No, Really, It Was Tough: 4 People, 80 Martinis

All you need to know about the Martini and how to pick your gin:

Spirits of The Times

No, Really, It Was Tough: 4 People, 80 Martinis

By ERIC ASIMOV

Published: May 2, 2007

The Times tasting panel sorts out which gins produce classic martinis, which add welcome nuances and which really ought to seek another line of cocktail.

Pilobolus: A Performance Merging Dance and Biology

http://www.ted.com/talks/pilobolus_perform_symbiosis

Married Thoughts

I thought my mother had taken a first step on the long road toward senility. She emailed a few days ago and then followed up with a call to congratulate me on the first anniversary of my marriage. I was sure that this milestone was April 28th.

A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I still had not completed the dinnerware set on my wedding registry. We had received five settings and I had been taking my sweet time to contemplate whether or not to complete the set or....that was the problem, what was I supposed to do with only five settings? I thought that I had one year to fulfill our registry and receive a 10% discount.

At a certain moment in the past month my brain convinced itself that I still had weeks to make the final porcelain plunge--a sizable chunk of change. April 28th sounded right, felt right. I knew we had the wedding at the end of April.

My husband of now a year plus had publicly declared at the moment we set the date for our wedding that our anniversary would be celebrated on Easter each year. This from a man who proposed on New Year's Eve for obvious economy of memory. Of course I am having none of his desire to conflate public and private party excuses. Perhaps his insistence on Easter as our anniversary warped my own memory.

It didn't help that I picked out and purchased a new necklace for myself in honor of our anniversary three (long) weeks ago while in Budapest. I had the nice lady gift wrap it, of course.

I read my mother's email fully convinced that she had jumped the gun. When she called on the afternoon of the 21st, I politely if bemusedly thanked her for her sincere well-wishes.

A few hours later, as I was sorting bills, I impulsively riffled through my papers and consulted our marriage certificate. There it was: April 21st. I had forgotten the date of my FIRST wedding anniversary.

I decided to have a cup of coffee to contemplate the situation. Midcup I realized that my 10% wedding registry discount was on the line. After several calls, it was determined that the discount was valid for six months only after all. So I am stranded with five place settings. The good news is that they keep wedding registries active forever to better assist you in the pursuit of your wedding dinnerware dreams.

What to conclude? I forgot the date of our wedding nary a year after the event. The only possible conclusion is this: we celebrate our marriage every day and so the official calendar date was clearly anticlimactic. He did bring home roses. And we did pop open a bottle of bubbly and use our wedding flutes. But I had on my sweatpants. And we were in bed, asleep by ten pm.

One year wed, but nearly ten years of shared lives and mutually forgotten anniversaries. A good start.

Looking for the Next Big Thing

Here is is the online version of Notre Dame Magazine's
profile of Prof. Barabasi.

http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/sp2007/keiger.html

Enjoy!

Writerly Quotes of the Day

"People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."

--Barbara Kingsolver



"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

--J.K. Rowling

Kafka on the Shore--What do YOU think?

The flight home was uneventful except for the lackluster food on the plane, which was an unfortunate event. On the plane ride I finished re-reading Kafka on the Shore for this month's book club. It is my selection and so I am in charge of the discussion. If you have read it, leave a comment on on this entry for our group to ponder. I am sure that you must have a reaction to its strange world of talking cats and time-dream travel, not to mention steaming udon noodles and bleeding (cat) hearts.

Friday Night in Budapest

Fish Soup at our favorite little place. Tram to the MU Theater. T.E.S.T--a modern dance performed by seven women. The Tram in the wrong direction. A spontaneous choice to get off and go to the New York Cafe, which was recently remodeled. It is stunning--all gilded walls and smart waiters. Our two cakes were priced to match the decor, probably the most expensive cakes in Budapest. But they were very, very good. And the delicous news is that this cafe is open until midnight, filling a crucial time slot for those late night cake cravings. (See the below description from http://www.talkingcities.co.uk.)

Today: Lunch with friends. Dinner with friends. Tomorrow we fly out before the crack of dawn. Back to the States. Back to work. Alas.

New York Café (New York Kávéház)

VII. Erzsébet körút 9-11
Previously shrouded under scaffolding and a dirty black exterior, visitors 'not in the know' would simply pass by the New York Kávéház without discovering the wonderfully lavish neo-Baroque interior of this late 19th-century building. Unfortunately, the café, which was once the haunt of Budapest's most famous poets and playwrights, was rammed unceremoniously by a Russian tank during the 1956 uprising (it also suffered significant bomb damage during WWII). Until recently the resultant structural damage was deemed too costly to repair.

All that changed, however, following the acquisition of the New York Palace (in which the café is housed) by Italian hotel group Boscolo. Having spent in excess of 8 Billion HUF on restoration work alone, the building has now been transformed into a luxury 235 room, five star hotel.

Budapest Art and Dance

Strange that I ruminated about "home" and postmodernism the day before yesterday because yesterday was spent in the Ludwig Muzeum and at the Trafo where identity and belonging got the once over by some of the youngest, brightest new artists. Duchamp, oh Duchamp. Would you be proud of your progeny?

K. and I made our way to the Ludwig Muzeum to see the current exhibition called Hataratlepesek or "Crossing Frontiers." As I have written before, I am unconvinced, worse, unmoved by video installations. The most effective artist was Oleg Kulik, who will haunt my dreams. He uses photos and video "to show a symbiosis between man and dog." They eat watermelon together. They play in the fields. They read books. They make love. Yes, oh yes. In full photographic realism. Seriously, I can't get it out of my head. And I am not talking about a cute little puppy.

