greetings from .... germany :-P

good morning blog fans and greetings from the frankfort, germany airport... as i have a 4.5 hour layover, i figured i´d cough up the 4 euros to use the internet terminal for 40 minutes... then i´ll just be down to 3 hours to kill ;-).... as with burger king in budapest, the keyboard sucks, but there´s actually a smiley and a frowny key to type :-) and :-( which makes my day

since last post, ...

friday: 2 hour lunch with my friend bernadett... we had a great chat... after that i visited the hungarian folk arts festival at the castle downtown... i had been to the festival 3 years ago, and it wasn´t much different from that but it was still fun.... after that, dinner with shalom at kek rozsa, a restaurant i like downtown, and then to the same coffee house as last friday to drag people with us to heroes square to play glow in the dark frisbee :-)... after that we headed back to the river since every august 19th the government sponsors an annual "concert of joy" to celebrate hungarian music the night before the national holidaý... this year was hungarian jayy and the stage was floating in the middle of the river, so the riverbanks were the seating area... it was prtty fun... then chatting til late night in a turkish 24 hour buffet... mstly i chatted with henk and ate baklava.... it was fun :-)

saturday was szent istvan day, istvan = stephen being the first king and the patron saint of hungary.... all day there were airplane races and shows over the river, so after watching the military ceremonies at the parliament on TV while i got ready, i got a good spot on the riverbank to watch the "air parade"... fairly cool... after that lunch and then to heroes square again to meet up with friends for the afternoon... however i got there early and ended up witnessing a political rally for 20 minutes first... then to the holiday "why i like hungary" poster exhibition, and then to the river again to watch the airplane races.... those were crazy... they had a series of obstacles made of floats on the river for the planes to go through...

after that, i headed for the basilica for the mass for the holy right hand... that´s right, hungary´s most sacred relic is syent istvan´s mummified right hand (he died in 1038, so it´s rather shrillved and blue).... they have a mass for it and then a very impressive parade with the hand at the end for all the catholic groups reprsented in hungary... i ended up in the 3rd row from the front so my pictures from the holy right hand procession are pretty freakin awesome :-)

finally, we headed down to the river again for fireworks... 3 years ago i sat ON the chain bridge which had to be the best seats in the house... now, however, they shoot fireworks from the chain bridge and elizabeth bridge as well as gellert hill so next to the bridge was the best they could do.... i swear it´s highly unlikely that you´ve seen the likes of what budapest puts on for istvan day... imagine grand finale of anerican fireworks, but from minimum 3 places simultaneously very close together and simultaneously for 30 minutes straight.... it´s FANTASTIC :-)

the only part that was slightly annoying was that to get home i had to walk 5 miles since public transportation in downtown gets blocked off for all the mass festivies... but 5 miles isn´t really that bad so whatever

yesterday, was church and then henk, shalom, and i went to zsofi and peter´s house to watch kontroll, a really popular recent hungarian movie that´s an allegory about the transportation police... it was really good

finally, i had to say farewells to all my friends and head home to pack... i hate goodbyes,... what made me cry even more on my way home was that henk didn´t say "bye" or "it´s been fun", but rather "we love you, and always remember you ae a gift from God" :-).... i LOVE my budapest friends

this morning, i was up at 4am (europe time, that´s 10pm eastern) and out the door to the airport by 5am... now i take off from germany at 1pm (7am stateside) and get to jersey a little after 3pm eastern (9pm europe)... i can´t sleep on planes, so no matter how you slice it, it´s a long day.... i wish i had to listen to announcements in hungarian for 4 hours instead of german, but oh well... off to find some breakfast... later dudes :-P