Still Stuck Deep in Thought

Most of the week I spend planning lessons, teaching, and worrying about how my lessons will go…and eating…and sleeping when possible. Yeah, sounds a little more stressful than last year. Why? Haven’t the slightest clue.

So, on the weekends, I like to push it all furiously away and escape into place where there are no children swearing in Hungarian, and no colleagues and parents glancing strangely at me wondering where I’m going and what I want. The weekends are my time to spend in the city with my friends and so therefore, I cherish them.

On Friday, however, the weekend didn’t necessarily come so quickly to my fingertips. After using a somewhat angry, but cathartic poem about the thrill of getting to Friday in my two eighth grade classes …and after the kids tumbled chaotically out of the room, I let out a huge sigh of relief and went off to meet two of my colleagues and a group of English teachers who were visiting from Finland, England, Italy, France, and Denmark. They were here for a week in correlation with an international project that my school is participating in with schools in the above countries. On Friday afternoon, my two Hungarian colleagues were taking them to the Castle District in Buda and asked if I’d like to meet them and come along. Although I’ve been to this district a number of times, I went along as it was a beautiful day and I’m always interested in meeting people from countries different from my own.

Everyone’s English was very good and I mistook a woman from Denmark as British, because her accent was superb. Of course, I had to tell her this. Non-native speakers LOVE this compliment. We English speakers take our language for granted. We don’t realize how widely used English is and how many must revert to it for tourists and teachers abroad like me. It’s the default language, the tie between people from two different countries who couldn’t otherwise communicate with one another. It’s mandatory for a lot of children who learn how to write in their own language, and then a year later, start practicing their English ABC’s on paper.

While trekking up the stairs to Fisherman’s Bastion, I introduced myself to a teacher from Birmingham. She and I both commented on how widespread English is. She told me that she was very impressed with the group’s English and how she herself felt bad for not speaking any other language. It’s true, there’s not a HUGE need for English speakers to learn a second language…but that’s not saying they shouldn’t learn one. I think all English speakers should be required to learn a second language.

If not for communication purposes, then to understand the inner workings of a different culture. A language is not just words, but it’s tradition, a way of life, and gives one insight into a different world not otherwise available. The world’s problems are evident and depressing in their enormity…making me feel hopeless sometimes. If there’s one way of gradually developing into a more civilized race, it’s to understand one another. It’s true that hatred and violence stem from ignorance and an overall lack of understanding. When one learns a new language, it becomes impossible not to get at least a little peek into the culture and mindset of that particular people. The more one learns, the more one understands…and the more one understands, the more one can accept.


I went into the Mátyás Templom for the first time on Friday. It’s the beautiful church at the top of Castle Hill and in all my time here, I had never managed to see it, because it had always been closed. I went in, feeling like a tourist again.

I don’t even know what you’d call me now…what is the term between TOURIST and CITIZEN? Ex-patriate? Nem tudom. In the meantime, I’ll just consider myself an enigma…I’ve never really been a fan of labels of that sort anyway.

So I spent my afternoon chatting with Birmingham and my colleague Marika. Birmingham must have been close to my age and kept asking me how it was possible that I could stay away from home for this long and not have my favorite TV shows. I told her not to fret because I did have BBCPrime, my current “golden” channel (consisting of British soap operas, home and garden shows, “The Weakest Link” and many more). Unfortunately, no Seinfeld though. We had a good time talking and she was one of those people that I knew would be a good buddy under different circumstances, but she was leaving in a few days probably never to be seen again.

Some of the French were taking pictures of the distant protests occurring outside the Parliament. From atop the Buda castle, the crowds looked like tiny Lego people. So harmless and far away. I asked Marika if she thought the PM would resign and she told me that she hoped not. She preferred everything to be resolved peacefully and quickly. She tried to tell me in her excited, yet somewhat broken English that because “the change” (fall of Socialism/Communism in the early 90’s) had happened so recently, the mindset of many Hungarians is in turmoil. Roads are being fixed and trams are being modified, but no one is looking at the most important thing of all: the way of thinking. For so long, Hungarians and members of other Socialist countries were equal under one government and taken care of…and now, with that gone, people are hungry for improvement in all arenas, eager for more money and free services. They want to see outside change, but it can’t necessarily happen until the inside “way of thinking” changes.

I soon left to meet Laura who was arriving on an afternoon train from my old stomping grounds in the northeast of Hungary to Budapest. She came to visit for the weekend and she accompanied me to dinner that night at a nice restaurant on the Danube where my colleagues took the group of international teachers. Unfortunately we didn’t get to sit next to Birmingham, who I had wanted more of a chance to talk to. But, we did sit next to my two colleagues and a group of friendly Italians. Laura and I both ordered stuffed cabbage and I flash fried the insides of my mouth when I ate a huge spoonful of her goulash soup too quickly. I hadn’t had an authentically Hungarian dish in a while, so I felt even more like a tourist that night, looking at my plate: rolls of cabbage stuffed with pork and rice sitting on a bed of more cabbage and surrounded by chicken with a hot dog balancing on top, all smothered in sour cream. Ahhhh yes…I suddenly remembered how much Hungarians love their meat and why I had gained a few pounds over the past year.


Skipping ahead to Saturday night, Laura and I decided to get some tickets to the Hungary/Turkey football match in Budapest that night. Liz and Janos already had tickets, courtesy of one of her colleagues. Laura is really into football and I had never seen a match in Europe before, so we decided to give it a shot.

I didn’t enjoy watching the football so much as just observing everything that was happening around us. For one, Laura and I were seated behind the goal, so we didn’t have a balanced view of the field. However, we were in the “party” section of the stadium. We sat, excuse me, stood among younger fans, faces painted red, white, and green, Hungarian flags draped around their shoulders, equipped with blowhorns and Hungarian chants…HUNGARIA!!! The rest of the stadium seemed to sit politely. It felt eerily empty in there, even with everything happening around us.

I guess I was comparing it to American sporting events. Booths everywhere selling crap, crap and more crap. Beer tents, hot dogs, vendors, peanuts GET YOUR PEANUTS! And this stadium didn’t even allow alcohol. In fact, the only things that I saw being sold were pathetic chicken sandwiches…the kind that would have just made you hungrier….iced tea, water, Coke, and chocolate bars. Between every little chicken/chocolate/coke stand was a fleet of at least thirty policemen, rather, SWATmen dressed in all navy armed with glass shields. They had that place under CONTROL. I’m glad I went, but I was also glad to get out of there. There was so much smoking in the stands and Turkey had scored the only goal that night, so Hungarian fans lost their cheer and never seemed to fully get it back, leaving the party section, well, partyless.

It was safe to say that the streets of Budapest were more exciting that night than the actual match itself.