epca

epca was my first time in europe.  i know nothing about europe other than what i've learned in textbooks and art history class.  air france was full of pointy noses, thin lips, chiseled features and hairy caucasians not overweight.  it confused me.  the smell confused me.  what europeans perceive has fresh and sanitary, reminded me of a foul smell that resembled my 7th grade french teacher.  i was asleep across most of the atlantic only to awake @ charles de gaulle looking for my connecting flight into eastern europe.  hungary they say, is a poor mans prague.  everytime i said "it's so beatiful here", they would say "prague is so much nicer".  im not even talking about prague, im talking about hungary, but there was the constant comparison.  sucks for hungary eh?  regardless, i was there for work.  5 day long conference that had me booked meeting to meeting 12+ hours a day with little food little sleep and too much caffeinated liquids.  for a conference that burgeoned the population by at least 2k, the city was bleak.  uber uber bleak.  clouded by grey and rain, the streets were empty and bare.  restaurants lay empty, streets were barren, lamps were out, and yet life still went on.  


we went to some club on a friday and saturday.  the women were beautiful.  raw, unrefined features of two extremes.  black brunette or uber blonde.  stick skinny in industrial apparel, tight jeans and knee high boots, a product of their environment.  and the guys all pretty much looked like fedor emlianenko.  meathead vegas easter europeans that quite frankly scared me. that's a nice club.  we did go to a more local establishment was the talent was a bit more farmlike but they still drank their beers and hopped around with the best of jlo's techno remixes.


do all poor countries have an affinity to salt?  does it make you warmer?  or does it just make you want to drink more water and eat more carbs so you feel fuller?  goulash is the soup of the country...which in essence sounds like a tasty soup. a tomato based beef stew, but less of a stew it was, more of a salt logged watery concoction.  not good.  nor did i really like that weiner schnitzel of fried flattened veal that everyone seemed to order all the time.  "chicken soup and caesar salad for me".


meetings were good, however, i was embarrassed most of the time, trying desperately not to cough my brains out mid sentence " hi im, cough cough, alex, i handle, cough cough, aromatics, cough cough".  what if you hold in a sneeze/cough and phlegm just flies out your nose instead?  now thats no gooD?  u can imagine how relieved i was to get home every night around ten....to pass out for an hour and wake up in a cold sweat and proceed to the bathroom to vomit the rest of the night. 


we had nobu one night.  some italian hungarian food another which was quite tasty until it came up.  the four seasons is most noted not for its lunch, but the glamour of it's lobby.  absolutely mezermerizing.  the thing with countries coming out of strife is that their knowledge for service is limited.  countries need to be at peace long enough to understand that westerners want service and when you serve, u will be rewarded with relatively nice gratuity.  there's no point to swindle tourists because as long as you provide a service and the exorbitant price is agreed upon, there's no need to cheat someone out of their money...they willingly give it to you. and when you get swindled.  u laugh.  and move on.  please tell that to colleague numero dos.


yay for budapest.


 


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