Second Meeting with the Attorney

January 31, 2002 Second Meeting with the Attorney We had our second meeting with the attorney at a coffee café. His office is outside of Budapest, but comes here twice a week, but does not have an office here. We established our business name and had it checked to make sure that it is not being used already. It will be American Council for English Studies – Hungary. He presented the business articles of incorporation and we reviewed them. We will be a limited liability corporation, so if there should be any lawsuits for any reason, we will not be personally liable. On Monday, we will sign the papers in front of a Notary Public. The notaries here have Dr. in front of their name. I am not sure what they have done to deserve the title, but in my mind at least they had better have earned it after what I went through to have the same privilege. After we have the papers notarized, we will need to go to a bank and open up a business account with three million forints ($11,000.00) in it that will be frozen until after the courts approve the petition for the business. This is usually a couple of weeks, but the name of the business and our names need to be published in a special publication first. After this, we will each have Residency permits as the managers of the business. One of us will have to get a work permit in addition through the business, since the managers are not allowed to do anything other than manage. With a work permit, one of us will be the teacher of record for the business. As cumbersome as the whole process is, it is very similar to starting a business in the States with the exception of having to wait in lines and lines and more lines within the same agency. Well, that may not be much different than some of my experiences in the States after all. At least here, we don’t have to do it ourselves with an English-Hungarian dictionary in hand. We have someone to do the whole thing for us. Ron had to leave the meeting early to go to an interview. I went to one of the schools to observe a teacher as part of the condition of employment for this school. When I got to the school, neither the teacher nor the student was there. I was early, but the administrator said that the teacher should have been there at least by that time. She said there was no reason for me to wait. It must have been cancelled without their knowledge. Frustration!! This is typical of life here; I am learning from the other teachers that I have met. People either show or they do not and there is no remorse if they do not. After I got home from the attorney meeting, the phone was ringing. It was a pre-school calling for Ron. He had stopped in yesterday and dropped off a resume. They want him to come in for an interview next week. This is the same school that he was so impressed with that he said he would volunteer at if they were not interested in hiring him. Hopefully, they will hire him. Our time has been filled suddenly with interviews, meetings with the attorney, interviewing banks for the business, and the realtor. We interviewed banks not only to see which would give us the best deal on charges, but also to see who had the English speakers; so that we do not need to drag an interpreter along with us each time we do something. We will probably deal with Citibank. They do not have checking accounts here. Everything is cash, credit card, bank debit card, or postal money order. It took this long to realize that the ATM machines do not have deposit slots. You cannot make a deposit at an ATM you have to go into the bank. Of course, you can withdraw money from the ATM otherwise they would just be strange decorations in the walls. In order to pay your utility bills, you can call your bank’s bill paying service and direct them to pay the bill or you have to go to the Post Office with cash and pay the bills there. Almost all bills can be paid at the Post Office. How it works with credit cards, I have no idea. Rent is paid in cash and they give you a receipt. I would not want to be the person that collects the rent with all of that cash in my pocket.

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Lease Signing Day

January 30, 2002 Lease Signing Day I was called for a second interview at one of the schools that I had been to. They had a class for me, but I needed to meet with the director. When I went in, she was all smiles. She explained that the class was for a group of architects, five in all. We will meet on Wednesday evening for two units of forty-five minutes each and then again on Friday morning for another two units. The class will last for sixteen weeks. She gave me the books that we would be using and an orientation to the school’s library, staff room, and paperwork. Rather than an interview, this was more of a “Welcome aboard” meeting. I was thrilled with the assignment and think that it will be very interesting. We will sign our lease for the new apartment today. As of February 15th, our address will change. Since many of you are not keeping up to date with this journal, I have sent the change of address as a separate e-mail. Updates later… Well it is a done deal. We signed the lease and what a process that was. It was easier buying our house than what this experience turned out to be. We needed a letter signed by the owner stating that he gave permission to use the apartment as the ‘seat’, a Hungarian term, of our business. He had agreed ahead of time, but being the cautious one that I am, I had the realtor put the stipulation in the lease, so there was not chance for a problem after the ink dried with our names on the lease. I had e-mailed the attorney ahead of time asking for this letter so that we would have it at the lease signing. It was in my e-mail last night. He sent two copies, one describing the owner as a business that owned the apartment and one as an individual that owned the apartment so that we had both options. Each was done in both Hungarian and in English. Just as a safety measure, I saved both copies on disk and took the disk with me in case there was a problem, the realtor could make adjustments, and we could get it signed. We met at the apartment to go over the inventory of what was there, something that I had insisted on since the daughter of the owner was living there last and had many personal items still there. Since we had made a point of this fact, much of it was cleaned out since we last looked at the apartment. They also brought in most of things that we insisted on having such as an iron with an ironing board, a vacuum cleaner, microwave, television, more blankets, sheets, and drapes for the master bedroom window. The realtor, who is a dynamic young person, had his Palm Pilot type devise and did a room-by-room inventory with his wife while we were there. Ron and I inspected the apartment for things that were broken or not working. The owner was not available, but had given his twenty-two year old daughter written permission to sign on his behalf. You could tell this process was wearing on her and she was tired of being under the microscope. Life is like that so it is beneficial for her to learn this lesson early on. It took an hour and a half for the inventory to be completed. In the meanwhile, we found a handle on one window that came off in our hands, a hinge missing a screw on the medicine cabinet, a crack in the bathroom mirror, and a chunk of tile missing from the tub. They are to fix all of these things by the 15th, but even if they do not, which does not matter to us, it is recorded. I tested every shade, both regular and security. I had the realtor specify what plants could be tossed and what had to be kept. Since no one had been living there, there were dead plants all over. She has dried flower arrangements all over the kitchen, living room, and some in the bedrooms. They have to go too. She gave us permission to dump them and they will go the first thing. They are not attractive dried flower arrangements, but look like what was once fresh flowers that have never been tossed when their souls escaped and now are just decayed resemblances of what they once were. After Andras finished typing the inventory, we went over it room by room to verify it. He put in every spoon, fork, cup, and little piece of plastic that was left there. This is what was so time consuming. Now let me divert for a minute. He has this mobile phone which is about six inches long, and about four inches thick. The phone opens lengthwise to reveal a full keyboard Palm Pilot type device. From this, he was able to e-mail the list back to his office where it was printed. We all piled into the daughter’s car and drove to the office for the signing. We each read the lease and made any changes that we did not agree on, which were minor and few. First, I wanted an original copy of her father’s permission for her to act on his behalf, then her signature on the permission to use the apartment as our business base. She did have a problem with this since there was no period included. Andras said that this would have to wait until it was included, but I whipped out the disk with both versions on it for him to make the necessary changes and she was willing to sign it. Grateful that I thought ahead, we were able to move on and sign the lease. At this point, I had to turn over 280,000 forints, which is the equivalent to $1,000 for a security deposit. That was the most difficult part of the whole ordeal. We had to shell out $900.00 for our current apartment’s security deposit and will supposedly get that refunded minus the final utility payments and cleaning costs a couple of weeks after we vacate. That is officially February 23, but we will be gone sooner. My head was reeling with details, figures, and plans that needed to be recorded somewhere in order to stay focused and organized. In the meanwhile, Ron had been confident enough now to deliver his resume to other schools. He has been making lists of schools that sound interesting to him and goes in person to drop off his credentials. After his first interview, he has become a changed person. His confidence has taken a dramatic turn for the positive and he makes his plans and rounds with enthusiasm. When he went to one school, he was able to speak with the director immediately. She is an American and the school has over fifteen teachers. She tried selling him on teaching there more than his having to be interviewed. She said that they did not have any vacant classes at the moment, but that he was welcome to come to a faculty meeting on Friday to meet the rest of the staff, which he plans on doing. This evening we went to Dawn’s for dinner. She had a co-worker over, a Hungarian woman named Aggie. She was a delightful person and full of Hungarian history, since this was her major in college. For a young person, she has an incredible work history, being a business consultant for some major companies. She was offered a position at Audi, but refused it since she would lose her independent status. Aggie also had a catering business for years and loves to cook. She is going to take us shopping and translate items that we need to know and also to show us where the best cheese store in Budapest is located. She has offered to give Ron cooking lessons after he expressed this interest and of course, I supported the idea. Why would I not, I will be a beneficiary. It was a wonderful evening and Dawn sent us home with a bag of books that she has read and no longer wants. Dawn is thrilled to have us here to have ‘playmates’ available and we are grateful to have her here since we have known her the longest of our Budapest circle.

