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.

Boldog Nonapot!

Yesterday was International Women's Day, so maybe I should have given voice to the quiet feminist in me, but the commemorations around Budapest were nearly as quiet, so I'd rather use the holiday as an excuse to make some observations about romance. In fact I didn't know about Nonap until reading a sign that mentioned it. But after that I did notice women carrying gifts from men and Eliza Doolittle's approaching people in restaurants and cars at stoplights to peddle their flowers. And one friend always brings flowers to his mother and has lunch with her on Nonap.

I don't think I would be exaggerating in saying Hungarians treat Nonap almost like Valentine's Day (plus I've just watched the V-Day episode of The Office and my sense of time is a little off). Not that they don't celebrate Feb. 14, too, because there were plenty of red candy boxes and other useful heart-shaped things in stock a month ago. But, strangely, I was in Vienna that day and was hardpressed to find any Valentine paraphernalia there (nor in Bratislava).

In just about each European city I've visited so far, though, love is evidently in the air. In Rome, it could have been that the city just inspires romance. My friend and I even received roses during our last dinner there (OK, they were dying, and we never figured out if they came from the waiter or the septuagenarian who winked at us, but still). But I don't think it was Rome. Public displays of affection reign everywhere on the continent, and somehow the couples transcend the realm of distastefulness and are actually sweet to see.

Day trip: Bratislava

[Click on headline for the Facebook album]

With Anna Karenina's suicide fresh in my mind, I got on a train to Bratislava, though I was only spending Friday there en route to Vienna for the weekend. It seems few visit the Slovakian capital except while passing through, and the winter cold made it even less appealing to visitors than other seasons, so I almost felt that we had the quiet city to ourselves.

As if as testament, my friends and I had trouble thinking of famous Slovaks, unless you count those who made Czechoslovakian history, and most of those associated themselves with the Czech Republic after the split. Jeff, our tour guide in Vienna and Budapest, said it was a shame but due in large part to the ambiguity of the Slovakian identity, a tool mainly of the rural nationalists who struggled for an independent state. It's true that Slovakia probably had/has relatively less bearing on international history, but I think it also seems less significiant because of a superficial, self-perpetuating cycle in which we're taught little about the country, so we teach little about the country.

Understand our irritation, then, that such an unvisited city should newly be on the Euro and relatively expensive, while the more popular Budapest is still on the Forint and more affordable. We should probably shed Hungarian attachments when crossing the border, but the difficulty is apparent when we keep trying to speak Hungarian (what little we know) to Slovaks. Then again, that probably has more to do with foreign languages in general, as people often confuse them when learning more than one, no matter how different.

An effect of my limited knowledge of Bratislava was to wander the day away, surprised by the Gingerbread-house-like designs of some buildings and amused by statues that didn't take themselves too seriously. At some point I always end up roaming the streets alone, or actually, allowing myself to get lost, like taking apart a car to see if you can put it back together. I took that time to see the requisite castle, New Bridge (main photo), and Danube River, where I would have snuck on to a deserted boat if a gate hadn't cut if off. But most of the time I didn't know where I was, walking east when I thought I was walking north.

As much as I love navigating and as much as my navigational skills improve with each trip, maps can be less simple than you expect. There can be a Vorosmarty Ter as well as a Vorosmarty Utca, or an Antelope Road as well as a North Antelope Road. My most recent epiphany is that I expect to look at a map and follow simple directions, only to immediately lose the correspondence between the paper and the street, i.e., reading the one and walking down the other. I expect something more like a GPS, as if I had a broader perspective and were to go outside myself to watch and guide from above.

I rely instead on instinct (successful much of the time) and strangers, and never worry because things always work out. While lost in Bratislava, I was lucky enough, as the dark descended and compounded the cold, that the next bus I saw would take me to the train station. I was one of the first to arrive, but the last to board because, succumbing to the negative temperatures, I bought a glass of wine just so I could sit next to a radiator at a restaurant and lose track of time in Sartre.

A possible high point of the day, I'm almost sorry to report, might have had little to do with Bratislava itself: from inside the evening bus, I watched a light snow fall unlike any I'd seen. Not sleet, not flakes, not powder; I can only liken it to sand that reflected the city lights the way clouds do, sand that the wind effortlessly twirled into a Flamenco dancer or dragged along the road as if by magnets.

