Journal of a Sabbatical

February 20, 2001

the fiendly hotel

Today's Reading: Budapest: The City of the Magyars by F. Berkeley Smith

Hotel Platanus - Budapest - February 20, 2001

I'm here. The G4 seems to have made it intact except for a missing tab key. Wonder if there's a tab key floating around an airport somewhere. Easily replaced anyway. Of course, I haven't hooked everything up and booted the thing yet, just visually inspected it when I unpacked it in István's office. Also unpacked the specimens that Zsolt sent with me.

The Hungarian color conifer book is being printed right now. István has to inspect each batch of pages as they come off the press, so Marti and I went to the printer with him. The printing plant is small but well-equipped with a not too old press. When István looks at the pages and comments on them, the printer adjusts the inks by pressing buttons and moving levers on a big console. Very fancy. Big pots of brightly colored ink, blue, yellow, and purple sat open next to the press.

Between print runs we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant around the corner from the printing plant. Having eaten Chinese food in China both István and I found this restaurant not very authentic except for the Chinese music on the sound system. I ordered "soy cheese domestic", which was their version of ma po tofu. Nothing like ma po tofu.

Here at the hotel, which is right next to the botanical department of the natural history museum making for an easy commute, I have a room with two single beds, a desk, a wardrobe, a small sitting room with a small table and a hard chair, and a bathroom with shower. My room overlooks the street and Nepliget Park across the street. The windows at the end of the corridor I'm on look right into the windows of the botanical department. Couldn't get much closer.

There's a brochure on my desk advertising the wonderful conference facilities of the Hotel Platanus, which describes it as a fiendly hotel. Fiendly? Do they get a lot of fiends here?