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.
No comments:
Post a Comment