Place, Photo, Word, and Food of the Week.

Place of the Week

Place de la Comedie - A great little plaza that is home to dozens of restaraunts, shops, a giant carousel, and the opera house mentioned in the previous post. We spent tons of time trolling around this square discovering fun sidestreets and food stands because it's quite close to where we're staying.

Photo of the Week



This is the triumphal arc in Montpellier. It was completed in 1693 to commemorate Louis XIV. The reliefs added in 1715 show events that occured during his reign, for example, the digging of the Canal du Midi linking the Bay of Biscay with the Mediterranean Sea.

Word (Phrase) of the Week

"Parlais vous Anglais?" - "Do you speak English?"

We speak VERY little French - that's not to say we didn't try - but when it proved too difficult we would ask this question. If they said "no" we would ask them if they spoke Spanish. If they said "no" to this, we were forced to give up or resort to cryptic hand gestures - but they usually spoke some English.

Food of the Week



What else? Crepes!!

They. are. delicious...and there were crepe stands on virtually every corner! That's just one more reason why we loved Place de Comedie - crepe central.

For anyone who has never had a crepe (how sad - seriously, stop reading and go find a creperie) they are just like thin pancakes spread with whatever your heart desires - nutella, bananas, almonds, honey, caramel, fruit, vegetables, anything. Then they're folded into a neat little triangle and enjoyed. Immensely.

More later - see you in Italy!

xxx
Em

Montpellier so far.

We've been in Montpellier, France for about four full days now, and I've been sick, but we're trying to do as much as possible in spite of that. Hopefully if I'm feeling better tomorrow, we'll try to do a day trip to another city close by. We'll tell you about that if we do.
First of all, here's some background about Montpellier, in the form of Fun Facts, because who doesn't love a good Fun Fact?
1. It used to be the second biggest city in France (Paris was biggest) in the 13th century.
2. It's been a University town also since the 13th century.
3. Montpellier is home to the oldest botanical garden in France.
4. It was a huge port town and trading center in the 14th century.
5. The Guilhelm dynasty established Montpellier as a major European power beginning in the twelth century and lasting for centuries after that.
6. Currently, Montpellier remains a cultural capital of Europe.

Up to now, here's mainly what we've done.

We seem to spend a lot of time in Place de la Comèdie, since it's a short tram ride from our host's, right in the historic center, and a good walking distance from many other sights. In the Place, there are small vendors as well as larger stores, people everywhere, and the large L'Opera Comèdie.

Additionally, we have spent some time in Place Peyrou. This Place is home to a statue of Louis XIV on horseback as well as the Peyrou Aqueducts and Water Tower. The Aqueducts took almost the entire 18th century to build and show what impact the Romans had on Montpellier.

Across from Place Peyrou is Montpellier's very own Arc de Triumph. This was commemorate Louis XIV's victories over the enemies of France and Protestant heresy and the construction of the Canal du Midi.

Only a short walk down the road are the Saint Pierre Cathedral and Jardin de Plantes. The Cathedral was built in 1364 and houses the oldest functional medical university in the world, founded in 1593. The gardens are, as we mentioned before, France's oldest botanical gardens. The architect, Jean-Antoine Giral, was also the architect of the Aqueducts and Opera House.

Well, that's all for today!
Ariel

O, Valencia!

Valencia Highlights

We did lots of fun things in Valencia. Examples;

Oceanographic - Super fun aquarium with the most marine species in Europe. We saw fish, etc from all over the world!
Museum of Natural Science - Interactive museum with tons and tons of exhibits relating to real-life (science actually became quite interesting) - for example, a station in the ergonomics exhibition about cushion firmness where you could sit on three chairs and see on a screen in front of you how deep your rear is sinking into the cushion. Interesting, but also wicked fun.

Fallas Museum - We JUST missed Fallas by one day. It's a Valencian holiday with tons of partying in the streets and fire and sculptures. The museum showcased the models (some plaster, some foam, some cork or carton) which could be a variety of scenes but were always models of one or more people. They're usually life-size or larger and often were quite realistic.

Torres de Ceranos - These were just outside our front door. They are giant climbable towers with a great view (check out below picture and info!)

