The last few hours of the year were pretty special for me. It's been a few years since I was home for New Year's Eve. Maybe that's the reason I didn't know about the Hungarian custom of going to the horse race on this last day. One would think: what a horrible idea to go stand or sit outside in the freezing cold of December 31st, looking at horses circle a track! Well, it's actually tons of fun! There were plenty of people and hot wine to keep you warm, excitement - although I didn't bet mostly due to the long lines and the much shorter ones for hot wine :) - but it was a very nice thing to do on an afternoon with a full moon out.
After the horse track, I had a nice quiet dinner with my parents, eating the traditional bun-less hot dog and sharing a bottle Bikavér - Bull's blood. Then I headed out to meet Szidi for the party she got us tickets for. It was a pretty big party with concerts and DJs, most importantly, my favorite band, Quimby, was to play at 10:30, right into the new year.
As all party-goers know, it's much more economical to get drunk before arriving and then just trying to keep up the buzz without spending a fortune on expensive drinks there. (Of course, this has a whole other meaning in NYC, where a mixed drink at a concert starts at $10.) True to herself, Szidi brought some Croatian liquer - not sure if it was Sljivovica or Travarica or maybe Maraschino - but in any case, it was strong!
Also interesting is that the party was at an old university building next door to the high school I went to. Since it was halfway between Szidi's high school and the fencing club, we used to meet there after school for lunch or coffee - can't remember if I drank coffee in high school - and hanging out there used to make us feel older (everyone in high school wants to seem older and be at university, I am sure!). Since then (almost 10 years ago), the university moved and sold the building and is now a venue for concerts and parties, without any construction, so the whole thing still looks like a school, which is cool on the one hand, but not the greatest for concerts.
In any case, Szidi and I used to hang out on that street all the time! Ah, all the memories! Naturally, she didn't forget to bring up some of my embarrassing moments of stalking my high school gym teacher behind the school back yard :) and other stories... with our Croatian liquer and another bottle of wine, we stopped on a deserted corner. We talked like we used to, like best friends do, for whom months of being away from each other doesn't matter the least bit, like friends who can pick up where they had left off months or years before. Those moments were very special.
And then the concert was very special too. Quimby was also part of our teenage years, our coming of age years, our Hungarian experience, our friendship. We both still know the lyrics to most of their songs, we still feel like we are 18 when they play Libido or Halleluja, and we jump and dance like we used to. These might have been some of the few times recently I really let go and did exactly what felt right without thinking about it at all. The music, the dancing, the feeling, the memories, the crowd... and, at the end, after midnight, they even made the Hungarian anthem, which is as depressing as it can get, a little more fun :)
Great ending to 2009, not such a good beginning to 2010, due to finishing the bottle of Croatian liquer and the wine, then switching to gin-tonics and in the middle of it all, eating korhely-leves (cabbage in a soup with some sausage, with sour cream to top it off), which is what people usually eat the next day when they are hungover, not in-between 2 gin-tonics - only in Hungary do they serve free food in the back garden in the rain, at a big New Year's Eve party with 1000's of people.
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