Christmas Day

I have been reading the book We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. In spite of the author’s name, it is a woman. The book won the Orange Award for Literature in 2005. We picked up the book in South Africa last year, but I never got around to reading it. Ron had and strongly urged me to read it soon. Well I finished last night before going trying to find the Sandman. However, my mind was in a tidal wave of thoughts about ATM cards, credit cards, worrying about cash if the hotel could not get our card to work, running out of money before our trip is over, which is really quite ironic. For the first time ever, we have enough cash in our accounts to cover this trip in its entirety without having to use credit cards at all. However, with Bank of America putting a stop on my ATM card and our Hungarian bank’s ATM not working, we are having to struggle with the cash on hand. Ron’s card has worked once. As a last resort, we will try his again, but the sadist/masochist duality in me does not want to draw money from that account. After all, we have over 3,000 Euros sitting in a bank in Hungary waiting to be drawn on for this trip, so I really don’t see the reason we should pay Bank of America $5.00 for every withdrawal PLUS their currency conversion fee on top of it. With these boil, boil, toil, and trouble thoughts, sleep was elusive. When it finally arrived, my slumbering nightmares were about school shootings and watching someone prepare for the next one. This is Kevin’s fault or rather Ms. Shriver’s. She is solely responsible for these transmissions into my subconscious, because for certain if they were mine, I would be lining up bankers, not innocent school children.

Knowing that Santa did not find us, there was no real motivation to crawl out of bed when the alarm went off other than knowing Ron rested well and had his heart set on more explorations. He was sweet enough to go the Italy for coffee and pastries while I showered and dragged myself together.

As soon as we reached the lobby, we told the desk we wanted to pay our bill. If we had to arrange for money, we wanted to know if they were going to have issues with our card also. It went through like a charm, averting one cardiac arrest. When I explained to the desk clerk our problem with the restaurant last night, she explained they had a chip reader also, but were trained in the other method also for instances like this. She claims there is no reason why the restaurant should not have been able to run our card. We are having to leave here at 3:30 am to take a taxi to the airport in KL for an Air Asia flight at 7:00 am. If I did not have enough material to produce a trilogy of full length nightmare movies, here is an added bonus. Air Asia has a luggage weight limit of 15 kg. When we left Vienna, my carry on, which did have the bulk of our clothes and six books was weighing in at 42 kg. We have dumped things, have not purchased a thing that has not been consumable, and hopefully they will know how to run a credit card machine to charge us for the excess baggage. There is nothing left to leave behind.

Being conscientious, we went straight to a money changer and converted more Euros and then on to Libra, the restaurant we owed the money to clearing ourselves of debt. It was 11:30 am, but they were not open for the lunch trade. Ringing the bell and pounding on the door did not produce any results either. We knew there was a historic mosque in the area, so we hunted it down and found it on Harmony Road. This road is so aptly named because there is a mosque, a Buddhist temple and a Hindu shrine with two blocks. When we were in Thailand, the Buddhist temples really spoke to my soul, but there is something about a Hindu temple that speaks to my imagination. This one in particular was dedicated to Ganesh, the elephant headed god. When I started to take a picture of a small Ganesh statue, a monk ran up to me waving his hands. I said “No pictures”, but without responding he placed a lei of flowers around Ganesh’s adequate neck and then signaled that now he was ready for his close-up.

Ron being the ever optimist, we went back to try out the other hop-on hop-off bus to see if we could get to the Portuguese neighborhood, though I reminded him that most likely they were all Catholic and nothing would be open. We entered the bus for two Ringgits for an all day ticket. We did the full circuit taking close to two hours of our time, touring neighborhoods reminding me of the time I lost my way in NYC and ended up in Harlem, back in the early 70s. We never did get close to the area of the city Ron wanted to see, so we let it go and returned to our starting point.

Again, we tried Libra to pay our outstanding bill, but still at 3:30 the place was closed tight. The neighboring business was open and when I questioned him, he said they would open at 5:30. He then asked if he could help and when I told him why we were insistent on finding someone, he called the manager for us. We arranged to leave the money with the neighbor. Cynically, I will now have to monitor Ron’s charge card to make sure that charge did not actually go through. We stopped at the Geographer’s Café for a beer where Christmas carols were BLASTING. I really cannot take it seriously hearing “I Am Dreaming of a White Christmas” when Ron and I are the whitest things around. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” are unnerving also in this environment. Perhaps they don’t play “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” because of moral issues; hmmm…I wonder.

