Report from the Forest

Well, things have been going well.

I slept for almost 11 hours both Friday and Saturday night. Clearly, I was just completely exhausted. On Saturday I wandered around the castle district, which was quite pretty and contained café Roszwurm, which had the best cake I had in Budapest. A chocolate and almond cake with light, moist chocolate cake and a chocolate cream with almost pieces as a filling. Amazingly good. Unfortunately, my trip was cut a bit short by a torrential downpour. I took refuge in a café, but I was lured out when it stopped and then it started again when I had nowhere to go to. The picture of the partially-destroyed cathedral is from my trip through the storm.

On Sunday I went to the fine arts museum, which I was a bit disappointed by. But oh well. I then came to Piliscsaba, where this reading group is being held. It’s about 20 miles outside of Budapest – 45 minutes by commuter train – in the middle of the woods. It’s a quite pretty setting and the (Catholic) university is quite interesting as well. It is a fairly small campus built in 1993 in a very postmodern style that somehow works quite well. You can see pictures at the end of this.

Yesterday was rather intense. 3 two-hour reading sessions, that started with a 40 minute presentation of a short piece of text followed by intense discussion about everything from grammatical points, questions about the accuracy of the text to major philosophical questions. Quite stimulating, but also quite exhausting, especially given that interacting with people went on from Breakfast to 11 PM.

Today is a bit more calm. They’ve left the afternoon free to go in to Budapest, but I’m tired and starting to worry about the class I’m teaching next week, so I am staying here and I’ll take a hike through the woods. Tomorrow there will be three sessions. Then I’ll have half a night’s sleep before I take the 4:20 AM train to Budapest to catch my 8 AM flight to London so that I can get back to LA Thursday at around 2:30 PM.

-- David

I'm done! Sort of!

Hey...

So the summer course is done. It was really good, but I'm quite happy it's done too. It was just exhausting day in and day out. But I think the second week went better than the first. PeHey...

So the summer course is done. It was really good, but I'm quite happy it's done too. It was just exhausting day in and day out. But I think the second week went better than the first. Perhaps the highlight was having Michael Frede attending all of the sessions and making comments. He seems to have a photographic knowledge of the text, but at the same time steps away from it to make insightful and overarching comments. I also had a couple really good conversations with him, including a long one about my work (which he was very supportive of).

I've gone to a couple of baths recently: the Gellert Baths and the Sycheni baths a second time. I went to both of these with a couple of fellow students. These are both the larger mixed open air/indoor bath types. I haven't been carrying my camera around with me, unfortunately, but I found a couple of nice stock photos of Gellert that I'm posting here. I think I like the Gellert better. The had a very nice art nouveau feel. And the wooded hill behind blended quite well with the architecture. Easily the third best use of borrowed scenery technique in all of Hungary.

I also went on Friday with Angelos to the Statue Park, which is a big park where they put old communist statues that communities didn't want any more. A couple of them were good works of art. Most of them weren't. Most of the interest was just in seeing a bit of Budapest's past. Myles Burnyeat, who was giving lectures this week, wrote a one-page essay about the park for the Times Literary Supplement. I haven't found an easy way to get the article online, but I am going to try and, if I do, post a link.

Well, I slept for around 11 hours last night. My plan is to go into the city, wander around the castle district, which I haven't explored much, and hang out at a cafe. I am going to this conference next week outside of Budapest. That will be Monday-Wednesday. I need to do some reading for that, but it is basically close reading of about 8 pages of text. So my basic plan is just to relax this weekend. And go to the Fine Arts Museum, which I haven't made it to yet (great collection of El Greco, evidently).

Alright, well, off I go.

