Office Workout Hungarian Orange

Eastern Bloc
10
First Steps
Noisy Office
in the Eastern Bloc
During my sophomore year I’ve quite often visited my university’s English-American
Studies building at 19-21 Ajtósi Dürer sor, although not as often as my professors
would wish it to be. Frankly, I do not recall any of the classes and lectures, nor the
highbrow lecturers for that matter, and I wonder whether it’s just me. Looking back
it seems that we have spent all our youth in its rundown café, stuffing our mouth
with cheap sandwiches and instant coffee, and our heads with pipe dreams. Little
did I know that 10 years after graduating I will be standing in the abandoned staff
room of my once fiercest linguistics teacher, renting it for my rock trio. How did
things take such a radical turn? by Gergely Huszti
The building which once served the purpose of lifelong
learning and the persistent cultivation of minds (with
little success in the case of your humble narrator) is
now drenched in booze, wall paint and the sound of
overdriven electric guitars. Arts and crafts performed
a coup while singing ’we don’t need no education’ and
victoriously took over from institutionalized education.
But forget fi gurative language, and let’s face the music.
(pardon me)
For many years rock bands of Budapest had to put up
with low-ceiling, stuffy and moldy basements as their
practice rooms, where egg-cups covered the walls for
cheap soundproofi ng, and neighbors called the police
from time to time because of unwanted noise pollution.
The guys who run Eastern Bloc (Keleti Blokk) have
seen a chance to change all this by renting and renovating
the old and rundown building at Ajtósi left behind
by Eötvös Lóránd University. The building is historical in
its own right, Ferenc Deák (the Wiseman of the nation)
allegedly spent his last summer here in 1876, while the
Sacré Coeur nuns saved many lives within these walls
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