Jo Ejszakat Budapestrol! 

The time has flown by and  our time in Budapest has com to and end.  Yesterday the students completed the final exam in the morning and in the evening got on the bus to travel to the Nosztalgia Etterem, a  traditional Hungarian restaurant on the outskirts of Budapest.  Accompanying them were Emese, the woman who organized our trip to Eger and other interesting cultural activities here in Budapest, and three of the Hungarian students who became friends with the students during our stay here.  The food was excellent and everyone seemed to be enjoying the evening. Unfortunately, my phone has been uncooperative and I haven't been able to transmit the pictures from the event to my computer.   Suffice it to say, that a good time was had by all.

Today, the hotel seemed a bit lonely with everyone taking off to either return to the USA or spend more time in Europe before the spring semester begins. 

I enjoyed the time here immensely and I hope the students did as well. 

Minden jot! 

Professor Hanson

Got a Case of the Hotel Blues

Cool museum complex. Not related to today.

Sziasztok! This is Aaron from room 453, delivering the FINAL student blogpost of St. Olaf Budapest Interim 2019. Thankfully I have word from Bruce that he will be writing the final entries, so I don't have the gruesome responsibility of wrapping everything up.

Today is a very special day for us because we're holed up in the hotel studying hard for the number theory final, which is tomorrow at 9:00 am! Stress levels were eased slightly when we learned that there won't be questions testing our Hungarian vocabulary (though Bruce, with his trademark deadpan wit, assured us that all the math questions would be written in Hungarian instead 😉). Nevertheless, the endless sea of review questions are keeping us plenty occupied--some of them forcing us to dig through our notes for theorems, others requiring a bit of creativity.

We're all so relaxed!

Some of us could not endure math-migranes forever, so we fled to the streets. Tor and some other people went to Central Market Hall for assorted snacks and stir-fry ingredients. I went to ALDI to grab from their huge selection of pastries that I've always been eyeing (I didn't need to be outside for long since I got my fix from going to the park and to an art exhibit yesterday). Brendan got KFC, but he's also studying abstract algebra in his free time (for Abstract II next spring), so he's definitely developed a tolerance for math. And Paul, in his all-consuming desire to be economical, didn't leave the hotel, instead warming up some frozen corn for lunch.

So yeah, not much action today. I know I said earlier that there are no pressure on me to wrap things up, but I still feel the desire to use this space to reflect a little on our whole Budapest adventure. Since this was my first time outside of the United States even, much less in Europe, being in Budapest was definitely a lot for me to take in. I loved the multi-era'd architecture, the cozy cobblestone streets, the beautiful flowing Danube River, and just the variety of sights, activities, and restaurants we could partake in (see: this blog). But it wasn't too overwhelming either; we had enough autonomy and breathing room to do what and as much as we wanted (a night in was never a bad thing!). While we certainly got a sense of Budapest's identity just by living there for a month, I greatly appreciate learning about the culture formally: the language itself, the monuments and neighborhoods, the turbulent history, the fraught politics (eerily similar to America's mess).

We've experienced quite a bit, but it's a little hard for me to point to one thing that sticks out to me (maybe because we've seen so much?). For me, it's more the sum of the experiences that affects me than any individual one--and a lot of it's subconscious even. It's weird, but I know that Budapest has made its mark on me. And of course, doing this trip with everyone in our little number theory class made it all the better.

Of course, this is just my experience. If any of the other students feel like I missed something, or if they just feel compelled to share their overall thoughts, feel free to drop a comment below!


With that, this is the students of Number Theory 2019, signing off!

Commie Trains and KFC

Today, we had the choice to ride the "children's railway" to the highest point in Budapest, or to stay in the hotel and study for the final.  Fred and Nolen chose the former option, Kendall and Henry, the latter.  Since the former is much more interesting, we will write about it first.

The Train Ride
Before leaving, Fred bought some delicious donuts at a fancy "Donut Library."  Then, he and Nolen met in the lobby with Bruce, Paul and Brendan to depart.  They took the metro then the trolley to the train station, where they met with Emese's son Viktor, who is a youth leader at the children's railway.

Viktor Krum

He explained to us the history of the children's train program.  It was started by "the reds," but continued after the fall of communism to this day.  The rail system is operated entirely by 10-14 year old children, of whom there around 500.

After buying our tickets, we got on the train and rode four stops.  During the ride, our 12 year old conductor punched our tickets, announced stops, and scribbled messages in the window frost to communicate with his conductor comrades.

We've got tickets to Ri-ide!

After getting off, we hiked 1km to the highest point in the greater Budapest metro area.  There, we found an old tower that you could climb to the top of to see the entirety of the city spread out.
We looked around then took some photos and a chair lift down to the bus station.

Photo./kdssb_eluwkgdb

Unfortunately, Fred and Brendan did not realize there was a safety bar that could be pulled down, and endured the whole ride clinging for dear life to the side railings, (the absolute madlads!!)

