All in the family

I am so easily amused.

Today I became friends with my ten-year-old niece on Facebook. I decided to check out her page, and it killed me -- she is so totally ten years old! Typical status update: "I love Diary of a Wimpy Kid!" and "I'm tired after a long day of shopping with my mom and aunt." She posted a picture of her little brother, then "liked" her own picture. My favorite post was when she reported of her real-life best friend that "Haley is now my friend," to which Haley responded, "Yep." Her activities include crafts, art, and sleep. And she likes Caddyshack, which means I will always love her.

"5 bedrooms, finished basement, interesting history"

Well, well. The Amityville Horror house is on the market again, for a mere $1.15 million. I wonder what it would be like to live in a house with a . . . um . . . history?

I read The Amityville Horror when I was a kid, and I'm not ashamed to say it scared the bejesus out of me. (That, of course, did not prevent me from reading it at least two more times.) I never saw the original movie, because it looked more hokey than scary, but the image of the house in the film made quite an impression on me. The real house has been extensively remodeled and even sports a different address than it originally did. It's now a beautiful, elegant home, filled with sunlight; it was originally called "High Hopes" (I love houses with names!). You can read a bit about the sale here.

Since I last read The Amityville Horror, I have come to believe that the whole haunting was a hoax. The house's real horror occurred in 1974, a year or so before the infamous Lutz family moved in, when Ronald DeFeo, Jr., murdered his entire family in the house while they slept. The Lutzes purchased the tainted house for an excellent price but lived there for only a month because they claimed they were driven out by violent paranormal activity. The little bit of research I've done strongly suggests that the Lutzes, despite the bargain they'd purchased, immediately realized that they were financially out of their depth and were suffering from buyer's remorse. The entire story was concocted so that they could walk away from the purchase with no financial obligation. Still, even believing what I do now, I bet if I read the book again today I wouldn't be able to sleep at all tonight.

Sean used to work with a guy who grew up in Amityville, who knew the DeFeo family and was friends with Ronald DeFeo, Jr. Richard told me he remembered eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen of that house. He said, "Ronnie was the most normal kid in the neighborhood until he killed his whole family."

What I learned today

From Wikipedia:

"Resistentialism is a jocular theory in which inanimate objects display hostile desires towards human beings. For example, objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a fleeing bouncy ball) exhibit a high degree of resistentialism. In other words, a war is being fought between humans and inanimate objects, and all the little annoyances objects give people throughout the day are battles between the two. The term was coined by humorist Paul Jennings in a piece titled 'Report on Resistentialism,' published in The Spectator in 1948 . . . The slogan of Resistentialism is 'Les choses sont contre nous' -- 'Things are against us.'"

UPDATE (10:02 a.m.): Oooooh, related!

One last view of Budapest . . .

Would you want to eat here?

Say it ain't so!

Yesterday I stopped by Moffet's Chicken Pie Shop to pick up some uncooked potpies for lunch today. I bought two chicken and two beef; I also had the guy at the counter throw in a container of chicken gravy. I didn't see any tubs of beef gravy in the refrigerated case and asked if they had some.

"Sure, in the kitchen. It's hot," the guy said.

I hemmed and hawed for a couple of seconds. My plan was to put the refrigerated pies and gravy in an ice-filled cooler in my car and leave them there for the evening while I went out to dinner and a play. Hot gravy sounded like a case of food poisoning just waiting to happen. I was about to tell the guy no thanks when he surprised me.

"The beef gravy is the same thing as the chicken gravy. It's just got food coloring in it."

Actually, he went on to say that Moffet's beef gravy has Kitchen Bouquet in it, but still. Jeez! My mom used Kitchen Bouquet occasionally in gravies and stews and I might even have a bottle tucked away in my own pantry, but I never thought a restaurant would 'fess up to it. Much more upsetting than finding out about Moffet's little secret is learning that Kitchen Bouquet is made by the Clorox Company. Ewwwww!