American School of Valencia - This is the English speaking school that our host works at (read about her below). We hung out with 5 and 6 year olds for most of the day doing crafts and such and then observed/participated in/helped with a high school dance class taught by our host! so fun!

More soon about France!

Photo, Person, Word, and Food of the Week.

Photo of the Week



This is the view from the top of the Torres de Ceranos right outside of our host - Toya's - apartment in Valencia. It shows the part of the city that we were staying in. The view at night was absolutely beautiful!!

Person of the Week

Name: Latoya West.
Profession: Elementary school teacher in an international private school and high school dance teacher.
Hometown: Ardmore (suburb of Philadelphia).
Favorite part of Valencia: Plaza de la Virgen "cause it's super pretty".
Favorite Spanish Food: Seafood Paella.
When she learned Spanish: Age 11 - in school.
Any other languages: Spanish, Thai, American Sign Language, Korean, and of course, English. (Wow!)

She's been super hospitable, so thank you, Toya, so, SO much!!!

Word of the Week

Perdido - Lost
Ariel's purse was lost...and we've been watching more "Lost" (the television show) than usual. It's very confusing - so most of the plot is lost on us. So we thought "perdido" would be appropriate.

Food of the Week

Tapas - The National food of Spain, they're small appetizers that can be enjoyed anytime throughout the day - often including ham (jamon), patatas bravas, cheese (queso), etc...

Our crazy adventure!

On Saturday afternoon, we left my (Ariel's) parents in Granada with my sister to go to Valencia, another part of Spain. That night, our host took Emily, Jessa and I out to meet up with some of her friends for tapas. While at the tapas place, my purse fell off the bench next to me over the edge to the floor. We searched all through the restaurant, but couldn't find it anywhere, which meant that it was stolen. Unfortunately, it contained almost everything important for travel in it (that means passport, credit cards, etc.). Our host Toya and her friends were so helpful though; we split up to search pretty much every single dark alley near the restaurant. We didn't find it though, so thanks to everyone's advice, we decided to go to the Police Station, the U.S. Consulate and the Lost Property Office on Monday when things were open again to file a report for the stolen purse and apply for a new passport.

Monday morning, we made our first stop at the closest Police Station to where it happened. They asked me to write down my name and then started to search through a box of stuffed envelopes. We all got so hopeful that they'd have something, anything of mine because it would just be such a stressful process to get ALL of my important things replaced. Luckily enough, they pulled out a stuffed envelope for me and in it was... my passport, credit cards, ID card, everything!!!!!!!! It was honestly one of the happiest moments of my life! So that was the happy ending!

Now I know what most of you are probably thinking: you must have been completely stupid to just leave your purse sitting there. But the thing is, I was literally sitting next to it the entire time, until it fell that is. I was on the top floor of the restaurant, just over the stairs, but for a person to reach up and grab it from next to me, we figured out that it would have to be an enormous amount of effort from someone over six feet tall and they would almost certainly be noticed. We asked the people sitting directly below the stairs, the staff, pretty much everyone who could have possibly seen what happened to it, and they all said they didn't see anything. Basically, it fell down, a thief took it and ran to somewhere, a dark alley most likely, took out the small amount of cash in there, and left it for the police to find later on. I'm just glad it all worked out so well!

Photo, Place, Word, and Food of the Week.

Photo of the Week



I know what you're thinking. But this is in a museum, the torture museum in Toledo, Spain. This is surprisingly the most humane method of execution that we saw - the axe. It was an incredibly fascinating and sickening exhibit of all the torture methods used during the Spanish Inquisition. See the below posts for more information on various torture methods (if you have the stomach).


Place of the Week



This is the interior of the Mezquita - a Church turned Mosque turned Church. More information below.


Word of the Week

Zumo - Juice

We already knew this word from Spanish Class, thanks Ms. Gillette and Mrs. Rogers! But it comes up a lot in conversation because Ariel's Mexican father always calls it jugo, which is what it is called in Mexico. He is constantly being corrected because in Spain it is called Zumo.

