Journal of a Sabbatical |
||||||||
February 24, 2001 |
|
|
farsang |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Today's Reading: The Third Eye, a Life in Photography by Bela Kalman |
|
|
Hotel Platanus - Budapest - February 24, 2001 Sun's out. Let's hope it's not another false alarm. Finished The Paul Street Boys last night. What a sweet, sad, tea-jerker of a story! Great characters. könyv = book könyvesbolt = book shop Botanical Department, Hungarian Museum of Natural History - Budapest - February 24, 2001
The museum staff were preparing for some kind of function in the main hall tonight. I watched a guy folding napkins from up on the balcony above the hall. Just when it occurred to me what a great photo it would make, the guy took a break. Them's the breaks I guess.
I treated myself to lunch at the Museum Restaurant, so named because it's next to the National Museum. I ordered one of the house specialties "layered potatoes a la museum", which was a giant, I do mean giant, casserole of potatoes, eggs, cheese, some kind of vegetable, and sausage. Somehow I wasn't expecting the sausage. I ate around it, consuming the potatoes and eggs etc. This casserole was large enough to provide a full meal for six or more people. It's about the size I would have made to serve my whole family. The waiter asked if I didn't like it because there was so much left over. I liked it fine, there was just too much of it. I ordered some coffee and lingered over it there before I headed back to the botanical department to meet István for a drive out to Budakeszi to see all the work that's been don on the herbarium since we moved all those boxes in. Herbarium - Budakeszi - February 24, 2001
The herbarium looks like a real place now. The area in
the lobby under the stairs is no longer filled with empty
boxes and trash from unpacking. Instead it house a
collection of cross-sections of branches and trunks of
various species of trees.
Botanical Department, Hungarian Museum of Natural History - Budapest - February 24, 2001 I edited the English text for a bunch of the labels for the New Zealand collection back here at the botanical department and the started flipping through a book of photographs by Bela Kalman, titled The Third Eye, which was sitting on István's bookshelf amidst the botanical books. I was so taken with it that I asked if I could borrow it to bring to my room tonight. There's a party going on upstairs in the botanical department building involving disco music and people dressed as clowns. We couldn't eat at the hotel restaurant because it was closed for a party. There's a party at the Museum of Applied Arts. Parties everywhere tonight. Couldn't find a restaurant where there wasn't a party so ended up at the golden arches. Yikes! Turns out this weekend is Farsang, a celebration of the end of winter, which involves balls, dinners, costumes, music ... and takes place on the weekend preceding Ash Wednesday. |
|||||
|
|
|
Copyright © 2001, Janet I. Egan |