09-02-2016, 08:48 AM
Monday Aug 22
What would make a trip to cemetery all that more special? A torrential downpour, of course.
I don’t know why I feel the need to visit the graves of famous Hungarian sabre athletes, but I do. So, part of the trip was to head over to Farkasreti Cemetery in Buda to see the graves of such notables as Alader Gerevich, Pal Kovacs, Rudolph Karpati and a bunch of others. There was also supposed to be a memorial to all the Olympic Athletes buried there. Daniel Magay had shown us pictures of his tour of Farkasreti.
Well, the rain pouring down outside my window put the trip into question. Plus, the fact I had never heard back from my cemetery contact who was to show us where all the bodies were buried, also made the finding of the graves problematic.
In the morning, I received an interesting email from HK. He had been up all night with the dry heaves and diarrhea. He was not going with me to the cemetery. He was doubtful for the afternoon trip to the film archive. He tasked me to get him some water and some rolls. I headed off to the underground and it’s shops to get the water. I picked up the rolls from the breakfast buffet.
Sandor and I crawled cross city through the traffic. Traffic is bad in Budapest because of the old streets and the minimal amount of routes to traverse the city. Rain didn’t help.
Farkasreti was pretty much a bust. I wasn’t about to walk around looking for graves in a downpour, especially since I had no clear indication of where to look for the graves. There was a sign pointing towards the Olympic Memorial, so we drove there.
I darted in the rain to the curved wall to take pictures with my cel phone. Those are going to be great.
I had Sandor drive us slowly back out in case I by chance spotted an important grave. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Farkasreti was huge. I could probably wander for days in there and never find a thing.
We headed back across town to the hotel in the hope of getting HK for the trip to Manda Film Archive. Originally, I wanted to go Farkasreti and Manda during the same trip since they were both on the Buda side of the river. The rain and the sickness put the kibosh on that.
HK wasn’t up for the trip to Manda. I had a quick lunch at a local place that had really good food. I couldn’t wait to go back to that restaurant.
Xenia had worked with Manda to come up with a list of films for us to review. It was now up to HK and I to go through the films they had and see if we wanted them digitized. When Norbert Maday learned what we were up to, he invited himself along. And where Maday goes Mohos goes. As it was originally explained to me, they had a bunch of films on 16mm that we were going to watch in the Manda screening room.
Xenia wasn’t at Manda when Sandor and I rolled up. I had to do the mime and dance at the front desk to get them to know what I wanted. Our contact Dorothy came out and showed me what was in store. They had a sheet and I just needed to film out the time code for the sections I needed to be digitized. Simple.
Xenia showed up. Maday showed up. Dorothy grabbed a big box of video tapes and off we went to the screening room.
So, no cool 16mm films just video tape. I could figure it out. Put in a tape. Scrub until I found sections that looked like fencing. Write down the beginning time code. Write down the ending time code. Seemed pretty simple and straightforward.
Except I was surrounded by morons. Xenia grew impatient with how I was going about it. There were probably 16 2hr tapes. She wanted me to just go right to the points marked on her list. I was trying to be methodical by going through all the tapes.
Meanwhile, I had Maday and Mohos shouting out whenever they saw something that interested them on the tape. As if I didn’t see the sabre fencers on the screen. At some point, Maday talked to another archivist to get his own set of films to review.
While I’m watching on one screen, they’re watching other stuff I need on another screen. That wasn’t distracting at all. Xenia put herself in charge of filling out the form. On the one hand, she could write down the descriptions in Hungarian. On the other, her handwriting was atrocious. I was living in this nightmare.
I scrubbed on, catching glimpses of stuff I needed on other screens. Xenia started shuffling the tapes to get to bits she thought I should see next. At some point, it got confused on which tapes I had seen and which tapes I hadn’t. It made for a really miserable experience.
When I realized how long this was going to take, I sent Sandor home. No sense in letting him just sit in the parking lot. Xenia offered to drive me back to the hotel, which was fine since her house was pretty close to the hotel.
The whole drive back Xenia is tripping on some weird noise coming from the car. She thought some thing was bouncing on her roof. I paid attention and realized that it was just something loose in the left rear strut of her Xfiniti SUV. Just go get it checked, right.
As we approached the hotel, I mentioned that she could just drop me off in the square opposite the hotel rather than trying to pull up in front of the hotel proper. Xenia said it didn’t matter. She had to turn and go back to Buda anyway. What? You had to go back to Buda through this miserable traffic. Buda, where we just where? I asked the obvious question: Why didn’t you just drop me off at the metro station and I could have taken the train. The train would have been faster anyway than crawling through crappy traffic to the hotel.
Xenia says to me “I didn’t want to spend the time to explain the trains to you. It would have taken too long”
I punched her. She didn’t think I would understand the metro system? What the hell? (Please note, no punching occurred during this story)
During the course of the viewing party, Mr. Mohos agreed to come back for a follow up interview. He wanted to come to the hotel at 2pm on Tuesday. I told him that 4pm would be better since I had interviews until 2pm at the military history museum. He asked for 2:30. I told him I probably wouldn’t be back until 2:30. Then it would take me another half hour or so to set up. The earliest I could possibly get to him would be 3. I think I got him to agree that he should be at the hotel at 3pm. Time to get another room at the hotel for the interview.
