Friday, August 26, 2005

Packing and New Reading Selections

It is done. I have boxed 1997 - 2001. I have labeled by batches and created a 6 page Word document with a timeline of major life events. The next step: select and print our prime photos from our 2002 - 2005 digital files and paste them into the albums I have started. From this point forward we only print those photos that make us more beautiful than life or, at least, less hideous than at that moment. Conclusions:

1) I have distinct cute and noncute phases that last months at a time (turquoise-blue hair was cute, while white-blond was more shocking less cute);
2) the cute phases do in fact correspond to phases in which I exercise;
3) we are definitely getting cuter as we mature; and
4) caffeine and stress cause one's skin to bloat (as I sit here and sip my morning cup).

The next major project as we prepare to move: the piles of important papers. Find a nook; it is already stuffed with dusty documents that need to be kept. There is no logic to which these disparate piles will succumb. It is good that I did the pictures first because the process humbled me and took the edge off my perfectionist itch.

The Final Countdown has begun. It is less than a week until we get in the car and head East. I am in a kind of tharn state. A deer frozen in headlights. I do not deal well with down time. I need the deadline to be within 72 hours before I can actually place a perfectly folded pair of slacks into a box. Blogging is a good salve. So are dinner parties.

Reading, of course, is the ultimate band aid. Alas, I am too pressured to pack and party to really relax between the pages of a hefty novel. I have started The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which is our book club selection for September. I know, I know. I will be in Boston as they gather over this tome. But I do plan to read their selections and participate in spirit and blog when possible. As I sunk my dollars into a new copy of The Historian (I think the public library here would appreciate the late fee I would accrue, but it would be cheaper to buy the darn thing), I also bought a copy of 1776 by David McCullough. I have heard rave reviews about this book. Since I am heading to Boston, I thought I best brush up on all things Americana. The Historian and 1776 together weigh about 3 pounds and will serve as nice door stops in our new abode.

In lighter reading, I read The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte on the plane/bus ride back from Europe. It is all about a powerful woman and the drug trade on two continents. Shortly after we returned to the Bend, there was a huge news scandal about a marijuana field near by that was raided. It brought the intrigue of the novel to real life.


Monday, August 22, 2005

August Book Club: Master Butchers Singing Club

Yesterday evening was my last book club meeting for quite some time. I am in complete denial that part of moving to Boston and having a great adventure means leaving these treasures behind. I trust that they will continue to laugh and delve into great stories, which is reassuring. I feel good just knowing that they exist, truly.

I brought along a friend, the wondertastic Ms. L, to introduce her to the group and see if the chemistry is good. The molecules seemed to collide and create just enough heat to liven things up for all involved. It is all about random collisions.

The evening began with dinner: sausage, in homage to Fidelis, ratatouille, as a nod to Eva's lush garden, fresh bread and a wonderfuly herbed salad. The apple tart and vanilla ice cream nodded toward the immigrants growing roots in North Dakato. A feast, to be sure. We dug in and caught up and nearly choked as L. recounted the basic premise of The Aristocrats, a new documentary. A hoot at the dinner table.

After dinner we tucked into a lively discussion of The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdich. We had read The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by the same author as a group a while ago. This work immerses the reader into the intimate everyday details of life in Argus, read: small town, North Dakota. The events span the two world wars and in fact war and the violence lurking just below the routine of our daily lives seem to be linked here. Delphine never experienced a battle field, but she had seen horror and senseless death. Reckless death and reckless life balance and often our lives veer toward one or the other despite all good intentions to remain upright. Erdich reminds us in this quiet novel that it is the songs we sing and the rituals we observe before death that matter. When the songs end, we are dead.

Quotes and Memorable Language:

"Eva sipped her coffee. Today, her hair was bound back in a singular knot, the sides rolled in smooth twists, the knot itself in the shape of the figure eight, which Delphine knew was the ancient sign for eternity. Eva rose and turned away, walked across the green squares of linoleum to punch some risen dough and cover it with towels. As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of time's range and could not be pilfered by God.