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Embassy Tasks

January 29, 2002 Embassy Tasks Our agenda for the day was to interview banks for our business account. Our attorney suggested that we go to a couple of banks and see if there is a manager that speaks English well, find out the service charges, see if they are easily able to transfer money to and from our California account, get bank machine cards, and have a branch convenient to our apartment/business headquarters. We found that the Dutch, Italians, Germans, British, and Americans own ninety-five percent of the banks in Hungary. The Hungarians own the last five percent. We started with the first bank that was recommended and found one of the officers who spoke English somewhat. He was not able to pull off the computer the list of charges in English, so gave it to us in Hungarian. He started to explain the fees and write them down supposedly in English, but it was more Hungarian. Fernando, we need you! He did say that if we returned later, he would have it in English for us. The second bank was on hold. We had set up a meeting with Damon at the embassy to look over his library of teaching resources. He has stated that he was going to ship the contents to Romania since it is underutilized here. With the aftermath of September 11th, entering the embassy or related buildings is a chore, which perhaps is one reason for the lack of use of the library. We had to show our passports and state our reason for coming in. Then we received plastic cards for entering the gate to go through security. We had to show our passports yet again. Damon’s office is not even in the embassy; it is in a bank building next door. Damon and his assistant gave us a bag full of books, magazines, and other resources for TEFL that are distributed to teachers and students alike. There are some great pieces of material here that will be enormously helpful. The library is much smaller than I had anticipated, but the materials are current and can be checked out for a month at a time. We were advised that we should register with the embassy in case of an emergency, so his assistant took us to the embassy building to do this. The back of the embassy is blocked off and all pedestrian traffic, so the front is the only entrance. This is roped off and there are a few security guards standing around that will not let anyone linger for more than the time it takes to put one foot in front of the other. After seeing our passports, they allowed us through the barrier. Inside, we had to have our things x-rayed and we had to walk through metal detectors. Registering was a matter of filling out a card and having them photocopy our passports. It was a simple procedure. Ron and I went to a café that Damon’s assistant recommended and then I went on to view a teaching demonstration for a school that was interested in hiring me. That lasted for one and a half hours. It was a group of five students that are all employees of a bank. The class is offered on their work time and the bank pays the bill. I am supposed to write up an evaluation of the class, but I dread it since this teacher was not an effective educator. When the class was over, he shared with me that he had been living in the Czech Republic for five years teaching and was in Budapest for two. Due to some personal reasons, he was returning to the States at the end of February or early March, permanently. He had not told the school yet. He said I would probably pick up his twenty-six hours if I wanted them, since the other teachers were booked solid. After hearing all of this, I do not have the heart to be very honest in my evaluation, so I will stick with the positives and downplay the negatives. That will be a real piece of creative writing. This teacher, Steven said that after a while you feel exploited by these schools working for such low wages. With a laugh, I said I have a doctorate, I feel exploited already, but I need the experience since this is such a closed field in the world of academia. When I returned home, Ron said I had a call from a school that was urgently trying to reach me. When I called back, they had a class for me that starts next week, two days a week for sixteen weeks. I accepted it. Supposedly, I am to start training with Berlitz next week. After leaving the second ‘interview’ and thinking about it, I had some reservations. You have to sign a contract with them that you will be available whenever they want you and that you will stay for one year or pay 50,000 Huf for your training. With these restrictions, since they also have Saturday classes, this would prevent me from doing any consulting work that Damon would be able to throw my way. In addition to this, I was getting some negative feedback from other schools that stated that Berlitz is only used because it is a brand name and their costs are too high for the average Hungarian to afford. They have a high turnover rate of teachers and they are not accredited by the Hungarian agency that accredits language schools. They have tried for years, but have not been successful in getting this official recognition. When Ron checked his e-mail, he had a request for an interview with the same school that offered me the class. I had suggested that he drop off his resume since the supervisor told me that they had classes starting and had not had enough teachers to fill the needs. He is on his way. In the meanwhile, we are waiting to hear from Daphnee about the collection that is to be Fed Ex’ed to us. Her Internet provider went bankrupt and under court order, the company has had to provide intermittent services through other providers. Because of this, she has been able to receive e-mails, but none of her out-going e-mails go through. We have been communicating through her secretary, who I am sure is sick of me by now. Every day, I watch the days tick off the calendar as our deadline approaches. I told Daphnee that we would be living in Timbucktoo, Turkey for six months when we get kicked out of Hungary if I don’t get them soon. I have not heard a word from her. As Ron said and he did not have to remind me, Daphnee had never let me down in the past, but the waiting is nerve wracking. WHERE THE HELL IS SHE? To make matters worse, they are leaving on vacation on February 1st. My father had called Daphnee, said that he had a bag of mail at his house, and wanted to know what to do with it. She suggested that he drop it by her office, which is about ten miles from his house. She did not know he had been hospitalized and at the time had an angioplasty scheduled, so that would be difficult and he did not share the information. Adding to the impossibility of it is the fact that Slut-whore has his car every waking minute, so he is stranded at home all of the time. No one wants to go there with her there, so the mail is in limbo. I know there are things there that I need for taxes, since Daphnee never reported receiving them at her house. I had to break down and ask my brother to pick up the mail and deliver it to Daphnee. He does not like going there anymore than anyone else and he could have written the book on procrastination. I am crossing my fingers that he will agree to do this, but it will not surprise me if he will not.

