It's hard to believe that exactly four months ago, I was anticipating my trip to Cairo. It's even harder to believe that less than a year ago I was anxiously awaiting the beginning of a year in Scotland. Now, I'm approaching my last final exam here and my next adventure.
Lately it seems that the general preponderance is the uncertainty of what waits ahead. There are the usual anxieties of starting another year or a new job or moving to a new place. But what is stranger is to return to a place, a very familiar place, knowing it will not be the same. In my Scottish literature class, we read several short stories that dealt with Scottish ex-patriots returning home and what they found on arrival. Now, I'm neither Scottish nor from some tiny island village nor have I been gone for thirty years, but I think the sentiments and underlying emotion are similar. There are times that I feel that I have to glorify everything here. I must be the Roman returning victorious from battle and I am not sure I can always keep that charade up. Not to say that there haven't been many wonderful experiences, but they have been fully tempered by the difficulties.
There are so many myths and expectations of studying abroad. This year has been the strangest, loneliest, most adventurous year yet. And for all of that, I wouldn't take it back. However, as the Chart of Emotions that one of my friends was given (in the conclusion that a visual bell graph would help explain what to expect while studying abroad), I am now approaching the reverse effects of studying abroad. What are those? Tune in next fall.
I think I might delaying travelling for 2 or 3 days and enjoy some more time in the company of people here. Not that I have money to waste, but the extra expense of changing a plane ticket seems well worth it at the moment. Then I'm off to Italy for about two weeks and then a quick jaunt to the isles of Ireland and Britain before I sail home.
Strange how the time flies in a foreign country, even when every moment isn't necessarily fun...
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Friday, 16 May 2008
Budapest, Part 3: Night
There is a gentle intensity about the Hungarian nightlife. It is similar to its Eastern European neighbors in that Budapest loves a good night out, drinking and dancing until the sun comes up. But the Hungarians have a spirit about them that seems more easy going and less intense than the Polish or Germans. They are definitely not pretentious like the French.
When I was in Budapest, Lena made sure I saw all the various aspects of the nightlife. Well, I will specify that we did not go to any strip or sex clubs, a reputation that Budapest somewhat encourages due to the number of tourists. However, despite being named the "Sex Capital," the streets were remarkably safe and as long as you stayed away from the crazy winos and alcoholics like the one we encountered on the airport bus, you were fine.
Enough about the merits of walking on Budapest streets at ungodly hours!
The first night I arrived I was too incapacitated by lack of sleep (I'd woken before dawn) to do anything. However, the next night Lena took me to a party in a friend's flat where I promptly met her international crew of friends. I was informed by the Hungarian that the wine label Danko was "a lifestyle" and given the quality of Hungarian wines, I would fondly join this lifestyle. (Note: Danko is only a lifestyle for those who can afford bottles of 3 euro wine or less) We then all went to a student night at a club called Living Room. Let's just say it was like a student night at any club anywhere in the world. Too many bodies, one "free drink," bad music, and guys to avoid. However, it is in someways both better and worse when you can't speak their language. They might actually be interesting people in their own right, but there is no way to ever figure it out. However, it also becomes an easy escape mechanism when there is no way to communicate. After several hours of this, Lena and I decided to go back to her apartment.
The next night proved better, or at least made for a more interesting story. We had been invited to a Polish dinner party - Lena's Polish friends were throwing a dinner party for their friends to introduce them to their native cuisine. That said, what I did eat was excellent. I can always go for a good pierogi. However, what we had thought was a sit down dinner became much more of an epic battle to get food. The Polish group had originally only invited their Polish and Slavic friends but it quickly morphed into 35 people for dinner and food for 10. Luckily, one of the skills I have mastered being a poor undergraduate is how to quickly navigate a buffet of free food. Of course, there's also an art to being polite at the same time. Another point of interest: there was more than plenty vodka to go around multiple times for everyone.
Afterward, Lena convinced half of the dinner party to join us at Szimpla, one of Budapest's "found bars." By "found bar", it is an old decaying building which is now a bar and that has been decorated by objects found around the streets. I believe I've seen these kind of establishments in various German films. Think found art plus cool hangout and a little post-communism mixed in. Clubbing seems to be the preferred option among many Europeans, but I absolutely adored this place. It was artlessly cool and had the perfect mix of ambience and people. No one was too hip or too touristy or too anything in particular.