Well, it was God, wasn't it, Delphine's thoughts went on stubbornly, who made time and created the end of everything? Tell me this, Delphine wanted to say to her new friend, why are we given the curse of imagining eternity when we know we can't experience it, when we ourselves are finite? She wanted to say it, but suddenly grew shy, and it was in that state of concentrated inattention that she met Eva's husband, Fidelis Waldvogel, master butcher."

"Life was a precious feat of daring, she saw, improbable as Cyprian balancing, strange as a feast of slugs."

"Who are you is a question with a long answer or a short answer."

"All around her, she felt how quickly things formed and were consumed. How there was so much blind feeling. It was going on beyond the wall of her sight, out of her control."

" 'There is plan, eine grosse Idee, bigger than the whole damn rules. And I always known it. Bigger than the candles in church. Bigger than confessionals, bigger than the Sacred Host.' She crossed herself. 'I do not know what it is. But big. Much more big.' " . . . . ' Our brains are just starting the greatness, to learn how to do things like flying. What next? You will see, and you will see that your mother is of the design. . . . Nothing can get rid of me because I am already included in the pattern.' '"

"Hey, I've got news for you. Everyone does everything to fill the emptiness."

"She lived with an invented force."

"A new story would develop. Delphine's story. Could she bear it?"

"She hadn't exactly feared the word contentment, but had always associated it with a vague sense of failure. To be discontented had always seemed much richer a thing."

"Time was an army marching like the butchers onto the stage. Time was a singing club whose music was smoke and ash."

"Some said the ghost dancers believed that those shirts would protect them against bullets, but Step-and-a-Half knew the dancers were neither stupid or deluded. They just knew something that is, from time to time, forgotten except by the wind. How close the dead are. One song away from the living."

"Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled. Step-and-a-Half hummed in her sleep and sank deeper into her own tune, a junker's piled of tattered courting verse and hunter's wisdom adn the utterances of itinerants or words that sprang from a bit of grass or a scrap of cloud or a prophetic pig's knuckle, in a world where butchers sing like angels."

For more information about Erdich and her newest novel The Painted Drum, visit her website.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Back in the Bend

Details have sucked me deeply into a black hole. The trip home from Budapest was relatively uneventful, though I did run into a very good friend on the last leg of the trip. Do you ever find yourself in the middle of an Indian forest spotting monkeys and yet have the feeling that someone you know will show up around the next tree? Well, this actually happened when I saw M. sitting patiently on the bus from Chicago to South Bend. We simply could not have planned such an encounter.

At any rate, I am tres busy trying to organize the house, my health insurance, clean the basement, purge useless pairs of sweatpants, see the dentist and systemitize eight years + of photos. Luckily we switched to digital at that point. I am decidedly inept at scrapbooks, so these treasures are being diligently sorted by date and filed in boxes with labels. It is the best I can do and it is driving me crazy. I am also trying to apply for jobs in Boston and enroll in a writing class. Anyone out there who needs an English Teacher or knows of a good writing community. . . I am open to suggestions.

The Bend is good. Those of you who who are SMCers/Domers will be suprised when you return for this Fall's football games. There have been major construction and road changes.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

A New Address


Boston: The not-too-distant future. This is the apartment that we shall call home for the academic year 2005 - 2006. In a few short weeks we will pack up enough clothes for the year into my RAV4 and settle into Boston, a new city for me. Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Budapest Nights





Monday, August 15, 2005

Gastronomical Review

Yesterday's entry was a bit premature. We had looked forward to a quiet and relaxing day, but events followed a different course. Our only official plans for the day included a late lunch/early dinner at 4pm.

