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.

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.

Heves. Ma Volt.

(Blogspot used to let me cheat. I could edit the dates, after I wrote the story, to make them fall chronologically. Apparently I can’t do that anymore, I apologize for any inconvenience.)

Heves and I have an up and down history.

My intro to the town, before I’d ever stepped foot in it’s little park, was a two-hour long conversation on the drive from Budapest two Augusts ago. Tirade would be the best word selection if we wanted to capture the tenor more fully. Peter was the ambassador and he found the little town of 10,000 suffocating and impossible to escape.

When I arrived in the town, I couldn’t agree more. Agi bombarded me with German, I couldn’t work the blinds, the neighbor yelled at me for not locking the door. It took me a week to make a friend.

So I escaped. For 12 straight weekends, I left to visit the other Americans in Hungary. Kalocsa. Budapest. Tiszaujvaros. Nyiregyhaza. Anywhere but Heves.

I realized slowly, that I was being silly. Part of the adventure of being abroad is discovering happiness in your surroundings. So I set out to enjoy Heves. The about-face corresponded directly with my first visit to the local weekend disco.

Students bought me beer, because that’s the way Hungary works. I bought them beer, because that’s the way Hungary works. That might be ketchier than shit in America, perhaps, but sustenance in a little Hungarian village.

So I found happiness in befriending them – they were much more willing to talk in English or German or any combination of the two at the disco. It liberates where the classroom is claustrophobic. And I met their older brothers and sisters and friends, home in Heves for just the weekend. That’s how I made my friends, like Miss Petra, and how I learned to be able to find enough happiness in Heves to stay every-other weekend, sometimes more.

When I finally left, I had been in the process of saying goodbye for more than 30 days. I was ready, and said goodbye with the vain flick of a wrist.

But here I was, standing in front of the Heves train station again, planting two kisses on Petra’s cheeks. Suddenly back in Heves, Petra translating the discourse of a meal of pork. Her mom is fun, but hardly speaks a lick of English. Petra’s taken only literature and grammar classes lately, it took her a while to regain the ease of fluency. Or maybe it was the new braces.

The same, but different, she explained on a backyard swing under Hungarian csillagok. Things had changed, she didn’t want to be heart-broken when I left again, as I had to do. She knew, of course, Heves isn’t home for me.

(She still thinks, though, that I’m a good story-teller, when she reads the tales on this page.)

The school, too, was different. Peter and Viktor are both gone. Left for the promise of better opportunities. It makes me happy. And thankful that I didn’t stay a second year without my two best teacher-friends. I got to meet the Canadian couple who replaced me, they’re charming and wonderful. It was odd to know that they enjoyed Heves so much to know that if they weren’t expecting a grandchild come July that they would stay another year. Kitti bobs on in German with Agi while petting little Bandito, who finds himself at home in the school lobby. Rob has the confidence of a businessman that I could never have, the kids said it worked well.

Handshakes with Bandibacsi were the same, but a high-five with the kids was different.

7A has grown so much. They’re taller and stouter and broader and more. They bubbled with the same energy, though, so much so that I promised them that I would always consider them “my little 7A,” even if now they’re 8A.

I got to visit with all of 8A, both the German kids and the English. They all learn both languages now, and we bounced back and forth with the playfulness of young trilingualism. I wish those kids could join me in some sort of classroom of life, they’re all so eager and heart-warming and bright.

Ricsi and Petra never moved on from 9D. They’re still there this year. The rest that blossomed into 10D gained too little in the transition, I fear. But because they were excited to hear my name, the teachers assumed that I should visit them, so I was sentenced to visit even those I never grew to hold dear.

The first question out of every class? “Have you got a girlfriend?”

I was almost excited to escape the school, one last time.

And the evening return to Unikum Disco that I had so long treasured? Seven people playing cso-cso, closed out early. None of my iwiw friends who had promised excitement to welcome my return. I didn’t even stay for a beer. Bulis happen only on Saturday, Petra explained on an early walk home. Or maybe exams were better to blame, she offered, as I quietly sang whatever song was pulsating through my thoughts.

I’m having a problem these days…with expectations. To high. Always. Rationality perversely miss-guided by romanticism. And when the expectations flop, I get disenchanted, but refuse to lose optimism for the next bend around the river.

There’s only one phrase for Heves and my trip. Ma volt. Already done. Used up, taken. Been there, Heves, done that. Treasured always in memory, but no longer my story.

Ma volt.

So it goes.

The Cast Since Then

It was less than a year ago that I left Hungary. The cast of characters, myself included, has changed completely. And they've stayed the same. All at the same time.

Heves:

Little Janka and Big Kinga both have language certificates now.

A Canadian couple, Rob and Kitty, share little Deak Fer u. 4. All reports are that they are wonderful.

Well-belted Eszter, one of my favored German students, now lives with the English-speaking grandmother Barbara because her family moved to Kecskemet. I think it will be good for both of them.