What would make a trip to cemetery all that more special? A torrential downpour, of course.
I don’t know why I feel the need to visit the graves of famous Hungarian sabre athletes, but I do. So, part of the trip was to head over to Farkasreti Cemetery in Buda to see the graves of such notables as Alader Gerevich, Pal Kovacs, Rudolph Karpati and a bunch of others. There was also supposed to be a memorial to all the Olympic Athletes buried there. Daniel Magay had shown us pictures of his tour of Farkasreti.
Well, the rain pouring down outside my window put the trip into question. Plus, the fact I had never heard back from my cemetery contact who was to show us where all the bodies were buried, also made the finding of the graves problematic.
In the morning, I received an interesting email from HK. He had been up all night with the dry heaves and diarrhea. He was not going with me to the cemetery. He was doubtful for the afternoon trip to the film archive. He tasked me to get him some water and some rolls. I headed off to the underground and it’s shops to get the water. I picked up the rolls from the breakfast buffet.
Sandor and I crawled cross city through the traffic. Traffic is bad in Budapest because of the old streets and the minimal amount of routes to traverse the city. Rain didn’t help.
Farkasreti was pretty much a bust. I wasn’t about to walk around looking for graves in a downpour, especially since I had no clear indication of where to look for the graves. There was a sign pointing towards the Olympic Memorial, so we drove there.
I darted in the rain to the curved wall to take pictures with my cel phone. Those are going to be great.
I had Sandor drive us slowly back out in case I by chance spotted an important grave. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Farkasreti was huge. I could probably wander for days in there and never find a thing.
We headed back across town to the hotel in the hope of getting HK for the trip to Manda Film Archive. Originally, I wanted to go Farkasreti and Manda during the same trip since they were both on the Buda side of the river. The rain and the sickness put the kibosh on that.
HK wasn’t up for the trip to Manda. I had a quick lunch at a local place that had really good food. I couldn’t wait to go back to that restaurant.
Xenia had worked with Manda to come up with a list of films for us to review. It was now up to HK and I to go through the films they had and see if we wanted them digitized. When Norbert Maday learned what we were up to, he invited himself along. And where Maday goes Mohos goes. As it was originally explained to me, they had a bunch of films on 16mm that we were going to watch in the Manda screening room.
Xenia wasn’t at Manda when Sandor and I rolled up. I had to do the mime and dance at the front desk to get them to know what I wanted. Our contact Dorothy came out and showed me what was in store. They had a sheet and I just needed to film out the time code for the sections I needed to be digitized. Simple.
Xenia showed up. Maday showed up. Dorothy grabbed a big box of video tapes and off we went to the screening room.
So, no cool 16mm films just video tape. I could figure it out. Put in a tape. Scrub until I found sections that looked like fencing. Write down the beginning time code. Write down the ending time code. Seemed pretty simple and straightforward.
Except I was surrounded by morons. Xenia grew impatient with how I was going about it. There were probably 16 2hr tapes. She wanted me to just go right to the points marked on her list. I was trying to be methodical by going through all the tapes.
Meanwhile, I had Maday and Mohos shouting out whenever they saw something that interested them on the tape. As if I didn’t see the sabre fencers on the screen. At some point, Maday talked to another archivist to get his own set of films to review.
While I’m watching on one screen, they’re watching other stuff I need on another screen. That wasn’t distracting at all. Xenia put herself in charge of filling out the form. On the one hand, she could write down the descriptions in Hungarian. On the other, her handwriting was atrocious. I was living in this nightmare.
I scrubbed on, catching glimpses of stuff I needed on other screens. Xenia started shuffling the tapes to get to bits she thought I should see next. At some point, it got confused on which tapes I had seen and which tapes I hadn’t. It made for a really miserable experience.
When I realized how long this was going to take, I sent Sandor home. No sense in letting him just sit in the parking lot. Xenia offered to drive me back to the hotel, which was fine since her house was pretty close to the hotel.
The whole drive back Xenia is tripping on some weird noise coming from the car. She thought some thing was bouncing on her roof. I paid attention and realized that it was just something loose in the left rear strut of her Xfiniti SUV. Just go get it checked, right.
As we approached the hotel, I mentioned that she could just drop me off in the square opposite the hotel rather than trying to pull up in front of the hotel proper. Xenia said it didn’t matter. She had to turn and go back to Buda anyway. What? You had to go back to Buda through this miserable traffic. Buda, where we just where? I asked the obvious question: Why didn’t you just drop me off at the metro station and I could have taken the train. The train would have been faster anyway than crawling through crappy traffic to the hotel.
Xenia says to me “I didn’t want to spend the time to explain the trains to you. It would have taken too long”
I punched her. She didn’t think I would understand the metro system? What the hell? (Please note, no punching occurred during this story)
During the course of the viewing party, Mr. Mohos agreed to come back for a follow up interview. He wanted to come to the hotel at 2pm on Tuesday. I told him that 4pm would be better since I had interviews until 2pm at the military history museum. He asked for 2:30. I told him I probably wouldn’t be back until 2:30. Then it would take me another half hour or so to set up. The earliest I could possibly get to him would be 3. I think I got him to agree that he should be at the hotel at 3pm. Time to get another room at the hotel for the interview.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm