Every four years around the Olympics somebody writes an article in the U.S. about how table tennis is taken seriously in the rest of the world. The angle is usually on assuring Americans accustomed to it being a toss-off game relegated to the basement that it can be taken seriously as an Olympic sport.
I finally met most of the neighbors in our building last week when our power went out. As it was around 11:00PM, it was hard to tell if the outage was limited to our apartment or shared by the whole building. When the stairwell lights, which turn off automatically after a minute, repeatedly turned back on, it became obvious that others were out of their apartments, but also that some of the building still had power.
This is something I've been seeing a lot -dogs patiently waiting outside of stores, unleashed, while their owners go shopping. I've also been seeing people training their dogs off-leash a number of times while I'm sitting in a park somewhere. I'm trying hard not to make too many assumptions here, but maybe there's a connection.
I'm noticing something with produce here that's exemplified by the tomatoes. They aren't always pretty. They're often very tender, with smashed ones on the bottom of any pile. Squeeze them and they all feel ripe with VERY few exceptions. The object when shopping for them is to pick the ones that aren't already split open.
In order to simmer down the pagans prone to raiding and form a proper country, King Stephen (now Szent Istvan) Christianized and organized the wild bunches in the 11th century. Hungary's founding is therefor attributed to him. A dream he had early on is commemorated nearly a hundred feet up on a pillar in Hossuth ter (Hero's Square). In it, he's being crowned by the Archangel Gabriel. 
This past weekend we were wandering along the Szechenyi Lanchid (Chain Bridge, pictured), which is closed to vehicles on summer weekends for the Summer on the Chain Bridge Festival. We'd gone a few times over the last couple of weeks just to eat the food, listen to music, drink beer, walk the bridge and look at the water, though mostly just to join the Budapesters outside in the summer for whatever excuse.
I'm noticing that in the parks throughout the city, people love to nap in numbers I haven't seen before. I'll try not to speculate yet about what this says about the Hungarian character or the quality of life in Budapest or whatever, but all types of people seem to love to enjoy beautiful summer days by going out in the parks and drifting off in the grass under the sun or a tree. The parks might be tiny, surrounded by buildings and filled with people, or the sprawling 300-acre Varosliget (City Park) or 1.5-mile long Margit-sziget (Margaret Island) in the middle of the Danube, despite all of the people around (or perhaps because of them) people love to sleep outdoors. 
I just came back from paying the rent for our second month here. Our rent is valued in Euros, but we can pay in Hungarian Forint(HUF) based on the official conversion of the day. Because of the bounce over the last month in the value of the dollar against the Euro and HUF (which according to the NYTimes is due to weakening in the rest of the world's economy to match the US's) we paid about USD$66.00 less than we did a month ago! (A month ago the dollar was at the bottom of a looong decline against the Euro)
Forget all those honeydews you just tolerate as you're eating them. Maybe they just make the fruit salad look bigger, they make you feel healthy, or on rare occasions you win the lottery and get one that's pretty good.
Wanting to cross the street, if you see one roaring at you, step back and wait. That's when you are close enough to hear the light-saber noises coming from their powerlines and witness the trail of sparks and hope they don't shower your head.
Sitting on the couch late last night I saw a bird fly into the living room and swoop into the bedroom. I often hear pigeons right outside the windows flapping wings and cooing, and wondered if they would ever come in. 
I saw two men communicating across the street from each other today. They were speaking in elevated tones and thrusting their hands around sort of passionately. Were they arguing? -or agreeing about something mutually unsatisfactory? I don't know. 
It's taking a while to learn how to eat within our budget. ...or it's just been too easy to keep eating takeout with so many cheap options close by that allow us to sit at a sidewalk table in the company of dogs, pigeons and other people. With several doner kebap places near home,600-forint($4) gyros have become a bit of a staple. Then there are places that specialize in a type of thick soup/stew that I haven't encountered anywhere else called fozelek. As I understand it, it's more or less made of vegetable that's been cooked into a puree and is eaten with croquets of all sorts. Don't quote me about this one. I'll get back to it in a later post after I figure it out a little better, but we do keep going back to Fozelekfalo Etelbar because it's so interesting and the whole cross section of Hungarians seem to be eating there. 
I went to the airport yesterday to meet Jenifer getting off her flight. With a minor delay and flights from New York, Kiev and Amman, Jordan funneling through Customs all at once, the waiting crowd and I ended up standing in the meeting area for about an hour and a half. It was actually quite a blast. Nervous excitement locked the room with many choked-up and pacing, cameras hanging around their necks. The doors which arriving passengers emerge from slide open from a mirrored wall, and then they walk down a runway created by railings, past all of the waiting people, one or a group of whom would be gasping and waving for the person. It's dramatic. Every couple minutes the doors slide apart and out pokes... a cart of suitcases. Pushed by... _______! 