Of course when we went to a jazz club, Fat Mo's, later on, we encountered a completely different environment. This place had once been a sleek bar of the 1920s and still looked so. The jazz band was remarkably good and the Hungarian twist to the music was all the more interesting. Unfortunately Scotland is a bit of a wasteland for music unless you like Brit rock or traditional Scottish music, both of which are fabulous. But forget about jazz. And if I hear another cover band playing "Sweet Home Alabama" in a Scottish accent, I am going to kill someone. The folk/rock band we heard at some other bar also was surprisingly good and they were singing in Hungarian. Europeans seem to think that if they sing in English it makes the music better. No comment.
I'm sure there are other things I'm missing from our night adventures. There are still plenty of other things I haven't even gotten around to like going into a random side door of a museum and having to be escorted out, or the adventures of the Roman baths. But all in good time. I must get back to reading Ian Rankin's Black and Blue for my Scottish Culture and Society final. Now that I'm on page 311 it's getting pretty good, however it's not exactly high brow literature. However it is Scottish:
Glasgow wasn't such a bad place: he'd been to cities in the States that could eat it for brunch.
When I was in Budapest, Lena made sure I saw all the various aspects of the nightlife. Well, I will specify that we did not go to any strip or sex clubs, a reputation that Budapest somewhat encourages due to the number of tourists. However, despite being named the "Sex Capital," the streets were remarkably safe and as long as you stayed away from the crazy winos and alcoholics like the one we encountered on the airport bus, you were fine.
Enough about the merits of walking on Budapest streets at ungodly hours!
The first night I arrived I was too incapacitated by lack of sleep (I'd woken before dawn) to do anything. However, the next night Lena took me to a party in a friend's flat where I promptly met her international crew of friends. I was informed by the Hungarian that the wine label Danko was "a lifestyle" and given the quality of Hungarian wines, I would fondly join this lifestyle. (Note: Danko is only a lifestyle for those who can afford bottles of 3 euro wine or less) We then all went to a student night at a club called Living Room. Let's just say it was like a student night at any club anywhere in the world. Too many bodies, one "free drink," bad music, and guys to avoid. However, it is in someways both better and worse when you can't speak their language. They might actually be interesting people in their own right, but there is no way to ever figure it out. However, it also becomes an easy escape mechanism when there is no way to communicate. After several hours of this, Lena and I decided to go back to her apartment.
The next night proved better, or at least made for a more interesting story. We had been invited to a Polish dinner party - Lena's Polish friends were throwing a dinner party for their friends to introduce them to their native cuisine. That said, what I did eat was excellent. I can always go for a good pierogi. However, what we had thought was a sit down dinner became much more of an epic battle to get food. The Polish group had originally only invited their Polish and Slavic friends but it quickly morphed into 35 people for dinner and food for 10. Luckily, one of the skills I have mastered being a poor undergraduate is how to quickly navigate a buffet of free food. Of course, there's also an art to being polite at the same time. Another point of interest: there was more than plenty vodka to go around multiple times for everyone.
Afterward, Lena convinced half of the dinner party to join us at Szimpla, one of Budapest's "found bars." By "found bar", it is an old decaying building which is now a bar and that has been decorated by objects found around the streets. I believe I've seen these kind of establishments in various German films. Think found art plus cool hangout and a little post-communism mixed in. Clubbing seems to be the preferred option among many Europeans, but I absolutely adored this place. It was artlessly cool and had the perfect mix of ambience and people. No one was too hip or too touristy or too anything in particular.
Of course when we went to a jazz club, Fat Mo's, later on, we encountered a completely different environment. This place had once been a sleek bar of the 1920s and still looked so. The jazz band was remarkably good and the Hungarian twist to the music was all the more interesting. Unfortunately Scotland is a bit of a wasteland for music unless you like Brit rock or traditional Scottish music, both of which are fabulous. But forget about jazz. And if I hear another cover band playing "Sweet Home Alabama" in a Scottish accent, I am going to kill someone. The folk/rock band we heard at some other bar also was surprisingly good and they were singing in Hungarian. Europeans seem to think that if they sing in English it makes the music better. No comment.