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Ron's First Interview

January 28, 2002 Ron’s First Interview Ron left for his first interview this morning and I had another interview with yet another school. Knowing how much I hate the interview process, I could imagine what he was going through. I was offered another position, teaching part-time and went to run errands before returning home again. When I reached the apartment, I held my breath as I entered, not knowing what to expect from Ron’s experience and reactions. What I had not anticipated was him to be totally relaxed and comfortable. The director of the school interviewed him. She basically tried to sell him on the school rather than the reverse. It helped that she was an American and had been here for three years. She knew the ins and outs of the system, had him totally at ease almost immediately and she was interested in having him on the staff. She invited him to a faculty meeting on Friday so that he can meet the other teachers and get a sense of the school. I was as proud as a parent that just had their child complete their first day of kindergarten. It is one thing to share your confidence in another’s ability than it is for that person to feel the confidence himself or herself. When I had to run an errand, I bought him flowers to celebrate his first achievement in the job search. Being a yenta, I decided to introduce Fernando and Damon. The four of us were to meet at our apartment and then going for coffee. Fernando had a poor weekend with some emotional hurts, so I suggested he come a half hour early and we could talk and cheer him up before Damon arrived. Fernando called at 5:00 and said he was just moping and was not sure about the evening. I told him to come even earlier and we would bring him out of his mood and set the scene for meeting Damon. At six, I went on the Internet and waited. My sixth sense told me that Fernando was trying to call, but the line was tied up with the Internet. I thought it just as well as this would not allow him to cancel at the last minute. When I shut down at 6:55, the phone rang. It was Fernando. He had been trying to call since 6:05. He arrived early, but could not remember if we were # 7 or # 9 and did not know either of our last names, so could not look at the buzzers on the buildings. He admitted that this was his last attempt at getting through before returning home since he was tired of sitting in his car this whole time. The rest of the evening went swimmingly, as the Brits would say. He and Damon hit it off immediately. We went for coffee, walked up and down the streets looking in shops, and then returned here for more conversation. Since Damon arrived by taxi, Fernando offered to drive him home. I etched another notch in my belt for another success story.

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King Stephen's Grave

January 27, 2002 King Stephen’s Grave Saturday, yesterday, we were planning on going to Vienna once again, but the idea of spending five hours on the train and not spending any money was not that appealing. Instead, we stayed in Budapest and did grocery shopping. It is wonderful to do a full week’s worth of shopping, including fresh meats and vegetables and only spend less than $40.00. We took the train today to the original capital of Hungary, Esztergom, which boasts the largest basilica in Hungary, still a sight for religious pilgrimages today. This was the birthplace of King Stephen, the first Royal House of Hungary. King Stephen was later canonized as a saint and his body remains in the basilica. It is an hour and a half ride to this small little town that is supposed to be so quaint. It may be, but not in the winter months. The town was rather dreary, with most of the shops closed and the streets empty. The housing looked poor and depressing, void of any architecture they were connected box style houses with few windows and no outside décor to distinguish one from the other. Walking to the basilica, there were some beautifully crafted old historic buildings with signs in Hungarian, so we know as much about them now as we did before leaving Budapest. Well, one building we walked into and it turned out to be the town hall. Many people assume we are German, so they attempt to speak to us in German. Fortunately, we have been in German speaking countries enough that we are able to get the concept of what they are saying. As much as I have had my fill of churches, cathedrals, and other religious institutions, I was bowled over by this basilica. The interior was magnificent and one of the shining stars of all that I have seen. The interior natural light was bright. The marble walls were grayish-blue, a color of a marble that I had never seen before and at first, I thought it had to be faux marble. I rubbed my hands on a number of veins in the marble until I was convinced that it was real. One chapel is entirely constructed of a rare red marble that is the color of ripe cranberries and is magnificent. I could sit in this building and stare for hours. It was the most inviting house of worship that I have been in in years. The original basilica was built in 1010, but was added on to in a Neoclassical style in 1856. In the crypt, there are the bodies of Hungary’s archbishops. The crypt is like walking through ancient Rome with numerous columns supporting the roof. There are huge sculptures decorating graves that defy description, but my favorite was an angel that was at least fifteen feet high double the width that was draping a robe over a coffin. It was done in bronze and the pose was of a relaxed non-sexed beauty that happens to be flying over and draping this large cloth over the casket as it traveled. The love, tenderness, and admiration of the angel could be felt for the task it was providing. It was a tremendous work of art. Many of the caskets were exposed and had multitudes of ribbons hanging from them with wording on them. We had no idea what these were or why they were there. Some caskets were identified by frescoes on the walls and they were almost perfectly intact from centuries ago. The basilica sits on top of a hill, from which you can view the Danube where it bends. On a clear day, you are able to see the Low Tatras of Slovakia, but it was overcast and foggy this day, so we had to use our imaginations. We did yell, “Hello” to Mrytis and Randall, though. There are a couple of religious museums on the grounds, but we chose not to visit them. After finding a café, we had coffee and a dessert. The selection was tremendous considering the size of the town and the lack of activity around, but we had difficulty in making a selection. By 4:00 pm, we were ready to hike back to the train and head home again. This is a place to go to in the spring or summer, since the parks would probably be lovely at those times. Walking back along the Danube, we observed dozens of swans playing in the river. Many must have been in their first year of life as they were mottled white with brown and some still had fuzzy necks. We nicknamed one Mr. Fuzzy Neck, which triggered an idea for a children’s picture book, in my mind. The train there and back was more like a large tram rather than a train. Our timing was excellent. There was a train about to leave just as we arrived and there was not a place in sight for Ron to get tea, so we were off. It was second-class only and surprisingly crowded. As soon as we returned home, we had to turn around and go out again. Our friend Dawn was just returning from Arizona this afternoon and we were meeting for dinner at a pizza parlor. Dawn will not eat Hungarian food. It was great to see her again, a familiar face who we have known for over three years. She had been in the States for over six weeks so we had lots to catch up on. She is a consultant with the Soros Foundation to work with teachers and school systems on including the Roma children into the mainstream schools, in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic.