David

Old Serbian City, Old Grand Masters

So, if anything, it's been more intense recently than it was the first week. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sunday night I couldn't sleep very well at all -- my back has been hurting more and more since Thursday. I think I hurt it somehow and then carrying around my portable has made it worse. So, after getting very little sleep, I got up at 6:20 in the morning and headed to my favorite baths, the Rudas Turkish baths. I actually showed up before it opened. I went in at 8 AM and was the only one in the hot baths for the first 10 minutes or so -- extremely nice. Then I had a nice massage by a smaller, but perhaps more skillful, guy. The baths and the massage helped substantially, but it wasn't until last night (Monday night) that I got a decent night of sleep.

Then pretty much everyone in the summer university (about 200 of us) went on a boat trip up to this old Serbian town 20 km north of Budapest. The river trip was quite pretty -- the Danube is wooded along most of the length - and the city quite quaint. Although the heat was pretty awful -- it was around 100 that day and the previous one, a record in Budapest. There were a number of little Orthodox and Catholic churches mixed together. Angelos, a Greek I've been hanging out with a lot, told me a fair amount about how Orthodox churches are set up as we were looking around. But really the highlight of the city was walking around, to the extent that that was bearable. I also had more fried bread with sour cream and garlic on top from a place that specializes in this.

On Monday Burnyeat started his lectures on the De Anima and Michael Frede was there. These are certainly two of the top five people who've worked in the last 30 years. They are both somewhere around 70, so they are certainly somewhat old, but still at least a substantial portion of their minds are working. It was very impressive watching them in action. Frede asks a lot of questions and there was a bit of a debate between them during Burnyeat's presentation. They are also very good friends (recently they were both at Oxford) and interact quite well. Frede, in particular, is extremely clear and has very incisive comments. I often think after he asks a question -- "yes, that's what I should have asked." People find him intimidating and I know there are horror stories, but so far I've found him quite nice to interact with. I'm hoping to have a chance to sit down with him to discuss my dissertation. I have a sense that it could be very fruitful.

So anyway, that's about it. The Burnyeat lecturers are quite good. One of the lecturers, Gotthelf, was not feeling well, so his presentation wasn't so good, but understandably so.

Ah yes, and today, after class I went with a couple of people to the most famous baths in Budapest, the Gellert Baths, which are Art Nouveau. One of the people I went with is Andreas, who I walked around the Serbian town with. He is in the very narrow alley in the picture saying to me "Oh, come on, David. Don't take my picture here -- it will make me look fat being in such a narrow place."

Anyway, the Gellert baths were quite nice. I particularly like the rooftop outdoor baths, which seemed to merge into the forested hill behind and which had a view of these very strange Art Nouveau domes on the top of the Hotel. Alas, no pictures of that, but you can find pictures by following the bath link I put in the links section.

Anyway, I hope you are all well,

David

Late night out and the Best of the Best

Well, I thought it would be nice to post some photos.

Last night everyone in the course went out for dinner, paid for by the program, and then out for drinks. The meal was only alright, but the setting was quite nice. The restaurant was in the courtyard of an old' artist's club. I had some good conversations. Then I we walked over to one of these bars that are quite popular in Budapest: a bar set up in a building that's been condemned and is waiting to be torn down. It was pretty awesome. Very funky while only a little pretentious. Half of the bar was indoors and half outdoors in the back, where the walls were falling down. I ended up having a fairly long philosophical conversation with Gabor, one of the course organizers. I like him a lot. We got home after 3....

Oh, while I'm thinking of it, it turns out that Michael Frede is going to be here next week as well, since his girlfriend (or perhaps wife) is giving one of the seminars. He is definitely one of the towering figures in the field. Once I've met him, I will have met close to all of them.

Thi claims that it all sounds just too good and he is having trouble grasping the relative weights of things. So perhaps I will try to organize this a bit:

The Best of the Best in Budapest:


So leaving aside things connected to the conference...

5. The yogurt

It's quite good, but upon reflection I think it had just been a long time since I had been in Europe. I've had good German yogurt here too. My favorite: plain, whole milk, natural. Perhaps with some raspberries on the side.

4. The slightly decrepit architecture.

I love how big the town is and the way that things are gently run down. My favorite: this building pictured outside the major transportation. A bit rundown and somehow strangely fascinating to me from a variety of different angles.

