Dobogókő-kör: Danger is Fun

Before I came to Budapest, I had some idea of going hiking, but not going to lie, I didn't have the highest of expectations. After all, Hungary isn't exactly known for its Alpine slopes (we're surrounded by the Buda Hills). So when I decided to show up for a hike organized by ELTE (after Google translating the event description, of course) I wasn't sure what to expect.

Well, I was in for a treat.

I went with two other BSM-ers (thankfully one of them spoke perfect Hungarian) in a group with zero other foreigners and a woodsy-looking guide. We took a Szentendre-bound train, got off after about an hour, and then took a bus deep into the countryside, amid rolling hills, gutted fields, and cottages ringed by colorful fences. When we finally got off at the entrance to the park, big cauldrons of goulash (foreshadowing: this will be a cultural experience) and a lovely view of the countryside awaited.

What's better than a steaming cauldron of hot goulash on a cold day? Trick question, nothing.

The first mile or two was a steep, icy downhill. The snow on the paths had completely compacted and turned to cold, hard ice, and within about ten or twenty minutes I had fallen three times, thorns had scraped up my palms, and my leggings were more mud than polyester. It's about then that the three of us realized just how metal Hungarians are. Several old ladies as well as a dad carrying a small child on his shoulders made it down the icy slopes faster than we did! (I henceforth referred to them as my "North Stars" because they were beacons of hope for the fact that, young and spry as I was, I could do this hike. I just needed to follow them).

Unfortunately I was too busy falling to take a picture of the steep part, but here's an icy part. That white stuff... not snow.

After lunch, we hiked uphill some (thank goodness) and befriended a couple of English-speaking Hungarians (including two fellow math students studying at ELTE, an aspiring tour-guide entrepreneur, and a lovely master's student who studied abroad in Pohang, the same town in Korea my mom is from! We stopped at a breathtaking vista where we snapped some photos, then huddled around a campfire for snacks and brownies (made by the entrepreneur). It was here also that I was baptized with a new Hungarian name, courtesy of the master's student: Kincso! (pronounced "keen-che")

The Vista-- and the curve of the Danube.

I promise I wasn't here alone!

A campfire-- where I was bestowed a Hungarian name. Fun fact: Hungarians celebrate "name days"-- like birthdays, where each day of the year is assigned a few Hungarian names and you celebrate when it's your name's day. Unfortunately my name days have already passed this year.

We gathered after the campfire break and learned that the next part of the hike would be "slightly dangerous." I looked to my North Stars for comfort. How bad could it be?

As it turned out, we were going to hike along a literal rock ledge, scrambling past barely-marked trails and sheer drops. And also sometimes climbing down those steep drops. It was awesome. Also terrifying. But if dad-with-kid and the old woman could do it, so could I!

A pleasant rock photo...

A scary rock photo. I'm not sure how scary this looks in photos, but trust me, it was scary.

We took another break at the bottom of all this rock scrambling near a small mountain stream, where we refilled our bottles and possibly were blessed by the house dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the "miraculous tree" that apparently was there.

Here's the little monument to the Virgin Mary. Not sure where this miracle tree is, though.

A bunch of people (including both of my North Stars!) took a detour to the small town to head home before dark. The rest of us enterprising souls soldiered on to what was undoubtedly the coolest part of the hike: in a ravine, hiking up a stream. When I say up, I mean that metal ladders and handrails were in place so that we could literally climb up the stream.

The ravine, with some people for scale.

I thought these ladders were wicked cool, but apparently in the recent past there were chains that you had to hold onto to climb?

My shoes got impossibly muddy and doused in ice-cold mountain water... multiple times... but the ladders were incredibly cool and like nothing I'd done before.

After traversing the ravine (wow sounds intense) we had about a mile of uphill before we ended up in the same place we started, where we could take a bus back to the train station and end up back in Budapest. Right before my trusty iPhone died at 37% in the cold (thanks Apple), I managed to snap this sunset photo:

After about ten miles of hiking that day, chilled to the bone with our shoes nice and damp, we sipped on mulled wine while waiting for the rickety bus, where the bus driver would take our forints one-by-one, give us change for the journey, and take us back to civilization.

Eger: Fortresses and Bull's Blood

Eger is a beautiful place, a couple of hours by train outside of Budapest. It’s the kind of town where a ruined fortress overlooks the burgundy roofs below.

We started our day there at Károly College, where a famous Astronomical Tower resides with one of the only existing functional camera obscuras left in the world (our guide claimed the only other one is in Scotland). I wasn’t sure how much to be impressed by this, but it’s actually pretty cool- something like the oldest version of a periscope that gives you a 360 degree, projector-like view of the city. The creaking of the metal rods our guide used to control the camera obscura assured us that this is, indeed, old technology!

