Meeting the Neighbors

Would you like to meet your neighbors, but you don't quite know how to make it happen?  It's true that we are beyond the days of bringing house plants, and sometimes banana bread seems too pushy, not to mention the possibilities of nut allergies.  Well.  I have just the thing for you.  Flood the bathroom.  It is just as effective as bringing a casserole, with no worries about gluten sensitivities or getting your pan back.


Didn't get enough of a feel for them, or just craving more human interaction?  Simply flood the bathroom again.


It takes almost zero effort, especially if your washing machine is like ours -- shitty.

...

Back in January, our bathroom flooded.  Kathryn was the first to discover it.




In our apartment, we have what I fondly call Bathroom Part 1 and Bathroom Part 2.  


Part 1 is a "water closet" which houses this funky toilet that was probably installed during the Communist era.  

Part 2 is home to our shower, peeling paint (from said shower, because the head is shifty, like a ninja, or a hyperactive child, and wildly sprays water pretty much everywhere but on your body), and a washing machine.  

The washing machine drains into the tub.  Or, it is supposed to.  On this night, an inch of water covered the floor, sloshing around like a living, breathing liquid lint monster. 




"There is probably a drain in the floor," Kathryn says to me.  "Knowing our apartment, there is probably a hole..." we are cackling madly at this point.

...

No one is laughing at 11 p.m.when the doorbell rings.  I am mildly terrified, thinking of Worst Case Scenarios (one of which includes an Eötvös gimnazium student alumni/stalker at our door to deliver more drawings of cats, but that's another story) as I peek out through the chain latch.

"Szia?" (Hello)  I ask into the dark hallway.

Three guys our age stand outside in pajama bottoms and sweatshirts.  Hair is ruffled and eyes look tired.  "Hallo," someone says to me, "Angolul?"

"Igen," I say, sliding the chain lock off the door and opening it wider.  "Sziasztok," I say to all of them.

"We live... downstairs."

"Oh!  Visz!!  (water)  Sajnálom, sajnálom, sajnálom!"  I say with a hand over my mouth -- sorry, sorry, sorry.

The boys seem mildly concerned.  They are the definition of mildly concerned.  With gentle English and soft voices, we talk about the water that is dripping from our bathroom to theirs.

The boy with stubble and a black Szeged University sweatshirt that fits tightly over his chubby belly asks, "Can you fix it?"  His eyes dart from me to the bathroom.  "When can you fix it?"

"I will fix it now," I assure them.

With leggings rolled up above my knees, and I am hoping this gives me handywoman street cred.  


I am so relieved these three sweet and disheveled boys are at our door, and not the other possibilities.  An angry old Hungarian incapable of smiling and speaking English but capable of yelling in Hungarian?  Our cat-obsessed stalker?  The rendőrség (police)?


I go back to the flood, and try my hand at different un-flooding techniques.  Sweeping the water into a dustpan with a hand-held broom is more successful than mopping.  


You know.  Just in case you would like to use this great neighbor-meeting strategy.

...

So.  Fast-forward to today, June 9th.

There is another ring at the door, and you guessed it, the washer flooded again.  Unbeknownst to me, as I was sleeping.

This time the downstairs neighbor spoke zero English.  This is the gist of our conversation, thanks to webforditas.hu.

szerelő hivni már -- mechanic hivni already
ask -- kérdez
talk to -- beszélgetés
before laundry, hose in tub.  -- mosoda előtt, harisnya kádban.
after, hose falls out of tub? -- a tömlő kiesik kádból?
lakótárs -- housemate

nincsek itt -- she's not here
waterfall -- vízesés

After many sajnáloms from me, and many clicking noises from him, he leaves, and I get out mop and dustpan and get to work.

When the bathroom is back to normal, I take a shower and crawl back into bed.  

...

Not an hour later, I hear a doorbell, but it sounds faint, and I figure it's not ours.  When I hear keys in the door, I am sure Kathryn is home.  I get out of bed and find a pair of pants.

This is the moment that I see an older man peeking through the crack of my door.  

"Pardon, pardon!"  

Who is this French dude in my apartment?

He keeps saying "Pardon" but he doesn't move.  

"Egy perc!" One minute! I say, pulling my pants on and shaking my head.

I go into the hallway and an older man with white hair is standing with his son, who is about 15 years old.    He looks relatively unscarred, considering.  Who knows what he saw.

