A day in Budapest

I might as well post this, which is a revision of my previous post (revision in the loosest sense):

A few key strokes, clicks, and scrolls will tell you that of landlocked Hungary's ten million people, one million, seven hundred thousand squeeze into Budapest. Of the country's thirty-six thousand square miles, two hundred fall on the part of the map labeled 'Budapest.' That is seventeen percent of the people sharing half a percent of the land. You will also no doubt read that the city is two cities, Buda and Pest, bisected by the Danube and connected by five bridges, and it's possible you'll learn that all of it sits on top of the continent's oldest subway. You probably don't even have to search to know that for a while, Hungary reported to the Soviets, who followed the Germans, who followed the Austrians, who followed the Ottomans (you don't ask what came before the Ottomans; it's like asking what came before the printing press). Of course, none of this matters. You do not have to remember.

It might only matter if and when you touch down in Budapest Ferihegy International Airport. As you drive from there into the capital, do not be fooled by the gray outskirts that glide anonymously by, or the trash heap, the fading rust-colored field, the road that descends from a freeway into an exit. The wide open space is an illusion; soon the city will close in. For fifteen minutes you will drive around the same secession building where a middle-aged woman has filled her balcony with plants that have no place here in winter. Then you will park on the sidewalk and step out onto the street. Look! In one square meter, uneven taupe cobblestones run up against maroon rocks that smile in rows of half-circles. But as much as you want to enjoy them, you cannot get around the twenty-six other cars that have also parked on the sidewalk. So that must be how the seventeen percent coexist.

At least you rarely have to worry about cars. For just seven thousand forints (thirty-five dollars) this green-and-orange paper card will get you on the subway for a month. Isn't the yellow line cute? Its three little trains bounce along, chiming each time the doors open and close, like something out of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Just don't forget your pass. And don't sneak onto a train just because there's no guard to stop you. Or, if you do, don't miss your stop, so that you end up at the only station where all the guards huddle in their heavy leather jackets and navy blue caps. Even if you try to look away, the one burly woman will grab your shoulder and demand six thousand forints. Please, if nothing else, get a receipt before she pockets the gift!

Let's hope you can still enjoy your time after that. Remember, there was a river, and a few bridges? You must be in Pest. Only Hungarians live in Buda, and visitors only go there for short trips to the castle and the hills and the Szabadság Szobor, which could be translated as the Statue of Liberty, but no need to ruffle any feathers. Liberty Statue is acceptable. About Pest, then: just walk east, you can't miss the Danube. If, on the way, you pass the rally of skinheads who somehow got into parliament, don't be afraid. They don't dislike you as much as they do the gypsies who crouch along the Chain Bridge, reaching out for alms or covering their heads as if salaaming. And they aren't as bad as the paramilitary group who dress in black boots, pants, vest, and cap, white shirt, and red scarf. You might have thought there were no more after 1945, or at least after they were banned last year. But stay out of their way and you'll be fine.

See, on the Danube, the ten-year-olds racing by in yellow and green kayaks? That's better. That's what you came to see. You can join them, but it might be more relaxing to rent a two-person cart on the island, Margit-sziget. Paths on either side let you pedal along the river, watching people on holiday aboard cruise ships that start in the Netherlands, or surveying Budapest's skyline of pale buildings, none more than three hundred feet high, but closer to one hundred. Now, isn't the Danube more than a word on a map? If you've had enough of the water (no need to stay on the bank for all one hundred fifty feet of Margit-sziget), come back inside. People are buying ice cream, dining on terraces, and gawking at zoo animals. Deeper into the island, dark busts of unknown historical figures stare out at no one in particular. They remind you to stop over at the labyrinthine walls of Roman ruins. Could be Greek. Could be a product of the city planners’ imagination. In any case, you must be tired. There's an oversized tree over there; its branches reach down so low, everyone is welcome to sit down for a break.

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Listening to: Regina Spektor
Reading: 100 Years of Solitude
Watching: Malcolm in the Middle

A city, realized

I wrote this for class recently:

I can scrape from the bottom of a tin can the tidbits of Budapest thrown in unthinkingly, or left behind from more important memories. Socialism, a river surely, Hitler's war, a colorless downtown map excerpted in a book on Hungarian. Alone, the scraps are useless and - at the point when I first touch down in the dry cold of early January - meaningless.

Once on the ground and in a car, at least then I am no longer confronted by a blank wall. It gives way to this new city, whose gray outskirts glide anonymously by. The trash heap, the fading rust-colored field, the road that descends from a freeway into an exit - I see them, it can't be denied. But they mean only slightly more than the scraps I brought with me. I see them with blinders and therefore with unrecognized disappointment. What are they to me? Everything exists in isolation, at risk of drifting into amnesia because pegged to nothing.

Look at the cobblestones! In one square meter, three different arrangements compete for space: uneven, taupe and black stones run up against a border of uniform rocks, separating them from maroon stones that smile in rows of half-circles. Look at the Parliament! Think: what decadence to line a government building with gold and gems. And to forgo Doric pillars for Gothic, burgundy-topped arches and spires. Read advertisements for ABBA's world tour or a mascara that works miracles or the Tavasz Fesztivál in spring. These posters wrap around thick, concrete columns that stretch four meters tall and dot the city. Beware subway guards who in their heavy leather jackets and navy blue caps demand six thousand forints (thirty dollars) as fine for an unpunched ticket. Get a receipt before they pocket the gift. Ignore gypsies who crouch along the Chain Bridge, reaching out for alms or covering their heads as if salaaming.

All of it feels as good as ignored. What good is to notice if I will forget? How to remember if I don't understand? It is the curse of those who think visually to understand nothing until the mind bestows on it an illustration. In the earlier weeks, my blinders left me wandering lost around Budapest, seeing directly in front and unable to complete the image with a turn of the head. I admired the beauty of secession buildings and trees that turned white and pink, but with a vague and perpetual discomfort of a void where context should be.

Only after staring incessantly at the map given all visitors, navigating streets independently, and connecting cartographic renderings to geographic realities, do I shed the blinkers. It seems I must reach a threshold, and from there, a city takes shape. Now the bazilika of Szent István is more beautiful than its prodigious teal dome flanked by towers and buttressed by a pediment of saints. Now it is east of the Danube, south of Margaret Island, southwest of Heroes' Square. There is beauty, too, in the grocery store inside the mall. From there I can turn left to get to the train station that doubles as a flea market, turn right to climb the hills of Buda, or walk home, straight ahead. Everything is anchored to everything else. No longer are they shadows on cavernous walls, but true forms that fall into place when I stroll through the districts, fly overhead, or close my eyes. What I see is an overcrowded city of two cities, bisected by the Danube, connected by five bridges. Here is the synagogue, there is the island, here is the National Gallery, there is the City Park. What I see is that Budapest is real.


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Listening to: Roma Di Luna

Reading: Tony Judt, Postwar

What a finale

I have been banned from Germany, deported with a police escort, acquired a criminal record, and missed my sister's graduation, all with one stone. On the layover in Munich, going home to California from Hungary, I was stopped by passport control because, like all other officials I've encountered between countries, this one didn't recognize my travel document. Let's be clear: it's a reentry permit, issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allowing permanent residents (green card holders) to get back into the United States after travel abroad. And though it quacks like a passport, border officials are always giving me trouble because they don't know what to do with this little turquoise book.

Accordingly, the German punk I had the misfortune of meeting took me aside for a closer look and decided I didn't have the proper visa or residence permit to have spent nearly five months in the European Union. So in order to wait five hours while he drew up the necessary criminal filing and deportation order, I had to miss my flight and take the next one - 20 hours later, getting me home just in time to miss my sister's high school graduation.

I say in earnest I could tolerate without anger the uncomfortable eight hours sleeping on the airport chairs; the criminal record; the mortification of boarding the plane with two border officials; the revoking of the privilege to return to Germany, at least for a few months; even the arrival home 24 hours after I'd planned.

But there is more than one legacy whose bitterness will follow me, though I hope to forget them. First, of course, was that I could not see my sister graduate, despite planning my entire return around that date. What's worse, if I could not spend that time with my family, it would have been some consolation to have spent it with friends in Hungary, but that was impossible.

Second, though the officials were not entirely wrong, neither was I, and I couldn't make them understand me. They thought I needed a visa, and that part was wrong because I'd applied for one at the Hungarian consulate in New York, only to receive a letter assuring me that permanent residents with travel documents could come to Hungary without one. Though still nervous, I accepted as much and went about my travels, making it to Italy, Slovakia, and Austria without much trouble. The only scuffle was the second trip to Italy, to Venice, because our train passed through Croatia, which is not in the European Union or the Schengen Zone, which means dealing with border patrol. I received some puzzled looks and double checks but made it through, much better than my Indian friend, who had a hell of a night stuck in Zagreb. (It cost him a pretty penny, but he eventually made it to Venice, too.)