I'm sure there are other things I'm missing from our night adventures. There are still plenty of other things I haven't even gotten around to like going into a random side door of a museum and having to be escorted out, or the adventures of the Roman baths. But all in good time. I must get back to reading Ian Rankin's Black and Blue for my Scottish Culture and Society final. Now that I'm on page 311 it's getting pretty good, however it's not exactly high brow literature. However it is Scottish:
Glasgow wasn't such a bad place: he'd been to cities in the States that could eat it for brunch.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
The Art of Revision
I have another complaint about the British school system, one that most Berkeley students would ridicule me for complaining about until they had experienced it themselves. Here in St. Andrews there is a period of time in between the end of classes and the beginning of exams and it is called Revision Week. There is nothing scheduled during this time and students are expected to use it to revise for exams.
However, this is too much time for us Berkeley students, used to the pressure chamber effect of building essays and exams and, don't forget, socializing.
Instead I will give some key rules to Scottish revision:
However, this is too much time for us Berkeley students, used to the pressure chamber effect of building essays and exams and, don't forget, socializing.
Instead I will give some key rules to Scottish revision:
- make a shopping trip to Dundee. You will now have new clothes to wear to the library which is the place to be seen.
- only study when the sun is out. Then you must put on sunbathing appropriate clothes and pretend to study while you really nap.
- live in the library. You have a whole semester's worth of reading to do in the upcoming week. Oh and getting those notes for those lectures you never went to would be helpful. When you only have two classes a semester, why bother going?
- Drink until you remember why you might want to study.
- Go home - its not like you'll do any studying anyways.
- Revise your knowledge of YouTube videos and facebook while "studying" in the library.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Adventure in Budapest, Part 2
I was going to continue documenting the rest of my Budapest trip in a more timely fashion, but somehow time swept away as usual. Better late than never.
The second day of my trip in Budapest, I awoke to the pleasant sounds of a city neighborhood. People laughing, cars moving, and the faint drill of construction in the distance. How nice to be back in the urban jungle, I thought! And I meant it - never again will I question my need for the city after living in a village for a year. Lena and I awoke fairly early and ate the standard Northern European breakfast - bread, meat, cheese, yogurt, and tea. She thought it would be the perfect day to visit the traditional Hungarian town of Szentendre. And in fact, it was. It was a beautiful April day - the sun shining just enough to make the temperature pleasant, but not overbearing.
We boarded a bus - overall the public transporation system in Budapest is quite user friendly, even to those who have never seen a word of Hungarian in their lives, like me - which was a much better experience than the night bus the night before. We arrived in the village, which reminded me of a combination of the villages I'd seen in Bavaria and Poland. Szentendre is known as an artists colony and is quite touristy. The flocks of Italian tourists was quite astonishing in my opinion, but we left them alone.
We wandered around the village, looking at the old churches and the terraced houses, built in a Hungarian-Serbian style. We tried a traditional Hungarian street food - langosh - which is a piece of deep-fried bread with various toppings like cheese and meet. Some British woman came up to us and asked if it was a pizza and then if it was fatty. 'Well, it is deep-fried', replied Lena. 'Then it's not a pizza?' the woman asked. However fatty it actually was, it was delicious with the garlic paste on the side of the counter, replacing the standard condiments of pepper, brown sauce, or ketchup. We wandered over to a point next to the Danube and ate our lunch. Afterwards, Lena and I decided to go back into the city.
That afternoon it became overcast, but the city of Budapest was only more resplendant in its decaying beauty with a layer of clouds overshadowing it. We wandered around the main streets, looking at St. Stephen's Basilica, the Grand Market, the main shopping district, and the Pest side of the Danube. What I did not know when I first arrived in Budapest was that it was once two cities - Buda and Pest - and they were united in the mid-1800s. There is also a section which was a separate area, the island of St. Margaret, which before the Turkish invasion was a convent. The majority of Pest was built after 1800, during the glories of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and are all magnificent in the tiniest architectural details. In 1896, in celebration of their 1000 year anniversary, the city redesigned major areas to resemble Paris and put in the first metro in continental Europe. Most of these places are still in use, although many still neglected from the years of war and communist regime.