3. Living like a aristocrat

This certainly overlaps with the other things, but I think it is worth mentioning on its own. I know that I've gushed about how cheap things are, but I realize that why that really makes a difference is that I can treat myself out a lot for not much money. I can get myself things that would normally be too expensive (massage) or a bit indulgent (a lot of coffee and cake) without having to worry about it at all. It definitely creates a life is good sort of feeling. The cheap massages are perhaps my favorite. In fact, I seem to have hurt my back lugging around my laptop all week. I could really use one, but it seems silly to take the metro in to the city center just for that.

2. The cafe-cum-cake shops

So civilized, so delicious. You can generally get a quite good coffee and a piece of cake. Today I got a wonderful slice of cake with light layers of sponge cake alternating with two types of nut filling. There never seems to be any rush. The coffee and cakes are always brought to you by quite nice waiters or waitresses. The Mozart cafe near the Opera is my favorite.

Oh, and speaking of which, I went out and bought some of these "kifli" that Alison's grandmother used to make. I bought two kinds: one with a poppy seed filling and one with some sort of chopped nut filling. They were quite good. I bought a few of them and shared them with some of the people here and told them stories about Alison's grandma.

1. The Baths

These are just a great institution in Budapest -- at fit well with the laidback atmosphere in the whole city. And, as I think I said before, I really like really using a great architectural space in the way it was intended to be used. The Rudas (pronounced: rue-daash) Turkish bath is my favorite.

One week down, plenty wearing shorts

Well, the first week is done.

This last day wasn't as intense, because there were two student presentations (which we didn't have to prepare for) and two sessions to discuss topics from the first week. This sort of open-ended discussion didn't work that well, but it was alright, and it was probably nonetheless good to have some extra discussion since there has been very little time during the sessions.

Tonight there is a dinner for everyone involved in the course. That should be fun. And then on Sunday there is a group boat trip up to the Danube bend, which is supposed to be quite pretty, stopping in this old Serbian city which his supposed to be cute and a bit of an artist enclave right now.

Well, that's about it. I've had trouble getting work done during the week on top of all of the other activities. I'm hoping to get some done today, since it is a bit less intense of a day, and to stay in at the dorm on Saturday and get work done. I am not very well prepared for next week. I will have next weekend to be a tourist.

I have met a number of other quite interesting people. There is a Greek guy from Oxford, Angelos, who seems quite insightful. He is working on Origen, a 3rd Century AD chap from Alexandria whose work is mostly untranslated (and who has a gigantic corpus). He seems extremely sharp and is doing extremely difficult textual work. There are a couple of interesting people associated with Cambridge. One is another Greek, Georgia, who is going to Cambridge (from a master's at Humboldt) to work on Hellenistic philosophy. Our philosophical instincts seem similar. But (and this a theme), her ancient Greek is much better. I have also been hanging out with these two Brits, one from Newcastle working on Aristotle's Ethics and another from Imperial in London working on Ancient Science. In general, the social groups seem porous and interesting -- I'm liking it a lot.

On a slightly different note, there have been a couple of things I've wanted to mention about the Hungarians. One is that they wear shorts! I brought lightweight long pants to Budapest, despite wearing shorts in the US, because my impression was that shorts seem juvenile in Europe. But many of the locals here wear shorts. Somehow it feels connected to me to the more laid back atmosphere here, but that could be because people wearing shorts reminds me of home. Somehow the men seem to me to dress pretty informally and in a thrown together fashion, but the women in general seem pretty carefully put together.

Well, that's about it.

-- David

Whew.

Well, it's been an intense three days...

Class starts at 10:00. Which means we need to leave the dorms around 9:15 to take the train. It then goes on to 4:00. Afterwards people often go out for drinks. And then to dinner. So Monday and Tuesday night I got home after 10 PM. So yeah, it is intense. I'm completely exhausted. Luckily today things ended early today -- around 5:30. Unluckily, I have a lot of reading to do. We'll see how much I do. I may just need to decompress a bit.

