Friday, July 31, 2009

After chasing the flight gates for the past day, I am beat. I am using the WiFi in the Budapest airport before I track down the taxi to the hotel. There were some complications in my well organized flight schedule, but I made it. (i think that is saying something) The connection in Chicago was probably too close with my delayed flight from Denver to get my luggage transferred. I had to run from concourse to concourse, but doubt the baggage handlers were as motivated. If it shows up, they will deliver it to the hotel. crossing fingers here.

Hey Taxi, over here....

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Walking around a city can sure make your feet sore, but you sure can see the place in greater detail. That was the mission of the day. Up early I walked the banks of the Danube River and discovered you can fish the Danube. Maybe not catch anything, because I didn't see that this guy had anything.

After walking for only a couple of hours, I was glad to head out again when the team leader needed an escort, but this time we took the bus and the metro train. Funny thing about the modern worlds fears, they get nervous about people taking pictures. The metro security told me no photos, after I took this one. Seems I always get in trouble for this crime. Sure hope this doesn't put me on the watch list.

What I found most interesting was above ground. The artwork found on the sides of buildings was great.
Tomorrow is the day the team will head over to the work site in Hadju. What will I find there, I am not sure, let me think about it...

Sunday August 2, 2009

No it is not a gourmet meal, but is is one created by Hungarian shepherds as they brewed up this concoction to cook over an open fire. We were invited to a traditional cook out where the owner of one the of houses we are building cooked for us

No I am definitely not in Kansas, but the countryside looks similar. The strange road signs to unpronounceable cities gives that up.

By the end of the week this house will be wee bit closer to completion.

Monday August 3, 2009

Usually when I head out the door for a little adventure, my wife has a few words for my. Yea, the usual, be careful, watch yourself, as well as the mushy, I love you. But on this trip Pam added another phrase to this ritual. "Don't be afraid to try new things. (to eat).

Today I sit at a table with the rest of my Global Village team and we all stare at a large clear glass bowl being set in front of us. It is filled with some milky brown fluid and chunks of something is floating to the top. Someone braves a sniff. Smells like cinnamon, and....maybe apples. Our best guess is that this is apple soup. Next come the main dish. Looks like potatoes, some sort of small chunk meat in sauce, and pink stained cucumbers and lettuce on top. I sit there with my fork hovering for just a second as my team looks on. Pam's words come back to me, and I dig in. What do you know, I may not be able to pronounce it, but I can eat it. Not bad, not bad at all. Serving size more than enough as well. Ok, more than enough for some of the gals on the team. Another college boy and myself make sure there there no waste.

The place we are eating at has a different special each day. We don't have to read off a menu, we just have to have a great sense of adventure.

Thursday August 6, 2009

I am in Hajduboszormeny, Hungary for a week. While many of my trips lately have been motorcycle related, this one is not. Instead I am traveling with a group of seven others working with Habitat for Humanity to help build a new house for a family in this country.

I was very tempted to rent a motorcycle in country and do some exploring on my own, but that really was not practical at this point.

However, when I stepped out of the shuttle and saw this little delight I was all over Google as soon as I could boot up my computer.

It is a Simson motorcycle manufactured sometime between 1948 and 1960(ish) in East Germany. At that time the Communist governments decided that the company would be more profitable, (maybe not the correct word for a communist economy) if it switched to mopeds. And that was that. East German company MZ took up the slack, and these old bikes have been rolling along the East European countryside ever since.

I wish I knew how they did it. Whether they have slowly been parting bikes out to keep some running, or re-building them on their own, they have been very successful at this.

Mo-peds and other two-strokes are very popular modes of travels, (I am going to regret saying this, but I miss the heavy drone of a big-bore cruiser, but this constant ring-a-ding-ding sound of a chainsaw with wheels is starting to annoy me) in this small rural town in the Eastern farmlands of Hungary. They are obviously newer, but I have now seen several other Simson bikes rides in among these bike gangs. In fact, it had me questioning my own facts. Surely these freshly painted, sound running machines were not all over 50 years old. ( Maybe because I am a tad over 50 and I don't look, nor run as good).

