hiking in hungary (121/365b)

first we took the ferry and then we hiked.
but to get to the ferry was over a mile walk, and it was already hot and the way seemed far and sunny.

zsolt's family decided to stay on this side of the lake and just go swimming but we took the boat, and were glad we did. larissa stuck with us though, and was duly impressed by the stamina showed by my hiking boys.

we found ourselves happily in the shade, munching on wild plums that we gathered from a nearby tree. eventually we tired of laying around, and found the hiking trail. in spite of the  shade and the woods and the breezes it was swelteringly hot. larissa who has lived in the Caribbean said it felt tropical.

larissa

at the top, with no view

from the ferry

we found hundreds of this species... i'm guessing invasive?

when we got back i was too hot for words. too hot for anything. too hot to even sleep.
i gave up, and was glad that zsolt's family took over cooking and made Lecsó, with potatoes and vegetables from his cousin's garden.

we talked until late into the night again, all except me, who gave up and went to read and fell asleep by the end of the page.

some wonderful felixisms from today:
sad lights = satellites.
extra sizes = exercises
and ... mama, mama, i have a really important question.... do the birds near the rocket launching get burned up?

a zero day - time to rest up for my nap (120/365b)

mostly we had to overcome our incredible inertia and head down to the lake to swim. it was nice there, and relatively quiet, but it's touristy so even on a monday it was pretty full of people. very shallow - waist deep for nearly a km from the shore. we rented a peddleboat for an hour and the kids liked that. i stayed behind on the beach and chatted with larissa, another FIRE person who had found our group in our Lake Balaton hideout.

and i started and finished "Ethan Frome" by edith wharton. not to be confused with the other book i have with me to read on this trip, which is by the author Erich Fromm. The Erich Fromm book is strange because it's basically all the same ideas that I've always thought would make a good book - the difference between *having* and *being* ....

It was not hard to love the lake and the relaxed atmosphere, and after the kids headed to sleep (not immediately, first we had to convince henry that he didn't need to worry about world war three :( :( :( ) we kept the chatting alive. 

some fancy distilled peaches?
Zsolt's homemade brew, even better than g+t

and when they were exhausted I went for a walk to find some stars. went with my camera, and brian brought the guitar, which i used as a tripod. no star-trails though, since for some reason long exposures were making my camera make weird noises...

the path by the lake

us with my guitarpod

arrival at lake balaton (119/365b)

headed to lake balaton this morning. we were going to nominally leave by 9, but brian hadn't gotten the car yet, and i wanted to meet manuela too. so i left the kids making waffles on their own, and headed out to find her. brian got the car and packed. when i got back we were still not all ready to go, but there was no stress.

we took backroads to avoid going through slovenia, and headed straight to hungary, always at 50-70kmh. a little slow, but the scenery was so pretty. i am always surprised how unrelated hungarian is to german. there is no foothold. i know no words. also, there's little to no crossover. you hit the border and instantly everything is completely hungarian. how did the austro-hungarian empire even work? it reminded us of getting to the pennsylvania border (from any state!) - suddenly bumpy bump bump along the highway. we drove at the hottest part of the day, and before we even left graz the kids started asking "when we would be there" - family road trip cliche. STOP FIGHTING IN THE BACKSEAT. DON'T MAKE US STOP THE CAR. DO YOU WANT TO GET OUT AND WALK? ARE WE THERE YET??

Felix asked if he could rent kettkars down at the beach. And i asked 'do you have a job?' and he said, with a mischievous grin 'yeees' and i asked 'what's your job?' 'not listening' he said. 'oh really, i asked, and how much do you make an hour?' '100dollars.' 'a hundred dollars an hour? So how long did you spend not listening today?' '10 hours.' 'so you got 1000dollars today? Great, then you can rent the kettkars tomorrow.' 

Brian promised the people we were staying with pizza this evening. little did we know our rooms, with kitchen, had no oven.

feed these people pizza please

you have one electric burner, a crepe pan, and no counterspace. Go!

all the amenities.

i did it. it was a little bit chewy, but done all the way through. there was even a vegan option, and it was delicious.

the lake is beautiful and flat, but we haven't been in it yet. i'm sure we will find a way to go swimming tomorrow!

music high (118/365b)

i didn't want to see any more la strada. but barbara was playing the last show, and nina strongly recommended seeing the french carribean band (and even brought me a dress to wear). i'm so glad we went! it was fun!

different listening styles
front row seats in a gigantic audience

music for orchestra and apartment block
barbara on the top balcony waving a pink fan

cool stage that they changed every number
made out of beer crates
also, the percussionist in the back is playing a box. it's tied around his neck with a string.
the lid opens and closes to make a noise, and he has a stick to beat it on the side

sweaty and still happy
playing very strange and beautiful sounding flutes that look like plungers

henry captured this one after the show.

