On the Waterfront feature

Here is a link to my recently published cover story for Where Budapest:

On the Waterfront

High Culture from the Cheap Seats

Location: Hungarian State Opera House
May 2, 2010
Adventure #15

It is challenging to say, “I think I'll go see an opera,” without adopting a really bad snooty accent. Operas maintain a high-brow connotation, and it is rare that one of my peers attends a show. However, in Europe – land of over-the-top opera houses – everyone deserves to witness their splendor. Luckily, Hungary seems to agree, as they always offer dirt-cheap seats in the upper balcony for mild opera-enthusiasts on a budget, like myself. In fact, it costs far less to buy inexpensive seats for a performance than to take the official tour of the fin de siècle site.

Although I always have obstructed views and have to come in an unadorned side entrance, I love being in the nosebleed section, because I am closer to the opera’s opulent chandeliers and frescoes that bring Greek gods and goddesses to life. This art is as big of a draw as the shows themselves. Also, it’s fun to spy on the people in the private boxes and mezzanine levels to which the balconies directly look. Lastly, it’s good to be in the peon section if I go to a show that I find particularly dull, namely La Traviata last year, because I can leave at intermission and no one is the wiser.

This last month, I bought $2 seats and took my parents to see Sylvia, a ballet. With beautiful sets of a mystical forest and colorful costuming - complete with perky tutus - it actually was a little disappointing not to have a better view. Perhaps I'll splurge for some high-end seats for the next show, but I can't get snooty now.

Look Ma, No Bar!

Location: Buda Hills
May 2, 2010
Adventure #14

It wasn’t until a pair of thimble-sized bumblebees started buzzing around me that I really started to get nervous. If I swatted or tried to scoot away from them, I was certain to fatally plummet to the stumpy ground of the Buda Hills.

After a lovely hike to Budapest’s highest lookout point, my parents and I decided to ride the city’s slow, scenic chairlift back to lower ground. My parents got on the lift first, and I rode solo behind them. Unlike many ski lifts in the states, the safety bar did not automatically come down to rest over my lap and no ski bum pulled it down for me either. Hence, it wasn’t until I was off the boarding platform that I realized I was on the ride without my seat belt securely fastened.

Being of the height-challenged variety, my arms couldn’t reach the bar and pull it over me without some major stretching in my seat, so I just sat still and held on tightly to the arm handle as we rode fifty feet above ground. Up ahead of me, my parents were suffering from the same lack of safeguards, and my mom spent the whole cruise in a white-knuckled state.

Fortunately, when the bees arrived in the middle of the 12-minute journey, I was able to sit without fidgeting as they conducted a thorough physical and rested on my pant legs. Once we were back on solid ground and I rid myself of my yellow and black companions, my mom said she’d finally take me up on the suggestion I’d been offering all week - drinking a shot of palinka.

Releasing My Inner Exhibitionist

Location: Hungarian locker rooms
April 2010
Adventure #13

Using American sensibilities, I've never considered myself prudish. I graduated from CU-Boulder (where we interpret being a "buff" in many contexts), the home of the naked pumpkin run, the threadbare bicycle ride and where I cherished a group of friends who streaked with the same regularity with which they bought blue books. However, in Hungary, even my widely drawn comfort lines are being crossed nearly every day in my gym's locker room.

For a little context, when I played sports in high school all the ladies were all extremely modest (read: insecure teenagers) and jumped through many hoops to retain this coyness. We mastered the maneuver most athletic women are familiar with, where you put your sports bra on top of your regular bra, then remove the bottom layer and never expose your lady lumps. In college, these boundaries became a little bit more relaxed, but still only the older women who were beyond inconvenient shyness walked around au naturel.

Then I moved to Hungary. Here, leafless women roam the locker rooms more often than clothed ones. I've grown slightly accustomed to seeing naked ladies everywhere I look, but lately a line has been crossed. I've been able to stomach nude women liberally apply lotion, sitting in the saunas or walking to and from the showers. However, the extreme action that has sent me over the edge is topless hairdrying. Every time I've gone to the gym this week, there has been at least one woman at the mirror fixing her hair, wearing only a thong or a towel tied around her waist or worst yet, in her birthday suit. The worst perpetrator to date is highly endowed and has hair down to her hips. Not only was she braless, her spectacle worsened as she used two blow-dryers simultaneously. Thus, both her arms were lifted and the hair wasn't the only part of her flapping around.

Unfortunately, there is no way to remedy this situation except to either grow even more liberal or to skip out of the locker room as quickly as possible after showering. But then, I'll be the odd wet hair lady (Hungarians seem to believe people who leave the house with wet hair automatically contract a terminal illness) who I am sure will be fodder for a Magyar blog.

Pushing Cultural Boundaries to the Fringe

Location: Pécs
April 9, 2010
Adventure #12

Never do I feel more in my element than when I am wedged into a vermilion velvet theater seat waiting for the curtain to rise, teetering on a cafe stool while balancing a coffee in one hand and snapping with the other to honor a poet's recitation, or perching on my tiptoes in a smoky Budapest cellar trying to catch a glimpse of a rock band. Without a doubt, I am an arts and culture junkie. To satiate my cravings, I recently traveled to a town in Southern Hungary called Pécs to see the Fringe Festival, as I explained in my travel blog. This festival, which started in Edinburgh and now has iterations occur all over the world, provides performance space for amateur artists in all genres through a weekend-long event, thus bolstering the "fringe" of the artistic society.