I had to find out. Our construction supervisor for this build has been helping us with understanding the culture, and interpreting. He is also a fellow biker, (he rides the Honda Hornet, our state side Honda CB600) so I had a feeling he's know the back story. He confirmed my findings. They rebuild, repaint, and keep these vintage metals going. Not for show, but for good old school riding and commuting to work.

What a concept! I still feel like I fell into the The Land of the Lost.

Monday August 10, 2009

Strange how one of the defining marks of a culture is the design of their bathroom, or water closet, or loo, or privy, or outhouse,…. See what I mean. do you squat, stand, sit or straddle? I am pretty sure that as adventurous as my wife is , I will never get her to a country that has you squatting over a hole in the floor, no matter how nicely tiled the room is, or how clean it is..

On a construction site in the states you’d find the portable chemical john. Self contained, and hopefully, pumped and cleaned on a regular basis. Here in Hungary, at least at this work site, we had the good old school pit toilet. AKA outhouse. Smelly, yes, fly ridden, yes. Breathe through your mouth and you won’t smell it. Sure…. I find tasting the air just as disgusting. At least there was two sides, Noi and Ferfi, girl and boy.

The indoor public restrooms are much better, or course. In our hotel in Budapest I found two buttons to flush, by room mate with some European travel experience pointed out that it is a mini-flush and a maxi-flush feature. (There is a great water saving feature that could be used stateside.)

Here they also separate the the toilet from the wash basin with a solid door. Even in the houses we are building that is so. In the public restrooms there will be a couple of closets with the toilet set in these. Quite different from the US model made of flimsy partitions and the foot high gap on the sides and door.

Now here is a strange feature I found on the water closet at the bath in Hajduboszormeny, it had no door knob. In retrospect I should have inspected that anomaly. I just assumed that the latch that locks the door is the same latch that will unlock the door. Yes, it was odd that it took as good hard slam to get the door to close, but maybe it was not built so well. Trust me now, it was built well.

When I stood to leave, I turned the latch to open the door. I pushed. I pushed harder. It was definitely more than stuck, it was still latched.

Did you get that description of this. It is a closet with a toilet in it. There is no gap to crawl under, no partition to climb over. There is a small window, but I am not that desperate, yet. I am at a public pool, with only my swimming trunks on, and I have not idea how to yell, “Help, I am stuck in the water closet”, in Hungarian. (I doubt that if I had my handy little phrase book it would have helped me).

Perhaps if I start babbling in English they will go get the other Americans to come to my aid. There has to be some alternatives here. The A-Ha moment comes to me. I have my room key. If I can somehow jam it into the turning mechanism I can turn the latch enough to open the door.

Key in, too loose, All the way in, not enough leverage to twist. Next idea. Not a good one.

Get a running start and bust the door open with my shoulder. I’ve seen enough cop shows to know a door can give when rammed with enough speed and bulk. Key word here, speed. There simply is not enough room in there to gain any kind of ramming speed. The little I did hit it with made me think that it would not work anyway. It I hit it with enough force to break it, my shoulder would bust and certainly that scream of agony would bring some attention. Time to use the small room to some advantage.

Sitting now on the closed lid of the toilet I brace my back against the wall, and my feet on the door. I will power push that puppy open.. I think for a minute about my escape, I’ll just walk past the splintered door and calmly head back into the water. No one knows me here, and they will forever wonder what happened to that door. Ok, push…….flush……I succeed in pushing the flush button on the wall behind me with my back.

Sit, think, try that key again. The second time around, I'm perhaps a bit more determined, or just have a tad more luck on my side. In either case, I'm freed from my temporary imprisonment, and can sheepishly wander back out to the pool.

Wednesday August 12, 2009
Oh to be young lithe and limber. Meet Lisa one of our valued members on the Global Village build team in Hungary. There was not a construction challenge she was afraid to tackle. Not even insulation.

