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

Another weekend in Paris

My last couple days in Paris, last weekend that is, felt as close to bohemian as I ever may, for superficial reasons but perhaps understandable ones also. We lived out of a friend's friend's studio, with a curtain to separate the bathroom and making pasta every night (it's become a running joke), unintentionally talking into the sleeping hours rather than going out. The daytime, too, does not go as planned, so plans become pointless.

On one day we walk and walk and through Promenade Plantee and other gardens, and the cemetery where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and I'm sure some French people are buried. Wilde's grave was a flowing Egyptian-like sculpture (of a woman I think) on top of a block of stone "defaced" by proclamations of love to the playwright and hearts and kisses. But I really could not tell if it was defaced, or sanctioned by authorities, and in either case, if Wilde wanted this. I don't know how he could. We arrive some time later at Grand Palais hoping to see Dali and Arcimboldo in action. On the way my friend is sure we run into a bit of a celebrity, the ex-minister of culture, who holds open the exit at the subway for us, because he's a leftist and would do that kind of thing (take the metro, I mean). But it's a rainy day so many have the same idea as we do - i.e., the line at Grand Palais is not worth it so we settle for Petit Palais across the street, to see exhibitions on William Blake and the Byzantine Empire / Mount Athos.

On another day we take the rental bikes (a recent innovation in big French cities) to that bohemian stronghold, Montmartre, then walk past the sex shops and Moulin Rouge to the top of the hill, one of the best views to see all of Paris. In another way I've already seen all of Paris, thanks to the host of the other friend I met here. He gave me a quick driving tour of the city, hitting the Place de la Bastille, the Eiffel Tower ("See how the flowers bloom?" he said. "I arranged it just for you."), Arc de Triomphe (he says he's the only person in the city to drive around it twice at times like this), Les Invalides - basically the things I'd only want to see for a few seconds anyway.

That last day, we were lucky because the sun came out, so we could sit on the Seine waiting for our train. Surprisingly I couldn't tell which way the water flowed, but ducklings crept by periodically (five in all I think, or the same one five times), and sadly I think they had lost their mother.

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Reading: Camus, Exile and the Kingdom
Listening to: Janis Joplin

The spirit of protest

If I'm lucky, I thought, maybe I will get a taste of the demonstrations for which France is known. Columbia - which had its share of civil disobedience in fall 2007 when students went on a hunger strike against the university's lack of diversity - warns study abroad students to avoid similar conflicts in foreign countries. They have reason to fear, as even during the protests at the G20 summit in London, heralded for exemplifying nonviolent resistance in the civilized world, a nearby nonparticipant died of a heart attack after being shoved by police.

Here in the northern port of Boulogne-sur-Mer is the closest I've come, as fishermen have shut down the harbor (among others along the coast) to protest quotas on cod and sole. According to the New York Times, "fishermen have resorted to dumping fish that they had caught overboard before returning to port because of the quotas." It reminded me of summer 2007, the only time I've been fishing. Off the southern coast of Long Island, we had to throw a lot of fish back into the water because they were too small according to fishing regulations, although I did win a prize for catching the biggest fish that day.

News crews stand out in otherwise quiet Boulogne-sur-Mer. Mostly they sat around waiting for something to happen, but it was slightly ridiculous to do man-on-the-street reporting near the beach, filled mostly with English tourists. But at least now that I've seen the crowded harbor and smelled the salty waters hitting the beach, I can understand why anyone would visit this small town.

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Listening to: Bee Gees

The dangers of travel

My number was up, and today I learned what it is to have a stalker. In his Pumas, jeans, and white collared shirt, he might have even been younger than I am. At a time when I could not have predicted it - as I walked along the tourist-dotted harbor in the direction of the beach and in late afternoon - he began to follow me. I noticed his stares but was initially just annoyed to be near this obstinate-looking punk whose blond shaved hair was beginning to grow out. He was more subtle than to mimic all my movements and would stop from time to time to keep pace, but I hoped he just happened to be walking the same, popular route. Instead, when I got to the beach, he sat down the same two places where I sat down, so I'd had enough. There was no more question.

The options ran through my head. I wanted to strangle him. Or go up to him and say, "Stop following me!" But he probably didn't speak English and I don't speak French, which was likely why he singled me out. What I liked about the more cosmopolitan Paris was that I didn't stand out as much as I did in Budapest, but in little Boulogne-sur-Mer, I was a sore thumb with a bright red jacket.

I left quickly, dreading the sight of him each time I turned around. How could he be so stupid and overt? And even the busy streets were not enough comfort. What if he followed me all the way home? I considered calling the international emergency number, 112. Maybe there were cabs (unlikely). Maybe I could have stopped someone else on the street or in a shop to tell him the problem, although I don't know what that would have done. Ultimately I settled on the bus stop, asking some high school kids if there was a bus going where I was headed.

