What a finale

I have been banned from Germany, deported with a police escort, acquired a criminal record, and missed my sister's graduation, all with one stone. On the layover in Munich, going home to California from Hungary, I was stopped by passport control because, like all other officials I've encountered between countries, this one didn't recognize my travel document. Let's be clear: it's a reentry permit, issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allowing permanent residents (green card holders) to get back into the United States after travel abroad. And though it quacks like a passport, border officials are always giving me trouble because they don't know what to do with this little turquoise book.

Accordingly, the German punk I had the misfortune of meeting took me aside for a closer look and decided I didn't have the proper visa or residence permit to have spent nearly five months in the European Union. So in order to wait five hours while he drew up the necessary criminal filing and deportation order, I had to miss my flight and take the next one - 20 hours later, getting me home just in time to miss my sister's high school graduation.

I say in earnest I could tolerate without anger the uncomfortable eight hours sleeping on the airport chairs; the criminal record; the mortification of boarding the plane with two border officials; the revoking of the privilege to return to Germany, at least for a few months; even the arrival home 24 hours after I'd planned.

But there is more than one legacy whose bitterness will follow me, though I hope to forget them. First, of course, was that I could not see my sister graduate, despite planning my entire return around that date. What's worse, if I could not spend that time with my family, it would have been some consolation to have spent it with friends in Hungary, but that was impossible.

Second, though the officials were not entirely wrong, neither was I, and I couldn't make them understand me. They thought I needed a visa, and that part was wrong because I'd applied for one at the Hungarian consulate in New York, only to receive a letter assuring me that permanent residents with travel documents could come to Hungary without one. Though still nervous, I accepted as much and went about my travels, making it to Italy, Slovakia, and Austria without much trouble. The only scuffle was the second trip to Italy, to Venice, because our train passed through Croatia, which is not in the European Union or the Schengen Zone, which means dealing with border patrol. I received some puzzled looks and double checks but made it through, much better than my Indian friend, who had a hell of a night stuck in Zagreb. (It cost him a pretty penny, but he eventually made it to Venice, too.)

I began to realize the severity of my predicament in early April, when I tried to drive to Istanbul through Serbia and Bulgaria (neither of which are in Schengen, though Bulgaria is in the European Union).I thought I was thinking ahead by getting a visa to Turkey, but didn't get past Hungary's border with Serbia because the border guards didn't know what to do with my travel document, and so demanded a transit visa. So an entire Friday wasted on driving to the border, arguing with officials, waiting for a bus, and taking a train back to Budapest. That day was the low point since I had come to Europe, but with time I hated the system less, or at least thought about it less.

I understand that the officials and bureaucrats are doing their jobs, even if it does violate common sense (i.e., I am not the kind of person targeted in these travel restrictions). My main grievance against them is their personal incompetence, as a sort of metonym for the incompetence of the entire bureaucracy (Kafka would back me up on this). These people have to put on as if they know what they're doing, but the smallest irregularity (e.g. a travel document in lieu of a passport) becomes a wrench in their whole system. No one knows protocol. So ask 10 different bureaucrats and you will get as many different solutions. Croatia lets me pass through, but Serbia doesn't. Hungary doesn't require an entry visa, but Germany [says it] does, though they are supposedly equal Schengen and EU members. Passport control in Chicago asks for my travel document, yet the one in San Francisco is content with my green card.

If it hasn't already, this will easily become a tirade, so I will just say I have gotten the travel bug out of my system for awhile and am happy to be home. I am not so arrogant to think I have seen it all, and this is not what Björk means anyway, but still I can't get her words out of my head:

The American bureaucracy may not be much better, but at least I do not have to deal with it as much anymore. I am happy about this, and other, less important things since returning. I am happy I won't have to pay a foreign fee for all my purchases anymore, or ruin any more of my shoes on the cobble stones. I won't exactly miss Hungarian food, which I can best describe as heavy and unhealthy (pork, beef, cheese, all fried, and vegetables a rarity). I am happy to be able to access websites again, websites that are not available or convenient outside the United States.