On the second day of our stay there was enough cloud cover and cooler temperatures to keep the attic work bearable, so there was a call for volunteers to tackle this job. Lisa stepped forward without a moments hesitation. Can’t say that much for myself. I knew what a messy, itchy job this was going to be. But hey, if a 16 year old girl can do it, this 53 year old birthday boy was not going to left to sanding on the lower levels.

Lisa wanted to travel and join a Habitat build, however, being under 18 she could not travel by herself. Her mom, a family physician from the Toronto region of Canada worked out her schedule so that there was a week she could take off to make this possible. That was how the team ended up with this mother/daughter team. (And to think that some mom’s complain about taking their kids to a cross town soccer game)

Laying roll insulation is not an easy task. We had one person measuring and laying the bats of fiberglass, and a second cutting them to that size and handing them off. Lisa had the former task. She could duck and weave under the roof rafters, while I was constantly watching my head. She would turn a perfect pirouette on a narrow two inch board to take the cut insulation, then spin on the same axis and lay it down with the precision of a gymnast.

I started with another young gal partner and had the cutting job down pat, but lost her mid-way in the morning job as she had to see a local doctor for an allergy condition. For some odd reason I thought I HAD to keep up the same pace as Lisa and Eric.

And I was, for awhile, then as the temperature in the attic was getting higher I had to get down for awhile for some rest and drink up some water. But not too long, oh no, couldn’t let my team down. I was back up in the attic of a second house to drive on.

It was while trying to navigate the ceiling joists on this second house that I missed a step and planted my foot on the ceiling drywall. Just a little slip, but it busted up the piece enough so that it would have to be replaced.

I worked for maybe another 20 minutes up there before I slipped and fell again. Yep, another section of ceiling would have to be replaced. This time I admitted the heat was probably getting to me and my legs were just too shot to stay up there and work any more.

The next day they were looking for volunteers to go up on the roof and lay shingles. Sigh… best I admit my limitation and stay on the ground

When Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity in 1976 he was hardly aware of climate change, global warming, and carbon footprints. He simply saw a need for simple, decent, affordable housing for the world's poverty stricken.

But lets face it, poverty is pretty hard on the planet. A cheap beater car for getting to work is probably an old, heavy gas-guzzling monster.  The valves are shot, the piston rings are worn and more oil is being burned off and poured into the air than Arnold's Hummer.

The houses are an environmentalist nightmare.  The estimate on a leaky faucet is over 200 gallons wasted a month. That's just one, chances are the bathtub faucet has some serious dripping issues as well.  About that carbon footprint, bigfoot couldn't deal a bigger mark than those thin un-insulated walls. On a cold stormy winter night, you can not keep a candle lit on account of the breeze slipping past the old window frames, rotted and falling apart. Sure, sound financial logic says that over a period of time it is more cost effective to fix this house than pay out the high energy costs wasted. But that requires making your children miss several meals this month, if they even have that flexibility.

Habitat is not in the business of fixing those old cars, but those classic simple, decent, affordable homes are making a huge impact on lives and the environment.

As I think back on my visit to Hungary, I remember that the homes I help build are very eco-friendly houses. I saw exterior walls wrapped in 3 inches of foam core panels, with wood framed walls insulated on top of that.  Plenty of fiberglass insulation on the ceiling as well. I know this for a fact, my arms were itching for days.

 With the double-paned vinyl framed windows, I bet you could heat this place with a match.

It is unfortunate that the current economic downturn has caused the Hungarian government to drop a mortgage program that was helping HFH partner with low income families  to build more of these types of homes.  They are now looking at adapting and changing the focus to re-hab work on multi-dwelling housing that looks to be just as helpful, and just as green.

An example given our team over our farewell dinner shows this potential. A lady called the office and asked if some Habitat members could help her with some re-painting of her window sill.  Years of differed maintenance, and probably poor soviet era workmanship had taken it toll on that poor window.  They couldn't re-paint it, there was not enough solid wood to hold even a layer more paint.  Instead they helped her get an new energy efficient window installed to replace it.  Immediately this lady was seeing a 20 to 25 percent savings in her energy bill each month. They helped her, they helped reduce the demand for more energy by this simple fix.