Did Szent Mikulás Visit You?

Did you polish your best boot(s) and put them on the windowsill or in front of the door to be filled by Szent Mikulás? If you did and you were good, you name will be recorded in his ledger. Szent Mikulás will fill your boots with presents from his great bag of presents and treats.

Unless you are wise enough to get extra-large boots for the occasion, there will not be much room for the candies, tangerines, oranges, walnuts, apples, and chocolate Mikulás figures that the saint leaves behind. There seems to be a bit of egocentric behavior going on with the chocolate selfies.

Krampus (Krampusz) is the ugly devil who accompanies saintly goodie man. He is supposed to be a frightening figure with horns and chains, dressed in fur. That is old school. After the series of horror films like Silent Night, Deadly Night, it is challenging for any devil to outdo scariness. For those of us who prefer naughty things in life that bring some unadulterated pleasure all year round, we subjected or treated to, depending on your point of view, to receiving a golden wad of sticks or a wooden spoon. For the bawdy among us, this could be much better than an orange!

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Blogging Rules 1 and 2

The first two rules you learn in blogging is

1.) to post regularly to maintain your readers' interest.

2.) never break rule number 1.

Though it seems like forever since I wrote last, it hasn't been that long. What I have been doing in the meanwhile is trying to scrape the mold  off of my body. With the exception of one day, it has rained here every day since May 10th. Some days it rained all day, but few. Most days it rained for an hour or two with dark bloated "I am going to get you" clouds still lurking  above ready to pounce upon us with more water. 

The good news is that I lucked out with the State Exams. My days of confinement have whittled down from seven to four. The first of the series is out of the way and it took less than half a day. Yowzer! June 2 did not include me, but I was uncertain. Due to a typo, I was exonerated from June 9, they decided they did not need me on June 16, so that only leave BA State Exams on June 23 and 25th. Well, I do have a doctoral dissertation defense I need to attend on June 7th, being made part of the committee without my raising my hand to volunteer. They needed to fill a minority quota and I was it. I believe I am the ONLY US native speaker with a doctorate in the entire university. Being the largest university in Central Europe and one that offers 68 Masters degrees, this is quite something. I would venture to guess that the number of native English speakers of any nationality with a doctorate, within our university system, would still be few enough to stuff all of us into a phone booth and still have room left over to dial home.

As I said, I was uncertain about today. I had filled the exam dates on multiple calendars. One of the calendars has all of the dates for exams. Other calendars had some of the dates, but no remarks. Then dates were added and deleted, causing much consternation and confusion as when I needed to be where. To avoid mental conflict, I went into school this morning, found my name was no on any committee, but went to my office to work.


I spent from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm working on my classes for the fall. The first day of classes for me is September 14th, yet here I am in June working on the course syllabi and schedules, finding new and hopefully better books, and so on. This is because I have such a hefty "To Do" list for this summer, mostly work filled and not necessarily fun in the fashionable sense of the word, that time is too precious to waste. Three of my classes are no squared away, checked off of the list. One is almost complete, but I am changing books, so need to read it again for scheduling. Then I am teaching a new masters level course Social Problems in the US. After ordering six books for that class to decide which to use, I had them send to a friend who consults here often to bring back from the US. What slipped my mind was that she was married in March, so though I had the books shipped to her home, she had been at her husband's home, 150 miles away. Now those books will not be arriving until August when she returns again. The joys of teaching out of your own country.


Speaking of books, Frommer's owes me 10 copies of my own book. They contacted me for shipping info, but it turns out that they will ship them from jolly ole England, where they have not been printed yet. That puts me on hold. It would seem reasonable they could spend a few extra to ship from the US, where it has been out for weeks now. We have received five phone calls for bookings from the US. Strangely, they prefer that to e-mail or even using our Jajah free call button on the website. Go figure.

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This Commercial Break is Brought to You...

A commercial break as in consumerism, business and leisure travel has been severely interrupted by a volcanic explosion in Iceland. When volcanoes spread their ash, it goes beyond countries and covers continents. Winds prevailed in sparing the capital city of Reykjavik in addition to other more populated areas. Considering this is Iceland, those populated areas would be those with more than one hundred people. Icelandic experts say the activity of the volcano is not letting up, which means that further traffic chaos is in the offing. Interestingly, commercial flights are able to make it to the US, due to direction of the ash coverage. Most countries in Western and Central Europe have closed airports. Budapest airport was closed as of noon today and was waiting for further reports. However, if other European airports remain closed, whether or not this airport is open will not determine who is going to fly.

MÁV-Start the Hungarian railroad system has been providing extra cars on trains bound for Zurich, Munich, Berlin and Bucharest on Sunday night to accommodate travelers stranded by the closure of the airport. The rail company said that it will steadily monitor rail traffic and the sale of international tickets and provide more international trains, if necessary.

The concentration of pollution particles rose fivefold in Budapest in a matter of hours when ash from the volcano reached the city, but other areas of Hungary have had it up to eightfold.

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• Views of the Ash Plume Over Europe (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)

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The Fine Arts and Agricultural Museums

I sent a note out to all of the American Studies students that I would be visiting all of the museums in Budapest during the summer. This was an open invitation for any of them to join me if they wished and we would settle somewhere for a coffee and chat when we were finished. As I plan my visits, I post the time and date and then wait to see if anyone joins me.

