March 15th Celebrations

My jogging route was clogged and convoluted on Sunday morning. During the night, police had set up barriers closing a lot of the roads in this district, preparing for possible riots. I also had to stop in Roosevelt tér, for that area was given for the fair. Upon the Széchenyi bridge, which Jack and I walked later, were a bunch of booths with actors doing historical recreations of famous events from the 1848 revolution. The weather was horrible and I'm sure they were miserable, but they did a good job keeping face.

From what we heard later, there were riots in the evening, but Jack and I were trapped in Bartók Hall for another concert. The Liszt Ferenc Chorus participated in a state event held there, along with the school orchestra. The prime minister gave a speech to start the evening, and artists from all over Hungary were recognized with awards during the night.

We got there early, and had to squeeze by truckloads of guards and police guarding the building. "Excuse me, we sing in the Liszt Ferenc Choir. We go where?" They all spoke rapidly and pointed. The pointing helped.



Béla Bartók hall is beautiful, with wonderful acoustics and comfortable chairs. The standard, we have noticed, for European/Hungarian concert halls is to place audience seats both beside and behind the stage, for those who wish to see from the performer's perspective. The choir was set up behind the orchestra on stage, and somehow Jack and I found ourselves in the center of the first row. Great view, but if a camera had zoomed in on us, people might have noticed that Jack and I didn't actually know the words to the three traditional Hungarian songs we were singing, including the national anthem.

Oops.

Our choir director also realized this, and at the end of his performance advice to the rest of the choir, he loudly yelled to us, "TO THE GENTLEMEN FROM THE USA: PLEASE MOVE TO THE THIRD ROW!" So embarrassing, but everyone got a good laugh out of it. I think they all understand how difficult their language is, and that learning their songs in such short time is near impossible. Needless to say, we flew to the corner of the third row and pretended to sing through the evening.

We were feeling nippish when we got home, so I whipped together another casserole around midnight. This one was topped with homemade cheese I bought at the Hunyadi tér piac on Friday. It was wow tasty. I'll skip through Monday and come to my cooking adventures for last night. We had another difficult Solfege class, and invited Hossan and Dinah over for dinner afterwards. I had been creating a dish in my head during class, and started preparing after we bought some necessary ingredients at the local Match in Deák Ferenc.

I found that making stuffed chicken was both easy and incredibly fun. While the rice was cooking, I carefully opened the inside of our leftover chicken breasts to make them... stuff-able. I also fried up some onion and mushrooms, and when all was stuffed with these and the rice (and a raw california pepper), the chicken got its fry time. In retrospect, the oven would have been a better home for it, for it was stuffed so much that the middle part took a long time to cook. No pictures of this excitement, I'm sorry, but there will come another time. Íde has mentioned she'd like to hold a potluck soon, and I'm thinking of ideas well in advance. I'm thinking vegetarian chili and corn bread. Easy, filling, and very Americano.

Special props go out to Kat, who is reading this week. I sent you something in the mail yesterday. Hoping this one gets there. I also send something to you, Margaret, that I found recently. It's about 25 years old, so take care of it. No, it's not a man.

Next post: Travel and Geocaching! If you are reading this and haven't gotten a postcard, or would like another postcard, send me an message. I have a big stack from Szentendre still waiting to be used.