I met Alexander, the only one of them who spoke English and French (his dad on one side, his mother on the other). Though he didn't know which bus to take, he and his girlfriend Cindy offered to walk me home when I mentioned the stalker, whom I didn't see from that point on.

How much has changed from yesterday's sun to today's rain.

Old friend in an old town

Boulogne-sur-Mer, along the northern coast of France, has a population of as much as 100,000. A friend I haven't seen in over two years teaches high school philosophy here, and within minutes of meeting at the train station yesterday, we were discussing educational systems and climbing the hilly roads to his flat as if the two years had been two days.

"If you look out this window," he said once we reached his place, "you'll see the town's only two attractions." To the left, a cathedral I hear every hour, to the right, a belfry indicating the castle and walls that surround the old part of town where he lives.

If my writing professor allowed me to use the word, I would call the day perfect. In a rare move, the sun showed its face, so we picnicked around the corner, on a grassy hill inside the walls. I am but shouldn't be surprised at how old the town looks, with typical cobblestones and uneven streets and low houses. I didn't stop for the museum inside the castle, but saw my first moat, which I guess is one of the reasons tourists actually come here, to my surprise. There's even a tourism office, er, booth, but Iohan says even a town of 100 has that. He adds, the tourists are often British because of the historical relationship and because England is supposed to be so close one can see it like Alaskans see Russia. And then there are those who swim the English channel.

We lay on the grass and under the bright sun, which would have been unbearable if not for the wind that passed over at just the right times. We ate and talked physics, politics, and inescapably, philosophy - Kant, Hegel, Pascal, wrapped around our own meandering thoughts. This is the turn our conversations always take, clearly because of his profession, but has it anything to do with the culture, too? It is not as if, in the United States, high school students are required to take philosophy courses.

Then he graded essays while I sat on the ledge of the wall in a familiar scene: reading (in this case, finishing Kafka) as the sun sank over the water.

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Reading: Borges, A Universal History of Infamy
Listening to: Carole King

Art in Paris

As in Vienna, I felt rushed through the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay because there's so much to do that even with three weeks in France, time is limited. But also as with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, I found many pleasant surprises throughout the museums, such as the Louvre's Psyche revived by Cupid's kiss above (Antonio Canova), which may have just become one of my favorites, next to Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Ugolino and his sons in d'Orsay. I don't know too much of the story, even though Dante's Divine Comedy was assigned reading, except that he was punished for treason and his sons tried to sacrifice themselves for him. This sculpture is probably more fitting to the dark context, but I prefer the white marble version at the Met.

Why do I prefer it? Why do I like so much the paintings and sculptures that I do? I don't understand much of the art I see, and much of my limited knowledge is based an a required art class that I hated. In some cases I see and appreciate the composition (La belle jardinière, Raphael, Louvre) ...


... the lighting and control over the time of day (Sérénité, Henri Martin, d'Orsay) ...

the vanishing point (Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878, Monet, d'Orsay) ...

... the movement (Chaumes de Cordeville à Auvers-sur-Oise, Van Gogh, d'Orsay).

But mostly the opinion comes from a basic but deep-seated emotional reaction. The art smiles, it calms, it inspires and stabs, it hurts, it depresses, it lifts. and I'm irritated that I can't explain it and amazed that static images can do so much.

It's a fantasy.

(Le chevalier aux fleurs, The knight of the flowers, Rochegrosse, d'Orsay).

Lunch with a Parisian

Isn't it amazing that a one or two hour meal can turn into five or six hours? My friend took me to the far south of Paris on Easter Sunday, to the apartment of her Moroccan friend, who made us a traditional, three-course lunch. We began with a carrot-tomato-orange salad while waiting for the fish and vegetables in the rice cooker - brilliant! I had never thought to use one for anything other than rice, and I had forgotten I could finally have good fish here. It's available in Hungary, but we're comparing a landlocked country with a Mediterranean one.

But nothing beats Morocco, my new friend says in between sips of alcoholic cider. The weather there is perfect, at least north near the Mediterranean. Rachid says it's the most well off country in Africa after South Africa (I don't know if that's true, but it's up there) and unlike neighbor Algeria, ethnic tensions are low despite the differences in Arabs and Berbers. He is of the latter, but speaks the languages of both fluently, as well as French, plus some English and Spanish. He also pointed out Morocco was the first country to recognize the independence of the thirteen colonies. I didn't even know Morocco was in a position to do so, given its colonial past, but so it did.