The first excursion to be posted was the Fine Arts Museum with the possibility of the Agricultural Museum to follow, energy pending. The Fine Arts Museum has a free one-hour tour in English at 11:00 am daily, after paying the admission of 1,500 Huf. A well-trained group of volunteers organizes it; many are ex-pat wives whose husbands are working here. I arrived at 10:30, sitting on the steps waiting to see if I were to go it alone or if I would have company. At 10:45, two of my students arrived, which was a thrill for me. Although they are both university students and one is an Art History major in addition to American Studies, they were not afforded a discount for entry. That is a pity!!

The tour consisted of about 20 people, mostly Americans from what I could overhear. There were two tour guides, one from Florida, and the other from Alaska. Today, we were to explore the Dutch Master’s gallery. Before starting in the gallery, we learned some history of the building. It was built for the Millennium celebration 100 years ago, so this is an important anniversary year. It houses the National collection of non-Hungarian art with exhibits dating back to the Egyptian era. It is considered one of the most impressive galleries in Central Europe as its home to works by famed artists such as El Greco, Goya, Rembrandt and Rubens. The foundation of the collection was part of the Esterházy family’s private holdings, once one of the most influential aristocratic families in the country. We have had guests who are museum curators in other countries who had explained just how impressive and important this collection is to the art world. I had no idea.

The group went from select painting to select painting as we learned some history of Dutch painters from the 17th century. The pictures were chosen by the docents conducting the tour and we found out later that with different docents, we may have viewed other paintings or a different gallery altogether. The explanations were detailed, but first the docents made us think by asking provocative questions about each painting. They fully involved the participants, which added to the experience. My students were enthralled, adding to my enjoyment of the whole experience, each of us learning new perspectives of looking at a painting and what details to look for.

There is a special exhibit of Titian at the museum at this time and one of my students had a special interest in the painting Portrait of the man with blue-green eyes from the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The museum had the exhibit in his Italian name Tizian and I had no clue who he was. It was not until I saw Titian that I recognized the artist. He is one of the key figures in the history of Western art, considered to have been the greatest 16th-century Venetian painter. We went to see this masterpiece and then some others on display in the same area.

I had thought we would break for a coffee, then if the students wanted to join me, we would continue on to the Agricultural Museum. One of them had to catch a train, so we parted ways and I walked to the park. I spotted a dog in the little lake and went to investigate. A young man was standing on shore and throwing a thick stick for his dog to retrieve from the water. The dog was obviously finding this great fun. When he brought the stick back to shore, if it were not immediately tossed again, he would start barking impatiently. As this scene played out, I snapped pictures of the happenings. The young man asked if I would e-mail him copies of the pictures and gave me his address. I learned that the dog’s name is Mazsda in Hungarian and Raisin in English. Mazsda allowed me to toss the stick for him a couple of times, so I was able to get my doggie fix for the day.

After a coffee in the park, I ventured over toward the Agricultural Museum. To be honest, this would have been the last museum on my list to see. The only part I had ever seen of it other than the outside was the one exhibit viewable from the souvenir shop attached. It did not look impressive or interesting. I had feelings of dread going in it, but if I were to commit to all museums, I was not going to change my own rules, but I could procrastinate them.

Across from the museum is a small chapel. This was the first time I had seen it open so I was curious. It was a lovely little church and after paying 100 Huf to the woman in charge of the wrought iron gate, I was allowed in. An order of priests are stationed here and it is still in use. From the English sign in the lobby, it is St. Gellért’s chapel where two popes have celebrated mass for different occasions. Behind the altar was a lovely mosaic type art piece that grabs the eye immediately. I was alone in the chapel at the time of my visit and spent a restful 30 minutes reflecting on the surroundings. When I came out, the gate guardian motioned that I was now allowed to go up to the choir loft as part of my admission.

Upstairs, there is not much to see other than a small non-descript organ and a few folding chairs. I had hoped that the higher view would be a better angle to photograph the art behind the altar, but it was partially obstructed by a beam and light poles from the ceiling. Upstairs in not worth the climb, but the rest was refreshing.

Outside the Agricultural Museum, there is a huge statue of a Karolyi Sandor. I found that he is responsible for modernizing Hungarian agricultural and taught the methods, hence the pile of books next to him.

Procrastination aside, I went into the museum. It was a pleasant surprise that it was free unless you wanted to take photos. A photo ticket was 500 Huf, but having an air of prejudice of what I would see, I did not bother to purchase one. I have to admit, I fell victim to jumping to conclusions. The museum was wonderful. This is the information discovered from their brochure. This is the biggest museum of agriculture in Europe. It is in the Castle of Vajdahunyad on Széchenyi Island. The architect was Ignác Alpár who combined many different styles utilizing parts of historic buildings in Hungary’s history. It was originally built for the Millennium as an exhibition hall and became the museum in 1897.

On the main floor are 12 permanent collections. This is where I encountered the term archeozoology, which I had never heard before. It is the zoological information gathered through the discovery of old animal bones. The building is 5200 square meters with marble floors and staircases, carved crystal chandeliers, stained glass windows, magnificently painted walls, and truly fascinating exhibits. For a museum that I had expected would hold my attention for 10 minutes, kept me captivated for 2 ½ hours.

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