Eager Eger

By now, I’m just about as well-versed in Eger as Rick Steves or any other English-speaker in the world. It’s a good thing, of course, as Eger is still as charming and wonderful as when it was my cultural escape from Heves. It’s a perfect blend of small-town charm, colorful history, ecclesiastical delight, baroque architecture, posh urbanity in little, consumable portions and, of course, wine. So it made sense that the magical county seat of my old county-du-jour would be my recommendation for the first law-interns weekend.

At first, it’s hard to plan for and travel with detail-oriented people who aren’t quite yet accustomed to traveling and living in a world that borders very nearly to second at times. They insisted that they heard Intercity trains were the only way to go. I countered with the realities of train transportation to Eger and promises that fish-heads-under-seats is, in fact, “culture.” Hungarians recommended reservations, they clamored. I begged to differ, never once having bought a ticket earlier than the moment before I jumped on the train and never once having ordered a seat, and paid more for it, unless it was compulsory. That’s just the laissez-faire see-what-happens Hungary I’d come to love last year.

The crew was impressed by the train when we finally hopped on Saturday morning, Melanie, Kalli and I running to catch up with the rest of the group, lunging onto the train in fear that it would leave any second. As they snapped pictures as we whizzed past the not-so-tall tallest point in Hungary, the Matra mountains, I gave them just the facts. I didn’t tell them what it’s like to hike, without a map, from that highest point, Kekesteto, to the village of Sirok, 40 km away. Maybe it’s because they wouldn’t have been interested, maybe it’s because tour guides should leave something for their clientele to explore and learn on their own.

Julia’s the Columbia gal in the Open Society office with me. You’ve already been introduced. She looks good with a wine glass in her hand, no? A contentment of sophistication.


Melanie and Kalli, too, are old news. I didn’t know, though, of Kalli’s proclivity for photography until she snapped 565 digital pictures over the course of the weekend.

Canadian Dave is, you guessed it, Canadian. From way up where the Carlyn sails, so north of Vancouver that it’s almost Alaska. Melanie and Kalli met him through Facebook after they almost rented an apartment from him. They didn’t though, and they felt so bad about jilting him that they invited him out for drinks. He came to Hungary in pursuit of an adventure and a license at dentistry. After high school, he absconded college to learn through more experiential adventures and picked up far more applicable trades like construction and Swedish.

Now, four years later, he’s without the Bachelor’s Degree that isn’t such a prerequisite in these parts of the world. He’ll study for five years at Semmelweis University in Budapest, mostly with other foreign students, and earn a medical degree that’ll be valid anywhere in the EU (and strangely enough, California). He’s gotten much better in Hungarian during his year in Hungary so far than I did in the same amount of time, I’m a little envious.

Stephanie works with Mel-n-Kalli. (He, I can’t believe that I didn’t come up with the melancholy nickname before right now!!) She’s at Princeton now, but hails from Florida.

Kate is an Australian who earned her entire Bachelor’s Degree at a Japanese university. Now she’s landed at Columbia, and just finished her first year of law school. The Trabant-top picture may or may not have been at my late-night instigation!

Saturday, after finding our Guesthouse just underneath the castle, we set out see Eger. At lunch, Dave and I sampled bikaver while Kate settled on beer. The waiter gave an impressed “Really?!” when he set the big beer down in front of the lady instead of the two gentlemen at the same table.

We finished the last of our ice cream cones before entering the cathedral, we gulped down the last of our dip-n-dots before entering the Mennonite temple, We spun our way up the minaret, as all good tourists must. Claustrophobia and heights struck half of our group, but we battled through. I lectured the short history of Eger and its role in a brief tour of Hungarian history in the shadow of the 17th century sliver of a testament to Turkish dominance of the city. There might not have been applause, but I think they were duly impressed.

An afternoon in the wine-cellar-ringed Valley of Beautiful Women is where the photo madness began. To amazing results, Kalli and the others started snapping away. While it’s normally a photogenic place, this afternoon was more amazing than most. A smiling 7 year old. A week-old bride shrouded in a droopy hat. A four-toothed violinist. Endless glasses of deep-red shiraz. Smiles.

We got lost in wine and conversation and laughter until a late supper. Most of the girls went home after a long day, but Dave, Kate and I stayed in the valley to make some Hungarian friends. We thought we heard some Australians do an Ozzie-Ozzie-Ozzie-Hoi-Hoi-Hoi, but they just turned out to be skinheads, according to two new friends at the top of the valley.

