An Introduction On My Hungarian Life So Far

We've been here in Sarospatak for 6 days (with the festival officially starting 3 days ago) and things have been so much busier than I remember from the last time we were here.  Which is a good thing as long as we can get to bed before 1 A.M. (we haven't been successful at the for the past few days)

Our days begin with a rehearsal for the morning chapel at 8:15 am. (after a 7:30 breakfast) The rest of the day is packed with rehearsals and activities all the way until usually around 10 pm. Tonight we have a candlelit worship service that will begin at 10:15 pm so we'll probably be up much later than normal.

Hungarian culture is so much different than American culture that it's quite shocking if you don't know what to expect. The town of Sarospatak (pronounced sharosh-pa-tack) is a lovely tiny town known for their beautiful flowers lining there streets. They also have amazing trees on the sidewalks whose fruit are free for the picking and eating. The castle at the end of the town is quite famous and featured on the 500- forit bill. 

So far we have met so many amazing people. I always feel kind of ignorant that I can only communicate in 1 language in a place where many people are fluent in at least 2. Fluency in 3,4, and 5 languages is not uncommon at all. The hungarian language is most similar to Finnish (surprisingly) and has a very complicated alphabet including 26 vowels. Yesterday morning during chapel we sang a song in Chinese (led by some of Chinese at the festival) and that was really fun. 

Unfortunately the translator headsets have not been fixed so morning chapel has to be in 2 languages through a translator. There are "small groups" (think like community groups) every evening and we are the co-leaders of an English speaking group. The subject of this year's material is "Dare to Live!" and is about being courageous. There are still some members of our group that have not yet arrived (they'll be coming next week) but we have a nice mixture of people from South Africa, Belgium, and Texas. 

The food is also quite different than what we are perhaps used to in the states. A usual breakfast includes bread of some sort, honey, jam, butter, cheese slices, big slices of peppers and tomatoes, a kind of lunch meat, a traditional spread with cream cheese, paprika, onions and salt, museli, milk, cocoa, traditional sweet tea, and super strong coffee (think like 5 times stronger than your typical espresso). Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and usually includes a dessert of some sort (usually a multi-layer cake or roll), rice with vegetables and meat, soup or broth, bread and a salad with shredded cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes, and water. Dinner is much more light with only a dessert (usually some type of fruit- the fruit they serve has been sooooooo much more flavorful than anything in the U.S) and a starch of some kind with meat.

I've been working on taking more pictures of the festival and around the town so hopefully soon I'll have enough to give you a good visual idea of what life is like here. For now, here are some pictures from our few days in Budapest (buuda-pesht).

update: the pictures are taking really long to load because of the poor internet connection. here is one of my favorites. a simple bicycle against a house. In Sarospatak almost everybody travels by bike- from little kids to grandmothers. how wonderful is that!

A few days in Budapest

After 3 days in Budapest, we are finally in little Sarospatak for our music festival. We'll be here for 2 weeks and it feels great to be back again after 3 years. 

After a flight fiasco along with a cello fiasco, it's good to be in one place for more than a couple days. Here are some pictures from our time in Buda and Pest before we took the 4 hour train ride to Sarospatak.

there are tons and tons of these beautiful little streets. getting lost in them is a privilege.

there were so many variations on sandwiches and deviled egg fillings i just had to take a picture.

Rearranging the Living Room...Oops I did it again.

I truly believe I have an addiction. It's called I-Have-To-Rearrange-All-My-Furniture-Every-Month. So maybe it's not quite that bad, but as soon as we came back from MN, I started to rearrange the kitchen and living room. You may remember the many ways I have rearranged in the 12 months of living here...The couch has been on every possible wall in the room. So what next? Ha. That's no challenge to an addict. I came up with something different and so far we love it.

This is the view from the kitchen. The front door is on the right.

I wanted something light and airy for summer, but also with pops of bright color.

my blogging corner. floral pillow from ikea (like 5 bucks!)

the other side of the  couch. remember these two chairs?  (i found them in the garbage and totally re-did them)

 This is our entryway. Next to this are the bookcases and artwork. I'm happy with my "new" living room!

 Let's see  how long this arrangement lasts ;)

WWOTM. Gone Fishing.

(just in case you're wondering, WWOTM stands for the 2012 series of our trip to Minnesota: We Wandered Out To Minnesota)

I wouldn't say I'm a fish fan. I love to eat it. I love to cook it. But catching it and cleaning it? No thanks. Especially when fishing with live worms. Or anything alive for that matter. My contribution to this fishing trip was 1) Slamming down the top to the fish cooler in the boat when one was emptied in there (it keeps the fish swimming and alive until we got back to the cabin) and 2) Consuming the fish. 

We did pretty well this trip- we got 7 fish in about an hour.  We caught 5 Northern Pike, 1 Walleye, and 1 Sunfish.  Since I have never actually seen the water-to-table process of preparing fish before, I thought I should document the process. Be forewarned- there are fish guts in this post! 

This is the lake we went fishing on-just outside the back door of the cabin. It gets to about 30 feet in some points. Isn't it beautiful?