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A Full Agenda

A Full Agenda Eleven o’clock, we started with our meeting at the realtor’s office. This person is an enterprising person. He had the contracts all ready to go, but I told him there would have to be revisions and we would have to come to terms with the owner first before we signed anything. The owner arrived with his daughter, but the owner does not speak English. The realtor had to interpret everything. Fortunately, his English is excellent. We negotiated back and forth for an hour. It turns out that if we rent the apartment and have a business there, it raises the tax rate of the owner. The way around this was for us to rent the apartment and then in turn lease it to our business. The owner has to sign a form agreeing to allow us to use the apartment for business. In Hungary, all apartment buildings have separate owners of the apartments, like a cooperative. Hence, there is a homeowners association and dues for building maintenance. When you rent an apartment, the tenant is responsible for the dues. I cannot balk at that since we are charging our own tenant the homeowner’s fees we are billed for our house. However, in this case, this apartment has a higher assessment since they refurbished the lobby, they are replacing the roof, and doing work on both the front and back of the building. The maintenance dues were almost triple of what we are currently paying. Since we are not purchasing the apartment, I had no intention of paying for repairs and remodeling that we would not directly benefit from as an investment. We were successful in having this dropped over twenty dollars a month. The owner will clean out whatever we want, make sure the apartment is cable ready, buy a new television, microwave, iron, ironing board, vacuum cleaner, and put up privacy drapes in the master bedroom. This is the only room without the security blinds, since it is a double window. He agreed to allow us to run the business there and almost all of our issues were met. The apartment will be cleaned by February 15th. I also stated that I would not sign a contract until we were given the inventory list. The agent said that this list was signed separately, but I wanted to make sure what we wanted and needed was on the list before we contracted for the apartment. We set up another meeting at the apartment for the 30th of the month, to go over the inventory and sign the lease. This is a closed lease, so if we break it within the year, we lose our $1,000.00 deposit. From here, I went off to Berlitz for the second interview and Ron delivered our thirty-day notice to our current rental agent. The interview lasted fifteen minutes with the offer of starting the training on February 6th. The woman said that this was just a formality and the supervisor was so impressed with me that she wanted to meet me personally. Ron having delivered the notice, said the manager asked why we did not ask them for help in looking for another place. I asked if he asked if they felt they did so well the first time that we should trust them a second. We still have a list of things that were promised our first week here that still have not materialized. The shower door was never installed, though the guy was here over two weeks ago measuring and was to install it over a week ago. Also, while I was gone, Ron sat down with the phone and started calling schools. He was offered his first interview for Monday. We will review the interview questions once again, but he has a great command of the vocabulary and concepts of the field and I know he will do well when he builds his confidence. We had just enough time to share the last hour, when it was time to meet with our new attorney. Following cultural tradition, we met at a coffee house. He gave us a menu of the expenses and though there are many, we will still spend less than Joshua and his wife did. There are fees for permits, notary fees, court fees, publication in the business gazette fees, and of course the attorney fees. We need to have three million forints ($11,721.00) in a Hungarian bank account for getting our seal and that money is frozen for up to a couple of weeks. That is the toughest part. We also need to have an on-going accountant since there are forms that need to be submitted to the government on a monthly basis whether or not we have income. This will be a major expense since they run about $90.00 a month, but we will shop around. Our attorney said he could recommend a good one that he uses and she works cheaper, but does not speak English. We could hire an interpreter for a few bucks an hours and still come out ahead. The good part is that our tax base will drop from forty percent working for someone else to about twenty eight percent being self-employed and like the U.S. there are a lot of deductions that are available. After doing some number crunching before learning of the tax percentage differences, I figured that if Ron worked ten hours a week, which gives him enough for a work permit and therefore a residency permit and I work twenty hours a week, that will give us $566.00 a month net salary based on forty percent taxes. Not bad, huh? That will pay our rent and some utilities. Since the average salary of Hungarians is less than $400.00 a month, we will be rich. That figure does not take into consideration the private lessons, which will put us in the upper echelons of Hungarian society. Damon had invited us to his place for American snacks, pizza, and a video for the evening. The U.S. government treats our diplomatic corps to great comfort. His apartment has a very large eat in kitchen, a double wide living room/dining room combo, two bedrooms, and two baths all fully furnished with furniture that looks like it came from the Bombay Company. He has all of the conveniences you could want provided: dishwasher, blender, hand mixer, VCR, DVD, stereo, those are the things that I miss that I noticed he had. He also gets the Armed Services cable channel so he gets current American television shows. The only one that I really miss is E.R. and Will and Grace. Ron misses West Wing. They have the PAL system here, not VCR, so we can’t ask any of you to tape shows and send them to us, we would not be able to play them anyway. The best part was when he opened his fridge to ask us what we wanted to drink and to show us the selection. On the door, were six packages of Oscar Meyer bologna, Healthy Choice snacks, and in the fridge were four boxes of Ho Hos and Yodels. The embassy has a commissary on the grounds, so they can buy American products there. When we get to know him a lot better…. Ho, ho, ho. Now you know where some of your tax dollars are going. Damon’s position as the Regional Language Officer is to provide support for teachers, schools, and organizations for the teaching of the American English language. Since he is a regional, he covers sixteen countries, but he is based in Budapest. He travels around to organize TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) conferences, give seminars, lend support to programs, acts as an advisor, and the list goes on. He covers sixteen countries, but the British taxpayers should be more up in arms since they have one person for each country. Now that is big bucks or big pounds to support these people and their programs. We stayed until midnight, munching and watching a video, then found that our bus stopped running at 11:46 pm. We had to catch a different bus, the night version, which only runs every twenty-five minutes and then walk about six blocks from where it left us off. It was a fun diversion and we are becoming aware of the fact that our social life is more active here than it was in Modesto.