The crowd in street became younger and younger and Dave and I became restless for a disco. We decided on the infamous lava-tube disco underneath the Bazilika instead of the disco in the city park, despite directions to the later.

At Amazon, much smaller and quieter than I remember, I teamed up with a cute gal on the foosball table. I don’t think her older brother took it kindly when she and I destroyed him and his partner. Not much English was spoken.

Sunday morning, as we packed up, I made our sixty-year-old hostess cry. We wanted to leave our bags at the guesthouse until we were ready to take the train a few hours later. I tried communicating that in Hungarian. She, on the other hand, wanted to go to the baths. She communicated that by crying, I gave in, of course, and she got her way. We hauled our bags off to a breakfast of fruit at the market. Again we found ourselves strangely photogenic. Even normal meals looked better in black-and-white. By the time we rolled into the same train station – Keleti – that we had rolled out of less than 30 hours ago, the photo ladies had managed certainly no less than 600 pictures. That, of course, is more than 20 an hour! I just feel bad for ruining so many of them with my presence… :-P

Fun with Hungarian Bathrooms
Budapest, Hungary
Jeremy Jewett

Find all the pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kalli.kofinas/EgerEgSzsGedre?authkey=q-PbdWq5Cy0

Egri Hetveget

One of the best aspects of travelling abroad with law students, etc? Talented folk galore. Kalli's one with the camera and took over 500 pictures of our (barely) 24 hour stay in Hungary. that's 20 an hour, if you're doing the same math i'm doing. Her smile makes people feel comfortable and her eye for the lens makes the results magic. Here're the teases before the storeis.



(from left Kate, Columbia Law, PILI; Stephanie, Princeton Undergrad, European Roma Rights Centre; Julia Columbia/Amsterdam Law, OSJI; Canadian Dave, Semmelweiss Medical University; the tour guide; Melanie, Wisconsin Law, EERC.)

wondering and wandering are two good ways to go

Up-to-date

I’ve come to realize the reason for the ungodly plug-in air freshener. My bed smells like urine. It’s not good. I tried scrubbing. Hard. But it still smells like old-lady urine. I speculate that bed-wetting may be why the old lady was shipped off to the nursing home. The can’t-wait-to-move countdown is at less than ten days!

Feeling a little underutilized at work. And the work that I’m doing seems more chart-perfecting than a valuable learning experience. Hmm.

Said goodbye to Harpswell on Wednesday at a little good bye party of the old standards (Janos, Kat, Aran, Matt, Noemi) and the law ladies I invited a long (Julia, Melanie, Kalli). Harpswell is headed back to Maine for the summer, than staking out a new life in Chicago. She hopes to go to nursing school there after a year. We toasted the last of her two-years worth of nights with Drehers, watching hot Hungarian salsa dancers and gyros. They’re so good.

Thursday was a wild evening storm. Noemi and I were shoved in from an outside table at the restaurant down the street. We loved the swing in temperature at the crack of the storm. Luckily there's a night bus between my house and Noemi's.

Friday was Zold Pardon, Buda's hot night spot for rockin' music. The teenagers dig it. Melanie and Kalli were skeptical, but Janos and I managed to convince them of the merits of the joint with the 100-forint entrance turnstill, pulsating tunes like "what is love" and "eye of the tiger," and a fantastic blend of merry young hungarians and sketchy Chinese businessmen.

And Saturday morning before heading to Eger? I woke up early to catch the train, but Janos was already up and about, slamming doors at 7:00 am in the morning. I didn't know what he was up to, I didn't open my door until i hear him stomp down the courtyard walkway. I shook my head at his antics, and opened the door to head into the shower.

But then what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a girl. Standing in Janika's room, looking out the window. Her hair, like a dream, was most likely flowing in the breeze. I gaspes a "Szia" before dashing into my room to better clad myself and find my glasses. When i popped back out, capable of seeing this time, she was still there. Redish hair flowing. 20 or so.

She spun and smiled. She stuck out her hand. She introduced herself as Monika. As if to explain her magic apperance, she said she was Janos' niece. She spoke a beautiful English lacking in communiation between Janos and I.

Her t-shirt, I kid you not, I swear to god: "Porn-Star-In-Training." Branded across her chest.

She's headed to Debrecen next yeat to become a translator. She was in town with her mom - Janos's sister - to see the Night of the Museum festivities. (All the city's museums stay open until 2 am with special programming, the Saturday night closest to the Summer solstice.) And she came, apparently, to stuff my freezer full of meat. More meat than I've ever seen in my life. Certainly more meat than our little kitchen can handle...

