Pictures From Fall Break (October 18-23)

As usual, these photos correspond to the stuff I talked about in the post immediately before this one. I traveled all around Romania for BSM's fall break, so there are a lot of nice pictures this time!

Before leaving on Fall Break, I got to go to a talk by the inventor of the Lénárt sphere, which is a tool for helping students understand spherical geometry. Pictured here is my construction of an equilateral triangle on one of the spheres, as described in Book 1, Proposition 1 of Euclid's Elements. :)

When we weren't using the Lénárt spheres themselves, we messed around with oranges. I made this monstrosity myself!

I saw this funky little statue in Poiana and loved it.

The Black Church in Brașov, so named for a fire that blackened its walls in the 1600s.

One of the narrowest streets in Europe! It was built to give firefighters access between two larger streets in Brașov.

Catherine's Gate in Brașov, one of the remnants of the old walls for the city. The four little corner turrets mean that Brașov has the authority to decide capital punishment.

Looking down on Brașov from high on a hill!

These are the Hollywood-style letters above Brașov up close.

Dipika and Hiro, two of the other BSM students who climbed the hill with me. :)

Peleș Castle from afar, featuring some of the beautiful tree colors we had this weekend.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside of Peleș Castle, but these are some of the pretty bits of artwork on the courtyard walls.

Bran castle was very different, with lots of bare stone and narrow staircases.

View looking out from Bran Castle.

This is about half of Bran Castle, as seen from inside the courtyard.

Our host gave us really good soup!

As far as I can tell it's foggy every morning in Transylvania. This was the best fog photo I got.

One of the better photos I got from the Sugo Cave.

One of the other BSM students trying to get through "The Birthing Hole," the tightest squeeze on our route. Past this point, I couldn't bring my phone because I would have broken it wriggling around.

Boating on the Red Lake, featuring some of the other BSM students.

A beautiful mountain gorge that we walked through on Monday.

There were a lot of very friendly dogs and cats out and about. Jake (pictured here) named this one George, and he followed us the entire time we were walking through the gorge. 

Dipika found a pretty purple flower! It's all one petal.

Exterior tower of Dârjiu fortified church, one of the oldest Unitarian churches in the world.

Interior of the same church.

One of the murals on the wall, featuring the sort of medieval art that people love to make memes with. Tag yourself?

A hilltop cemetary in Sighișoara that I thought was really beautiful.

To be honest, I don't know what this building is. It was in Sighișoara and I thought it looked cool so I took a bunch of photos of it.

The top of the "Echo Chamber" in Salina Turda, which extends downwards for about 150 meters. Sound echoes for a loooong time if you yell from right here.

The main open area in Salina Turda. It's hard to get a sense of scale from the photo, but that's a Ferris wheel in the bottom center, and the lights at the far end of the room are 13 flights of stairs that you need to take to get to the bottom. It's HUGE.

In the same room, there's an underground lake with some weird, UFO-like structures built in it. I couldn't get very good photos of it but hopefully you get the idea. :)

The stairs one takes to get back aboveground from the salt mine.

There were a bunch of hanging lightbulbs in Cluj, and that's pretty much all I got to photograph in Cluj so here ya go.

The whole reason we had fall break now was October 23rd being a national holiday in Hungary, which these signs in Cluj commemorate. 

The Romanian currency is the lei, some samples of which are depicted below. The bills feel weird and I much prefer the Hungarian forint.

After my trip, I went to a topology talk given by Dr. David Gay, who is working at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn this year. Before the talk, I helped him build this dodecahedron out of paper. It's a fun shape to make because they fit together to tile 3D space, like squares and hexagons fit together to tile the plane.

Fall Break!

Hi everyone,
This last week, I got to go on a big adventure! We didn't have school from Monday-Wednesday this week (October 23rd is the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a national holiday), and I joined 8 other BSM students on a trip through the Transylvania, which is a region of Romania that has often belonged to Hungary in the past and has a lot of interesting cultural history. We did a LOT on the trip, so this might be kind of a long post unless I end up getting tired and glossing over the details. I'll put up a bunch of pictures in another post right after this one too.