What I learned today

A boudoir is a woman's private sitting room or bedroom. The word boudoir is derived from the French word bouder, which means "to sulk" or "to pout." A boudoir is thus a room where a lady goes to sulk.

Yesterday Sean and I decided we wanted to see a few sights around Budapest, so we opted for one of those hop on/hop off bus tours; we'd enjoyed them in London and Dublin and figured this would be a similar way to get an overview of the city that wouldn't kill us with a marathon walking tour. We waited for the bus in Heroes' Square (above), where the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary are commemorated. There are also a couple of art museums there, one of which we'd visited the night before on an eerily quiet, deserted outing arranged for the INPUT conference attendees -- a few dozen of us wandered around the Museum of Fine Arts in half-light, wondering how we were going to get back to our hotels after the buses dropped us off.

There is a lot of construction going on at Heroes' Square, which is far more than a square: it's a huge park. Above is, I believe, a lake that has been drained. All over Budapest you can find half-finished construction projects; some one them seem to be active, and it's nice to see run-down areas and sites of importance getting a face-lift, but you'll also find piles of broken-up asphalt, mounds of dirt, half-dug trenches, and so on that appear to be abandoned. It's difficult to figure out what Budapest's plan for the future of the city is.

This stunning castle sort of building is located behind Heroes' Square. It's an agricultural museum.

Finally, the bus arrives! Chuck Pocket selects the language he wants for the audio tour. Such a kidder -- I think he opted for Finnish. All the signs on the bus seemed to be in German.

Sean and I decided we really only wanted to hop off and see two things in depth, and here we are at the base of our first stop, Castle Hill. To the right you can see the tracks of the funicular.

A view from the street level of Castle Hill; the funicular is out of the frame to the right.

In line for the funicular. (Siklo means funicular.) We waited about 20 minutes in line for a 2 minute ride up the hill. A worried American couple behind us in line seemed perplexed about the cost and wondered why it was going to cost them half as much again to come back down the hill on the funicular as to go up; I had figured it out but didn't feel like explaining to them that the "return" ticket they were so worried about included a trip up and back down. Lame! Let 'em sweat.

Inside the funicular. We shared our car with another couple, who were far too blase for my taste. Come on! How often do you get to take a funicular ride? Stand up! Take a couple of pictures! Have a little fun, guys.

More than halfway to the top. There's the other car in action.

At the top of Castle Hill there's a castle, a labyrinth, a church, a bunch of restaurants and shops, and a lot of other things I can't remember. One of the things offered as a tourist attraction was the chance to shoot arrows at targets. The girl in the black tank top, who sounded American, was a pretty bad shot. The bow recoiled against her shoulder after one shot and she yelled, "Jesus Christ, that's going to leave a bruise." At least two of her shots flew far beyond the targets.

Sean took archery in college so I thought he should give it a try. He didn't hit the center of his target, but each shot got progressively better as he quickly figured out that the bow pulled to the left and he needed to compensate to the right a bit. He put that tank top girl to shame.

Here's a fountain that seems to be under repair. I say "seems to be" because there's a ladder, some tools and a bunch of electrical gear lying around, but there's no one in sight who seems to be doing any work.

A raven with a gold ring in its mouth atop a cool gate.

Did I mention that the raven is part of the gate's design? Something tells me this gate is trying to tell a story or myth I'm not familiar with. Ha! That reminds me: When I was a kid I had wonderful, fat book of Native American folktales that had been translated in English from Hungarian.

This sign was so adamant that I thought it was telling me the fence was electrified, which seemed unfortunate since I had already touched it. But no, it was just telling me to keep off private property. OK, Mr. Sign Poster, I will not wander through yet another pile of rubble. There are plenty of others available throughout the city.

I really liked this giant, medieval-style mural.

Here's a street atop Castle Hill. Again, it has this almost undefinable European feel to it.

Maybe it's the cobblestones in the road.

Or the shop signs, like this hand-forged beauty outside an antique shop.

