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

Babel, by any other name

To all the Krisztian's or Ajtony's in the world, happy name day! I'm late to discover this Hungarian custom, which is like a mini-holiday and which other countries in the region practice, too. Each day of the year is dedicated to a different name (sometimes two) and on your name day, friends wish you a "Boldog nevnapot!" maybe celebrating with flowers or drinks. I found it odd and random at first, until I remembered similar obsessions with Western and Eastern astrology.

Of course the names are generally Hungarian, so the closest I could find for myself was "Lenke" (23 July), not exactly a direct translation. Other names are easier to link - Karolina, Zsuzsanna, Tamas, Pal. For a long time, though, I considered it strange, on the brink of offensive, that people should translate names at all. If your parents gave you the name "Mateo," that is your name, not "Matt." I reasoned that it's one thing to translate a word: clearly when a Briton says "summer" and a Vietnamese says "mua he," they refer to the same season. But it's quite another thing to say that Mateo is the same person as Matt, as there is no universal definition of a person by this name, so what are we referring to?

I've since softened my position on the issue to consider that there are examples like St. Matthew from which we derive names, and that names do have other meanings even if they sound nothing alike (I noticed this with "Smith" and the Hungarian "Kovacs").

But I don't know if I can be as accommodating of country names. Why do we say/spell Germany, Brazil, or Vietnam in place of Deutschland, Brasil or Viet Nam? It only makes sense to me in needing to make a country name pronouncable, e.g., from Chinese or Arabic characters, but in most cases that's not a problem.

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Listening to: Royal Philharmonic plays Queen

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.

Art in Vienna

[Click on the headline for the Facebook album]

Three hours away by train, Vienna makes for a popular weekend trip, so I took one with my study abroad program. Going into these things, I'm never armed with enough background knowledge, but with a general understanding of the Habsburgs, the World Wars, and Kurt Waldheim, I could appreciate the time there - at least more so than the people who inspire the "There are no kangaroos in Austria" postcards. Seriously. I don't forgive the ignoramus I encountered at Columbia who believed Schwarzenegger is from Australia.

I will grant, though, that there is some benefit to not doing your homework, namely, the pleasant surprise in discovering just how much art the Habsburgs amassed. Bruegel! Rembrandt! Even Raphael! It almost made up for all the art I missed in Rome (I forgot most museums close Mondays). There is something magical about standing a foot away from Madonna of the Meadow or Napoleon of the Saint-Bernard Pass, remembering not just the hands that painted them, but the shared experience with admirers from a century ago or half a millenium ago as they interpreted the work in their respective contexts.

"I can't believe I'm looking at THE Napoleon," said at least one member of the study abroad group. But I find this initial awe meaningless if you don't get to stop and experience the process that the artist went through, imagine Jacques-Louis David (who also did my favorite, The Death of Socrates) moving from one color to the next, question why he placed the break in the clouds where he did, wonder whether it was he who created the change in texture from cloth to leather or us who imagined so. That's hard to do when a guide is rushing you from one room to another.

But even that is not enough. I sometimes like a painting or sculpture for its aesthetic appeal, but I can only look at so many Madonnas (there was just one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but I mean in general) and have realized I favor paintings that depict the ancient or historical over the religious or vain (read: portraits). That may be my atheist bias, but also I'm not enough of a connoisseur to value a piece just for the style, form, and decisions of the creator. It's the same with literature, except that the latter doesn't have as much leeway to offer a legacy based chiefly on the author's technical abilities. We are more likely I think to venerate the books whose meanings transcend plot and prose; hence my preference for literature over art. So it is with ancient/historical paintings.