To reflect on the months abroad negatively would be unfair, however, and the amount in this post dedicated to such is inversely proportional to my real sentiments. Without reserve I say I could not have made a better choice for a study abroad setting, the affordable and yet international and breathtaking city that is Budapest. Unlike Vietnam, Hungary is a place I leave along with its language, and I will miss hearing and practicing Magyarul. I will miss greeting and taking leave of people with a puszi on either cheek. I will miss riding across the Danube from Buda to Pest on a bus or tram. I will miss the love and friendship I found in this city. I will miss the lakes where wakeboarders circumscribe the water on cables; the Buda hills from which I have seen all of the city blanketed in snow or twinkling below and brighter than the Big Dipper above; the islands along the Danube, so close to the congested downtown and yet idyllic and isolated - and I knew very well how much I missed them all as they grew smaller and smaller beneath my plane window, before clouds erased them, billow by billow, and swallowed our plane.

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Rereading: 1984

Listening to: Blue Oyster Cult

On driving

For the first time in four months, I drove last weekend, and for the first time in nearly as many years, I drove a manual. This is only significant because in Hungary, automatics are just about unheard of. I noticed the same in Vietnam, France, Switzerland – I would go so far as to guess that outside of North America, manuals rule the road just about everywhere in the world, and I’ve wondered why that is. I have heard manuals are more efficient, so perhaps North Americans are just more wasteful people. Similarly, I do think it has something to do with a driving culture, at least in the United States. There, manuals were the car of choice at one time, but over the years, I suppose automatics were the best way to get a car in every garage, as Roosevelt wished.

But I’m glad things are different here. I don’t really know why, I just like manuals and wish I could drive them better. That they are more prevalent is probably related to the reason people say “liters per kilometer” here whereas I’m used to “miles per gallon.” I discussed this with my friends in France, and they don’t believe me, but I think Europeans say liters per kilometer because (consciously or not) they care more about how much fuel (i.e. liters) has to be expended, whereas Americans care more about how much they can drive (i.e. miles).

There are other differences I like here, too. The traffic lights don’t just change from red to green when it’s time to go, but from red to yellow to green (as well as green to yellow to red, as in the United States) – the extra yellow clearly gives the driver a heads up to get into gear.

What’s more, in Switzerland, when you drive along some highways with traffic lights, they stay red at night but are programmed to turn green just in time for your arrival. The only thing I can compare that to are the traffic lights in Manhattan, which change at regular intervals, as do the ones in Downtown Sacramento, where you can stay in the green if you drive a steady 25 miles per hour.

Although I have seen “Wilkommen…” and “Bienvenue…” on highway signs, more common are the modest signs with town names, the notable part being that when you leave a town, you see the same sign with a red diagonal line drawn across it. Maybe I just haven’t seen this yet in the United States. Maybe I also haven’t noticed a rule my friend says everyone knows: on two-lane highways (four lanes altogether), the right lane is the default and the left lane is only for passing. This I don’t believe. I know there’s a slow lane and a fast lane, but I’ve certainly seen a lot of people pass others from the right (which he says is illegal). But on this continent people seem to follow that rule.

My unquestionable favorite among these vehicular observations first appeared in France. We were driving along the country roads, by rocky cliffs covered with protective nets, when a car flashed its high beams at us as it drove by. So did the next. Not too long after that I saw why: we passed cops parked on the side of the road, checking for drivers who flout the speed limit.

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Reading: Milan Kundera, The Joke

Switzerland: seven cities in seven days

Switzerland didn't exactly make the list of top countries I'd like to visit in Europe, but I spent a week there because, thanks to a friend of a friend, we had access to a car and accommodations. Perks notwithstanding, it's been my most expensive week so far (e.g., $30 for a pizza), so in this way and in many others, the country seems to live up to its name, which can be both good and bad. That may just mean I haven't penetrated very deep into the heart of Switzerland, but in the abundance of luxury cars, mountains, and clear water, I see what I expected.

Together, the mountains and the water make up the best of Switzerland. No matter where you stand, it's nearly impossible to have a view without a mountain not too far away, usually still covered in snow at this time of year. We drove from one end of ski-loving Switzerland to the other, from little Nyon on the northern coast of Lake Geneva in the French-speaking west, to Zurich in the German-speaking northeast, and because of the mountainous landscape, I'd never driven through so many tunnels.

For some of the drive we could enjoy Lake Geneva to the south, reflecting the ten kinds of blue and white in the peaks that rise behind it. It's the largest lake in Europe, so large that as I watched it stretch out before me, I had to keep reminding myself it wasn't the ocean, so large that when the rain didn't hit us, we could still see pockets of rain scattered around different areas of the lake. When I didn't see drops hitting the surface of the water, I still saw thin shadowy curtains hang down from clouds in the distance.

This was in Montreux, on the eastern edge of the lake. We climbed a tower in the nearby Chateau de Chillon with its natural moat, and at the top could look down on the ripples that crisscross in grids, or on the misty white line in the atmosphere separating the lake from the sky or mountain.