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Another Interview

Another Interview As exhausted as I should have been with the little sleep I have been getting, I was up until 3:30 am last night reading. I have an interview today with yet another school, but it is not until 2:30 pm. Appointments have superceded my well-intended plans for getting up early and starting to write. Today we have an appointment to see the apartment that set Ron on fire. I had not seen him this excited for a while. From there, I will have an hour to get to the interview. Ron took me to the apartment and we walked around the neighborhood. Of course, he pointed out all of the best features first, like the large grocery store and the fresh produce market that sits outside of it. The tram is a long block away and one of the subway lines is two blocks away. Across the street is the Budapest Department of Transportation as close as we can figure, so there are not a lot of noisy neighbors. The street seemed quiet enough and not filled with traffic. There is a jazz club within the block and a Latin American restaurant on the corner. The outside of the building looks like most Budapest apartment complexes, old, worn out, and ignored. That is one of the features that I appreciate the most, the humble façade. We met the agent outside and waited for the owner’s daughter, who was late. The agent decided to start without the daughter, but it turned out she was waiting in the apartment. The elevator worked well and was reasonably modern for this part of the world. From the fourth floor, we walked out on the balcony and around to the apartment. Sun was spilling into the courtyard, making it light and clean looking, a change from our current living space. When you walk into the apartment, to the immediate right is the kitchen. Let me remind you that in our current apartment we have a kitchen and living room combination. This was a separate kitchen that was large enough to have a table and four chairs, cupboards on two walls, modern appliances and plenty of room to walk around even if there were four sitting at the table waiting to be served. The window overlooking the courtyard provided lots of natural lighting. Now turn around and walk out of the kitchen and before you is a large hallway. To the immediate right is a walk-in pantry with floor to ceiling shelving. Next to this is a half bath with a toilet and a sink. The full bathroom is the next door on the right. It is equipped with a tub and shower combo, not my favorite, but I could survive, a toilet, a bidet, and a washing machine. The drying line is up at the ceiling, it raises and lowers for use, so it is almost out of sight when not being used. Opposite the pantry and baths starting from the entrance door is a row of closets for coats, clothes, and cleaning supplies. Beyond these closets on the left is the master bedroom. It is huge. A queen size bed is in this room along with a small sofa, chairs, and a small wardrobe closet. There are two large windows that overlook the courtyard adding light to the room. From the master bedroom, you can enter the second bedroom. In here, you will find a double bed and another sofa and chair. There are bookcases with glass doors along one wall and the window to the street provides for wonderful lighting. There is a small, one chair balcony off this room. When you walk out of the second bedroom, you are in the living room. This room can also be entered if you made a straight shot from the kitchen through the hallway. The living room is huge also. There is a sofa, two armchairs, and a very large L shaped computer desk. Both walls have book case cabinets. There are two large windows in this room that also overlook the street. Walking through the living room on the other side is the third bedroom. This bedroom hosts a single bed, a desk and a chair as well as more bookcases. This room is going to become our little classroom for individual and small (2-4) group instruction. Almost all of the rooms have the old, original decorative molding at the tops of the walls and those fancy decorative things in the middle of the ceiling that look like a chandelier should be hanging from them. I am sure one of you knows what that is called, but I do not. Almost all of the rooms has a dual lighting system. You can choose between subdued lighting which are four unusual bulbs in the four corners of the room, or brighter lighting, which are other bulbs. Each room is fully furnished almost to a fault. The walls have attractive pictures on them, but the bookcases are loaded with books, in Hungarian, otherwise, I would not complain about them, compact disks, and dead plants. The kitchen has jars of preserved food that look like bottle of ptomaine poisoning waiting to happen, plus old dried flowers that are crumbling. There are still clothes in closets even though the apartment is vacant of people. The daughter of the owner was living here until she was married. Then she moved into her husband’s home and there was no room for most of her personal belongings. Ron had gone through the first time and looked at aesthetics, but I went through and looked at practicalities. Are there enough electrical outlets and phone jacks. Who was going to clean this stuff out of here? Would it be zoned to doing business operations? What would the utilities run us? Was the heat gas or radiator? Do the security screens work? Is it hooked up for cable? Are they going to supply a television since there was none? Were they going to put in a microwave? With my best poker face, we said that we would have to talk it over and would call the agent that afternoon or the next day. We left there and found a quick bite before I had to go to an interview. We had fifteen points that needed to be covered with the agent and agreed upon prior to making a firm decision. Some we could be flexible on and others were non-negotiable. While I went to the interview, Ron went back to the agent’s office. The agent, who is a former college Economics instructor, called back that afternoon and made an appointment for with us to meet with the owner, the next day, to come to terms on our needs. He also returned with the name and number of an attorney that the realtor/former Economics instructor has worked with and recommended. He said the attorney could do all of the paper work we needed for permits and setting up the business and avoid the Ex-Pat Relocation Center. He said they were good, but overpriced. Ron called and we have a meeting with him in the afternoon. When checking the e-mail, I had a message from Berlitz. They set up the second interview for tomorrow. Berlitz has 350 locations around the world, so after being employed by them, the opportunities are endless for teaching in various parts of the world or for management prospects. Their system of teaching, their pedagogy is closing linked to my ideal methodology and therefore, it is an exciting chance to train in something that closely resembles what I had researched for my dissertation. There is a year commitment for the free training or they want big bucks in return. It only makes sense that they do not want to put the time and money into training you and then have you go off and teach for some competitor.

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A Day in Vienna

A Day in Vienna

Last night, I could not sleep. No matter how hard I tried, it would not come. I finally succumbed at 5:30 am to be awaked at 7:30 to get ready for catching the train. I was determined to make it through the day without complaint, so as not to spoil the day for Ron. Sleeping on the train has always come naturally, so this was some respite. If it were not for the interruptions of the Hungarian conductor, then the Hungarian passport control followed by the Austrian passport control, and then the Austrian conductor, it would have been a long restful nap. When Hungary joins the E.U. in 2004, the two passport control interruptions will be eliminated, but until then, my beauty sleep will be on hold.

How do you do Vienna on ten euros? It is not easy, but I was determined we were not going to spend a lot of money there since we had spent so much on our week in Innsbruck and Venice. We had ten euros left from that trip and since we had the Europass for transport that was our budget for the day. Ron made sandwiches ahead of time and we packed fruit along with it. We took the 9:30 train and arrived in Vienna at 12:00 noon. Vienna is a wonderful walking city and there is so much to look at. I was looking in every store window, while Ron was looking at every historic building. The buildings are breathtaking and when you know a bit of their long history, they really come to life, but I was obsessed with finding shirts at bargain prices to supplement our meager wardrobe. Having five shirts, three of which are too sporty to wear for work just does not cut it. We keep thinking of the boxes of clothes we still have in storage, but the cost of shipping them here or flying back and retrieving them is more than replacing them.

The last time we were in Vienna, the cost of things was so prohibitive, it prevented us from seeing much. We had paid the equivalent of $12.00 each for one museum, five dollars for one coffee and pastry at a café and the list went on. This time was not going to be different since we were on a poverty budget. However, the euro has brought prices down considerably. Chestnuts are my favorite winter snack and I have not had them once this year, so I bought a bag of ten for one euro and twenty cents. We had a coffee late in the afternoon at a wonderful little café and it was three euros and twenty cents. With our budget, we did not avail ourselves of any of the museums, but we had our lunch in the park that sits between the Museum of Natural History and the National Art Museum. It was enough for this trip to just admire the architecture and the wonderful fountains that grace the park.

Vienna has many pedestrian malls, which were crowded, but I had the sense from listening to languages that it was not crowded with tourists. In one square, there was a man performing a puppet show with a leopard puppet that was dressed in a coat and tie and ‘playing’ the piano. With canned music, the leopard performed with his god obviously pulling the strings. The puppet came alive with this man’s magical hands. He had superb control of the music, being able to stop it at a whim and the puppet interacted physically, with the people in a nature manner. It was an incredible demonstration of art at its best that would not be available in a museum.

