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Published: April 26th 2015
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One of our favorite winter pastimes - cakes.A lot happened at the start of our trip.... so I hope bear with me as I keep writing about all of the initial days and weeks. Soon after we got to Budapest, my friend and colleague from HSU, Tasha Howe came to visit with her family. Tasha did her Fall sabbatical in Croatia, and she decided to spend a few days with us before returning to the US. In addition to wanting to show their family the city, I was also hoping that her boys who are similar ages to my kids would share some encouraging/inspiring things to say about their experiences. (My kids were into their first week of school and decidedly not excited about the sabbatical at this point.)Tasha, her husband Mike, and their boys got here very late at night on January 6, after some pretty rough train travel (that involved having to switch to buses because of major railroad construction in Budapest). I walked around with the four of them on January 7, showing them “Vasarcsarnok” one of the large indoor markets that sells produce, spices, food as well as t-shirts, jewelry and various souvenirs. We also meandered around Vaci utca, the main downtown pedestrian area.
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Iza, feeling exhausted. What, cake again?? The plan for the evening was to go to Geller Furdo – a spa, thermal bath (with a hotel attached). For images, see
http://www.gellertfurdo.hu/galeria/gellert-galeria-5(I didn't take any of my own photos here.)
The place is quite spectacular, although having seen it first-hand, it is also clear that it could use some maintenance. Here, things took somewhat of a comical turn as the Hungarian no-rules way of life I wrote about in my first blog came into full effect. Trouble started almost immediately, when it became difficult to determine what sort of tickets to buy. It was unclear whether you had to buy a special (more expensive) tickets with cabins to change in or whether the normal ticket would allow you to change in a gender-specific locker room. After finally buying our tickets, we followed endless and confusing signs that seemed to send men and women in the same direction. At last (after a tour of the basement, going up and down stairs following the signs), we finally made it to a locker room. We changed (it was gender-specific!) but trouble started again when Iza and I were unable to lock our lockers. After about many attempts with about 10
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In the cafe above the Alexandria bookstore. This place is incredible. I know the picture is blurry but you have to be quick to catch Miska in a moment where he forgets that he's too cool for all of this... different lockers, we tried to get help but the only available staff member was a man. After some haggling with him, he yelled up the stairs to the locker room and told women to wrap themselves and he came in. The whole thing was funny, weird, unprofessional and somehow very uniquely Eastern European in flavor. We got the lockers locked! We finally made it out to the pools where we noticed with a lot of dismay that signs sent men and women into different directions for steam baths. We went our ways (improvising an elaborate plan on how we'd reunite) only to discover that all the steam baths, saunas and pools were co-ed after all, only the signs had not been updated. After some further comedy of errors, we were finally able to unite (men and women, boys and girls!) and enjoy the experience. We all ended up having a great time, especially the kids, trying all of the pools from the scalding hot to the freezing cold, and the various saunas and steam baths. The experience was a great example, though, of how just a few helpful signs (and maybe even some helpful attitude from the staff) could have
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Cafe above Alexandria bookstore. I think it's called the "Lotz room" after the painter who painted the frescos on the ceiling. made things easy instead of guaranteeing that people are annoyed by the time they get into the baths.
As a footnote to the story, I ended up getting really sick and pretty much had to cancel the rest of my plans to hang out with Tasha and her gang, other than having them over for dinner another night.
One of the major undertakings that we started immediately after arriving here was to obtain Tyler's papers to stay beyond 90 days. Americans can stay in Hungary and other Schengen countries for 90 days without a visa. When we talked to the Hungarian consulate in Los Angeles last summer, we got the advice that to stay in Hungary for over 90 days requires a “type D visa” that is equivalent to temporary residency. They told us that we can obtain this visa via the Hungarian university (Tyler is at Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem, or ELTE while I'm at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics) or via being married to me. They advised that it would be easier for him to get the visa through me. We had also looked into this through the Hungarian Immigration Office's website and it seemed
like this was good advice. We gathered all the papers we needed and made an appointment to turn in his application at the Immigration Office. Things went quite smoothly at the first but when it came out that we live in the US, the official I was talking to got quite upset with me. She told me that she would take our documents but Tyler wouldn't get a residency because I don't currently live in Hungary. I asked her (quite meekly at this point) how we should be proceeding instead. She was very unhelpful (her only suggestion of leaving at the end of 90 days then returning immediately turned out to be complete non-sense – once you leave you have to spend 90 days out of the country before you can return). I won't bore you with all the plot twists (needing to get additional papers such as proof that our landlady really does own her apartment... interview with immigration, nail-biting few days as still no word comes from Immigration and Tyler's status is about to expire) but Tyler did finally get his fancy residency card that would actually allow him to stay here for up to three years. Ironically,
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Lotz room - part of the ceiling. we became pretty convinced part way through this process that the correct (and quite possibly less stressful) way of proceeding would have been to get Tyler's papers through the school, but, unfortunately, by the time we realize this that was too late.
