Budapest, 1 March 2010

There are two things that are not self-evident for someone living in a city like Budapest: rainbows and a starry night.

Budapest is divided into 23 districts, my friend Jucus lives in the 14th, and I live in the 9th. For some odd reason (the wedding hall matches the colors of the wedding) she and her fiancé opted to get married in the 9th district. That is, about 8 minutes walking away from my home. As any good localpatriot (is there a word like that in English?) I introduced her to my favorite places on the streets between my home and the wedding hall*.

Jucus came over after she dropped her daughter off at preschool, and cut my dad’s hair. After some Farmville we went for breakfast at a nearby bakery and then we were off! Our first stop was at the flower shop where she usually buys flowers for my mom.  It was the first (and last) flower shop she visited. Then we ran to the dress shop to pay the first installment of my dress, that I decided to buy. It costs HUF 49,000, cca. ?200 or $250. To rent it would have been HUF 27,000. The original price would have been HUF 55,000, but since we are such a nice group of people, I got a discount.

With that done, we got back on the world’s longest tram** and headed out to the creative hobby stores, to buy everything for the invitations. On the way home we stopped by the shady cake shop to order the wedding cake and the snacks and at one of my favorite restaurants, where the dinner might take place. After getting home Jucus started to make the prototypes of the invitations.

Jucus at work

They look pretty awesome for prototypes. Jucus is super creative and she doesn’t smear glue all over the place like I would.

Today has also been a great day. My grandma, who was born in July 1920 met her great-granddaughter, who was born in October 2009 for the first time. Grandma looked about ten years younger on the way home.

Grandma and Rebeka

Grandma, Rebeka and my sister Kata

Four generations: My Dad, Grandma, niece and sister.

*In Hungary civil weddings are compulsory, so everyone gets married at the registrar’s office, or, at the fancy wedding halls the local councils maintain.

**Budapest has two tramlines that are practically one line, affectionately called the four six (négyes-hatos) that runs from one end of Buda, crossing over to Pest on Margaret bridge, then, after following the grand boulvard, crosses back to Buda again on Petőfi bridge. We live a stop away from Petőfi bridge in Pest, and my grandma lives a stop away from Margaret bridge in Buda. The ride used to take about 30 minutes when I was a kid. The old trams were recently replaced by Siemens’ Combino trams, which happen to be the world’s longest trams. The ones in Budapest are also the only ones with doors on both the left and right sides of the tram cars, which caused a lot of malfunctioning at first, making poor Combinos the subject of many jokes. Now that they have been in use for a few years now, people nicknamed them the worms, becasue of their shape.

I was on my mission in Salt Lake City when TRAX first started to run. Everyone kept asking us if we had ridden it already. I really didn’t get why it was such a big deal: I ride something like that daily back home.

To celebrate, I fried some fish. It didn’t taste like fried fish, but it was still fish. So it was a mostly great day.

To celebrate

So, this post was brought to you by Microsoft Excel. I have been dreaming in grids, and I am finally re-learning all the formulas I hadn’t used for years, plus there is this new thing called Excel 2007… Can you believe what they did with the menus? I can’t find anything, and F1 is now my best friend…

Now off to work with me…

Today my dad and I took advantage of the fact that there was no precipitation, windstorm or extremem cold that would worry my grandmother, and we went to visit her. You see, my grandma is 89, she has very limited vision and profound hearing loss, but she lives independently in Buda. We live in Pest. Now for those foreigners who have never been here: Buda and Pest are divided by the Danube and are historically two cities that became a united Budapest in 1873. Now that was the off topic trivia for today.

Some of the things that my grandma still has, is the dolls my sister and I had as kids. I can still recall the names of three of those 4 dolls (Marika, Zsuzsi, and my male doll, complete with plastic genitals, Zoli), but for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the black doll. It might not even had one: he was my néger baba, and depending on my needs for the game I was playing, it could be a boy or a girl. I think most everyone had a black doll back then, and I remember how much I loved my friens’s Chinese doll.

To be honest, I wasn’t a classic doll lover. I preferred blocks, especially Legos and the sandbox to dolls. Dolls were great for roleplay with my friends, or to play the students of my school, but no, I really wasn’t a doll person. My sister, on the other hand, was. We both had Barbies, but she was the only one who actually got a whole family of Mattel’s plastic disproportionate people. Now that said, with our male dolls, which could pee, and had the apropriate genitals, the appearance of Ken was a shock! Poor guy, permanently molded into underwear!