After wandering around for awhile, Lena and I stopped at the Grand Market, also built in 1896, in order to buy dinner. It is an indoor market, with stall upon stall of almost everything imaginable. And my god the paprika sausages! I do not recommend them in general as the are in the best circumstances as good as a very poorly made salami. However, the pickled bell peppers were excellent and the amount of produce surprised me. I had rather thought it would be like Poland, which had very few fresh vegetables. Then again, I was there in November and this was now April.
Eventually Lena and I wandered back to her apartment with our bounty and made dinner, complete with the very drinkable 60 cent wine. However, an interesting night was to follow.
The second day of my trip in Budapest, I awoke to the pleasant sounds of a city neighborhood. People laughing, cars moving, and the faint drill of construction in the distance. How nice to be back in the urban jungle, I thought! And I meant it - never again will I question my need for the city after living in a village for a year. Lena and I awoke fairly early and ate the standard Northern European breakfast - bread, meat, cheese, yogurt, and tea. She thought it would be the perfect day to visit the traditional Hungarian town of Szentendre. And in fact, it was. It was a beautiful April day - the sun shining just enough to make the temperature pleasant, but not overbearing.
We boarded a bus - overall the public transporation system in Budapest is quite user friendly, even to those who have never seen a word of Hungarian in their lives, like me - which was a much better experience than the night bus the night before. We arrived in the village, which reminded me of a combination of the villages I'd seen in Bavaria and Poland. Szentendre is known as an artists colony and is quite touristy. The flocks of Italian tourists was quite astonishing in my opinion, but we left them alone.
We wandered around the village, looking at the old churches and the terraced houses, built in a Hungarian-Serbian style. We tried a traditional Hungarian street food - langosh - which is a piece of deep-fried bread with various toppings like cheese and meet. Some British woman came up to us and asked if it was a pizza and then if it was fatty. 'Well, it is deep-fried', replied Lena. 'Then it's not a pizza?' the woman asked. However fatty it actually was, it was delicious with the garlic paste on the side of the counter, replacing the standard condiments of pepper, brown sauce, or ketchup. We wandered over to a point next to the Danube and ate our lunch. Afterwards, Lena and I decided to go back into the city.
That afternoon it became overcast, but the city of Budapest was only more resplendant in its decaying beauty with a layer of clouds overshadowing it. We wandered around the main streets, looking at St. Stephen's Basilica, the Grand Market, the main shopping district, and the Pest side of the Danube. What I did not know when I first arrived in Budapest was that it was once two cities - Buda and Pest - and they were united in the mid-1800s. There is also a section which was a separate area, the island of St. Margaret, which before the Turkish invasion was a convent. The majority of Pest was built after 1800, during the glories of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and are all magnificent in the tiniest architectural details. In 1896, in celebration of their 1000 year anniversary, the city redesigned major areas to resemble Paris and put in the first metro in continental Europe. Most of these places are still in use, although many still neglected from the years of war and communist regime.
After wandering around for awhile, Lena and I stopped at the Grand Market, also built in 1896, in order to buy dinner. It is an indoor market, with stall upon stall of almost everything imaginable. And my god the paprika sausages! I do not recommend them in general as the are in the best circumstances as good as a very poorly made salami. However, the pickled bell peppers were excellent and the amount of produce surprised me. I had rather thought it would be like Poland, which had very few fresh vegetables. Then again, I was there in November and this was now April.
Eventually Lena and I wandered back to her apartment with our bounty and made dinner, complete with the very drinkable 60 cent wine. However, an interesting night was to follow.
Monday, 5 May 2008
April Showers Bring May Flowers
It's been a long while since I last posted here. Unfortunately, the end of a semester is always the most tense, wound up period of days, no matter which university I am at. Not only is the workload greater than at any other period of time, but everyone has a mad rush to have the last great party of the semester.
Here in St. Andrews May has brought an assortment of things: beautiful sunny days (I spent two hours today reading on the lawn), barbeques, and the realization that I am going home in about a month. The previous sentence can be interpreted like this: I am trying to do as much as possible right now.
