September 28, 2010: Competitive Bridge again

September 28, 2010: I realize it's been quite a long time since I've posted pages on my blog. The reason is that I've been internetless in my apartment until last night when Andras, a Hungarian friend came with the wireless attachment, installed it, and set up my computer for me. So, although I am again available with Skype, I've found that I cannot upload pictures into my blog using this wireless connection. This is REALLY bad because I've kept up to date with my blog using Word and have approximately 100 pages in Word (including pictures) that I had hoped to upload into my blog to document what's been going on these past few weeks. I may have to reenter all of this if I can't figure out how to get blogspot to understand Word format!  Not looking forward to that, but there's so much to share that's been really interesting these past few weeks: the wine festival of three weeks ago, the arts festival of two weeks ago, my evening listening to Hungarian jazz and local jazz clubs, and my introduction to Hungarian competitive bridge, not to mention the great things that have been going on in school where I teach. So, I promise to eventually enter blog posts for all of this with great pictures, but not immediately.


In the mean time, I'd like to describe the wonderful evening I had this evening playing competitive bridge in Obuda, the old part of Buda that dates to 2000 years ago. My partner was Ruth's dentist's on-line bridge partner, Alex Szabo. Alex and Ruth's dentist play bridge very often (Alex from his office at 7:00 - 8;00 a.m. and Ruth's dentist from 10:00 - 11:00 p.m.) They've never met personally and until tonight, Alex didn't even know Ruth's dentist's name. 


Getting to Obuda was not particularly easy. I had to take two buses to the subway and the subway to a tram which crossed the Danube River. Then I had to walk in the winding streets of Obuda to find the location. Alex had said the address was 6 Kiskorona utca but that location was obviously a warehouse of some sort that was all boarded up. I called Alex on my cell phone and he said to come to 7 Kiskorona utca which one would think is nearby, but not in Obuda! Alex tried to describe the location but I could not see anything like what he was describing. So, I went up to a man who had just finished parking his car and gave him my phone and had him talk with Alex in Hungarian. The man and Alex talked and after they had hung up, the man told me (in English) to go through an alleyway to the other side of the group of buildings and I'd find Alex. Of course I went too far and found a lone man on a street who I thought might be Alex. It wasn't, but fortunately he spoke English and pointed me in another direction. I finally found Alex who quickly escorted me into the bridge hall which contained 30 tables of bridge players. Alex told me that they had already refused a number of players wanting to play, but Alex somehow persuaded them to open up one last table for us!


Alex and I had about five minutes to discuss conventions for playing bridge and it was then that I realized how talented Alex is at bridge, because everything I mentioned he said he'd play that way. We were really an ideal partnership (from my point of view at least) and in the first hand we played, Alex bid so that I was playing for a slam! Alex was dead on in his bidding, and I easily made the slam. What a great way to start (although I suspect that probably every other partnership would also reach and succeed in making a slam meaning that we were not any better than any other partnership). We played 26 hands at 13 tables throughout the evening, and Alex was very supportive and he taught me a lot of new things to improve my play. Unlike the US bridge clubs I've played at, I did not feel that Alex was critical, but rather very supportive, complimentary, and genuine in our partnership. He told me he thought we did better than average (which is good for me since I'm relatively new to competitive bridge). And, he arranged for me to play bridge tomorrow night with his girlfriend, a math teacher at a Hungarian college. It should be fun to meet and play with a Hungarian mathematician.

After the bridge game, Alex invited me for a drink so we could just talk and he told me a lot about Hungarian history, mentioning again how in Hungarian history, other countries came into Hungary, took it over, divided up Hungarian property, and in the last treaty ended up ceding 2/3 of the land to the neighboring countries. He said (and I've seen this in others myself) that Hungarians do not stand up for their rights with respect to other countries, and always seem to end up with the short end of the stick. At any rate, I have found the Hungarians to have adjusted to this state of events well.


Well, I guess I had better turn in since I begin teaching at 7:45 a.m. tomorrow morning. More later.