A cake to steal my nerves at 5:30 and then we were off to the Trafo for a modern dance event. They were showcasing four new choreographers. We stayed for the first two and then went in search of becsiszelet (wiener schnitzel). I would have stayed, but our two guests had had enough. Ouch. If you are in town, catch an event at the Trafo--one of my enduring favorite scenes for modern dance and people watching.

Then it was off on a hunt for a cake shop that was still open past 11:00. We stepped in two or three but nothing felt right. We we headed back to Szent Jupat for turogomboc--huge bready balls of sweet puffy cream-of-wheat, covered in sweetened bread crumbs, drenched in a sour cream sauce, and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Seriously. Usually this dessert is a huge flop. But at Szent Jupat, it is a divine thing. Trust me.

Another Day in Budapest

It was an overcast day yesterday. After a slow food lunch--arugula salad with Parmesanand walnutsfor me and rabbit with paprikas for my two lunch companions, we strolled the city streets. A shop here. The new Apple store. A shoe store. A store devoted to selling those machines that make coffee from those new pods. An art gallery or three. We made our way to my favorite tea shop, 1,000 Teas.

Since my last visit here (maybe more than a year ago) they have entirely renovated. It is still divine. We sat on low cushions. L. had a brief nap. I threw caution to the wind and had a strong Turkish tea with heavy doses of raw sugar crystals. We smoked my first waterpipe, which felt definitely exotic and even slightly illegal. Of course, ala Clinton, I don't inhale. In fact, I am abashed to say that I am constitutionally incapable, thank goodness. Not to mention that my body (thankfully) has no reaction to nicotine. A waterpipe sucks the smoke down into steam before you suck it into your mouth. Very steamy. Loads of hilarious pictures.

After the tea and smoke, we headed to the theater to see Lefele a hegyrol by Arthur Miller. We sat in the front row. L. and I had to move our legs each time an actor crossed the stage. It was a wonderful play skillfully acted. I have no idea what the English title of the play is. But the story involved a Lyman Felt who has two wives. A tricky situation. I loved that on occasion I would catch myself NOT translating and just enjoying the action.

Theater for the brain needs food for the gullet. We headed out thinking that we would haunt one of our favorite bars, the Castro, a Szerb place, on Raday utca about a thirty minute walk. Not a half block from the theater, there it was: the Castro. Since our last trip here the Castro had lost its lease and moved next to the theater! No tourists here. Just important cheap haircuts, scarves, and cigarettes all a dangle during intense conversations about who knows what.

Buda Castle

Overhead:

An American strapped down by camera straps and geared up with sensible shoes and windbreaker, points to the Matyas Templon (the St. Matthew's Church) and asks a passing Hungarian, "Is this the castle?"

The Castle is not a castle. It is a castle region. There are walls. There are many building inside these walls. The church has a spire and looks Gothic enough. But the castle is not one building. It is more than one place at once.

We live just below the castle in a residence established for scholars who are fellows of the Collegium Budapest, which is in the castle. There are about 100,000,003 steps between our apartment door and the Collegium. Luckily the Ruszurm Cafe is next door to the Collegium for a quick cake and espresso to recover from all those stairs.

Last night we were the guests of the Collegium for a special wine dinner. 2 starters, 1 main course, 2 desserts and 8 wines. I tasted each of the wines. Which was the best? Always the previous one, of course!

Yesterday I was going to do so many things, but then: I slept till noon, sweet J. it was a kind of heaven with the birds in the courtyard and no alarm clocks, no place to go, nothing I had to do. Then it was reading/writing till 4. A cake at the Ruszurm and off to the Pest side of Budapest to find our theater tickets for tonight. I had time on my hands before dinner and so I stopped at the Promod on Vaci street and bought some sweaters--very chic--to combat the spring chill. It is one of my favorite chain stores (French, I think). Today I do hope to hit some of the tiny boutiques with Hungarian designers.

I wore one of my new sweaters to dinner. There I learned among other things that growing up in Hungary as a little boy after WW II created a postmodern sense of displacement very different from the sense of homelessness I know from the culture of the States. In the States (beware huge generalization) there is a lack of connection, a restlessness, that drives people to move and reroot themselves over and over, looking for that intangible sense of "home." But if you grew up in a country that took turns accepting and then exiling you, your sense of restlessness and at-home-ness (or lack thereof) is a direct product of your home. In any case, both can produce a person who feels more at home in a foreign land. Or is this the result of culture consciousness? Once you KNOW the formula: sour cream, paprika, onion, beef---can you still relish it? Once you know there are formulae, can you ever be happy knowing that you have chosen one formula? Can you choose more than one and not be trapped in a dual reality?

After dinner we took our friend on a stroll around the Castle grounds. The views are breathtaking. If you visit Budapest, you must walk around the castle district at night. All the buildings gleam with luminous stone. The Parliament across the Danube is a delicate wedding cake in stone. Beware midnight: all the monuments go dark.

Today: A morning at home writing. An afternoon that starts with a lazy lunch at the Ket Szerecsen restaurant near the Liszt Ferenc ter (who we learned last night was NOT Hungarian). Wandering about the city center. Tonight: An Arthur Miller play in Hungarian, which might be beyond my reach, but will give me plenty of time to sit and ponder postmodern thoughts.

Budapest Blog of note: http://www.budapestdailyphoto.com/