A cathedral atop Castle Hill. I can't remember who it's named for -- perhaps St. Matyas? The yellowish part of the roof is a colorful mosaic of tiles.

Um, some religious figures. They are atop a steeple near the cathedral. I didn't catch their names.

I asked the lady who ran this antique shop to write down the name of this fellow for me (which of course I don't have on me right now -- sorry). These masks are worn in a festival in a southern area of Hungary every year to commemorate a medieval battle in which the Turks were driven from the area. Hungary, incidentally, seems have been a favorite place for invaders: the Turks, the Mongols, and the Habsburgs all have claimed Budapest for themselves. The Castle district was viewed as a particularly desirable stronghold, as it is near but several dozen meters above the Danube.

A bit of the view from atop Castle Hill.

Could this be what it sounds like? A marzipan museum?

Sure enough. Here is their prime exhibit in a front window. The Marzipan Museum, however, is primarily an ice cream parlor, and by this point Sean and I were looking for something more substantial for lunch.

The Fisherman's Bastion, another monument to the seven tribes who founded Hungary. It offers a panoramic view of the city and its construction was completed in 1905. It has a soft, puffy, fairy-tale look to it. It has been described as "kitsch but beautiful."

Finally, lunch time! Sean and I wandered down a little street lined with small cafes and picked this one at random. It was a good choice.

The remains of my carbonara pizza. It had ham, bacon, mozzarella, mushrooms and sour cream on it. It was a little salty but very tasty. Sean had beef goulash stew served atop gnocchi, which was far more like the goulash I remember my mom making than the soup I had the other night.

Here's some sort of weapon sitting outside the Citadel on Castle Hill. The Citadel was built as a stronghold and lookout tower. You can see, around the edges of the picture, that it was badly damaged in WWII. It did better than the castle, which was destroyed (for something like the third or fourth time in history) and had to be completely rebuilt, starting in the 1950s. Today the castle is an art museum. We did not visit.

This is a terrible shot of the back of Szabadsag Szobor, or Liberty Statue, the Hungarian equivalent of the Statue of Liberty. It was erected in 1947 to commemorate the Soviet liberation of Hungary from the Nazis. Talk about leaping out of the frying pan into the fire!

Here's an even more distant shot of the statue as we bused back to the Pest side of the Danube. (Betcha didn't know that Budapest is actually made up of two cities, Buda and Pest, separated by the ugly brown Danube.)

Shortly after I took the above picture, something happened to our bus. I say "something," because neither the driver nor the guide conveyed any information to us. All I know is, we were driving along to our next destination when the bus stopped in a lane of traffic behind a white van. I don't know if we broke down (I don't think so, because the driver left the engine running) or if we had rear-ended the van. All I know is that we stayed there for about fifteen minutes while the guide and driver kept getting off the bus, conversing with a guy in a white t-shirt who was on a cell phone (whom I assumed to be the van driver), then getting back on the bus. Sean and I were sitting upstairs on the double-decker bus and were mystified, as were all the passengers around us. Eventually the guide came on the intercom and told us all that there had been an accident and another bus was arriving to pick us up. We never learned what happened.

The new bus was slooooow and kept making layovers along the way. At one point something seemed to be wrong with the intercom system so our guide got off the bus and disappeared (we later saw her walking blithely down the other side of the street), while a young guy with a computer keyboard got on, plugged into the bus's system and . . . did something. Then the driver shared some homemade cookies with him, the guide returned, and we once again resumed our journey. None of these delays was terrible, but it was all annoying because no one ever bothered to explain what was going on. Sean and I (especially I) were fuming when we got off at the other stop we'd planned on, the infamous Terror House.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the building except on the ground floor, where there's nothing going on, so I'll do my best to describe it. Terror House is a large, otherwise ordinary looking building on a pleasant, busy thoroughfare. Only the fact that it was been painted a dull gray and a huge metal overhand placed atop the building, featuring the word TERROR and a giant arrow cross, makes it obvious that this is a museum and not, say, some more mundane business. Oh, yeah, and the tiles that look like mugshots but are actually photos of the building's victims that run along the outside of the building at about eye level.

