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

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

Red, white, and green

In emails and local publications, I'd been reading warnings about the violence that has become typical on March 15, equivalent to Hungary's Fourth of July. I even read lists of hot spots to avoid, but yesterday was mild compared to the egg-pelting of years past, especially the destruction of 2006, following a leaked tape of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitting he'd lied about the dismal economy. I say mild, partly because I didn't get out much, but mainly because, aside from a few arrests (including one person with a case of eggs), there were few reports of conflicts.

But expectations of unrest were understandable. As seen in 2006, Hungary has been suffering economically since long before the current crisis; little has been said since an International Monetary Fund bailout was announced in October, and the European Union's rejection this month of a proposed $240 billion bailout isn't making things easier for Gyurcsany, whose Magyar Szocialista Part (MSZP) surely won't survive the next election.

I passed by a rally organized by Jobbik Szervezete, an extreme right wing party, but by the looks of the thousands-strong crowd at Deak Ferenc Square, you wouldn't know it's a minor party. I understood little, except for the choruses demanding Gyurcsany's resignation, that much scarier when you saw the hardliners dressed in something resembling black military fatigues. They held (and wore) flags of all kinds: the official flag, the party's flag, the old Arpad flag (associated with the Nazis, among others).

Everywhere, riot police lined the streets, many of which were closed for much of the day, as were the square in front of St. Stephen's Basilica (so I had to walk another way home) and the Chain Bridge. On the other side of the Danube River and away from Jobbik Szervezete, the main opposition party Fidesz held its own rally. I arrived at the tail end, so there was only time to get forralt bor (hot wine) and overcooked chicken, but two days earlier I'd caught a taste of what the conservatives were all about. As it does every year, Fidesz hosted a small memorial to General Jozsef Schweidel on the street that bears his name. He was one of the 13 Martyrs of Arad executed by the Austrians on 6 Oct. 1849 (hence the street named after this date) after Hungary's failed War for Independence from the Habsburgs.

Five paragraphs deep, and I am just now mentioning this event, but that's appropriate because much of the historical significance is lost on March 15 (when the abortive revolution began with a reading of a 12-point list of demands). Instead of commemorating the events of 1848-49, Hungarians are more likely to hold political platforms to criticize the incumbents, which indeed is what Fidesz did at the memorial. In all fairness, they also sang the national anthem and recited "Nemzeti dal," the national song Sandor Petofi penned for the occasion. There's now a bridge and radio station dedicated in his honor, but details of his death are still unclear.

Much less political are the activities on the Chain Bridge, decorated end to end with the country's flag and stages meant to give a snapshot of life in the mid-19th century. Specifically: horse-drawn carriages, a game of jumping over a stick, and some kind of ash-covered metalsmith. I liked the blown up black-and-white photos that stood alone, but stopped taking pictures after no one could tell me who they were. Some wear paper hats that look as though they're off to war, and everyone (and I do mean everyone) wears the red-white-and-green pendant called kokarda. Anyway it probably beats our Independence Day fireworks.

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Reading: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Watching: John Merriman, "The Origins of World War I" (Yale lecture via AcademicEarth.org)
Listening to: Elton John, Greatest Hits

The countryside, caves, and a castle

Miskolc is a university town two hours northeast of Budapest, but I'm afraid in the two days out there I didn't see much of the university or the town. Instead much of my attention went to the drive (to Miskolc, as well as to Aggtelek) and to the sights: a castle, a cave (pictured), and a bath inside a cave. On the way we stopped for gas, which is paid for after filling up the tank, the reverse of what I'm used to. "But what if people just drive off without paying?" I asked my friend. The answer was cameras, both at the gas station and all over the highway, which also means drivers can receive fines (for speeding, or anything else) a month after the fact.

California has conditioned me to love driving and the whole process of a drive, but even then a cruise through the countryside seems like it'll always be an unexpected pleasure. It was better often to watch rather than talk during the hours driving from Miskolc to Aggtelek and back: brown leaves with hints of burgundy and gold still clung to the trees as if it were autumn, and clouds hung low in the sky, so low some wrapped around villages and mountains like smoke, and others moved so quickly over the land we seemed to be driving alongside them. I forget too that these highways pass through villages simultaneously cut off from the world (a woman pumping water in front of her home) and connected to it (satellites on top of every other house).