Food of the Week



Churros con chocolate are our food of the week! They are deliciously fried - they remind us of funnel cake. And they're even better when dipped in the Spanish hot chocolate, which is so thick it's almost like pudding! We saw one woman make them right in front of us. It made me feel slightly ill but it didn't matter once I tasted them!

Granada, Spain

For the last three days, we've been in Granada, Spain. It's a small city separated from the coast by the Sierra Nevada mountains (which have snow!). One of the best parts about it is where we are staying: a cave in the mountains!

On the first day we got here, we just walked around the city at night. The next day, we spent pretty much the entire day at the Alhambra. It's an eighth century Mosque that was the last Muslim stronghold in Spain before the Reconquista. It was an enormous complex with a Mosque, Charles V Palace, an incredible fortress and a huge, spectacular garden. The Alhambra is located at the top of a hill, which was not the most pleasant walk up, but the top was so amazing that it was completely worth it.



Today, we toured the city. One of the highlights was the Royal Chapel, where King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella, Philip the Fair and Juana the Mad are all buried. Prince Miguel of Portugal was also buried there. We're not entirely sure why. We plan on learning all about them in AP European History next year! The Chapel was incredible and Queen Isabella spent one quarter of their wealth just to build it.

We're leaving Granada and my (Ariel's) parents tomorrow for Valencia! Can't wait! For Valencia, not to leave them.

New Photo Hosting Site!

We got a new photo hosting site at photobucket, so here's the link for it! We have uploaded some photos from Hungary but they don't have captions yet. We're going to do that and upload more photos soon.

http://s1028.photobucket.com/albums/y342/arielandemilytour/

Ariel and Emily

EDIT

Photobucket didn't work out too well...we have some up from Hungary...but we're now using facebook for our photos. If you use the link in the right sidebar under "More!" (the ones that say Israel photos, Spain photos, etc...) or click on the links below, it will take you to a PUBLIC facebook photo album. THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT. Anybody can look at them; there is no need to sign in. Check it out!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=403714&id=786160572&l=6185d03aae

Holy Toledo! And other parts of Spain!

Sorry about the infrequency! We've been super busy lately and moving around locations almost every other day! And as always, we've been having technological issues.
Anyways, we've spent this last week in Spain!

We arrived in Madrid on the evening of March 9, so we really didn't do anything of interest for the rest of that day, other than going out for tapas. In case you didn’t know, tapas are a very popular food in Spain. They are basically small portions of food that you can share among friends at any time of the day (except for siesta, when everything closes). The next day, we went to the Prado Museum, touted by Spain as the best collection of paintings in Europe. We started out at the special exhibition, which is currently a collection Spain’s royal armor, called “The Art of Power”. Most artifacts were from around 500 years ago in a time when armor was used to prove wealth and power. The royal family would commission a piece from the greatest artists and armor makers of the time with elaborate gold and silver designs. In the permanent exhibit in the Prado, we saw paintings by world famous artists, mostly Spanish. Among the most famous were Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” and El Bosco’s “El Jardin de las Delicias”.
In the afternoon while walking through Madrid’s Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol, we saw dozens of mimes (los mimos) and street performers. The mimes ranged from a wookie to a three-headed table to a puppet popping out of a toilet. If you give them money, they will move or take a picture with you, but some of them were so creepy that you didn’t even want to be near them. We also saw a fun mariachi band on the street and actually even knew a few of their songs, thanks to Spanish class. Since Madrid is a huge city, the plazas are always bustling and the streets are night are always full, despite Spain’s cold spell while we were there.