The Nazis and later the Arrow Cross Party (a Hungarian fascist organization) used this building from 1944 until some later debated date -- 1956? 1961? -- to imprison, interrogate, torture, and execute political prisoners. The museum acknowledges this, albeit in a highly stylized way. None of the exhibits is realistic (except the prison cells in the basement level, which have presumably been cleaned out but are otherwise starkly nauseating). For instance, one of the first rooms you enter has a large wall down the center, with a bank of four big TV screens on each side. One side of the wall shows images from the Nazi invasion of Hungary, while the other shows images from the Soviet regime. While all this is going on, loud, pulsating electronic music is playing -- the juxtaposition of the violent, frightening images with music associated with dance and abandon is jarring. At a later point Sean and I had to wander though a short maze made of walls of 1 kg blocks of soap. I don't know what the soap signifies, but it was eerie nonetheless. A lot of the exhibit was lost on me as it was primarily in Hungarian, German and Russian, but I was struck with a sense of unease nonetheless. I would find it very difficult to work in such a place, yet there were two young women giggling behind the ticket counter as we paid our admission. Photos of victims and their torturers are everywhere, and most of the building's interior is painted in muted colors like gray and black. Sean's mom is sensitive to negative energy in buildings, and I have a feeling she wouldn't be able to go anywhere near this place, even if she didn't know what had happened here. I picked up English language flyers in almost every room so I can read up on the building's history. It's both fascinating and mysterious.

After that little jaunt, Sean and I were ready for a bit of lightness. We joined Curtis and Veronika for dinner at our favorite new Budapest joint, Fanyuvo.

My dinner, the Transylvanian mixed grill on a wooden plate. It was a steak, a battered and fried chicken cutlet, and a battered and fried pork cutlet, served atop French fries. Meat!

For some reason I can't find this dish on the restaurant's website menu. This is what Sean ate, and I swear if was called the "meat mound" or "meat mountain." It's chicken and cheese baked in a casserole, served with a slightly sweet honey dipping sauce. That's a heap of mushroom rice on the left.

Amazingly, after all that food and couple of desserts that we split, I didn't suffer massive indigestion last night, although I did dream that I was peripherally involved in a massive outbreak of lice. The less said about that, the better.

Sunday in the park with Gyorgy

So. I'm in Budapest. Bet you didn't see that coming! Actually, since only about 5 people read this blog and all of them know me personally, you all probably did see that coming. Sean and Curtis' latest movie, Something Blue, was selected to screen at this year's INPUT Conference, an international conference of public television programmers which is meeting this year in Budapest.

I am a nervous flier, but of course I wanted to see some more of Europe. Armed with anti-anxiety medication, we left LAX on Thursday. Someone stowed away with us: Chuck Pocket, my pal Lucy's little legless buddy whom I believe she envisions as her personal Travelocity Roaming Gnome. I told Lucy I'd carry him around in my purse and take him out every so often to see the sights. Yes, I am a 44-year-old woman. Wanna make something of it?

Here's Chuck enjoying his last taste of Mexican food for some time. (Though I doubt the Camacho's Grill at LAX could in any way be dubbed authentic.)

Thanks to Ativan, my new favorite pharmaceutical, I dozed much of the flight from Los Angeles to London. Things have changed a bit since the last time I flew, way back in 2004. For instance, this is the first time I've had my own personal TV/movie screen. I watched the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 (not very good) and sampled episodes of The Big Bang Theory (overrated) and How I Met Your Mother (also overrated). I was expecting the very worst in food and amenities, but that wasn't so bad: British Air supplied us with toothbrushes and toothpaste, eye masks, and socks. Dinner was a choice between chicken and lasagna, both decent, and we ate a perfectly serviceable breakfast (served at 3 a.m. L.A. time).

