Buskers, Statues and Hummus

After an evening of wandering through some of the night life and getting to know some of the Hungarians attending one of the Universities some of us will be working at, it was decided to hit the streets once again in the day for a walking tour. After people slowly awoke from sleeping off the fun of the evening and getting some breakfast (at lunch time), some of us headed toward the tram stop near the dorms. We got off at the same stop as central market, a large in door market where you can buy fresh fruits, vegetables and bread from local vendors. It's much like a farmers market in Michigan, but much bigger, and there's little English to be heard of read. Produces are generally bought by weight per kilogram. However, as we're all familiar with the market, we quickly moved one to find other places. The streets we wend through are filled with small shops at the corners, where one can buy the nerdy, tourist I <3 Budapest mugs, bags or shirts. (I would say I greatly considered getting one, but I didn't, so I won't say it) Along the sides of the building are restaurants, where a sign or podium has the menu readily available, and occasionally someone is there ready to seat you. Here there was a man delightfully playing an accordion with a huge smile, waiting for coins to fall into his case near his feet. Busker!! I love them! Not too far off we encountered another busker (street performer), playing his violin.

Soon we passed through an old Serbia neighborhood. Against the church in this section a wall stood plastered by vines crawling along it. As we moved on we found a giant foot, but what's more exciting is we found a playground! Unfortunately, the slide was a little too small for me, but it didn't stop me from trying to play around on it. I found an odd spinning cup, and noticed a hole in the bottom, so I thought maybe if you pour sand into the cup and spin it the sand will leak out in some strange way. The sand just stayed there. Abby, my girl friend who is also along for the semester in Hungary program, had more sense than I did and indicated it was probably a spinning seat. The group proceeded to take turns getting dizzy on it, and we walked off swaying.

We eventually came to a church, decorated with statues of angels, and Christ on the cross at the base. This seems to be the typical construction of churches. Height, of a steeple pointing up, with points all along it, and garnished with statues of angels or great men, all whom I have little idea of which hero or figure they were intended to represent. We stood outside it near a dry fountain, where faces formed into the side of the structure would have water shooting out their mouth, if there was water being pumped into it. Near it some homeless people slept. Pigeons flew around the square. The scene had an odd stillness to it, and I felt the statues were watching us and wondering what all these people were doing below them, and why they had been constructed by them in the first place. I almost felt I heard them talking about how still they felt, and how silently the men had been sleeping below them through the night. I would have felt compelled to have sat there longer, but there was more to see.

One of the more exciting stops was, yet again, the finding of buskers! Three men playing brass wind instruments near a monument. While other people in the group were reading something about the monument I knew nothing about, I dropped a coin in their case, and stood back to watch. Abby and I enjoyed listening to them, and then the man in the middle decided to surprise us by suddenly bursting into a song with a deep, but mellow, voice with a fitting on key crackle in it. It was absolutely amazing! They made me smile for several minutes after wards.

We also made a stop at a "historical McDonalds". Supposedly the first "this side of the iron wall". Some children were eating there, and Abby pointed out how they were staring at me because of my height. I proceeded to pull out a coin do some old magic tricks which I'm far out of practice with. They seemed to enjoy them none the less, and conversed about how I might have done some of them.
Other activities continued. Such as walking along the river, stopping for coffee, pictures at statues of famous composers, the discovery of book stores and an opera house. But the details would take a long time to fill in, and I’ve already probably gone on and on with some of these, so I shall try to cut it short so you can return to your life.
The day ended by meeting others outside a church to go to a hummus bar. We partook and some wonderful hummus, and the best falafel we've found yet. (I've been eating a lot of falafel here, a deep fried chickpea patty, much of which has been rather dry at most stops we've been getting them at, but these ones were quite good.) Getting back ended up taking longer than anticipated, but having had no coat and wind making me quite cold through the latter part of the day, I was glad to get back to a warmer place.

And now I should probably get back to studying the Hungarian language, instead of procrastinating with this. Lots of fruits, vegetable, and other foods to learn. Woot! Also:

I like tea.

The path of toes -- for lack of a more suitable title at the moment

You might be wondering why, after so long, there have been so few posting about what I've been up to since my arrival in Hungary. I could come up with excuses of all sorts, and I'm sure some of them might even sound almost legitimate.