The Reality of Returning to Writing

Sorry. I’m not getting much out of writing stories this time around... The trail of a blog I left behind last time meant/means so much to me that I wonder why the change. Some thoughts?

It’s so much easier to write and publish and communicate this time around. Perhaps that means it couldn’t be as meaningful. Last year I had only an hour of computer a day, thanks to my 800 HUF library card. I'd compound and compact stories for days and weekends on end, so I'd have one glorious tale to tell by the time I let my fingers race across the keyboard, complete with inverted Z and Y.

This time, there’s a cosmopolitan city full of distractions galore.

I spend all day look at words of all sorts on a computer screen. It’s hard to want to do more of it after a long day of work.

The stories simply aren’t as good. They aren’t as adventurous. For the most part, I understand what’s going on in this country now. There isn’t as much of that glorious uncertainty that makes stories of retrospection so much fun.

And there aren’t any characters. I have a plethora of friends here, of course, almost more than the whole population of Heves. Old and new. Young and old. American and Hungarian and any other sort of English-speaker. But no characters. Look carefully at those who peppered my stories last year:

English Peter.
German Peter.
Old Barbara.
Smiling Betti.
Pretty Petra.
And especially, Super Gitta.

People weren’t just themselves. Coupled with an adjective, they were characters. Persona attached in a simple adjective, they were somehow larger than life. Figments of creation. Just a part of a story, an animation in my story. I couldn’t even comprehend most of the time that they had their own stories...

An update on two of those characters?

I called Super Gitta this afternoon. She’s good. Probably studying too much exams. I only recognized her voice two or three times the whole conversation. I hope she comes to Budapest this summer and we can have the chance to get together and talk.

Thanksgiving Elli and I are planning a little backpacking trip in Romania. Maybe out of one of the Transylvanian cities I’ve been to, maybe out of somewhere new. It’ll be her second career hike, after last year’s successful Bukk adventure.

(And as you can see in the picture, we're in the middle of a heatwave! Apparently it's coming from North Africa. Toasty warm!)

Back

My roommate from orientation, of all people, is back.

We shared room keto-keto-harom, back when Hungary was still so new and absurdly foreign. He’s an unlikely returnee. We met up Sunday morning, an hour after his plane touched down, in a little basement pub next to Keleti. His first urge, back in Hungary, was a Borsodi, even though it was 10:30. He’s always been more comfortable talking to me than just about anyone else, I think, and he chain-smoked his way through his entire story as I listened on in a condescending disbelief.

He was a little older than us, on a year's sabbatical-of-sorts from a major movie studio in Hollywood. He was quiet during orientation, then they sent him off to his little village. It's in the same league as Heves and Gaines' Mezobereny. Those kind of places can mess with your mind. Plus It's a kilometer from the Romanian border. Many of the students come from Romania each week, staying in the dorm-like kollegium, so they can learn in their mother-tongue, Hungarian.

His first problem was contractual. They wanted to change the terms of his contract because the county was nearly bankrupt, or something along those lines. Scared that nothing was the way he envisioned it, he argued back, calling Hajni down to mediate.

After a rough start, he began to bond with the students. He's not a teacher by trade, but he was willing to become invested in their lives and offer English lessons to anyone in the town who was interested. When his washing machine broke and flooded the office below him, he offered a handshake and English lessons in apology.

He came back from a Christmas break back at home to more problems with his principal. That's about the time, too, when the drama began. The teacher who lived above him was disappointed when he didn't want a relationship. The twenty-something college girl from the town, though, was excited when he did. (So, too, was her little sister, one of his 9th grade students.) The teachers were mad that he didn't have a strict Hungarian-teacher attitude with the students. A gay student was too close for comfort. And the cutest girl in the school started coming to his apartment, alone, for private lessons.

He explained the culmination best in an e-mail i received in September or so. "I got mixed up in whole love triangle," he confessed, "and it all exploded one night at the disco in Romania." What did that look like, you might wonder? "I ended up walking the streets drinking and basically crying and later I learned the cops were looking for me the whole time." So it goes.

The sordid details were no less tumultous than some of the other misadventures of his life, that i've strangely and detachedly been privy to. He finally straightened everything out, to the satisfaction of the principal, police and himself. But his departure was tainted. He sees his stay as a success, as a positive, because of the relationships he built with students and because of the positive impact he had on them. But back home, it affected him so much that he was nearly comatose for several months, dazed by Hungary. And that village. Finally, he found a really good job in another movie studio that he really enjoys. But just as he was set to move past Hungary, he decided to come back.