Chuck waits patiently at Heathrow to board the flight to Budapest. We ate lunch on this flight; Sean and I were offered a choice of either a cheese or tuna sandwich, but Veronika, Curtis' girlfriend, told me later that their flight a few days previous to ours provided only a coleslaw and cheese sandwich. The hell . . .?!

The flight to Budapest lasted only a couple of hours and it was still light when we arrived. I didn't take any pictures as we cabbed it from the airport to our hotel, but suffice it to say that the Soviet style of architecture is still alive and well in post-Communist Hungary. LOTS of big, blocky, gray, impersonal buildings, mixed in with a few historical structures. Our hotel is quite nondescript and our room is best described as spartan. Since we are being offered nothing in the way of amenities, I don't feel too bad about asking for a clean towel every day. Still, it's clean and not too expensive, and we're right next to a subway stop. Budapest has the oldest subway system in Europe.

This is where we had dinner Friday night. The place has this funky, woodsy theme going on; it reminds me of, of all places, Clifton's Cafeteria, although it's not quite as wacky as that L.A. landmark. We ate downstairs, where fewer people seemed to be smoking. Smoking is allowed in many places in Budapest, and there are cigarette butts everywhere as testament to just how many people indulge.

One of the pages from the menu. (A lot of signs, menus, advertisements, etc. are bilingual or in English exclusively, and lots of people speak English and German.) I wanted to order the Dangerous Plate or the Wooden Plate of Profusion, simply because they sounded so silly. I ended up ordering a chicken cutlet with peaches and Gorgonzola, with a side of mushroom rice. Side dishes are referred to as "garnishes," and they are heavy on the rice and potatoes around here.

Vern and Curtis looking happy. I think their beer had just arrived.

Chuck hangs out by the salt cellar.

Here's my dinner. Yeah, canned peaches with Gorgonzola sauce sounds weird, and it probably was, but it tasted good.

On Saturday Sean and Curtis took off early for the INPUT conference. Vern and I got a more leisurely start. Since she and Curtis had already been in town a few days, I let her decide where we'd go. We took off towards the major market in town, which is housed in a large building close to the center of town.

After we got off the metro, we walked down a couple of little side streets to get to the market. The blobby yellow thing above is a much-used candelabra covered in old, dripped wax, sitting in the window of a little cafe. It was late morning, too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, and the streets were quiet. The cafes that lined our route all had patios, and it looked like it would be a bustling spot in a couple of hours.

Hey, Vern! The center of this street was closed to traffic and instead lined with tables, chairs and umbrellas. It's hard to describe, but it felt very European.

This is the market building. I wish my camera had a wide-angle lens so I could capture how enormous it is. There are three floors. The ground floor is full of market stalls selling fresh meats and vegetables; the second floor is nonstop artisan goods, much of it tacky but some really cool, aimed squarely at tourists; the basement is fish and other supermarket goods, like canned foods. Vern and I immediately headed upstairs.

Here's a view from one end of the second floor. The building is obviously old and filled with lots of natural light. The shops on the second floor mostly hug the walls and the aisles are very crowded. Vern advised me to push through the crowds because no one will just stand aside and let me pass; she turned out to be right. I bought a pretty hand embroidered table scarf for myself and a couple of gifts for others.

Here's another shot from the second floor. The roofs cover the food stalls on the bottom floor. Later, Vern and I headed down there to look at the food. There were all sorts of fruits and vegetables, including quite a few we couldn't identify. There were lots of booths devoted exclusively to paprika, which seems to be the national spice of Hungary. We were both struck by the meat markets -- it looks as if no part of the animal goes to waste around here.

Case in point: chicken heads and chicken feet.