"Pardon, pardon!"  the older man keeps saying.  Is this all he says?

"Semmi.. mindégy.." I stumble.  It's nothing, don't worry about it...

He thrusts an identity card at me.  "Hadju Géza," he says.

Oh.  Not a Frenchman.  My landlord.  

Szuper.

And now I've met everyone. I hope.

Gone to the Moon

It's been a while.  I feel like I've been to the moon and back, or at least Vienna.  The full moon swelled up in my stomach and energy field, which has been heavy and buzzing.  I had a birthday, which fell on the full moon, and a really weird birthday weekend.  I have been coming down slowly from the silver moon, just floating through space, thinking about how weird existence is.  What else is there to think about?  My trip back down to earth has been slow, but meanwhile on Earth I have shit to do, so I am working on re-planting my feet here in Szeged.


Speaking of the moon . . 


                               


There is too much to say, and lately I have been feeling so frustrated about this canvas of the internet.  Our words to one another are so condensed.  Have you noticed how we have become greeting cards?  We leave out the "I" and say, "Hope you're doing well" but without room for the question of "How are you doing?"  I am guilty of this too, especially on facebook-land.  Sometimes I feel like because technology gives us this gift of connection regardless of geographical location, we forget the significance of how far from one another we are and what this means for our life experiences.  


I guess I am not being so ballsy, but to get ballsier what I am feeling is that some people think that because I am facebook it erases the magic of what I am doing being so different.  Is this an entitled thing to think or say?  Probably.  I guess I am missing the magic of what it used to mean (or what I think it used to mean) to be far from the people you love, for talking to your family and receiving postcards to be a treasured moment.  Our communication is so distilled.  From profiles, where you can choose carefully which aspects of yourself to display, to status updates, where you can pick through all the garbage in your mind and find the gems, to "Hope you're well" messages . . . We're all simmering in this giant internet-speak stockpot and I think the juices are disappearing.  We might too.


But enough of that.  Here are a few words and photos from my life lately. 

We started our vanilla extract.

We made gulyash.

Birthday mandala.

Kathryn and I went into the hippie store downtown on my birthday, and this was my birthday mandala on their calendar.  I asked the shop owner, a young guy with his hair twisted back, what it meant.  His English was limited, and the translation was priceless.  "Never can die your soul.  Even if body to die, nothing stopping the..." he pauses, puts on a serious face, and then crazy eyebrow wiggles, "immortal soul of man!"  We all laughed. 

Also, Attila, A.K.A. Mr. Confident, gave me the best birthday present ever.  Wine (which he pre-chilled before he brought over, classy stuff), plus this: 

Bonus points if you can tell what the gift is.

I also made a pail-list, which is smaller than a bucket-list, and with a smaller time frame and list of things to do.  This is the beginning.

Oh!  I got a bike.  Today I biked home from school while tender-looking snowflakes stung my eyes and brought a smile to my chapped lips.

And teaching.  Oh boy, teaching is fun, funny, challenging, wild, weird, wacky, frustrating, heartening, exhausting, energizing.  All of these words apply to my life on a whole at different times and I feel like the waters moving through me are changing too rapidly for me to put my finger on where the current is taking them -- I can't quite pin down how I am feeling or doing because the minute my hands are holding onto something, it changes in my fist into something else entirely.

Is this what it means to go with the flow?

It's wintery here and we've been making the apartment more and more our home (photos coming soon), and it feels so nice to be snug and cozy while the snow crusts the trees outside our window.  I saw one small child today walking with his mom, who held onto the hood of his jacket, and he took tiny careful steps while looking intently at his shoes.  "I have been there," I thought with a smile.  Isn't our life kind of like that?

Our apartment in Szeged

I have been up for so many hours.

Brain body and spirit buzzing too much for much sleep on the plane.

Even my distractions (books, movies, music) couldn't keep me from riding the waves.

I felt like puking, and I felt like crying, and I felt like laughing. I did the second two.

It was glorious.

It feels surreal and too real and eventually, I suspect, it will just feel real.

There is so much to say but I will just leave you with pictures of our apartment for now.

Ready to leave Matt's apartment in Chicago. I can't believe this was just hours ago.

Living room

Breakfast/tea/dinner nook

My room, pre-unpacking.

The toilet part of the bathroom.

The shower/sink/washing machine room.

So cozy, so thankful, so tired.