Journal of a Sabbatical

August 1, 1999

brezhnev's head

After checking in at the guest house in Budakeszi, more about which later, István drove me back into the city of Budapest to meet BiB for dinner. We met him on the terrace of the Marriott, overlooking the Danube. When I introduced István to Bobby, he asked if he'd seen this species of conifer that only grows on the Bosnia-Serbia border and if so would he photograph it and maybe collect some samples. Bobby looked at me like "what kind of maniac have you hooked up with?" Dendrologists do tend to be a little monomaniacal.

Bobby and his colleague, Vic, took me out to dinner at the Mekong, a Thai restaurant with all Bobby's Thai friends. I had pad het, a dish of several kinds of mushroom including those black ones I love plus another species of black ones I'd never had before that I also really liked - tons of different kinds of mushrooms. I tried some of the spring rolls with a very spicy hot sauce. Majorly spicy. Still trying to be vegetarian, I turned down the chance to taste bird. I asked what kind of bird it was, but they just answered "bird". Definitely wasn't chicken.

Not having slept at all on the plane, I finally wore out while the evening was still young. István had written out detailed directions and a map for the cab driver - plus a note telling him he'd better get me back to Budakeszi safely or else (or else what, I have no idea). The cab driver got a little scared when I kept motioning him to keep going further into the woods. Probably afraid of wild boars. Anyway, I got back there safely and ready to sleep.

About this guest house. It's a hunting lodge in the forest outside Budapest. It's not normally open in August, but they opened it for us and gave us the poor starving botanist rate instead of the rich German hunter rate - still pretty pricey.

So, like I said, this is a hunting lodge. The walls are covered with deer antlers and skulls, mouflon heads, entire wild boar skins, wild boar tusks, fox skins ... What's not covered with dead animals is covered with exquisite oak carvings of hunting scenes - the gorgeous animals before they become skulls on the walls.

Our hostess, Edit, gave us a tour of the heads and pelts telling us which ones were shot by Janos Kadar and other famous communists. The deer head shown in the above picture was shot by Leonid Brezhnev. We took to calling it Brezhnev's head, naming the former deer Brezhnev. That's a mouflon head next to it. I have no idea what the English word for mouflon is. In fact, I think mouflon is the English word.

Hope I don't dream of wild boars.