Slovakia - BBQ Party in Komarno

We got up bright and early Friday morning in Budapest and made our way out of bed at about 8:30 in the morning - very slowly and not so surely. But we had a barbeque to prepare for back in Komarno for some people that were coming to town from Budapest and other areas of Hungary. Roland had sent out an invitation a few weeks back, cc'ing me on the email. Of course, it was all in Hungarian, so I perused the email looking for keywords that I could decipher, but to no avail. Anyone know anything about the language? The closest thing it is related to is Finnish and it is derived from something similar to Mongolian. Yea, not so easy to pick up on, that's for sure. I did, however, manage to master four words in Hungarian - Hello (or Goodbye), Yes, No, and three variations of Thank You.

Anyway, we had expected good attendance, but several people canceled at the last minute, so we had massive excess of food. But everything turned out fine food wise, more people would have been a bit more difficult to manage. The event was held at a sports club that Roland is a member of. We had nearly complete dominance of this place and it's patio, grass, volleyball court, tennis court, pool, jaccuzzi, sauna, and refrigerator. We arrived at around one o'clock and people began to trickle in shortly thereafter. Roland and Csilla took off for the store and returned with excess everything for the party - wine, beer, water, snacks, plates, cups, etc. etc. They did a great job organizing everything that evening despite the lack of sleep the night before, the travelling during the day, and the sudden cancellations.

Most of the visitors were friends of Roland's from his days at the prestigious International Business School in Budapest, so these people were clearly priveleged and on the high road as far as their careers are concerned. I had met one of them briefly about five years ago when he was a roommate of Roland's on my first trip to Budapest, though I didn't recognize him until later. Besides him, there were several very cute girls, including one that was apparently from a noble Hungarian family. I haven't come across any of those here in the states! She was an exchange student in Wisconsin who had an interesting experience here in the states. She had some bad stuff happen to her but, despite that, she still admired the US and wanted to eventually live here. I traded thoughts with her for a while and had a nice intellectual discussion about the differences between the places. Very interesting stuff.

As the night progressed and tongues got loosened, bellies got filled, and temperatures outside dropped, I was taken back to the hotel by my chauffer (Csilla ;o) to get some warm clothes for later that night. When I got back, there were rumors of jaccuzzi usage being thrown around. I jumped at the chance and plunged into the luke-warm water for the first of many soaks. After a bit of time in the water, it became quite frigid and I think that these trips led to my nasty cold that I carried for the next few days. But trips to the jaccuzzi were seperated with trips to the hot (wet!) sauna on the premises. I love my saunista sessions and did them frequently that night. I always kept a cold beer on hand to keep me sufficiently hydrated, which I'm sure helped, albeit in a negative way. People were flowing in and out of the jaccuzzi, pool, and sauna (not to mention closets!) throughout the night, so I got to talk to lots of people and have a great time entertaining people with my Hungarian and my dance moves in the jaccuzzi ;o) .

At some point during the night, I changed into my warm clothes in order to raise my body temperature and prepared to head home. Apparently I fell asleep on the leather couches while waiting for Roland to get back from his house, which is about five minutes away at turbo-Roland speed. While I slept and snored on the couch, Csilla, Agi, and Roland (NOT Vas ;o) cleaned up the mighty mess that was left. They should have woken me up, I'm sure I would've helped out one way or another! In any case, after waiting and sleeping for about an hour, I woke up and ate some more meat from the BBQ. Where was Roland???

Another hour went by and Csilla was pretty annoyed at this point. Roland eventually showed up, smelling sweet with cologne ;o), with some nice clubbing clothes on at about 3:45 in the morning, when the discos closed at 4:00am. He had apparently gone home, changed, and FELL ASLEEP while the masses were waiting for him to shuttle us to the hotel for the night! Csilla was less than thrilled with him, and he didn't hear the end of it for the rest of the weekend :o)