On May 1st, I jumped into the North Sea at dawn. St. Andrews has a lot of 'traditions', ones that no one is quite sure where they originated, or they were actually started about five years ago. The May Dip is one of the traditions like Raisin Weekend, that no one is quite sure where it started. Yet no one really cares. The student body traditionally jumps into the North Sea at dawn on May 1st.
I knew there was no way I would actually wake up at 4am and walk down to the beach in the rain, so my two friends named Chris and I sat around drinking wine until the early hours. Then Scottish Chris and I walked down to the beach in the dark during a torrent of rain and hovered around the few bonfires. It was so dark that we could not recognize anyone, but we didn't much care. We were just waiting for enough daylight to be present for us to run into the sea. We also decided that we did not want anyone to steal our clothes, so we hovered around a nearby group and when we undressed put our clothes next to theirs. Meanwhile hoards of people ran around in the dark with swimsuits or clothes, a group of guys dragging a plastic raft into the sea. People shrieked everytime a downpour of rain fell unexpected from above.
Having been out in the rain for an hour already and having had enough wine to keep the blood circulating, I did not feel that cold walking around in just a swimsuit at dawn in Scotland. Perhaps this goes to my water polo days - although many have kindly pointed out that that was only winter evenings in Southern California, not mid-spring at the North Sea. Chris and I eventually ran in, although I was only able to go up to my waist before deciding this was good enough.
We marched out, got dressed, and took a taxi home in the wee hours of the morning. I had enough sand in my shoes to last for all the other years of May Dips I will miss.
Here in St. Andrews May has brought an assortment of things: beautiful sunny days (I spent two hours today reading on the lawn), barbeques, and the realization that I am going home in about a month. The previous sentence can be interpreted like this: I am trying to do as much as possible right now.
On May 1st, I jumped into the North Sea at dawn. St. Andrews has a lot of 'traditions', ones that no one is quite sure where they originated, or they were actually started about five years ago. The May Dip is one of the traditions like Raisin Weekend, that no one is quite sure where it started. Yet no one really cares. The student body traditionally jumps into the North Sea at dawn on May 1st.
I knew there was no way I would actually wake up at 4am and walk down to the beach in the rain, so my two friends named Chris and I sat around drinking wine until the early hours. Then Scottish Chris and I walked down to the beach in the dark during a torrent of rain and hovered around the few bonfires. It was so dark that we could not recognize anyone, but we didn't much care. We were just waiting for enough daylight to be present for us to run into the sea. We also decided that we did not want anyone to steal our clothes, so we hovered around a nearby group and when we undressed put our clothes next to theirs. Meanwhile hoards of people ran around in the dark with swimsuits or clothes, a group of guys dragging a plastic raft into the sea. People shrieked everytime a downpour of rain fell unexpected from above.
Having been out in the rain for an hour already and having had enough wine to keep the blood circulating, I did not feel that cold walking around in just a swimsuit at dawn in Scotland. Perhaps this goes to my water polo days - although many have kindly pointed out that that was only winter evenings in Southern California, not mid-spring at the North Sea. Chris and I eventually ran in, although I was only able to go up to my waist before deciding this was good enough.
We marched out, got dressed, and took a taxi home in the wee hours of the morning. I had enough sand in my shoes to last for all the other years of May Dips I will miss.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
A Visitor
Krista came to visit this past week and besides having an awesomely good time, we did the usual Scottish round-up. A Scottish round-up includes going to almost every pub in St. Andrews, travelling by bus through the Scottish countryside (although I made Krista go to Edinburgh on her own - my schedule was not very flexible this past week), I made haggis, we were entertained by my British flatmates, and we discovered one of the finest beaches in Scotland. Of course, there was the usual St Andrews tour, which takes about 2 hours: the castle, the cathedral, the campus, the town, and the golf course. Add on another half an hour to walk back to my flat.
Correction: As Krista pointed out, as did several other visitors, I do not exactly walk through fields to get to class. There is a paved path. But the fields border it - one side being hay fields and the other being a hedge and playing fields. The rabbits and ravens are the most frequent site along this walk.
