Remember how last week I got on a plane and flew to Hungary then took a train to Debrecen?  Cool.  So that’s where I am.  And remember the “c” is like in pizza.  The alternate title to this post was “Da Brett’s In”  like “The Brett is in” which, you know, is great, because using “the” with names is cool, and then it’s also cool cause it sorta sounds like the name of the town.

Town seal. The red represents the fire that pretty much continually burned Debrecen, and the blue represents.. damn, i I forget. The water that put out the fires?

Okay, so what am I doing here?  I’m attending a Hungarian language school.  In theory, it’s crucial for my dissertation.  In reality, I probably could have gotten by with just a Hungarian grammar to do most of the work and some self-directed language learning.  But then I couldn’t spend a month in Hungary taking a class.

This is my third summer school language class, and I’m starting to feel 1- like a pro at summer language classes and 2- like a weirdo for taking so many summer language classes.   I mean, when was the last time I actually tried to siarad Cymraeg?  It’s been awhile.  But whatever, I’m basically a linguist, and it’s always nice to have a more fun answer to THE question.

Like in years past, most people want to learn Hungarian either because they already live here and so of course, or they have some Hungarian familial connection (whether parents, as in most cases, or great-grandparents, in at least one case).  When I’m feeling chatty, I’ll tell people about my real reasons for studying Hungarian, but, in the interest of producing fewer yawns, I usually say I’m doing it for/on a lark, which has the added benefit of teaching 2L English speakers a fun idiom.

This is in DEbrecen

So.  Class has been good.  Everyone in my beginner class is of the connecting-to-roots persuasion, and we’re making pretty good progress.  Classes only go until 3:30 every day, and I’ve joined a gym, rented a bike, and found a good grocery store, so it’s kinda regular life here- get up, go to school, come home, study, work out, read Chomsky, make dinner, etc.

BUT I haven’t been taking many photos or at least I hadn’t, until yesterday.  Because yesterday the school organized a field trip to Eger, a town about two hours away, which is the site of a siege in the Ottoman wars of the 1550s.  So there are a bunch of pictures of Eger.  I would write more but..  well, I’m not going to.  Because I want to publish this now, because that will hopefully get me back in the memorializing-the-trip mood, and also because some meth head in West Virginia has my credit card number and basically bankrupted me yesterday afternoon during a state-wide Kroger shopping spree so I have bank matters to wrangle.  So!  Enjoy!