So, ladies and gentlemen, happy winter solstice! Today is supposed to be the shortest day of the year and I can attest to that. It's 4:30p and it's been dark for an hour already. That's probably one of the hardest things about winter anywhere: the short days. Add to the fact that I'm on the eastern-most side of the time zone and it gets a little weird. I am feeling like I should be making dinner and getting to bed soon, when in fact the number of hours that will still be awake outnumbers the amount of hours that I have already been awake. It's weird.
Today, Matt, my fellow American volunteer in Budapest, and I set out on a mission: find a music store that meets our needs. We were supposed to meet in Deak Tér, but today was Matt's day to oversleep, so I headed to Deak Tér without him. Good thing - it was just a CD store. See, music in Hungarian is "zene" and store is "bolt", so one would rightfully assume that when they find a zenebolt, they've found a music store. Wrong. Well, right, but not the music store we were looking for. Actually, the type of store that we were looking for is called a hangszerbolt, or "sound store". So, upon disappointment with the Kalaka Zenebolt, I headed to Oktogon, where I would meet Matt. We went to another zenebolt (we were starting to finally realize the above statement) and quickly realized it wasn't what we were looking for. That's when we saw a sign for another store and it had a violin on the sign, so we were hopeful. Turns out, it's a string instrument store. Matt plays violin, but I'm really not sure what his mission was, but apparently this store didn't appeal to him. This is when we got brave. Upon asking the gentleman behind the counter if he spoke English, I then asked where to find woodwind supplies because I need saxophone reeds. "Go over by Opera, you'll find something there." So, we wander over to the Opera House... we knew we wouldn't find anything IN the Opera house and going "by the Opera house" is kinda like saying (for you Grand Rapids people) "go over by Van Andel Arena"... okay, there are four sides to the Opera House and really, lots of side streets that could have music stores down them. As we made a loop around the block, we were running out of luck, when, on a whim, we decide to veer right. There, in front of our eyes is a hangszerbolt. We go in, look around and all we see are guitars, but there - behind the counter - is gold. Two types of saxophone reeds - VanDoren or Rico. Yes, I got some VanDoren reeds at 780huf (about $4.08) each. Yeah, a tad expensive, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Then, as we were wandering back to the metro to head to the office, i saw a piece of heaven (my glasses were foggy) - a woodwind store - saxophones, clarinets, flutes, oboes, bassoons... If I ever need anything fixed or anymore reeds, I now know exactly where to go. Success, my friends, absolute success.
After said adventure, lunch was eaten and then we went to the ÖDÉ office for a bit to help with their paperwork (read: Matt helped make photocopies, I helped myself to coffee and 'supervised' - in my defense, there's only one photocopier). Then, we headed out. On my way home, I was walking through the metro after having stopped at the grocery story. It's usually always the same story in this metro station: lots of people running through the area, a few homeless on the sides, people performing/playing music/preaching in the center... but today something made me stop in my tracks and wonder...
THERE WAS A DONKEY IN THE METRO STATION. It was a serious 'what the junk?' moment. With my limited Hungarian knowledge, I was able to come to some conclusions, but they're not for sure, so I left wondering... and wishing I'd brought my camera!
So, now it's your turn - why do YOU think a donkey was hanging out in the Metro? Leave a comment on my blog - tell me what your creative response would be to why there would be a donkey in the metro, and I'll tell you what I concluded in an email.
:) Let the creative juices run!
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If you haven't noted, I've taken up the art of cooking and baking more since I've been here. I've always enjoyed doing these things, but have often not had the right company or the time to actually do them. Since being here, I've had the chance to make a lot of new, fun things... and I've taken pictures of them along the way.
The first thing I had the pleasure of creating was a potato salad. It's been one of the few things that I actually found all of the ingredients for without a problem (or huge expense) - so here it is: "Hungarian Tasted and Enjoyed" potato salad and home fries (i made too many potatoes!)
I asked Timothée what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said that he wanted hamburgers, so we went out and found beef (the most expensive meat in Hungary) and made his wish come true.
These are Chocolate Shortbread cookies - they usually don't look like this (google image search doesn't have anything like this, promise!) but this is how mine turned out without measuring devices or a beater or oven temperature settings... and they were delicious. These were made for a youth group meeting and Karácsony Amerkiból (Christmas in America) at the Tanoda
One thing I'm learning to work with is a lack of oven in our apartment - this made Christmas baking a little difficult, but have no fear, there are always ways around everything. My solution? No Bakes! Muesli instead of oatmeal and walnut cream instead of peanut butter, but they were delicious!
This was my first attempt at making something "Hungarian" - palacsinta. It's like a crépe, only we filled ours with cheese, mushrooms and ham... sadly, since my camera is broken, I couldn't tell that this was a bad picture of the palacsinta, but they were also delicious, especially after Zoltán (the Hungarian-Ukrainian in green) fixed my recipe.
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