I'd like to buy a vowel, please

Üdvözöljük szállodåankaban! Kérjük, vegyék figyelembe, hogy az eltünt értéktárgyakért!

Holy diacritical marks, Batman! Such is Hungarian, I have found. But here's my question: if you emphasize every vowel, doesn't that....doesn't that nullify the point of accenting one in the first place? Baffling, yet delightful. Slavic languages are a new and bewildering experience; it's the same alphabet, to be sure. And yet nothing is recognizable because it isn't a romantic language; it has wholly other origins. The best way to think about how Slavic languages make you feel is to say they're a tease. Like a man in a tux with a gin martini. Hungarian is step up from Chinese, which is utterly alien to the unstudied eye (and ear)...and yet, this Slavic langauge has the false appearance of being manageable, and though it sounds like it could be a kissing-cousin of Russian (so to speak), it isn't. At all. Hence, the language as a tease-- a great big tease.

As you've probably surmised, I've arrived in Budapest. I actually landed (after leaving my B&B in Aberdeen at 4:30 am) about 3 hours ago (2:30 pm), but it took me a bit of time to get to my hotel. Not only is traffic crazy downtown (and I am smack downtown, *awesomeness*), but then you've got to take into account (you knew it was coming) Misadventure With "Public" Transport In A Foreign Country, Part the First (of the 2010 series).

I write "public" with scare-quotes because it had to do with a short, rotund taxi driver...and his taxi..and I can't decide if taxis count as public transport. At any rate you get the picture. So here's the story:

Alta Moda Fashion Hotel--which is brand-baby-spanking new, is across the street from where the conference will be (Central European University), is 5 minutes from the river, and is where I'm staying these next 4 nights/5days--was supposedly going to collect me from the airport and drive me to the lobby of selfsame hotel. No one showed up for "Crull". In fact, no one showed up with a sign at all except for one poor guy who was searching intently for straggling "Music History Conference" participants, and who saw my curious glances in his direction and mistook me for one of his own misplaced flock.

Although I toyed briefly with the idea of ditching my own conference and joining that one instead (and this may or may not have been in part due to the fact that the guy with the sign was rather handsome), I decided in the end to stick to the original plan. Which is to present on Friday a talk I have yet to finish on the history of the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Yes, I am in Budapest for this. Hurrah! The conference is called "HOPOS", which stands for History of Philosophy of Science. Fantasticalness, yes?

Back to Misadventure with Public Transport in a Foreign Country, Part the First. Once I realized that my hotel had stood me up, I went without stopping to think much (hmm: the more I reflect on it the more it seems these Misadventures involve going without stopping to think. Ah well. I embrace the fact that I'm a Head in the Clouds, Feet in the...Altostratus sort of person. Or something. Aaaanyway...). I jumped in the first taxi I found, and immediately noticed that the price meter thing was NOT in units of Euros. I had paid for my room at Alta Moda Fashion Hotel in euros, and apparently made the badly grounded inference that Hungary operated on that particular currency. Which in fact it does not.

So I tell the taxi driver, whose English is middling-to-bleak, I need to stop at a cash machine.
"Cash machine?" He asks.
"Caaaash MaahSHEEEEeene" I say more slowly, and loudly, as all Americans do because somehow we think this makes English magically intelligible.
"Cash machine?" He asks again. I take out my debit card and wave it.
"CASH machine," I say. He says,
"Oh! Cash machine!"

After about 20 minutes of hairy driving (it reminded me of Beijing taxis-- fast, furious, and confident beyond all reason), the taxi driver pulls over, puts on the hazzards and says, pointing to a building: "Cash machine!"

I jump out and run up the steps. There are two machines. I try the first one four times, and it refuses to dispense any Forint (which I had at least managed to calculate during the drive is approx. 1/200 of a USD). I freak out, and try to run back to the taxi. Only..there is now an entire lane of cars filling the space where MY taxi had once idled. And of course I didn't pay any attention to what color, make or model my taxi was. I didn't even really pay attention to what the driver looked like. I make several noises of frustration, run up to open the rear-left door of a car that looks somewhat familiar and realize *just* before opening the door that, given the look on the driver's face, this was NOT in fact my taxi (or a taxi at ALL. I'm such a ninny). I despair of the situation and turn again up the stairs to try my luck at the second cash machine. After three tries I am SITLL having no luck, but now the taxi driver has parked and come over to me to help the poor dumb blonde American chick.

Though, I must here pause to make confession: whenever I do air-head stuff like this in other countries...I (oh man this is an embarrassing confession)...I feign a British accent. So they won't think I'm a stupid American. That's right. I really do it. And have done it, a lot. Sorry, it's true. I don't have enough pride to stop being an air-head, but I do have enough to fake a different accent.

Anyway, I tell the taxi driver (in faux-British English) what's happened, and he says "Cash machine at hotel?" I say yes, and scamper behind him like a freakishly tall fluff-nugget back to the taxi, whose color I at least have the presence of mind to notice. (It was black. And shiny. But I still don't know the kind of car it was. European?)