I began to realize the severity of my predicament in early April, when I tried to drive to Istanbul through Serbia and Bulgaria (neither of which are in Schengen, though Bulgaria is in the European Union).I thought I was thinking ahead by getting a visa to Turkey, but didn't get past Hungary's border with Serbia because the border guards didn't know what to do with my travel document, and so demanded a transit visa. So an entire Friday wasted on driving to the border, arguing with officials, waiting for a bus, and taking a train back to Budapest. That day was the low point since I had come to Europe, but with time I hated the system less, or at least thought about it less.

I understand that the officials and bureaucrats are doing their jobs, even if it does violate common sense (i.e., I am not the kind of person targeted in these travel restrictions). My main grievance against them is their personal incompetence, as a sort of metonym for the incompetence of the entire bureaucracy (Kafka would back me up on this). These people have to put on as if they know what they're doing, but the smallest irregularity (e.g. a travel document in lieu of a passport) becomes a wrench in their whole system. No one knows protocol. So ask 10 different bureaucrats and you will get as many different solutions. Croatia lets me pass through, but Serbia doesn't. Hungary doesn't require an entry visa, but Germany [says it] does, though they are supposedly equal Schengen and EU members. Passport control in Chicago asks for my travel document, yet the one in San Francisco is content with my green card.

If it hasn't already, this will easily become a tirade, so I will just say I have gotten the travel bug out of my system for awhile and am happy to be home. I am not so arrogant to think I have seen it all, and this is not what Björk means anyway, but still I can't get her words out of my head:

The American bureaucracy may not be much better, but at least I do not have to deal with it as much anymore. I am happy about this, and other, less important things since returning. I am happy I won't have to pay a foreign fee for all my purchases anymore, or ruin any more of my shoes on the cobble stones. I won't exactly miss Hungarian food, which I can best describe as heavy and unhealthy (pork, beef, cheese, all fried, and vegetables a rarity). I am happy to be able to access websites again, websites that are not available or convenient outside the United States.

To reflect on the months abroad negatively would be unfair, however, and the amount in this post dedicated to such is inversely proportional to my real sentiments. Without reserve I say I could not have made a better choice for a study abroad setting, the affordable and yet international and breathtaking city that is Budapest. Unlike Vietnam, Hungary is a place I leave along with its language, and I will miss hearing and practicing Magyarul. I will miss greeting and taking leave of people with a puszi on either cheek. I will miss riding across the Danube from Buda to Pest on a bus or tram. I will miss the love and friendship I found in this city. I will miss the lakes where wakeboarders circumscribe the water on cables; the Buda hills from which I have seen all of the city blanketed in snow or twinkling below and brighter than the Big Dipper above; the islands along the Danube, so close to the congested downtown and yet idyllic and isolated - and I knew very well how much I missed them all as they grew smaller and smaller beneath my plane window, before clouds erased them, billow by billow, and swallowed our plane.

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Rereading: 1984

Listening to: Blue Oyster Cult

Socialism lives

It was with mixed feelings and a mixed message that I bought three Communist posters for my siblings after visiting Statue Park on Friday. Each had some combination of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Marx, and others, caricatured in the form of a movie poster, a band, and South Park. Never mind the capitalist profit made from their commodification. The more significant contrast is that my siblings will hang them up without entirely supporting the men (the way Che supporters wear his face), nor will they entirely laugh at the decoration (the way Michael Moore holds hands with Bush).

Whoever designed the posters probably intended them for the latter, ironic purpose, and so I say it is even more ironic that my family, with its socialist leanings, is more in between the Bush and Che alternatives. Safe to say we don’t support any of the reeducation, political purging, or subjugation that would make Orwell turn in his grave. But we remember too that these resulted from totalitarianism, not the ideology of socialism in its economic, sexual, and humanitarian equality.

Then again, I think we are removed enough from the Cold War to see that communism itself isn’t completely the evil we believed it to be. About all this I am unsure. Who knows, maybe not everyone is laughing. What impels people to, for instance, visit places like Statue Park? In between the ironic (though silent) laughter and the homage to the victims of terror, there is probably also a part of us that pays respect to the likes of Lenin and Mao, if only to recognize their impact as world-historical figures. Something like the legacy of Napoleon still upheld in France.

