Hungarian class is more Hungarian class. It is a really interesting language, but the class itself is incredibly draining. We learn mostly vocabulary, which is hard to retain, with a little bit of grammar, which can be complicated. Hungarian still has a fair amount of exceptions and irregular verbs, like English. However, a lot of how things work are based on how the words sound and hopefully it's the kind of thing you develop an ear for. Not sure how much of an ear I'll develop in a semester, but I'll certainly improve.
For lunch, I wandered around with some people to find a place to eat. We eventually settled on an etterem, the standard word for restaurant. It served Hungarian food, and you pointed to the dishes you wanted and they'd pile it on a plate, then weigh it to determine how much you owed. It was pretty tasty and pretty cheap but almost everything was fried, which was unfortunate. I got a salad as well, but it was drenched in dressing and so not incredibly tasty. On the way back from lunch, we stopped at a fancy chocolate store and I bought several different chocolate bars. One was pure dark chocolate, 70%, one was dark chocolate with lavender, and the final was dark chocolate with Sichuan pepper. I ate the lavender one on the way back to class, but the other two are as of now untouched. The shop was also interesting because a lot of the chocolate bars were labeled in French, so it was kind of nice to be able to understand what the items in the store actually said.
After class, I tried to buy the revenue stamp we need in order to get the residence permit. As an American citizen, I don't need a visa to enter Hungary and I can stay here as a tourist for up to 90 days without anything beyond my passport. But, since I'm going to be here for longer, I need to get a residence permit. So, I went off to the post office with a group of people to try and get these expensive and necessary stamps. Once there, I did not do so. There was a group of 5 of us trying to buy the stamps and we weren't exactly sure what we needed. There was one person at the post office who spoke any English, and she didn't speak very much. While we had the Hungarian word that we needed, we thought we only needed one large stamp and the teller started counting off a bunch of smaller ones, so we decided to play it safe and confirm what exactly the stamps were with our program's student coordinator. The teller was very annoyed with us as we told her, in broken Magyar, that we didn't want (without an object), as we backed out of the post office. We then ran into another group of BSM students who were trying to do the same thing. They were confident that the stamps they found were the right ones and so did purchase them. I was still unconvinced and decided that I didn't want to risk spending about $80 on the wrong set of stamps.
Afterwards, I walked with a group of people to find Csak a jó sörök, or Only good beer, a good beer store in Budapest. On the way we passed by this cool looking statues. There are neat statues all over Budapest, and I should really take more pictures of them.
Anyways, getting to the beer store involved me riding the villamos or tram for the first time since I got here. The metro pass I got covers all forms of public transportation, which means I didn't have to pay anything extra, and it was a very nice and simple experience. I then led the group of people away down side streets looking for a beer store whose name I couldn't recall as it started to get dark. Luckily, we were in a nicer part of Pest so it wasn't too shady. Eventually though, we found the store. And it was fantastic. I'm definitely going to be be going there on a regular basis. They had a wide selection of beers, many I hadn't heard of, some I had. There were some American beers, but a good variety of Europeans as well, including Belgian. I bought four beers, two from a local Hungarian brewery, one a strong Belgian ale, and the last an interesting looking Dutch beer. To date, I've tried one of them, the Black Rose, which is a strong Hungarian black beer. It was sweeter than I expected, but still very tasty.
After the beer store, we headed out for an early dinner. We found Liszt Ferenc tér, named for the famous actually-Hungarian-and-not-German composer Franz Liszt. His real name is Ferenc, but I guess the German was more palatable to people. Also his last name translates to flour, which I find amusing. This square was filled with many very tasty looking restaurants and wasn't as expensive as the other restaurant-filled area I know of, Ráday utca. We picked the most crowded restaurant and headed inside. The meal was delicious, probably the best I've had so far. It was expensive for Budapest, but still relatively reasonable, and a healthy amount of food. I had bone marrow and roasted goose leg with a glass of dry Tokaj wine, a white wine that was fairly fruity and not all that dry.
It was delicious. They cut the marrow out of the bone for you, which felt pretty fancy. And it was as tasty as bone marrow can be. I've been looking for it because it's apparently a Hungarian delicacy but I haven't seen it on any menus. The goose was delicious as well, and I ate it straight off the bone, though I felt a little uncultured for doing so. Other people got other delicious dishes. These included duck breast, a traditional garlic cream soup, pumpkin risotto with blue cheese, chicken páprikas, and a meat and something soup (this is what I get for writing this post so far after the events transpired...)
They were all delicious. It was a pretty posh looking place to; I felt a little out of place with my t-shirt and backpack, but it was worth it.
Afterwards, I returned to my apartment where Boris and some people were hanging out. I joined them, and we tried some Unicum, a special Hungarian bitter liquor that's very popular here but not liked anywhere else in the world. It's interesting, very herbally; it has a good initial taste I find, but the finish is very bitter, too much so for my taste. The Unicum itself pours a dark brown, a most unappealing color. Anyways, that was all good fun but I blame the hanging out with people for why I was unable to blog, being too tired and too late for me to put words to paper.
Anyways, that's it for Wednesday, now to Thursday!
No comments:
Post a Comment