Correction: As Krista pointed out, as did several other visitors, I do not exactly walk through fields to get to class. There is a paved path. But the fields border it - one side being hay fields and the other being a hedge and playing fields. The rabbits and ravens are the most frequent site along this walk.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Budapest, Part 1: Arrival
It's been awhile since I set foot in the land of writing blog entries. For the past several weeks, I travelled to a myriad of places. Nothing too obscure - unless we want to discuss the Beckett I read for my Irish literature class - I jaunted my Bohemian self across the plains of Europe to better explore Budapest and Paris. Of course, if I needed any less Bohemia, it might be now. But that may be another story to follow.
I arrived in Budapest around midnight, following a day of airports. If I ever appreciated train travel, it is now after spending at least 2 full days at airports in order to acquaint myself with Europe on a budget. I have come to learn that the budget airlines of Europe are all talk - they are extremely uncomfortable, inefficient, and often make up the 'budget' price with a variety of fees. However, after a jaunt with WizzAir from London to Budapest, I was more than happy to meet the transportation of Eastern Europe. (My experiences of public transportation in Poland were very limited.) Lena, who I was visiting, met me at the airport and we then took the night bus back to her flat in the center of the city. Unfortunately, she had never been on a night bus this far from the center of Budapest and it proceeded to become an adventure, one in which we picked up some random Italian guy, also hoping to get to the center of town.
After getting off the airport shuttle at the metro stop, we waited for a bus, Lena, me, and the Italian. We waited at the stop, trying to ignore the exceedingly drunk and fat Hungarian man. But unfortunately this was no ordinary drunk, content with talking to himself. He kept making noises at us, "Wsht, wsht, wsht" he would say, and then he kept getting closer, close enough for us to see the spittle we had previously imagined. Luckily for us, the bus arrived. Unluckily for me, the drunk decided to climb on the bus ahead of me, and as I tried to climb the stairs with my suitcase, he fell backwards off of the steps. I jumped off before he could hit me, jamming my finger against the handle of the suitcase, while tentatively trying to get past him. Eventually, I joined Lena on the bus and we were off.
After about forty minutes, we made it back to Lena's apartment, a grand relic of the Soviet era. It was like the similar Polish relics I had seen, but it was surprisingly decent on the inside. While small, the apartment was comfortable and the owner had made a thorough attempt at decorating it. I readily admired the various retro Hungarian ads the filled the walls and the simple, yet attractive mixture of antiques and Ikea. As it was late, we went to bed, Budapest waiting for the next day.
I arrived in Budapest around midnight, following a day of airports. If I ever appreciated train travel, it is now after spending at least 2 full days at airports in order to acquaint myself with Europe on a budget. I have come to learn that the budget airlines of Europe are all talk - they are extremely uncomfortable, inefficient, and often make up the 'budget' price with a variety of fees. However, after a jaunt with WizzAir from London to Budapest, I was more than happy to meet the transportation of Eastern Europe. (My experiences of public transportation in Poland were very limited.) Lena, who I was visiting, met me at the airport and we then took the night bus back to her flat in the center of the city. Unfortunately, she had never been on a night bus this far from the center of Budapest and it proceeded to become an adventure, one in which we picked up some random Italian guy, also hoping to get to the center of town.
After getting off the airport shuttle at the metro stop, we waited for a bus, Lena, me, and the Italian. We waited at the stop, trying to ignore the exceedingly drunk and fat Hungarian man. But unfortunately this was no ordinary drunk, content with talking to himself. He kept making noises at us, "Wsht, wsht, wsht" he would say, and then he kept getting closer, close enough for us to see the spittle we had previously imagined. Luckily for us, the bus arrived. Unluckily for me, the drunk decided to climb on the bus ahead of me, and as I tried to climb the stairs with my suitcase, he fell backwards off of the steps. I jumped off before he could hit me, jamming my finger against the handle of the suitcase, while tentatively trying to get past him. Eventually, I joined Lena on the bus and we were off.
After about forty minutes, we made it back to Lena's apartment, a grand relic of the Soviet era. It was like the similar Polish relics I had seen, but it was surprisingly decent on the inside. While small, the apartment was comfortable and the owner had made a thorough attempt at decorating it. I readily admired the various retro Hungarian ads the filled the walls and the simple, yet attractive mixture of antiques and Ikea. As it was late, we went to bed, Budapest waiting for the next day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)