The smart ones, safety bar down.

Nevertheless, we all arrived safely back to the city.  Fred and Nolen then split from the group to grab an early dinner at a Hungarian eatery.  Afterwards they returned to the hotel and caught up on their studies.


Kendall woke up at 10:30 after a long night of studying.  His day was somewhat less eventful, but he got a lot of good work done.  For breakfast, he went to the chocolate factory to get a sausage croissant, one of his favorite meals.

One of his Favorite Meals

While there, he discovered that they had free Wi-Fi, and took advantage of this to review Euler's theorem, one of the many difficult topics on Tuesday's final. For dinner, he went to Big Soup, another one of his go-to restaurants.  He tried the miso soup and sesame seed ice-cream on a waffle, both of which tasted great.

Kendall's Dessert at Big Soup

Now he plans reviewing more for the test, hopefully with minimal procrastination!

Henry ate KFC, studied and watched Netflix.

Four Little Adventures (part 2)

Szia!

Today, our room split apart, and we went on different adventures. These are our stories.

GRACE:
My day in Bratislava has been good! We started the day off by going to a cute little restaurant called The Urban House. The food was super delicious, as you can see in the picture of the pancakes below.

We then went to see Michael's Gate, which was super pretty because it was also snowing.

Then, we turned around to go see the Royal Castle of Bratislava. It was very pretty, and not crowded since there weren't a lot of tourists. Then, we went to the Bratislava Castle and all of the museums that were inside. We learned about the history of the Castle and Bratislava in general. In the Castle, down a flight of very narrow and winding stairs, we saw a replica of the Hungarian Crown that we had seen in the parliament building in Budapest.

We then decided to get lunch at the Castle and the food was super good. After lunch, we went to a church that we tried to visit earlier in the day but there had been a mass going on. Then, we decided to go to a museum of modern art. There were a few different levels that had different kinds of art, which was super cool. Now we are deciding where to go to dinner.

ANSLEY: 
My weekend began at 7am, with getting up for another hike! Bruce, Jill, Ken, Aaron, and I left the lobby of the hotel at 8am and made our way via tram, metro, and then bus to the start of the trail. While it was a bit chilly out, the morning was beautiful and I was excited to spend it outside exploring the country more.

This weekend's hike wandered through neighborhoods, up and down scenic bluffs, and finally ended with a delicious cup of hot chocolate at Janos-hegy, the highest point of Budapest.

Not only were the views incredible, but the group of people we were hiking with were really fun to get to know.

Everyone brought a bunch of treats to share for lunch, and overall I loved the warm, friendly hiking culture I've experienced here.

After making it back to the hotel, I took a much needed shower and nap before dinner.


LIV: 
Today, me and five others from the trip decided to go to a museum that my grandma recommended. We took Metro 1 to the House of Terror, which is a museum that is located in a building that was used by the Arrow Cross Party as well as the secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary. When first walking into the museum, you see a tank in a reflecting pool that reminded me of the 9/11 memorial, but behind the tank, there is a wall that is full of the faces of the victims to the building. We worked our way through the museum, and it was kind of crazy to being in the rooms where these officials made these decisions, interrogated, and imprisoned these people. Having the guest lectures who told us a little about these times was helpful, because we had background and stories of their personal experiences under the Soviet rule. The basement of the building was the most shocking part for me because they had the cells where the political prisoners were kept. They also had punishment cells, like a standing cell where the prisoner was forced to stand, water cell where they were forced to sit in water, and other similar inhumane things like that. The most chilling thing I thought was that they recreated a place of execution. Overall, the experience of going to this museum was very somber.

(we weren't allowed to take pictures, so here is a picture from wikipedia)

After the museum, we went to eat at an Italian restaurant that we have gone a few times called Bellozzo, and then returned to the hotel. I napped, and then began to review for the final coming up. For dinner, we made tomato soup and quesadillas just to save a little money. Now, Ansley and I are about to watch Up in Hungarian, and see if we understand anything!


QIAN:
It has been a very, very relaxing day for me. I chose to sleep in and did not wake up until 11am. It is such a bless since our usual class started at 10am and we usually are out of bed by 8:30am. So that was good. However, because the hotel breakfast ended at 10am so I could not go to that, I had a banana and an apple for breakfast that I brought from the Roni ABC grocery store nearby. After eating my "breakfast" at 11:30am, I decided to do our last homework and watched some tv shows.
Lucia, Lindsey, Jessye and I went to Bamba Burger for dinner, a chain burger place that we have gone a few times before. But this is actually the first time that I realize there is one just around the corner by the hotel (I had only gone to the one in Oktogon and the one by the Federick tere metro station). So that was a new discovery.

After dinner, I went to a bubble tea place in the Fashion street called Bubu Bubble tea and got a Matcha Boba tea. It was a great way to end a relaxing and refreshing day.

