Work/Life Imbalance

Sorry for being away for almost three weeks. Most of January has seen a huge shift in my work hours from sensible to non-sense. That work/life balance I enjoy so much hasn't existed this month.

A few weeks ago, I wrote the notes for a blog about maintaining a work/life balance when you’re an expat in a strange country, working a job you enjoy, and with no grasp of the local language.

I felt I was doing pretty well, until I finally got around to editing it into a post-able piece earlier today. Work has been pretty rough all month, and after working late it’s tough to do anything more mentally strenuous than stare at a wall, let alone writing a solid post.

I will try to be better. This moth, I went to London (Not that one, the English one) a few weekends ago and I have stories about that. I've been exploring more of Budapest: the baths, the museums, and, yes, the bars. For now I doodled some Marshall Arts of my more mundane January activities. Enjoy.

Minding My Vegetable Manners

Mmmmm... the sort of vegetables I used to buy from the 7-11

I had a roommate who scoffed at the thought of vegetables coming anywhere near his Kraft Dinner. He ate chocolate bars like meals some nights. Other nights, he’d inhale two packs of Mr. Noodle out of the pot, eating around the bits of dried green onion from the salty powder.

He believed beer, cigarettes and Doritos were a rich source of vitamins and minerals (although the way I’d eat the Doritos sometimes, you’d think I believed the same thing). Some days I’d cut up a red pepper as an afternoon snack and he'd shake his head pitiably at me.

Based on the stories I heard about Hungary before my move, I was going to arrive in his food paradise: No fresh produce to be found anywhere, but plenty of pickled vegetables and potatoes. That thought didn’t bother me much – I’ll eat sauerkraut right out of the jar if no one’s looking. What addled my brain was the possibility that I might have to live without proper ruffage.

Just days after I arrived, I went to a grocery store near my hotel in search of fresh fruit, oranges, bananas, anything. What I encountered was too much of a stereotype to be true.

The produce section was one shelf, wedged between the chocolate and the potato chips sections, with wrinkly apples and browning lettuce on offer. There was more selection in the alcohol section – this was indeed my old roommates’ dietary paradise! 

I had also brought some attention to myself. Wandering every aisle in the store in disbelief, a security guard followed me back to the fruit section, giving me the hairy eyeball while I appraised the oranges and kiwi.

As usual, I was wrong.

I, in my ignorance, had completely jumped to the wrong conclusion. Within days after my time warp into the East Bloc grocery experience, I realized this was the exception not the rule.

Former co-workers of mine might remember my fondness for slicing a whole red bell pepper and eating it plain at my desk. In Hungary, there's a type of long, thin pepper, locally they're called paprika, and it's pretty much a food group for me. Yes, there are potatoes, but apples were in season in autumn when I arrived. With winter settling over here, beets and carrots are regularly found in my office building's cafeteria. Beets!

I heeded all the "advice" about food from friends in Canada and worried about developing scurvy here. The fact is I'm nowhere near getting pirate teeth from vitamin deficiency, but I have to work to get my fruits and veggies into me. In that respect, Canada is no different than Hungary. In Toronto, I made my weekly trip to Kensington Market to load up on produce. Here, I go to the market near my home or a couple good fruit sellers. I even use the opportunity to clumsily practice what little Hungarian I know.

I've turned a few heads when I exclaim my excitement  over seeing beets on offer for lunch or finding a fine-looking red bell pepper. If you want to eat good food you have to make an effort for it, so when I see an easy way to get my greens I for it. It's no different anywhere.

Christmas in the Land of Beer and Chocolate

I figured this was going to be the most difficult time of year for me.
Living an ocean away from home, I'd be missing my family’s Christmas Eve to-do, the lazy family Christmas Day spent with chocolate and overly violent or dark movie marathons (Saving Private Ryan and Eastern Promises, to name a few titles) and Boxing Day with my second family at the Hender-Hut.

Moving to Europe so late in the year meant a trip home for the holidays was pretty expensive and untenable. So I resigned myself to a Christmas on my own in Europe. 

Before I left Toronto my friend Alison mentioned she'd be in Germany for Christmas to visit her boyfriend, Oliver. This would be also her first time away from her family for Christmas. We decided to meet in Europe. 

This was an 'Over-Beers' Idea, which are not usually followed through. But we both leapt at the chance to see a friend over the Holidays and worked hard to see it through. The plan was come to Dresden, stay at Oliver's apartment and we’d figure out the rest after I arrive.

I took the night train (yes, like the Journey song, more European) from Budapest to Dresden and spent Christmas Eve in a bouncing couchette compartment. I arrived Christmas morning exhausted with train bed-head and was welcomed to Oliver’s mother’s home for Christmas lunch (my first Christmas Goose!).

The next four days were a fantastic blur of beer, chocolate, sightseeing, and remedial German language lessons. When it was finished, I caught a train to Prague, where I met a work-friend, who had earlier offered up a ride to Budapest.

I'm not a fan of writing blow-by-blow accounts of my adventures (ugh, so much writing), but blasting through the Czech countryside to Budapest I got thinking. The couch and bed I slept in were offered up by my new German friends. I was treated like family at the Christmas lunch. The chocolate, the beer and the healthier food was given to me. My embarrassingly painful German lessons were provided for by patient people I had just meant those days I was there.

I was treated to incredible generousity and kindness while I was there, and it seems like a disservice to simply chalk it up to "Christmas Spirit." These were great people at their best.

It's a tired cliché that Christmas can be a lonely time of year, but it was one cliché I didn't want to test. It was a joy to spend it with a good Canadian friend, but my new German friends made it an incredible Christmas to remember.

To all my Dresden friends, thank you for everything. Später alligators!

Familiar faces in strange places