Not that I had much company on Friday. At times I was alone, at times half a dozen tourists wandered Statue Park, also known as Memento Park. And no wonder: I spent over an hour, two buses, and a tram to get outside Budapest, where the statues have been placed. Most were moved there from their sites in the heart of the city, after being toppled in 1989, though their original locations are still denoted on the not-very-informational plaques. What’s worse, I thought, some are “authentic replicas” of original monuments. I complained of this to a Hungarian friend, of city planners fabricating culture and recreating history just to please tourists. But my friend shut me up: is the city really making money on the half dozen tourists that come out there? The truth is, he said, they want to preserve culture and honor history.

He’s probably right, so I’ll just be happy with the huge replica of Stalin’s boots that stand outside the entrance, which is itself a large red brick wall that doesn’t really keep anything out. The park is an outdoor museum, a string of three round fields with a bright red star made of flowers in the center field, and larger-than-life statues, reliefs, murals and any number of monuments along the circumferences. People and writings are a mix of Hungarian and Russian, ranging from the solidarity of the Soviet Union and its satellite, the rights of women, the education of children, and the loyalty, strength, and peace realized through socialism.

The one called “Liberation Monument” shows a wall of white stone, interrupted where a man’s profile takes shape behind the man himself, who stands before the wall from which he has just broken free. The symbolism is clear, but I can’t look at it without thinking, don’t you know it’s you, Communism, from which we are breaking free?

At some point I realized how comic it all was: here I was, standing in a Cold War era park, holding The Joke by Milan Kundera. Like many of the Czech writer’s works, this sets the trials of life and love against the backdrop of Soviet-occupied Central Europe. Ordinarily I would call it a coincidence, but more likely, I am proving Kundera’s own thesis in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It is not coincidence that my family comes from a still (nominally) Communist country, that I came to study in Hungary, that I read this book and this author, that I visited Statue Park. Kundera uses the example of Anna Karenina to argue that what we call dramatic, like Anna’s preoccupation with and death under trains, is not coincidence but life. The motif of trains (or just as easily of communism) is not dramatic accident created for novels, but drama that we, consciously or not, tend to create for ourselves.

A walk through Margaret Island

Most people enter Margaret Island through Margaret Bridge to the south because that is closer to downtown Budapest, but the two-and-half-kilometers-long island runs all the way to Arpad Bridge to the north, where there’s another entrance. A bus runs from one end to the other, and small rental cars run by motor or pedal, but most people walk to take in the foliage that sometimes hides from view the Danube on either side. To walk along the river they have to move to the edges, where runners and bicyclists take up a red road and couples, readers, and picnickers sit on the slanted stone that gives way to the water, on which cruise ships and kayaks glide by.

Back inside the heart of the island, people buy ice cream, dine on a restaurant’s terrace, work out at the athletic center, or visit the zoo, attractions as hidden as they are in Central Park. Around the large fountain, (distance) the first landmark upon entering through the south side, people sunbathe. A bit further on and trees open out onto an open field more reminiscent of Golden Gate Park, for people to play music or Frisbee or huddle in groups. Past this, a track and a football game in progress, and eight English children in two teams, in two lines, in a relay race: the ball (or is it a water balloon?) passes over one child’s head, through the legs of the next, over the head of the next, and so on, until the last runs to the front. Repeat.

Beyond this, dark busts of unknown historical figures stare out at passersby. Some stop to sit on the oversized tree, whose branches descend so low as to form seats. Others navigate the labyrinthine walls of Roman ruins. Could be Greek. Could be a product of the city planners’ imagination. And just before reaching Arpad Bridge: a manmade pond with benches and rocks forming the perimeter, and inside, green from the water lilies, from the reeds, from the mold at the bottom or from the trees reflected in the water.

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Listening to: Shakira

On driving

For the first time in four months, I drove last weekend, and for the first time in nearly as many years, I drove a manual. This is only significant because in Hungary, automatics are just about unheard of. I noticed the same in Vietnam, France, Switzerland – I would go so far as to guess that outside of North America, manuals rule the road just about everywhere in the world, and I’ve wondered why that is. I have heard manuals are more efficient, so perhaps North Americans are just more wasteful people. Similarly, I do think it has something to do with a driving culture, at least in the United States. There, manuals were the car of choice at one time, but over the years, I suppose automatics were the best way to get a car in every garage, as Roosevelt wished.

