Meet the Parents...and the sister and the aunts and uncles and...

Well, I have survived week one of eight in Central Europe! What a week it has been. I continue to exist at this strange nexus of tourist and resident and I am therefore not doing either one to the max.

Well, this weekend was the big one...the one during which I met the family. Basically all of them. Oh my, what an event it was. Peter's cousins, Tami (that's Tommy to you and me) and Bazsy (um, that would be Buhjhee to us), were celebrating their birthdays and so the whole clan came over for the event. There was Peter's brother Micu (Mitsoo) and his wife Judit (Yoodit) and their son, kis Micu (little Mitsoo). There was Peter's sister Eszter (easy enough), her boyfriend of 11 years (!) Dénes (Daynesh). There was Peter's adorable mom, Eszter (yes, in this country they name sons after the dad and daughters after the mom). Then there were the many many cousins and aunts and uncles, each of whom has some kind of nickname, most of which I am unable to remember. My favorite was Peter's uncle, name unknown, who we took to calling Rummy because of his very close resemblance to Donald Rumsfeld. Of great interest is that Rummy here is a beekeeper. Go figure.

Peter's mom was the cutest. We couldn't speak to each other - other than hello and goodbye and a random word here and there - but we smiled a lot. And every once in a while she would just walk up to me and hold my hand. At one point she said to Peter, "This will be my daughter." And Peter translated for me and I just kind of smiled and blushed awkwardly. To which Peter responded, "What, you have a problem with that?" Ah, the romance!

Most surreal moment of this day, however, was when Peter's sister Eszter and I, taking great pains to have a conversation, sat in the living room each with a dictionary on our laps (mine English-Hungarian hers Hungarian-English) and looked up the words we wanted to say.

WE KISSED AND THEN THERE WERE FIREWORKS
After the party, Peter and I went to a special event I have taken to calling the Great Hungarian Kiss-Off. One one of the bridges (there are seven) connecting Buda and Pest, a local newspaper (kind of their version of the NY Post) was trying to break a record for the Guiness Book of World Records. The record to be broken: Number of people kissing in one place at the same time. The number to beat: 5,500. So, on the bridge was a concert and then at 10pm was the countdown to the kiss. So we kissed. It was crowded but we managed. Then there was a spectacular fireworks display immediately following. Actually, I am not usually a fan of the fireworks but maybe that's because they usually suck. This fireworks show was truly awesome. Those Hungrians know how to do it!

After the kiss-off and the fireworks, Peter and I tried unsuccessfullyy) to cross the bridge to the Pest side so we could walk around over there but, given the success of the event - we supplanted the 5,500 Frenchies with more than 11,000 Hungarians - we could not push our way through to the other side. So we went for a short walk on the Buda side, sat on a bench by the river and then went home.

SUNDAY IS A DAY FOR TOURISM
On Sunday Peter and I had the most touristy day yet. We went to brunch (they don't really do brunch here but we went to this nice hotel, Hotel Gellert, and had some American style brunch - in otherwords, huge amounts of fatty foods on buffet display. Then we went to the Dohany Zinagoga - the Dohany Synagogue. Supposedly this is the second largest synagogue in the world but I don't buy it. It did not look any bigger, in fact it looked smaller, than Emanu-El in San Francisco. Nonetheless, it was lovely. In the back of the synagogue is a Cemetery and the "Tree of Life" - a weeping willow made of steel that is dedicated to the many Hugnarian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. The memorial was donated by Tony Curtis and family in honor of Tony Curtis' dad, Emanuel Schwarz - a Hungarian and a Jew (by the way, I had no idea that Tony Curtis was Jewish...or Hungarian for that matter).

After the synagogue, we went to Szecheny Furdor - a bathhouse. It was AWESOME! Huge thermal pools of varying temperatures and spouts of water that massage you if you stand under (or over) them. We spent two hours there - we didn't emerge from the water until we were sufficiently pruned.

Later that afternoon, Peter went to the gym and I went for a run (finally, some time alone!). I went to Margit Sziget (Margeret Island), a small island in the middle of the Danube. The island has a rubber running track around its circumference (about 5.5k around) and in the middle it is just like any big city park (but it's an island in the middle of the Danube!). It is a beautiful island. It reminded me very much of Vancouver's Stanley Park (only smaller), complete with a swimming/recreation complex right in the middle!

HAAS COMES TO BUDAPEST
After a home-cooked meal (I am refining my housewifery chops!), Peter and I went out to a cafe on Liszt Ferenc Ter (named for Franz Liszt) with three Haas grads from Peter's class. Marc, Jody and Michelle are doing a tour of Eastern Europe and called Peter while in Budapest. Despite there being no love lost between Marc, Jody and I, it was nice to see familiar faces in such an unfamiliar place. And they gave us some tips about Prague and Vienna, where we are hoping to go some time in the next few weeks.

WORK
I had a great meeting last Friday with the Deputy CEO of the Budapest Stock Exchange and he is trying to put me in touch with a woman at the largest bank here in Hungary who is starting up its first SRI fund! I am going to get in touch with her today and see what, if anything, comes of it. The time is coming to update my resume for the Haas resume book and I am still trying to figure out what to say I am doing here!! Well, at the very least I am meeting nice people and learning some things.