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Listening to: Feist, "My Moon, My Man"

Roma - photo album

[Click on headline for the Facebook album]

Losing my religion (if I had it to lose)

And on the second day, we paid a visit to the house of god. There were several in Rome, of course, more than I could bear, but you don't question the Vatican. And anyway, I was there for the art and architecture. At the risk of offending (well, more than a risk), I have to say it's a shame that so much beauty is produced in the name of religion, as if we could find nothing better to which to devote it. Nevertheless, beautiful it was. To get to the Sistine Chapel, we walked through hall after seemingly endless hall, which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the gleaming statues and columns, and scenic ceilings that stretched to the heavens. But we didn't want to miss Raphael and Michelangelo before closing (which had happened to a friend we met there), and the authorities really make you work to reach the grand finale.

Anticlimactic does not quite describe Michelangelo's ceiling, as it in no way fell short of majestic. I appreciated, too, that the guards incessantly shushed the crowd and ordered us not to photograph or record (not that that stopped many). It might have been that the "Creation of Adam" section equaled the size of every other section of the ceiling, and seeing the image blown up so often before now dwarfed the real thing. Or perhaps it was that we had just witnessed up close the grandeur of Raphael's frescoes that mutated my expectations.

I'm still humbled that the masterpieces were within my fingertips, but I wonder about the cycle that begets masterpieces. There is no question about the skill behind the ceiling and the School of Athens and the Disputa, but what sets them above other works by Michelangelo and Raphael? The inner cynic argues that we extol the paintings in part because they've been extolled. By the same token, we visit famous sites because they're famous, because recognition adds excitement to the experience. If I were a better traveler (and I've learned this for future ventures) I'd have done more homework, better valued what I saw, and valued it for better reason.

In that case I might have been able to stand more cathedrals, but it was enough in all of St. Peter's Basilica to run into the surprise of Michelangelo's Pieta and similarly to find homages to Galileo in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels near Piazza della Repubblica (all of which I highly recommend).

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Listening to: Goo Goo Dolls
Watching: Slumdog Millionaire
Reading: Sandor Balogh and Sandor Jakab, History of Hungary

When in Rome

Our four-day weekend in Rome gave us just enough time to visit (almost) everything we wanted without exhausting ourselves. As required, we began with the Forum and Colosseum, making our way through cobbled and claustrophobic side streets. They can be dank, but venture down as many as you can: though the main streets are beautiful, it is along the alleyways that the hills rise and fall and the quiet buildings like adobe seem to press together. They explain the popularity of motorbikes, one of which nearly took out my roommate because the crosswalks are inconsistent and the bikes speed by much more quickly than four-wheels. I believe the only casualty was a cell phone.

When I saw the Colosseum I thought of the awe that it (and any ruins) inspires, because it appeals to our nostalgia, to our inability to preserve or traverse time. It is history, a link to the world historical figures and gladiators and common (but ancient) folk who walked these halls millennia ago. But it is deflating to think that a used napkin, too, is a link to Jennifer Lopez, and what is the difference in paying for that versus paying to look at a spoon that a Roman ruler once used?

The Colosseum has traveled through time where we can't, and after years of ravaging it is understandably worn out. That it's less perfect, though, doesn't make it any less appealing to tourists; on the contrary, it's why people buy antique chairs with the front rung carved away by resting feet. It's more authentic. Amazing how much of the structure can be saved. And amazing how selective we are in how we save anything. I stood alone for an hour on top of the Pincian Hill (one of the best views of the entire city), looking down onto the Piazza del Popolo, but not without graffiti along a railing to obstruct the view. Beyond the question of whether graffiti is art, should the city wash away the spray paint? It probably hasn't done so yet because of the time and money required, but if we don't rebuild the broken walls of the Colosseum, maybe we shouldn't erase the work of street artists: both record history and act as commentary on the times that produced them.

I don't subscribe to that idea so much as mull over it, but one idea beyond contemplation is the indignity and disgrace of cities and other authorities that construct attractions explicitly for visitors. Near Popolo is Villa Borghese, and leading into the park is a porta flanked by sphinx-like sculptures. It is not just poor taste, it is disingenuous. Like the flashy nativity scenes, one inside left of St. Peter's Basilica, another in the piazza outside.

