Curious Characters

After three weeks in Hungary, I can comfortably say that I've met a number of animated individuals. Whether or not this has anything to do with Hungarian culture itself is up for grabs, but the cultural differences almost have to contribute.

Exhibit A: for a couple of days in a row this week, a few of us ate lunch at a restaurant called Kadar. Supposedly it serves non-kosher, "traditional" Jewish-Hungarian cuisine, whatever that means. Whatever, it's delicious. Anyway, the menu changes from day to day, the prices are very reasonable, and the man and woman running the eatery are extrememly likable. The man we refer to as "The Doctor" because he wears a large white shirt every day and has a physicianly disposition and low voice. Plus he knows now to come over to our table and translate the menu when we walk in, almost like he's going over charts with illiterate patients. Now, both days we were somehow swindled into buying dessert! The first day the woman simply brought the succulent apple-meringue pastry to the table and, at that point, who's going to say no? The second day The Doctor saw that I'd finished my soup and began describing something delicious with his less-than-perfect English. I thought he was asking me how my meal had been and describing how they made the mushroom soup, so I nodded enthusiastically so that he knew I'd enjoyed my meal. Well, of course, 2 minutes later I had a plate of goodies in front of me again, which the boys along graciously lapped up. To wrap it all up, The Doctor helped me with my coat as we were leaving and said "Szia tomorrow!" I wasn't sure if he was saying "Szia", which is good-bye in Hungarian, or attempting an American "see ya", but either way it was very endearing. Unfortunately, we haven't returned for a third visit yet.

Exhibit B: Today we heard a lecture on a topic we could actually follow: Number Theory! Csaba Szabo was as crazy as his name looks! He gave what I considered to be the most engaging lecture thus far, excitedly slamming the sliding-chalk boards back and forth as he sketched illegible proofs out for us :) Being in the front row was a bit intimidating, as class participation was expected, but worth it. It's hard not to hold back giggles with a guy who asks us to find differences between numbers like "7 to the huge" and "29 to the lot".. The discussion pinnacled with a consideration of "how many trees you can see in the middle of the woods", assuming of course the trees are only located at every integer location like "all NORMAL forests". Turns out you can only see the trees that have coordinates that are relatively prime! Exciting, huh? And the probability that if you choose 2 numbers they're relatively prime? 6/pi squared. It still boggles my mind that we can assign finite numbers to ideas like that. Sorry, non-math followers! Point and case: Hungarians+Chalkboards=Inspiration.

As you can see from this elegant illustration (:

On another note, one of my favorite hobbies these past few weeks has undoubtedly been people- watching. Our commute across town every morning and afternoon carries us through some very energetic, busy crowds--presumably Hungarians on their routine commute to and from work or school. Over the weeks, my top three observations are: Hungarian commuters are polite, affectionate, and very, very stylish.

Polite: Even now that the strikes are over, public trams and subway stations are often very full, with people constantly sitting, standing, exiting, entering, stumbling from jerky stops (or maybe that's just us tourists) on the packed cars. Despite it all, and even with the language barriers, I've noticed that the elderly and handicap are always given a seat, that "excuse me" or "sorry" are frequently muttered, and that both passengers and drivers (usually) wait patiently for everyone to exit and enter the vehicles at each stop. And, in the unthinkable occasion when an Ole finds him or herself a bit turned around and unsure which direction he or she wants to go on a tram, it is plausible that a random Hungarian man or two who speak not a drop of English would patiently spend a solid five minutes pointing and gesturing until the student finally figured out where he or she was. Not that that has ever happened.

Affectionate: French kissing isn't only in France!

Very, Very Stylish: If you are a woman between the ages of 15 and 30 and you are every wondering what you could wear to fit in in Budapest, I guarantee a pair of dark-washed skinny jeans, tall black boots, and a black pea-coat with a cashmere scarf would do the trick! A few of us girls grabbed a quick lunch today then spent the rest of our hour shopping for what else but skinny jeans and boots. Tina warned us before we left that blacks, browns, and greys would be the most common colors on the streets, and she was right about that!

But enough stereotyping. To wrap it up, we are all anxiously looking forward to this weekend! After a week full of math, Tina has graciously given us tomorrow and Saturday off, so we are free to travel the world (okay... Central Europe). We are going in several directions... a group of about nine of us are catching the train to Vienna in the morning, while another group is headed to Prague, and a few daring individuals are catching flights to other exotic destinations. We are all hoping to find decent youth hostels for a reasonable price. The Euro isn't quite as friendly toward an American tourist as the Hungarian Forint, so we're all bracing ourselves for a pricey weekend! I have no doubt it will be well worth it, though... considering we've managed to entertain ourselves in Budapest for three weeks, I'm sure a weekend anywhere will be an absolute blast.