This was first released to much acclaim on November 23, 2009. Since then, interest has dwindled.
Hello!
This is really long. I won't even read it. Control F for what you want to hear about.
When I first met my friend Ali in 1st year, I thought, "Oh great, another hot, boring, blonde girl from California" but after learning she is of Hungarian royalty, she has become an increasingly interesting person. So, this weekend I took a trip to her ancestral home, in the mountains above the Balaton in the little village of Lovasbereny. As it was a Sunday, no trains ran directly there so I had to walk from the train station for about two hours through a foggy forest uphill, but it was all worth it. Walking towards Cziraky Kastely, I spotted a group of babas who were leaving the church. I approached and asked, in what I can only assume was perfect Hungarian, where he castle was. They all got excited and pointed in its general direction. They asked if I was Magyar, I said no but tried to explain that my friend's grandpa was born there. In the end, they didn't understand me, I didn't understand them, and they were too shy to have their pictures taken (they were all four foot tall octagenarians in fur coats with canes, linking arms as they walked. This photo would have financed another year of my trip). I did get a photo from far away but it wasn't as amazing as the up close. Anyways, the palace was incredible, though almost entirely abandoned and boarded up. I snuck around the perimeter and spied through the windows like a creep, but it was completely gutted. It was a very beautiful building, but the plaster was falling off it on the outside. I actually felt it was more real and easy to place historically than the retrofitted tourist attractions. So, feeling conflicted about preservation vs authenticism, I naturally went to the only pub in town (right across from the castle) and let the experience soak in with an enormous mug of mulled wine. It helped. (Afterthoughts: I took a whole series of pictures and a video diary of this trip but somehow my photocard caught a virus and they are trapped, possibly forever. Maybe we'll never know what this trip was actually like?).
I love being Canadian. Not only does it win me friends by the pound here, but being around other Canadians is a culturally comforting thing. A guy from Montreal and I went out with an Australian and American to a cluuub and on the way home stopped for some paninis. There was a man inside who asked where we were all from and was so excited that we were from Canada that he insisted on paying for our meal. We couldn't accept, but he told us he had lived in Toronto and found the level of openess and multicultural awareness in Canada to be so great and beyond compare that he left with a much more open minded view of the world and felt that it was a way to repay us for what Canada gave him. It was quite tearful and we gratefully accepted. He even bought sandwiches for the Australian and American, and afterwards the Montrealer and I smugly said to them, "you're welcome" because lord knows their countries haven't done anything for the world.
So as you can see I am making fast friends here, as demonstrated by the following conversations:
Me: "I really like red cabbage with apples. Where can I buy some?"
Woman: "That's not a Hungarian dish."
Me: "But I had some the other day with my meal."
Woman: "In Hungary? No, we don't eat that here."
Me: "But the menu actually said 'Red Cabbage with Apples'"
Woman: "It wasn't red cabbage with apples. That's not a Hungarian dish."
Me: "Look. It happened."
Girl: "I am an English teacher. This is one of my students. He speaks English really good."
Me: "He speaks English really well."
Girl: "@%$& you."
*pause*
Me: "Well I can see you don't need help with the imperative."
Have any of you ever actually tried to learn English? Evidently we have 12 tenses, and I have no idea where those came from. I cannot believe the hoops we make the rest of the world jump through. It is fascinating to see how people learn English, because what logically follows in their language comes out bizarre in ours. What's most shocking to me is that English is not the world standard from which everything deviates. I can't believe American cultural hegemony has lead me astray. The receptionist at the library loves me and asks me questions about English (i.e. "The cat is purring" vs. "The cat purrs") that make me stop and realise I have no idea what I am talking about half the time and the only reason I know anything about the English language is because I studied Russian. I go to the library to read the Economist and L'Express when I'm feeling plucky (I really only browse the article titles and the captions but no one speaks French here so I end up looking very high class. You have no idea how terrified I am of being called out one day).
So I was potentially poisoned the other day. I was in the market, buying fresh sauerkraut, salt pork and walnuts as though it were a usual Thursday and I happened upon a kindly old baba who didn't have much in her barrow so I decided to buy some walnuts. She was also selling homemade V8 juice, sealed with an elastic over some seran wrap. The seran covering on one suddenly popped and she marked the price down. I thought, "for 200 forints, she's practically paying me to take it" so I took a few sips and went on my way. I was sitting and reading a few hours later when suddenly a vision came to me of Ms. Thompson from Foods 9/10 holding a bulging can and saying, "I could kill everyone in the room with this." While I have been known to defy Ms. Thompson in the past, there was no denying her sage advice in this instance so I ran to the washroom to induce vomiting, in a vain attempt to purge every last trace of botulism from my body. But there was no tomato juice to be found in my stomach, and I suspected it would show up later, in 3-5 days when I went paralyzed and stopped breathing. The worst part was not knowing how to handle the situation. Do I pay money for preventative treatment now or should I let my health insurance cover the Iron Lung that I will be put on for several weeks in a Hungarian hospital? I'm fairly uneasy about non-Western medical care. In my world hierarchy of medicine there is Canada at the top (and I know we are good because we poach doctors from all around the world and make them mop floors and drive taxis until they are ready to practice real medicine), then the UK, metropolitan US, and maybe Australia and Western Europe. After that there is Hungary, the former Soviet Union, Spain, and then Somalia, East Timor, rural Idaho, etc. Anyways, I have spent the last 5 days in paralyzing fear which does little to help detect the early warnings of botulism, paralysis. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with, emotionally, in my entire life. On the one hand, I cannot believe that I am going to die, but on the other hand, I can believe thatthis is how I am going to die.
Going to market has been pretty positive for the most part. I made chicken paprikas the other day, and when I was buying meat the lady reached into a huge display case of raw chicken with her bare hands, grabbed a few breasts, weighed them, took my money with the same chickeny hands, then gave me my change and a bag of chicken. I had no room in my bag so carried it. I think I like the East most because it's the only place where I can walk around the city with a clear plastic bag full of raw meat without attracting attention. In fact, I feel even more inconspicuous this way.
Hope you're all keeping well,
Rory
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