but the absolute top best stuff was the dancing afterwards, which i ended up staying till the band basically dropped after 3 encores. they were playing gypsy, klezmer, reggae, everything. it wasn't too loud, and i couldn't stand still. long after all the orchestra musicicans (and my kids and husband) had given up and gone home, i was still bouncing around in the front row by the stage. screaming. laughing. jumping. clapping. cheering. singing along in gibberish who-knows-what language. i got home not even that late, only midnight, completely music high and happy.

morning at the music library (117/365b)

today we scheduled all the things.

the window guys showed up right at 8am and took all the inside windows although brian and i had understood they would start with the outside windows. i hope they know what they're doing!

i met up with a lovely french lady so she could give me a cd of mp3s they used for the background music of their kids show. such yummy gypsy music, one from an unknown roma singer. we sat on the ground in the lesliehof and talked about setting music to shows for kids. how kids have more attention than adults give them credit for. how things don't have to always be fart sounds and dumb slapstick to be funny (although those things can be funny too) and how we shouldn't split the audience into "adults" and "kids" but rather play for "people" ... while we were talking, a random kid came up to us and stood near us watching us talk. then walked away. the lady said she is used to this - kids seem to feel that she "does shows for kids" and just expect her to unpack and play for them.

the university library was only open before 1pm, so i went there next, finding that the stuff i need was all "rare" and couldn't leave the library. although the guy responsible for that was on vacation, another guy was kind enough to get it from the archives for me, and let me use his office to peruse paul v. klenau's school for scandal, copiously marked in pencil by karl boehm.

included were such rye comments like:
"we're making the tempo so broad so that the tenor can really make full use of his voice (- if he has one -)"
i laughed out loud

then i took the tram to eggenberg, where i just beat a thunderstorm to the zorn's place. i shared my sourdough with kathi, watched as she kneaded the cement-like sticky dough to the proper consistency, and left, a whole bag of rye flour lighter, exchanged for a freshly picked garden cucumber - my first food of the day. back to the city center for some decaf at tribeka and blogging before meeting the cellist who will be playing with our quintet. 

the five of us found a place to have a drink, while the la strada acrobats warmed up nearby, and the four of us bombarded her with information about who we were and asked her question after question about who she was. 

barbara and i went out afterwards alone, and she discovered i'm impossible to buy shoes with, and i left without dinner to meet up with my little family and watch a show where dancers played soccer. it was a great show, but i was very hot and hungry, and when we went home, i ate dinner and went directly to sleep.

museums and theater (116/365b)

i'll watch theater in the rain

it was a lovely lovely lovely morning, got ready in time to get to the museum for a craft day, and the theater with felix (too young for the craft day) ... right when we got off the bus, the pressure dropped, the temperatures plummeted, the sunny sky disappeared and it poured with an aggression we weren't expecting, leaving us all soaked on the 1 minute walk. theater herewith cancelled, we dried theodore and henry's hair with some paper towels, and their craft day commenced. felix and i just explored the museum for an hour or so, then the rain had stopped and we went for a walk. we met manfred, and had a nice little coffee. time to pick up the other kids - and it started raining again.

home again home again, everyone changes their clothes.

back for the afternoon theater - raining again. what's going on? watched with umbrellas. met some people we knew and hung out afterwards until we went to the next la strada presentation. this one was about millenials growing up, trying to get jobs, trying to build relationships, trying to figure out what to do in this crazy world. all very avantgard theater (not meant for kids really at all, although advertised "for everyone"). at one point they are standing on little metal tables shouting at the world, then they throw things at each other, and throw their tables and chairs on the floor. Felix get up from his seat on the ground and shouts into the sudden quiet "You dumbheads, you are so mean! you shouldn't throw things! Stop shouting" ... i was a mixture of mortified and proud.

on the way home we got 3 scoops of ice cream, 2 sponsored proudly by theodore. we sat in the street and listened to street musicians fight against the loud canned music from the center for the acrobats playing the street festival.

apricots at 11 ... (115/365b)

felix understood "apricots" instead of "acrobats" .... so we thought we'd get apricots to eat while we were watching the acrobats, but there were no apricots at the market today. we got peaches. turns out our appetites were very small because it was nearly 99degrees out, and very sunny. the acrobats were stunning and beautiful, but we were very hot afterwards.

really impressive jenga tower with people crawling inside and outside of it until it toppled over.

i was up at 5:30 this morning, for no particular reason, and felix explained when he awoke that he now knew how to catch a butterfly. "how?" i asked. "you just have to catch a caterpillar, and then you have to feed him grass and water, and make sure he has air and sunshine, and then you have to wait and wait, and then you catch a butterfly." this makes me so snuggly inside.

in the evening hours i went to see the producers at the murinsel, and that was nice, although that movie is very disappointing in the sense that there are so many missed opportunities and so many cliche mel brooks' moments. ("mel brooks or mel gibson?" asked kris. "which national anthem?")