After three nights in Madrid, we drove to Toledo, a smaller city famous for their damascene art, a style used for inlaying black steel with gold, silver and copper wire. The craft, like the city, is centuries old and sold at just about every kiosk and small store in the city.
We spent most of our day there at the Cathedral, which took 250 years to build, starting in 1226. Because the cathedral took so long to build, it has Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Classical styles of architecture. The main points of interest were the portrait room, the sacristy, the treasury, and a collection of all the archbishop’s hats and robes. In the portrait room, there were portraits of every archbishop since the church was built. It was interesting to see how not only the styles of paintings changed, but the archbishops became increasingly older, probably due to longer life spans. Additionally, the archbishops themselves began to look more modern, with plastic-framed glasses and more contemporary body language for posing. The sacristy was the room where all the priests would change into their robes. Inside of the room, there were 19 paintings done by El Greco and a ceiling fresco by Lucca Giordano. On the fresco, there was an angel whose toes seem to follow you around the room. The treasury held a giant 400 pound tower for the communion wafer to be paraded around town yearly. It was about twice as tall as me and built out of silver and gold. Seems like a lot for a wafer, doesn’t it? The treasury also held gifts to the church from other cities and churches as well as very old bibles.
The morning we were leaving Toledo, we went to an exhibit focusing exclusively on torture and torture devices used during the Spanish Inquisition. Along with the more well-known devices, such as the stock, gallows, and burning stake, there were also iron chambers filled with spikes, a wheel that crushed the person against the wall, a skull crusher, and a breast stripper (to be used heated or cold). The museum was absolutely terrifying, since all the non-wood devices were original and actually used in torture. It was also horrifying to think that one wrong move your spying neighbors saw and reported could easily be cause for your torture. So many victims were abused and killed without even knowing what they did wrong.

After Toledo, we went to Cordoba, formerly the location of a huge tri-religion convergence and major power of Spain. At one point in history, the Moors, the Christians and the Jews all lived in Cordoba in basically perfect harmony for hundreds of years. However, a few hundred years before in the Inquisition, tensions started to rise along with suspicions and expulsions of individuals and even certain religious sects.
The major highlight of Cordoba is the Mezquita, a Church turned Mosque turned back into a Church. The interior is filled with 850 red and blue marble columns from 786 AD, which we all agreed looked a little like something from Willy Wonka’s. In 1236, the Mosque turned back into a Church when King Ferdinand III conquered the city. It was so interesting to look at one side of the building and see a very Moorish Mosque, then turn around and see an incredibly Gothic Church. It pretty much felt like two separate buildings.
We also visited a Sunday morning market in Cordoba, which was probably a mile long. We made it through less than half of it and saw everything ranging from jeans to craft supplies to food, all priced cheap. It was fun to see things like jeans for 6 Euro and delicious dried fruit. As with all of our Spanish cities, we spent a lot of time in the old section of the city. All of the old sections are basically similar with narrow and windy cobblestone streets, where getting lost is easy and part of the experience. Around a corner could be anything from a great view of the church to a little garden and statue.

Next, we drove to Sevilla, a relatively large city in southern Spain. Even though it’s big, it was so authentic. They still have traditional flamenco shows, bullfights, and other typical Spain characteristics. One of the best parts was a large, old church (we went to lots of religious building, as you can probably tell) which was home to Christopher Columbus’s tomb and a bell tower with a fantastic view. The tomb was this huge inscribed marble base with four bronze men carrying a bronze casket on top. Colombus’s bones have been moved so many times though, so we all began with different ideas of where he was buried. However, this is where he is now. We also climbed up the Giralda (bell tower) to the top, which was a windy and steep climb on a cobblestone path. The Muslims used to ride horse to the top of the bell tower for their call to prayer five times a day, which although it would be quicker than by foot, we couldn’t believe that horses could make those tight turns. The top had a great view of all sides of Sevilla, but we didn’t want to stay up for too long since it was getting close to three and we didn’t want to go deaf from the bells ringing.
We also visited a museum about the Inquisition in Sevilla, which really made the Inquisition so personal by showing that no one but the Inquisitors are safe. It was in Castillo de San Jorge and showed the excavations of the original architecture. It was presented in a very high technology way that related the Inquisition with today and the Declaration of Human Rights.
On our last night in Spain, we went to an authentic Flamenco performance. We sat in the front row, right in the center, close enough to touch the stage, which meant that not only did we have a great view, but we also were in the best place to get hit with various objects flying off the dancers. Each dancer performed once on their own and then again at the finale altogether (which we were allowed to videotape! Look out for the video soon!) and were accompanied by a guitarist and two male singers. There were three female dancers, two male dancers, a female singer-dancer, three male singers, and two guitarists in total. Everyone looked like they were so engrossed in the dance and having a great time during the entire show. All of the performers were also so excellent! In the first dance, we were hit with a stray hair comb off the dancer (we got to keep it), the second dancer sprayed us with his hair gel and we were hit with dust flying off the floor from the third dancer’s huge dress. It was so awesome!

