Journal of a Sabbatical

April 26, 2001

budapest (still) in (again)

Today's Reading: Budapest 1900 by John Lukacs

Oh man, I fell asleep in the office at the Botanical Department this afternoon. My head dropped right down on the keyboard. Yikes. Thank goodness I didn't accidentally delete all the files Zoltan just brought down from Eger on CDs or the new scanner driver or something. So there I was with my head on the keyboard and I hear this phone ringing and people talking in Hungarian, and it's not a dream. Boy was I embarrassed. I did have a dream about speaking Hungarian last night though. I dreamed I had to give a commencement speech at some university and at the last minute they told me I had to give the speech in Hungarian and somebody would prompt me from a little palmtop that had wireless videophone except the prompter person was not prompting in Hungarian but in Spanish and I couldn't figure out how to translate it from Spanish to Hungarian. No wonder I woke up so unbelievably early this morning.

I was up at 6:00 AM, dressed and everything. Mrs. Entomologist asked if it was my habit to get up so early. Uh, nope. I have never been known as an early riser. My body thinks it's in a whole 'nother time zone. Anyway, she was up and had breakfast ready practically the instant I stuck my head out of my room. She was concerned that Entomologist had woken me up when he left even earlier. I didn't hear him at all. It's just an internal thing. Anyway she had breakfast ready instantly: toast, cheese, sliced green peppers (those long green ones that are mildly hot), tea, juice, coffee, cake, and some kind of paté that I didn't recognize and didn't like. Loved those hot peppers though. That's one of my favorite things about Hungary - hot peppers for breakfast. That and the default coffee is espresso. My kind of place.

So instead of being worried that I wouldn't get to the office by 9:00 on the dot to meet the guy from the Mac place who was bringing the cable so I could transfer the files directly from the G3 to the G4, I had time to spare. Rather than take the tram to Kalvin ter, I walked. It took about 20 minutes. The entomologist's apartment is in Buda, sort of near the Gellert hotel (fairly famous landmark), so I got to walk across the Szabadag Bridge across the Duna, umm, Danube. The black-headed gulls are in breeding plumage. The Danube is high and rushing, way less placid than in February. Some guy crossing the bridge from the Pest side stopped in the middle and dumped something from a plastic trash bag into the rushing river. I do not even want to know what that might have been.

I hung around Kalvin ter for awhile drinking lemon Fanta. Why don't they have lemon Fanta at home? It's one of the those Coca Cola products with a limited market kind of like Poccari Sweat, which I didn't even realize was a Coca Cola product until I visited the Coke museum in Atlanta once. Unlike Poccari Sweat, which is disgusting, lemon Fanta is great. Way better than orange Fanta. Anyway, I still had plenty of time to take the Metro from Kalvin ter to Nepliget and get here before Man with Cable (I think his name is Gabor but the half of the men here who aren't named István are named Gabor). I was even here before István. That surprised him.

Man with Cable did all the work, so all I had to do was drag and drop the files and stare blankly for 2 hours while the files magically migrated. Then Greatest Mac Expert of Eger arrived with the new scanner. It turns out it's a USB connection. Man do we ever need a USB hub. Man with Cable says they might not be available here. They've gotta be. I mean this is the 21st century. (Turns out that a quick Internet search revealed two places that sell them in Budapest). Man with Cable left. Greatest Mac Expert of Eger installed the driver and stuff for the scanner. Greatest Mac Expert of Eger left. Zoltan arrived with CDs from Eger. I went to the deli in the metro station to buy some lunch while he copied the files from the CDs onto the G4. This is like tag team wrestling or something. Finally I get to scan something. Then I fall asleep. The miracle of jet lag.

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