Category Archives: Uncategorized

Before I forget I thought I better write about those things that strike me as being the very different and a few things that are the same.

Fur, they wear a lot of it, I even saw a woman wearing one of those little minks with the head & claws on like my grandmother used to wear for special occasions. Most of the fur is trim on coats but occasionally you see full fur coats worn on weekdays, no special occasion. One reason for the popularity of fur might be the cold. Although the paper reports temperatures with 30 as the night time low and low 40’s for the daytime highs it seems really cold to me. Maybe that explains why everyone wears a scarf and hat also the older women still wear those felt hats if there not wearing a fur hat.

Children under age six all have one piece snowsuits on with cute little knit hats tied on. I can’t think that I have seen a single young child without full snowsuits and tied on hat but hey I’m cold too. I associate these full body suits with skiing and snowboarding but hey I’m cold too. I wish I had one.

Speaking of fashion square toed shoes are the thing here for both men and women. It’s sort of a stereotype thinking of eastern Europeans in square toed shoes and it’s true. Me with my clunky rounded toes, I imagine I stick out but I’m not changing. My toes aren’t formed square. I imagine it’s like the Chinese foot binding if you grow up with square toed shoes all your life they probably fit.

Today I saw my very first recycling bins but don’t even think of going to the grocery store without your plastic bag. Everyone carries them and you pack your own groceries. They sell them to you in the store for 10 forints (6 cents) or more if you want a plastic bag that will actually hold two days worth of groceries. This has created a culture of reused bags yet they don’t seem to have any other commitment to recycling. There are zillions of mineral water bottles in the trash.

Pencils have no erasers. Everyone has red and blue and just the occasional regular lead pencil on their desks. None of them have erasers. The school gave me a small bag of supplies to start school with: four highlighters, a blue book with graft type paper which I assume is intended to be my grade book, a large pad of scrap paper, sticky notes, a pen, a pencil and a separate eraser. Why?? The Hungarians also lack rubber bands and plastic wrap.

Some things that are about the same.

Zsuzsa says the weather report says snow may come anytime but after a week of her  saying that there hasn’t been a flake. Just like home the weather report is wrong.

Even though park space is small, I thought I saw a dog park yesterday. I asked Zsuzsa about it and she said yes that there are dog parks. “They tried having a park just for children AND dogs but it didn’t work out so they have parks just for dogs.” In a very small playground I also saw an official sign that said “Dog WC” in one corner. Yuck! I  guess the plastic bags are too precious  to use  for  poop scoops. 

After Zsuzsa got lost in miles of “residential housing” in our country giant apartment complexes y flat at Bikszadi ut. 27 finally was located.  To my relief it was  than I expected although my bed is much smaller.  It’s a very small sofa sleeper actually.   The apartment if very nice one of three in a private house.  The furniture is perhaps the ugliest stuff I’ve ever seen.  If you left it out on the lawn in Spokane no one would pick it up even though it seems quite new.   I have attached the address for my slide show. 

http://picasaweb.google.com/Janwingen/MyFlat

I learned in the Unitarian Church that “instant Karma” is a misinterpretation of Hinduism I left SFCC intending to really clean-up those piles of stuff in my office, not actually accomplishing the task. Here I was given a choice of two desks both piled high with papers of the previous occupants, recently retired. Can you imagine retiring with (I kid you not) a foot and a half of precisely stacked white memos, attached book shelves are full of miscellaneous volumes, glasses, a jar of red sauce and other lunch paraphernalia, even family pictures still pasted on the shelves. Oddly the appearance of both desks was about the same in the leftover pile of paper and clutter department. Perhaps “retirement” is a euphemism for suddenly swept away by a flood or overcome by the plague. The other explanation is it must be a different culture!

I choose the desk with a view of the window. The other unlucky occupant will have a view of me.

We have two computers for an office of six and I was warned that one is too slow to use. I was quickly and efficiently set up with a computer account & college e-mail so I shouldn’t complain however I am absolutely losing my mind. I know I complained before about ALL the Word commands in Hungarian. This is not a problem if there is a symbol like Save or Open but commands like Save As have on screen symbol Here is a new interesting part with my account. My words are all marked as misspelled and once I accidentally hit spell check. The highlighted words were changed to the closest spelling of a word in Hungarian including all the necessary diacritics. An amazing thing to behold! An amazing thing to behold! A mayo tom top beeped

