Sunday, February 10, 2013

Mangalica Fesztivál or This Little Piggy Goes...

Friday was a lovely day, cold, but clear. It would have been a perfect day for the Mangalica Pig Festival, but our guest did not venture to breakfast until after 12:30. He is a repeat guest, so we cut him some slack. However, by that time, were both immersed in projects and put the festival off to another day. For the uninitiated, these are curly haired pigs indigenous to Hungary. Plan B was to go to the Cézanne exhibit at the Fine Arts Museum.

Since my ticket allows me entrance to all rooms, I started with the Günther Uecker special exhibit. Uecker’s work is something I would never have conceived of, almost all of his work is done with nails. He uses nails, like in hardware nails. As simplistic as some of the projects seemed, once you really studied them, a feeling of appreciation developed. For instance, a round platform covered with nails pounded in randomly seemed less than artistic; then the barest movement sent a signal turning on a light along with a motor turning the wheel. As light bounced off of the nail heads, creating shadows with the nail stem, it was fascinating.

From here we moved on to attempt to appreciate Cézanne, an artist I have never really cared for in the past. This has been such an exulted showing, I felt obligated to partake. Admittedly, I did find most of it appealing. There were many pieces from other artists showing how Cézanne copied their style as he was developing his own style. There was so much reading; thankfully, it was in English as well as Hungarian, but still an overwhelming amount.

Somewhere half way through, I started feeling sick. My stomach reacted like I hadn’t eaten for days, my head was light and I had a tsunami of sleepiness flood over me. I could barely stand. After a healthy sitting spell, my inclination was to run to the café for something to eat, but instead we continued on, putting food off until later.

In the evening, I was sick once again causing me to retreat to bed at an unreasonably early 11pm. By 4am, I was wide awake with no thoughts of sleep returning any time soon. By 6:45, I finally marched back to try for twenty winks. It worked, not waking until 10:30. With errands to run, the pigs were put on hold yet again, but the weather had turned to snow flurries, so this added to the list of excuses.

Today was do it or lose it; the last day of the festival. What was an excellent day on Friday to be outdoors, turned into a mediocre day on Saturday and a horrendous one on Sunday. A very snow filled night has made the sidewalks slushy and slippery. The festival was larger than years past, but the majority of booths were selling cooked food, pálinka, cheeses, honey, and crafts. It took much slipping and sliding, being covered in snow, and passing many booths where I could not partake of the food before we finally found the pigs. Honestly, they were the main reason we were there. 



Here are some before and after pictures of the pigs.
Pigging out
Three Little Pigs, which will go to market?


The finale




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