Our trip started out on Friday night, with an overnight train from Budapest to Brașov, Romania. I love traveling by train, and we had sleeper cars so the journey was very comfortable. This was also my first time traveling outside the borders of Hungary, so it was fun getting to have my passport stamped upon crossing the border into Romania. We made it to Brașov around 10:00 on Saturday morning and had the day to explore the city. We stayed in a nice guesthouse on a street named after Vlad Țepeș a.k.a. Dracula, who is a national hero in Romania. After leaving our bags at the guesthouse, we took a bus up to Poiana, one of the major ski resorts in the area. There isn't any snow there yet, but we had a nice lunch and enjoyed the beautiful fall colors in the hills. When we came back down, we joined a free walking tour of Brașov and saw some of the main buildings in the historic part of the city. Around the end of the tour, I went with three other BSM students to hike up a 1000 meter hill next to the city. Brașov has its named spelled out in Hollywood-style letters at the top of the hill (hearkening back to Communist times, when the city was renamed "Stalin" and the new name was spelled out in pine trees on the hillside), so we made it our goal to reach the letters. We got to the top right at sunset and took some great pictures before climbing all the way back down in the dark. A very nice local man and his dog helped show us the way back, which was great. In the evening, we all got dinner together before retiring to our guesthouse. It was one of the other student's  21st birthday, so some people bought wine and everyone stayed up late drinking it and chatting with one another.

On Sunday morning we got up, ate a nice breakfast, and departed Brașov by bus. It was Castle Day, where we visited three awesome castles in the region. The first was Peleș Castle, a palace built by Carol I (first king of independent Romania) around 1900. It was incredibly over-the-top, with rooms blending influences from all sorts of European styles, multiple secret doors, and precious stones and metals everywhere. We had a nice tour of the interior and got to enjoy the scenery outside for a while before driving off towards Bran Castle, which is a popular tourist attraction because it's where Dracula lived. We got there just before closing time, but we were allowed to walk through the rooms and take lots of cool photos of the stuff there. It was much older than Peleș and provided a neat contrast of style with its medieval fortifications. The last castle we visited was Râșnov Fortress, which was originally designed to be able to house the entire population of the city it overlooks in times of crisis. We weren't allowed within the walls because it was past closing time, but we explored the exterior and enjoyed the sunset from the hilltop. Afterwards, we drove for a couple of hours to reach the small village where our guesthouse was located. The host was wonderful and gave us a lovely dinner of traditional Romanian food, and before long we all dropped off to sleep.

On Monday we woke up and traveled to a nearby forest with an extensive cave system in the hills. Two experienced cavers gave us a tour, including some parts with very tight squeezes. Six out of the nine of us were able to make it through, and there was a lot of army-crawling to reach the more open rooms. It was awesome! There was also a room with very good acoustics, so all of us sang "Country Roads" together to see how it sounded. After the cave, we drove to Red Lake, which is a small lake in the mountains formed through a landslide. As a result of its sudden formation, a lot of trees were caught and petrified at the bottom, and their stumps stick out of the water. It was very cool, and we were able to rent rowboats to explore the surface of the water for half an hour or so. On the way back from the lake, we took a scenic route through a gorge in the mountains, which was stunningly beautiful. We got back to the guesthouse in time for dinner, and people stayed up late enjoying pálinka obtained from our host.

On Tuesday we packed up early and left the guesthouse for a long day of travel. Along the way we stopped by the Dârjiu fortified church, which is a medieval church that became one of the first Unitarian churches in the world after the Protestant Reformation. It was a beautiful structure, with some neat murals on the inside. I also got to try singing in there, which was great. After leaving the church we traveled to the city of Sighișoara, which is notable for its walled "Old Town." We had a couple of hours to explore there, and I saw a lot of neat old buildings, including City Hall when I accidentally entered it without permission. From Sighișoara we had a couple more hours of travel to get to our final guesthouse of the trip, in a small village an hour or so from Cluj. We ate well there and spent the evening chatting with one another.