Hello from room 753! I couldn't seem to log in from my account, so even though this is Lindsey's account, this is Annabelle posting.

We woke up this morning to discover that the hot water was not working in the hotel. Cold water does not make for a pleasant morning shower. However, this unpleasant surprise was made up for by class starting an hour later today. I chose to use that extra hour to sleep in.

Class today was focused on the cryptographic applications of number theory. We started with a simple Caesar cipher and moved on to a rigorous discussion of the RSA algorithm. This encryption algorithm forms a basis for how much of the internet can function. I did a summer course on cryptography in high school, so much of today's lesson was a review for me, but it was interesting to see how the math that we've been working on for weeks underlies these applications. It was a neat change of pace for the final lecture.

After a final lunch of gyoza and ramen at Big Soup, my preferred lunch option, we returned to class for our final guest lecture. ____ gave an interesting talk on various functions that have at some point been posited to only produce prime outputs. None of them actually do and he showed various proofs as to how and why these functions produce composite outputs.

After class, we all went back to the hotel for a lazy afternoon. I attempted to take a relaxing bath, but discovered that the hot water was still not working. After some studying and some Netflix, we headed out to grab dinner at Bors, a really good street food restaurant.

I ordered a pulled pork sandwich and a sausage curry soup. The pulled pork was the best pulled pork sandwich I've had outside of the south - so much better than the Caf. And my whole meal was only 1500 forints!



This has been a great month here in Budapest, and there will be a lot of studying to do this weekend before the final.

Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath

Hello again from room 353, formerly known as room 352. (Yes, we moved rooms...)

Today we started off with class from 10-12 all about Euler's Theorem. Which for those of you who don't know is all about prime numbers and congruency! But don't worry if you don't understand what that means, we're still trying to get a grasp on it ourselves.

In the afternoon we had a literature professor come in to discuss famous Hungarian works of poetry and literature. We analyzed the translated forms of poems and excerpts, including the Hungarian national anthem...who knew it was sooo pessimistic?! The literature professor was fantastic, and this lecture surely supplemented our liberal arts education (MCG!!).

We did take four days of Hungarian on our trip but aren't quite fluent yet! On the way back to the hotel, a stop at Aldi was necessary to find more pomegranates and Milka chocolate bars. A bunch of us got together in our hotel room to finish our homework and of course eat the chocolate we just bought.

At 5:30 we all met in the lobby to go to Gellert, one of the baths just across the Danube (in Buda) from our hotel. Most of us were dressed warm, but a select few (cough cough our male counterparts, Nolen & Fred...) decided to wear shorts and sandals in 30 degree weather!

Room 353 in the warmest bath!

While we were there, we had the option of going into a steam room (it smelled AWFUL so we skedaddle out of there), a cold pool, and a couple thermal pools at varying temperatures. One was off limits as none of us had a swim cap with us, sigh.

After spending about an hour there a group of us were starting to get pretty hungry. Just a couple tram stops away we ended up at Baobox where we got Bao and Batyu, essentially steamed buns and dumplings. On the way back we stopped at Gerbeaud for cakes which they are known for and were delicious!

Bao and Batyu

Lucia and Andree both got the raspberry cake

We are having a relaxed night here because some of us are preparing to go to Bratislava for the weekend! Tune in with us next Tuesday after the final!!

Perfect numbers, Erdös, and me

Good news and bad news.

Bad news first: Brenden is feeling sick, so he can’t go to the museum he was going to blog about.
(And, he chooses to write in the third person for his intro).

Good news: that means Brenden’s blog post will be all about math. Hooray!

We started off class today with more discussion about multiplicative functions. And, we were introduced to Euler’s phi function, which counts the number of positive integers less than or equal to n which are relatively prime to n.

In the afternoon, we were treated to a mathematical lecture about number theory, by Csaba Szabo.

We first learned about perfect numbers. These are positive integers whose proper positive divisors add up to themselves. (So 6 is a perfect number, since 1,2, and 3 are the proper divisors of 6 and 1+2+3 = 6.) Mathematicians don’t know how many of these perfect numbers there are, but we do know that every even perfect number must be a function of a related Mersenne prime. We also don’t know if there are any odd perfect numbers. That’s the thing about number theory - we can ask questions that are either really easy or really hard to prove!

Speaking of proofs, the class also learned about Paul Erdös and his Book.

Paul Erdös was probably the most famous Hungarian mathematician who ever lived. He was an eccentric genius who firmly believed that math ought to be a social activity - that’s why he worked with over 500 different people to publish tons of math papers. He often said that God (who Erdös called the Supreme Fascist) has a Book that contains the most elegant proofs to intriguing math questions. We saw some of these proofs in class and in the lecture. In the past, students who took this class got to see a documentary about Erdös. Maybe we will too, huh?

Well, that’s it for now. While Aaron, Tor, and Paul do homework, I’m going to lay in bed and pray to the Supreme Fascist for some relief from this sickness. Ta ta for now!

-Brenden