He's looking for a little closure, I think he'll find it. It might be dramatic, as tends to be his panchant strangely enough, but i think it will be good for him, but that's just a guess. I warned him about the strange sensations of going back to a place that you come to romanticize and glorify, if those are the right words. He listened, then lit a cigarette.

He disappeared just as suddenly as he appeared. Like a shadow. I haven’t heard from him since he boarded that train to a little town far from here three hours after we met up. Who knows if I ever will. So it goes.

The Second Badger

Melanie arrived safe and sound Tuesday, the anticipated arrival of Wisco law student #2 to hit Budapest this summer. We didn’t have any classes together last year – and she knows a whole different law school crew than I know – but we got to know each other a little through the Wisconsin International Law Society and pre-Hungary excitement. I failed in an attempt to give her a Hungarian-language base before she arrived, but I’ll do a better job of being an on-the-ground tour guide.

Noemi and I met her for supper her first night here. I was so full afterward that I could hardly make it home, but it was a good intro to Hungary. By Friday, I was helping her and Kalli, a Brooklyn Law Schooler rightfully proud of her Greek heritage, look for an apartment.

They lucked into a beautiful place, recently renovated, no more than six blocks away. Kalli’s parents started talking to a man on a train and he knew a friend who had a friend with a solution to the problem. The Serbian man now works with an Irish invest who renovates flats in Budapest. (And I learned a trick that’s happening across the city. Building “associations” are selling the rights to renovate the 4th or 5th story attics that have gone unused since the building was built decades or a century ago. They use the proceeds to renovate the entire courtyard/outside entrance, etc.)

They’re both working at the European Roma Rights Centre this summer. I enjoyed, tragically, Melanie’s reaction when she talked to her first Central European about the Roma. At a cozy courtyard bar after the ladies signed a handwritten contract Friday night, the Serbian-born landlord treated Melanie to the traditional tirade of Roma stereotypes and disdain. Melanie was shocked, I think, to walk into the uphill battle of public opinion in these parts of the world. But of course I should be cynical, I used to teach at a segregated high school…

Since then, the ladies have hardly stopped shopping, pausing just long enough for a dusk-lit tour of Castle Hill and the Fisherman’s Bastion. They took loads of pictures, maybe someday they’ll land online. Occasionally they call in to evening gatherings as too tired to arrive, but we’ll see if a short stay in Eger next weekend can jumpstart their late-night performance!

Another hard day at the office, this time listening to a presentation on the Sudanese legal system, trying my best to make a map of the continent of Africa. Not so hot...

Nary a Straw-Berry

Hungarian festivals are my favorite. Sausagefest (Kolbasznapok) in Bekescsaba. Paprikafest (Paprikanapok) in Kalocsa. Harvestfest in Hernadnemeti. Ribbonfest (Szalavagatagatagato) at school, bested only by Studentfest (Diaknapok). I’m sure next weekend it will be a Cucumberfest…

These festivals are remarkable in my mind mostly for their amazing ability to make the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary ordinary. Only Hungary would find reason to celebrate the pepper or a sausage for an entire weekend, they’re not as glamorous as the walleye, after all. And the monumental festivals in each part of the land, celebrating their own unique-ity wind up being exactly the same. The same booths of traveling peddlers pushing souvenirs, candies or other merriments. The same kettles of goulash, whether with or without intestines. The same singing and dancing, the same traditions. The same Big-Hungary pride.

This weekend? Eperfesztival. Strawberryfest 2007.

Julia and I had plans to visit Esztergom or Visegrad, but we were having hard times deciding which one. (Do you happen to have an expert preference?) So when we heard that Szentendre was hosting Strawberryfest, we scrapped our previous plans and agree to meet up with the other law interns here in Budapest and take the HEV to the quintessential touristy Hungarian village. We all agreed not to wear white, as we envisioned stuffing our mouths with strawberries until our chins ran red like savages.

Saturday morning, we met up with Vanessa (a French gal turned Canadian law student who will be working with fellow Badger Melanie Black at the European Roma Rights Centre) and Kate (an Austrialian turned New York law student working at a place called PILI). But when we got to Szentendre after 30 minutes on the commuter rail, we were shocked to find, block after block, nary a strawberry.