Photo, Place, and Word of the Week.

Photo of the Week



This photo was taken (by photographer extraordinaire, Mark Milstein of Northfoto) in Vienna in front of the Habsburg Palace which you can read more about in a recent post covering our trip to Vienna.



Place of the Week




This photo was taken, again, by Mark Milstein in front of the Godollo Palace just outside of Budapest. This palace houses a Queen Elizabeth, or "Sisi", museum because she frequented the palace. For more information, check out the more comprehensive description in an earlier update. One thing we did not include in the earlier post, which is quite interesting, is the fact that during the Soviet Occupation of Hungary Godollo was used as a horse stable! It's strange to think that such a beautiful palace could have ever been used by animals!

Additionally - in this photo with us is Emily Milstein, Mark's daughter and a previous "Person of the Week". Read her interview below.

Word(s) of the Week

The words "push" and "pull" proved to be useful in Hungary. We didn't want to spend minutes at a time pushing on a "pull door".

So...for future reference -

Push - Tolni
Pull - Huzni

Photo of the Week 3

As you read on our blog, we visited both a Marzipan Museum in Szentendre and the Hungarian Parliament building. Originally, we were thinking of using a photo of Parliament for our Photo of the Week, but after we saw the Parliament in Marzipan at the museum, we decided to combine the two. Which makes this a sculpture of the Hungarian Parliament made out of Marzipan! I know, it's completely crazy what they can do with that stuff!
After we start a new photo hosting site (apparently Flickr has a monthly limit which we have met), we will post the link and upload pictures of everything in Hungary. Sorry that we always seem to have technology problems of some sort - the voltage converter is broken, the Internet won't connect, our Flickr is full, etc. - I'm pretty much useless when it comes to technology.

Update!

We've done quite a bit in the past few days.

I'll start with Tuesday night - We went to see Eugene Onegin, a 3-act, 7-scene Tchaikovsky opera based on the Alexander Pushkin novel in rhyme by the same name. It was completely in Russian with Hungarian subtitles, so we had no idea what was going on. But we enjoyed the beautiful voices, full orchestra, and the Opera House setting itself. We later looked up a plot synopsis and discovered that it is the story of a man (Onegin) who rejects a woman and kills his best friend and later regrets it.
The Hungarian State Opera House itself was incredible. It's a horseshoe-shaped, Neo-Renaissance building located in Budapest (on the Pest side). It's not huge as opera houses go, but the acoustics were absolutely amazing, especially considering it was one of the first opera houses to be built in the world. It's a very historic building - many of the greats have played here or have been guests. Gustav Mahler was actually the music director here for a period of time.

Then on Thursday, we went to Szentendre(in English...St. Andrew)- a village slightly North-West of here. It was essentially an in-tact Baroque town that has (since the 1500's) been the center of the Serbian community in Hungary and an artist's colony. The town itself was adorable with its cobblestone, winding, narrow streets, little shops, and art galleries. We went to the Marzipan Museum there - which was amazing. Marzipan is an almond and sugar paste that can be molded into virtually any shape and then dyed to create life-like figures, scenes, and buildings. Check out our pictures!

The next day, Friday, we took a tour of Parliament and later explored the Jewish section of Budapest. The Parliament building was extremely ornate and is the third largest in the world after Romania and Argentina. We saw the crown jewels and the holy crown, which were, strangely enough, located directly under a 5-ton chandelier...which the tour guide himself actually called the most dangerous place in the museum. We also trudged up the huge staircase in the foyer. As we were doing this we could easily picture the Hapsburgs standing at the top of the staircase crossing their arms and tapping their feet, laughing at the out-of-shape guests who were not important enough to use the lift. We also saw the legislative room. This building was absolutely gorgeous and completely different from any government building in The States, which are clean and simple, as opposed to the extravagantly detailed design that the Hapsburgs used anywhere they occupied.