In Aggtelek we descended 270 steps to reach the two-million-year-old cave shared with Slovakia. Like clouds, the stalactites (from the ceiling), stalagmites (from the gound), and stalagnates (combining the two) form recognizable images, from Santa Claus to dolphins to Romeo and Juliet, and they continue to form. Others have fallen (some more than once), but the tallest stalagmite is 19 meters, and in Giant's Hall (main photo) the ceiling is 27 meters high. The entire UNESCO site is 25 kilometers, so although our tour was under two hours, I can see how others last for seven.

That was conducted in Hungarian, but earlier, I took a shorter, bilingual tour of Diosgyor Castle in Miskolc. Aside from my friend and I, just four teenage girls went on the tour, so it was as though I had a private guide because I was the only one who needed English. It's dedicated to King Louis the Great, who ruled Hungary and Poland in the 14th century, so the small castle has a wax museum depicting the life of the times, which evidently meant leprosy from an appalling sewage system (dumping trash out windows), belief in a hell modeled after Where the Wild Things Are, and non-lethal combats as sport (the winner gets a flower). The guide said this was the largest collection of wax figures in Central Europe - odd for just half a dozen small rooms, but there was a lot of supporting cast.

As for the castle itself, four stone block towers rise up from the corners, with similarly wrought walls and a bridge connecting to the surrounding land. Most of the space is occupied by a courtyard with a platform at the east end. Not much fills the small rooms, but to reach some you can walk underground, and (better yet) others you can reach by climbing four or five sets of stairs inside the towers, where it is wonderful to look out over Miskolc as the sun sets.

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Reading: Ferenc Molnar, The Paul Street Boys
Listening to: Sheryl Crow, "Sweet Child of Mine"

Redemption

That is, if I needed to be redeemed, today gave me enough fodder to justify (culturally, educationally, historically) coming to Hungary. I generally grimace at all things touristy but went on a tour this afternoon thinking it can/should be done once. Then, our guide (Jeff, I thought, but he didn’t respond when called it) made a case for his existence, though I’m pretty sure it was unintentional: past halftime, we were asking which nearby cities he recommends visiting, which led to a spiel on remembering to read the guidebooks and go to the tourist hot spots because one can, believe it or not, learn a lot from them. Now that I think of it, he was referring to the Disneyworld in the Czech Republic. Previously I had been attracted to Hungary’s communist past, revolutionary pride, and developing status, but now on to more specific points of interest:

• Jeff put on a German accent and tells us what he says other tour guides would tell other tourists: two lions greet you at the entrance of the famous bridge over the Danube, and when it was first erected, people admired and praised the bridge as the first (after Vienna's) to connect East and West, but one little boy remarked that the lions had no tongues, which put the creator of the bridge to such shame that he jumped off said bridge. Bull shit, as it turned out. Moral of the story: don’t believe everything guides tell you. After all, they’re in the business of “edu-tainment,” in his words. I thought that was a good way for Jeff to begin our tour. (Disclaimer: the above photo was taken by a friend, not me.)
  


• I think the East-West part was true.


• At first I was cynical that he should show us hotels, but those, too, had their redeeming qualities. Namely, they broke ground in ushering in Western capitalism, therefore symbolizing goulash communism, Hungary’s soft approach to that craze of the second half of the 20th century.


• An even better symbol is the nearby McDonald’s, the first to open doors in a communist country. For its debut, journalists hailed the event as groundbreaking and Hungarians turned out in droves, dressed to impress.


• Hungary’s is the second largest synagogue in the world, after the one on Fifth Avenue. A fellow student pointed out: one would think Israel could hold its own in that race.


• It’s built in the Moorish style in homage to the days when Jews and Muslims got along. Later synagogues included organs, flouting the Christian patent, because Hungarian Jews couldn’t get enough of that Beethoven.


• After World War II, the best preserved (not entirely sure what that means) group of Jewish people were those in Hungary.


• The country’s name derives from the initial impression that the first settlers here were related to the Huns, which despite a physical resemblance at the time, has been disproved. In fact, they were genetically much closer to the Mongols. (Two words: lion’s tongues).