cities, and two wanderlust driven travel companions plus moi…all equipped with Greek names… THIS was my winter holiday in GREECE!!!

Jeremy (Dionysus: god of wine)
Harpswell (Athena: goddess of wisdom and war)
and I (Artemis: goddess of the hunt)

I’m sitting on one of my two beds in Szerencs, overwhelmingly giddy to be home in my BED that I LOVE. I feel like I’m melting into it right now…it just doesn’t compare to the train couchettes (train bunk beds that resemble those you’d see in an army camp). I can finally do laundry, use my own shower, my own kitchen, and gather my thoughts from the trip. I love being on the go, but sometimes there’s nothing better than getting home after a long time away.

Here come the itinerary and trip highlights:

Dec. 21st – Szerencs to Budapest, Budapest to Kiskunhalas, Janos provided us with a place to hang out for a few hours until our next train arrived at the unpopular hour of 2 am.

Dec. 22nd (1:46 am) – Kiskunhalas to Belgrade, SERBIA.

The three of us arrived in Belgrade at 6:30 am feeling a little ragged, but Jeremy was perky, because in the remaining ten minutes of the train ride, he made a Serbian friend with the girl sitting across from us. I guess he felt pressured as Harps and I would meet up with our Serbian friends later that day…but then again, Jeremy tends to ignite banter with anyone who speaks English along the way.

Harpswell’s dad’s friend fetched us from the dark train station (cold, aching, tired, and hungry, but still enthusiastic to see the bombed out buildings of Belgrade) and took us to his quaint apartment. Then the three of us fell asleep for a few hours and REALLY messed up our sleep schedules, while he read a book. We all picked up a few words in Serbian, I sampled the country’s specialty “Deer Beer” or “Jelen Pivo”, and we became acclimated to Orthodox churches and the Cyrillic alphabet just as we had to leave. The Cyrillic was a good BASE CAMP 1 on the Mount Everest of “NEW AND COMPLETELY FOREIGN LANGUAGES” before we hit the summit aka - Greek alphabet. But then again, once you get the hang of Hungarian, what CAN POSSIBLY BE HARDER? I left Serbia feeling flush from the snow that began to fall, the delicious meat dinner we all had, and we hopped the next train at 6 pm, ready for our couchettes.

Dec. 22 –23rd – Overnight train from Belgrade to Thessaloniki, GREECE (passed through Skopje, MACEDONIA sometime before dawn).

This portion of the trip was largely uneventful as the three of us attempted to use the beds/benches to our advantage. However, I did get snips of disapproval here and there from me mates about wanting to crash around 7 pm. I guess they weren’t prepared for how much sleep I like and NEED. From that moment on, I was known as the girl who needs too much sleep for reasons beyond my comprehension.

Border guards and ticket officers (see Jeremy…I know the difference) came to our glass box about once every seven or eight minutes to stamp our passports, study our Balkan flexipass tickets, and blabber something in Serbian/Macedonian/Greek (at one point we thought they wanted us to get off the train which made me suspicious and I imagined the train taking off without us and with all of our crap). We dined on Hungarian sausage, Jello/chocolate cookies, and Cheetos. Snacks fit for a champion.

Dec. 23rd – Thessaloniki to Athens, GREECE

In Greece, you need a reservation for anything you do. Our first incident of train trouble and group tension resulted from not being able to make a reservation for our train to Athens. We had finally made it to Greece, but we were still hoping to get to Athens before Christmas. After consulting about 6 people about what we should do, we ended up standing in between train cars for approx. 20 mins. We were forbidden to lay our stuff down in the train bar and tersely told by a few Greeks that we needed to move our asses outta there. Finally, the ticket officer directed us toward three empty seats in the dining car where people felt no qualms about lighting up in a no-smoking area. It was a chimney, and I rested my weary forehead on the table, glancing up every now and then to see the magnificent scenery jet by the window. The snow-capped mountains were spectacular and Harpswell even told me that one of them was supposedly Mount Olympus. I believed her as the mountain tops were hidden in the clouds…I liked to think that Zeus was still up there ready to toss a lightning bolt down at a moment’s notice.