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Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve and it is feels like Fourth of July outside, with temperatures around 85 degrees and 85% humidity, but it is better than the 30 degrees in Budapest. We went to Italy for breakfast or at least the bakery called Italy. We cannot get enough of the Portuguese custard pies. When they will appear again on our radar is anyone’s guess; best to fill up on them now.

Walking to the historic city center, we stopped at the Dutch Harbor Café to check their hours. This is the one place we have seen that offers WiFi. We shall return, but onward to the tourism office. I am surprised Ron waited this long before sniffing it out; it is usually the first thing on his agenda. His motto is “Leave no tourism office undiscovered and then rape and pillage their knowledge”. When the tour office is especially convenient, he has been know to make frequent trips in to the office during a stay in one city. Workers have learned that if they are not on Ativan before he arrives, they will be by the time he leaves. He prepares his list of questions, before entering, but this list never seems to diminish as they are answered, but rather grow exponentially. I witnessed one young worker who actually was able to able for retirement by the time we left the chairs facing him. Sad really to see someone so young, age so quickly.

Armed with all of the information he thought we would need for our two days stay, we left. Directly across the street is the Museum of History, next to where the Christ Church is located, not a gathering ground for tourist schlock and bicycle taxis. They are not so efficient, but they are memorable for those who have not seen them before. Each competes with the others in a gaudiest bike from Mr. Black’s worst decorated bike list. As if the lime, hot pink and canary yellow flowers are not enough, some have attached generators to their tri-wheeled taxi in order to have miniature Christmas lights blink on and off while you are serenaded by East Indian love songs in that high pitched shrill nails of the chalkboard sort of undulating vocal noise. Needless to say, we passed up this cultural opportunity.

The entrance fee for the Museum on History was five Ringgits, but also included the Museum of Ethnography, Museum of Education, Museum of Literature, St. Paul’s Church, the Governor’s Museum, and still another governmental museum. With the exception of the last two, we did them all. It was an engaging hour. Well, I exaggerate, but it was not too much longer than this. The Museum of Literature was especially disappointing. The first room was a diorama of Folktales, which I had high hopes, but then after that was just a propagation of Islam and Arabic with famous letters written by one of the Sultans to the King of England. It was not until the last room, that Malay cultural literature was continued, but none of the descriptions were in English.

For an educational museum, there was not much to see, but a diorama with a teacher holding a stick over a child’s head while they copied from the board onto their individual slates. Other exhibits were old report cards and school memorabilia. One of the other guests was a man who had gone to school here and recounting his memories for his son. Listening to this was worth the price of admission to the whole complex. From the son’s accent, they have been living in North America.

Based on Ron’s investigations, we knew there where two hop-on hop-off buses that stopped on this circle. He had wanted to see the Portuguese section of the city and this was the best way to get there. One bus is a double-decker while the other is single and they have different routes. According to the ‘tour’ bus map, the red double-decker should have taken us to this Eurasian part of the city, so we hopped on and paid our five Ringgits for a full days travel. Unlike in most cities, where a hop-on and off bus offers a commentary about what you are seeing, this one was silent with the exception of the jabbering of the locals who use this as local transport. After two blocks, we made a stop, and then we went for over thirty minutes before the next stop. Just like a local bus, you have to tell the driver when you want to get off, but this was not clear to us. We rode the whole circuit. With the hypermarket Tesco and a mall being the highlights of the ride, we realized we were not getting any closer to anything Portuguese then when we left Budapest.

Actually, the real highlight was waiting for the bus. By the bus stop is a gentleman with three snakes of varying size and variety along with a huge iguana. The iguana, a café latte brown with some black stripes on his tail, was quite dashing and with his three inch nails, making it certain he could cut a rug both figuratively and literally. His head had a mass of horns coming out of it like a deformed unicorn, but such a pleasant docile personality to spend hours being on display. We never actually saw him move, I hope he was not stuffed. Unquestionably, the snakes were real. For ten Ringgits, the man would drape his 15 foot yellow snake around your neck, take your picture and then use his portable photo printer to print it. If yellow was not your color, he had other choices in patterns of browns and blacks. Quite clever, but since I have posed with snakes before, both the reptile and mammal versions, I declined the offer to model for him. It occurred to me that he must have to give the snakes a rest once a week or so for feeding. Who would want a snake wrapped around their neck with a big bulge half the way down its body?

Being Christmas Eve, Ron had to do the Catholic thing. We stopped at St. Francis Xavier’s Church to find out masses were at 7:30 pm in Tamil and10:30 pm in English. Back to the hotel to read and rest, we left again at 6:30 to ensconce me at the Dutch Harbor Café across the street from the church, where I would check e-mail and hope my battery did not run out before Ron reappeared. The owner is American, born in England and lived most of his life in Minnesota. He was a commercial pilot and after retiring was offered a teaching position by Air Asia. He opened this restaurant because his friends told him if he was going to whine about not finding a good pizza or other Euro or American food menus, he should open his own restaurant. It sits on the Dutch Harbor, hence the name.

