24 Hours

We've had an awesome húszonnégy ora (24 hours). Yesterday was pretty quiet, and included a great dinner of leftover krumpli (potatoes) fried in olaj (oil) with hagyma (onions). Jack also fried up some kielbasa (that's polish). It's was a very meleg (hot) meal, and tasted nagyon jó!

You'll notice the abundance of Hungarian words. The most recent units in my textbook (köszönöm, Mom!) included shopping for food in Hungarian, and I'm trying to learn as quick as I can... which means you will be to. Együtt beszel Magyarül tanulunk! ("We are learning to speak Hungarian together!"... but literally, "Together to speak in Hungarian we are learning!") Y'all better study. Soon I may take '(' and ')' off my keyboard.

Jack had gone to the Iguana étterem (restaurant) to use Skype, as usual these days, and I was settling in for a study session when the phone rang. "Dude, can you walk towards the Iguana? I ran into some drunk people and they wanna walk me home." I didn't know what to expect, so I slipped the meanest looking knife I could find into my left sleeve and hurried to meet him. Jack was right outside the restaurant with a charming drunk man I got to know as "Chubby."

Chubby was disarming at the first, and had us all smiling and chuckling within minutes. He was accompanied with three other women, one of which he was dating, and all of which he HAD dated in the past. His two exes left for home in a taxi. I soon realized that the reason Chubby wanted to walk home with Jack was because we live in the same building! Zoltán utca tíz! His apartment is the penthouse I gaze at when I zone out while studying, and wonder what it would be like to live there.

I found out ten minutes later :-D

We gave the reason for needing to drop Jack's back in our apartment as my excuse for putting the knife back in the kitchen. Chubby insisted that we come up to see the place, so we happily obliged a few minutes later. His girlfriend, Eszter, made some finger-food (cheese, bread, veggies and fruit) and Chubby began a tour of both the apartment and his extensive collection of wines. Apparently he holds some kind of degree in wines, I think. I won't describe either other than to say that both were stunning. Jack told him that the apartment he owned might net two million in Manhattan. Chubby talked for hours on Hungarian history, culture, his family, cooking - did I mention he fed us?

It was a great evening hanging out with this guy. Learning that we were musicians, he invited us to come to Eszter's (surprise) birthday party on Wednesday. We're gonna prepare some birthday music to play for them. As a parting gift, he gave us an unopened bottle of Tokaji Aszú, négy puttony (quality 4 of 6) - 1997. Pre-Bush! Tokaji Aszú is a great dessert wine. Very, very sweet. It's a white wine, and looks like apple juice. In fact, Jack had apple juice with dinner tonight and I gasped as I watched him take a careless mouthful.

More after intermission. Sok puszi!