"Harsonán yátszom!" (I play trombone!)

For circumstances I am about to describe, the last two days are combined into one post.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was an early-up day for me. Mrs. Hárs mentioned that I could meet my new trombone teacher that morning if I came before 10 (téz). Beforehand I needed to run to the post office to pay a fee, as well (more on this later).

Gusztáv Hőna is an imposing man. I guess anyone of my heights can be called that, eh? He is a strong, grandfatherly character with distinctive white hair and a thick, deep voice. He speaks English very well and I bet he plays the hell out of his trombone. Besides chairing both the brass and woodwind departments of the Academy, his other job is playing with the Hungarian Radio Symphony. We exchanged quick jó napots and talked briefly before he had to get to work. This is exam week at the Academy, and he was reviewing what I assume are juries.

I decided to take his offer to wait for him in his office on the 4th floor (5th floor for the Americans). After running to the mall to get a SIM card for the phone Tamás generously gave me (more on this later, too), I took trombone and music there and practiced for a while. Soon I met some other trombonists who were hanging around. First there were Balás (Balash) and Jacklin (I think). Jacklin (I may edit this name later) is a senior at the Academy, and is a full trombone section unto herself. In fact, all the brass players I have heard here have a magnificently full sound. They really play like they know what it's about. Or, as the more vulgar of us say, they play with balls.

Balás speaks egy kicsit angolul, so we had some small conversation. He is a sophomore. I took out my Rochut/Ervin duets, and what followed was some of the best music I've made in a while. It took some attempts at explaining that the two books were intended to be played together, but when I held the music together, they got the message. The word 'duet' doesn't translate, I think. They'd never played the Ervin parts, and sightread very well. We went in a three-way rotation for a long time, long enough to play through 13 or 14 etudes. Soon we were joined by Ester and Adam, two other studio members. Adam speaks English very well, and Ester almost not at all, but we did communicate in Spanish a little. Adam translated a lot of conversation between all of us, and when I told them I wanted to learn Hungarian, they started teaching me slang... which I won't repeat here.

After a few hours, Hőna úr (the studio affectionately calls him Guszti) came up to the office/studio hangout. First, he talked with the present studio members in Hungarian. I gleamed it was something about individual scheduling, because he seemed frustrated and talked to many people at once. They all have little black books, which look like date books, and kept flipping through them and writing things down. One by one they left (as their schedules for the semester were finalized?) and Hőna talked with me about the possibilities for the semester. I'm very excited to be studying with him. When Balás asked me who I would be studying with, he seemed impressed by my answer.

It was getting on into the afternoon, so I decided to go home and watch the inauguration coverage. The English channel here is CNN, and it seems nobody else is interested (or has the money) to advertise on that channel. Tonight Jack and I counted the commercials on that channel between news breaks. There were seven - all for CNN or CNN shows. It was like watching FOX. But they were the only ones showing the inauguration in a language we could understand, so on it went. We toasted "the moment" with a glass of very dry red wine (in juice glasses) - "Egészségédre!"

I went kinda comatose watching the parade. It all went very slowly, and I felt tired from so much Hungarian during the day. Jack kept prodding me - "let's do something tonight" - "feel like going out?" - "I hear there're desperate women over at SOHO London"... So finally around 23 (o'clock) I caved and started tying my shoes ("What the hell? Are you messing with me?").

First we got on the bus to go to the Academy to check out local hangs, but didn't feel like going anywhere we saw, so after an hour of mindless walking around we settled on Captain Cook's, my first bar experience in Budapest...

... but that was boring and the music stank, so it was on to the Café Montmartre!

The music was in full swing, an awesome quartet of three guitarists and a female singer playing latin tunes. We sat at a table (now our table) and picked up the drinks menu. One meaningful glance between us, and we knew what we were getting.

For those of you who have never had it, there is a good reason why absinthe is illegal in the United States. The very look of it is venomous. It's a transparent, pale green drink in a little glass which puts evil thoughts into your head. To make it slightly bearable, you are supposed to mix it with sugar. The bartender brought it to our table (with a slight "adios muchachos," I felt) and we contemplated our existence. Mixing sugar into it seems to be a placebo, as it doesn't dissolve into solution but just sits on the bottom. The smell of it is licorice and gasoline, and at the first whiff, my chronic stuffy nose of the past three days was gone.

At the first sip, all the bacteria within my digestive tract gave screams of agony and died.

After a meaningful "Egészségédre!" (which literally means, "to your health!"), we took that first sip. Jack hasn't talked about his experience, besides "Wow!", but mine was like this: First, my throat caught fire. The gasp I took brought arctic air inside me, and the clashing temperatures caused my head to reel. And that was a conservative, "I've heard this stuff is hallucinogenic" sip.

I didn't see a green fairy that night, because we worked out a system to keep our sanity. One sip and a five minute break to recover. Then, a 3-2-1 count, "Egészségédre!", and another sip. It took nearly an hour to finish that 4 centiliter drink, during which we were very entertained by the band and the couple sitting in front of us. The man, a Brit businessman, was awkwardly trying to humor her, a cute Hungarian woman with long brown hair. She was clearly drunk and putting on a forced display of amusement while saying with her eyes, "Why don't we get out of here and have an intimate discussion about private international relations, already?" At one point, I actually heard him say, "Don't you think I look like Michael Flatley?"

Ah ha ha. What a knob.

With each tiny green sip, she looked cuter and he looked dumber. But soon they left wrapped in each other's arms, and so did we. But not in each other's arms. We paid 1200 forints for each glass, which translates to about 6 dollars. Got back after a short walk across the neighborhood.

I didn't wake up until 4:30pm the next day.

More about yesterday tomorrow. I have to live today first.