When Ron returned, he stated that being a Tamil language mass, he was the only lily white person there. The church was overflowing into the courtyard and beyond to the edge of the street. He was not in awe of the music, partially due to the language, but also the instruments were too different for his ears.

We went looking for a recommended restaurant that serves a particular version of Indian food indigenous to Malaysia, but when we found it, it was closed. I did not bring my wallet thinking that carrying the backpack with the computer was enough; we were relegated to finding a restaurant that accepted cards. By chance we found one and it must be the gayest restaurant in Malaysia. The ‘hostess’ was so butch she makes my father look like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Each of the waiters was more flaming than the next and we half expected a pyrotechnic display before we left. We verified they took credit cards and agreed that MasterCard was acceptable.

Being a balmy evening, we sat outside with diners at five other tables. We ordered a full meal, being Christmas Eve and all. As the evening progressed, additional tables and chairs were set out on the street to fulfill the growing demand for food and drinks. When we were ready to go, the count was up to twelve tables all filled with customers waiting. Asking for the bill, Ron handed over his charge card. It seemed like an impossibly long time before the waiter retuned and said “I am sorry sir, there is a problem with your card. We have a chip card reader and your credit card does not have the chip.” I had read about this issue in Europe, but would not have imagined it would have appeared here already. Apparently, all of the credit card issuers in Europe are changing their cards to have a computer chip in them. The retailer inserts the card into a reader, negating the need for swiping it; supposedly this is to reduce fraud and problems with the magnetic strips. However, since North American cards do not have this chip, travelers have encountered this problem when traveling. The solution is to tell the retailer to swipe the card the ‘old fashioned’ way as their chip readers are dually capable. They supposedly tried this, but it did not work. I told them to punch in the numbers manually, but they said that did not work either. Between us, we only had 50 Ringgits and the bill was 69. After discussing the matter with the waiter, then the hostess, we finally worked our way to the manager. I kept insisting that if they did it right, it would work fine. Proof was that it worked in KL just days ago. They insisted they were not trying again. We gave them our 50 Ringgits and signed an IOU for 19 more. How humiliating is that? Merry Christmas! Where is Santa Claus when you need him?

When we returned to the hotel at 11:30, the lobby was black and the front door was barred shut. The way things were going it would not have surprised me if we found the only hotel with a curfew and we were locked out of it. As we peered into the window, we saw a security guard who opened the side door for us and had our key ready. Not quite Santa Claus, but he did do in a pinch.

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The Absolutely Last

This is the absolutely last blog entry before we take off on the Lufthansa flight today for Frankfurt, then to Johannesburg, but it has to be done.

My fantastic LP 3 students insisted that I have one more coffee with them before departing, so I carved an hour out of the stress filled days of planning, packing, and preparing to meet with them yesterday. As it turned out, it was good therapy for a number of reasons. The day before, I had problems with paying bills online, one of the documents I had scanned for next semester had to be done over completely, the “To Do” list kept growing instead of shrinking. Conversely, my nerves kept shrinking, not growing. I needed an hour of pure socialization.

We met at California Coffee Company. Seven of them were able to make it. We shared stories of Christmas and I was asked to retell stories of my childhood celebrations, which I did giving the versions from early childhood to later ones. They shared stories of their holiday celebrations too, which enriched the conversation, learning more about each other than classroom time ever allows. Best of all, we had lots of laughter, always the best medicine for stress.

The last story was perhaps the best, as I was about to leave, Imola had a confession. She somehow thought that we had class today; consequently, leaving a present they had for me at home last Thursday. This was the urgent need to meet with me today. They presented me with a pink crepe paper package with a purple ribbon and wire decoratively holding it together. The wrapping looked like a swan, but I had no clue what it could possibly be.

To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. It was a bowl by a ceramicist who I have loved since first coming to Hungary. We have bought many of her pieces of work for gifts, but have never bought one for ourselves. It always seemed like an indulgence we could not rationalize at any moment in time, but always made the promise that ‘some day…’ I was given a beautiful bowl with the colors and style that I would definitely have chosen myself. It could not have been more perfect. I was so taken aback, it was astonishing. Usually, in instances like this, I start bawling like a child and I actually felt it trying to push its way out of my tear ducts. I think the fact that we were in a café allowed me to have some control. Coincidently, two weeks ago, I was thinking about American Christmas ribbon candy and how traditional that was growing up. The other present they gave me was a little metal box with ribbon candy in it. It was amazingly perfect.