We relied on Noemi to find out why, as we strolled the crowded cobblestone streets linking shop after shop under the bright sun. The first woman she asked knew nothing about strawberries and festivals. The concept sounded familiar to the second woman. The third, and other clues like signs, broke the unfortunate truth. The festival wasn’t in Szentendre, but 15 km away in a little village, Tahitotitotoititfalu.

Undaunted, and thirsty for the sweet nectar of that little red triangle of goodness, we caught a bus to the village after a one-sided debate with a nice old lady about the validity of International Student ID cards for a discount on the bus. (Nem.) Breast-feeding, cranky bus-drivers, unique smells and uncertain destinations are all part of the fun in the adventure of getting to Hungarian festivals.

True to form, a carnival of sorts opened after a bend in the road, and we hopped out. Still no strawberries. The temperature and uncertainty were beginning to take a toll on the faint-of-heart. I put my nose to the ground to find what I’d come for. The berry of straw. Which seems, in retrospect, to be a rather silly name for a berry.

After a hundred meters of searching, I found them, tucked under an umbrella in front of a wrinkly old woman. For 400 forint, a half kilo was mine. I gulped them down as I made a hasty escape, the woman was trying to entice me into a black auto. Or something devious that entailed her chanting “fekete auto” at me even as I walked away.

Unfortunately, though, those were the only strawberries to be found, minus the four or five Hungarian schoolchildren parading around the grounds inside strawberry costumes. In fact, there were almost as many camels (2, disgusting), archery competitors (a handful), country-western bands playing “Country Roads” (1) and Lauras-in-tank-tops (also 1) then strawberries at the damn festival given in their honor.

By the time Kat, Noemi and I took to dipping our toes in the Danube, the law ladies had decided they’d had enough of provincial Hungary and were taking the bus back to Szentendre and then a boat down the Duna back to Budapest. Traveling in big groups is so annoying that I was almost relieved, but I was glad they’d made it out of the cosmos of Pest.

Come evening time after nap time, I made my first trip to Szimpla, long built up by Janos and Matt as their favorite evening destination in Budapest. With only a vague idea of how to get there, I led the three law ladies, two cute Spaniards and a Canadian guy to the courtyard club.

(Cultural Question Distraction: Did you know that 2 million people live in the Canary Islands? That’s 5% of the entire Spanish population!)

Towing the three first-time-foreigners-in-Budapest and the three law ladies, it seemed like I knew half the bar when we found Noemi, her friend and later Matt. And we hadn’t even met Clay yet, who dropped by during cso-cso matches. It was hard to recognize him without the facebook-familiar fur hat. But it seems like he, and his girlfriend Inna, will be a great addition to the slew of interns abroad in Budapest this summer. After all, he wrote the darn guidebook! (When he was on the staff of Let’s Go Eastern Europe back in the day.)

As for Szimpla itself? Two big thumbs up. ☺

Just Like a Prayer

After a meandering Friday night with the teachers and Noemi, I started to weave my way through the 6th district, homeward bound, about 2. A block from Szinyei Street, I was surprised to hear Madonna pulsating through the empty streets. The closer I got, the more I started to wonder what kocsma was played the song. How had I missed a neighborhood bar, at first glance, that would have been willing to blast Like a Prayer late on a Friday night?

I debated investigating the sound, but decided against it, resigned to tiredness after a long day of work/play. Instead, I slipped the blue key into the keyhole of the big double door that guards the 3 Szinyei courtyard. A funny thing happened, though, when I opened that door: the music got louder.

At first I was worried, disconcerted that a neighborhood bar could be so loud that the sound would permeate the walls and invade my tranquil little courtyard. Two sides ivy, two sides balconies. But as I walked up the steps, the music only got louder. That’s when I saw the young man passed out on the stairs, that’s when I knew for sure: I have young neighbors and they were having a party in my little building!

Momentum was pushing me toward bed, but I figured I had to take advantage of the opportunity to meet my neighbors. I started in Hungarian to the first person I met when I walked into the open door. But I quickly switched to an English “Who lives here?”

The man pointed to a couch in the corner with an accusatory “Andras.” I introduced myself. Under the threat of German, he admitted to knowing English, and quickly apologized for being too loud. I laughed and promised I hadn’t come to complain. He brought another neighbor into the conversation, and a bottle of homemade wine. They both were artists of sorts in their spare time. I never learned what their jobs are, but they were both out of school.

We talked a while, then the police knocked on the door, telling Andras to be quieter. People across the street had complained. He obliged and I went home not long after, still amazed at having young neighbors in what had seemed to be such an inactive, almost elderly, building.

