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Hi, everyone!
I now have just 1 month left in Budapest--hard to believe, isn't it?
The time has gone by quickly, but all the same, I'm excited to get back
home & see my family.
It hasn't snowed here yet. We've had some impressively foggy days,
though. This morning, I could barely see the Parliament across the
Danube from my metro stop. Yesterday, however, was unseasonably warm
and sunny. Instead of taking the metro all the way home from College
International, I got off at Astoria and visited the big Libri bookstore
there. (Libri is a chain of large bookstores; I liken it to Barnes
&
Noble in my mind, but interestingly, the store isn't set up to allow
people to sit and read the way Barnes & Noble is.) I wanted to
get a
copy of "A Kis Herceg," ("The Little Prince") but, as I
found out from
asking a store clerk in Hungarian, they were out of copies of it.
Instead, I bought the first Harry Potter book in Hungarian. It's well
beyond my reading level, but I'm familiar enough with the plot to pick
my way through it.
I also went to the big market hall that we visited as a mini-field trip
during the intensive language classes. The ground floor is a food
market, and the upper level is a folk crafts and touristy items
market. I did some Christmas shopping there, and then walked home.
It
was a pleasant, long walk along the Danube. The sun was setting,
which
made the sky and water look pink.
Last weekend, Forrest, Mai Anh, Pei Zhuan, Melody, and I went to
Kecskemet, a Hungarian town about 2 hours south of Budapest. There,
we
went to the Leskowsky Musical Instrument Collection. The owner,
Albert
Leskowsky, is a musician who has been collecting instruments from all
over the world for 30 years. He has them on display in his house.
Many of the instruments are interesting variations on normal
instruments, for example, violins with different shapes of bodies;
guitars with two necks; and a trumpet with square tubing. Others are
more exotic, such as an alphorn; some are almost unheard-of, such as
a "nail piano." (This is a bunch of nails of different
heights,
pounded into a hollow wooden box for a resonating chamber. It's
played
by drawing a bow along the nails.) We were lucky, because we arrived
at the museum about 10 minutes before another group, who had called
ahead and requested a demonstration of some of the instruments, so we
got to sit in on the demonstration. Among other things, I learned
what
a hurdy-gurdy and a Jew's harp are (instruments I've read about but
never seen), and I got to see Albert Leskowsky play the musical saw!
(I've wondered how this was done; it turns out that you play it with a
bow on the non-toothy edge of the saw, and bend the saw to change the
pitch. More bent = higher notes.)
After the instrument museum, we had lunch (nothing special) and
discussed where to go next. Many of the museums in Kecskemet were
closed for the winter, so we didn't have as many options as our
guidebooks purported. We decided to check out the "Museum of
Naive
Artists," and, if it turned out to be closed, to go on to the Folk Art
Museum. The Museum of Naive Artists was closed, but we never got as
far as the Folk Art Museum. First, we explored the lawn outside the
Naive Artists Museum, which had some wooden sculptures and very cool
benches that looked like pieces of driftwood.
This led us next door to the Toy Museum. This museum's description in
our guidebook didn't look too exciting, but we saw on a sign that we
were just in time to visit the toymaker and workshop. Hmm, get to
watch somebody making old-fashioned toys?--that sounded interesting.
So, we went inside & asked about the workshop. The woman at the
desk
seemed a little surprised. She collected 150 Ft (75 cents) from each
of us, led us up a flight of stairs, through the 1-room Toy Museum,
down another flight of stairs, and into...a "workshop" for little
kids
to learn how to sculpt with clay! We were all too amused by our
mixup,
and by the prospect of playing with clay as a cultural experience in
Kecskemet, to back out at this point. So, we sat down with the four
little kids (I'd guess they ranged in age from 4 to 7) and tried to
copy the head toymaker's actions in making a snail, a bird, a horse...I
spent most of my time trying to make a clay whistle that the toymaker
demonstrated. He made one easily, but I just couldn't get mine to
whistle. Pei Zhuan eventually succeeded in getting his to whistle.
Forrest bypassed the whistle problem and made a clay peacock and gecko,
instead.
We stayed at the workshop until about 4:00, when we had to leave to
catch the train back to Budapest. What a fun, unusual way to spend a
Saturday!
I hope you're having a great week! I'll write again soon!
Sziasztok,
Abra
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