But I’m glad things are different here. I don’t really know why, I just like manuals and wish I could drive them better. That they are more prevalent is probably related to the reason people say “liters per kilometer” here whereas I’m used to “miles per gallon.” I discussed this with my friends in France, and they don’t believe me, but I think Europeans say liters per kilometer because (consciously or not) they care more about how much fuel (i.e. liters) has to be expended, whereas Americans care more about how much they can drive (i.e. miles).

There are other differences I like here, too. The traffic lights don’t just change from red to green when it’s time to go, but from red to yellow to green (as well as green to yellow to red, as in the United States) – the extra yellow clearly gives the driver a heads up to get into gear.

What’s more, in Switzerland, when you drive along some highways with traffic lights, they stay red at night but are programmed to turn green just in time for your arrival. The only thing I can compare that to are the traffic lights in Manhattan, which change at regular intervals, as do the ones in Downtown Sacramento, where you can stay in the green if you drive a steady 25 miles per hour.

Although I have seen “Wilkommen…” and “Bienvenue…” on highway signs, more common are the modest signs with town names, the notable part being that when you leave a town, you see the same sign with a red diagonal line drawn across it. Maybe I just haven’t seen this yet in the United States. Maybe I also haven’t noticed a rule my friend says everyone knows: on two-lane highways (four lanes altogether), the right lane is the default and the left lane is only for passing. This I don’t believe. I know there’s a slow lane and a fast lane, but I’ve certainly seen a lot of people pass others from the right (which he says is illegal). But on this continent people seem to follow that rule.

My unquestionable favorite among these vehicular observations first appeared in France. We were driving along the country roads, by rocky cliffs covered with protective nets, when a car flashed its high beams at us as it drove by. So did the next. Not too long after that I saw why: we passed cops parked on the side of the road, checking for drivers who flout the speed limit.

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Reading: Milan Kundera, The Joke

Switzerland: seven cities in seven days

Switzerland didn't exactly make the list of top countries I'd like to visit in Europe, but I spent a week there because, thanks to a friend of a friend, we had access to a car and accommodations. Perks notwithstanding, it's been my most expensive week so far (e.g., $30 for a pizza), so in this way and in many others, the country seems to live up to its name, which can be both good and bad. That may just mean I haven't penetrated very deep into the heart of Switzerland, but in the abundance of luxury cars, mountains, and clear water, I see what I expected.

Together, the mountains and the water make up the best of Switzerland. No matter where you stand, it's nearly impossible to have a view without a mountain not too far away, usually still covered in snow at this time of year. We drove from one end of ski-loving Switzerland to the other, from little Nyon on the northern coast of Lake Geneva in the French-speaking west, to Zurich in the German-speaking northeast, and because of the mountainous landscape, I'd never driven through so many tunnels.

For some of the drive we could enjoy Lake Geneva to the south, reflecting the ten kinds of blue and white in the peaks that rise behind it. It's the largest lake in Europe, so large that as I watched it stretch out before me, I had to keep reminding myself it wasn't the ocean, so large that when the rain didn't hit us, we could still see pockets of rain scattered around different areas of the lake. When I didn't see drops hitting the surface of the water, I still saw thin shadowy curtains hang down from clouds in the distance.

This was in Montreux, on the eastern edge of the lake. We climbed a tower in the nearby Chateau de Chillon with its natural moat, and at the top could look down on the ripples that crisscross in grids, or on the misty white line in the atmosphere separating the lake from the sky or mountain.

The other reason I wanted to go to Montreux was Freddie Mercury. This was his second home, and after he died, the city erected an appropriately ostentatious statue in his honor. In other classic rock news, the nearby casino was the site of a fire that supposedly inspired "Smoke on the Water."

It was the little stuff like that that made the week interesting. Stuff like the flower clock, and the home and statue of Rousseau in Geneva. And the giant chessboards on the pavement in Zurich. And the heartrending Lion Monument in Luzern. While there, we had lunch at a Euro Thai restaurant (I should feel bad not trying the local fare, but Swiss food is not what you'd call world-renowned). The first thing the Thai woman asked was whether I was Vietnamese, and to my surprise she started speaking in what Vietnamese she knew. She wasn't bad. Who knew I'd come to a country with four official languages (the other two are Italian and Romansch) with a Hungarian friend to eat at a Thai place and speak to a woman in Vietnamese.

