Budapest with Gabi - part 4

marzipan - who knew it was good for something? in szentendre, just outside of budapest, there is a marcipan muzeum and gabi's family took me there to experience it. i couldn't have ever imagined...

(this is Zrinyi Ilona - the lady after whom my school is named)

the crown jewels

creepiest thing ever

(the parliament is such a landmark and i think it's pretty well liked)

this one was really impressive in person, click on the pic to enlarge it

of course there is a gift shop where you can buy a bazillion kinds of marcipan: sugar candy, chocolates, chocolates with alcohol, figurines, caramels, suckers, and gummy candies... all mixed with/infested with marcipan.disney is so famous - everywhere

they look cute but they kind of taste like playdough

in case you didn't realize, every single thing in the museum was 100% marcipan, made by sweet little hungarian ladies. they work in a glass room in the front of the museum and you can watch them if you like. there are small signs in front of every scene/figure/statue that says who made it, when, whether it was for a competition or not, and how many hours it took (many took over 100 hours). do you agree with me that hungarians are the most patient people ever??

Budapest with Gabi - part 3

when walking around szentendre we saw such sights as these:

walking down the streets of szentendre you can see many vendors, shops, and artists

here is one such artist whom i asked in hungarian if i could take his picture. love his face in this

the average size of passageways in szentendre (gabi was in the pic, so i asked her to say hi)

cobblestone everywhere, so quaint

i want to go back to szentendre in the spring or summer when there are leaves on the trees

some guy was selling little secret boxes that are hard to get into. he'll carve your name or whatever on there if you buy it. kathryn and tom are my sis and dad, so i took a pic for y'all.

these otherwise cute purses are made out of MUSHROOMS

have you ever seen a "shop" so fulllllllll of stuff?!?!?

gabi with her apa and anya

look at her lovin' on him!

we had a nice quiet morning walking around the pretty little town. there are houses, flats, shops, museums, restaurants, and traffic... but not a lot of any of those things. it is some sort of non-touristy hungarian hideaway, so i consider myself privileged to have been taken there. :)

thanks AGAIN gabi!!

Budapest with Gabi - part 2

in between heartbeats

gabi and her parents took me to a little suburb of budapest when i was there. it's called szentendre (saint andrew) and i loved it there. there are a few museums there, and though i'm not usually the museum type, the ones we saw were fatastic! what i saw in a three room "museum" (which is actually up a wooden spiral staircase above someone's flat, probably) was so fascinating i'm certain i'll never forget it. there are teeny tiny miniature eensy weensy sculptures, paintings, and statuettes made by an unimaginably patient guy.

to prepare you for the museum (or by mere coincidence) there is a strikingly narrow path between two buildings in the center of the town. and it leads to the door of the place containing the tiniest stuff i've ever seen.

when you come in you notice little display cases that look like this. there is a tiny thing (whatever it may be) with a light and a microscope pointed at it.here is a close-up of the microscope aimed at what looks like nothing.

but here is what was actually on that little stick of nothing (head of a pin):

top row: a working padlock and key
bottom row: a disassembled padlock and key

here was another almost-nothing on a tiny pin. side view. oh, it's upside down on the pin and the microscope inverts the image.

here's what we were "looking at" in the above pic:

(by the way, that urn and those cups are sitting on a sliced grain of sugar)

this is the smallest book in the world.

it has hungarian poetry hand-written on its thinner-than-paper-thin pages. there are 12 pages... and you can turn them to read it, if you have the tools to do so. omg.

you've heard of things being so small you can fit them on the head of a pin? in the micro-museum they did it! here is a chessboard with movable pieces! i zoomed in with my camera AND we're looking through a microscope. freaking minuscule!

so, here is a poppy seed - you know those little things that get stuck in your teeth? well, these people cut one opened and made it a nest for golden sparrows... and a caterpillar.

nothing...

the most amazing thing ever!

in matthew 19:24 jesus said, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." watch out, rich folks - i know it wasn't easy to get these camels in there.

i didn't/couldn't take pictures of everything. but there was also:

a bust of abraham lincoln carved in a sloe seed (size of a mustard seed). it's 3mm.

a life-sized baby golden flea wearing shoes.

a spring from a miniature watch with a little man walking on it. the man is 5 microns tall. (1mm=1000microns)

a golden yacht sailing on a sea – a grain of rice – with a standing woman, and a flying seagull.

a map of australia carved in glass and held in a half poppy seed.

a human hair, carved length-wise and inscribed with the word "peace" in 5 languages.

another human hair, hollowed out to make a tube, inside of which was a perfectly carved rose.

the guy who does these things (oh he also paints really small things on really small things) is some ukrainian-hungarian named Mikola Szjadrisztij. there is some info about him in the museum. he first had to make the tools necessary to make these tiny things. when he wants to make a stroke on a painting or carve a line in some gold, he has to be very still and quiet and listen to his heart beating. he has to make his move in between heartbeats or he will make an error.