We arrived at around 8 o'clock am Budapest time by train. We came directly to our residence and had coffee and juice while we relaxed and showered. Around 11 we headed up the stairs to the Ruszwurm cafe for "breakfast." L. has been in the habit of eating their kremes cake, a thick layer of vanila creme between pastry shells, for a morning snack. I gave in and had a tepertos pogi, a bacon enhanced biscuit. We then strolled down to the city and shopped and I entered my first blog of that day, which was mostly a recap of previous events. We eventually crossed the Danube into Pest and there we continued shopping, but my caffeine and bacon high was crashing and so we headed for our second snack: gelato for me and chestnut creme for him. Just for the record, this was our second dessert of the day and it was about 3:30.

We then found our way to Bagolyvar, an upscalish place connected to the famous Gundel, which neither of us had even visited before. The restaurant is located next to the city park and zoo and the sidewalks were crowded with loads of people out for a Sunday stroll. We met a few friends, new and not so new, for lunch. The food was traditional magyar fare. I ordered turkey cooked on a scewer with prunes wrapped in bacon, which is not something nagymama would make but still quite meaty. Prunes wrapped in bacon, then grilled. Genius. The conversation raced at top speed and I must be fully primed because I understand 99% of it! We then ordered dessert. I ordered noodles with poppyseed. So simple, so beautiful.

After our friends left for the opera (that is why we met so early), we quickly made our way to the lanchid (the chain bridge) to meet a Greek friend who is a prof at MIT. He was passing through Budapest on his way home to eat fresh figs for the rest of the summer. Luckily he was a camera fiend and hopefully we will have some nice shots to upload of our journey by foot around the castle district. He hadn't had any cake while in Budapest, so of course we had to take him to the Café Gerbaund, which though touristy is still a fine place. We ordered five or six cakes and shared. It was a meal to be remembered. Count it up: dessert four times in twelve hours. I have truly never felt so svelte.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Back in Budapest

This trip was been shadowed by the passport gods. L. made two trips to Bucarest to arrange his identity card in order to renew his Romanian passport. He got ALL the correct papers, signed here and there, paid the fees and . . . no passport. It turns out that some office in Bucarest was supposed to send a number of some sort and they did not. As I sit here in this sultry internet cafe, L. sits in the overcrowded, frenetic Romanian police headquarters on the off chance that the number will arrive before closing time. He did arrange for the Hungarian embassy to give him a paper that allows him to enter Hungary. So, it looks like we will leave for Hungary on Saturday night, arriving Sunday morning. That gives L. exactly one day to arrange for a Hungarian passport before we fly out on Tuesday. Ugh.

Somewhat appropriately I have been reading Chekov's short stories this week. Someone told me at some point that all you ever needed to know about the short story as a genre was found in Chekov. Frankly I was afraid of him. I thought I had to be in a classroom with brilliant minds to understand his work. Alas. I actually have about three different things I am reading, which I am not in the habit of doing. I suddenly realized that I have a huge stack of readables and a dwindling about of time.

Can you believe that 20 minutes before the police office closed, they gave L. his Romanian passport? It looks as if we will return all together after all! His mother theorized that they had it all along but were hoping that L. would bribe them or make a little offering before they passed it over. That is the way it works here, not all of the time, but often.

We are now in Budapest and L. and I are in a bookstore/internet cafe. We are recovering from our long, long train ride. We all grimaced when two little boys entered our couchette, but it turns out that they were very sweet and quite entertaining on the ride here. Their mother even recoginzed L. because they grew up in the same town, though she was quite a bit younger. Our last few days in Csik were quiet. We tried to go to a movie, but the 8 pm showing was cancelled due to lack of guests. It turns out that at least 5 tickets must be sold. We had heard that they would run the movie if one person buys all five tickets. We got there three minutes late, however, and the ticket guy had already made the executive decision to return home for a few hours before the ten pm show. The last afternoon we drove out to a valley with a little river to cook out. We went mushroom hunting, but we did not find too many. It was my first time at such sport.

