nawl

Spring has finally arrived! It was a beautiful day today, sunny and a balmy 8 C (45 F). There was something about the fact that it was above zero that put an extra spring in my step and a sparkle on the entire day. The breeze was soft and comforting.

I decided that as long as I'm stuck in Budapest, I might as well enjoy myself. So I did. I spent a solid afternoon at the baths, taking in the outside pools, the sauna and the cold plunge, and a small tour of the indoor green pools. I talked to a bunch of French civil engineering students who were here for a week-long exchange to study Budapest's bridges. For once it was warm enough that the 38 C pool felt uncomfortably hot.

And at night, I decided to go out, and discovered Budapest's ballroom dancing scene. Score. Tonight was Szombat esti láz, Saturday night fever. The music was a divided rotation of your usual 10 international competition dances with paso doble removed and salsa instead. The first hour was standard (waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, viennese, tango, waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, viennese...), and the next several were a much more popular and crowded mix of 90% latin, 5% standard, and 5% things they don't play in the ballroom scene I'm used to (bachata, something that's not a night club two-step that's danced to your usual sappy night club two-step music). They apparently don't believe in hustle, polka, argentine tango, or any non-jive swing here (though people doing "boogie woogie" which appeared to be west coast, maybe, were segregated in a different room). The samba people were doing is not at all the samba that I learned at Berkeley. This samba was mostly a fixed dance with a set of complex in-place latin moves that rarely travels.

Within two dances I was co-opted by a really good dancer for the entire rest of the evening. Who spoke fluent English. Everyone that I have asked to dance speaks fluent English. Any professional person below a certain age seems to speak fluent English.

Certain music choices were hilarious. One song was Jail House Rock, but in Hungarian. I laughed. My partner informed me that this was a famous Hungarian singer. I asked him, "You know who Elvis is, right?" There was also a Hungarian version of a song from the French Romeo et Juliette musical. I don't even know why I know the song.

Anyways, I think I have finally discovered how to meet random Hungarian people and emerge from this silly American BSM bubble. I am pleased. Tomorrow is Öt órai tea (5 o'clock tea), same crew and same scene as today. Yay.