Budapest with Gabi - part 1

one of my colleagues (i call her "spanish teacher gabi") invited me to go home with her for the ski break. *note: there were two days off - thursday and friday - for students to go skiing. schools have the option to give these days off or not, my school did. how freakin' sweet!* gabi was born in raised in budapest, so that's where we went. i was even allowed to bring xander!

the first night we got home, ate lunch (goulash!), and took a nap. then we got drinks with one of her friends and returned home for a relaxing evening - since this was vacation after all.

the next day we went to parliament. i didn't even attempt to take pictures of the outside because i'm not that great of a photographer and there are a million pics online. here are a few good ones:
then inside i took a few of my own. it really was very impressive in there. the building has been badly damaged twice in the past hundred years, but has been rebuilt by who i am convinced are the most resilient people on earth: the hungarians.
anyway, here are some shots of the inside:


right when you walk in there is a replica of the parliament which is 125x smaller than the real thing, to scale. even that is impressive... but also... it's made of matches. 100,000 or something.

here i am in the main entrance. red carpets, marble, real gold on the ceilings, frescos, scupltures, arches, chandeliers... these people ain't messin' around.
there are statues along the halls depicting regular hungarian jobs (baker, painter, teacher, doctor, etc) to remind the representatives, the prime minister, and all of the 2000 employees of parliament that they work for the people.
i really liked those statues. there are 88 of them, if i recall correctly. detailed, realistic, yet funny.

here i am in the room where all the history happens. (US equiv: congress)


the CROWN JEWELS! ooh, ahh! there isn't a king any more, but if there were, this would be his stuff. these pictures are zoomed because this area is roped off and in a big glass case.

we somehow missed the english tour (though we arrived early) so we had to take the hungarian one. i didn't mind, since i'm used to blocking out/snatching random words of hungarian from conversations all day, but poor gabi had to translate. AND this was like her 6th time on this tour.
THANK YOU, GABI!!! sorry i'm a pain and don't know hungarian - yet.

in other news:
last week one of my colleagues invited me to the theater/theatre. the show playing was a hungarian favorite called "Pál Utcai Fiúk" ("pal oots-eye fee-yook) which is something like "the paul street boys." i went to the theater and lo! about 1/4 of my school was there! there were a ton of students and teachers i recognized right away. actually, i saw one kid i thought was one of my students. i thought he was balazs. i stared at him a while, keeping with the hungarian norm, until i decided he wasn't my student. then i chuckled to myself as i thought about how funny it would have been if i had gone up to him and said, "oh balazs! good to see you!" i chuckled because i thought to myself that his name probably was balazs and he would be freaking out because i knew him and he didn't know me. anyway, my facination with him dissolved as i was busy looking around at other potential students. as my colleague greeted me and whisked me away, i heard that balazs-looking kid's friend come to him and say in hungarian, "hi balazs!" of course that was his name.

anyway, i loved the play, though i think i only understood about 10% of the actual hungarian. since it was acted out, i could grasp the concept pretty clearly. it was about two groups of boys who are fighting for an empty lot (for a playground, sort of) in 19th century budapest. it's based on fact, the streets and boys are/were real. in the play, however, allll of the boys were played by girls. and rather well, i'd say. there were a few scenes i didn't totally understand, so i asked aniko' at intermission. she gladly filled me in and equally as gladly laughed at what i thought i had understood. :::rolls eyes:::

in budapest, i told gabi that i had seen the play and liked it. we stopped in a bookstore and she bought me a copy of the story in ENGLISH!! woohoo!! when we got back to her parents' place (the place where she grew up) she even showed me her very own copy from when she was a kid. yay! i'm turning hungarian... sort of.

mine and hers

thank you for a great time in your city, gabi!