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

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.

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

Terror Haza

If the House of Terror did not enclose such a grim legacy - Hungary's more than four decades of terror under Nazi and then Soviet occupations - it would almost succumb to the absurdity in much of tourism. The museum alternates between the poignant (interviews with former prisoners, fascist and Communist propaganda, a preserved basement of torture and incarceration) and the cheesy (a video of actors changing clothes as they found new roles under changing regimes, a pig because collective welfare made it difficult to own your own). I don't know if cheesy is the right word, because I couldn't decide whether to admire the curators for mixing history with symbolism (as that would make them artistic) or dismiss them for trying too hard to please tourists (as that would make them cheesy, like the Buda labyrinth).

But if there's any place a tourist should see in Budapest, this is probably it. The Terror House grabs attention easily, for a few reasons: 1) its name, even if people first think it's a Halloween attraction; 2) its odd location on Andrassy Avenue, known for shopping and its UNESCO World Heritage recognition; and 3) its facade, an overhang with the word "TERROR" carved out like stencils so that the sun writes the letters on the sidewalk below.

Beyond the initial impressions, the museum delivers. This is probably due to its small size, but I've never seen a museum presented as such a complete package that is simultaneously concise and dramatic. The first image that greets visitors is the wall of victims: thousands of low relief, black-and-white head shots, about a square foot each, depicting the deceased and inscribed along a central wall that spans all three floors and the elevator. In the basement is the smaller portion of the wall, that of the victimizers. Their faces are smaller, but they have names and dates, many showing the victimizers to be alive still - hence the debate over what should be done with them and whether they should be allowed into public office.

Like the wall (and like a good meal), the exhibition rooms also rely on the power of presentation for impact. I've realized most of them are works of art in themselves, often for their symbolic significance. One room made manifest the dualism of oppression under fascists and Communists by screening footage on either side of the same wall in the center of the room, Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other. Working with the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, both at different times controlled Hungary, which seemed to trade one form of totalitarianism for another.

Another room shipped us off to Siberia, as the condemned Hungarians were once expelled. Horizontal wood paneling lined the walls, with windows simulated by TV screens showing the landscape roll by. A carpet map began in Hungary at the entrance and ended in the Soviet far east at the exit. Then there was (what I call) the Warhol room of '60s ads denoting the prosperity and consumption under socialism; the Catholic room, along the length of which ran a huge white cross "exposed" by floorboards pulled aside; and the black-and-white Gabor Peter room, white where the Communist police chief enjoyed a clean office, black where the Jewish Hungarian served a prison sentence under the system he once controlled.

All of this trimming disappears, however, once you walk through the rooms of the basement. For solitary confinement, you have the choice of a closet big enough to hold one person, a larger room just three feet high, or a wet cell. There's a Hungarian flag with the Soviet emblem cut out, a common image during the 1956 Revolution. A gallows is intact. Interviews run on a loop, men and women lamenting the senselessness of their subjugation. A young woman reads the names of the dead. And in the background plays a Hungarian version of Lili Marleen.

Travel literature

Next on my reading list is Hungarian literature, which would happen to be perfect for later today when I visit Eger, a historical city within two hours northeast of Budapest. Somewhere I had heard vaguely of Geza Gardonyi's Egri Csillagok (Eclipse of the Crescent Moon, or technically, Stars of Eger), required reading for all Hungarian students. That's precisely what I wanted to read, the country's equivalent of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird. But I wasn't clearly reminded of it until a few days ago, not enough time to find a copy in English (let alone read it) before the day trip.

The best I could do was stumble upon an online, Hungarian version of the novel and translate it section by section through Google - wait, I've just realized I could have used the URL to translate the entire page instantly. No matter. I couldn't even get past the first of five sections, realizing that it was not enough to read a spotty computer translation, even just to get the gist of the plot. Naturally, plenty of words didn't make it through the translator (average of one per sentence, maybe more), and sometimes those that did were incorrectly translated. But I did learn that what a Hungarian friend told me was true, that English is simpler than Hungarian in that the latter has more precise words for ideas, which is why Hungarian texts are generally longer than their English counterparts.

Guess I'll have to wait to get a hard copy, but Egri Csillagok does seem worth reading. Among other topics, the book, published in 1899, is set in the historical context of the 1552 Siege of Eger, in which the city and its sturdy castle mark the rare achievement of fending off an Ottoman invasion.

On a related note, I just finished The History of Hungary After the Second World War, 1944-1980. That is to say, I reached the last page of the book, skimming or even skipping whole pages at a time. The problem I hadn't realized when checking out the book was that it was published in 1986, and as relatively progressive as Hungary was at the time, this didn't prevent the authors from propagating the party line. I could find no criticism of the Communist party, just applause for its successes, scant retelling of the 1956 Revolution, and even omission of the execution of Imre Nagy, the prime minister arrested during the Soviet crackdown on the revolution and not properly buried until 1989. The Hungarian writers also had some minor translation difficulties and focused far too much on political scheming and statistics, rather than events and implications. The search continues.

Meanwhile, off to Eger!

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Listening to: Supertramp, "Bloody Well Right"
Watching: Muhammad Yunus' speech at Columbia

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)"

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"

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).