We drive into the heart of downtown Budapest, all the while my taxi driver is answering his cell phone constantly and speaking in frustrated Hungarian voice to various other taxi drivers, no doubt telling them something like
"Geez, I got this STUPID American chick in the car. She doesn't have any cash on her, not even a Euro to her name, and she keeps fading in and out of this STUPID British accent. What does she take me for? I am going to charge her SO much more than the usual fee. Stupid American."

I start to feel like, well, a stupid American, sitting there listening to him converse in this foreign tongue while I sit dumbly in the back, praying that I can find cash at the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel. I start peering intently out the window, scanning the streets for the address of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel, at Nádor Utca 13. Points for knowing the hotel's address, right? Am I right?

After an eternity I spot the street sign and practically shout (in my best Hungarian accent, after listening pensively to the taxi driver's many conversations): "NÁDOR UTCA!" Of course I pronounce it horrendously wrong, but if I've learned one thing it's that one can always save at least some (dumb) (American) face by making charming though naive attempts at the local language. The taxi driver laughed, and corrected me. Several times. But at least he was laughing. And then we had arrived at the lobby of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel.

The entire building is gorgeous, and less than one month old inside. Everything is done in classy black/white/gold/silver, and the reception desk is manned by 2 endlessly kind Hungarian young men and 1 endlessly amused Hungarian young woman. The taxi driver, who has of course followed me into the lobby of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel, commences a string of (so I gather) partly amused, partly annoyed, partly sympathetic conversations with each of the receptionists, after which one of the young men opens a tiller, hands my taxi driver 5200 Hungarian Forints, and checks me into my room.

Which is where I am now typing. I unpacked my things, took a few deep breaths, and have now told my story. I'm pretty wiped out, and the light isn't exciting outside right now (it's a bright, beautiful, sunny day...but there is too much sun so as to make photographs flat), so I will take a little nipper, as they say, until the sun is ready to set. And then, onward with the adventures, and the subsequent photos which I shall post, post haste.

I can always finish writing my talk later, right? Of course. For now there's too much adventuring to be done (well, save for the napping part). As Bilbo would say, "It's a dangerous business, going out your front door."

Balmoral

I needed to get out of Aberdeen. Something fierce.

So yesterday I took a bus along the Royal Deeside, thus named because it is a road built alongside the Dee River so that the Queen could easily get to her residence (and by residence I mean castle) in Balmoral. You know that exquisite scene in the movie The Queen, where she is at the Balmoral Castle, in the highlands, and her life is in shambles, and suddenly she looks up and there's a magnificent stag just standing there, peacefully? Trust me, it's a turning point in the film. Here-- you can watch the scene yourself: the first 3:30 takes place where I was yesterday:



Here are some of the pictures I took from the little day trip. You can see more of them on my Photobucket site, in the Scotland album. [My my, isn't THIS a media-savvy post?]





The Castle at Balmoral (the Royal Family's residence in Scotland)




Crathie, the small village outside of Balmoral Castle


It was wonderfully freeing, especially because I made my own way to the top, avoiding all the tourist routes. In fact, I don't think there were any "designated trails" on the hill I climbed. All the better. And no chance of getting lost (yes, I know it's what you were thinking) because I could always see the Dee, and Balmoral castle below me.

On the way to the top I got in some good rock climbing (on rocks so old that they crumbled, much to my simultaneous amusement and terror), some self-portraits in the forest and at the summit (including one of me putting a stone on the Cairn--or the Ebenezer, perhaps-- at the top), walked through fields covered in 8 inches (at least!) of ancient undergrowth, and in the process of all this managed to coat myself in sufficient quantities of dirt, moss and other unidentified foliage, thorns (yes, lots of thorns--especially near the crumbly rocks), and of course I managed to find some sort of goo to get all over my jeans. I shall save the water in which I wash this climbing outfit then put it into an oaken barrel along with some wheat kernels, and let it sit for 30 years, and then proceed to distill my very own single-malt whiskey. I shall call it "Elisiker", and it shall belong to the Eliselay Scotches--akin to Islay whiskies, but...woodsier.

I had a great deal of fun on the hike. I discovered lots of enormous slugs (which I poked with a twig), the ruins of a small house or shed, lots of deer tracks (and poop), and a small meadow near the peak in which I laid me down amongst the wildflowers and whispery mountain breezes for a wonderful nap...until it started to snow. I climbed several fences, trespassed through a few backyards, stumbled through two boulder fields, walked smack into an expansive marshy-swamp (but escaped before my shoes were completely soaked), and saw the biggest bunny I have ever seen on this earth. I sang old gospel songs all the way down, eating raw sugar-snap peas (which I took one at a time from my pack) between verses.

After my hike the weather turned blustery and bone-chilling, so I took the bus to a quaint nearby village called Ballater. I found a little coffee/tea shop where I sat at a table with two older women from Aberdeen, who were on a day journey in the highlands. They tried to share their tea-cakes with me but I politely declined, explaining that I was drinking coffee and it didn't seem appropriate to eat teacakes whilst drinking coffee.

