Hockey game and 6-day work week

Here is a whirlwind update on the last 1.5 weeks:

Last week, I attended an English-language stand-up comedy show (affectionately termed BUDSuCS) with people from the curry club. A Hungarian comedian who was famous for translating Monty Python into Hungarian opened the event. A lot of his humor translated pretty well into English, except for the following joke: "I am just now learning about computers and google. I was at a friend's house, and asked him to google 'the USA.' Over 60,000 hits came back, so I asked him to print them out to read them." He paused. There was silence. "Oh, I guess that joke doesn't work as well in English." I asked co-workers about it later, and they looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently, it doesn't translate into Hungarian well either. Silly, lying man.

I had my first hockey game on Saturday night. There were a fair number of new traditions for me. At the beginning of each period, we would gather around the goal to do a cheer. My teammates coached me on the cheer each time - most times it was something like "3...2...1... GO LILAC!" Our fans also threw us candy at the end of the game. There's a cool write-up of the game online. (You can see me with the puck in the second picture.) I used an online translator for the parts with my name:

• "The first played his match Lakatos Boglárka arrived from Ferencváros in the thirteen champion's shirt, and united Államok-beli our legionnaire, Jennifer Tison." I have confirmed that legionnaire is the correct translation.
• "Our situation utilisation quoted the last year's one unfortunately, or the last pass was inaccurate, or the Dunaújváros goalkeeper outwitted us, you are successful though it a thousand to omit a percentage situation, than for example in Jennifer Tison case, who Csiszer Réka accurate pass into a brought goal situation, American legionary it drew the package beside an empty gate from a metre however... " AKA and then Jenny missed the wide-open net. Oops! Tough but fair!

Today, Thursday, October 23, is a national holiday in Hungary. It's a dramatic story that I will write more about later. As such, the entire country worked this past Saturday in order to get Friday off. The Saturday working day was pretty relaxed, and it was nice to have two jeans days in a row. I'm at the airport getting ready to head to Romania now for the 4-day weekend!

Visiting Auschwitz

It was hard to know how to describe this experience. I have tried to be factual and relate some of the thoughts and feelings of the people I went with.

While in Krakow, we visited Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Auschwitz was actually a collection of three main camps and about 40 subcamps. Over 1 million people died at Auschwitz, most of them Jews. The main prisoner camp, Birkenau, consisted of 300 buildings and could hold 90,000 prisoners at a time. The main gas chamber could kill 2,000 people at a time. That was the first horrifying thing about the experience: the utter scale of the camp. Today, you can see row after row of the chimneys of buildings that housed prisoners. When the Germans learned that the Soviets were coming, they destroyed most of the wooden buildings and all but one of the gas chambers and crematoria [destroyed gas chamber/crematorium pictured at right]. As such, little of the original Birkenau camp remains but those chimneys.

Upon arriving by train to Birkenau, each individual was told to go to the right or to the left based on a German doctor's assessment of their appearance (i.e. their fitness to work). The direction indicated whether individuals were either sent directly to the gas chambers (which occurred to ~75% of Jews) or kept at the camp to work. Those kept to work were processed in meticulous (and unnerving) fashion. Detailed photos and records were kept of each individual. We saw hundreds of these photos later in the day, and the expressions were haunting: some looked defiant, some looked resigned, and a few actually smiled. Every single person in the pictures we saw died within months of their arrival.

Those allowed to live did so in horrible conditions. Disease was rampant, food was scarce, work days were long, and any sign of disobedience was sharply punished. One thing that struck me was the conditions of the dormitories. I noticed that the bunk beds weren't long enough for an adult man. They were smaller than my bed at home, but were used to fit five at a time. Upon reflecting later, most of our friends from the hostel commented that while the tour itself was rather impersonal, it was our own personal reflections that were the most troubling.

As one example, there is a monument at the back of Birkenau with 22 separate plaques underneath, each one written in a language representing a nationality held in the camp. A Norwegian guy from our hostel said that it wasn't until he saw the plaque in Norwegian that it really hit him: people walked around the camp speaking the language he grew up with. People like him.

We also went to Auschwitz I, which has an entrance gate reading "Arbeit macht frei," ("Work will set you free"). It served mainly as an administrative center for the camp, but also housed many Soviet prisoners of war. We saw ghastly things: the "Wall of Death" [pictured] was in a courtyard between two buildings, and was where many prisoners were shot and killed. In the cells of the building next door, troublesome prisoners were starved, suffocated, or made to stand all night in confined conditions. The main commander of the camp lived with his family about 100m from the gas chambers.

I wanted to leave the experience continuing to wonder how people can deny that the Holocaust occurred. I did. On the way, we watched footage shot by the Soviet liberators of the camps and heard an interview with one of the cameramen. Upon their arrival, the Soviets found restless, haunted individuals expecting new threats from these armed soldiers; over 600 bodies; and an unbelievable amount of material confiscated from entering Jews. The scale of the camps was enormous, but many individuals didn't live long enough to stay there. The amount of items collected from arriving prisoners gives an indication of how many people died immediately. The meticulous records kept indicate the regular schedule and size of train arrivals.

I learned something interesting yesterday. In my last post, I mentioned the huge salt mine we visited while in Krakow. Apparently, miners hid many Jews in some of the mine's 2000 caverns and snuck food to them. That was an uplifting thing to hear after witnessing such a site.

Krakow, Poland

This past weekend, I traveled to Krakow, Poland with a great woman from the Hash club. The experience began in fine form, as I shared a sleeper train car Thursday night with two older Hungarian women. We couldn't really speak to one another, but they offered me candy, so I felt pretty good about the situation.