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Reading: Vaclav Havel, The Memorandum
Listening to: Babyface

The simple life

Conditions in the French countryside were slightly less primitive than those in the Vietnamese village where I visited family last summer, but I resisted the low-speed Internet and landline and filled my time with Dostoevsky, grassy hills, and freshly picked leeks. (In fact I may be the last person I know to have heard about the swine flu outbreak.) I spent the better part of a week in Rossas, a hamlet of at most a dozen houses nestled between mountains 200 kilometers southwest of Lyon.

When the weather permitted, we trekked through patches of yellow-green grass and newly bloomed trees, sometimes to a stream that my friend’s brothers dammed themselves, or to a field like an oasis naturally cleared amid the trees. When the weather didn’t, we buried our noses in books, listened to Bach, and watched smoke on the mountains (well, if there can be smoke on the water…). For a split-second I considered that this fog might actually be smoke, the way it rose from the mountains. It was worth watching the low-lying clouds, because to see them drift east to west, in and out of the hills, was to see them connect the earth and sky, to see that the white wisps are much closer to us than to the ceiling, and to see beyond the two dimensions of the sky.

Indoors, we also prepared easy meals, sometimes with vegetables straight from the garden outside, which we tilled when the rain let up. Because we were staying with my friend’s parents and because they are vegetarians, I learned to eat more sustainably than I have in my carnivorous past. Except for a month in sixth grade, my weeks in France were the longest I’ve gone with little or no meat, and I left with a renewed desire to give vegetarianism another shot – for moral reasons, but also because the crap we get from the slaughterhouse is injected almost beyond recognition. So it’s less about avoiding meat (because I will still eat meat) and more about eating real food. It reminds me, why do we cook anyway? In our early days it made sense to grill beef and boil bamboo for health reasons, but I wonder at what point we decided we needed to put things like carrots and tomatoes to heat, too.

Each course was very simple – lettuce with tomatoes or rice, vegetable soup, stir-fried potatoes, bowtie pasta, cheese, fruit yogurt, or chocolate. I didn’t think these alone would be enough for me, but when you have course after course (and that seems to be the French way), it’s more than enough. It also helped that I have learned to like things I used to think I hate:

• Radishes
• Uncooked cauliflower
• Cooked carrots
• String beans
• Lentils
• Cheese
• Unsweetened yogurt
• Celery
• Olives
• Spinach
• Peas
• Ravioli
• Pesto
• Plain pasta

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Reading: Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck
Listening to: Bjork
Watching: Scarface

I climbed this:

Hitchhiking, mountain-climbing, ski-less skiing – I did in one day things I could only imagine and some things I had never imagined at all. Of these, hitchhiking was the most necessary because there was no other way to get to little Barnave from Valence (and to get there we took a train from Lyon). All the horror stories and warnings had succeeded in deterring me from hitchhiking before, but now there were three of us, two girls and Iohan, a veteran hitchhiker because, he said, people here are nice. And he was right. So right that between the five cars it took to reach our final destination, we never had to split up, as we’d feared. So right that I might consider hitchhiking again. So right that (and this is more likely) I might consider picking up hitchhikers one day because the drivers we met were conversational and because I understand the pain of rejection (though, actually, we were quite lucky and didn’t have to wait long between being dropped off by one car and picked up by another).

In Barnave, a mountain village of sixty or so in southwestern France, we slept in a temple on those blue mats used in gym class and wrestling matches. Both (the temple and the mats) were indispensable to Iohan’s sister, who is a trapeze artist and who hosted us because she lives in the house adjacent.

For a backyard she has the fields, the forests, and the mountains, and also one of the many vineyards that seem to make up the town. Wind tossed the clouds around unpredictably, and in the distance, it shook the grass of just one field, seeming eerily to touch nothing else. I noticed there, and on the drive there, the variety in the hills and mountains, because each peak that rises behind each other is different from that other. One is fully forested with evergreens. Another sprinkled with rocks. Another with dead grass and bushes. Another still frozen in snow. I counted at least five different greens.

At breakfast one friend scared the other and me, saying we’d better eat enough for the day ahead on the mountain. But in the face of necessity we survived those ten or so hours on apples, sweet biscuits, and water, some of which we bottled ourselves at a spring one-third of the way up the mountain. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Living in the mountains was enough, I thought, but in fact we had to hitchhike three times to reach Valcroissant, the site of the mountain we would climb.

