Many things have happened

Hello one and all,

It has been a busy and fantastic seven weeks since my last post. I figure I'll make a "quick" blog entry to give the highlights - if you can make it through all this text, I owe you something.

DOMINATING SPORTS/BEING DOMINATED BY SPORTS

• My ice hockey team won the Hungarian national championship! We won all our games all season, and continued that streak through the best-of-three playoff finals. For our victory celebration, we sprayed champagne on the ice and even got to drink it out of a gold trophy. We then skated around the ice with red, white and green (colors of the Hungarian flag) ribboned gold medals. A popular Hungarian news site, index.hu, posted the results of the game and a lot of my co-workers came up to me the next day with congratulations.
• In the process of this hockey championship, I reinjured by MCL (partial tear) and learned more about the health system in the process. While it would have taken a month or two to get a state-sponsored MRI, I was able to pay a little more and get an MRI within days. Furthermore, because a co-worker booked the MRI appointment directly, I saved over 50% of the cost of what a private clinic would have charged for the booking. Finally, I was given my initial results in a combination of Hungarian and French. This was interesting.

TRAVEL

• In February, a good friend from high school, Chris, came to visit me for 9 days. We saw the sights, and also voyaged to Bratislava, Slovakia and Vienna, Austria. There are two food items I would like to highlight: (1) Slovakia's national meal, bryndzové halušky, is delicious and very mac&cheesey, (2) There are stands on most Viennese street corners selling cheese-filled sausages. Given these two factors, you can imagine Chris and I had an awesome trip.
• In March, it was back to Munich for a quick trip that involved business meetings and go-karting.
• In late March, my Northwestern DM co-chair, Scott, and his girlfriend from med school, Joanna, came to visit me for 8 days. This was a super time. On the traveling side, we made it out to Sopron, a small Hungarian town that juts into Austria. (After the WWI Treaty of Trianon, Sopron was given the choice of whether it wanted to be a part of Austria or Hungary. The city chose Hungary, and is now known as one of Hungary's most "loyal" districts.) Lots of picturesque cobblestone walkways, a huge firetower in the middle of the town and a delicious seafood restaurant, and an eerie clearing with ~400 crows made this a quite good experience.

OTHER NEWS/NOTES

• Socially, I've stayed busy setting up Hash runs, making merry and continuing to enjoy the city and the people in it. :)
• My Hungarian is definitely coming along, and continues to be really handy. I have amusing conversations with my cabdrivers (about how they've put on weight, about why I'm always happy, etc.) and make restaurant reservations in Hungarian, so I'm pleased with where I've come to.
• I'm still working on the banking project I began in January - I'm assisting in restructuring a multinational bank after it received a bail-out due to the crisis. Very topically relevant, sometimes long hours, but hilarious as my team consistently points out to me when I am acting "American." They've worked to train me to speak my mind and not let my normal polite/optimistic tics get in the way of being direct. Or, at least they're trying to. So, I apologize if I seem socially awkward when I get back! (See! That was way too nice of me again! Darnit!)
• I've stayed active in the Hungary for Obama group, which has been really interesting on a number of levels. First, we've had to spend a lot of time defining our mission statement. From the start, the group was a multinational collection of people from all areas of the political spectrum, including some registered Republicans. For that reason, it's made sense for us to remain separate from Democrats Abroad (where member need to be American and Democrats). Now that the election is over, we've had to ask ourselves - what is our mission? We've formulated one predominantly based on acting as a forum for discussion from all comers, and for advancing the ideas of openness/inclusion/transparency that were so integral to the Obama campaign. I'll imagine there are a lot of international groups like ours that don't feel very included in the "Organizing for America" process currently being launched in the US. That organization is rolled under the DNC (and why would a group of international folks in Bangkog want to call themselves "Organizing for America: Bangkok Chapter"?). So, lots of interesting things to think about and it's been exciting to be a part of the process.

WHAT'S GOING ON IN HUNGARY

• Prime Minister resigning: The Prime Minister resigned last week. While a new candidate has tentatively received the endorsement of the ruling party, the political outlook isn't too smooth. When I've asked Hungarians at work and at the client a general "how are you?" question recently, we'll often launch into a political discussion or they'll make a comment on the uncertain nature of the country's future. Basically, it's hard to see how reform can happen here - taxes are high for those who pay them, those who don't pay them won't want to, etc. etc. Read a really illuminating article HERE about some of these issues.
• Working on Saturdays, etc.: You may remember that if there is a public holiday on a Tuesday or Thursday, the Hungarian government will give us that day off, in addition to the Monday or Friday. However, the whole country is required to work an upcoming Saturday in order to make up for the "free" Mon/Fri. Because Thursday, Jan. 1 was a public holiday, we were given Friday, Jan. 2 off for "free." We were supposed to make up that "free" day on Saturday, Jan. 10. However, due to the gas crisis in Ukraine and the high cost of gas, the government decided to change that Saturday, Jan 10 "work day" to Saturday, March 28. Conveniently, that was also the weekend that Europe enters Daylight Savings. Now - this is the funny part. A guy I know emailed and posted on facebook that the Hungarian government had decided to change Daylight Savings to Tuesday night, because Saturday, March 28 had been a work day and it would be a bummer to only have a 23-hour weekend. This didn't make much sense (how could one European government unilaterally decided not to enter Daylight Savings when the rest of the continent did?) but I and many others were still willing to believe it. I do so because (1) I am gullible, and (2) Few things would surprise me at this point. (I spent many of my first weeks at work asking questions like, "The government can do what??")

Okay! That was a whirlwind update without any pictures... so if you've made it this far, thank you! At the end of this week, I have three awesome visitors coming to town: Brook and Katherine (friends from Chicago hockey and IM sports) and Jason (friend from NU). I'll be heading off on vacation in April to Spain (for a wedding and vacation) and then to the US (for business school visists). I'm definitely looking forward to it, and will attempt to update before/during/after/sometime sooner than 7 weeks from now. Hope all is well wherever you are - I'd love to hear from you whenever you have the chance!