The other reason I wanted to go to Montreux was Freddie Mercury. This was his second home, and after he died, the city erected an appropriately ostentatious statue in his honor. In other classic rock news, the nearby casino was the site of a fire that supposedly inspired "Smoke on the Water."

It was the little stuff like that that made the week interesting. Stuff like the flower clock, and the home and statue of Rousseau in Geneva. And the giant chessboards on the pavement in Zurich. And the heartrending Lion Monument in Luzern. While there, we had lunch at a Euro Thai restaurant (I should feel bad not trying the local fare, but Swiss food is not what you'd call world-renowned). The first thing the Thai woman asked was whether I was Vietnamese, and to my surprise she started speaking in what Vietnamese she knew. She wasn't bad. Who knew I'd come to a country with four official languages (the other two are Italian and Romansch) with a Hungarian friend to eat at a Thai place and speak to a woman in Vietnamese.

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Reading: Vaclav Havel, The Memorandum
Listening to: Babyface

The dangers of travel

My number was up, and today I learned what it is to have a stalker. In his Pumas, jeans, and white collared shirt, he might have even been younger than I am. At a time when I could not have predicted it - as I walked along the tourist-dotted harbor in the direction of the beach and in late afternoon - he began to follow me. I noticed his stares but was initially just annoyed to be near this obstinate-looking punk whose blond shaved hair was beginning to grow out. He was more subtle than to mimic all my movements and would stop from time to time to keep pace, but I hoped he just happened to be walking the same, popular route. Instead, when I got to the beach, he sat down the same two places where I sat down, so I'd had enough. There was no more question.

The options ran through my head. I wanted to strangle him. Or go up to him and say, "Stop following me!" But he probably didn't speak English and I don't speak French, which was likely why he singled me out. What I liked about the more cosmopolitan Paris was that I didn't stand out as much as I did in Budapest, but in little Boulogne-sur-Mer, I was a sore thumb with a bright red jacket.

I left quickly, dreading the sight of him each time I turned around. How could he be so stupid and overt? And even the busy streets were not enough comfort. What if he followed me all the way home? I considered calling the international emergency number, 112. Maybe there were cabs (unlikely). Maybe I could have stopped someone else on the street or in a shop to tell him the problem, although I don't know what that would have done. Ultimately I settled on the bus stop, asking some high school kids if there was a bus going where I was headed.

I met Alexander, the only one of them who spoke English and French (his dad on one side, his mother on the other). Though he didn't know which bus to take, he and his girlfriend Cindy offered to walk me home when I mentioned the stalker, whom I didn't see from that point on.

How much has changed from yesterday's sun to today's rain.

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

Living at the speed of two languages

I finally got around to Hungarian literature in the form of Ferenc Molnar's The Paul Street Boys (A Pal Utcai Fiuk), a century-old novella about two rival gangs in Budapest. It had its merits, from the comical (I still laugh when I think about little Nemecsek falling into the Danube, and Csonakos asking, "Did you have a drink, laddie?") to the political (Molnar draws overt links between the gangs' pivotal battle and the real turf wars between states).

Not that I expected much from a book for young people, but still, to call this a "true world classic" (preface by Molnar's grandson) is a little silly. Some of it is the author's fault, e.g., martyring a schoolboy (sorry to ruin the ending if you were planning to read it). But to Molnar's credit, much of the problem is the translation. I once thought if you could speak two languages that was enough to translate, so it amazes me still how vital is a translator with a handle on the mechanics as well as literary form. This creates I think a divide that questions where credit is due: is the author great if the translator isn't? Conversely, can a talented translator fill in where an author is lacking?

The topic also resonates as I finish up Crime and Punishment. Not only do Raskolnikov and Razumikhin translate works between Russian and German, there's a circular scene in which Sonia reads in Russian the passage about Lazarus from a bible that has been translated (from I don't know what, German? Latin? English?) but of course I am reading this all in English. The translator, then, must have been very self-aware as he worked on Dostoevsky.

As in many introductions to Russian lit, this one clarifies the peculiarities of Russian names. But it goes a step further, explaining that the translator chose to keep some possible sources of confusion (such as referring to Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov as Rodia) because he is in Russia, the reader must remember.