Later on Friday, we visited the Jewish section. It was incredibly run-down, though it looked like they were working on some renovation. We later learned that it was hardly been touched in centuries. The one part of the section that looked decent was the Synagogue. It was stunning. It was an Moorish Revival-style building that, after being bombed and suffering air-raids during the communist era, had just started to be restored in the early 90's.

On Saturday we took a day-trip to Vienna with our host to see the other half of the center of the Hapsburg's dynasty. It was incredible (and incredibly different from Budapest)! We immediately noticed how few people were walking around, even on a Saturday. Some parts were like a ghost-town. We also noticed that, unlike Budapest, there are more traffic laws and speed limits. And everything was incredibly orderly. Except for the street pattern. The streets in Budapest had been straightened out by the great architect and engineer, Szechenyi, in the 19th century. In contrast, the streets of Vienna never underwent anything of the sort and are incredibly winding and narrow in many places. The most obvious difference was probably the language. German, of course, as opposed to Hungarian. The similarities were also evident, though. The Hapsburg's palace was, of course, in true Hapsburg taste, extravagant and intimidating. For example, they had huge statues of men with clubs directly outside of the castle. Not-so-veiled threat? I think so.

The first thing we did when we got there was step into St. Stephen's Basilica, which is currently undergoing renovation, but is still incredibly visually spectacular.
We also went to the Holocaust memorial, the monument itself was designed to look like an Auschwitz gas chamber and had all the names of the camps around it along with an inscription in Hungarian, Hebrew, and English. We have photos that we will be posting as soon as possible. It was incredibly intense and sad, but also moving, to be in the midst of this spot where the Gestapo headquarters once stood. Similarly, we ate at a cafe that Hitler used to frequent when he was studying art in Vienna. I wish he had succeeded in his art...maybe we could have dodged the bullet that was World War II. Anyway, the cafe was amazing, even if it did have an eerie back story and incredibly high prices. All of Vienna was expensive, which makes sense seeing as their income is about 4 times that of Budapest's.
We also walked around the palace a bit, outside mostly, and were able to look into the courtyard where the horses have their stables and glimpse the perfectly-trained Lipizzaner horses, the preferred breed of the Hapsburgs, of course.
The palace was absolutely beautiful, as were the "storage buildings" where the Habsburgs stored their excess art, ancient artifacts, and such.
We took a peek into the royal butterfly collection, which is in a gigantic glass room where you can now order food and eat among the butterflies, and saw where Franz Josef kept his huge collection of books in a floor-to-ceiling library.

On Sunday (today) we visited Gödöllő in Pest County, which is a palace built for the Grassalkovich family and later passed on to Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth (known as Sisi to many). Sisi spent lots and lots and lots of time here and it now houses a museum, much of which is dedicated to her. They have recently torn up the gardens and are completely re-doing them - because nothing is good enough apparently. The place was amazing though, with ornate decorations (of course) and intimidating size.
After that we went to visit a horse stable, which was fun, but cold. The horses were clearly well-taken care of and were absolutely beautiful.




So as our time in Hungary comes to an end (we fly out Tuesday) we've been reflecting on these first five weeks of the trip in general.
Basically, these past two weeks have been very different from Israel in regard to the weather and the history and the people. For example, the subways and buses here are always completely silent, while in Israel people are incredibly friendly on public transportation.
It's interesting that not many people speak any English, which is also quite different from Israel, where most people did.
We've been having a blast and we're looking forward to Spain! Keep checking back for photos of Vienna, Budapest, etc...
Follow this blog (in the right sidebar)! and leave a comment =]

Emily
x

Food of the Week

Sachertorte (pronounced "sah-ker-tort") is also often called "Death by Chocolate", and for a good reason. It is a traditional Viennan food, which we ate on our day trip to Vienna today. It's basically two layers of chocolate cake with a semi-hard chocolate top and a fruity filling between layers. In other words, completely delicious. We enjoyed ours at a place called Cafe Central, a place with actually an interesting history. When Hitler was studying art in Vienna, that was his favorite place to enjoy some Sachertorte. The cafe itself was very beautiful, but it was strange to think that Hitler may very well have eaten the same food as us exactly where we sat. Here is a picture of Emily eating the cake, and in a few days we will try to upload more pictures of Vienna, including the "after" picture of the cake (slightly sick faces from too much chocolate).