The kids started school on January 5. It was a pretty traumatic experience, primarily the anticipation. I had picked out the school and had communicated with the principal before the trip and my Mom came to the rescue again and bought the textbooks. But there were many unanswered questions about lunches, schedules, PE clothes, etc. The morning of the first day was very tense. Iza held it together with all the composure of her mature 9-year-old soul. Miska was frantic – he could not believe that we would really put him in the school and leave him there. In fact, he seemed convinced that if he just resisted, he could wish the whole thing away. No such luck. They were abandoned at the school, turned over to the head teachers of their classes. When we got them at the end of the first day, they were beaming with pride of having made it. The other kids received
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Our cake selections (a different occasion this time). them really kindly and there are several students in Miska's class who are quite fluent in English. In spite of this, it is still often hard to get them to school and it would be an exaggeration to say that they like going. Fortunately, their school days are pretty short – they go from 8 am - 1pm most days for Iza and 8 am - 2 pm most days for Miska.
The school is a typical Hungarian elementary school, although the lower grades (1-4) are supposed to be bilingual. Teachers firmly believe in discipline, not coddling kids too much, the power of memorization and the need to do everything (particularly calculations!) with speed. Iza was pretty traumatized by the teacher yelling at one of the boys in front of the class for failing to do his homework. Miska has also talked about his teacher (a women in her 30's, soft- spoken but with a no-nonsense manner) being able to quell mutinies and make kids cower simply with her murderous looks. I think one potential positive outcome of the sabbatical will be our kids' much-much greater appreciation for their teachers in California. Instruction in some of Iza's classes is
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Another cafe/"cukraszda" in Buda, the Auguszt pavilion. in English – but these classes are art and music and all other subjects are in Hungarian. In the upper grades (5-8) there are no bilingual classes but in Miska's class the electives are languages (German and English) and several of the kids speak English (and presumably German too) quite well. I had made it clear to the teachers that my main goal for the kids this semester is to learn Hungarian. Miska's teacher seems to get this but not Iza's. I've had many conversations with her at this point about various suggestions and plans for Iza to keep up with the curriculum and I've sort of given up. (I knew she was a lost cause when we had a long and elaborate conversation in which she was showing me the biology text that was talking about differences between the foot and bill structures of the hen and duck and she was suggesting ways I could help Iza learn some of the main points, so she can take tests on this in Hungarian.) Iza has been doing a lot of homework and when I recently looked at the on-line grade book, she is actually doing quite well academically. She's had
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Iza's entrance to the school. She prefers to apparate but sometimes she does have to walk through this wall that appears solid-looking to Muggle eyes. a hard time fitting in socially because she's very quiet and shy. She really enjoys playing make-believe games that come with complicated story lines and character development. These can be tough to follow (for me) even all in English sometimes – and these games are certainly way beyond her Hungarian. There is some hope, though. She has done a school project recently with a girl named Judit, who is also pretty shy. The two of them had to create a poster about Hungary and they both seemed to love working on this and also simply working together. After this, Iza made a sweet thank-you note for Judit. The two of them have hung out at our house and they started doing a poster on California (just for fun). So, I have hope that things will get easier for Iza, even if she really has to stretch herself.
Miska is a very different kid... He is very outgoing and charismatic and leaves the school high-fiving most of the middle-school aged kids. He seemed to hit his stride much quicker than Iza, as far as socializing goes. But he misses his friends at home intensely and has really not allowed himself
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A playground near our house. to really let his guard down with any of his classmates (as far as I can tell). He spends all of his time at home on his computer, playing video games and getting online to be with his friends at home. (We've had a few interesting moments discovering him up in the middle of the night, still hanging out online with friends in California.) We've coerced him to do a minimal amount of work (some reading and math) but he's really not putting in much effort at this point. At school, he has not exerted himself and basically sleeps through classes according to his head teacher. The only time he's done school work at home was when he had to make a powerpoint presentation and introduce Arcata to his class. He did do a really good job on this and was excited after he presented and got a lot of questions from his classmates. Although I was very grateful to Miska's teacher for having more a more reasonable expectations than Iza's, I can see that Iza being forced to work may have some advantages. Both kids have picked up some Hungarian (Miska for example learned how to cuss, quite fluently
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Iza in the pencil sharpener. and with an excellent pronunciation) but neither of them is at a point yet where they can speak and they're both pretty frustrated with it. Miska did finally invite a boy from his class to have ice cream with us this past week, so maybe he too will become more open to friendships here. Considering everything, the kids are doing quite amazingly. I don't know what they will take away from this experience – it will not be possible to predict for years, I think. But if nothing else, I hope they gain strength from attending school in a different country, in a different language – it is a tough experience and they're doing it.
