Have you finish reading my last letter? If so, please leave your thoughts below! Thank you!
I think people in the U.S. really consider every war important and also consider the deceased important. From what I know, there is no similar holiday like Memorial Day in Taiwan. The closest one is Tomb Sweeping Day but it's still different. Wikipedia also says that the Memorial Day also indicates summer. In Taiwan, the indication of summer is Dragon Boat Festival. There is an idiom said that you can't store your jackets in the closets until Dragon Boat Festival is passed because the temperature remains unstable until Dragon Boat Festival (5/5 of lunar calendar).
Because there's not much things to share about school so I'll continue sharing my fun experience in Eastern Europe. There is such a museum called Underground Railway Museum Budapest and it's located in the Deák Ferenc tér station.
Below are some trains that were used in Budapest M1.
After I finished visiting the museum, I went to the souvenir's corner. While I was worrying about there is nothing to bring back to Taiwan, I found these on the ground. These are some signs directly taken from the buses and trams in Budapest, and the lines of these signs are disabled, so they decided to sell these, because there are always some people collecting these stuff. It was 850 Hungarian Forint (approx. 3.07 USD) each, so I bought one back.
The one I bought is from the tram, so it basically looks like this, but it's not from line 2.
The cruise ships that goes on the Danube river is usually flat and long, they don't look like the cruise ships in our minds, because there are plenty of bridges across the Danube and the cruise ships have to avoid them. So these river cruises often look like this. Despite they are flat, they are still long and well equipped. I watched some TV shows on Travel Channel introducing cruise ships of Danube, and they still looked very comfortable to stay in. The building behind is Buda Castle.
This is Elisabeth Bridge.
This is Matthias Church, Budapest. It was initially built in 1015, rebuilt in late 14th century and renovated in late 19th century. I like this architecture much because it was built in Gothic style and has colorful roof tiles.
After we enter the church, what we'll see is many windows made of stained glass. These glass pictures show the story that are told in the Bible. Though I'm not a catholic, I still felt astonished when I first saw it.
Hungarian catfish soup, 990 Ft (3.6 USD)
Goulash soup, 990 Ft
Grilled goose liver with baked apple rounds in Tokai sauce, 2990 Ft (10.9 USD)
Hungarian cold plate, 2490 Ft (9 USD)
Tenderloin stuffed with bolete mushroom cream served with goose liverin Cabernet sauce,grilled vegetables and Mediterranean potatoes, 5990 Ft (21.8 USD)
Tenderloin stuffed with bolete mushroom cream served with goose liverin Cabernet sauce,grilled vegetables and Mediterranean potatoes, 3790 Ft (13.8 USD) (Not sure)
By the way, I started to do some research about the pronunciation of languages which use Latin alphabets but have very complex vowels and consonants because I want to read them. I did the researches of Magyar (Hungarian), Polish and Turkish, and I'm going to research Swedish next. I probably won't "learn" these languages so quickly because they are extremely hard, I just want to know how to read them well. I had booked the course of Spanish and it will be start on June 11th. Are you interested in phonology? Or have you do any similar researches? Do you have any thoughts about what I shared in this week's article? Please leave comments as usual to let me know!
Sincerely,
Melvyn Chou, 25/05/2017.
(Actually I was at Vienna and was going to go to Budapest this date last year.)
Mervyn,
ReplyDeletei see that you have expanded your interests for just trains, now to trains, foods, and all thing Hungarian. With little bit Slovakian on the side. Good for you.
It's easy for us to forget that Hungary was an equal partner with Austria in the old Austria-Hungarian Empire (1848-1918), and, as such was a wealthy country, and one of the leading countries of Europe during this time. You can see that from the buildings.
The Magyars were one of the last of the barbarians tribes of enter Europe from central Asia, and, at the time, their language and culture was unique to Europe. They were a "horse people", not traditional farmers. Along with the Poles, they were famous for their cavalry, and for centuries defended Europe from Turkish invasions. Hungarian cavalry regiments were famous up until the First World War.
As a language, Magyar is not Slavic or Germanic, or Latin, as are almost all of the European languages. As a matter of fact, the European language most closely related to Hungarian is Finnish. Don't ask me about that. Nobody seems to know. But that's what makes Hungarian so difficult to learn.
If you're serious about Turkish, I know a student at Chang Chi University in Taipei who is studying Turkish. I don't know how she choose Turkish, but she seems to enjoy it.
If your primary interest (after trains, of course) you might want to look at Chang Chi University. They seem to be famous for their language department.
Tim