Not too much else to report on, although I can think of so many things I did not write about cocerning life in Transilvania. Perhaps later. Today and tomorrow will be busy as we do last minute errands and shopping here in Budapest. Luckily we are staying in a quiet residence on the castle away from the hustle and bustle. D. is staying with his aunt and cousin outside the city. A bit of quiet before the long flight home and our reintroduction to life in the midwest.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Poems: Salty and Sweet

Today I feel like poetry. The sun is brilliant and the not-too-distant mountains stand out sharply beneath the blue sky and a smattering of ice-white clouds. From inside it looks warm, but I wear a turtleneck sweater under my jacket. Now this is the summer time weather I know for this valley. Gone is the heat that nearly smothered me.

I am far from the sea, but somehow the elemental nature of this place seems right for a poem that uses salt to talk about love. South Bend, Indiana, if one would dare to compare apples and oranges, knows nothing about the salt of the earth. It is so simple, this poem. Why didn't I think of it?

If you like this poem by Lisel Meuller, or even if you don't!, visit http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/. Ted Kooser, our current poet laureate, has put together this site and publishes little poems-not his own-along with a short commentary. I heard Kooser read from his newest bookthis past fall. He seemed surpised at the audience's rapture. The man wrote poetry at 4 am for years while he sold insurance by day. Talk about salt of the earth; just look at his face.

Love Like Salt

It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought

It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

It breaks out on our foreheads

We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins

At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.

Reprinted from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems" (LSU Press, 1996) by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
For more poetry, check out this poem by Kooser:

Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

And here is one of my favorites from Kooser:

Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

A Sunday in Csik

The rain started ten minutes before the fabled Illes concert was to begin on Friday night. It poured. Luckily we had stored away three ponchos that we had purchased for a trip to India last summer. It was monsoon season in India, but we never had to use them and they were still in their crisp packages. One loses all dignity in the rain; the three of us in ponchos had dry heads but the mountain-going Hungarians here seemed to grimace when they saw us. L. said they were jealous; I was sure we were the laughingstock of the town. Despite the rain, we faithfully stood in "Freedom Square" and I was impressed by the band. I must say the music was good and I even knew a few tunes. We had had visions of drinking beer until the wee hours of the morning, but our wet pant legs did us in.

Saturday we toured the city and enjoyed the festival before lunch. There was am impressive gulyas cooking contest. Think chile cook off. Different cities and organizations had bubbling cauldrons of their secret recipes. Do not think macaroni and ground beef. Gulyas is a soup with beef, potato, paprika and lots of other vegetables. There was even the "world's largest" pot simmering. I have photos of this that I hope to upload one day. We ran into some friends there who were leaving that afternoon to drive to Greece for vacation. Think about that.

We resisted the tempting smells and headed home to enjoy nagymama's home cooking: meat soup, beef, mashed potatoes, cucumber salad, and watermelon for dessert. It was worth it. Meat soup loses something in translation. It actually has no meat. It is cooked with beef and vegetables, but served only with thin noodles. The beef is the second course. The vegetables and leftover beef are then diced and mixed with a homemade mayonnaise into a salad for the next day.

Later L. awoke me from my afternoon nap (I've had a napping relapse) and we got gussied up to go to a gallery opening. We have these three artist friends in town who have had an "open studio" where they work and people can just drop in for a drink of palinka and a smoke (first or second hand, your choice). We have three small paintings by one of the artists, Janosi Antal, in our dining room (think psycho potatoes in a triptych). At any rate, they have just converted their open studio into a bona fide modern art gallery and museum. They gave speeches. Then a little barefoot man in a scary gas mask and a black robe performed. He had a map of Romania affixed to a meat grinder. His buddy played loud, eery music that grated the audience's nerves while he pushed beef through the grinder. The raw meat oozed through the cities of Romania. This symbolized how art is treated in Romania. Later I saw the little man who must have been the performance artist enjoying the abundant refreshments. I kept wondering if he had washed his hands. I grow maternal.

It is Sunday now and the rain is relentless. The city festival ends today, but the rain has already finished off the good spirits. People droop as they stroll and the heavenly smell of kurtos kolach (a bread covered in sugar and grilled over hot coals on a tube) is overpowered by wet dog. Kurtos kolach, by the way, is yet another food of the gods. I had a scheme years ago to try and sell it in America. I still think it would fly off the steaming hot wooden tube.