I also am proud to report that my room is beginning to smell less like old woman, a fragrance that had begun to suffocate me in a sort of asaematic clenching of the lungs. A Glade Plug-In, or however they brand it in these parts, was the culprit, injecting its rotting stench into my precious 14 square meters (an approximation) of living quarters. Now that it’s been removed, I’m starting to breath a little better, and apologizing less to myself and visitors.

A Week at Work

Week two down. Successfully moved into a new room and tackled two projects: the monitoring mechanism and now a summary of India's case law surrounding Freedom of Information. Sweet! So who are the cast of characters running around this place?

Julia’s a really friendly world-traveller who’ll be finishing up law school in Amsterdam next fall. After time at Georgia Tech, she peace corps-ed for two years in Africa. She never really took to liking Columbia, but has good stories. We invited her to the Children’s Railroad with us and she watched Pirates III with the ladies. I feel a little guilty about not inviting her totally into my trove of friends so far, but I’d feel bad if I gave her all the answers and didn’t let her explore and learn on her own, too.

Ira has a Russian wife who’ll be joining him next week. He’s a Yale guy, smart as snot but a little dry at first. Pest seems hardly an adventure for him, he’s spent a lot of time in Russia and the Stans.

Eszter’s my boss, of sorts, who I met for the first time yesterday. She was in New York and Panama for two weeks, but I think I’m really going to like her. A Hungarian raised in-part in Peru, she has a infectious enthusiasm and optimism that makes her a little rare around these parts.

Reka’s a more typical Hungarian, proclaiming to be tired with Budapest, an expert at pretending to be gruff. I can read through her sarcasm, though, and I’m quite convinced that she’s thoroughly charmed with my Hungarian, as most of the natives are.

And Zaza’s the head-boss around here. He’s Georgian – the former Russian republic, of course, not a Hot-lanta suburb. He’s got a great laugh and seems well-organized. This week he’s in Brussels. Next week it will be London.

Roommate Janos and conversing at astonishing rates. Today we discussed Wisconsin and where he used to live. I brought out the ole Wisconsin State Highway map, and he pointed a few blocks down Szinyei Street.

And thanks to a random facebook connection, I weaseled my way into the company of a fun group of Hungarians last night. Viktoria had worked at Wisconsin Dells last summer, that was reason enough for a Facebook friendship. When she came to Budapest to visit a half-dozen or so Dells co-workers, she invited me along. It became a downright international party, complete with a Pole, a Mexican, two Koreans and I. There was a surprising comfort to a random facebook friendship. Perhaps it was Viktoria’s finely-tuned Missouri accent that soothed me.

Back to the grind. Well, either the daily grind or conversations with Julia about wack theories like how cold cucumber soup could actually be delicious...

Balaton Bash

After two weeks, I’m back to fluid in moving about Hungary, but it’s always the wacky things that remind me of how adventurous it really is. On the train to Balatonfured it was a fish head – and the spine of that same fish – laying underneath my seat, picked clean by whoever had been in that compartment on the stop previous. I tried to convince the distraught middle-age woman across from me that it was “nem baj, nem baj,” but she insisted on calling MAV employees to discard of the skeleton.

I was proud of myself, just as Balaton came into view and the tracks started to skirt Central Europe’s largest lake, for talking to the cute girl who had been sitting in my compartment as we gazed out the window, mesmerized by blue water and floating sails. Timi spoke English, of course, so we talked about swimming and sailing and studying as we got closer to Batalonfured. From there, she’d catch a kics-piros train to Zanka for a weekend with friends.

This weekend, just like last year, I was off to Lake Balaton for a welcome-to-summer bash with American teachers. This time we crashed the north shore, Balatonfured, rather than overstay our welcome on the south shore near Siofok. I only knew a handful (Janos, Emily, Harpswell) of the 23 from last year, but I’ve gotten to know Matt and our token Hungarian Noemi well in the first weeks of being here. The rest of the crew were new teachers I’d only heard about in so many stories.

Friday night was the drama and uber-americanism that the stories had promised. Apparently the group isn’t as tight knit as last year, not a smallish band of brothers and sisters battling through a foreign land with the comforting drunkenness of quick-tongued conversation with fellow Americans. So it goes, that sometimes you’re a part of something magical, and trying to recapture that is more difficult than in should seem. So instead of take part in naplos and merriment, I convinced Noemi that we should climb into the bar’s tree-house and talk an hour of the evening away.