Another plus of the Astronomical Tower: killer views of the city!

Afterwards we headed to the historical castle, in which “a small Hungarian garrison” famously fended off a Turkish invasion in 1552 (before the Turks captured the town forty years later- anyone feel the bitterness yet?). Some two hundred years later the Austrians demolished half of the castle in order to save money, so naturally as a demonstration of the usefulness of... I guess gunpowder, in the museum tour I had the unorthodox experience of actually setting a small mound of gunpowder on fire (probably would not be a thing in America).

The entrance of the ruined castle. Looks a little spooky, doesn't it?

By far the best thing about the castle was wandering the ruined walls. There were remnants of snow and beautiful views of the nearby Basilica and Turkish minaret. Sightseeing in the winter means not many other tourists, and there’s something profoundly magical about walking alone in a castle somewhere in the middle of Europe...

Posing on the walls, wishing I were wearing a Game of Thrones costume.

In the evening, we went to the Valley of Beautiful Women, because conveniently Eger is also home to some famous wine country. This was wine tasting number 2 for me, and the highlight is Eger’s Bull’s Blood wine (Egri Bikavér) so named allegedly because sixteenth century Hungarians would smear the wine on their faces and around their mouths, using its deep red color to scare the invading Turks into believing that they actually drank blood. Scary stuff. It’s good wine, though!

So happy and buzzing with bull’s blood, all of us crazy American students sang on the train ride home. It was a wonderful day.

Beyond Budapest: The Artist's City of Szentendre

We had the opportunity to go on two day trips to Szentendre and Eger while with Babilon, and both were positively beautiful. It’s probably going to be hard to capture the magic of the quiet of these towns compared to Budapest’s hustle and bustle, but I’ll try.

Szentendre is a village to the north of Budapest that’s ridiculously easy to get to via train (we took the train to Esztergom and got off after about an hour). It’s quiet this time of year, and relatively cold and grey. After disembarking from the train, we set off immediately towards the city center, in our lovely guide Emese’s capable hands.

 It had snowed that week (as it does), so the vibe was definitely cozy and intimate.

We started the day by walking and taking in the charming village, stopping at Blagovestenska Church, a Serbian Orthodox church. With Emese’s help translating, an old woman, the only soul in the building, told us a bit about the contrasts between the Serbian Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox traditions—she should know: she is the former while her husband is the latter. Gesturing towards the Christmas decorations still displayed in the nave, she told us that in the Serbian Orthodox church it’s traditional to have an oak tree, not an evergreen tree, as a Christmas decoration—so her family ends up getting two trees every year.

I lit a candle in the church after giving a small donation. I figured better here, in a peaceful, quiet place than somewhere like the Vatican. (PC the incredible Lia Bozzone)

We had some free time after lunch, during which Lia and I spent some quality time walking on the cobblestone streets and taking some nice photos.

Glamor shots! (Lia Bozzone)

I didn’t understand why this trip was marketed as “the artist’s village” until after lunch. We visited two places that really highlighted the value of artistry and craftsmanship, meeting three women intensely passionate about things I would not have considered art before that day.

Our first stop was, of all things, a chocolate shop where the owner treated us to a tasting of “single origin chocolate” (and to some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had). She called her passion “coco culture,” which seemed a little silly at first, but upon putting the deep, rich chocolate on my tongue and tasting actual floral notes, coco culture immediately rocketed its way past wine and cheese in my grand ranking of luxury-item culture.

Think hot chocolate, but richer and darker and thick like custard. I could probably drink enough of this stuff to become comatose.

We also stopped by a traditional weaving shop, where a mother and a daughter were finishing a long shawl under the supervision of the head weaver, who spoke of weaving with a sparkle in her eyes. We saw her weave to finish the shawl for the mother and daughter, who had been there four hours that day. The head weaver wove like breathing, the shuttle moving back and forth between her hands like a heartbeat. When it was time to cut the strands and finish the shawl, Emese translated for us: “it’s hard to finally make the cut. Like seeing a child grow up.”

The highlight of the day, though, winding the cobblestone roads as the sun slowly set, was a small Hungarian folk art shop called Blue Land. The owner, Ilona a talkative and friendly woman with a lovely old dog, excitedly showed off the deep blue hand-printed clothes, the painted eggs from different regions of Hungary, the traditional Christmas ornaments made of recycled food items (dried orange peels, mushrooms, peppercorns, etc.) and corn husk dolls that Hungarian grandmothers immemorial had made for their granddaughters. Under Ilona’s watchful eyes and lilting English, each carefully-made item told a different story about the folk culture of the nation.

