Day 30: In which a cat results in hijinks

A.K.A. FILLER EPISODE

Operation make-a-lot-of-food-and-then-eat-it-over-the-course-of-a-week went into action today. I made a ton of rice and stir-fried nutrition-type food. I may or may not have burned the rice and then overcompensated by adding too much water so my rice ended up being kind of wet and sticky, ie perfect for chopsticks if only I had some.

I'm basically a chef. Please try to contain your applause.

Here are some pictures from today and also yesterday:

Spoons here are either too large or too small. So small, one might even call them... Qian-sized.

My Quantum class moved into the otherwise unused design studio today. I played ping-pong with my professor while we waited for the other student to get there. In looking around the room I discovered there:

Straws! Massive straws! For scale, that is A4 paper aka European printer paper. 

This guy was hanging out at the metro station yesterday:

I can only assume this is a proper Magyar.

Day 24: In which I do some things and then write about it

This day was marked by Adventures in Cooking: Stir-Fry Edition. I'm not yet convinced that I shouldn't start another blog about how I don't know how to cook. Oh, and I went to Szimpla, supposedly the second best bar in the world, though I know nothing about who rated it or how it was rated.

As we all know, chronological order is best order, so back to how I don't know how to cook. This adventure in cooking tofu was better than the last. I got garlic and ginger power in lieu of the fresh versions and this was probably a mistake. It was still tasty though, just slight more carcinogenic. But! It was actually tasty! High-five me. And I found soy sauce. I don't know how to wield it properly. Also I was too lazy to also make rice, but maybe I'll do that tonight to eat the rest of my tasty (!) stir-fry.

And back to Szimpla. I met up with some AIT, stopped at someone's apartment for a bit to pregame and have a good time and we walked to Szimpla together to meet with yet more AIT people. It was big. And full of people. And Americans who weren't us. There are a couple of levels and lots of rooms and all of them were full of people. Also they sell carrots. I bought one. It was an expensive carrot but carrots are delicious and that's not the first time I've ever done something for the novelty of it. Mostly we hung out and shot the shit, as the kids call it. 

I wouldn't call Szimpla spectacular but I also didn't buy any drinks there and also seemed not to notice the eclectic style mentioned by the many favorable reviews. Other than the carrot bit, I mean. But I would probably bring anyone who visited me to Szimpla anyway. 

Day 23: A Patient Patient

Remember that affliction I mentioned in my last post? Well, I went to the doctor today. Coincidentally, orvos was a vocabulary word.

Anyway, again, the AIT student coordinators are fabulous. One of them came to the clinic with me to help me navigate. Since I went to see a specialist, it was not at the regular place but it was within walking distance of both the regular place and my apartment which was convenient. Less convenient was the DMV-esque waiting around forever. Dorka waited with me so she could tell the person how my bill needed to be filled out or something. This is extra nice when you realize that we were waiting around for about an hour. It's times like these that require having a book on your phone.

Anyway, when it was my turn, Dorka said something in Hungarian to the nurse/assistant person that included "amerikai" and left. My doctor didn't speak great English but she spoke enough to tell me to strip and what my medication would be. I don't think she knew how to say "gargle" but she got the point across. It turns out that I have a virus. And it's pretty common in Europe.

Payment involved me handing cash over to the doctor and getting a receipt to present to my medical/insurance people for reimbursement.

Next stop was the pharmacy across the street. In my usual manner, I presented the necessary forms to the necessary person and hoped for the best. My strategy is to speak snippets of English that isn't particularly needed but is enough to inform whoever has to deal with me that I do not speak their language. I'll have to go back later today to get something that they have to make. But what I have so far seems to be cold cream, anti-allergy medication, and some kind of ultra-concentrated Listerine. I'm not sure how much I actually need the meds, since my condition has been improving since yesterday, but half of the cost is covered by insurance and viruses is bitches so I might as well. I do wish I read the labels though. I googletranslated stuff, but it's not great and has a habit of leaving some words untranslated. Also there's a lot of stuff, so I didn't even bother trying to translate it all.

Next up: the regular medical place to get reimbursed. When I got there, the receptionist was not at the desk so that was cool. Again, I presented forms to whoever would take them and did whatever I was told until the situation resolved itself. Sajnos, in the course of this, my carefully varied bill sizes was destroyed. Sadface. Now people will get mad at me for trying to use use a bill an order of magnitude greater than what I'm trying to pay for.

