Journal of a Sabbatical

February 22, 2001

the end of the world

Today's Reading: The Paul Street Boys by Ferenc Molnar

Botanical Department, Hungarian Museum of Natural History - Budapest - February 22, 2001

The sun is out this morning for the first time since I've been here. It's quite a relief to see blue sky. Nearly everything is installed but I still need the SCSI card to hook up the scanner. Also the POP and SMTP server addresses to set up email. Oops, I spoke too soon about the weather. I took the metro to Deak tér to get some lunch and go shopping. It was snowing there in little showers off and on, mostly on. As you can see in the picture, it was oppressively overcast along the Danube.

I walked along the bank of the Danube just to see if it was still green or was frozen. It is not frozen. It does however look very green - that grayish green color that people tell me my eyes are except with a little less blue. That is, my eyes are more blue than the Danube and my eyes aren't blue really. They're bluish grayish green. And it was snowing. Have I mentioned it was snowing?

I wanted to look for bookstores, preferably used book stores but really anything with books in a language I can read. I found one, bookstore not book, called Corvina near the Kempinski hotel. The bookstore is on the second floor of an office building. The building has these strange elevators with tiny one-person compartments that loop around endlessly and you just step on or off at the floor while the elevator keeps going. I watched in fascination as people got on and off but I was afraid to try it myself. Fortunately there's a regular elevator across the hall. Anyway, Corvina has lots of Hungarian literature in translation . I bought The Paul Street Boys by Ferenc Molnar and a collection of four novellas by various contemporary Hungarian authors.

Next stop was Libri-Studium Academia Bookshop on Vaci ut where I bought The Story of the Hungarian Language for Nancy who is fascinated by languages and is convinced that Hungarian is comprehensible to our western minds even though it's not related to any other language.

The piece de resistance of my shopping trip was one of those matryushka dolls I bought from a kiosk in the expensive tourist shopping area. Sumo wrestlers instead of the usual peasant women or Russian leaders! The big outer one is Konishiki! A Konishiki doll? How have I gone this long without one? The vendor opened it up for me and the next one inside is Akebono. I exclaimed "Akebono!" The vendor looked astonished: "You know these guys?" I laughed: "Igen, igen." You bet I know them . I bargained him down from 5500 forints to 5000 forints just by standing there in shock when he mentioned the price. Later when I told István and Marti what I paid for it they asked "What is it made of? Gold?" Nope. I just bought it in the expensive part of town.

So there we were having a good laugh over my sumo doll and just stuff in general . The SCSI card arrived so I set about installing it. We took pictures of me installing the card. I closed up the case, plugged everything back in, turned the machine on ... and nothing happened. No fan. No boot. Nothing. Oh no! I took the SCSI card out. Still nothing. This is looking very bad.

István called the local Apple repair place. They told us to take out the battery and wait 15 minutes. I looked on the Apple Knowledge base and found a service bulletin that said to reset the CUDA chip. Did those things. Still nothing.

Outside there was a brilliant lightning flash and a loud thunderclap. It started snowing again, this time in earnest. Marti commented that it must be the end of the world. I quite agree.

Hotel Platanus - Budapest - February 22, 2001

Judi, who dined with us last night at Kalosca, invited us to dinner at her apartment tonight. The way to her place from the street is very atmospheric with all the ironwork casting pale shadows in the street lights. Big stone steps with lacy shadows -gray on gray. Her apartment is in a 100 year old building with very high ceilings. It struck me as very cozy and homey. The walls are lined with books. She has two birds, a finch and a parrot. The finch is very vocal - calling frequently. The parrot is quiet.

Judi fed us stew and fried potatoes, and in honor of my visit, "bird's milk" - milk sweetened with sugar and vanilla, fortified with eggs, and islands of meringue floating on top. Very Hungarian. Very tasty.

When I mentioned having bought The Paul Street Boys Judi said the novel takes place very close by and instructed István to show me the main locales on the way back to my hotel. So after dinner we drove to Paul utca and the Botanical Garden just like in the book. I sat down and read half the book in my room after dinner. And so to bed with hopes of not dreaming about the G4.