(What Kat neglects here, is that two of the seats were together, and the other was at a different table. The two girls quickly snatched the neighboring chairs, and sentenced me to sit with three random Greeks. Luckily, the happened to be three lovely Greek ladies. I found it hard to butt into their conversation, but after one hopped off the train, i came up with a plan. I would us a magazine in a desperate attempt to decipher the Greek alphabet and take pity on me. Ta-da! Worked like magic, and an hour later (this was a five-hour train ride) I was talking with dark-haired coeds Katerina and Helena. Bo-yah!)

We arrived in Athens at night and deep down I was incredibly excited to be there despite the fogginess in my head from being on an eternal train. Athens is one of those places that was on my invisible list of cities to see during my lifetime. I never thought I’d actually get there, but then again I never thought I’d be teaching English in Hungary either. I’m fascinated by Greek mythology and all of the architecture so I couldn’t wait until daylight so we could start exploring. We succumbed to a taxi to take us to Hostel Zeus as we were in no mood to figure out the Greek metro system (which we later learned far surpasses the Budapest/Prague metros). Our first night consisted of getting our bearings in a new city. We dumped our stuff in Rm. 16 and grabbed gyros and drinks before deciding to head back for the night. The hostel was fairly empty and we only met two other American girls that night…and then a random guy in the fourth bed of our room, which was strange as most of the other rooms were completely empty.

Dec. 24th – Athens

Christmas Eve in Athens brought us a hike to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon, Temple of Athena, Theatre of Dionysus, the Agora, and a breathtaking view of the millions of white buildings clustered at the bottom of a valley between mountains. Ruins were scattered throughout, seemingly sporadically dropped from the sky to land among the hundreds of cafes and bars. Mountains cropped up to create rolling neighborhoods and the sea was distant but visible. Harpswell and I liked to pretend that the stray cats and dogs found wandering about at the top of the Acropolis were ancient gods and goddesses reincarnated as animals, still watching over their old city. The Agora (or marketplace) reminded me of the deck at home in Naperville as mom and dad have made it into a backyard paradise. Not that our deck contains Ionic columns, busts of Greek heroes, and marble floors…but the overall ambiance of lush greenery, birds chirping, and a sense of calm resonated here (in a city of 5 million!).

On the way home, we stopped for Ouzos, a Greek licorice drink at a stray bar and were in good spirits for the night. We met up with a number of people on Christmas Eve, a big party night in Athens (or it could have just been another Sat. night…as the primarily Orthodox Greeks don’t celebrate Christmas until January 7th). Many of the bars that night required a reservation, and Jeremy almost got us beat up at one of those. After the bouncer asked us to move from the steps because we weren't willing to pay an 8 Euro cover charge, he opined out loud, "Uh-oh guys, we must be holding back the hordes from paying 8 Euros to get in!" He bouncer took menacing steps forward and growled, “You got a problem with that?!” But we managed and it was definitely a Christmas Eve different than any other.

(This is a clever attempt to cloud, in poetic language, the fact that Kat hooked up with a boy from Cyprus that night. I was kind of a pimp all trip. I would talk to random people, and boys are more approachable for me for the obvious reason than I'm way more invested in the feminine outcomes. All the boy were wandering foreigners with accents and if Kat and Harps are a sufficient sample size, American girls are obsessed with accents.)

Dec. 25th – Athens

Christmas Day in Athens was beautifully blue and sunny, with a juxtaposition of tropical flora and Christmas décor. The green of all the plants was so sharp in contrast to the Hungarian winter plain. I made my other two travel companions wait to see the changing of the guards at the Parliament building and then we wandered home to prepare for our fancy Xmas dinner. Dressed to the nines, we headed out to a Greek restaurant and adapted to the new dinner hour. People were still arriving to eat at 1:30 am, just as we were about to leave.