UPDATE: So I went back to the pharmacy and got my thing which is apparently another cream presumably not of the cold variety. But I noticed something else at the pharmacy. The first was a glass thing (a table, perhaps) full of what looked like some massive quartz crystals and other, smaller crystal type things. Like healing crystals. Next, I saw a word that looked suspiciously similar to "homeopathy."  This word I believe was on a cabinet. Not off to the side or in the back but front and center at the counter. When I got to the counter, I noticed a pamphlet that entreated me to go to "www.homeokult.hu." Promising. Those who go to this website will find an offer for a four year graduate degree in homeopathy. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN. Recall also that I myself was purchasing medicine from this place.

In other news, I recently learned that some people at AIT play League of Legends, so I made an account on the Eastern European servers (with the same name as my NA account, lulz) and everything is SO HARD without runes or masteries. Ungh. Apparently there is racism against Polish people on this server. I don't know this first hand as I don't have all team chat enabled, but I believe it as that would make Poles the Mexicans/ Brazilians of the EU East server.

Day 20: The Bottom of the Rollercoaster

Today, I decided I would try cooking for real. Kind of for real. I made tofu and curry powder hot and put it on pasta because I didn't want to attempt rice sans rice cooker. It wasn't amazing. It was, in fact, excessively mediocre. It didn't have any vegetables and was super bland. I tried putting salt and pepper on it but then it just tasted like salt and pepper, which is something, I guess.

Side note: people talk about how salty things are here, and I have a hypothesis as to why- It's because everyone smokes! Smoking -> no taste buds -> MOAR SALT. I'm basically a genius.

Also today I discovered that I already missed turning in an assignment. Not because I forgot, but I neglected to internalize the due date of 'Friday.'

Oh, and my skin seems to be marred by some heathen pestilence. I wasn't going to tell you until it resolved itself, but not to do so felt like lying. The good news is that the AIT coordinators are amazing and setting up an appointment for me and that having insurance means that I don't have to pay money for it.

While I titled this 'The Bottom of the Rollercoaster,' I am 1) not actually feeling that bad and 2) not experiencing the cultural shock meant to be described by the rollercoaster. Just to clear that up. If it wasn't clear. Yeah.

Day 18: Tourin' Around

The AIT group went on a bus tour around Budapest. Naturally, the day started out with surprise sausage (meglepetés kolbász), courtesy of one of the coordinators. This is an inside joke, the story of which will not be explained here.
Anyway, we went to some places and I took a few pictures:
The tl;dr of the tour is that there is a lot of architecture, everything in Budapest has been destroyed at least once, and Hungarians have spent a lot of time being boned.

Heroes' Square. I've been here before but learned a bit of Hungarian history. the takeaway: Hungarians have been on a losing streak since the 15th century. Ouch.

The zoo: on my #TODO list

An art nouveau elephant house. Apparently a baby elephant was born here recently.

An opera house. The tour guide said that we /had/ to visit it before leaving Budapest.

Supposedly, this is looking out of the old Pest, into the Jewish ghetto because Jews weren't allowed to live in Pest.

A synagogue. The largest in Europe.

St. Steven's Basilica/ Cathedral. I learned the definition of basilica and also the one for a cathedral. Apparently this basiledral incorporates three architectural styles. I can't tell.

This is the inside of St. Steven's Basilica. They tell me it's Baroque. Someone important must have died because there was a funeral going on when we were there.

This is a memorial to some peaceful protesters of the Communist Regime who were gunned down. I'm not sure if these represent actual bullet holes in the walls or if they just look like it.

Apparently the statue of A Man Who Looks a Bit Like Teddy Roosevelt on a Bridge is in fact of a prime minister and revolutionary who became martyred. Apparently the American Embassy is near here and some guy (not this guy) spent 17 years there. Because Communism. This place is actually pretty close to my apartment, so it's comforting to know that the embassy is nearby in case something goes down.

There was a protest going on. Something about banks and loans and not being able to pay them? I thought I heard "student" in there somewhere.

Parliament across the Danube.

Matthias Cathedral. I really like the roof.

Also Matthias Cathedral.

Tiny Matthias Cathedral for blind people.

A statue of a horse.

A statue of a horse's balls. Apparently polishing them is a tradition.

The building formerly known as the headquarters of the Hungarian military. It was destroyed and stuff and left as a memento. Here, the tour guide translated "memento mori" for us, but it was not the same definition I knew.

This was once a church.

Gorge.

Still gorge. The building in the middle there has this gold decoration that's supposed to be super special and you can only really see it when the sun is setting.

Cable cars.

Still lookin' fine.

The city lighting up

House of Terror. Also on my #TODO list.