“I didn’t know hiking would be this easy!” I smiled in the first car, into which I had crawled under the back door and half-sat, half-crouched over a box of nails and a hammer. “Oh, so you think we’ll be riding the whole time!” my friend shot back.

There is also a little church with a hostel at Valcroissant, which I am beginning to understand better. Few residents do not amount to few tourists, and it was a pair of tourists, actually, who drove us the final leg.

Vertically, we ended up covering nearly 2,000 meters; horizontally, perhaps ten kilometers there and ten kilometers back. I knew going into it that I would want to quit and it would become unbearable at some points. But more accurate is to say that your body seems to be able to carry on in these situations as long as your mind doesn’t know about it. And in fact I would have second winds, bursts of energy when I just wanted to run (I would pay for that later, in the days it took to recover), but I think that had more to do with impatience than energy.

The terrain here was as varied as the hills I’d seen earlier, if not more so. One hour we would be trampling over damp and dead leaves, the next we would be fording a cool spring. Or running through dirt and stones, or picking our way through grass and twigs. On one grassy knoll we walked within a few meters of a ram, lying so carefree we thought it might be sick (but probably not because it was gone on our way down). Sitting on a cliff almost worthy of Pride Rock, we eventually saw more like him, probably a dozen rams in the distance fading into the boulders behind them, except for a baby ram that somehow ended up nearby.

To top it off, untainted white snow survived into this late spring at the top of the mountain. I unwittingly wore ankle socks and capris, so Iohan dug a hole into the snow with each step, creating a path for us to follow. Uphill, that is. I didn’t consider that we would have to find a way back down, possibly because I was sick of the snow and just wanted to reach the summit.

Making our way downhill in the snow, it turned out, was the best part of the expedition. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there, but we slid down the slope in nothing but our shoes and T shirts! Terrifying but thrilling, difficult but efficient. Simply saying it doesn’t seem to convince me that I glided down a mountain, more than 1500 meters above sea level, riding the crest of the snow. In some places the snow was too soft, so we’d sink down past our knees, or I’d ride piggy back or on shoulders. But mostly I wanted to make it down myself and realized that this, in spirit, was exactly what I’d come out here to do.

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Reading: Dostoevsky, The Possessed
Listening to: Heart

Heart of Lyon

A woman I met briefly in Lyon compared the city to Budapest: in either, one can look down from the hills on the western part of the city (the "Buda" side), to see the river and the rest of the city. The main difference is that Lyon has not one but two main, surprisingly green rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, though they do converge. Indeed, in the hilltop apartment where we stayed two of the three nights, a window faced east (in the end I couldn't get myself up early enough to watch the sunrise), giving us a view of much of the city, the Saone, and the garden immediately below where we sat for breakfast.

It seems there was no shortage of high-altitude vantage points that offered breath-taking views of Lyon, with its red ceramic shingles and darker red chimneys that look like so many top hats tossed onto the roofs. But for this the best part of the city might be the Croix-Rousse (like Red Cross, but "Rousse" isn't quite red, more like fox red). I went there a couple times but even better than the panoramic views was the second evening there, when a light fell over the hill like none I can remember. I was initially unhappy that dusk came on because the eastern sky clouded over so ominously, but after a few meters we noticed a brightness in everything west of the stormy section of the sky, almost like night and day, as if we had stepped from one to the other. To describe it might be impossible, but if I could remember what an eclipse looked like, I'd probably compare it to that. Or like a painter had applied one new glowing color so lightly but evenly across the already colored sidewalks, faces, trees and clouds. It was a pink and orange that changed so quickly that when I looked back at my photo (main, above), I was afraid I might have changed the settings.

Nearby we also saw a cathedral, something meant to look like a mini-Eiffel Tower I think, and Roman ruins, amazingly. The maze of hand-laid stones were not much less impressive than the ruins in Rome, except that we could jump across these freely (I think so... didn't really think about the sacrilege at the time). Imagine our surprise when we walk past these and happen upon the Amphitheater of the Three Gauls. Row upon concentric row formed the half circle before the stage, which I hope is still in use, and then healthy green trees and lawns. The wind would blow leaves and other yellow-green specs from the foliage in misty waves, as well as whole clouds whose shadows we could see racing across the amphitheater.

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Reading: Vaclav Havel, Temptation
Listening to: David Bowie