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."