kaiser rocks!

I love the Kaiser Szupermarket experience!! (pronunciation chart: sz = s. s = sh) It is in what clearly used to be an old covered market choc full of individual stalls. Sadly, it is now dominated by a single chain grocery store, the Kaiser, but it maintains some of it's former self.

Not only is there a coffee cart, a public toilet for the low, low price of 80 forint (actually kind of a rip, but seeing as I had just enjoyed the former, I probably used about 80 forints worth of...TMI) and fresh fruit stands to greet you as you enter, but inside there is a thrift store! A thrift store inside a supermarket! Go figure. Where else can you go out for a pint of soya, jar of olives, tinned tomatoes, and souvenir vase from Bratislava? Brilliant.

And of course, there are also the more predictable market stalls like the cheap, polyester bra and panty set stall, the track suit stall with fake down hoodies, and of course the booze and cigarette stall. It’s like a South London street market under one roof, minus the reggae cassette tapes.

PG Tips 4-Ever

Today I found tofu in Hungary!

Maybe not such an achievement, but seeing as I have yet to see the soy curd of the gods on any menu, I was not optomistic.

And I am getting that homey feeling from the unexpected – British products. PJ Tips! Tate & Lyle sugar! Though I prefer to avoid foreign import products when you can buy local, my Hungarian phrasebook does not distinguish between light golden brown sugar and sugar. And my “let’s show off that we yanks may know dick about foreign policy but a lot about cookies” baking required such distinction. As for tea, my options for black tea were Liptons in English, Liptons in Hungarian, and PJ Tips. PJ Tips may attempt to envoke nostalgic images of empire, but at least it’s good tea. Does it count that I bought it in the Indian / ethnic food shoppe? Which is now my new favourite store. From the street level, it looked like a place to buy some Indian beaded pillowcases like you find at Camden market and incense (which you can also find at said market). I wasn’t too excited, and almost didn’t venture inside, but boy am I glad I did! Down stairs lurks a basement filled with Indian and Carribean delights. Not the best prices, but not that bad. $1.50 for 500 grams (look it up!) of curry powder. Same for cumin and coriander. I mean, those crappy little plastic jars of McShittings or whatever cost like $4-6 at Safeway, so who’s complaining? And I really hate to say it, but the best part was that I could actually ask where to find something in English! People tell you ou can get by in Hungary on English. Sure, but you can't talk with cab drivers or shop keepers for the most part. So while my Hungarian remains capped at 5 words, this was a major occurance.

I passed on the incense sticks.

In the neighborhood

teeth and carrots!


eh?


buildings!


local recycling!


strange signs!

Some local color!

This, I venture to guess, used to be a former squatted party house or some such thing. Sometimes, a nice, crusty couple walk up to the building expecting to open the now-bolted door. This is, unfortunately, a sign of the times around here. Though I have no idea what the space used to be, I'm sure it was nicer than an empty building Or the new luxury flats sure to be built when the building gets torn down. Grrr. I (heart) stencils of monkeys.

The West End

The mere name rings fear in my heart. It reminds me of the wrong side of town in Los Angeles - and by wrong side I don't mean as soeen on the local tv news scary. By wrong side I conjur up lost hours of my life spent in traffic on the 10 freeway and Starbucks on every corner with ample parking in the rear. Sorry.

So my second day in Budapest was spent at a Westend mall. Not just in the mall, but inside the T-Mobile shop trying to sort out mobile phones. You have to be a resident to buy even a pre-pay mobile so a local friend was roped into the painful excersion to help phones for my flatmate and I. Such the good sport is she. I don't know if I would have the temperment for such an outing I did not have a direct investment in. And after taking a soul-destroying amount of time to buy said phone, we topped off the outing with McDonald’s. Thank YOU ‘Merica. The only thing worth commenting about McD’s is that here, you buy your ketchup. Though there is no bottomless fountain of condiments, you do avoid having to laboriously squirt out a reasonable supply of ketchup from no less than 4 tiny foil packets. Truth be told, I have managed to end up at a McDonald’s at least once in most countries I’ve been too. Why NOT try a veggie burger in Dubai or have a Quarter Pounder with beer in Spain? Or stumble in for a happy meal in Amsterdam completely high after your first and only attempt at coffee shop culture during which you failed to properly roll your own but managed to soak up enough secindary effects nonetheless. McDonald's is currently the subject of a boycott from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) farmworkers. After a 2 year campaign, the CIW was able to pressure Taco Bell to pay whopping (no pun intended) .1 cent more per pound of tomatoes. They have extended this campaign to target McDonald's who has so far resisted 'addressing the crisis of human rights abuses and sub-poverty wages in its tomato supply chain'. So no more McD's for me, but sometimes it's tough to remember one's values when in a Hungarian mall buying mobile phones from German-based transnational telecomms.