Word of the Week 3 and Person of the Week 3

Koszonom - Thank you
Pronounced: koh-so-nome

Okay, we know that it's pretty basic and not that interesting of a word, but, in case you didn't know, Hungarian is one of the least similar languages to any other language. Basically, it's like nothing you've ever seen before. There's lots of gy's and sz's and other word combinations that are hard to pronounce. We have learned maybe around five or less Hungarian words so far, which are basically "yes", "no", "exit" and "thank you". Not really very interesting, but useful.


This week, we chose two people for our Person of the Week. Ildiko and Emily were both born in Hungary and Ildiko is Emily's mother. They are our current host family.

Name: Ildiko Milstein

Where in Hungary did you grow up? I grew up on the Northern side of Hungary, near the Slovak border in a small village.

What do you think of the public transportation system in Budapest? When I used to use it, I thought they were usually dirty and cold in the winter, but I could get anywhere I wanted. Nowadays, they have these terrible scandals with the management. They basically stole everything from the company. There are eleven managers currently being investigated for it. The systems are very old. They basically haven’t modernized anything.

What do you do for a living? We have a photo agency and I work in sales and marketing for Hungary. We sell celebrity and stock photos to magazines.

What’s your favorite Hungarian dish? Palacsinta, a crepe filled with chocolate, jam or applesauce.

What’s the Hungarian school system like? When I was in school, they made you go to the closest school to your house. Now, you can choose basically any school you want. You go to primary school from 6 to 12 or 14. You can enter high school now at 12, which I don’t think is a good idea. There’s too much of an age difference between 12
and 18. School seems very difficult now; there are tougher subjects and languages are very important now.

When and how did you learn English? I started at the age of 14. I was in the first class at my school allowed to learn English. Before, there was only Russian and sometimes German. I chose English mostly because I liked American music and wanted to be able to understand the words. I had such a great teacher; she didn’t even need to teach with a book. The teachers are always so important.


Name: Emily Milstein

What grade are you in? Fourth grade.

Do you like your teachers? Some of them; our gym teacher is not so good because she’s very tough, but I like maybe the English Science teacher. (Note: Emily attends a bilingual school, so has classes such as Science in both English and Hungarian.)

What’s your favorite thing to do in the city? I like shopping a lot with my mom. I also like to go to movie theaters and museums.

What are your favorite museums? In America, I like the Natural History Museum. In Hungary, I like the National Art Museum.

What do you think in the most useful word for us to know in Hungarian? Gyikhus, which means lizard meat (kind of like mystery meat at home).

What’s your favorite food/drink/candy? Spaghetti with tomato sauce, Sprite and Starburst.

Well, we've changed our schedule since we posted it due to weather and other factors mostly out of our control, but we are trying our hardest to make sure we end up doing what we'd planned.

On Saturday, we hid away from the rain by visiting Arena Plaza, a GIANT shopping mall. Picture the biggest mall you've ever seen, then multiply that by at least ten times and that's about the size of it. It has pretty much every store known to Hungary all within one store, along with an IMAX movie theater. Even though it wasn't the most intellectual day possible, it was a good glimpse into Hungarian popular culture. After talking to our hosts, we learned that basically the Hungarians feel that because they were deprived of so many cultural fads during Communism, they should make up for it now by "living it up" now. Every McDonald's here is packed, contrasted with McDonald's back in the U.S., which are barely ever packed. It's definitely interesting to see how even subconsciously they are trying to be as almost American as possible, as if to prove something. It's hard to explain.

We decided to be pretty as touristy as possible on Sunday and took a bus and boat tour of Budapest. The bus took us around to basically every big attraction and gave us the audio background on it; we learned about the Habsburg Castle, the National Museum of Art, the Opera Hall, and more. The tour was not a fantastic way to see the city overall, but gave us a nice background, since almost every stop on the tour is somewhere we have been or are planning on going. However, we did enjoy some of the interesting pronunciations - we could tell the guide was not a native English speaker. The boat ride on the Danube, while beautiful, was cold and too loud to hear any of the narration. We didn't really get anything out of it, but it was a nice view of the Danube.