Communism and, like, the normal thing. This is actually where we started the tour but I was too lazy to put all the pictures in chronological order.

We ate at a restaurant on AIT's dime. This was on the ceiling. The restaurant had a survey on its placemats but no crayons! That was my biggest disappointment.

After the tour, I checked out the fish festival a little bit, because Budapest loves festivals. Even though apparently Hungarians don't even eat fish that often. Like once a year, I'm told. It was a lot of people tightly packed around other people selling things at tables.

Day 17: Classin' Out

I had some science to do today. I wanted to find out if February 15th was an excellent day to purchase chocolate as it is in the US. To my dismay, I found that the heart-shaped boxes costed just as much as they had the day before. However, in performing my research, I discovered that the supermarket near my school is no mere supermarket. It was like some sort of Supertarget that was three quarters groceries. So big.

Today's highlight was a trip to the opera. Class-E. A group of us went to see The Marriage of Figaro at the Palace of Arts. It was a good thing that I read the synopsis beforehand as it was an Italian opera with Hungarian subtitles. I say that I like didn't know and reading the synopsis was a fortuitous accident, but I did and that was 100% planning.
This was the view from my vantage point:

Why yes, those are costumes hanging in the air, why do you ask?

I rather enjoyed it and I didn't even fall asleep! It was nice and had some funny bits but was pretty normal until the last bit. Then it got weird. Like extras getting a little orgiastic weird. By this time, we were probably in hour three of the opera, so I had a little trouble focusing on the plot with the extra doing... whatever it was they were doing. What I'm saying is, many a feel was copped that night.

Other highlights of the play include she whom I've dubbed The Wig Fairy who went around putting wigs on people including various members of the orchestra, their instruments, and the conductor. At one point, she was poking some stringed instrumentalist in the wig with his bow. Oh Wig Fairy, you cray.

After the play, a friend and I went to get some food. It was late, so the only place we could find was a McDonald's. I had actually been meaning to see if MickeyD's is any different here (not that I have much experience from home). It was not. But the burgers were tiny. Like, so small. I did not pay very much money for that burger, but still. 

Sad that my burger is half the size of a normal person burger

Also, my feet have blisters now because my nice-looking shoes hurt me and I just never learn. I lead a hard life.

Day 13: Thoughts on the little things

I'm still unnerved by the rotational symmetry of outlets here (in addition to the reflective symmetries which do not unnerve me). I realize that it really shouldn't matter with AC, but I can't help but feel like I'm plugging everything in backwards.

I think that's it's weird that they don't put lamb in their gyros. I also think that I should shut up and stop being such a food snob, like /I/ know the correct and proper way to prepare a gyro.

I noticed that my all sandwiches all the time diet has resulted in me going through bread at an alarming rate. I decided to try getting sliced bread for my sandwiches to 1) save bread and 2) have nice bread slices -I'm awful cutting bread/ things in general. The bread that most resembled the loaves from home had a much small cross-sectional area. Also they were labelled 'toast'. Certainly not sufficient for my sandwich-making needs. I am suddenly aware of the woman joke potential for this paragraph. Anyway, despite finding more reasonable sliced bread, I was forced to conclude that the phrase "The best thing since sliced bread" simply cannot carry the same weight here as it does in the States.

Also, it snowed here and it is perfect for snowballs. I am hoping that the next few days will give me an opportunity to take advantage of this.

Day 11: In Which a Man Stands on a Bridge

This morning started with an adventure in produce-buying. I was too intimidated to do it before. I creeped on some lady to figure out how. Feeling confident, I put my bag o' tomatoes and put it on the weighing machine and looked through the pictures for tomatoes. They were not there. And some lady was waiting for me. I tried to get out of her way but she was really nice despite my being an awkward American who cannot speak the native tongue. She couldn't find the tomatoes either. Turns out, the tomato label was associated with a picture of a cucumber. Flail. This was also the case for oranges which had a picture of an apple. I feel that I cannot be held 100% responsible for my inability to buy produce. Also, Spar needs a better programmer.

This afternoon, I went to the Palace of Arts for a free concert. On my way, I encountered this fellow:

Man who looks like Teddy Roosevelt but is probably not Teddy Roosevelt on a bridge.

My first question about this statue was Is this a statue of a man or a statue of a man on a bridge? Upon attempting to cross the bridge, I concluded that is indeed a statue of a man on a bridge. Curious. Teddy, watcha doin' on that bridge?

Anyway, this is the inside of the Palace of Arts

This is the outside from the balcony. The blob in the middle there is a maze of sorts. I'm told no one knows why it's there.