More family has arrived for a few days and the tiny apartment that is so cozy has become congested with damp socks and little boys shut in by the rain. You know the boredom level is pretty serious when even Game Boy has lost its allure. I finished reading Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang today, which was interesting to read here in this formerly Communist country. I also read Harry Potter Six this week. I had been reluctant to dive into Harry; I hadn't read the fifth one (sh! don't tell). I gave in mostly because D. and L. had both read it and had been whispering about it continuously. It is a quick read and worth it to keep a young reader enthralled with fiction. I'm not sure what I'll read next...I have been reading the Atlantic's fiction edition as a filler. At some point I will read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburger, which is a required summer reading for our resident 5th grader. I might revisit the Master Butchers Singing Club--make note of its memorable language and ponder its themes. Gots to get ready for Book Club this month! We will be back in the States in time for my August meeting. In fact we will probably leave Romania and return to Budapest on Friday. Then we will fly back to the States on Tuesday morning, a week and a day from now.

Incidently, if want to learn more about Csik and Transilvania, check out the Ballad of the Whisky Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hocky, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. My Dad has read it and passed it along to my mother. The hero is from the very city I sit in now. It is a TRUE story, but you won't believe this guy's life. It gives a fairly accurate account of life for Hungarians in this region of Romania. Highly entertaining.

Friday, August 05, 2005

"City Days" Festival

After five days of morning tennis lessons I have bronzed a bit on my shoulders, roughened up my palms and realized that I need many more lessons to even hope to compete with the 4 feet tall 9-year-olds who I am too embarrased to play because they are so powerful. Alas. This morning's lesson was especially difficult for me as I had trouble sleeping and woke too late to properly drink my coffee before heading off to the courts. Luckily we have no lessons on the weekend and so I get a little break.

The "City Days" Festival has started here in Csik. The huge attraction this year is a concert tonight by Illes, the equivalent of the Beatles in Hungary. This is their farewell tour and all of Transilvania is headed here for the big event. I can't tell you how many aged rockers and pop stars I see peform. I don't go to many concerts in the States, and so I don't have much to compare the experience with. Here the performers seems to last and last. The band that performs tonight must be in their sixties. I'm not sure why this makes the experience more surreal.

The city is packed with stands selling all the local specialities: lots of meat and beer. Actually Romania's most popular beer is made right here in this town and of course it is everwhere. It is not to my particular liking, nonetheless when one is Csik, the Csiki beer is the way to go. By the way, Csik is pronounced, "cheek" and Csiki is "chicky." Now you know.

Okay, time is up at the Internet Cafe!

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

The Cider House Rules is an amazing, thought provoking book. I had complained that I felt as if I was in a modern museum gazing at carefully contructed works that nonetheless left me cold. Then somewhere around three hundred pages into the novel, I sat down in front of a Rothko and let my eyes focus on its red-orangeness and allowed myself to move into its bands of color and see its complexities and feel myself expand. In other words, I got into it. The characters, the ideas emerged. My head is spinning with Irving's presentation of the modern hero, the role of fiction, the ideal versus the real world and where we fall as citizens.

I tried to look up commentary on the novel but have found very little that I can access. I want someone to read this novel so that I can hash out its meanings! I would definitely recommend this book for my book club. It has a rich plot and sympathetic characters. Most of all it has controversial ideas about what we owe to society, in particular to children and fallen soldiers. I get Homer Wells; he is my hero. The passage about the Ferris Wheel is riveting. Did I mention it is set in Maine and concerns orphans, abortions, apple trees, love in unexpected equations and fighter pilots?

Some quotable quotes and memorable language:

"Sometimes when we are labeled, when we are branded, our brand becomes a calling."

"The coastal winds gave the brittle orchard such a shaking that the clashing trees resembled frozen soldiers in all postures of saber-rattling."

"Grown-ups don't look for signs in the familiar. . . but an orphan is always looking for signs."