I thought of it again last week at a Hungarian rendition of Hello, Dolly! Because I wasn't familiar with the plot, my subconscious succumbed to the Hungarian dialogue and repeatedly believed that the characters were traveling from Budapest (rather than Yonkers) to Manhattan. Again I relied on some translation and again felt the guilt of missing out on works as they are in the original (not that the Hungarian Hello, Dolly! is original...). I've read an untranslated work once in my life, Marquez's Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada, and it was immensely more beautiful and there is so much that just can't be translated. Hence my insistence that we preserve as much as possible, sans translation.

The only argument I've heard against bilingualism, and I heard it recently, was that one language would detract from the other so you'd never really have a command of either. But I reject it, else how could Milan Kundera write in French and Czech? So, Hungarians, that is one thing you must work on. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised at the scarcity of English speakers here, as so many politicians around the world don't speak English, but even Hungarians themselves admit that not enough of them, especially compared to neighboring countries, know the language.

Of the merits of bilingualism, though, I again share this argument a la Eddie Izzard:


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Watching: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Listening to: Springsteen, Greatest Hits

Field trip: Debrecen refugee camp

Technically I'm not a refugee because my family left Vietnam voluntarily and for economic reasons, though I did live in a refugee camp in the Philippines for a few months. But I remember nothing, so the trip with my Refugee Law class to a camp in Debrecen was really my first. It would be foolish (but probably unavoidable) to predict what such a camp would be like. We drove three hours east by bus and entered what looked like an elementary school: dry, green and yellow grass; subdued, white and beige buildings with flat roofs; and in the middle, a wooden jungle gym and a blacktop for football and basketball. One classmate said it looked like a summer camp. Another took offense at the gray walls and barbed wire along the perimeter.

At first we expected to be observers, like apprentices come to examine this specimen called the refugee. I think I expected them to be used to visitors, but they're there for such a short time we might have been the first such group to drop in. So they stared at us as much as we did them. It occurred to me as they tried to answer in Hungarian that they might have thought we were locals and they were the outsiders (while we had thought something similar of them). But Central European University is made up of so many international students (and few Hungarians) that this Refugee Law class is often introspective and just about everyone is an outsider.

We had a panel discussion with the camp director and then the decider, an asylum official, both in a bright yellow room with childrens' drawings and posters from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the walls, origami cranes hanging from the ceiling, and crayon marks on the floor tiles. At any given time there are some 700 asylum seekers hosted at the camp, where they stay for two months on average and receive around $30 petty cash a month. Debrecen generally serves as a stopping point for asylum seekers from Eastern and Southeastern Europe on their way west.

"They don't like us," the director said of Debrecen's locals and authorities. It's probably safe to say that such a negative reception conflicts with the view of most people in that room, and yet I get the impression it's a common sentiment (racism? xenophobia? nationalism?) in any region with a sizable foreign population. I don't think I could ever empathize with such a sentiment, but how, I wondered, could there be such a wall between our openness to foreigners and their rejection of them, both of which seem 'normal'? It's true, we're a self-selected group, students who choose to study refugee law. Still I don't understand it.

Part of it, the director suggested, was the perception of criminal activity among arrivals (though I stress perception because I reject the claim that it is any more prevalent among this group than another). Some shoplift, he said, admitting that just that morning police took a camp resident into custody on human trafficking charges.

I don't know which bothered me more - the crimes, or a potential cause of the crimes, namely the inactivity among the refugees. Most don't stick around long enough to find employment as they wait for their cases to be decided, and of the children, only one-sixth of them can be accommodated at the local schools. As someone asked the director how people spend their time, a handful of children banged on the door, divided between remaining obediently outside and spilling into the room like paparazzi anytime someone went in or out.

"This is what the kids do," the director joked. "I don't want to say what they do when they're more active! Same for adults."

The children turned out to be the unexpected highlight of the trip. It began slowly, with two or three boys peering curiously in through a six-inch gap in the window. As we walked by the jungle gym and the football matches, one or two would greet us with the only Hungarian they knew, "Szia!" But once the camera came out, all hell broke loose. I took a couple shots and showed them to the children, who quickly caught on and clamored around the camera. We had no common language, so they pointed and posed, competing for the attention of the lens. (Note: At the camp's request, I am not posting any photos of them.) It was a shallow friendship but I'm not complaining, because the icebreaker encouraged the children to follow us around for the day, and when we left, they waved goodbye and cartwheeled and ran along the side of the bus.