But back to mobile phones. Say what you want about portable culture and disposable consumer electronic goods, but mobile phones are forever. I know, not for everyone. Who hasn’t lost, dropped or otherwise ruthlessly abused a mobile to the point of cruelty? But for me, I pick my team and stay with them. I am not a casual consumer of technology, but I probably spent less time buying a far more expensive and mission critical laptop than I did my mobile. The closed model of mobile service provision is such that you not only choose your team, but you pay a steep price should you pick the wrong one. I think there should be a new dating service in Europe exclusively for pre-pay mobile phone users. Instead of sorting people by geographic location, they are organised by mobile providers. Because is T Mobile were to date Vodaphone, the consequences could be very expensive. I know it happens all the time, but it is not recommended for those on a budget.

So mobiles sorted, the only thing left is to work out internet access in our flat. We haven’t bothered to send out our physical mailing address to anyone, but have spent a fair amount of time trying to decipher why our router is so unfriendly to our Mac computers. I was worried about the Apple / PC / Central Europe thing, but I have already stumbled across an honest to gawd Apple store (minus the creepily named Genius Bar). And the IT department had no more or less trouble setting my computer up to the university system than anywhere else.

(ps. this is my new phone. isn't it a tad new romantic? it matches my new wave bedspread.)

Encountering The Man

First night in Budapest (that did not involve a semi-catatonic state on the Ikea couch caught in a 24 hour satellite news channel trance...yes, it was Groundhog's Day wth BBC World news loops) and we partied like it was 1984 and got shut down by the long arm of the law.

The night started harmless enough at Szimpla Dupla - Szimpla being an a handful of squat culture bars gone hipster that remain great laid back places to go despite being listed in Lonely Planet as must-see attractions. My flatmate ad I got to meet our co-workers and I learned never again to dare confuse German with Swiss German. And that I really need to have an implant with the gene that alows one to make guteral sounds unfamiliar to the delicate American vocal palatte. In short, Eric becomes Errreeecsh. I exagerate. But my linguistical dysfunction is starting to get on my nerves. John Doe, where are you?

Well, if John was anyone who is anyone, he was at the party last Saturday night in Buda. Apparently, house parties are not very common here. So it was quite an event to find an entire flat on the posh side of town jam packed with journalists and other friends of friends of friends. You know that feeling when you arrive really late to a party and feel overwhlemed with your own sobriety? Not only was everyone at the party super tanked, but they had completely dispensed with even the pretense of drinking out of cups and it was like a wino convention of Hungarian's finest red and white. To the off license we went in search of our own bottle to drink from. NOt necessarily to catch up (impossible), simply just to fit in. We split the difference with Rose.

Anyhow, around 2am the police came and were remarkably patient while it took over a hour for the non-obtrusive but clearly inebrieted crowd to disperse. We stayed with our friend who wanted to ensure the party hosts were not taken to the police under any dodgy pretense. Thankfully, they were not. Their only punishment was to clean up after the peanuts, bottles and hangers-on. It was quite the scene, of which only photos and the image of a Hungarian guy who was en route to France and spoke about as much French as I do literally fell into me babbling something about "la vie!" or "la revolution!" as we waited outside for the human rights watch intervention to conclude.

All and all, it was an impressive night that made me feel like the next few months will more than make up for the self-imposed social isolation and house arrest I have put myself under trying in vain to finish unfinished business.