After the market, Veronika and I cabbed to the INPUT Conference to catch Sean and Curtis' program. They had prepared a special one-hour cut of Something Blue (which normally runs about an hour-and-a-half -- don't worry, Norman, your big scene is mostly intact) for the conference, and it was on the program with 3 other public television shows. (And just in case you're wondering, yes, Something Blue was shown on public television. In South Carolina. Last week.) The first show was from Belarus and ran about 20 minutes. It was a depressing, wordless little film shot from a photographer's apartment of the street outside his apartment over the course of several months. Most of the action seemed to consist of a group of men getting drunk, starting fights, and then passing out in a small park. To be honest, I dozed off a few times, which made the film seem even longer. After it was over, the audience got to question the filmmaker, who said that the show couldn't be shown on TV in Belarus (because Belarus is "the best country in the world" and things like guys getting publicly drunk on what seems like a daily basis just "doesn't happen there"), so it originally aired in Poland. Like I said, depressing. It was followed by an episode from the British TV series Wonderland, called "The British in Bed." A number of British couples were interviewed in their beds, and they talked about all aspects of their relationships. My favorite was the couple who opened and closed the show, an elderly Jewish duo who had been together for about 50 years. They talked over each other and poked not-so-gentle fun at one another; they were surprisingly candid and quite funny. That show seemed a little long, but it was a blessed relief after seeing the same drunk young Belarusian guy fall over a picnic table for the fifth time. The third item on the program was an episode of a Danish TV show called The Farmer, which is a reality show that follows a twenty-something guy around his small farm as he tries to create a life for himself that he considers simple and good. It's an incredibly popular show in Denmark (I think it's Denmark; it could be Norway), but it raised some hackles with the audience, some of whom seemed incensed that the farmer is now being paid by the TV network to work his farm. "He's not a farmer; he's a celebrity!" seemed to be the complaint. Eh, it didn't bother me. Curtis thought the show was awful but the concept interesting. I kind of liked it.

Here are Sean and Curtis on the right, along with the moderator, discussing Something Blue after its screening. The audience was pretty subdued during the Q&A, possibly because they liked the show overall and had no complaints, but also possibly because they were tired and hungry. Some dim bulb actually asked why Sean and Curtis didn't make a documentary instead of a mockumentary. Um, because there are no real blue-skinned people? I think the mockumentary format was lost on a few of them, but a couple of guys were very enthusiastic and talked to Sean at length in the lobby after the screening. I liked the one-hour cut of the movie a lot, though my big scene as the incompetent florist was left on the cutting-room floor.

There was a cocktail and dinner party in an adjoining building so the four of us headed over there.

The five of us, I mean. Chuck basks in the glow of bulk-purchased blush wine.

Ready to disco!

Enjoying the free libations.

I don't know why Sean looks so angry. Maybe he's just hungry; it was getting pretty late, with no dinner in sight. Please don't ask me to explain our surroundings.

Members of "Hungary's most famous dance club" performed a couple of numbers for the guests. BORING! Obviously none of them have ever seen Dancing with the Stars. I couldn't imagine any of these staid couples shaking it up.

This couple was supposed to be dancing the "hot salsa." Trust me, it was mild. While they were prancing about, I wandered over to the buffet table and perused the appetizers. We hadn't been informed that it was chow time yet, but come on -- there were platters and platters of hors d'oeuvres just sitting there! I grabbed a slice of baguette with some salami on it and went back to our table. I peeled the tomato and cucumber off and ate the bland rest, which was nothing more than salami, butter and bread, but at least it was food. Vern was starving so she headed off for the table. Within a minute she was back, pulling on her jacket and announcing she was leaving. Apparently, when she picked up an appetizer, a waiter grabbed it out of her hand and told her no one could eat until the dancers were done. Veronika said, "Well, I've touched it. What are you going to do now, put it back for someone else to eat?" No, said the waiter, he was going to throw it out. The whole thing was kind of ugly so we left.

I was glad I had eaten one of these before the screening. It's hard to describe -- I don't think it's ice cream, but it's chilled. It tastes kind of like a chocolate-covered marzipan-flavored ice cream bar. I really liked it, despite the horrible name.