Dec. 26th – Athens

This was our emergency day in Athens (unplanned) but necessary as we hadn’t bothered to research what the hell we were going to do after our hostel reservation was up. A spinach pie, a few hours at an Internet café, a short power outage, a Greece guidebook, and some advice from our John Lennon look-alike hostel front desk worker from Liverpool later…we decided to hit up the town of Nafplion with no other knowledge than what Jeremy discovered in the guidebook. We got a few nods of approval when we told some of our short term friends/acquaintances in Athens where we were going. We then planned to hit up a few museums, but realized that most everything was closed in Athens due to the recent holiday.

So we did what we do best, we wandered. And we wandered right into a cricket match in a city park area. Miraculously, all of us were really into it and became loyal spectators, cheering for the fielders (?) that were standing next to us. Jeremy tried out his Hindi and we all got to know some of the players who were from Pakistan. One admitted to us that the Greeks don’t necessarily give them the five-star treatment. Next, we trekked up to a small cliff where we watched the sun set over the sea and managed to ascend above the exhaust and ground pollution. To one direction, storm clouds materialized over the mountains and blended the two into a dark bluish gray mass. It was beautiful and a perfect activity for my favorite time of the day. Later we learned that this area was prime for evening drug dealing…

Dec. 27th – Nafplion (small town on the Aegean Sea about 2 hours south of Athens)

Hopped the bus for Nafplion the next morning and had absolutely no idea of what the place would be like. What Harpswell and I wanted was a beach and so we were crossing our fingers that the guidebook was right. When we pulled into the town, we were greeted by a huge fortress on a mountain that curled itself around the entire plateau of its summit. We had our pick of places to stay and we finally decided on a place with a little kitchen and lots of bookshelves. It even had a balcony looking out at the fortress mountain. The town consisted of narrow but hilly cobblestone streets lined with bakeries, shops, and cafes. Balconies covered in flora not seen in Hungary at ANY time of the year overlooked the streets/sidewalks.

Harpswell and I eventually made it our goal to find the beach and take a dip. Every step we took uncovered a new and incredible mountain, stretch of water, or cliff covered in cacti. On the way, we ran into Jeremy and we all had the same wide-eyed smirk on our face. Almost in unison, we agreed that this town was beyond spectacular.The beach was not just any beach, but the Aegean Sea. The same sea that King Aegeus supposedly jumped into EONS ago after falsely believing that his son Theseus had not been successful in killing the mythical half man, half bull, Minotaur. When in fact, Theseus had slain the beast and in his excitement, had forgotten to raise the white victory flag that would let his father know he was okay. Instead, the King saw the black flag and jumped into the sea to his death. This is the same sea that Harpswell and I plunged into! Our winter holiday was starting to get TROPICAL! It was necessary to start swimming quickly so that the blood would flow and keep us warm. Harpswell, in her Maine upbringing, dove in right away, but I took a little longer. Once I did get all the way in, I looked to shore only to see on old Greek man with two raised arms, cheering me on. I

That evening, our crew had the best dinner yet on the trip. Jer and I ravaged our swordfish, while Harpswell finally got her kalamari…not to mention flan and red wine. For reasons beyond me, the wait staff continued to bring us free dessert…”FLAN ON THE HOUSE!” “CARAFE OF WINE ON THE HOUSE!” Afterward, we tried to go dancing after dinner, but we were the only ones dancing, as apparently Greeks haven’t inherited the dancing gene.