We had not planned our day well. The trains back to Budapest were at 4:30 and then not again until 7:35 pm. By 4:30, I was dragging my tail. We went to McDonalds for a McFlurry, hoping the sugar rush would help me get by. Where else but McDonalds can you get a cheap sugar fix. We continued walking and looking in stores. When we did find some shirts on sale, the store did not take credit cards, so we passed them by. Stores close by 5:30, so we decided to walk back to the station and that is when we realized we were going to be loiterers for two hours, homeless vagabonds waiting for the train. We had enough change left over for one cup of tea. I told Ron he should wait until the train arrived in the station and then find the establishment with the longest line to wait in so that we could repeat our drama.

The return train took three hours to get back to Budapest; making more stops on the return then in the other direction. We did not get back to our apartment until 11:00.

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Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

The first meeting of the day is an interview with Berlitz School of Languages. They called and asked me to interview. The supervisor said that normally they have people come in to fill out forms and then they are invited in if the school is interested, however, in my case, she was willing to by-pass the forms and go directly to the interview. We set a time for 10:30 on this day.

Interviews are dreadful things. I have new empathy for that frog I dissected in biology class in high school. When I am being interviewed, I feel like my body is pinned to a cutting board with my two little green arms pinned outward from my body, then my two little green legs pulled tautly outward and pinned down also. With my little white belly rising in the air, the dissection knife makes its first point of contact, plunges into my belly to make the first incision. My formaldehyde juices start to weep out replacing the tears that I can no longer shed. The skin of my belly is pulled back to reveal my vital organs. Then the judgments come. Is this a worthy specimen? Are the organs where they should be? Is there anything worth investigating further? What value will this specimen have for us in the future? Should we just close him up and discard the remains? Such is the life of interviewing. Can you tell that I hate it?

Making the decision that I was just going to be myself and let life go with the flow, I met with Clare at Berlitz. The people at Berlitz are young. Maybe it is because I just had a birthday, but most of them could be my children with children of their own. Clare for all of her approximate twenty-five years, if that, was a seasoned interviewer. She asked me questions that I expected and many that I did not anticipate. With a sweet smile on her face, she dragged me over the coals first one way and then back another. At the end of the interview, she showed me the training schedule that every Berlitz instructor is expected to attend. It is ten days of training from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm and asked if I could attend to that schedule. With an affirmative answer, she said that would be perfect. With all of the hour processed at a computerized rate, I felt like the frog that was worth saving. She left the room to speak with the area director about visas, permits, and other legal things and returned to say to me, “Thank you for coming in. We will be in touch if we are interested.” Whoa, wait a minute here, I thought we had a done deal and all was nice nice. Returning to the frog feeling, I just may be the one that is tossed and has to resurrect to go through this yet again.

Feeling thrown off balance, Ron and I had an appointment with the American teacher who started his own business with his wife. She is working as a kindergarten teacher for a special project bilingual school that is based within a company. This is like a day care for employees taken to the next level. Joshua was full of information as to where they went and how they proceeded and started rattling off the costs. My mind was going cha-ching, cha-ching, as the cash register rang up the items tallying a big bill regardless of whether it is forints or dollars. He used the Ex-Pat Relocation Center, which charged them $500.each for the work and residency permits, then the attorney cost them $1,000 and the list goes on and on. It still seemed like a good idea by the time we were finished. He is working on a Hungarian-English journal for Hungarian writers and he teaches ten hours a week. He and his wife bought an apartment and they are able to live off her salary and bank his own. Joshua and a three others have started a writer’s group, holding meetings two Tuesdays a month. I plan on going to the next meeting. He also shared that they have these new friends, Hungarians, who opened the first all children’s bookstore in Budapest. They are looking for someone to do a Story Hour and I think I am going to volunteer for that post. Speaking of bookstores, it is amazing that you cannot walk two blocks without passing a bookstore. We have not seen so many bookstores anywhere, ever. There are even booksellers in the subway tunnels. Every bookstore is always filled with people and most of the bookstores are independents, though there are some chains. Damon had said during our brunch that this is one of the most literate countries in all of Europe. We see all of the American authors with their books in the windows and get very excited until we realize the titles are in Hungarian.

We were having dinner with Damon that night. It was his birthday and we took him out for dinner. We went to one of his favorite restaurants, but it was a special wine tasters dinner and reserved seating only. They were serving a fixed six-course menu and five wines for a little over $20.00 a person. I was grateful that we did not stay, since that would have been well over what I had planned on spending for dinner for three. His second choice was a delightful little restaurant done in dark woods and cozy. It had a Dutch name, the Amstel and the feel of the Dutch pervaded the establishment. After dinner, we had cake for him at our place. Since he works for the Embassy, we discussed our plans with him and he thought they were wise. He suggested he may be able to offer me some contract work. He covers sixteen countries and has projects that he does not have time for, so though perhaps I could assist. One project he had in mind was writing the curriculum for a content-based English class for police officers in Lithuania. He would pay for my transportation, hotel, meals, and for the work. It would be great experience if this comes to fruition.

When Damon left at midnight, I logged on to read the e-mail. There was a message from the Associate Director of Berlitz. She said that the supervisor that interviewed me was so impressed; she wanted to ask me in for another interview. I e-mailed back that I would love to come in at her convenience, but that we would be in Vienna on Wednesday.

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Orientation at My New Job

Orientation at My New Position: The Ups and Downs of Living Abroad

That first glorious call that I had been waiting for came in this morning; the first school that I had interviewed with wanted me to come in for an office orientation this afternoon. They had a student for me. The meeting was set for 2:00 pm. I had to reevaluate the four shirts and three pants we had brought with us to see how I could look a bit different than the first time, but still somewhat professional. A different sweater with the same pants and different tie would distract the eye of those that saw me the first day. Plus on the first day, I did not remove my coat during the interview, so I was most covered anyway.

The rest of the morning was devoted to reading and writing for me. Ron finds little projects for himself along the way. He spends a lot of time in the grocery stores, pastry shops, coffee shops, and lately reading. He has investigated Hungarian classes, chose the school he wants to attend and will start in February. Ron has also really taken control of finding an apartment using the realtor I found on the Internet. He regularly checks their listings and goes to look at the buildings exteriors. Many of the apartments have photos on the Internet, which saves the realtor of showing people numerous apartments that you may not be interested in. When he found one that met my requirements of being close to the tram or subway, he asked to be shown the apartment.