So I guess one of the popular things in Budapest right now is to run bars out of old abandoned buildings that are waiting to be renovated. The nearby bar doesn't quite fit the mold -- it is a relatively nice building that hasn't found a new lease for some reason. The bar is set up in the courtyard. Very nice, relaxed, funky atmosphere. See picture.

The sessions have been extremely good. There have been four seminars on Plato's Phaedo, a dialogue I am quite interested in (and will be teaching when I get back). They have been excellent. There have been two sessions on Greek Medicine (by Schiefsky who is in Classics at Harvard). I can't say that I'm that interested on my own, but it is useful for getting the general intellectual background in Ancient Greece. I guess he has made a good case that Ancient Medicine plays an important role in pre-Socratic philosophy, whereas it is normally thought that this is mostly cosmology. This is probably a fundamental change in the way I think about Socrates' predecessors. Today the third series of seminars began -- on Aristotle's Biology. They look to be extremely good. I think that the work done in the last ten years on this subject has been pretty exciting and Alan Gotthelf, who is giving the seminars, seems to have some interesting ideas on how to push that work forward. I chatted with Gotthelf over a beer -- he is an extremely friendly and interesting guy who I am very glad to have met.

Yesterday I gave my presentation. I think it went pretty well. I got a lot of good questions and was surprised by my ability to respond to them. David Sedley, who I think is one of the top people doing work today, said some incredibly nice things to me afterwards. So overall I am quite happy with it. I also got some quite useful feedback that I will need to think about some more.

The intellectual atmosphere here is quite nice. People chat about all sorts of things, moving in and out from philosophy. I have had some very good conversations with people. The two Hungarians organizers are quite well read, insightful and friendly. One of them, in particular (Gabor), I have had a couple of really good conversations with.

But I am tired. I would say all of the participants are (although probably only a third have been going out for drinks and dinner afterwards). The course organizers invited me to a meeting of Central European Ancient Philosophers Association (or some such) who are discussing Aristotle's Physics (Physics II.4-6, to be specific) for three days. I think I'll do it -- it will last until the day before I leave. It should be a great opportunity to meet some more ancient philosophers from the area, interact more with those I've met, and do some philosophy.

Alright, well I think that's enough for now. I'm exhausted. I hope you are all doing well. I was going to attach a second picture of the main campus buildings, but I guess I failed to download it. There are four interconnected (only graduate studies, no undergraduates associated with the university). I'll attach a few pictures of the university next time.

-- David

Well, I'm busy and tired, but I thought I'd do a short update since this is the first day.

The classes seem quite good. I met with the course organizers and the students and had two class sessions. There are about 25 students. I'm the only American. There are a couple of Brits. About 6 Czechs, 4 Italians, 4 Greeks, and then a smattering of other Eastern Europeans. Ah, and one German, who seems very good. The people seem friendly. I ended up talking mostly to the people who aren't Italian, Greek or Czech, since they ended up speaking to each other in their own language.

The classes are each pretty short: an hour and fifteen minutes each, with a fair amount of reading for each class. The course organizers explained that they expect discussions to carry into the evening over dinner. We'll see how that works -- hopefully well. There was probably 15 minutes worth of discussion and an hour of lecture. As one might expect knowing me, I had a few things to say.

There is a get together tonight at 8. I'm going to go for at least part of the time, but I'm giving my presentation tomorrow and have hardly prepared. Also, I didn't sleep that well last night. So I won't be able to stay up too late.

Anyway, the two classes were quite good. One was by Schiefsky on Ancient medicine. He did a good job doing an overview for people who don't know much about it. The other session was the first of four sessions on Plato's Phaedo, by David Sedley, one of the top people in the field. I've seen him talk before and he is, as always, very clear and insightful. I think I learned a couple of important things about this central dialogue -- things I may even take into my course this summer.

Alright, well I'm off to prepare. But first, coffee!

-- David