Dec. 28th – Nafplion

The last day in Nafplion was a little rainy, but that didn’t stop me from wandering back out onto the beach path, only to be pummeled by a high tide wave. Salt water in my mouth, in my hair, on my shirt, pants, and purse, and absolutely soaked my shoes. I felt like I was standing on that bridge after one of those water rides at the amusement parks. Later on in the evening, I took the same walk with Jer and Harps and warned them that Poseidon was angry today. But I don’t think they believed me until they saw that same wave crash up onto the path. It was about 23 times scarier at night, with flashes of lightning popping up every now and then from the dark clouds above the sea. Despite the sea storm, we could clearly see a myriad of constellations to the left of the fortress mountain. We timed the wave and ran through the tunnel like we were part of an obstacle course. The adrenaline was rushing as we made it through.

(This was not actually as scary as Kat's epic tale would make it seem...)

Dec. 29th – Leave Nafplion for Athens at 6 am, Athens to Thessaloniki

After reaching Thessaloniki, a big city in northern Greece, Jeremy introduced himself to an red-headed Irish guy who was waiting in the international train line. Three beers later, we had made acquaintances with another solo English speaking traveler at an outdoor cafe while waiting for our next connection to Belgrade…he gave us a lesson on United Kingdom/Irish geography using a mobile phone as a map while gypsy children petted our hair and a bold white cat pawed in the air in an attempt to get our Cokes.…

Thessaloniki to Belgrade (30th of Dec)

SLEEP!! SLEEP!!

Dec. 30th – Belgrade to Subotica, SERBIA, Subotica to some small town on the Serbian border

We traveled in a silver train/bus/trolley like war vehicle that moved at the pace of a lawnmower while the driver happily chatted/played cards with someone standing next to him. What fit the situation even better was that, instead of heading north in a straight line like initially planned, we skittered on the Serbian border for some time just to prolong things for the hell of it. It could have been worse!

(Cloaked in the fond memories of our little silver bug-mobile, I feel like Kat could have emphasized more how UNBELIEVABLY CLOSE we came to not escaping this adventure! Imagine yourself trapped in a country, just trying to get out. You hop smaller and smaller trains, going to smaller and smaller cities in the hope, the whim of a prayer, that simply getting closer to the border is a good thing. We almost did not make it. Serbia almost did not let us go.)

SMTONTSB (see above) to Szeged, HUSzeged to (we thought Budapest) but ended up in Szolnok, HU

Dec. 31st - Szolnok to Budapest, HU for NEW YEAR’S EVE 2006!

For anyone who actually read all of this…WOW! Impressive! I’d just like to say that this Greece trip has to be one of my all time favorites. I had two wonderful travel companions and we saw a lot, laughed a lot, weathered some tension here and there, but made it out alive seeing more of the world than we had before.

Boldog Uj Evet!

Happy 2006! Here in Hungary, that thought is best expressed with "Boldog Uj Evet!" Literally, happy new year (accusative case). Hungarian doesn't get more simple than that one.

Back in Heves after a magnificent New Years in Budapest. One highlight was calling parents, from atop the Buda hills on New Years Eve Day, with a delicate snow falling over the city and the river Danube below. They're coming in February, I'm really excited to share my new country with them.

Come nightfall, we invited ourselves to a small party hosted by some college students. Counting backwards in Hungarian is beyond my rudimentary grasp of the language, but at the stroke of midnight, the whole group sang "Magyarorszag." A highlight was chatting with a girl named Kitti. She's an English major in college, and I like those sorts of people. We danced together for hours, but I never got around to teaching her the American traditions between a boy and a girl on New Years Eve. Perhaps that has something to do with where I went to sleep in the wee hours of that morning.

i did not sleep on a bed.
i did not sleep on a couch.
i did not sleep in a chair
i did not sleep on the floor.
i did not sleep on a table.
i did not sleep in the bathroom.
i did not sleep outside.
i did not sleep on the porch.
i did not sleep standing up.
i did not sleep in a ball.
i did not even sleep in the bathtub.

I started 2006 waking up atop a wardrobe. With a pillow. Apparently it was the best late night option.

My best for a happy 2006, a year in which I hope we meet again!