"...just don't call it ping pong"

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.

Here's another indication of its relative status in Europe: a section in the Varosliget (city park) dedicated to about nine table tennis tables, all of which were taken.

Meeting the neighbors in the dark

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.

I went out and talked to the woman from the floor above ours, who as it turns out is the only other English speaker in the building (there are seven apartments). Standing there in her nightgown and a windbreaker, she recruited me to join her and another woman to go look at the main fuzebox on the outside of the building. We jiggled loose the screwdriver holding the latch shut, and as she reached in to flick the fuze, she hesitated and said, "No, you do it!", chuckling sheepishly. I flicked it... and nothing happened (but I fulfilled my duty as the sucker newcomer).

I tagged along for the next 45 minutes while the three of us went to other apartments to find out the extent of the outage and round up phone numbers for the building maintenance and try to arrange an electrician to come over. At least, that's what I think was happening, because all I had to go on were the tones of voices and body language. Otherwise I might as well have been deaf. The Hungarian language doesn't seem to have many changes in inflection. It all sounds like run-on sentences with moderate urgency.

Nevertheless, I finally got to introduce myself to several people I've passed in the stairwell a few times in the past only to mumble a fake greeting after they'd said "jonopot" to me. I now know I could've said jonopot back, but until now I'd just sort of fake it with a mumbled "hello". "Hallo" by the way, seems to be how Hungarians say good-bye.

Anyway, Eva from upstairs and I were able to chat a bit in the dark and reassure each other that no, we don't make too much noise for the other (her son used to dribble a ball on their floor, but she's since stopped him). The next morning when all of the power was restored except for our apartment, she made herself late for church to make arrangements for the building's electricians to come over for us. It turns out the wires in the wall fried, and they needed to chop a hole in the wall to replace them.

When did "unleashed" come to mean wild?

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.

Bactrian on the boulevard

     

It is thought that the Magyar tribes that settled Hungary over a thousand years ago came from Central Asia, and I keep seeing little clues of this around town. (If this camel had been simply tethered to a tree on Andrassy ut, it wouldn't have been quite the spectacle it was in an abandoned trailer)

Paradicsom paradox

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.

Contrast this with shopping for them in grocery stores in the US, where the object is to select the ones that aren't pale and hard. When you can squeeze them a little and pretend they're ripe, it's time to eat. There's that magical brief window in the summer when they truly are ripe and local and it's like a celebration where you buy all you can and gorge. The rest of the year it's better to stick with the canned ones.

So far in my six weeks in Hungary, that peak season shows no signs of letting up. Things I've read about the U.S. food industry imply the priority of growers is on the structure of the produce and its survivability after being trucked across the country as well as how it looks in the grocery store. This seems to be at the expense of flavor. 

Last year I read something about the Uglyripe, a tomato bred for flavor instead of appearance that was just becoming available in Kingston, NY grocery stores. The Florida Tomato Committee was stopping the growers of the Uglyripe from being able to export their tomatoes out of Florida, where most of the US's tomatoes are grown in the winter. There was no accounting for flavor in the grading standards they set and enforced, only appearance. It's no wonder I never found any joy in fresh tomatoes and I learned to count on canned tomatoes 11 months a year.

Thinking of this now as I eat more tomatoes than I have in my life makes me curious to know more about where the produce in Budapest comes from, and where the power lies on the food chain here and what the politics are behind it.

Another Hungary visitor

We had a visit by another nighttime guest. It was bigger than the last two, and wanted to land. The curtains were partially obscuring the windows this time as earlier in the day I was trying to keep the sun from heating up the place. Now they were keeping the bat from getting back out easily. Eventually it left, but not before leaving behind all of the bloodsuckers that have been munching us at night.

Mosquitos, that is.

Delicious brick of poppy seeds

Now test me for heroin.

Where fireworks come from

  
The most memorable part of the fireworks were the large group of dancers on a stage in front of the Chain Bridge whose stomping dance and flailing costumes seemed to rise and fall with the show and intensified along with the grand finale. No doubt the sky-full of explosions was pushing the dancers, but it looked to me like it was the other way around.

Late afternoon holiday lull

The woman in front of us kept nodding off during the late afternoon outdoor mass which precedes the parading of St. Istvan's hand. It had been a long, full day already, but I attribute her plight more to the murmur of the monotone chanting typical of any Catholic mass.

When we went back down to the riverbank we discovered that others had a better idea for dealing with the heat and tired legs. 

    

We're still recovering

  
Over the course of the holiday, as we'd walk from one part of the city to another, the amount of ongoing activity made my head spin. An air race over the Danube, multiple fly-overs of military planes, acrobatic planes, acrobatic helicopters, dancers dancing the dances from the era of St. Istvan, reenactments of the crafts of the era, the bakers guild taking up a block selling and baking various breads...

We went home for a break during the hottest part of the day, and when we returned the dancers were still stomping, the bakers were still baking, and the planes were still tumbling. We had dinners of grilled meats and as afternoon turned into evening and the dancers were going back up onto the stage for more, the groaning of yet another or plane still tumbled through the sky behind Parliament, there were more and more people sprawling on the lawns among the flower beds. The amount and endurance of the constant activity was impressive.