Tasty Weekend!

This weekend was full of delicious food, fantastic people, and exciting experiences. Yay, adjectives!

Wednesday night was not at all good; drinking, personal (boy) problems, and not enough sleep are the three things that sum up the entire experience. I crashed at Bruce's, but didn't get to sleep until 4 and then woke up at 7:30 Thursday morning, unable to get back to sleep.

Aaron had also spent the night there and at 8 the two of us groggily left in search of coffee. We found ourselves at California Coffee Company, a café even more Americanized than our usual haunt, Soho. Usually the coffee is fine (they even sell drip coffee!) but that morning it was cold, disappointing and overpriced. We used their internet, didn't talk much (I was mopey and we were both out of it), and parted ways around 9. On my way home I stopped at grocery stores to pick up supplies for apple crisp: golden delicious apples, butter, brown sugar and oatmeal. I couldn't find oatmeal or brown sugar at the Match I went to first. (The major grocery store chains in Budapest are Match, Tesco, and Spar/Interspar/Kaiser's). I ended up at the Spar in me and Voula's neighborhood, where I found all the ingredients I needed (although the brown sugar was the type that's just white sugar mixed with molasses). I brought my ingredients over to Voula's where I was planning on doing my cooking and she fed me tea and let me cry lots.

I left around noon, went home, took a shower and ate breakfast, grabbed the apple crisp recipe then came back to Voula's where she, Aaron and I were going to make 3 different dishes in Voula's tiny kitchen. We spent the next two hours cooking and bumping into each other. Voula baked squash and mashed it with butter and brown sugar, I made my crisp, and Aaron made the most nuclear, 1950s dish possible. Broccoli casserole that called for canned peas, mayonnaise, canned cream of mushroom soup and shredded cheddar cheese (it was quite tasty, but definitely disgusting to watch him make).

We felt like such good housewives, braving the metro with our hot casserole dishes covered in tinfoil and we got to Kevin and Davids to find it full of people and delicious food. A fantastic time was had by most. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pirogies, rolls, deviled eggs, squash, sweet potatoes, homemade bread, mulled wine, crisp, pumpkin pie; a real feast! The only thing missing was cranberry sauce, which couldn't be found anywhere. After a few hours and lots of food, Me, Voula, Aaron, Kyle, Mark, Amol, and Zeb went back to Voula's to watch Mallrats and hang out.

Class wasn't canceled on Friday, but I usually only have one class on Friday's anyways. Graph theory, at 8 am. But I was a good student, I actually went to class! It was only me and four others (the class has over 20 students in it, but a lot of people decided to make the weekend a long weekend and go traveling and others decided that it just wasn't worth going to graph theory). We got tests back and mine came back with a 73% on it! I have now officially passed a test in Hungary!! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!!!

In the afternoon Kyle and I went shopping at West End because he needed a coat. We found him a nice one, then went to a ritzy café in the mall for overpriced coffee and sat and talked. We parted ways around 5, then I went over to Halcy's to make dinner with her. We made fruit salad (kiwis plums oranges apples bananas yumm), pasta and chicken for dinner for the two of us, Halcy's roommate, Jax, and Bruce, and Bruce brought over two bottles of wine. After dinner we realized how nice something sweet, and it turned out that Halcy and Jax had two bars of baking chocolate... so we melted them with butter and sugar and had impromptu fondue with the leftover bread and fruit salad from dinner and drank red wine while they taught me how to play Euchre (Euchre is like Heroes in BSM; a couple of people got a couple of more into it until everyone was obsessed). They all went out to a bar and I went home since I was still very sleep deprived.

Yesterday was museum day! We ended up skipping the Baudelaire exhibit and only went to the French Erotic Illustrations exhibit and the Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit. The French Erotic Illustrations exhibit was definitely eye opening. When you hear about "bawdy French books" in historical or period fiction this is exactly what it was in reference to. The exhibit was books in glass cases, open to the most ridiculous illustrations. I will not describe them in detail, but let me say that the French of the 18th century had a fascination with flying phalli.

The Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit turned out to be much more than that. It was an exhibition of paintings from the Rupf collection, featuring many other artists besides just the headliners. Aaron, Voula and I didn't stay together while we were walking through the exhibit, but ended up choosing the same favorite painting independently. The painting was by Klee, called "Companions Walking" or something similar. I want to show a picture, but we can't find it on the internet anywhere, which is a little strange.

In the evening the three of us invaded Zeb and Luke's where we made sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, drank some cheap Egri Bikavér that Mihály brought, and watched Kiki's Delivery Service. After the movie I frenchbraided Voula, Aaron and Luke's hair and we finished the wine. Voula, Aaron, Mihály and I took the tram back to the Castle district (Zeb and Luke also live in Buda, but further south than Voula and I). Mihály left us to go to the pancake place to do homework and Voula, Aaron and I walked back to Voula's singing selections from Hedwig and the Angry Inch a little louder than we should have. When we got to Voula's door Aaron realized it was already 10 (he also lives in Buda, but about 45 minutes away by metro and tram since public transport isn't nearly as good in Buda as it is in Pest) so he headed home. I hung out at Voula's with her and Casey and we made hot cocoa/tea and talked about Casey's trip to Dublin this weekend and just chilled for a couple of hours.

Then I walked home. And slept another 10 hours. I think I might officially be caught up on sleep now, maybe. Possibly.

Now I'm in Soho with Voula and Aaron, I've had coffee and carrot cake, and it's time to attempt some homework!