English Peter finally quit the school, after years of moaning. He left for France with his fiancée. I’m proud of him.

Petra has braces now.

In Hungary, the prime minister Gyurcsany Feri admitted that he lied. He was caught on tape saying that the MSzP had been lying about economic figure for two years for political reasons. Perhaps they’re spoiled, but the Hungarian were so disappointed that they rioted. A lot.

The forint is trading at 185 per dollar. When I left, the exchange rate was 205 per dollar.

Friends:

Emily and Laura are the same. I think they always will be.

Kat is still traveling, but I think a boy with an accent is reeling her in.

Liz had to leave Hungary two months early, and it seems like she’s done a lot to support her dad back home, as he battles with cancer.

Gaines has learned she that she has no interest in the law and instead will carve out a different future in Dallas.

Jenna and Yerik divorced. Yerik’s in Chicago. Jenna will be going to med school in Hungary.

Chad’s in a band on the east coast. I would imagine that he’s well.

Brent landed a great job in one of the motion picture studios in Hollywood. But even after his departure, the confusion of love in Hungary still swirls his mind. He has plane tickets already, but is still undecided on a return trip this summer.

Thanksgiving Elli now has a year of college under her belt. Her Hungarian professor at Indiana kicked her out of class because she’s too good. She’ll be in Hungary this summer, back with her beloved host mom. She recently purchased hiking boots and a backpack. Her teeth are now braces-free.

Eva and the Ministry of Defense have gone separate ways. Same with Welder-Boy, too. Both changes are for the better, she asserts. She works for a Korean tire company now, orchestrating their training department. Not quite as she fulfilling as she thought it would be, she’s weighing job offers across Europe.

She took to writing a Hungarian-language blog, to better understand her own world after drawing inspiration from what I had written. My favorite quote from her musing on being an angstful young Hungarian in the midst of angstful times in Hungary? "I don’t have a movement, I am only a silent observer of the world around me who still believes it can get better and nicer."

Heves visitor Rachel spent four months in Spain. Apparently the Spanish boys were not as tempted/tempting as the Hungarians lads.

My friends R.J. and Gaby got married back home. As the only single delegate to the wedding, I was nominated to give a toast. The microphone shook in my hand. Wandering and love are the only two concepts I remember from the babble. Afterwards, I took it upon myself to throw a bowling ball blindly down a darkened lane. I’m not sure if I knocked over any pins in my lane or any others. The last I heard from them, they wanted to adopt a Hungarian child.

Me:

I turned 26.

I learned in Washington that I outgrew camp, somewhere along the line. I learned at the ALPs ropes course, that I’d outgrown ropes courses, too.

Washington also taught me that islands are beautiful, but claustrophobic. Maybe I was tired, but I didn’t make many friends there. And again, I proved better at establishing connections after the fact. Regardless, Rainer and her sisters charmed me.

Law school taught me that Baskerville is my favorite font. And that I miss writing.

Books and concepts are something I can only handle for so long before I need to actually do something. One year of casebooks and dicta was too much. I’m excited that next semester I’ll be manning the appeal of an actual prisoner in the Wisconsin prison system, likely writing for an international law journal and perhaps competing in an international moot arbitration. Two thumbs up for interactivity.

I earned a spot on the dean’s list in a completely overwhelming first semester. While I’m not a legal genius, and won’t ever be, I have some skills that work well in a field like law. My mind might not be aflutter with hypothetical situations and niceties of preciseness, but I’m good at analyzing problems and I’m getting better at arguing on behalf of my solutions.

I learned, though, that I do best in those wondrous challenges you can’t fully appreciate during the fact, you could never enjoy them until they’re over. Without any challenge like that this spring semester, I’ve regressed into half-heartedness. I left for Hungary, emotionally at the least, in about March.

A girl in the law school wished me the best socially, romantically and professionally last fall. I don’t think it worked, unfortunately. I worry now, in my old age, about my abilities in the area of interpersonal love. Maybe I’m allowed that fear when little sister Megan's moving in with her boyfriend, high school friends Shawn, RJ and Peter are either happily married or on their way to their second marriage, the ole camp girlfriend Sara’s engaged and freshman-crush Kelsie sent, just shy of her 5 year wedding anniversiary, an e-mail picture of adorable Mia Joan, almost 2 years old. She shares her mother's middle name. The introspection, coupled with a litany of fleeting crushes over the course of a spring, led me to question/realize/wonder most recently if writing and love might be mutually exclusive, either one or the other, at least in the way that this man approaches both.

I have started to use the phrase “this man” to replace I. Hmm…guess we’ll have to see what that literary device means.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died. Heaven, too, continued with it started last year, stealing my third and final grandmother. “Family” now means something far different than when I set out for Hungary almost two years ago.

So it goes, I suppose. Things always stay the same and things always change completely, both at the same time. That's what makes the adventure so much fun.