Wednesday was the final day of the trip. Our train back to Budapest was leaving from Cluj at 14:40, so we had time to make one final stop before leaving Romania: Salina Turda, an enormous salt mine that has been converted into a tourist attraction. It was so cool! The main mine was the largest underground space I've ever been in--it's difficult to convey just how huge it was. The air currents and humidity in the mine mean that the salt gets redistributed into weird formations, while the walls develop beautiful wavy patterns. We were able to explore for an hour or two (and yes, I did try singing here too) before we needed to depart for Cluj. Because we spent a long time at the mine, we barely had any time to explore Cluj, but we were able to grab food and see the outside of one of the main churches before running to catch our train. The rest of the day was spent traveling back to Budapest, and that was the trip! It was an amazing experience overall.

In contrast to the many fun and exciting things I did in the last week, this next week promises to be far less pleasant. I have four midterms in four days, so essentially all of my free time is going towards studying for them. If I survive the exams, though, I get to go hiking in the mountains of Poland with my friend Grace! Wish me luck. :)

A Musical Weekend

Hi everyone,
It's been another interesting week here in Budapest! I have more things to report than I did last time, but sadly I haven't had many opportunities to take photographs, so images and text will be in one point again. Next week I should have lots of pictures to share though, so you can look forward to that if you like the photos. :)

This weekend, most of my time was spent coordinating singing with people! I rehearse and perform in various musical ensembles about 12 hours a week while I'm at Lawrence, and I've really missed having the chance to make music with people while here, so it was wonderful. I sing to myself whenever I'm walking through the streets alone, but it really doesn't compare to the experience of singing in a group. There's an open choir that sings in St. Stephen's Basilica for the English-language masses on Sundays, and this week I was able to attend (after failing to find the rehearsal room last time). The group was small and extremely welcoming, and I had a lot of fun picking up the hymns we sang by ear during the rehearsal on Saturday morning. It was thrilling to sing in the basilica during the actual mass--the space is so huge it almost feels like you're singing outside! I might not have another opportunity to sing with them, as I'll be traveling a lot in the next few weeks, but it was a totally unique experience and I'm so glad I did it.

But that wasn't the only opportunity I had to make music last weekend! One of the people I went out clubbing with a few weeks ago reached out to me, and together we coordinated a "jam jam" of BSM students who enjoy singing casually. We met up at her apartment (which is much better for hosting than mine) on Saturday night and sang for over three hours and it was amazing. I taught the others a couple of my favorite sea shanties, and other people played guitar and improvised percussion and led some good folk songs and things. We ate shortbread and laughed a lot and it might have been the best time I've had hanging out with BSM people since coming here. This weekend everyone is traveling, so we won't be able to get together, but hopefully we can establish more meetings whenever we're all in the city again.

Singing was the only social thing I did this weekend, but I also got to do some nice things on my own around the city. I went and played on the school piano, which plays almost exactly a half-step lower than it should but is reasonably in tune otherwise, and I also visited the kürtöskalács (chimney cake) festival taking place near my apartment a couple of times. The pastry lines were almost 90 minutes long the second time I went, but the atmosphere reminded me of the Sweet Corn Festival we have back home so I didn't mind spending time there. I also had a good book to read while I waited in line, which helped pass the time. :)

Once the week resumed proper, most of my time was consumed in frantic attempts to get all of my homework done for the week, and as such I didn't do much of note. Tuesday night was the exception, when I accompanied the Hungarian Arts+Culture class to a theatrical adaptation of the Odyssey at a local theater! I love theater and have been itching to see what contemporary Hungarian productions look like, so it was very interesting. The show was in Hungarian with English supertitles, which made it a little harder for me to follow the comedy as it happened, but I had a good time. The set was minimal, consisting of a single platform on a turntable, with the walls of the theater covered in blue tinsel-like streamers representing the ocean. When Odysseus finally reached home, the streamers were somehow released from the ceiling in a flowing sequence to leave the stage bare, which I thought was an awesome bit of stagecraft. One fun fact I learned is that people in Hungary clap in unison--they start out slow and gradually get faster, until it's too fast and everyone suddenly cuts the tempo in half and resume speeding up from there.

And that's about it! I'm officially on my fall break now, which means I don't have class until next Thursday. On Friday night I'm taking an evening train to Transylvania with a group of fellow BSM students, where we'll be staying until Wednesday. I'm very excited about it and will be sure to take lots of pictures so I can make a solid blog post about the experience. In the meantime, please enjoy the few pictures I have from the past week:

There isn't any special significance to this photo--I'm just excited to be living in a place where I regularly walk past castles in the course of my daily activities!