I am in seventh heaven as they say. I splurged and bought the least expensive USB drive I could find at a shop called PHOTO SZWLL or something close. Knowing very little about anything here I had a hunch a photo shop might have more than cameras so I walked the extra block to check it out. Sure enough cameras, webcams and all kinds of computer peripherals all displayed so I could lead the sales guy over and point. Apparently USB isn’t a universal term I forget what he called it, probably flash drive in Hungarian. Next comes the always embarrassing negotiation over the payment. No, I don’t have a store credit card; I want to pay cash $$ but I have a $10,000 forint bill. The charge is $3472 forints and he doesn’t want to have to give me change although he says he can. I have to dig through the 3 places I keep cash and prove I have $2600 forints in bills. As I dig my bills become larger 20,000 one 50,000. He again asks me if I would like to put it on a credit card. I can even sign-up for a credit card. NO! I mean NEM! This is all done with good humor but I am always show exactly how inept I am as I pull out all my unfamiliar bills and change and study them.

Now I can type on my own computer and upload my documents in my office. I have been trying to type my entries on a Hungarian keyboard. Zsuzsa showed me how to change the keyboard so the letters correspond to our standard American keyboard BUT the keyboard doesn’t change of course. I can’t tell you the exact differences between their keyboard and ours but the letters are placed differently For sure the Z and V are more accessible and shift typing a letter yields the letter with all those weird diacritics umlauts and such. Luckily I am mostly a touch typist but every once in a while I don’t hit the semi-colon or something correctly. When this happens I look down at the keyboard to see where it is and I am completely flummoxed. I suddenly can’t remember where any of the letters are supposed to be. I just have to shake it off and stop looking at the keys and start typing again. Oh one last problem if you right click all the choices are LONG Hungarian words help, spell check, save all commands are all in Hungarian so you better remember your keystrokes and MS symbols because there is no phrase book available that translates windows commands.

Gist I am very happy to be sitting in my living room listening to the BBC discuss how the super Tuesday race is “hotting up” using an English version of word, a familiar keyboard and saving on my new USB.

Zsuzsa took me on the bus to the university today.  I got lost last night going out to buy coffee at the grocery so I am trying to pay close attention.  I am under dressed in black cotton pants and a sweater.  I look like the staff not the faculty.  I’m at a complete  loss with all the Hungarian names.  I met about 10 people.  Zsuzsa says they will all remember me & that I don’t need to worry about it but I think I should be taking notes.  I must say so far my highlight is the water machine.  One button for very bubbly water, one for slightly bubbly, one for still water and one for hot water.  It powers up and makes all kind of noises and finally shoots out exactly 6 oz of water.  I think it is a bubbles, tea or instant coffee in this university’s culture.

Tomorrow I go to immigration wish me luck.  Zsuzsa is not studying the paperwork so I think she believes the bureacracy will be a challenge.

Feb 2^nd Arrived 20 minutes early but with no luggage so I spent 30 minutes on paperwork. No phone number and only a street address no apartment number. so I was a problem. I realized I didn’t even have a phone number for Zsuzsa who was meeting me. Since the luggage area is separated from the waiting area by a wall and a guard I was afraid she would thing there were no more passengers. I was one of only two Heathrow passengers who lost our luggage the other women came from a different LA not Seattle. After driving in the dark through tons of “residential housing” projects looking for my impossible little street we finally found it. The landlords Magdi and Istvan gave me the usual lectures only in Hungarian. Zsuzsa translated roughly – “Don’t plug-up the sink or the toilet, keep it clean and your paying for the gas and electric so suggest you not use too much.”  Zsuzsa bought me starter groceries and left me with homemade me Chicken Paprikash with homemade dumplings. I also got starter money 100,000 forints which I am to payback in cash in the same denominations before Ieave Budapest. Pretty nice! I did the math it’s $500.

February 3^rd Zsuzsa took me to all the important downtown monuments today and the shopping mall which I think was a bigger than Northtown but hard to compare since the stores are smaller and it is on five floors if you count the Cinema on the top. T-mobile had about 7 sales clerks and it was “take a number” service. I managed to part with quite a few forints for my new cell phone. I think it was $82 and I put an extra $25 in minutes on it. Most fun was when they handed me the 3 pages of fine print cell phone contract in Hungarian and I just shrugged, grinned and signed. Zsuzsa has let me know she is not interested in translating this kind of document for me. When I asked for a cell phone manual in English they had to print out 100 pages on their printer.

It was a great day to be a tourist because the sun was out although it was definitely winter. (They don’t have time and temp. on any corners I saw here.) We saw some large tour groups young Americans and Japanese groups both old and young. There were plenty of people with guidebooks from all countries but the sites were not really at all crowded which I can imagine all these sites will be in another season.

Good thing I have a spare room for packing. Notice the bathroom scale for weighing luggage.