Our toys, compared to some of those that my friend’s daughter has, were simple and a lot fewer. The doll dish set I got when I was 4 served my sister as well, and then we used them for all kinds of other functions (like as a paint dish, or to feed the kittens) after we outgrew playing with dolls all together.

Today I was seeing posts left and right about what the world was like ten years ago.

So here is my little trip to ten years ago.

Approximately ten years ago, in the middle of February of 2000, I was going into my last transfer in my mission. It was shortly after LDS missions switched from monthly transfers (transfers are when missionaries switch companions and move from one area to another) to six-week ones, and I was one of the very few people, whose release date (the date when travelling home from the mission field) wasn’t changed. It was going to be my last 6 weeks in the Utah Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission. Now looking at the mission name, I always had a thing for places of “employment” with ridiculously long names. (Just try Józsefvárosi Önkormányzat Általános Iskola és Gimnázium.)

I was a district leader (DL) and I was a little sad I was no longer office/fleet staff. Gosh, I loved that calling! I adored my companion, Sister Page (I think I only had two companions I didn’t really get along well) and I loved the job! I have to admit, I loved any calling, except Tab Director. Tab Director had only one redeeming feature, that was running into members of the Tabernacle Choir or the odd General Authority (Church-wide leader) in the horseshoe under the Tabernacle. But it also meant staying on the Square late every Thursday night as the choir was rehearsing, trying to contact people who came to the rehearsal, all this, while staying outside the Tabernacle. Did I mention that I had that calling in the winter??? Plus the month I was staying late every Thursday night on the Square I was on early shift, so it made for some miserable Friday mornings!

Office/Fleet was different. We had our cozy little corner in the North Visitors’ Center, with our own computer (that, in 1999-2000 didn’t have MS Office. It had Word Perfect. It also had all the genealogy software, too), a fading plant (we were underground) and extra keys for all the cars. Not that I drive. But it was fun to run on my P-day to rescue stranded sister missionaries, and to take the cars through the car wash in the Church Office Building. I also liked doing the mission magazine and going to the weekly meetings with the Zone Leaders and the Mission Presidency.

It was during this meeting on the day of posting the new callings that President Winwood gave me a shock. You see, Sister Page and I pretty much got a confirmation from him that she and I were going to stay together another 6 weeks, in the same calling we were at that point. I had even seen the transfer board in his office that reflected the same thing. That morning I found no new calling slip in my mail, so all pointed towards an uneventful meeting. Then President started to read out the new zone and district leaders, and something like this happened: “Angelic Sphere, ZL Makanina, early shift Sister X, late shift Bogár. ” Thus, shortly after 2000 began, I became a DL.

My first 6 weeks as DL was less than great. I had a difficult time with my otherwise adorable Japanese companion, and there were two sisters with serious difficulties in my district. I had never been good with other women, and there I was, responsible for a dozen young women from all over the world. Some of them barely spoke English.

Ten years ago I found out that my last companion would be Sister Olya Kokonina – my 3rd Russian companion – from Moscow, and we’d “kill” each other: we were going home at the same time.

At this point I didn’t only know the Christus narration by heart, I also had the entire movie “Legacy” memorized. I had read the Book of Mormon 6 times cover to cover in English and 3 times in Hungarian, and I had read several books by Hugh Nibley that were available in our mission library. I became a Kenneth Cope fan, met Russian Cosmonauts, but missed my chance to meet Orson Scott Card. I had served for four months in the “field”, in the California Anaheim Mission (the world’s second smallest mission geographically after Temple Square at that time). I had lived through the Salt Lake City tornado of 1999.  I had only 6 weeks left.

Just an interesting thing: I had 4 mission presidents, not counting the MTC presidents. On Temple Square my first president was President Snow, then, 3 months later President Winwood became the new mission president. In Anaheim, due to an odd extension of my stay till July 7, I first had President McDonald and then, for the last week or so, President Rasmussen.

If you have 7 minutes, and like Kenneth Cope, or just would like to see some more photos of TSQ life, I recommend the below video I threw together tonight.

The song Mercury was singing here is a folk song, one of the first I remember learning in kindergarten.

It’s about spring, it’s about love.

You see, in Hungary, kids don’t dress up for Halloween (even though left over carnival costumes are sold during October in some stores), but for carnival. Thus, no matter what store I set foot in – be it a drugstore, a bookstore or grocery store – I’m facing plastic costumes sold for the equvallent of cca ?10-?20. They seem cheap, and well, plastic to me. After all, they are 100% polyester. The selection is rather limited and most are rather untasteful, at least for me.

