Irkafirka, Hungarian for “Express Yourself”

There is something special to make note of when the country you’re in plays Pink Martini’s “Amado Mio” in the grocery store. Let’s not forget, they’re from Seattle. Ah, the rare instance of cultural export when the term "cultural" actually means just that.

This is St. Stephens Basilica in Pest close to our flat at sunset.

We walked from Batthyány ter to the Gellert Hotel today. Our jacked sleep cycle left us ready to start the day at 11:30 am. It was a wandering day prefaced by a long list of things we won’t have nearly the time we need to see. We have perfected the zen of no attachment to anything on the list. Emerging from the airport yesterday, my fragile Bay Area fog-pampered constitution dubbed this country Hot-gary (as it turns out, this describes far more here than the weather). Temperatures around 86 degrees today gradually wore on us.

My agenda for the day was to enjoy at least one of the many hot springs that together pours 18m+ gal of mineralized water into the city every day. After finding the Rac Baths entirely in the process of being renovated, we went on to the Rock Church and Gellért Baths in the Gellért Hill and Tabán area of Buda.

The Tabán area of the city was once occupied by the Celtic Eravi.


This is the Tabán gardens and terraces. The Rock Church is also a recommended visit, now that it is unbarred from the concrete wall the communists covered it over with until 1989.

Gellért Baths (yep, that's David) were the pleasure and mood renewer for the day-as well as an extraordinary cultural watch point; Germans, Russians, Americans, British and French all enter not knowing the language, asking questions of a haggard staff who cater to the language of the question attentively but with annoyed expressions. With various trips to the loo and our locker, several groups of buff, blue-eyed German men took to asking me for directions to the pool. Zaftig is a German word, right? This is a country for staring at the native women and at the imported male visitors (significant quotient of rugby attired guys hanging about together in pub-lic places/transit points too).

We had a delightful meal accompanied by some good piano at Vistacafe. A good looking native in black with rolled up shirt sleeves displayed his rather good musical chops on the restaurant’s piano rather than sitting with his friends. Unlike the pretension (the 3^rd most expensive meal we’ve ever had anywhere in Europe) of last night’s meal in a mid-50s German and Russian clientele at Karpatia, we enjoyed the atmosphere much more here. At first glance, Vistacafe feels like a Hungarian Bennigan’s, but what they serve is a surprising blend of healthy, not so healthy and just plain good. Highlights:

Lemonade: oranges, water, very little sweetener and mint!

Some of the tastiest salmon ever

Chicken shish kebab with grilled apricots on the stick

Breaded turkey around bacon and feta (you can taste how the animals lived- well)

Breaded, fried lobster tails (they left the shell on- how odd)

Pear cake for dessert (more dairy to die for- a cream layer atop pears and a dry cake with bits of chocolate).

I am feeling repressed by not being able to say much more than “thank you” in Hungarian. Even a friendly dog in the park rolled his eyes at my lack of words.

The insomnia tonight finishes off with an astounding amount of marketing of products to Hungarian women, an Animal Planet documentary about scorpions and some Hungarian porn (David thinks it was German; words were not foremost in the broadcast). It’s all in silhouette. It’s like watching a ménage to the current iPod silhoutte, bright colors and movements ad campaign. View the full collection of Budapest photos here.

Spice Rack Face

My girlfriend Anna is taking my face through an abbreviated "boot camp" to prepare for the wedding. My care regimen is longer than ever at night and in the morning, but the results have been worth the discipline. She only wishes we started 6 months ago...

Typically I come to see Anna's skin care salon for waxing- a far cry from the olfactory and tactile delight you experience from being bathed in lavender water with a warm washcloth, steamed, and cleansed with delicious and fragrant chamomile and lemon cleansers and massaged. And with hardly any attention my decolletage has also cleared up and improved as a result of the neck and shoulder massages.

Anna has brought the Ilike (Szep Elet), Peter Thomas Roth, and Christina of Israel product lines to bear on my troubled skin. Ilike in particular has products derived from rose, nettle, lemon- a feast for the skin. Most interesting is that Hungary, seems to be a seat of innovation in this type of product. Given what it says on the Szep Elet site about what exists in that part of the world, perhaps one of those Eastern European spas will be where David and I venture on our second leg of the honeymoon (we wanted to try to visit Slovakia and Slovenia anyway, the home my now passed father's parents came from at the turn of the century). Interstingly, Peter Thomas Roth himself is the child of Hugarian parents. This part of the world that seems to birth such wonderful innovation?

The organic, all natural movement has embraced not just our food chain (as we struggle to re-educate ourselves about where our food comes from). Thankfully, we're starting to put these efforts into products that touch our bodies. It's a strange fusion- we create tons of toxins and all these salves and potions to rid ourselves of them. What a world for our children this will be indeed! A couple of loops perhaps need closing, don't you think?

But the process hasn't been painless. To get my skin looking healthier, the journey has included some discomfort to help rid my skin of comedones. I've now had two intense facials with ingredients intended to stimulate circulation to my skin. The first was paprika layered with blended fruit pulps. Holy paprika Batman! Most recently, it was another Christina product containing capsicum combined with a blend of glycolic and salicylic acid. An Israeli product vs. Hungarian. Innovation has the darnedest ingredients! Having all this done makes me feel like the most pampered...skillet, cup of tea, or piece of raw meat.

The eternal quest to find out where the products that touch our skin come from and why they work so well. Hail the magic ingredients: sulfur and glycolic and salicylic acid.

Both photos by me. OK, OK. My face layered on the spice rack image. It has 57% opacity in Photoshop. Happy now? Pretty simple really.