 Some of the fish we caught.  The long skinny ones are the Norther Pike. After you get to shore you put them in a net near your fish-cleaning area.  Some of them may not be dead at this point. I've been told this is normal.

The first thing you do is give the fish a big ol' bonk in the head with the butt of your cleaning knife. You give it one good head trauma and it's dead. 

With your knife, you go in at the back of the head and carve all the way down to almost the tail.

It should look like this. 

Then you place your knife between the skin and filet it all the way down. 

Repeat on the other side. 

Ta-da! Drop the fish remains into a bucket. See how the skin hangs down on both sides? 2 filets from  one fish.

K-man actually filleted 2 of them pretty well. Here in the picture you can see his dad finishing the Walleye. 

The next day we cooked them simply and deliciously: bread each filet in flour, salt, and pepper. Fry in butter.  Yuuuuuum.

WWOTM. Maple Beach Burgers.

(this is part of the We Wandered Out To Minnesota series)

One of the days we were at the lake we went on a fun double date with Karl's brother and his wife. They had found this little burger place on the edge of Lake Lida and had been there before. If there ever was a cute, out of the way joint, this was it!

Maple Beach is this tiny little cabin across the street from a beautiful, big lake. You go in and order your food and then take a seat outside on one of the many picnic tables. When your order is ready, the cook bangs on the window and holds up a number card. If the number he holds up matches your order number, than the food is ready. You just go inside and pick up the tray.

 Here's our tray. And our family fries. They have all kinds of different burgers for such a small place. It's reasonably priced and very tasty!

There are no soda fountains at a small place like this- just a vintage fridge where you can pick out a can of soda. How could I resist this Strawberry Crush??

Sometimes you just gotta go for the artificial. 

Who's with me on that?

We Wandered Out To Minnesota

Every summer (and sometimes even in winter!) we go back to K-man's hometown in Minnesota. It's waaaay far north and west. If you drive there from the East Coast you may even think you've driven far enough to end up in Canada or Alaska. 

we always get a picture (don't ask me why-maybe it's the proper farmer thing to do) in the corn on July 4th before we head out to the ooober-big family gathering at the lake. Here we are joined by our nephew who wanted to be in our family picture. Adorbs.

Although each summer is different, many things stay the same. The corn always grows at an incredibly fast rate, the lake house is always there, there are about 100 relatives that we visit with (no, I am not exaggerating), there is gardening to be done, and lots of other fun things.

This year I did a couple things I haven't done yet: cherry picking (and pitting) and fishing.

I have never ever been cherry picking before, but if I had known it was going to be 99 degrees I guarantee you I would have not worn skinny jeans. Don't let these pictures fool you- I was a sweat bomb when K-man snapped these. 

A relative had a cherry tree that he kept just for decoration and didn't use any of the cherries. Well goodness, I'll take them! (now if I could only convince my neighbors to let me have fruit from their apple and pear trees!) 

Me and my pickings. There's actually a better picture where my eyes are actually open, but my hair didn't look as good in that picture. Yeah, I'm girly like that.

When we got home that evening it took 3 of us working for about an hour to de-pitt all the cherries that got picked (about 2 gallons).

These are actually sour cherries and will need to be made into pies or jam. Or at least some recipe that uses a bunch of sugar.

Hope you enjoyed part 1 of our MN adventures!

WWOTM Welcome to THE LAKE.

Apparently everyone in Minnesota has a lake house. After all, there are over 10,000 lakes in the state. When I first heard this, I was pretty shocked. Like, everyone has ANOTHER house? It's the city equivalent to going to the beach. Except there's a house there that you can live in.

Every summer we go to MN we always spend a couple days at "the lake." Apparently you don't say, "I'm going to Crystal Lake" you say "I'm going to The Lake." I guess the city equivalent would be not "I'm going into borough of Manhattan" but "I'm going to The City." Make sense? Ok. Let's proceed.

The first time we go out to the lake is usually for the annual 4th of July family gathering. Last summer there were 110 relatives there. This year only 90. Seemed kind of empty if you ask me. We have lunch (it's a GINORMOUS potluck) (this year I spotted 3 tatertot hotdishes (they're not casseroles, by the way. well, if you are in the east they're casseroles.) ).  <-----probably a hundred punctuation rules violated right there. just realized that. moving on.

SO. The lake house is a beautiful cabin that K-man's great-grandfather bought waay long ago for his kids to enjoy. The family has grown since then and now everyone gets to enjoy the beautiful spot in the summer.

 This is the sign you will see on the tree right before you need to turn in to the cabin! So nice and rustic.

The cabin! on the 4th of July gatherings there are lawn chairs filling all the green space you can see here.

 If you turn around this is the view you'll get.  On the left next to the dock is the boat we went fishing in. The canoe in the foreground is a beautiful, but not ideal for fishing. 

 K-man also gets to go wake boarding. I go along in the boat as his glam-team.

For some reason he always gets allergies from being in the lake water. But I guess wake boarding is worth it

being in the water is so much fun! (As long as weeds don't wrap around my ankles and the minnows don't bite my toes!)