I concluded my evening with dinner in a food court.

Observations for today:
Foodwise, Turkey is the Mexico of Hungary. Turkish fastfood is a big deal.
I should learn another language and then go to a place that doesn't speak that language. I should then find people in that place who speak that language. We will then become best friends.

Other things I learned:
In Hungarian, there is no language distinction between a boyfriend and a male friend (and, I assume the same for girlfriends). Apparently this is the source for some amount of confusion.

Also: I met a person who knows a person that I know. So I guess that's cool too.

Day 10: Chinatown

I decided that my technical classes are pretty much Discrete Math Part II. But not my Discrete. The one I NINJA'd (TA'd, if you're not an Oliner). Networks is about large real-life networks and clusters and also about randomly generated networks. Combinatorial Optimization has been about matching thus far. Today we did Hall's Theorem but in rather a different way from the approach in Discrete. And Quantum Probability started by breaking out the partially-ordered sets to help define the kind of logical operations we need. In other words, my classes are super amazing.

With Chinese New Year coming up, I went to the Chinese market with some people. I think the group was half people who speak Chinese fluently and half with broken Chinese. I'm not sure who spoke less Chinese: me or the Indonesian kid. Apparently the Chinese part of town is sketchy. I was warned that people might try to steal my passport. It is unclear if this was a real threat or if it's an urban legend from people who do not go to Chinatown.

When we were looking for the market, we came across this gem of a store: A mannequin shop.

It was open, but if television has taught me anything, it's that a serial killer is headquartered in the back and if I went in I would surely die.

We found the market:

It wasn't really open. It was also definitely the sketchiest place I have ever been in my life. You can see the tarps in the photo. The whole place was covered in various tarps. We wandered around for a bit but left to try to meet up with the rest of our group.

They found an actual supermarket. It apparently stocked a particular brand of ramen that was much beloved by one of my friends in her youth. I took some of it try it and because ramen is a college-kid staple. But more importantly do you know what I found there? Peanut butter! There was actually a Chinese Skippy brand of peanut butter, but I got a cheaper brand. Butyeah, peanut butter. So good. And it's not really a thing around here.

Ended the day with dinner at a legit Chinese restaurant (as opposed to a Chinese buffet). They had a couple versions of the menu, one that was only in Chinese and one for foreigners that had pictures and the names of all the dishes in Chinese, English, and Hungarian.

Today's moral: When in need of peanut butter in strange lands, go to Chinatown.

Day 8: Hummus Among Us

Today was a relatively normal day. I switched out of my Hungarian class to the other section which is closer to my level but whose classes I will only be able to attend half of. We'll see how that goes.

Also! I went to this restaurant called the Hummus bar which is a vegetarian restaurant. They exist here! Whaaat. Anyway, that was tasty. Other than the food, the highlight of the restaurant was the quotes on the wall. They were in English, but some of them were not quite right... We can only suspect that the Hungarian version of the quotes were stuck into a translator and copied onto the walls. This is particularly amusing for the quotes that were originally in English.

This is an example of (most of) one of the quotes they had.

"Most of the failures in life where two people who [didn't realize] how close to success they were when they [gave up]."

Day 7: Bath Time

The second day of classes. There are two Hungarian classes. It turns out that they were separated based on skill as many of us who are not me went through a two-week language course beforehand. Since I have a schedule conflict, I'm the only one in my class who hasn't gone through the language school. We're starting with chapter 11. Awks.

In Data Mining we learned the importance of attending class for the sake of your project teammates. Apparently this has been a problem with the Hungarian students in the past. I concluded that Hungarians are the Babbies of AIT.

Also I got wifi! Hooray!

A group of us decided to go ice skating at City Park, which is apparently the largest ice skating rink in Europe. It was a pretty good time. The music they played was indistinguishable from what would be playing in America, featuring Katy Perry and Adele among others.

Huge.

Note the castle.

We went to the thermal baths afterwards, which is conveniently also in City Park. One of the pools had this sweet current thing where the water would go around in a circle and you feel like you're swimming super fast. It was awesome. 

Day 5: Hangin' with Hungarians

Most of today was not especially exciting. We learned about our classes and finalized (ish) or selections. Apparently the standard courses load is five courses but from what I heard a lot of people signed up for more with the intent of dropping some in the future. I ended up signing up for Hungarian Language, Combinatorial Optimization, Data Mining, Networks, Quantum Probability and Quantum Logic, and Hungarian Music. I will probably drop either Quantum or Music.