Saturday was summer, and it felt good. Sunshine warmed our walk to the beach, and after a minute or two of trepidation, the water felt good. A brief afternoon thunderstorm was the perfect preventative cure for sunburn and allowed a nice lunch break. By evening we were ready for the pitcher after pitcher of free white wine samples that our guest house arranged for. They really treated us well for $10 a night. And while eating supper before drinking wine might perhaps have been advisable, it’s hardly a necessity if you’ve got a pole to lean against.

But, of course, there’s no getting around the absolute highlight of the weekend: Not once, but an amazing twice, I found myself locked inside a bathroom…

The first, definitely, was the charming Noemi’s fault! We let ourselves into what might have been a locked bathroom at the beach. Thinking that I must have finished before her, she locked the hallway door on the way out. A minute later, I found myself trapped on the inside of a locked door, inside a darkened hallway. I stood befuddled for a few minutes, pondering exactly how I found myself locked inside a bathroom. I was just about to start knocking on the door, from the inside, when an employee unlocked the door. I think he was surprised to see me in the locked, darkened hallway, but I koszonom szepan-ed him and walked past before he could ask the obvious question.

The second incident, though, was no one’s fault but my own. Back at the guesthouse, about to take off for the train station, I thought I’d be smart and use the flushable facilities rather than wait and use the more primitive accommodations available on-board the train. On my way out, I struggled with the key. It’d been giving me problems all weekend. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the lock mechanism to budge.

Not about to be caught trapped in a bathroom twice in one weekend, I decided to get smart. Rather than bust my fingers trying to click the lock open, I’d use mechanical advantage. I picked up the doorstop and the can of aerosol fragrance – I’d squeeze them together like a pliers, using mechanical advantage to force the lock to give way. With fierce determination, I put my plan into action. I squeeze the key between the doorjam and aerosol can, and turned. I smiled when I felt it easily give way. But then I heard a terrifying clink – one-half of the key falling onto the hard bathroom floor, snapped completely off of the operative end of the key.

I let my head crash into the door in disgust. And again I found myself pondering being locked inside a bathroom. With imagines of missed trains and eventual starvation creeping into my psyche, I began to knock on the door, from the inside. Five minutes later, help arrived. We concocted a plan. They’d get the other bathroom key, and try to open the door from the outside. I was ready to plant kisses on my saviors when the plan worked, a hostage freed of misfortune, but that would have only increased the intra-group drama and intrigue, so I simply offered thanks.

Needless to say, I avoided bathrooms on the train-ride home. Luckily, the most excitement at Deli Pu was recognizing Timi and waving a hello. Hungary made a little smaller by a familiar face, a voyage come full-circle.

At Work

The first three days in the OSI office – I’m not gonna lie – were a little dull, a little too much like the first year of law school: Lots of reading, interrupted with frequent checks of Facebook, iwiw, or some other kindly reminder that the rest of the world is more interactive than casebooks. Sure, there was more of a point to the reading this time around, I was learned all the background information about Freedom of Information that I needed to know, but sometimes it’s hard to appreciate background work, even if every glance out the window catches the spires of St. Istvan’s Baszilika.

But then came Thursday afternoon and a phone call. Just before I was ready to pack it in for the day, a voice on the other end of the line gave me a mission. Like a game of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, the mysterious voice from New York – it belongs to a certain Sandy – gave me an adventure, a puzzle, a project.

What, she wanted to know – and had wanted to know since the day before, but had only asked an e-mail account that hadn’t yet been activated – were some of the monitoring mechanisms that the Council of Europe used to supervise various human rights initiatives in the past. How did the Council’s Committee of Ministers delegate the task of watching over member states in key areas like the racism and intolerance, the prevention of torture, the protection of national minorities, upholding the European social charter and fighting human-trafficking? And what could we learn from those structures (organizations, tools, methods, etc.) as the Justice Initiative helps recommend the best monitoring methods for the Council’s upcoming Freedom of Information convention?

So Friday morning I dove into international law and the realm of the Council of Europe. The Council’s website was just about my only source of information. Adequate, if not well-rounded. So I plunked away for eight hours until I’d found a slew of information, some more helpful than other parts. I e-mailed off a narrative report and chart to New York and Abuja, Nigeria. Monday morning, when I came back, an e-mail box full of feedback, other ideas, etc. Time zones are fun. There can always be an e-mail and an assignment waiting in the morning. When I finish in the afternoon, I send it off, knowing that when the seven hours of difference work themselves out between here and New York, I’ll have all my questions answered come tomorrow.