I had, then, to ask about Camus, my Algerian-born existentialist hero, but Rachid is not a fan. Camus purports to represent the universal, when he is more confined to context than he would probably admit. As is any writer. You can't read late Nietzsche without considering the syphilis that distorted his psyche, Rachid says. Context! His example: if you tell me you went to a protest around the Bastille, I will guess it was a socialist protest.

We had planned to go to Musée d'Orsay after lunch, but by the time we got to dessert, others were probably having dinner, and we wanted to make it to the final mass at Notre Dame. I couldn't believe the efficiency, that Rachid could do so much for that meal with so little in his small apartment. He laid out chocolate-covered pears on a bed of pistachios, so I pulled out some almonds to add. "You carry almonds with you?" he smiled. I told him I had a pear, too. "The girl who carries almonds and pears," he answered. "That should be the title of a book."

He walked us to the cathedral, on the way stopping to show us the plaque dedicated to Lenin on his street, Rue Beaunier. "See, Lenin lived here from 1908 to 1909," Rachid said. "So we're neighbors! Just 100 years apart." For now, anyway. He has lived in Paris for 15 years and moved around a lot. How much? "Beaucoup, beaucoup," is his only answer, except to add that this is quite normal. When we passed Beauvoir Hotel, he said the name source used to go there with Sartre for a little menage a trois. He didn't stay for the service, but the day with him was ultimately more of a celebration than anything said inside the Gothic halls.

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Listening to: Xavier Naidoo

Intro to Paris, over books, wine, and food

The semester at Central European University technically ended more than two weeks ago, and with my arrival in France yesterday morning, the nearly two months of traveling around Europe has officially begun. Most of that travel will be in France - hence the blog title change - where I begin in Paris, hosted by a friend whose host is kind enough to lend me a room. I have yet to get to know the septuagenarian who owns this apartment and who speaks little English, but this room is telling: shelves upon shelves sag under books on Rodin and the history of film, or by Hugo and Verne, or a translation of Gulliver's Travels that reminds me I need to reread this favorite; cupids and curlicues are carved into the ceiling and walls, and against the walls sit/hang black-and-white photos (I can't tell if they're aesthetic or historical), a Klimt-like painting of a violin in a kitchen, a red-and-yellow Soviet tapestry bearing Lenin's face; I write by the light coming through the double glass doors that open out onto a balcony, which overlooks Boulevard Voltaire in the 11th arrondissement, and by the light of two lamps made by their owner out of whiskey and champagne bottles; the best part are things like the lamps all around the apartment, knick-knacks he has made out of metal or wood or simply picked up off the street.

The fatigue and disappointing weather limited what I did yesterday, but in the evening, friends new and old put together a simple dinner and our conversation for those more than four hours hinted at things to come: fashion; school; living with French speakers, while in Hungary we lived with people from our program; organic and genetically-modified food; wine; France's protest culture; the Algerian War; colonialism; movies; differing views on hygiene; religion.

After a few days here, the plan is to move gradually south, hitting Lyon and Marseilles in the coming weeks, before heading to Berlin, Geneva, and then back to Budapest one final time.

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Reading: Kafka, The Castle
Listening to: Lily Allen

Tavasz itt van!

Some kind of Croatian Easter display...

...with two faces...

...in front of St. Stephen's Basilica. Yes, spring is here!

Hajra, Magyarorszag!

Wednesday morning I watched President Obama on TV, skirting a request at the G20 Summit in London for projections on the World Cup, and in the evening, I watched Hungary shut out Malta, 3-0, at the Puskas Ferenc Stadium. I have little to compare it to, having been to one professional game each of basketball, baseball, and American football, so the drunken cheers, face paint, and buses of fans were probably on par with any other game.

But I think more likely, the excitement was heightened this time because Hungary had just beaten Albania over the weekend and has a decent chance of making it to the World Cup next year, the first time since 1986. I almost didn't go because the 35,000 seats were sold out, until a ticket became available at the last minute.

The wave went through the crowd at least five times in a row, dotted with cheers of "Magyarok!" (Hungarians) "Gyere! Gyere!" (Come on) "Ya, ya, Hungaria!" (apparently they refer to the country as Hungaria, too, not just Magyarorsyag), and "Hajra, Magyarorszag!" (that I can't translate but how much meaning can a cheer have anyway?). Those, along with the red-white-and-green flags, were new to me because the games I'd been to brought out regional pride rather than an entire country united.

I also was not used to the smoking, but I guess fans needed a substitute because alcohol is banned. Or people just showed up drunk, downing their last few drops at the gate and tossing another can into the trash heap before facing the security guards to be searched (not that they really searched women or children). At a Jets game two seasons ago, I thought it was funny that people received capless beer bottles so they couldn't throw caps at the players, but I guess they should just be happy to have the beer at all.



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Reading: Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell
Listening to: Julieta Venegas
Watching: The Office