After thanking them sincerely for the gifts, Balazs and I ran back to my place, I

walking a light lighter than earlier in the day. Balazs had to run to ELTE’s main campus and took Ron with him to have some papers signed. I grabbed some Euros, ran to the currency exchange to change enough to pay for our annual transportation passes. This year, the cost was 80,850 Huf each. That was 660 Euros, a big chunk of change. I made it to BKV at 3:31 and they close at 3:30, but I snuck in and bought them. The guard was standing at the door to unlock the door for me and let me out, locking the door behind me.

We had translating for Balazs to do, so he stayed on when he returned with Ron and then joined us to meet up with Fulbrighters at the Christmas Market. There, we had a cup of hot wine, then continued to Govinda’s, a vegetarian restaurant for dinner.

After dinner, we all went to the laser light painting show that was on display. They do this outstanding light show on the walls of buildings and on the ground. It is truly amazing and artistic. The artist is a woman named Dóra Oröm and the show will be on display until January 1^st. It was a
spectacular event, an incredible day fill with great people and a wonderful start to a

holiday season and our trip.

Photos by Ron.

Happy Holidays to all and a Healthy, Prosperous, Educational New Year.

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Christmas in Vienna

Ron and I took one of my students, Balazs, to Vienna for the day. He is my unofficial Teaching Assistant and is continually looking for work from us to keep him busy. He is over here whenever we need something translated. Many times, he will stop by just to be social. It amazes me how many hours he can spend with me a day and then later call and see if I want to go for a coffee with him. He is the most determined student I have ever met, who wants to perfect his English. He even makes his roommate speak to him only in English, though his roommate is Hungarian. He really is a delight to be around. We both enjoy him immensely.

Sunday morning, the three of us met with Lynn the Fulbrighter and off we went to Keleti train station for our great adventure to Vienna. Our train was at 9:10 and we found our reserved seats in a smoking compartment since all of us smoke. Ron, Lynn, and Balazs played Scrabble on the way and I read my book. Neither of them had been to Vienna before and we have been there dozens of times, so it was exciting to see it through their eyes. Our mission was to see the Christmas markets and decorations more than the sights.

We arrived a little past noon, the sun was shining brightly, and the sky was clear. We found the first street market within minutes of our arrival. We putzed and puttered at the booths and then decided to stop at a restaurant for lunch. We knew that hot wine was waiting for us back outside, so we just had a snack rather than a meal.

When we bought our wine, the man let us skip paying the 2 Euro deposit on the mugs since I told him we promised to return them. Across from where we were standing, there was a clown making balloon animals. Balazs and Lynn were joking about wanting one and after fifteen minutes, the clown came over to Lynn. He started hitting on her and told her that he does not meet to many women his size or shorter. He made her a dog balloon in pink.

We took them to two of the palaces on the outside. There were Christmas fairs at both. Our public transport was included in

our train ticket fee, so we covered lots of territory walking or by taking trams. By the time we needed to head back to the last train at 8:00 pm, we were tired, but feeling fulfilled. It was an excellent day filled with laughs and merriment with good people. Who could ask for more at the holidays?

These are Ron's pictures.

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Christmas Market

The first weekend of December, we met some Fulbrighters and Ron’s new friend from the museum at the Christmas market. It was the opening weekend and we arranged to get there at 4:45 to see the opening of the Advent window. Unlike years past, there were no live musicians playing on the balcony of Gerbreud’s restaurant as a prelude. There was some recorded music and one of the windows opened to display some unusually non-holidayish gaudy picture of modern art. Each window is sponsored by a different company. The first year we were here, they were all a holiday theme. Since then, they have been the same ugly pictures of abstracts in hideous colors.

The booths are the same year after year too. Once you have been there, you know exactly where each vendor will be year after year. When I regret not buying something one year, I know where to head first the following year. For the uninitiated, it is new and exciting. This is our sixth year, so we go for the gluhwein, the hot spiced wine that is served all over the market. We had dinner there too, some fat sausages with thick mustard and perfectly deep fried potatoes.

It was so crowded, we could not walk around as a group, so we only lasted an hour before others decided to call it a night. The only booth I knew I wanted to return to was where I bought our sugar bowl, creamer, and butter dish last year. We needed another creamer for when Ron makes pancakes for serving the syrup.

Lynn, one of the Fulbrighters came home with us to use our WiFi and called all of her family for a post-thanksgiving greeting via Skype. Normally, she does this at cafés. I can see her sitting in cafés, looking like she is talking to herself in English.

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