I could try to explain how I arrived after so many hours of flying, leaving me in an odd state of travelling fatigue from being crammed into a tiny space, with no leg room, and essentially all of it taken by the seat in front of me falling back to take it all away, and left with no feeling below my waist for several hours left me a little drained. Though, on arrived on the plane after a layover in Germany, I found myself overly excited to be looking down onto a river, the Danube, and realizing, kind of for the first time, that I really was going to Hungary. Sitting in the plane the entire time left me uncertain if that was where I would end up, or if I would simply be left in perpetual aircraft storage for the rest of my life...nothing says "Waiting for Godot" like a plane ride. But I did arrive, and then changed some of my dollars into a curreny that once again lets me think in more than three digits.

I could explain that with this new money I spend so much time looking at the strange faces and their mustaches and trying to figure out how much it's worth, knowing 1000 is not the same as in Ugandan shillings, and cleary not dollars. (It's approximately 200 Forints (not to be mistaken with Florence, which is a city, not a currency) to the dollar, just in case you were wondering). And having so many oppurtunities to explore and spend these colorful pieces of papers for food.

Food! With such a distraction in my mist is there any wonder I've been torn away from writing blog posts? I'm glad to discover  there is enough of varity to maintain being a veggetarian and not having to reaquaint my stomache to meat, which at this point could result in embarrising situations. There is so much bread. So much cheap bread. So much good, cheap, wheat, bread that makes me realize the bread I've been living off of must have been a mistake.

Would you accept my confusion toward signs? They seem to be covered with words and phrases that mean very little to me at the moment, but surely bear some special meaning that I need to know about. Like, "this food product is here", "the bathroom is there" and "please be sure catch the right tram leaving for your destination at this time and place to get there on time" (surely, with the complexity of these words, they must be saying something with such specificity).

Trams run just about all over the place. And they're wonderful. They get you from point A to point B, and then you're no longer at point A. This is helpful because it means there are other points to get to, other things to see, and all of it so much worthy of ones time, and most importantly there is a means for this process to happen. With this open to allow for adventure, getting to the computer seemed like an unsubstantial use of ones time. While you can be out exploring in the day to find the market to do more shopping, in the evening one can go with Hungarian students to places that have plants growing from the ceiling, cars become seats, and chair trees grow along the wall, in order to drink and drip wax on ones hands. Though not everyone seemed as excited to drip wax on their hands, not even the hungarians. Then it might start raining just when it seems like a good time to go to another place that sells cheaper drinks, but this isn't a problem, because rain is mostly just water (and we just don't think about what else at such times), so we found another alley pub full of smokers and cheaper drinks. Yay!

Smoking! It's everwhere here. Everyone seems to do it. It such a shunned activity in the US, where if anyone pulls out a cigarette they get stared at, frowned at, and judged. Here no one seems to care, most resteraunts seem to be absolute fine with someone walking in, pulling out a cigarette and toasting their lungs with no concern of baffling or offending anyone; there seems to be no one to offend. The consistancy of this, signs that aren't in English, and an odd amount of public displays of affection are probably the three more surprising discoverys of central Europe.

Public display of affection (pda, as I shall call hence forth) seems to have little limits. The trams at two in the afternoon present themselves as suitable places for some very intimate moments between couples, as well as parks, walk ways, resteraunts (particularly this tea house "teahaz") and well, just about anywhere. And of course there's never any worry about other people being there, it's perfectly acceptable.

Computers.... these alone are intimidating to keep one from attempting to blog. An entire two letters are switched!!! TWO LETTERS AND THEY CONFUSE ME TO NO END!!!! The z is where the y is supposed to be, and vice versa. How can one approach a computer knowing these two letter aren't where one expects them? Likewise, the punctuation is all over the place. I keep searching to find out how to do something simple, like quotations.

And today, I finally have managed to come out and make a blog post. I hope my excuses give me some forgiveness from my thousands of readers (or rather, probably more like four or five of you). I will try to become more consistant in my postings and keep you updated.

I like tea.

I'm packing!

Sort of.

I'm kind of almost done. So now I'm sitting on a bed, waiting.