Then I got back on a bus (no Misadventures with Public Transport the whole trip! I'm a little frightened about what this might mean for my Hungary and Germany tips...you have to understand how this peculiar type of Karma works for me, I guess..) I day-dreamed all the way back to the Union Street Bus Station in Aberdeen, watching the River Dee flow merrily alongside the road. The world was new again.

Today I had much work to do, so I revisited the "secret" cafe, whose name is actually Kilau (see the photo album link above for a few pictures of the coffee shop, as well as my study partner, Julie). During the research I realized that I will only be in Scotland for little more than 48 hours. I packed up my things and headed out in search of a record store, because I had to buy the Stornoway album before I left--it's a Scottish band I mentioned before, and you can't get the album on iTunes. I found a store called 1-Up, which is my new favorite thing in the world. I wiled away the afternoon there, delighted by the large selection of great Indie albums, as well as many favorite bands both old and new-- until closing, at which point I had to make the painful decision to purchase the following (but a subset of the many more I wanted to purchase):

Sigh No More (Mumford & Sons)
Fire: The Jimi Hendrix Collection
Gold (The Velvet Underground)
The Very Best of Nina Simone
The Sound of The Smiths
London Calling (The Clash)
and, of course, Beachcomber's Windowsill, by Stornoway.

While I was finalizing my purchases with the slowest sales clerk I have ever encountered (she even read, with care, all THREE of the receipts generated by the sale), the other sales clerk explained that she and my cashier, Princess Thorough-Pants, were sisters, and that their dad had owned this shop since the 1970s. She also told me they had vinyls downstairs in the basement that I should check out..but unfortunately it was already closing time (well, it was PAST closing by the time Captain Slowface finally handed me my bag). I will do my darnedest to get back to this magical musicland before I leave. I've already listened to the Smith's album (perfection) and the Stornoway album (haunting, beautiful, and very Scottish). I'm finishing Nina Simone as I type. Love me some Nina.

Right now I've gotta get back to work. And by work, I mean half-assed editing of various grant proposals (bleeech) combined with simultaneous full-assed listening to...oh, who should be next? Let's go with Velvet Underground. Yes.

T.G.I.F.

That's all I got.

LoTR

I can't go very long without reading my favorite book. I finished Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises yesterday afternoon and then realized I had read everything I brought with me on the trip. So I went to a used bookstore after work and bought my second copy of Lord of the Rings. Ahhhh....wonderfulness.

I don't get the big deal with Hemingway, anyway. If you want to understand the disillusionment of a generation, all you have to do is watch a few minutes of MTV's The Real World, or observe any number of platinum blondes with fake nails driving third-generation Hummers whilst drinking Venti Soy Non-fat Lite Raspberry Mochafrappacchinos and texting friends about how disappointed she is with the latest Gossip Girl plot twist and how annoyed she is about the BP oil spill, because, like, can't they get over it already?

Now *that's* disillusionment. And we didn't even have a World War to disillusion us--we did it all by ourselves. So take that, Ernie.

Although, in the end I liked the book okay. It made me want to go to Spain. That's how disillusioned I am-- that I read a book chronicling the subtle but poignant love affairs or denials, waning friendships and existential crises among a group of young expatriates, and I thought the best part was Hemingway's description of the Matador's shiny green pants. Oh well. I do love green pants. And shiny things.

Yesterday Guido and I wrote a book proposal and sent it to Cambridge University Press. We did it in one hour, which got Guido very exited. He thinks we broke some sort of book-proposal-writing record. Maybe CUP will give us a trophy. That'd be nice. Maybe it will be shiny. OR green.

Today I am working on proposals for grants again (and the peasants rejoiced?). But if I work hard, then I can go home and read more Tolkien! (and the geeks rejoiced!) But really, how can one help it? --here, surrounded by shires and sheeps and Lothians and...well, the mood is trés apropos. As it were. This weekend I will take a day trip out of Aberdeenshire to do some "tramping" of my own. It has been far too long...

American Populace Enthralled By Idea Of Getting Enthralled By World Cup

Oh how I love The Onion (from which I took above headline). It makes me miss the homeland.

I haven't written a real post in a long time. Part of that is because I'm working really, really, ridiculously hard and that diminishes the potential for boredom which diminishes the potential for adventures. I haven't even had my Obligatory Misadventure With Public Transport In A Foreign Country yet. Maybe something special awaits me in Hungary or Germany. I leave Scotland in exactly one week. ONE WEEK!

Also, I happened to have a very difficult weekend, and so haven't felt much like writing about anything uplifting because I've been feeling pretty rotten. In shambles, in fact. And being in shambles alone in a far distant country (no matter how green) is tough. Nay-- awful. So yeah. That's what's up. But you know, the sun is back today, for the first time in almost a week, and...what else. And I got to have a chocolate cookie at breakfast today, so there's that.

Though through these last few days I have had something of a revelation: when life gives you lemons, read The Onion. You can write that down.

Here's a smart-alecky little interactive feature from aforementioned news source, in line with the title of this post. I do enjoy how Americans are able to make fun of themselves. I think it's fairly unique, actually. At least I don't get that hearty sense of self-deprecation from any other nation. U. S. A. ! U. S. A. !