School days are short and we have developed some routines that are now changing as the weather is getting better. In the mornings, we have to get to school by 8, so the kids get up around 6:30. Waking Miska these days is a monumental task and is somewhat the bane of the mornings. We take a bus or a tram to school (that takes about 20 minutes including the waiting) and most often we stop at a bakery to buy a “kakaos csiga”
- or “chocolate snail” for them to take to school. These pastries are addictive – and they're just one type of the standard offerings. There are also pastries filled with “turo” (which is a little like cottage cheese... yum) and jams, or walnuts. The streets are full of the smell of freshly baked pastries in the mornings and just on our short walk from the tram to school there are 4-5 different places we could buy them. Iza has a favorite place and she usually orders. The woman who works there seems to be getting pretty fond of her and was asking about her when I bought our pastries one morning because Iza was too grumpy. In the afternoons, I get Iza, then, on the colder days, we'd duck into the mall to stay warm until it was time to get Miska. (Yes, my friends living in colder climates, you can mock me but I was truly traumatized by the cold this winter.) We'd often do some grocery shopping too – next to the mall there is a big market next to the mall, with tons of vegetable stands. The produce is good quality and mainly local. You can find
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Who gets to use the zip-line first? some imported vegetables too. Overall, the variety is notably smaller than in California. Through the winter, fruit was basically apples, oranges, tangerines, grapefruit and bananas. One could find some painfully hard kiwis but that really was it. Similarly with veggies, some things just don't seem to exist here (like celery root or summer squash). There are some other things to make up for it – like other types of squash and kohlrabi but overall I've found that cooking turned out to be a little more of a challenge than I anticipated. Struggling to find some of the ingredients and having an electric range made me feel a little inapt in the kitchen – which is unusual for me. (I even had an accident in the kitchen about a month ago in which I managed to burn my neck and right hand.) I am getting my sea legs back on, though. But... I've gotten off on quite a bit of a tangent from our daily routine. After we kill an hour walking around (or playing outside, now that the weather is getting better), we go back and get Miska from school too. These days our afternoon routine involves walking to the
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Iza getting to try a horse named Diamond in a park. ice cream store on our way home from school.
Sugar has been playing a prominent role in our lives in the past few months. First of all, any lunch you get invited to automatically has some hand-made dessert. (Lunches are the big meals here and they typically consist of three courses: a soup for first course, some meat with side dishes, often pickled things for second course and finally, dessert). And, we have become quite avid fans of the “cukraszda”. These cake shops or cafes are really an institution. They're not uniquely Hungarian – when we were in Austria and in Slovakia, we went to similar places and even the offerings were quite alike with some minor differences/twists. I'm not sure what I find so appealing about these places but I love them. The cakes are never super sweet, they are usually quite elaborate (many layers, multiple fillings) and the flavors are subtle and delicate. I love the huge variety that a lot of places offer – the tantalizing choice one has to make. Many of the cafes are quite elegant, have interesting histories and I love seeing all the different people who go to them. One of my
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Diamond's pal, "Little bro" felt left out and tried to eat some trash (really, he stuck his head in the trash can) to console himself. He was cute and resented our efforts to stop him. favorite people watching instances so far involved a couple of old girlfriends, sitting together and chatting. They were probably in their 70s, dressed up very nicely, having some make-up on, with their hair done. They looked beautiful – very tasteful and still looking good in their old age. You could tell that they've been meeting up for coffee and a cake for decades and they've know each other forever. It reminded me of my grandma who would do the same with her friends – make a date in some of the most elegant places downtown once every couple of months and dress up to go out. I loved in the old girlfriends, and in my own grandmother too, how much class and style they held onto – like age didn't matter at all. I guess the whole cafe/cukraszda culture is intricately linked to these associations. Maybe that's part of why I like them so much. The cukraszdas and cafes are transforming these days. They, along with all restaurants and pubs, are putting tables and chair out on the sidewalks and the whole city is beginning to come alive. But, my infatuation with the city and its spring will have to
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OK... so I'm a pretty terrible photographer but there was a really pretty sunset that afternoon. wait for another blog.
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