The four years I was teaching I found that there were only two possibilities for a carnival custome: cheap, storebought one (about 10 Spidermen, 5 Snowhites and 2 pirates) or nothing. That might have been due to the nature of the school I worked at, but with some creativity we managed to dress all the kids up in an easy, economical but fun way. I do have photos, but I’m not sure if I should be posting them here. My friends, who taught at other schools, reinforced that most of the costumes were lacking parental involvement.

Back when I was a kid there were also two kinds of costumes: homemade and theater quality rented ones. The latter ones were excluded from the costume competition, yet, we did adore those costumes. They were few and far between, though.

Most of my costumes were sewn by my grandma, and were later recycled as costumes for my sister. I remember dressing up as a Vietnamese, an Indian, a Gypsy, an Uzbeg, a rag doll and I do know I’m missing a few years there. My sister was definitely a ladybug one year, as her name switched around a little literally could mean ladybug.

Back then, even if two kids dressed up as the same thing, there were never identical costumes. A princess was done differently by Mrs. Kovács and Mrs. Szabó.

That said, planning the costumes began as soon as the school year, and the parents were already firing their sewing machines up by mid October. There was planning, there was parental involvement. Actually, the involvement meant making the outfits, baking cookies, decorating sandwiches and helping to decorate the room the day before carnival. Parents were not invited to the carnival itself, maybe a mother or two from the SZMK (Szülői munkaközösség, quasi PTA) stayed for part of the day to help with the food and the games. Most of the festivities happened in the morning, with only a few carrying over into the afternoon, eliminating the grumpy, tired kid tantrum syndrome that seems to plague carnivals these days.

Here are some preschool pictures of me and then my sister, just to give you a taste of what mothers and grandmas came up with.

That’s me, in January or February of 1981, as a Vietnamese kid. Note the knee highs over white tights and the gym shoes! My parents that year limited their planning to making the rice carrying device and the hat from red cardboard paper. Some real rice was glued to the thingy, and I was dropping rice all over the place the whole day. Pretty much that’s my only memory of that year.

Clay Aiken, to be specific.

His first album, to be even more specific.

Now Clay Aiken is my email counting music.

I discovered Clay Aiken through a friend, and through the Aladding DVD I got for Christmas one year. It was way before anyone in Hungary really knew who he was -and I doubt there are many people today, as we are a country untouched by American Idol. Seriously. It hs never been re-broadcast here. We had “Hell’s Kitchen”, “Survivor”, “The Amazing Race”, even “So You Think You Can Dance” or whatever that one was called, but never AI.

I believe that his voice is amazing, and yes, there is that “fellow special ed major” vibe as well.

I have to admit, however, that his most recent album is not my favorite one. But like… I’d love to go to a concert one.

And if I wrote this on a Thursday night, I would have included the below video right away: Clay Aiken on Scrubs!

My best friend is getting married, on May 22, 2010, which also happens to be my 33rd birthday. (Now really, how many of you get to eat wedding cake for your birthdays?)

The other day my sister, my friend and I went wedding dress hunting. In Hungary most people only rent their dresses, and still pay a month’s salary for it. My friend was lucky enough to find a very affordable and lovely dress – which may or may not be the one in the photo – at the first place she actually tried any dresses on.

And a photo from 2001…

Several years ago when my Dad retired, he returned to his hobby of photography. The photographs the city we live in – Budapest – and all the places he ends up going to. He has also been blogging for a few years and upon seeing photos of other bloggers from elsewhere in the country, he came up with an idea of collecting photos from all over current Hungary – soon to be followed by historic (pre-1920) Hungary. He started to expand his hobby into making simple web pages.

As the result of this hobby, the Photograph Hungary! website was born. It is in constant transformation as more photos are added and as we explore different features we want to add to the site, and in the meantime… the photos are there.

People of both sexes, all ages and of all walks of life show how they see Hungary. And this I’d like to share with all of you.

On the left in the Menu you can see the name of the village, town or city, feel free to click through them. You will find some of my photos under Balatonszentgyörgy, Egercsehi, Keszthely, Káptalanfüred and elsewhere, too.

My last post was about the spilar binding thingy I bought at Aldi. It took me almost a whole week to make the prototype.  I decided to use BlogBooker to turn the communal recipe blog Konyhamóka into a PDF file which I then printed off and bound. I like to have a hard copy of my online recipes.

That said we also set up an English version of Konhamóka for those, who don’t speak Hungarian. KitchenAction is shadowing Konyhamóka… and then it might just decide to be its own thing.