Friday, July 01, 2005
Second day of SASE
Blogs will come much slower from now on as I got ruthlessly cut off from my wireless lifeline. Unthinkable cruelty. Right this moment I am using the wi-fi of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and sitting in the beautifully decorated main lecture hall at the annual conference of SASE (Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics), listening to Nigel Thrift. Well, as you can see, my attention span is getting highly minimal, even though Thrift is a real bright fellow. I am just already brain dead from 1.5 days of conferencing. I am leaving my last breath of intelligence for Theda Skocpol, coming up in 20 minutes. Isil is sitting next to me and I cannot fathom how she can manage to look so focused after drinking so much beer last night.
We went to a nice reception last night, with good wine and people, then in the company of the insider circle of Stark and Bruszt to a dinner on a boat docked on the Danube opposite the Castle. I do not want to brag but Budapest is spectacular and very romantic. Need to fall in love asap. During dinner Levcsi called to meet up soon so that we could listen to the poem he recited to me in love and drunken stupor I taped some 8 years ago. I have not met him much since then. It is really weird to be talking ‘shop’ with all these people again. After dinner we went to Kuplung, a typical Budapest pub transformed from a former auto repair shop. We were meeting Arek there who is an ever-returning man in my life. Once more he brought his usual sweet and gentlemanly self: amazing compliments, treating all of us for drinks. The band Csokolom and the intense smoke is not so palatable to foreigners so we moved over to Kis Szimpla that will quickly become my favorite spot in Budapest. It is on the courtyard of a typical city building of Budapest: hanging corridors to apartments all around, trees and colorful lampions embrace the drunk and extremely stoned. Glasses break, men can’t stand straight, women giggle, dogs leisure and we drink and talk lay sociology. Nice.
We went to a nice reception last night, with good wine and people, then in the company of the insider circle of Stark and Bruszt to a dinner on a boat docked on the Danube opposite the Castle. I do not want to brag but Budapest is spectacular and very romantic. Need to fall in love asap. During dinner Levcsi called to meet up soon so that we could listen to the poem he recited to me in love and drunken stupor I taped some 8 years ago. I have not met him much since then. It is really weird to be talking ‘shop’ with all these people again. After dinner we went to Kuplung, a typical Budapest pub transformed from a former auto repair shop. We were meeting Arek there who is an ever-returning man in my life. Once more he brought his usual sweet and gentlemanly self: amazing compliments, treating all of us for drinks. The band Csokolom and the intense smoke is not so palatable to foreigners so we moved over to Kis Szimpla that will quickly become my favorite spot in Budapest. It is on the courtyard of a typical city building of Budapest: hanging corridors to apartments all around, trees and colorful lampions embrace the drunk and extremely stoned. Glasses break, men can’t stand straight, women giggle, dogs leisure and we drink and talk lay sociology. Nice.
