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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Christmas in Otavalo -3

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Christmas in Otavalo -2

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Christmas in Otavalo -1

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Scottish Reader

I see I have had a Scottish reader here. We would certainly love to have a Scottish B and B guest. We left Edinburgh last summer with more than 30 Scottish pounds, which we tried changing to British pounds. The 'gentleman' at the exchange claimed he did not have any British pounds, but that the Scottish pounds would be exchangeable anywhere. If we had a guest from there, we could do a private exchange. It seemed to me at the time that we had problems the year before with the extra currency, but was not about to humiliate him by telling him his currency was worthless outside of the islands. When we returned to Hungary, no one would exchange the Scottish pounds. Had I thought about it, I could have changed them for Euros while still in Edinburgh. Too much feisty Fringe Festival frivolity to remember options, I guess.

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Fringe Day 5

Monday, August 6, 2007

1:00 pm The Man Who Planted Trees – Paid 3.75 each on a 2 for 1 sale. This was a puppet show, but excellent. The puppetry was superb and the story was heartwarming. The adults loved it as much as the children, or more so.

2:30 pm Faith Brown and Her Boys in the Buff – Paid 5.50 each for these as we heard so many good reviews. Faith Brown is a well know comic in England. The show was a comedy musical and hysterical. YES, boys were all in the buff by the end. Worth seeing and paying for.

7:00 pm Flamenco con Fusion – 4.50 each on a 2 for 1 sale. We arrived late having gone to the wrong place. Flamenco dancing, music and interesting costumes. Good memories of Argentina.

10:30 Amsterdam Comedy Collective – Paid 4.25 each on a 2 for 1 sale. These Dutch guys are funny, but they are learning the cultural differences of humor. What works at home doesn’t always work abroad just because you translate it. A couple commented "This would have gotten more laughs in Holland." No, these are not the guys that were actually in the show. They had a multitude of different and outrageous flyers.

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Fringe Day 4

Sunday's shows were:

1:00 pm State of Matter – Paid 4 pounds each on a 2 for 1 sale. Eight young men do break dancing, acrobatics, and ballet to all different types of music. Excellent performances and amazing coordination and movements.

9:15 pm The Naked Comedy Showcase – Paid 4.50 pounds each for these on a 2 for 1 sale, but wish we hadn’t. Though we expected the comics to be naked, we also expected them to be funny. We were disappointed. Some members of the audience were taken aback. Duh! What did you think from the title of the show?

10:30 pm The Sound of Music Drag Show – Paid 4.75 on a 2 for 1 after speaking to the performers. They have been playing for 7 years on Melbourne and were invited to come here to perform. We loved the show. They were hilarious, clever, and terrific.

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Fringe Day 3

What we saw today -

12:00pm Forgotten Voices – Free tickets – The stories of survivors of WWI. The characters were all Brits except one American. The lone female had an accent so cockney, we could not understand her. It was touching, but difficult to comprehend some of the accents.

5:25pm Sweet UFO – Free tickets- Thankfully, we did not pay for these. The premise is that this young girl has denied that her father has killed her mother and then disappeared. She believes he was abducted by aliens. Her two friends support this belief by pretending to do night watches with her and they develop a whole world for her fantasy until if all falls apart at the end.

11:00 pm Butch: A Queen’s Struggle to Become a King – One free ticket from the star of the show, but we had to buy one. It was a one man show about butching up his feminine side. Very funny and worth buying a ticket.

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Fringe Day 2

Friday- Our events today

12:15 pm Sting for Nolte – Free tickets - An aspiring Professor of Philosophy ditches everything after his finance gives him tickets to a Sting concert. She did not know he hates Sting and he becomes obsessed with getting Sting to remake all of Nick Nolte’s films. Two person play, excellent performance.

2:45 pm As The Mother of a Brown Boy – Paid 4 pounds each. Based on a true story about a mixed race young man who was bright, top of his class, but mixed with the wrong crowd, got chased by the police and died in a car accident. Dance, multimedia, song. Excellent performance.

5:00 pm Break-Out – 5 pounds each on a 2 for 1 deal – A group of Korean comedy actors’ play about prisoners breaking out of a prison and the guards who try to catch them. Excellent dancing, action, and comedy.

8:30 pm Druthers Precarious – The young girls hawking this show made it sound great. It was 2 for 1 and only four pounds each, so we decided to chance it. This was really existential and otherwise weird. We would not have paid for knowing what we know now. It is about a guy in a dusty attic with suitcases who have never gone anywhere and neither has he. Different characters use overused quotes from philosophy to show him his options. Some good body work, but other wise thumbs down.

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First Full Day in Edinburgh

Our first order of business today was to get our pre-paid tickets for the Fringe Festival. We know that many events are free the first days too, so we scored some freebies and bought others. Here is what we have seen today.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

1:00 pm Potted Potter – 5 pounds each as a 2-1 – Excellent comedy act about the first six of the Harry Potter books all in one hour. Two young men had the adults laughing harder than the children. Well worth the money, even at full price.

3:15 pm Touch – We were approached by the writer and director of this play while hanging out. He convinced us to pony up 5 pound each on a 2 for 1 deal for tickets. It was a great play about a woman who is presumably going to commit suicide and the man who saved her. The savior finds out what life is really about through the rescue. Two person play, great theater.

5:20 pm Extropia – Free tickets - I enjoyed it but Ron did not. Very Orwellian about a time in the future where there was no music. Workers are programmed. The sound effects were fantastic, but we had to leave the show before the end because we had another to go to and this one started late. They had technical difficulty.

6:40 pm God’s Pottery Saves the World – We paid 5 pounds each for this online before we left home. It sounded interesting, but it was a comedy act by two young men that was silly, a bit racist where it did not need to be and objectionable in other areas. We were not impressed.

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Airfare Madness

We have tickets to the Military Tattoo in Edinburgh for August. We are combing that with the Fringe Festival. Last year, we went to the Fringe and had a great time. I have been searching for a good airfare. Last year, I found 33 different ways of combining budget airlines to get from here to there. Of the 33, only 11 would feasible due to connections. Then of those 11, all were more expensive than flying Malev, the Hungarian airlines. This year, I thought I hit gold. I found a website that allows you to type in the information one time and then you can search 20 different sites such as Expedia, Sidestep, Orbitz, and so on. Many of these sites do not allow travel that does not initiate in the U.S., thus limiting our possibilities. I did find allcheaptravel.com through this and also a great airfare. I booked it immediately with my American Express card. I received a confirmation number and a confirmation booking e-mail and I was pleased with myself. Four hours later, I happened to check my e-mail only to find another message from Allcheaptravel. They canceled my reservation since my Amex card had a foreign billing address, even though it is a US based account. Using Jajah, I called them and tried to salvage the seats, but was told they were gone. Back to the beginning again, but hopefully, since we are trying so early, the prices will go down later. The taxes on all airlines are more than the tickets themselves.

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