"But who seeks the truth from unlikable sources?"

"Always be suspicious of easy work"

"Reality for orphans is often outdistanced by their ideals; if Homer wanted Candy, her wanted her ideally."

"Don't think so badly of compromise; we don't always get to choose the ways we can be of use."

"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parenthesis."

"Rules, he guessed, never asked; rules told."

"How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes."

"his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn't as important as his usefullness."

Monday, August 01, 2005

Marosvasarhely: fel Sziget Festival

We loaded into the car and took off through the pine tree laced mountains and over the rough Romanian roads. Usually the air here is fresh and the summer tempuratures mild due to the elevation. This summer is different. And the temperature rose as we headed out toward Marosvasarhely. Dog meleg volt. It was "stinky corpse" hot, as the saying goes. It was about a 4 hour drive. No air conditioning. It is only 150 km, but the roads are filled with rustic wooden carts loaded 12 feet hight with hay. Suffering souls labor on bicycles between the villages. Large trucks travel at a snail's pace. Roma(Gypsy)families wave cars down and shout out their wares: freshly picked blueberries, rasberries, honey, onions and roka mushrooms (which are plentiful due to the torrents of rain that fell before we arrived). All of these obstacles require constant attention and endless perilous passing around curves and over hills. I am always grateful when we arive anywhere. I do everything possible to avoid driving myself. Instead I sit in the passenger seat and swear mildly or grunt meaningfully in the directon of the driver.

The festival, the "fel Sziget", was a smaller offshoot of a huge festival that will take place later this summer in Budapest. Typical summer stuff: food, tons of people, beer, swimming and concerts galore. No corn dogs; no root beer. Plenty of miccs (the beef/pork speciality) and gulyas.

People wore as little as possible--thongs and shorts so short that perfect little half moons of flesh peeked out the hems. I was told that the topless habit is new, however. It is seen as a Western European habit and has been taken up by the young and perky. There were many gothish types--wearing black, sporting cheaply dyed hair in strange colors and showing various body tattoos or piercings. Lots of families and young mothers with strollers. Teenagers roamed in packs. For the most part we parked in one place or the other and drank lots of cool beverages. I did learn how to play Imperial, a card game, and lost tragically. Two nights in a row we stayed out until three in the morning: we danced in the finally cool air to techno or Tom Waits.

Marosvasarhely is about 50% Romanian and 50% Hungarian and is larger than Csik. While you hear Romanian in the market in Csik, you rarely hear it on the street. In Marosvasarhely Romanian seemed more common and I had more difficulty ordering food or shopping. I know how to say thank you in Romanian, but that is it. Marosvasarhely has a large Orthodox temple that dominates the city center, while here in Csik the Catholic Church is the center of town. Yet Marosvasarhely had a McDonalds while Csik still does not.

On the drive home we decided to stop at a so-called medieval festival. It was decidely not medieval, but it was packed with lots of interesting art and folklore. And lo and behold I met a soul mate--an "instant poet" who was selling quatrains for 10,000 lei or 30 cents. He asked for a theme and produced the verse on the spot. The theme I chose, for no special reason, was the American Women. The verse is in Romanian, of course. The poet had dark eyes and was extremely amused that I used his service.



Other services for sell: kisses for a price, free hugs, marriage decress good for the duration of the festival, and a guy in Renaissance costume who had a knife stuff in his chest with fake blood who would let you take a photo with him. Cool. Mostly we were hot. Did I mention that his festival was in Segesvar, the home of Dracula's birth and childhood? Do I need to tell you about the Dracula t-shirts and coffee mugs?

We slept well last night; glad to be home. This morning I had my first tennis lesson of the summer. Our tennis teacher is nearly 70 and talks constantly, all in Hungarian. He has more energy than I can muster when I am fully caffeinated. He is a blur. Unfortunately so is my backhand.

I want to write more about what I am reading and have read, but that will have to wait as I am running of out time in the Internet cafe. I am almost finished reading Irving's Cider House Rules.