My friend Lia and I each bought a lucky charm there: a small baby doll nestled in a walnut shell, decked out in some of the beautiful royal-blue printed cloth. These lucky charms are meant to be gifts, and Ilona showed us the correct way to give them to someone else- from our right hand to the receiver’s left, to “complete the circle.”

Lia and I spent the rest of the day walking along the river of the town, and as evening set on the quiet day we remarked at how unabashedly beautiful it all was, and how we couldn’t wait to return.

Budapest Glamor Shots + Thoughts about Hungarian

A backlog of posts has led me to the efficient conclusion that this post will have two goals: to give a sense of how amazingly beautiful Budapest is with the help of some glamour shots... and to note some initial impressions of the Hungarian language.

What, a beautiful photo already?? The view of the Pest side from Buda castle (fyi, Budapest is called so because it used to be two different cities, Buda and Pest).

My first three weeks in Hungary have been occupied with taking courses with the Babilon Language Studio in Budapest with the other BSM and AIT-ers (AIT is a similar program to BSM, except for computer science students). All in all, the course was quite effective in teaching essential Hungarian (the teachers seemed especially fond of board games) and I would definitely recommend the course for anyone looking to get a basic grasp of the language.

Now that the language classes have officially come to an end (and the math begins), I wanted to take some time and jot down my impressions of Hungarian— it’s quite unlike any other language I’ve encountered!

Throughout the course, our instructors emphasized the fact that Hungarian is an “ancient language,” relatively unchanged from its Asiatic roots. Our guide for the day trips, Emese (pronounced “Em-eh-sheh”) even claimed that if she were to travel to central Asia she could hear the similarities in the languages there and if given enough time would be able to understand and communicate effectively there.

For some reason this lovely building on the Buda side is called the Fisherman's Bastion, but it's anything but a fisherman's shack. It may be my favorite spot in the city to run to...

It’s a language that gives impressions of both east and west, influenced by both the Austrians and the Ottoman Turks. Hungarian depends heavily on vowel harmonies and word suffixes for meaning. Suffixes are attached to words depending on the vowel harmonies on the word and can indicate anything from verb tense, to plurality, to the accusative/objective form.

The existence of an accusative form is interesting because as we were told repeatedly, word order in Hungarian is relatively free. For example, take the following English sentence:

“Tomi loves Csilla.”

English word order makes it clear that Tomi is the subject, Csilla is the object. In Hungarian, both of the following sentences mean the same as the above:

“Tomi szereti Csillát.”

“Csillát szereti Tomi.”

Word order plays a role in which words of the sentence are emphasized (as this helpful Duolingo article points out), but not what the sentence as a whole means.

Phew, grammar sucks. Please enjoy this night view of Parliament if you are getting bored of my ramblings.

Another interesting verbal tick that I’ve noticed is the all-too-frequent filler word “Jó,” which at least on the face of it means “good,” as in “Jó napot” (good day) or “Jó reggelt” (good morning) but which practically functions as a kind of filler word that Hungarians seem to sprinkle between sentences and to fill the silence (less frequent but also used are "szuper” and "okay")

One of the hardest things for me to internalize when beginning to learn the language is the pronunciation of the Hungarian alphabet. Thankfully, Hungarian is a language where the pronunciation remains consistent throughout the language (unlike English, as our teachers never failed to remind us), but getting used to the fact that “s” is always pronounced “sh” took quite a bit of time—also note that the city’s name is pronounced “Budapesht,” despite the fact that you may come across as a bit pretentious in America if you emphasize the “sht” a too much. I still am not totally sure how to pronounce the “gy” sound (which is unfortunate because it appears everywhere from the number one—egy—to the word for onion—hagyma), and Lord help me with all the accented variations of the vowels that must be distinguished in order to spell correctly—there are four versions of the letter “o” here: o, ö, ó, and ő!

The view from St. Stephen's Basilica. St. Stephen was the first Christian king of Hungary, and you can visit his actual hand in the reliquary.

My Hungarian moment of triumph came at a Fornetti (one of those pastry shops in the subway) when I stopped for a pastry and saw the word “túró-taska.” My heart skipped a beat—I knew what that meant—cream cheese bag! I was so excited that even though I was going to get something chocolatey I ordered it on the spot. “Egy túrós-taskát kérek.” It was a miracle exchange, just like in class: “Más valamit?”

“Nem, Köszönöm.” He said the price. I handed over the money. It was beautiful! And since then on rare occasions, when I mutter Hungarian to mask my American accent I’ll sometimes get lucky enough to get a Hungarian response.

All in all, I have to thank Babilon for taking in a group of about seventy or so Americans with thick, blundering tongues and making semi-decent tourists out of us!

Feeling like a traffic cone on the Citadel on a cloudy day...