Weight has such a strong influence on people's lives. Many find their own to be much more than they'd like to handle, even when such notions are ridiculous. But for this evening, keeping ones weight has involved coping with the limits airlines have placed on luggage. Slowly these limits have become more harsh. I remember the days when international flights meant each person could check in two bags, at 75 pounds a piece. Eventually this number dropped down to 50, and we wondered how in the world we could ever manage to fit all our things with such restrictions. But now we live in a world where the airlines have pulled all stability from underneath us, and left us with only one check in bag. Generally this hit me with little concern for my upcoming trip. All I have to bring are a few books and clothes, clothes aren't that heavy, there won't be any problems. Of course, one article of clothing is quite light, but when included with the others they become one transformed monster of cotton equipped with a bowling ball beer belly (yay for fitting in terrible and unnecessary alliteration!). So after much apprehension I had to attack this monster, and try to see if anything could be pulled, moved, or severed, and had to pull out a few books from the library I wanted to bring. (Apparently sheets of paper all add up very quickly too) I was backed up with the support of a scale, which frankly left me with much to be desired in measuring. After an after-midnight trip to a place with a much better scale I finally discovered that I'm not over-weight at all! So now I can relax without too much concern. Bringing back souvenirs may prove interesting, but one problem at a time.

Alright. As I've been mostly exhausted all day, and it's already after 1:43, my mind is shot, and my blog post is probably painful to read, so I will stop you from going any further and find something else to do with my time, and let you do the same.

Also, I like tea.

"I like songs about drifters - books about the same."

My favorite colour is green. That's not to say I have anything against any of the other colours, it's just that ever since I first started learning the names of colours these big people called grownups kept asking me what my favorite one was. So, I naturally assumed I was supposed to have one. Looking outside I saw the grass was green, the leaves on trees were green, and decided I liked that, so chose it as an answer. If the truth be told, in most cases, I tend to like most things. Also, I like trees and spiders. It's best you don't question my liking for spiders. I could give you an answer, write a long essay on it, or compose a bad a poem about how meaningful I find them, but then you still won't understand it. So just accept it, and move on.

You may be wondering, why is this guy's first post on his blog about his favorite colour, trees, and spiders? I can look at his "About Me" and learn very quickly pointless facts about him, why clutter his posts with these things? What sense is there in that? Exactly! There is no sense to it, and there's no better way for you to be introduced to me than through non-sense.

I like colours, lots of them. I also like ink, it's black, which is the absence of colour. This is called a contradiction, something you need to get used to when you read anything by me. I might speculate it's not really a contradiction, but then my brain would explode and I don't feel like doing that right now. What I'm trying to do here is tell you a little about myself, so I guess I'll become autobiographical and try to expand on where I've been, what I've done, and how I have no idea where I'm going. Partially because, hey, it's an intro to my blog, and second, I'm meant to be packing right now and this seems like a reasonable means of procratination.

I was born in Congo, former Zaire. My birth certificate, so I've recently realized, has my name spelled wrong, and has the wrong birth month. Shoot. I think I've gotten over it, but it's still odd. I eventually moved all away across the border to Uganda, where I was raised. I moved to the United States of America, this odd place that for most of my life was simply a name printed on the bottom of a thin booklet I had with the title "Passport". It was also some place I was meant to identify with. I wasn't quite Ugandan, and brief visits to the US reminded me of this. Starting college I had to move there, previously the longest I had lived in my "home" country was a year, when I was five. Otherwise there were the brief six month visits every four years, where I learned to realize I liked Uganda a lot, I considered it home. But, it wasn't quite home, I wasn't Ugandan and though it feels like home it's not where I'm from. In the US, I was supposed to be home. But it isn't home. I've realized now that I don't have a concept of home. Where ever I am is home. I move from place to place, drifting between the infinite worlds and thoughts there are to inhabit, and I don't know if I will ever stop. This blog is about my journey to find home, like sitting in a railway station waiting for the train to arrive to take me there, and where I'm sitting is really my home, not the desination. As David Foster Wallace says in his essay (as he attempts to describe how Kafka is actually intended to be halarious, we've just forgotten how to tell) in which he states, "...our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." I'm probably just repeating myself several times with different words, or the same words in a different order. It's another habit I have, so expect it.

My next stop to discovering my home, this planet earth, is Hungary. But first, I should continue the packing I'm procrastinating from by writing this.

I also like tea.