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Reading: Sartre, "Nausea"
Listening to: John Legend, "PDA"

Hungary - photo album

[Click on headline for the Facebook album]

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Reading: The Budapest Sun
Watching: Simpsons, "Lisa the Drama Queen"
Listening to: Foo Fighters, "Best of You"

Fries with that goulash?

Probably, the surfeit of McDonald's (McDonald's's?) and UPS's in Budapest shouldn't surprise me because, I've come to realize, I don't think twice about the Ikea's and Toyotas and other foreign brands in the United States. I might get used to it, but the cognitive dissonance (if that's what it is) comes from a number of reasons. In the first place, I thought only those in the United States were foolish enough to buy U.S. cars. A similar line of thinking follows for Pizza Hut's and Burger King's.

But there's a difference between foreign companies operating in the United States and U.S. companies operating abroad. If the United States is a melting pot, then it makes sense that outside companies would want to tap into that market and that the different cultures bring their different cuisines, clothes, and customs. On the other hand, when I see Sean John in Budapest or KFC in Vietnam, it seems to have less to do with diversity and more to do with: 1) a desire to Westernize, and 2) the intrusion of U.S. businesses.

What I like in all this, though, is the forward motion of globalization; I admit, I fancy the idea of a world government. There will be some casualties, as the famous Mediterranean diet proves. But there's some credence to the notion that as the United States (or any country) exports its culture via films, food, fashion, or what have you, other countries will better understand it. And vice versa. It doesn't seem that much different than the democratic peace theory (liberalist belief that we should spread democracy because democracies don't go to war with each other). But I don't know what potential this has. As a friend told me, and as I saw in Vietnam, globalization or Westernization may not mean democracy or civil rights; they may not get further than Britney Spears and Indiana Jones.

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Reading: Chistopher Duggan, "A Concise History of Italy" (slow but worthwhile read)
Watching: The Royal Tenenbaums (why didn't anyone make me watch this sooner?)
Listening to: Kelly Clarkson, "How I Feel"

Alice in ... Central Europe?

That I should end up studying at Central European University and that it should turn out so well resembles my fate at Columbia: each is a result of negligible research and lots of luck (not that I believe in luck, whatever that is). Basic facts about CEU I should have known, I didn't.

For instance: George Soros funded the university, which is part of the reason Russia in all seriousness believes it to be a haven for conspirators who want to overthrow the Kremlin. My Russian foreign policy professor mentioned so in class today, and considering Soros' contributions to the 1989 revolutions, it's not so crazy (he deems himself "responsible for the 'Americanization' of eastern Europe" according to the New Statesman). The professor went on to tell us about a former student who applied for a job at the Russian foreign ministry, which turned her away after seeing CEU on her CV. The general recommendation if you want to work for the Russian government: downplay your Western education. How ironic, after Russia invited so many Westerners (including Jeff Sachs, Columbia celebrity economist extraodinaire) to help with rebuilding directly after the Cold War.

Other, more relevant facts I should have known: CEU is a graduate school on a strange quarter system, so I'll be done here in March. Also, the only really Hungarian thing about the school is its location, as students, teachers, curriculum, etc. are generally international. So although I'm "immersed" by taking courses like any grad student here, it was not what I had expected immersion to mean. A bubble indeed.

The role of Lady Luck, then, is to prove that none of that really matters. Although my conditions have been a sign of poor planning, they also signify to me what Camus has said, that you can find pleasure in nearly anything. I don't think it is a contradiction to reject the nonsense of fate or luck but believe that everything ultimately works out. I get to finish the term with months to travel. I study refugee law with people from the countries we discuss or Russian foreign policy with people who remember Yeltsin's election. I constantly run into other students I recognize, the school is so small (population: 1,500).

And I find other ways to meet Hungarians. One such recent friend asked me last night, "How do you like Budapest?"

"Well, if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be very happy here," I said.

When he asked what makes me unhappy, I said nothing, that happiness is a choice and I'm always happy. I didn't notice the potential incongruity, but he tried to work it out: "So if you didn't like Budapest you would be unhappy, but you are always happy... So you are happy everywhere?"

That seems about right.