Hungarian Food: Impressions

My first reaction to Hungarian food was that it’s not very photogenic. In the first week, the Babilon Language School took us to a small restaurant in Taksony for a sampling of the Hungarian culinary tradition, and after I had loaded my plate with all manner of roasted pork, stuffed cabbage, and other stewed meats and grains, I thought to myself “the only two colors on my plate are white and red.” So besides the fact that I was ravenous and couldn’t wait to dig in, that’s the unfortunate reason I didn’t take a photo of the food.

Luckily, when we went to Eger (more on that later) our bubbly guide Emese took us to a glorious contemporary restaurant that served Hungarian food but very prettily. So without further ado, a glimpse of the Hungarian palate:

The first course: the famous Hungarian goulash. This version featured a rich beef base thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (and blood red to boot) but I’ve also had less fancy more soup-like variants of this delicious, paprika flavored dish.

The main course was a lovely chicken paprika dish with an egg noodle base, a modern take on chicken paprikash. Note the heavy use of tejfol here!

Dessert was Hungarian pancakes. When I first heard “Hungarian pancakes,” I was expecting latke-like things, but these are sweet crepes stuffed with túró and topped with apricot jam and berries.

The stars here are meat and dairy. Hungarian food is very heavy and not very vegan friendly (at all). But with all the fat and spices, it’s honestly objectively delicious, even if it’s not the best diet for avoiding heart attacks.

I have three major observations about the food:

1. One of my new favorite ingredients is the Hungarian tejfol (pronounced “tay-fol”) which is an interesting mix of sour cream and yoghurt that’s perfect for cutting through all the fatty spicy meat and sausage, or for dolloping on a bowl of thick goulash. In the previous picture, there are about 2 pints’ worth of tejfol dolloped on the main chicken dish. Two of my friends on the program like to joke about how they killed a liter of sour cream here within a week thinking it was Greek yoghurt (mixing with peanut butter and such) before they realized otherwise, but honestly, I think it's an understandable mistake. Tejfol tastes more like yoghurt to me than American sour cream. I’ve put a little in oatmeal to make it creamy and it’s pretty good.

2. If the “white” in Hungarian food is all that tejfol and carbs and such, the red is definitely paprika (Hungarian for the Cubanelle-like peppers that are cheap and ubiquitous here). Paprika, paprika powder, paprika paste (which comes in toothpaste-like tubes), and all derivations of the spice are in everything here. Which means, at least according to me, that Hungarian food has all the heaviness of British food with none of the blandness!

3. Sweets. Good God, Hungarians know how to do their sweets. My sweet tooth is having a field day. Pastries and cakes, in fact all manner of sweets, are ubiquitous here in what are known as cukrászdas, which are “sweet shops” that sell any kind of sweet a sugar maniac can think of in one convenient location. In one particularly famous Jewish cukrászda, I sampled flódni, a three layer pastry of crushed walnuts (mmm...), poppy seeds, and apples. At a Hungarian restaurant on the first week, my roommate and I had the good fortune of ordering Somlói Galuska, a beautiful sponge cake trifle drenched in chocolate sauce as dark as hell and a little boozy (so, in a word, divine). But the sweets don’t have to be fancy. In every subway stop I’ve been to I’ve seen pastry shops galore where everyone lines up to buy pastries filled with csoki (chocolate) or túró (like cream cheese).

Unfortunately, I have lost many a two hundred forint coin at such shops.

Flódni from Fröhlich Kóser Cukrászda

The beautiful Somlói Galuska from the first night. The little fruit on top, we discovered, is a delightfully sour “ground cherry”!

And finally, to talk about drinks. Hungary is wine country (not beer, like its western neighbors) and thank God for that- I’ve always disliked beer. I’ve had two official wine tastings so far, and have swirled and breathed in wine as pretentiously as I possibly can. But by far the best thing about Hungarian wine culture is that it’s extremely common to drink wine at bars (even not-fancy bars), which means I no longer have to look like a dweeb drinking a glass of wine while all the cool kids drink Coors Light or something.

Wine and desserts, friends. Pray I don’t come home with diabetes.

Me at wine tasting numero uno trying to be fancy with a fancy rosé.

QUICK UPDATE: Budapest and Math

For the next four months (February to May), I’ll be studying abroad with the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics (aka BSM) in Hungary. The first three weeks have been devoted to studying basic Hungarian and learning about Hungarian culture with the Babilon Language School. There are a lot of firsts here: first time in Eastern Europe, first time studying pure math full time, first time eating goulash, etc. I expect this will be a fountain of inspiration for this blog (fingers crossed!), so to avoid having to re-explain the scenario I wanted to preface future posts with this update.

So, without further ado, sziasztok from Budapest!