We did have to have a discussion about his looking for work. Though he is retired and I can respect the fact that he does not want to work full-time, it has become evident that he needs to find a job in order to get a work permit, which in turn will allow him to get a residency permit. As of January 1, 2002, the law has changed similar to the rest of the European Union. We can only spend ninety days out of six months in the country. After ninety days, you have to leave for six months before you are allowed to reenter. Ron had two choices: find a part-time job or ask our friend Randall if he wanted a roommate in Slovakia for his outcast time in Hungary. He admitted that he was phobic about interviewing, so we did practice sessions of typical questions to help ease his nerves.

Upon my arrival at Ameuropa, the school that hired me first, I immediately had the sense that something was wrong. The receptionist asked that I sit in the library to wait. While there, I could hear the director on the phone in an animated voice using multiple octaves of expression. My inner voice said that this was about me even without understanding a word of Hungarian other than igen, which is ‘yes’. When she finished the call, she and her assistant came in to meet with me. She apologized profusely stating that the first student she had assigned me decided that he only wanted a teacher who was fluent in German. This student is the CEO of the largest construction company in Hungary and is from Germany. His last teacher from this school was from Germany and has since returned. When she left, he put his lessons on hold and now was ready to resume them again. He felt that she was able to explain things better to him in German when he did not understand them in English. Although this is missing part of the point of learning a language, if you are a high powered CEO, you get to make demands. Therefore, I was on hold until they have more enrollments.

My fear has been that we will not get positions that will give us what we need for our Work Permits, which are necessary for our Residency Permits, which are necessary for us to stay here over ninety days. None of the permits can be initiated until I have my original diploma and Ron is in the same situation. His original is neatly filed in New Jersey also. As of January 1, 2002, the new law is that you have to have this initiated within the ninety days of your tourist visa or you have to leave the country for three months and then return. The other glitch is that you are supposed to return to your country of origin to have the Residency Permit issued. In our case, we would have to return to New York City or Washington, D.C. to have them done. It only takes one hour to complete the process, but flying there and back for one hours worth of work seems ridiculous. I e-mailed my friend Daphnee asking her to go to the storage unit and dig our all of the official forms that we could possibly need: diplomas, birth certificates, and in my case my name change certificate and then Fed Ex it to us. She and her partner are the only ones who have access to the unit.

With the director being such a warm and kind person, I had no problem with sharing these concerns with her. I also said that I had read on the realtor’s website, this suggestion about foreigners starting their own business here in Hungary. This gives them tax advantages, residency advantages, and the opportunity to purchase property. She strongly recommended that if we were planning to stay for any length of time, we should think about a business and buying property within the next year or two. She said the economic forecast is that the property is going to skyrocket when Hungary joins the European Union in 2004. She also gave me the name and number of another American teacher who just did the same thing.

Like my mind is not already on overload, this just gave me more to think about. When I returned home, Ron was already there. When I asked how the apartment hunting went, he said one apartment, which is on the web, had a circular bed in two bedrooms, with a canopy covered in a sheer material. The bedspreads were made of red velvet and the rest of the apartment was decorated in the same vein. When he questioned the realtor about the previous occupant, it seems that this was owner occupied by a single man. Nix that apartment! The other apartment he went to see, he remarked, “I hate to tell you about this one.” Thinking that it was just as atrocious as the first, I responded that we would just keep looking. Ron said that the second apartment was wonderful and then went into detail about its attributes. We agreed that if he liked it so much, we would go together to look at it and see if it was worth pursuing. He called the realtor before I had finished the sentence.

Discussing what I had been told about starting a business, we decided that it was probably a good idea. The one drawback is that we have to have $10,000 in a Hungarian bank account for at least two weeks while the paperwork goes through. We are going to be even more grateful for the Care packages we received, since it will be a really tight budget for the next few months. I called Joshua, the American teacher who started his business and arranged for coffee for the next day, so that we could pick his brain.

Then the phone started ringing and two more schools invited me for interviews. It is amazing how things start happening all at once. Due to this heavy increase in activity, I had to go purchase a date book to keep everything organized. Our social life is picking up as well.

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A New Contact

A New Contact

A few days ago, our friend Myrtis e-mailed me with the name and e-mail address of someone she has known through the English teachers circle that she has cultivated over the years. Damon is a Regional English Language Officer with the U. S. Embassy here in Budapest. He is a Regional Director, so his territory covers sixteen countries. I had e-mailed him and we set up a brunch for today at one of the local hotels that have buffet brunches.

We seemed to know each other as soon as we made eye contact in the lobby. The buffet was a smaller version of our Christmas Eve dinner buffet, but no less substantial and visually appealing. This buffet had far fewer fish options than the holiday buffet so it was without question more attractive to my very much appreciated taste buds. Champagne was included which was a bonus feature.

It is always disappointing when you anticipate a blind date being successful and it turns into a memory that needs turbo repression and then Prozac for a month to recover from it. That was what like Christmas Days disaster felt like. It also makes you shy away from repeating the process, but as the cliché goes, you have to get right back on the horse and try again. Meeting Fernando and having it be a positive experience, can us the confidence to try again. Damon was no disappointment. He is gregarious, humorous, informative, and shares a number of common interests with the two of us. We spent a fleeting three hours at brunch that were relaxing and stimulating simultaneously. Damon said that he was sure that he could find some professional work for me within all of his countries, with me as a consultant. This was certainly something that I was hoping for, but was not going to introduce the idea on our first meeting. At the end of the meal, we arranged for the three of us to go out on Tuesday night for dinner to celebrate Damon’s birthday. Our social circle is starting to evolve.

From brunch, we only had an hour before we were due to go to the ballet. I thought we were going to a modern ballet at 5:00 pm. The theater is a warmly inviting, but small building. The interior must have been refurbished in the recent past, since it is in excellent condition. Our seats were in the balcony and as it turned out, we had seats on the side in one of the little compartments that overhang the orchestra. I had this flashback to all of the pictures I had seen as a child of President Lincoln sitting in the Ford Theater in his private box. I scanned the audience below for a John Wilkes Boothe look-alike, but thankfully, there were none. The walls of the theater are painted in polychrome layers of light beige like clean sand on a beautiful beach trimming the insets of tangerine mixed with country cream, and the background color was a mocha brown like a rich coffee with lots of milk. The seats were dark forest green plush with intaglio set designs of leaves of assorted shapes. Bare wood floors of a pine color on the downstairs floor was in sharp contrast to the rich colored wood that created the balconies. The wood at first glance reminds one of a cherry wood, but it had an orangey tint to it. There were two levels of these extended balcony boxes on either side of the theater, with six in each level. Columns of the distinctive woods separated the boxes, while the restraining wall of the box was spindled and bowed outward. The railings along the tops were covered in the same material as the seating. Each box had a coat hanger, a mirror, four seats, and a door for privacy.