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Reading: Melanie A. Sully, "A Contemporary History of Austria"
Listening to: Josh Groban, "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)"

Conversation with a Hungarian

I couldn't help but notice the "Cocaine" printed boldly on Sylvia's bright blue tee, so she pulled out a can with the same logo from the counter. "It's about 10 times stronger than Red Bull," she said, then noticing my reaction, "Yeah, it's an odd name to give a drink."

In the few minutes before that exchange, she had only spoken scant English to take my order and Hungarian to the other patrons, so I had timidly considered asking whether she knew the significance of what she wore. Sylvia turned out to be one of the first locals I've come across who spoke English proficiently and I told her as much.

"You Americans, all you need to know is English and you're fine," Sylvia said. "But Hungarian doesn't go very far, so I don't understand why more people here don't learn English. Especially downtown where the tourists are."

Neither do I, but it seems times are changing. She had to learn English in primary school, though she's been out of the education system for at least half a decade. But now her brother is finishing up secondary school, where he's required to learn two languages. On Americans knowing English, though, I tend to agree more with Eddie Izzard; about two minutes in, he pokes fun at the British for not taking up any foreign languages.

What's more, Sylvia spoke French and German, more so when she worked on a French cruise liner sailing from here to Amsterdam. She now stewards for a Swiss ship eight months out of the year and told me how the company set up an office in Cyprus to avoid Swiss taxes. The rationale of the taxes, she thinks, is to deter people from applying for permanent residence, for which they are eligible after working at a Swiss company for a number of years. I suppose no one wants residence in Cyprus.

I happened to catch her during the passenger ship's down time, but business also wasn't booming at her winter job, a cafe in the central fifth district. I was the only real guest for the hour that we talked, the others being friends and fellow employees in the neighborhood. This is normal for the season, but the dearth reminded her of Budapest's street riots in 2006, which cut tourism in half. Sylvia was sailing at the time, but the news and friends and family told her about the fires and violence that erupted in response to a failing economy and impotent government. She didn't know the solution, but the protests - which were likened to 1956 and 1989 - weren't it. "It just hurt our economy even more," she said. "The street is not the answer."

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Listening to: Coldplay, "Viva La Vida"

Curbside parking

Notice, especially, the white lines drawn on the sidewalk and street in the picture (bottom left). Not only do drivers park half on the street, half on the sidewalk, authorities make it easier by demarcating just where to do it. My adviser at Central European University explained that more cars inundated Budapest than it could handle, so people park this way, or entirely on the sidewalk. Kind of makes the whole parking-on-the-driveway and driving-on-the-parkway seem sensible.

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Watching: CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "Scream Bloody Murder" (and soon, the inauguration!)
Listening to: Groove Theory, "Tell Me"

Televizió

Shows like The Simpsons or Sesame Street seem internationally recognizable and popular enough that they'd be translated into hundreds of languages, but I was surprised by some of the other offerings I came across: Letterman, Malcolm in the Middle, King of Queens, Made, even my sustenance, Gilmore Girls. There were also more music channels than I knew existed, including at least three different MTV channels. I figured a show had to establish itself before it was exported, but maybe this just reflects a (sometimes absurd) desire to Westernize.

While I had VH1 going in the background, I heard a commercial for some kind of green card lottery. It gave the address for a website where people could learn about a program through which the U.S. government purportedly raffles off a few thousand green cards every year, so come live/work/study and live the American dream!

My view of immigration is extreme and it is that we should just throw open the floodgates. We have zero control over where we are born so why should that determine where we live and die? Perhaps there is some credence to the fear of permitting dangerous foreigners, to the goal of preserving culture, to the need for order. But the prerogative of free mobility often outweighs those concerns. Besides, we are all part of the world community, as Vonnegut writes in one of his short stories, I forget which.

This affects me little, except for the ridiculous bureaucracy that travel entails. When I prepared for my trip to Vietnam, I called the INS, which told me I must have a passport, which I don't because I'm still a Vietnamese citizen but left the country too soon to get paperwork for a passport. When I prepared for Budapest, the consulate told me I needed a visa since I'm not a U.S. citizen, but that also was untrue. All I have is a reentry permit to return to the United States, but even that I question because a friend told me today that he doesn't have one, as it's only necessary for travel longer than a year (a waste of a few hundred dollars). Now we wait to see if I can travel around Europe.

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).