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

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

Our humble abode

To get beyond the surrealism of a new city, to feel that you have actually left home and shifted your existential status in relation to the rest of the world, becomes easier with the help of local architecture. Although there is much to learn and describe about the design of Budapest, my first thoughts go to the construction of apartments and similar buildings, like mine pictured. It seems a common Hungarian solution to at least one architectural challenge is to build apartments around a courtyard, allowing more opportunity for windows. The idea may not differ so much from the shafts of Manhattan, but there is something much more thrilling about coming and going through the courtyard with the dwellings of neighbors rising around you.

Inside our apartment, though, I guess I ended up shafted anyway. My room makes dorms look spacious, anomalous to the rest of the apartment with its 14-foot ceilings, which makes me think space is poorly distributed. But I knew what I was getting into when we signed the lease, and it appeals to my minimalist tendencies. The only part I find strange is that I so easily accepted the windowless conditions, having forgotten what a fuss I made about finding a room with a view in Vietnam. No matter. I sit now in our airy living room, which if the sun were out and the blinds drawn would glow with natural light. The blinds themselves are a funny thing, too. They're heavy with wood bars to cover the large windows, so to open or close them is borderline hazardous and requires pulling or loosening a thick cloth strap.

Laundry also entails more effort than usual because most people have washing machines but not dryers, so we hang dry our clothes. I can't complain, though, about the heated racks in the bathrooms, which in many homes include a shower far removed from a toilet. Most toilets have round metal buttons (as opposed to levers) to flush, though I saw one at Central European University with a pad instead. The doors, as with those in the rest of the place, lock only by key. That always adds extra time entering and exiting (so we're screwed in case of fire), and explains why there are so many locksmiths wherever we go. Otherwise things are quite 'normal,' including kitchens, although real estate agents like to say that American-style kitchens are those that meld into a living room or some other part of a house, and everything else, I suppose, is un-American.

Home is where the heart (and blood and sweat and tears) is

Last night was a szendvics (sound it out) that began and ended well, even if it was filled with a series of paying avoidable fines, getting lost after bedtime, and dragging over-sized suitcases up stairs.

After staying in the dorms for a few frustrating days, all the students seemed to find an apartment that worked, in my case a triple with two balconies, furnishings, and wireless for $1400 a month. My friends and I met the landlord at 9:30 p.m., signed the papers, and got the keys. We were so sick of apartment-hunting and so happy to have a place of our own we decided to go grab our yet-to-be-unpacked stuff from the dorm and move in the same night. Probably our first mistake.

It would have taken a lot to ruin the night, but the gods certainly tried. The first omen appeared on the metro, which generally works like car insurance (or for Margaret Levi-loving taxpayers, it's like quasi-voluntary compliance): authorities trust that you'll buy a metro ticket, and they'll only check to confirm you have one when you don't. Ultimately, it was my friend, not me, who was caught without a ticket on our way back to the dorm from the apartment, but the 6000-forint fine put a damper on the night for all of us (it's only $30, but that's twice as much as a monthly pass).

Fast forward about an hour, after we had packed our luggage into two cabs and arrived back at the apartment, or so we thought. Instead of driving to 26 Sziv Utca (Heart Street), we drove to 38 Sziv Utca, which is what the landlord had told us. Our first key (there are three, one to get into the complex, one for the security door, and one for the main door) didn't work. But it was dark, late, and bitingly cold, so the non-English-speaking cabbies wanted to get the hell out. I was offended they'd abandon three young ladies in a foreign country with nowhere else to go at midnight, but they helped us open the door (probably just because we hadn't paid them yet, otherwise...). Miraculously, it opened. Miraculous not because all three of us had already tried on our own, but because that wasn't our apartment (we eventually learned), so the drivers must have gotten it open through sheer will power. Then they left.

True, it was our fault that we didn't double check the address and that we didn't recognize the building and that we moved in while the world was asleep. But we weren't complete idiots. The thing about Hungarian flats is, they don't have numbers, so even if we were in the right building, we could only rely on memory to find the actual apartment. Still, we tried. We hauled our belongings up the stairs of the elevator-less building, which like most others operated with motion-sensitive lights that turned off every few minutes. Yes, I'm afraid of the dark. And it didn't help that the light switches matched the doorbells (we probably didn't make too many friends last night). When our keys didn't work, door after door, we gave in and called the landlord, who had obviously gone to bed, and that's how we found out we were definitely in the wrong building.

The right building was only a block away, not that that made it much easier to run all our bags from point A to point B in one fell swoop. And then another set of stairs and uncooperative lighting and probably pissed off neighbors.

But aside from that, smooth sailing! We got in, we got our flat, and we got a story to write about.

A room with a view

It’s hard to know where to begin, so, at the risk of neglecting a countrywide perspective, I’ll start at home. I’ve moved twice in less than two weeks, which is what happens when you go to a foreign country without making living arrangements. The thought scared me, of course, but enough people had assured me it’d be easier to rent a place once I reached Saigon that I believed it. I spent the first few days at a small hotel (khach san) while my cousin searched for a room. For just 200,000 dong a night (the exchange rate is 16,600 dong per dollar), I could have certainly made the hotel my home for the summer, but the idea has always seemed odd to me. If I want to see Vietnam as it is, why let a hotel obstruct my view? A cheaper room also had the masochistic appeal of testing my capacity for discomfort.

The hotel could not have had more than a dozen rooms, and mine came with a TV, air conditioner, mini-bar, and queen-sized bed. I had been warned not to be surprised if, as in many East Asian countries, the bathroom had no separate shower, just a nozzle that splashes the entire bathroom when turned on. But I had only one complaint about the room, something that at first I couldn’t put my finger on. It was an unsettling feeling that I gave no thought to, that I subconsciously attributed to exhaustion or something like it. Not until the second day did I realize the room lacked a window.

How silly to lose sleep over a window. But after my pathetic excuse for an internal clock had already been scrambled by the 16-hour flight, a window seemed to be the only reminder of which way was up. The combination of jet lag and an unstructured schedule had me sleeping haphazardly, always between sprints and marathons, never knowing day from night. If nothing else, I told my cousin, please find a room with a window.

Technically, she did. The room had two windows, in fact, plus the glass on the door and the large, vent-like openings near the ceiling. But it may as well have had no windows because they admitted no natural light, instead opening out onto a hallway in the building. When I walked through the hallway during the day I would glance wistfully at our neighbor’s room, which faced the street and overflowed with sunlight.

Then again, that room was also closer to the railroad running next to our building. Just 20 feet away from the train, I always heard its terrifyingly loud and irritatingly frequent whistle, so I imagine it could only have been worse for our neighbor. I can’t explain why I dreaded the oncoming train so much because it couldn’t have been the noise alone – it never disturbed me in my sleep, and I always hoped it was thunder, which inexplicably would have been more bearable. I started reading Atlas Shrugged the night we moved in.

Some other things to look for when renting a room in Vietnam: curfews, furnishings, toilets (as opposed to a hole in the ground), sinks (as opposed to a spout), air conditioning, and permission to cook.

What we didn’t think to ask our landlord was whether we could have company over, and when he refused, my cousin decided he was too difficult to live with. Our smaller, yet costlier room sits among a chain of other rooms behind the shops on the main street, rather than inside a building. In other words, we have a window. It’s hardly large enough for an average sized person to crawl through, but still, all I wanted was to see the sky. There was only one drawback I hadn’t planned for. Like our old room, this has openings near the ceiling which admit insects along with the sunlight. Now that there are newspapers covering those holes, I’m getting bitten less often, but if you’ll excuse me, I have some gnats to kill.