Pecs

On Sunday, we (my flatmate Uku and some of his coursemates from the History Department) went to Pecs, a city about 170 km south of Budapest. It's actually quite close to the Croatian border.
I've just uploaded photos of the trip.

50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Although I had planned to stay home and study, I decided to go out today, as I didn't want to miss the "historic moment" in Budapest. Just as I got out of my house, a long row of police cars were speeding by, with sirens on. It was somewhat scary to see trucks full of armed police officers being transported to the city centre, to the location of the demonstrations. The streets in the centre were full of demonstrators, carrying Hungarian flags and other national symbols. I tried to approach the Parliament building, but apparently the police had blocked all the streets leading to the Parliament. At one point, I became quite scared, when the police drove people off the square in front of the TV building.
I then followed the crowd to the St. Istvan Bazilika - there were quite many people there already, they were singing and shouting nationalistic slogans in Hungarian. The people were protesting against the current government. Some were carrying slogans saying that the current government is a successor of the 1956 oppressors...
Take a look at photos here.

photos

Yesterday evening turned out quite unexpected (but enjoyable!). I wanted to go out, but somehow couldn't find anyone to go with me. So, I went alone, and ended up taking a long walk on the shores of the Danube. As a result, I have a bunch of new photos, including a series of artistic photos (Budapest by night, artistic photos). If you look at the photos, you'll see lots of Hungarian flags and candles - that's because tomorrow there's the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary. This means that tomorrow is a public holiday. And I have an enormous amount of schoolwork to do...

wild weekend!

This weekend was one of the best I've had in Budapest (as you can see in the photos)! ;)) In case you are wondering who those guys are in the photos - they are Portuguese, one of them is a friend of my good friend Jaana. They were doing a kind of "tour of Europe", which ended in Budapest. I had never seen them before and I had doubts if I was going to meet them, because I was extremely busy with school last week and quite tired by Friday. But finally I still decided to meet them. I had planned to just have dinner with them for an hour or so, but in the end, it happened that I got home 5 am in the morning! ;)) It was kind of funny - I was supposed to show them around in Budapest, but it turned out that they had seen more in Budapest than I have in 1 month! So, they ended up giving me a tour! Later on we went to a nightclub, where we drank several Caipirinhas (after having drunk a bottle of Hungarian wine in a park. Curiously, it was labeled Rose, but its color was actually yellow. Nevertheless, it tasted good.). Well, I guess the photos speak for themselves... ;))

On Friday, I did some sightseeing. I went to Hero Square at the edge of the City Park. The Hero Square (or "Hösök tere" in Hungarian) has statues of important people from the history of Hungary (unfortunately, all men!). I took some photos, which you can see in the gallery.

Internet!

We have internet at home! At last! In the last couple of days I've been too busy to write the blog. I'll post something longer soon!

the routine.. or not quite yet..

It looks like my everyday schedule is becoming more and more fixed (which is good!), yet it is not a routine and probably will not become one for quite a while. I've managed to arrange most of the practical things by now, although some still remain, like getting the parking permit for my car (to do that, I need to get registered in Hungary). Until now, I've spent most of my time arranging the practical things or studying, which means that I haven't had enough time for myself and for getting to know Budapest. And looking at my schedule until Christmas, it seems that there won't be any spare time at all, even not for a weekend trip outside Budapest. So, I guess that I will stay in Hungary for the winter break or as another option, if I'm done here in June, I'll stay for an extra week, just to see places and do things that I haven't had time for during my studies.
As for school, I think I already mentioned earlier what courses I'm taking. My favourite so far is The Work of Gender - the professor is very cool (although she's quite strict) and I'm enjoying the discussions we are having. As I have quite a number of writing assignments for each class, I decided to upload them all - so in case you are interested in reading them, check http://kadri10.pri.ee/ceu/. Alghough, I have to warn you that most of these papers are written as reaction to articles we are reading in class, so you might not get the point without having read the actual article (although I usually start each paper with a summary of the key points in the article).

At first sight, my schedule doesn't look very tight, but when considering the amount of work I have to do for each class (about 50 pages to read + written assignments for some classes), it is difficult to find a free moment. Monday and Wednesday are the busiest days in terms of the number of lectures - 2 and 3 respectively. On other days I have just 1 lecture per day. In order to stay healthy and sane, I'm trying to fit sports in to my schedule as often as I can. I've been swimming at least once a week now, the last 2 times in the famous Szecheny Baths of Budapest (it wasn't too enjoyable, as there were about 2 people per square metre in the pool!). Also, I've been to the CEU gym once (planning to go again tomorrow) - it's a small gym but has the basic thing I need, which is the treadmill.

Some of you have been asking me about food (those who know about my eating habits!) and I think I mentioned earlier that I was eating falafels every day. Well, this has changed for 2 reasons: first, I have an apartment now where I can prepare my own meals and second, I'm a bit fed up with falafel sandwiches :). As for vegan food, I can get pretty much everything here, except for dark bread which I really miss. Also, I haven't found chickpeas in any store, except one, which is very far from my home. The other bad thing is that most food labels are in Hungarian - that's the reason why I still haven't been able to buy oats for making apple burgers.
Unfortunately, my flatmates are not vegetarians and as it turns out, they eat quite a lot of meat. I'm planning to cook some vegan food for all of us if I have time some evening. Here is a photo of me and my flatmates. :) Uku is studying history (before that, he was doing a Master's Degree in Economics in Tartu University) and David, the Serbian, is a philosopher, now doing Political Studies at the CEU. So we are quite an interesting combination of people as our backgrounds are concerned.
As of now, we are all getting along well and haven't had any major disagreements - probably this is also because we see each other so little - we all have different schedules and come home rather late every day. Although a few days ago we had a small friendly argument (or rather, a discussion) concerning the party we are planning to organize in our apartment. The disagreement was over some issues like the number of people, taking off (or not!) shoes when entering the apartment and smoking inside. Apparently there are many smokers here and although I'm prepared to make compromises in the other two points, smoking inside is something I won't even negotiate. ;)
Some of you who know me better, perhaps know that I don't usually go to parties in Estonia (and if I do, I almost never enjoy them). Well, here it has been quite a different case. I've been to a party every weekend (that's a lot for me!) and I must admit that I've had fun! (except once, when I drank a bottle of wine, after which I wasn't enjoying myself so much any more... :)).

On Friday I went to T-Com, the only company that offers Internet connection in our district, and made the contract with them to get Internet in our apartment. I don't know if I've mentioned this already, but most Hungarians working in the service sector do not speak English. At T-Com, they found a guy who could speak some English, so we managed to make the contract. Hopefully, the Internet will be installed this week. The problem is that the minimum duration for the contract is 1 year and we have to take the Internet with a package including the phone, which we will not be using. But since I'm sharing the costs with Uku, it won't be too expensive altogether. Right now I'm waiting for the call from T-Com to arrange the time when they will come to install the Internet. For that, I was told to learn the names of the weekdays and times in Hungarian! (which I haven't done yet) :)

The CEU is hosting quite many events - there are several public lectures every week (today there's a lecture "Melancholia of Freedom: the Moral Burden of Autonomy and the Pleasures of "Ethnic Closure" in Post-Apartheid South Africa" which I'm planning to listen). Last week they showed old Hungarian films every night - I saw 3 of them.

By the way, if anyone wants to send me something nice :)) then here is my address (don't be confused, this is the way they write addresses here):
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Kadri Aavik
1067 Budapest VI.
Podmaniczky utca 43 I/2
Hungary
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("I" after the house number is a Roman numeral)