Vernokina wasn't feeling good this morning, so she stayed in while Sean, Curtis and I walked to St. Margaret's Island in the middle of the Danube River, which flows through the center of Budapest. It was a cool, overcast morning, perfect for a stroll through town.

Paul Anka's coming to Budapest! Does America know how to export culture or what?

Name me one American distilled liquor company that would feature redwork embroidery in its ad campaign. Just one!

Huh. The Beautiful Blue Danube is neither.

The skyline visible from the bridge to the island was kind of pretty, though. It was easy to look at it and imagine an earlier time.

This is a fancy resort and spa on St. Margaret's Island. Here, let me give you an idea of the beauty of the architecture:

Standard issue Soviet. It reminds me of the dorm I lived in my freshman year of college, which had been designed by a guy whose previous experience was in designing prisons. I kid you not.

A little church on the island. I wanted to get some closer shots, but I think a service was in progress.

There were busts of noteworthy people all over the island. We were struck by how familiar many of them looked. For instance, this guy was a dead ringer for John Malkovich.

President Taft.

The somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

We couldn't decide between Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving, or this guy Sean and Curtis went to grad school with, but I can't expect my readers to recognize Jeremy Simonson.

Orson Welles.

Omar Sharif.

This is part of a ruined 12-century abbey that stands on the island. I was struck by the sensitivity with which part of it has been restored. Yeah, those cinder blocks blend right in!

Chuck enjoyed visiting St. Margaret's grave. Apparently Margaret (or, more properly, Margit) was "given to God" by her father, the king, after he successfully drove the Mongols from Budapest. She tended to lepers and reportedly never bathed herself above her ankles. Chuck has a bit of a foot fetish, not having any himself, so Margaret is right up his alley.

Sometimes you just gotta be fabulous, even if it's on the altar of an ancient place of worship.

This fountain was covered with graffiti and filled with trash. It was kind of depressing. The whole island, as a matter of fact, was muddy, covered in weeds, and home to a lot of garbage, especially cigarette butts. People aren't fastidious about cleaning up after their pets, so there is definitely a tang of dog shit in the air.

A water tower on the island. We walked by it once and completely missed it and had to catch it on the way back.

At first I thought this was a poster for the new movie version of Robin Hood, but then I realized it's a musical theatre production opening in Budapest this summer. It looks like a vampire version, if you ask me.

Here is a little Japanese garden kind of randomly located on Margaret Island. There were two ducks (one of them asleep) and some tiny fish the same color as the mud at the bottom of the pond.

This little turtle kept arching his neck and staring winsomely at the nude statue. Part of me wants to think it was love, but another part realizes there were hardly any places for the little guy to crawl out of the water; this rather narrow ledge was one of them, and he looked uncomfortable rather than amorous.

A little waterfall disguising the side of a building.

After we left Margaret Island we went to lunch at a little bar/cafe down the street from our hotel. Even though it was sprinkling, we opted to sit outside because the bar was stuffy; out by the street the air was fresh and cool, and an awning protected us from the elements.

This monstrous building was across the street from the cafe. Curtis said it's a smaller version of the big market Veronika and I visited yesterday. What the hell is going on with all those yellow curves and filigrees? Just because you can design a building any old way you want to doesn't mean you should do it.

Sean found the best thing on the menu: a chicken cutlet stuffed with kielbasa and smothered in an herbed cheese sauce.

Chuck and I finally got to sample some goulash! I remember my mom's goulash being a stew that either had noodles in it or was poured over noodles. On all the menus here, though, it's listed as "goulash soup," and it's considered an appetizer. It's a tomato-based broth heavily seasoned with paprika and caraway, filled with beef, carrots, and potato. It's all right but hardly something to tout as an international delicacy. Dessert was pretty damn good, though -- basically, they were small, warm cake doughnuts covered in a creamy custard sauce.

It's about 6 p.m. local time and I'm pretty wiped out. Sean and Curtis are back at the conference and headed to a dinner afterward, while Vern has finally ventured out of the hotel for some food and fresh air. I think I'm going to stay in tonight and read.