No food festival would be complete without people dressed up as the food in question.

These people went all-out with their chimney cakes, adding ice cream and a túró rudi on top of the pastry.

City Park is pretty, and it was fun to be there when it was so full of people having fun at the festival!

A more traditional chimney cake, which for some reason I photographed in the most unflattering way possible.

This is just some pretty art I came across as I was walking through the city this week.

Here's the theater I went to! I wasn't able to get any good pictures of the inside but it was nice.

Catching Up

Hello all,
The previous weekend was a lot less crazy than the few that came before it, so this should be a shorter post. I have a lot fewer pictures this week, so I'll probably just include them with the text here instead of making a separate post. Last weekend, I made a long to-do list of various things that I thought would help get my life more in order, since things have been a bit out of whack lately. I got supplies to clean the apartment, made soup, walked around the city, worked on my homework, and decorated my room, which was all great but not interesting enough to describe in detail. We did find something like eight utensils lying behind the stove, coated in grime, so I spent a while getting them usable again and that was interesting. On Friday night I was invited out clubbing with some people, which was strange. I don't drink and very few people would describe me as a "partier," but it was neat to see what Budapest night life is like, especially since I live in the party district, and I made some good connections with the other people there that mean I can hopefully hang out with them more soon!

Once the week began, I spent the majority of my time trying to keep up with my coursework. The math classes here are very intense, and I'm usually running close to the deadlines for submitting my homework. I did go out to grab food with friends a couple of times though, getting introduced to a nice vegan restaurant very close to BSM. I also went to something called "Astronomy on Tap" Tuesday night, which was an astronomy pub trivia night over in Buda. I went with some friends and we didn't win, but we had a lot of fun guessing at the answers and enjoying the space. Just last night (Thursday), after my classes let out, I was able to meet a person that I'm distantly connected to (I'm fuzzy on the details but I think he stayed with some family friends on my mother's side of the family a few years back) in a bar and it was really nice! We had a good conversation about our respective countries, and he was able to recommend a lot of nice things for me to do to make the most of my time in Budapest.

That's honestly just about everything that's happened this week. This weekend I'm hoping to attend a kürtőskalács (chimney cake) festival that's happening near my apartment, sing with a choir for the English mass in the basilica, and maybe hike to a cave in the hills just outside of the city. I need to make sure I keep up with my homework though, so we'll see what happens. :)

Photos!

I honestly can't remember which ruin pub we went to last Friday night (Instant maybe? I'm not sure), but it was pretty wild! I'm not one for clubbing, but the aesthetic of these places is very cool.

Altogether too much silverware to be hidden behind the stove. I had to boil them three times to get them clean, but now we have multiple small spoons!

Homemade soup, plants, and decorative photos from home ft. a pile of small change I can't spend in the background.

This isn't a high-quality picture, but this Tuesday was my first time out on the Danube at night and it's beautiful! This is the view towards Buda Castle while crossing a bridge from the Pest side.

Pictures from Near September 28th

As usual, these photos correspond to the stuff I talked about in the blog post immediately preceding this one. These photos are not presented in chronological order, and there were a number of places we visited last weekend where we couldn't take pictures, so I encourage you to read the previous blog post to get a better sense of what I've been up to. Cheers!

Grace found a stick!

Meg made a face when I took her picture!

Grace and Meg found a staircase with good holes in it!

Matthias Church, right next to the Fisherman's Bastion

Some of the eclectic decorations inside Szimpla, one of the ruin pubs of Budapest.

This room in Szimpla had a bunch of working CRT screens suspended in some sort of fish net? And also lots of wires and Christmas lights? It was very strange but cool.

View of the Szimpla Farmer's Market from above.

One of the two locations for Szputnyik, the vintage clothing store where the three of us went shopping.

Three friends, three lemonades, three delicious lángos!

Meg takes more aesthetic photos of Market Hall than I do

We found treasure in the Labyrinth!

Really really good gelato!

This statue of St. Stephen had the best feet and we were very excited about it.

Lizards!

One of the best patterns we were able to make out of Poly-Universe tiles.