I was considering going to the Superbowl party at AIT later which would involve getting there before 11 when the bus stops running, shenanigans until 3-4 am and then sleeping over at AIT. On the way back to my apartment, however, I met a small group of people from the program two American students that I knew and two Hungarian students that I didn't. The Hungarian students invited us to see a concert so we got food at a Turkish fast food place where I got a gyro with chicken because lamb was not an option -sad.

At the concert hall we met up with a friend of the Hungarian students who was part of the AIT program last semester (or maybe last year) and was going to be studying away in the Netherlands this semester. Tickets were only 1000 Forints ($5) for students though we had to stand. Apparently the concert was a Bartók marathon so it had many short performances all day.

Afterwards they took us to a pub and we hung out for a while. I don't know their names exactly, but a first approximation is Jordy, Alec, and Vincent. Vincent recommended a rose wine for me which I enjoyed. Apparently it was a good choice because it came from Lake Balaton.

The Hungarians we hung out with were all apparently physics majors together but Jordy and Alec defected to the math track. They were impressed that I knew about Peano arithmetic, thanks FOCS!

Things I learned today:
-My landlord is person from AIT
-Hungarians are non-ironically into the "Ladies first" thing

-How to say some of the numbers between 0 and 10. 8 and 9 are still a little iffy for me. Though I got to practice when we played cards.

- Hungarians use two types of decks of cards: French cards, which are the standard poker cards, and Hungarian cards which don't contain the numbers 2-6. 

-Hungarians also play B.S. but with the slight variation that you only play one card at a time.

-The hair style where men have no hair on the sides and rather a lot of hair on top is a thing. I call it a fat mohawk.

-If you can do jam, you can do palinka

Day 4: Scavenging

Today we started our orientation. As is proper with orientations, it began with a scavenger hunt. Teams were directed from place to place to perform tasks with some side goals to perform throughout. The side goals were to find people named Béla (which nobody found, though my team called ourselves Team Béla and we found a shopkeeper who had a facebook friend named Béla whose picture we photographed; to find mustaches, as Hungarians are famous for their mustaches; to find a statue of a US president in a particular square (it was Reagan); to name all the bridges in Budapest; and to name films shot in Hungary.

Our first stop was to a strudel place to sample various strudels while blindfolded and to guess their flavors. My team did pretty well at this task which was also delicious. 

The next stop was to a market to but supplies for our lunch. This is where we learned that a Hungarian won a Noble prize for discovering vitamin C in paprika. 

Stop 3 was in a Starbucks where we learned of Hungarian inventions which include but are not limited to soda water, safety matches, the Ford Model T, the BMW diesel engine, and the Von Neumann computer architecture.

The next stop was at a pub. We were given five shots of various types of palinka (a Hungarian specialty) and asked to identify which type was which. We did not do well at this. We were also given a stein of Hungarian beer and a glass of wine and soda water and told to finish it all.

Because my team had some extra time at the end, we went to get the most beautiful ice cream I have ever eaten.

The scavenger hunt was followed up by a visit to AIT. As a fun fact, the business park that AIT is in has the first statue of Steve Jobs. So that's fun.

Later that night, we all met up at a pub, students and coordinators both and had a round of drinks on AIT. This is also when we discovered that my team won the scavenger hunt by a significant margin and we were awarded with a boxes of matches, vitamin C, and fake mustaches. Also a giant bubble maker and a cake, neither of which I know what happened to.

Day 3: Island of Joggers

Today I learned that in order to get data on my phone with my shiny new sim card, I must fiddle around with the network settings. Fiddling complete, I am now able to use google maps and keep a constant information drip in my wifi-less apartment.

I decided to walk over to Margitsziget (Margret Island). I found it to consist mostly of trees and joggers. There was a lot of both. There were also some ruins of a Dominican convent which was home to Saint Margret who I guess is kind of a big deal?

Also my roommate arrived! I know very nearly nothing about her. I suspect that she may be short enough not to be hindered by the low ceiling above our beds.

 Apparently nickelodeon is a thing here. Also claire's and T.G.I. Friday's.

This is the Pest-side bridge to the island

I thought I would try to make a comparison of Buda and Pest. This is Pest.

Here are some pictures of ruins:

Saint Margret of Hungary: kind of a big deal

This is a water tower. Apparently it's a landmark.

 This is the Buda side of the Danube. It has more hills.

The bridge on the Buda side.

 Attempts to get artsy with the bridges: SO MUCH BRIDGE

The view from the bridge. Buda is on the right, Pest is on the left.