All that I knew about tonight’s performance was that it was Carmina Burana. Since I am musically illiterate, this meant nothing to me. I thought it was some woman who choreographed modern ballet. I can hear my friend Howard, the professional musician, laughing as he is reading this. Music may not be my forte, if you will pardon the pun, but dance of any kind will hold my attention for hours, so I was willing to participate in this cultural outing.

The stage looked like a wheat field that had just been combined, with all of the little stubs left in random patterns on the soil top. The other visual that it reminded me of was a home haircut that was anything but a success; a little patch here, a bald spot, and then another little patch elsewhere. It was curious what was to follow. There was no orchestra. Music was electronically produced, but the quality was excellent, though in Latin. The dancers wore costumes that looked like street people with designer threads. The men wore beige, brown, gray or a combination. They had loose fitting Asian type pants, with jackets that reached their knees and bare chests. Each jacket was different designs along with the loose fitting nature of the clothes are reasons to lead one to think of a homeless person’s wardrobe. The women in contrast all wore white and almost toga like short dresses, all of the same design.

With the music in Latin and no libretto, the interpretation of the dance was left to your own imagination. Our analysis was that the people were peasants who feared death and the demons that provoked horror into their lives. They were however, able to expose the evil for the simple form that it really was and thus detracting all of its power over them. The women did a ritual bathing and then the men offered them symbolically to the sun. At one point, when there was still evil, there were long chains hanging from the ceiling. The dancing spiraled through the chains, but when the sacrifice was over, the chains fell from the ceiling one by one. They freed themselves of the chains that restrained them. It was an incredible show of talent and endurance.

I have always had great admiration for dancers and if I had not suffered with a butterball body from my youth, my secret dream was to be a dancer. Unfortunately, I was heavier at birth than most dancers and you have to have some control over your body. To be a dancer you have to be coordinated and I had not mastered that until my thirties. By then, any chances of being agile and able to contort my body were long gone. You know that you are not really meant to be a dancer when you bend over to tie your shoes and you fall over. Of if you are standing still you need to hold something for fear of losing your balance. When I was a child, I wore an EEE width shoe. It was like standing on those solid platforms that hold portable basketball hoops. As I got older, they changed to a C width, which made me top heavy. I am like one of those inflatable punching dolls that are weighted down with sand, but if I am punched, ribbed, or knocked into, I go down and do not bounce back up.

Applause has never occurred to me to be to be a cultural issue. At the end of the performance, there is applause. The difference is it is orchestrated applause. Everyone in the audience claps at the same tempo and timing. It was the strangest thing I have witnessed in a long time. It was so coordinated; you would have thought there was a conductor in front showing us the beat. First they start with clap, pause, clap, pause, clap, clap, clap for one minute. Then it is clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, pause, pause, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. Then we return to the first rendition once again, and alternate. It seems that there is a different pattern depending on who is taking the curtain bow. When it is the whole cast, it is one pattern. It changes to another when it is each individual performer, and yet another, which I did not delineate for the stars. They also take six, no kidding; six curtain calls, before every one leaves the theater. Standing ovations here do not seem to exist here! It is so coordinated, I thought for sure that the seats were wired with electricity to give a stimulated response, you know the zap and clap type of audience appreciation.

The evening was topped off at Spaghetti Ice Coffee parlor. We had our cappuccinos with which to delve into the meaning of Carmina Burana, modern dance, and life as a thin young person with complete control of their body.

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Peeking Into My Mailbox

Peeking Into My Mailbox

Our friend Marsha, the angel who bought my car, sends such wonderful feedback to the chapters and I really appreciate it. Here is where I will let you be a voyeur into my e-mail box.

Marsha: The trip sounded so wonderful. And I loved reading about it. You are so descriptive that I can almost feel the fog around the bell tower, taste the pizza, hear the silence on the deserted streets, and I loved it! This is a chapter I will read over and over.

Responding to this, I mentioned to her that I was going to rewrite some of the earlier chapters, edit all of it, and then try to get it published when we reach whatever natural conclusion to stop writing this occurs. I thought I had saved the particular reply from Marsha, to this statement, but I cannot find it so I will tell you from memory.

Marsha’s response to this was that I would need to add more suspense and sex to really make it a bestseller. She suggested that I be hanging from a tram that was going 60 miles an hour, by my fingertips and Ron had to rescue me. (Folks, if this were ever close to reality, let us just plan my funeral now).

Ron read Chapter Nineteen and said to me, "We still had plenty of time waiting for the train after I got my tea (four minutes), but you made it sound like we were running for it. I said, "You read what Marsha wrote about adding more action and sex to have a best seller.” So, with Marsha’s ideas in mind, I rewrote the Vienna scenario and e-mailed it back to her. The rewrite goes like this: Ron insisted on getting tea at the Vienna train station, knowing that we only had minutes to catch the train. Just as he boarded the train took off one the minute printed in the schedule. I had to run mightily to catch the train as it was speeding down the tracks at fifty miles an hour. With one last shred of energy left from my marathon race, I took one leap for the door Ron held open for me. By my nails, I was able to grasp the frame of the door. After a time, Ron was able to drag me into the safety of the train car, but only after my body was battered and abused as I was flying in the wind like a tattered flag, from hitting, trees, poles, and people who thought that the piñata had finally arrived in Eastern Europe. By the time I was rescued, we were so grateful for my salvation that we…” (If I tell you the rest, you will not have a bit of incentive to purchase the final book.)

Ron responded, "Okay, I will not complain anymore."

Marsha: Oh my Gosh, that made me laugh out loud and everyone came to stand in my doorway to see what was so funny! The tattered flag and piñata parts really got me! So! I see you have it in you, for the trashy novel big money maker bestseller type of book, as well as the travel Arthur Frommer type. Thanks for the best laugh of the day. Actually of the week! Love you. Marsha

I may save this and make sure it appears on the back cover of the final product!

In the meanwhile, our friend Leinani has been a busy one shopping for some essentials for us. I found that on Bank of America online, I could set up anyone at all as a payee. So, Leinani is getting me another pair of black Lee jeans, since I only have one pair that fit with the weight loss, Norton SystemWorks computer software (I could get it here, but only in Hungarian), chap sticks for Ron’s delicate lips, and a bit personal, Metamucil. She shopped around to get the best deals around and sent it out in the mail.

Ron had been aware of this shopping excursion of some time, added, and deleted things from the list as we found them here. When I told him that the goods were on their way, he panicked at the cost of mailing in addition to the cost of the items sent. It was too late; she had mailed them that day. He asked why I could not get jeans here instead? Well, since a shirt cost me $30.00, I think the $28.00 Lee jeans with postage are still a better deal. Here they cost over $50.00 and do not look like they are the same quality. Since it was a done deal, there was no turning back now.

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