Poland: 40M people, Polish language, Zloty currency
Krakow: ~800K people, Former capital and home of "Poland's Camelot," Known as one of Poland's most charming cities

Krakow is an awesome town. It has a huge, gorgeous central square that features one of Europe's prettiest cathedrals. Every hour, a trumpeter stands at the tallest window of the church and blares a tune that stops mid-way through. Apparently, this trumpeter would play a song to warn the town of attacks... until 1241, when he was hit by a Tartar arrow mid-way through and stopped mid-note.

Another highlight was a salt mine, constructed 700 years ago and Europe's oldest that's still in operation. There were 2000 caverns in the place, all made completely of salt. Our tour began when our guide seriously asked us to lick the walls. There were amazing salt carvings and cathedrals all the way through the mountain, partly due to tourism, partly due to the miner's boredom, partly due to the miner's need for religion in such a dangerous environment. For instance, Copernicus visited in the 1490s, so some miners carved a salt bust in his honor. The above picture is of the salt mine's Chapel of St. Kinga, constructed for the Hungarian princess credited with bringing the salt to Poland. Again, everything is salt. The chandeliers are made of salt crystals and the "tile" floor is actually carved salt. It was made by three miners who worked separately over a period of decades. All of the miners pooled their money to send one of the carvers to art school - in thanks, that carver came back and carved the Last Supper on one of the walls.

My friend and I lucked out - we stayed in the world's #1 hostel from 2007, as voted by users of a few famous hostel websites. It was really fun and really clean (these don't usually go together at backpacker joints) and we met some neat people, including 4 Army officers about to re-deploy to Iraq. At one dinner, 3 of the 5 present had climbed Kilimanjaro that summer and a 4th had lived in Arusha, Tanzania (the nearest major town) for a few years. So, it was a great group.

While in Krakow, we also visited Auschwitz. I will post separately about that.

Many happenings

On the recent news front, I submitted my first business school application an hour ago. Woo hoo! I'm heading to Krakow, Poland on the night train Thursday night to meet up with a friend from the Hash. I've been semi-stressed lately, and am really looking forward to the trip.

That said, I have still made time to do all manner of fun things, including getting back into tourist mode. It's easy to stop visiting sites in the city you live in, and I vowed not to fall into that rut. I'll warn you that the first comments are rather depressing (which will likely continue when I visit Auschwitz this weekend).

Site #1: The Great Synagogue: The world's second largest Jewish house of worship - it seats 3000 people. Both men and women can worship inside, and so in order to keep the Orthodox Jews happy, the architects ensured that women seated on the second and third levels couldn't be seen from the floor. There was also a tussle over putting the organ in. Levity aside, it was pretty intense. The Synagogue was built in 1859, and marked the corner of the Jewish ghetto during WW2 - 70,000 people lived in a few city blocks. The tour guide's mother had lived there and survived, and her father (not a Jew) helped hide 300 people. Three thousand Jews were buried on the Synagogue grounds. Less than 1/3 of Hungary's 900,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.

Site #2: The Iron Stump: This was just an aside in my guidebook, but I wandered over to it after working on apps at a new cafe on the Buda side. "This is the odd-looking tree trunk into which itinerant artisans and merchants would drive a nail to mark their visit."

I play hockey for one of the two major sports franchises in Budapest, and our rink is right next to the soccer stadium. We had a practice at the same time as one of the matches last weekend - the streets were teaming with people in white and purple scarves walking into the game, and you could hear the crowd chanting while we practiced.

A co-worker from Chicago was in town this past weekend, and we stayed up to watch the Cubs game from 4-7am Sunday morning. What a downer. But on the up and up, NU is #22 in the nation!

This morning got off to a fantastic start. I've been missing peanut butter a lot (hazelnut/Nutella is all you get over here!), but a co-worker who'd lived in the US brought some PB and bread into the office this morning. We had a special breakfast with two of the Hungarian guys who had been willing to try PB out. They gave it a go... and then got their Hungarian buttercream spread and ham. ;)

Finally, a few people have asked how Hungary's been impacted by the financial crisis. Answer: Not much, at least according to the head of the central bank: "I said and I am still saying that this financial crisis will have no direct significant impact on Hungary."

Learning Hungarian

I had my first Hungarian lesson today in awhile. We did an exercise concerning this song, and it was awesome:



I was even able to figure out the name of the song, "Iskolatáska," was "Backpack." ("Iskola" = "school" and "táska" = "bag/purse.")

I helped a friend move tonight, and as I was stalling with the cab driver, I adeptly explained the situation by saying in Hungarian, "My friend goes into the new house." ROCK ON!

Financial impacts in Hungary

I have felt the American financial crisis in two recent instances:

1. I joined a hole-in-the-wall gym across the street. The equipment is ~10 years old, the carpet is worn and there are bodybuilder posters everywhere. (On the up and up, I've learned that Eurobeat music is easy to run to.) It's convenient and awesome. The man who owns it was checking his stocks on his laptop, and was lamenting the fact that (i) Congress didn't pass the bail-out bill, (ii) he had just lost hundreds of dollars, (iii) he had lost that money in Apple and Google, of all places.
2. I was scanning something at work today, when the partner in our office walked by and said something like, "So, your economy's pretty much down the tubes, eh? Glad you came to Hungary?"

At the invitation of someone in the hash, I went to the monthly meeting of a "curry club" tonight at a local Nepalese restaurant. The crowd was mainly British, which was quite evident when we wished a member happy birthday by singing, "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." I'd heard recently that the most troublesome cultural difference in the world is between Americans and the English, because we think we should be fairly similar. This was evident when the Americans had to make a quick switch to the appropriate British wording of the song: "For he's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us."

I'm pretty lucky: I was assigned an Executive Assistant at work to help me out with all of my silly foreigner questions. This has come in really handy recently, as the gas company, washing machine repair company and intercom repair man at my flat only deal in Hungarian. Phew!