Vízilabda

Vízilabda means water polo in Hungarian. The Hungarian team has won the gold medal in the Olympics 3 times (Athens, Sydney, and Beijing) and are the current World Champions, so the people here are rightfully proud of their team. I had never been to a water polo match, or really even thought much about the sport at all, but when we were told the US team was coming to Hungary a bunch of us from Fulbright decided we wanted to go. The match we went to was held in a town called Szolnok about halfway between Bekescsaba and Budapest. Even though the US team got beat pretty badly, we had a great time and it was really fun to see something that the Hungarian crowd got really into.

Before I let you enjoy the pictures of the match, I just want to say a couple funny things that occur at Hungarian events. The first is that when people here clap at any sort of event (this happened at the Opera too) they end up all clapping in rhythm with each other. In the US we all just clap willy-nilly, but not here. It may start out willy-nilly but before long, everyone is in-sync with each other. It is a mystery to me how this happens, but it makes me laugh every time. The second thing is that even though we were at a Hungarian sporting event, they still played all the usual American "pump you up" music. This was especially disconcerting as we were getting our butts kicked and had to listen to "we will rock you."

 National Anthems

 Start of the game

 Deflecting a goal

 This is the best player on Hungary's team, so pretty much the best water polo player in the whole world

 Not such a bad view.... ;)

well....we had a good time anyways