Home

After a week as Kat’s house-guest, I finally have a room of my own! It’s in the heart of imperial Budapest, a block off of ornate Andrassy Ut and the Yellow Line buried below it. The stately 6th district. Two metro stops to the northeast? Heroes’ Square and the gateway to City Park. Two metro stops to the southwest? The eight-sided heart of pedestrian Budapest: Oktogon.

3 Szinyei Ut I.6

I’ll have my own little neighborhood stores and restaurants to patronize for the first time. The OSI offices are just four stops, a five minute commute on the first underground metro on continental Europe. A dark and soothing inner courtyard, ivy creeping up the far building under the shade of a sprawling tree that must have been planted as the building was built seventy or eighty years ago.

Eva was the connection. Dezso, a PhD-holding retired Colonel of the Hungarian army, had a room to let. His aunt, a nicely old lady, judging from the pictures of three generations of moustachioed Hungarians hanging on the wall, left last month, off to the nursing home. So I sleep now in a bed, crunchy with springs, that smells a little like old lady.

And down the hall? My new best friend Janos. He’s 40. A salt-and-peppered marketing manager of a local Metra store. Metro’s a magyarized Sam’s Club. It turns out that Janos and I are going to be talking mostly in German, as his English is more limited than his limited German. Luckily, conversational language is all we’ll likely be needing for the next month.

After June, I’m moving toward Nyugati Station. One of Noemi’s friends is renting an apartment to teacher Matt. It’ll help everyone out that I can stay there in July and August, and Matt doesn’t come back from his summer in America until three days after I leave. Moving won’t be hard, as I own three garbage bags full of things in this country, and it’ll be nicer to live by myself, not to belittle Janos’ company, of course.

First meal at the restaurant at the corner of Kodaly Korond? I was feeling daring in my first taste of my Magyar independence, I went with a milanoi dish I’d never heard of. I wasn’t impressed at all, but it was easier to choke down knowing that it was a part of the adventure of finding myself smack dab in the middle of a Hungarian neighborhood.

A scrawled message to Janos in the morning, auf Deutsch, of course, and it was off to the office then Lake Balaton!

Song and Dance

Once upon a time. Not so long ago.

Favorite moment of the first week back in Budapest:
A Saturday evening of make-shift fun.

Tommy used to work on the docks.

Janos was kind enough to host us at his favorite neighborhood bar, The Squirrel, if we translate away. An outdoor café spilled out of the wood-panelled interior, complete with a native group of young Hungarians who were kind enough to bring a guitar and sentimental enough to play Wonderwall. Liz would have made fun of me for faux British accents if she had been there. But as our conversation turned rowdier – as it has known to do – Janos ordered us on, lest we ruin his reputation with the help and regulars.

Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck.

A missed metro, the last of the night, left us wandering down a street we’d never wandered before, and likely will never wander again. Block after block of search for elusive night bus stops created inspiration or desperation, or some combination of the two. I was adamant that we take advantage of the first oasis of sorts that we stumbled upon. A sketchy karaoke bar.

It’s tough, so tough.

We ordered beers as two Hungarians battled their ways, surprisingly well, through Barbie Girl. When they reverted back to Hungarian favorites, I was nominated to kickstart the English.

Gina works the diner all day.

Harpswell handed the balding man behind the kareoke stand a request, a minute later he called Jeremos up to the front of the bar. that's when Bon Jovi's rhythm started to pulsate.

Working for her man, she brings home her pay for love.

I burst into song as Laura burst into dance. We were rockstars.

She says w'eve got to hold on to what we've got
cause it doesnt make a difference
If we make it or not
Weve got each other and thats a lot
For love - we'll give it a shot

Most impressed? The Hungarian lady who had sang Barbie Girl. She clapped wildly. She was digging me. By the end of the song, but voice was cracking and hoarse, but I managed a koszonom szepan as I handed the mic back. Walking back through smiles and high fives, the Barbie-singer jumped me. She thrust a new request sheet in my hand. A translator explained that she wanted to sing a duet with me. I didn't know the song written on the top, but i scribbled Jeremos down anyway.

Whooah, were half way there
Livin' on a prayer

But as I finished writing, scrawling myself into a contract of collaboration, she smiled. A bit of a smirk. Then the translator-du-jour told me why.

"She wants you to put your telephone nymber next to your name."

Take my hand and well make it - I swear
Livin' on a prayer...