At Hungary's Fringe Festival, my vanguard sidekick Zsofi and I performance hopped with some amazing and peculiar outcomes. The first show we saw - or tried to see - was of the latter variety. A modern dance troupe was putting on a show, but instead of a standard stage, their makeshift performance space abutted a large gallery window. They hung a black sheet over this window and cut multiple peepholes in the cloth. If you wanted to catch a glimpse of their frantic movements, you couldn't go inside and watch the performance unfold, but rather, you had to negotiate with the crowd for a chance to be a peeping Tom. Sick of waiting our turn, we switched to a more professional dance troupe's performance and caught the last half of their show. This riveting performance included a long choreographed fight scene between four couples, which involved lots of jumping, catching, and bodily movements I wouldn't dare attempt. I wish I could have seen it twice.

Next, Zsofi and I switched venues to catch some musical acts. Although Hungary is not known for cultivating talented gospel or soul singers, I still wanted to see a performance in the genre. It turned out to be as lackluster as I should have expected. The large group of 20 singers resembled a shy teenage church choir where no one will stand close to the microphone and no strong melodies are ever heard. After a soloist managed to downgrade Grace from Amazing to humdrum, we hopped across the hall to a decidedly different performance - a trio of pubescent punk rockers who pounded out incomprehensible songs and suffered from the if you can't sing, sing loudly disease.

Fortunately, we fled and ended up in a gem of a bar. In its entryway, a local pop artist recreated his modern-day version of the Sistine Chapel in a cartoon fresco (pictured). Instead of the iconic touching fingertips, it features clinking beer glasses, and in the place of the regular Michelangelo characters are Frank Zappa, DJs, break dancers and even the lead singer from Motorhead. We grabbed a table near the art and the stage and were treated to a beautiful folk singer who mesmerized us with soulful Roma songs from the region and traditional folk songs.

Next up, was my favorite show of the entire weekend: an energetic blues group. First, I must make a confession: there are three instruments that I believe to be the bees knees, and should one individual master all these instruments, I will be their bona fide groupie. They are: the bass (this love was fostered early on, as all my pre-college crushes played the bass), the saxophone (I still resent my band teacher for convincing me to play the flute in lieu of the tenor sax), and the harmonica. This blues band had a dashing blond front man who rocked classics like "The Thrill is Gone" with rare moxie for being a non-native English speaker, but, most importantly, he was a mad harp player. I sat in an enamored, toe-tapping state for their entire set, just waiting for the next harmonica solo. I haven't felt that present for an event in a long time - maybe I'll have to join that band's already large groupie pool. This performance also sparked what may be my next goal once I finish this blog: learning to play the harmonica.

As our last cultural stand of the weekend, Zsofi expanded my visual-art knowledge and introduced me to a fascinating modern Hungarian artist, Tivadar Csontvary. The painter, who suffered from schizophrenia, didn't start painting until he was 41, but in his short career, he created a surrealistic oeuvre of vivid landscape watercolors and portraits that are detailed to the point of eerie. He now tops my list of favorite Magyar artists.

BINGO!

Location: Budapest
April 15, 2010
Adventure #11

Whether we were to conduct a bingo game for a group of Hungarian hipsters or the local elderly patrons who are our actual target audience, the most popular prizes would be the same: coffee and cigarettes.

Nearly every month since I moved to Budapest, I’ve helped the North American Women’s Association host a bingo game at a local nursing home. As a non-Hungarian speaker, my role is pretty simple. I help set up and distribute snacks and juice, then watch over a table or two to ensure the players don’t miss any numbers and confirm that winners’ Bingos are legit. Players get really into it, and I love hearing a seemingly reserved person yelp "Bingo," causing their competitors to let out equally loud groans.

Not only do I enjoy spending the time with the elderly and my American and Canadian cadre, the game has helped me learn my Hungarian numbers from 1-75 and how to correctly pronounce the names Bela, Illona, Nula, Gabor, and Olga, since our bilingual caller uses these names as a culturally relevant B-I-N-G-O substitutes.

Of course, the downfall of a volunteer project like this is that I can’t hold conversations with the volunterees because of the language barrier. However, this situation proves how far one can go with non-verbal communication, which was underscored when I recently tried to assist one of my favorite regulars in claiming his prize.

In addition to the always popular cigarettes and coffee (so coveted that we limit winners to one carton of cigarettes), the prizes include candy, some food items and lots of toiletries. Now this dour man who I was assisting is one of the most entertaining gamblers because he is an inveterate word worm who brings a newspaper to every game and reads as much as he can between each play so as not to reduce himself to talking to his peers. When someone else wins he scowls and opens his paper wider – pretending to be too good to play Bingo anyhow. On this particular day, he ended up winning a round, so I asked him what prize he would like. Apparently he told me “deodorant,” but since that word is at the bottom of my need-to-know Hungarian vocabulary hierarchy, I had no idea what he wanted. In response to my confused stare, this elderly gent raised his arm and mimicked rolling on some freshness over his flannel shirt. Naturally, this made me giggle, and I even provoked a rare smile from him.

Even though I can’t speak in complete sentences, at least I inspire a smile now and then, especially when I resort to cheating. There is nothing more disheartening than watching over a table for more than an hour where no one is winning and the people are getting frustrated. Thus, when it comes close to the end of our session and there are still some players who haven’t won, we signal to the caller to announce auspicious numbers that lead to a gleeful utterance of “Bingo!” Yes, even fabricated Bingos sound as pleasing as orthodox ones.

New Published Poem

A University of Colorado literary journal, called sub-scribe, just accepted one of my poems for their newest edition - yea. The theme was Bad Timing, so I contributed a poem that is a throwback to high school angst. Consider it my paean to Salinger.

You can read it by clicking here.

I've been published in the journal before, and you can read and hear my earlier work here, here and here.