On Monday, we went back to school for the first time in over a month. Sure, it was in Hungary, but it still counts, right? We met up with our hosts' friend's daughter and she arranged for us to go to three English classes. We also ended up going to a math class, but it was in Hungarian and I have a feeling I wouldn't have understood even in English. In the English classes, the students asked us questions. The classes' knowledge of the language and interest in us varied from "a little interested and good at English" to "not interested in us and okay at English" to "very interested in us but needed their teacher to translate everything". They mostly asked us just some standard questions about our classes, musical preference, state, etc., but we did get a few in one class about some more interesting topics, like how we felt on September 11, 2001.
After a long, hard day of learning (not), we decided to go to the Szuchenyi bath house and relax. It was gorgeous there! There are three giant outdoor pools ranging in temperatures from 34 degrees to 38 degrees Celsius. The 38 degree one is basically just a giant hot tub that you can swim in! In addition to the outdoor pools totaling the size of a football field, there are dozens and dozens of indoor pools. Those range from 20 degrees (freezing! I didn't even want to put my foot in it!) to 38 degrees and saunas at temperatures between 40 degrees and 70 degrees. We didn't even want to venture into those, since the coldest was about the temperature of the desert in the summer. Either way, we had a great time and left pruny, but relaxed.

Yesterday (Tuedsay) was a museum day for us and we chose the National Art Museum. We only saw the temporary exhibit, called Degas to Picasso, but that was where all the paintings we mentioned before were. It was so wonderful! Here is a list of only some of the paintings we saw by some of the better-known artists, but we saw a lot more! Also, I apologize for any spelling mistakes, our notes are hard to read.
The Prison Courtyard by Vincent Van Gogh
Flowers in a White Vase by Henri Matisse
The Muse Inspiring the Poet by Henri Rousseau
The Two Saltimbanques by Pablo Ruiz Picasso
Head of a Woman by Marie Laurencin

We got off to a great start today at our first stop of the day: Market Hall. It's basically a really large indoor food market with tons of fresh bread, fruits and vegetables along with meats, cheeses, fresh-cooked Hungarian food and more. We played it safe and went for bread, cheese and fruit, but it was delicious! We sat at a nice table overlooking the rest of the market and enjoyed our feast.
After that, we were off to the Hungarian National Museum. The museum covered every bit of history from around the 13th century to today. Thanks to our architectural knowledge from American studies, we recognized the building as Neo-Classical and could point out so many architectural features, such as the Corinthian columns, pillasters, a potico, and a pediment. Inside even just the landing area on the stairs, there were murals all around made by Karoly Lotz and Mor Than, two well-known Hungarian artists whose work we also saw at the Hungarian Art Museum in the Habsburg castle.
The exhibitions in the museum were really great. Even though all of the artifact descriptions were in Hungarian, they still had such a good array, from Habsburg-worn clothes to Arpad jewelry. There were English historical-background descriptions all around, so we did get a chance to learn about the history. Hungary has, probably like most countries, a really interesting history. Its ruling has basically been transferred through the years between smaller dynasties, the Ottomans, the Habsburg's Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Soviet Republic to today's Parliamentary government. Since it would take too long to recount everything we saw in and learned from the museum, I'll leave it at that.

As for our schedule, it's very tentatively looking like this:
Thurdsay - Szentendra
Friday - Jewish section, Parliament
Saturday - Orava castle
Sunday - Vienna
Monday - shopping (not the most intellectual option, but hey, we need to relax and look at designer clothes sometime, right?)
Tuesday - fly to Spain

That's all for now, we will probably start with Hungary's weekly requirements soon!
Ariel

Person of the Week #2

Our person of this week - or last week - is from Kibbutz Ketura.
Her name is Aliza and she lives on Kibbutz with her family and currently works with the Kibbutz volunteers.
She learned Hebrew in Hebrew school and has lived on Kibbutz for a fairly long time.
She told us EVERYTHING we needed to know about Ketura, including the workings of a traditional Kibbutz set-up.
We'll post all of these details later, and we may try to get an interview.

Thank you, Aliza!