Time for class, I will get around to more on Rome later and try to preach less.

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Reading: Camus, The Stranger
Listening to: Killers, "Why Do I Keep Counting"

Forces from beyond

This picture was taken around noon on my way to class at Central European University. The men in green must have felt they had tortured us long enough, so here they are, spreading the salty love after snow has fallen. I would have felt pretty silly tiptoeing and sliding, but we were all in it together; a man in a car saw me struggling on my merry way and shouted something in Hungarian. I don't know what it was, but let's assume nice. I also made eye contact with a couple guys having just as much trouble and we shared a laugh.

Oh, the background? Just the Basilica, down the street from my school. I think the Latin reads: "I am the way to truth and life."

CORRECTION: "I am the way, the truth, and life." - courtesy of a friend who knows nine languages. (Updated 1/15/09 8:04 AM)

Stairway to heaven

When I was nine, maybe younger, my nanny asked me if I might like to give God a try. She was Christian and didn’t try to persuade me, just told me about him and about praying and crossing myself. Who knows what made me give in – maybe the shiny cross she gave me. I wore it for a few days until my Buddhist cousin saw it and cried, “Do you know what that is?” while removing the chain. That’s pretty much the extent of my contact with God, and anyone who knows me would be shocked to hear that I even got that close.

But a couple days ago I got much closer, right up to the foot of the man himself. On a mountain in Vung Tau, a resort city two hours away from Saigon, stands a 100-foot statue of Jesus, holding out his arms as he surveys the laity 600 feet below. “You know,” my coworker Nguyen said after I saw the icon for the first time, “there were some Boat People who escaped Vietnam a few decades ago, and when they returned, they built that statue as a gift.”

There must have been something in my face because she asked what was wrong. “Nothing. I just think it’s silly of them to take up public space like that. It doesn’t just belong to Christians.”

The next day we made our pilgrimage to the man upstairs – up a very, very long set of stairs. I went for the same reason I would stop to look at a car accident, but in fact if there were nothing up there but an abandoned car I’d still have gone for the sake of climbing the small mountain. The trek was tiring, with plenty of landings where we could rest and gaze down at the town, at the sea that turned into sky, and at the progress we’d made. Like holy harbingers, clusters of statues would occasionally greet us, as if to say: almost there.

The actual statue at the pinnacle of the hike was flesh-colored, domineering, and anticlimactic. I might have been more impressed with a golden calf, but it wasn’t really Jesus’ fault; he had to compete with a breathtaking view. On one end I admired the coast packed with ant-sized beachgoers and grasshopper-sized palm trees curving around the peninsula. I knew I was looking at something so many others must have seen in brochures. On the other end was infinite water and sky. The sight alone made me feel weightless, or as if I were filled with nothing but that floating blue.

Jesus compensated as best he could. Tourists were allowed to climb inside the statue like they would Lady Liberty, either to the balcony built into his robe, or farther up to his outstretched arms. Earlier, when my boss had told me people could do this, I’d asked, “Isn’t that a little sacrilegious?” Little did I know there was a sacred screening process. You cannot enter the body of Christ wearing shorts, skirts, or tank tops, and you must leave your shoes and water bottles at the opening. I wasn’t disappointed, but I felt bad for anyone who’d gone through all that trouble just to be turned away at the gates.

So we'd faced our maker and by providence no one was smote (smitten?) by lightning. Then again, we did get caught in the rain on the way down, Mr. Pina Colada would be happy to know. If it had come just five minutes later we would have been dry in a taxi, but I’m glad it happened. We were only a few flights from the bottom when I stopped to enjoy the wind that was picking up. On the horizon, the same wind was bringing in clouds and, to our amazement, we could see them raining into the sea before the storm reached us seconds later, the sky still light. We ran to a tunnel for shelter and did what was only logical while waiting out the storm. We ate ice cream.