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Listening to: More Dirty Dancing [soundtrack]

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

The countryside, caves, and a castle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

Out for a walk

As much as I love travel and the idea of travel, I am often frustrated by the problem of breadth versus depth; how many places will I visit and how well will I get to know each of them? On the continuum that runs from complete ignorance of a place to true expertise, I often wonder what it really means to have been to a city. I have an irrational aversion to tourist attractions - well, irrational in that I should judge something according to its own merit, not by the number of others who like it. But there is an element of rationality, too, because a bubble often forms around these attractions and keeps out the distinction of the locale.

To walk around the neighborhoods, though, is a start, especially today when the sun finally returned. Doing so confirmed a couple things I'd heard. For instance, people seem to love their dogs, leashed or not, but don't love to pick up after them. Droppings are everywhere, but I saw them before it was too late, I think. Also, few cross the street unless given the green light, a strange reversal of Manhattan and Saigon, but it did make me feel like quite the trailblazer to continue on where others had stopped. Even more gratifying were the people who talked to me even if I didn't understand them. I paused in front of one shop to look at the boots placed outside, and a middle-aged woman rambled about something while fingering $6.50 pants. When she walked away, I noticed a hole burned into the left leg, which probably wasn't her doing (though she was smoking). An older gentleman stopped me for directions ("Hol van a...?") but found the place right in front of us before I could say "Nem tudom." Now I know how Rory felt in the second season when someone mistook her for a New Yorker and requested directions.

On second thought, my encounter probably trumped Rory's because there aren't many non-whites in Hungary (but they must be somewhere because Chinese restaurants abound). I'm surprised at how international this city has been (students, and others who end up staying after visiting) in contrast to how few locals speak English. It's hard to know how well I 'fit in' because some speak to me and others stare, although it may be in my head. I'm self-consciously discreet about my camera and map, particularly today because a friend inspired me to explore with no particular destination in mind. Getting lost didn't bother me: I figured I would wander and then look up my location whenever I wanted to go home. But in general I like keeping my bearings because I'm a visual learner who can't know a place until I can picture it.

I was luckily quite near a metro as dusk set in, near the Keleti Pályaudvar train station (pictured) in fact. The problem was, I couldn't find the entrance. Theoretically, maps should be simple, but just because there's a metro icon where Fiumel and Kerepesi intersect on the map, doesn't mean you will see the actual metro once you reach Baross Square. To complicate matters, most busy intersections have entrances that lead underground so that pedestrians can "cross the street" without interrupting traffic - convenient, but confusing because they resemble metro entrances. So after several of those, as well as dead ends and construction detours, I found the red line.

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Listening to: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Y Control"

Születésnapom!

When friends start wishing me a boldog születésnapot in different languages and calculating the best time to do so (according to the time zone), I know I've arrived. The first well-wisher was in Singapore, so he had an advantage. A friend here rationalized a few hours prematurely that because I was born in Vietnam, it was probably time to start celebrating. But at midnight he and my roommates gave me a ceremonial rendition of the birthday song. A friend on the east coast (er, of the United States) followed shortly after with a note to the future me (as I'm six time zones ahead). And then of course the ongoing Facebook attack.

The premature friend said I should buy myself a present in the form of a ticket to Rome (just like I bought myself that Garfield birthday card). So we fly there next weekend. But I shouldn't have let him book the ticket: not only did he screw up my address, but he is now a she from Lithuania.

Actually, I kid about the trip and the card, neither were gifts to myself. The first we'd talked about for a few days, and the second is for a best friend and fellow Capricorn with whom I'd usually celebrate my születésnap. Funny that the card reads "Sorry that I'm running late to your birthday" - it reminds me that we commemorated my last milestone, the big one-eight, about a month late because it was more convenient (academic break + empty house + amateur jello shots). As I'm out of the country this time, it seems I'll be 22 by the time I celebrate my 21st. But festivities with my Budapest barátim are in the making for tonight and tomorrow night, so more posts to come on that (and Rome).

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Listening to: Rza feat. Xavier Naidoo - Ich kenne nichts (I've never seen)
Reading: Kafka - The Castle

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)

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.

Are we there yet?

In our last discussion about traveling around the continent, a friend here suggested we just go to the airport some weekend and take whatever cheap flight is left. I loved the idea, but it is dawning on me how little this time in Hungary may actually be Hungarian. Maybe I should have begun with why I chose Hungary of all places: sometimes I wish I had a more noble reason, but it is only slightly less random than closing my eyes and pointing to a spot on a map. Travel has always been part of the life plan, so when it came time to choose a study abroad location, I went through Columbia's offerings, decided my Spanish wasn't good enough (I still rue the day), and narrowed it down to three cities with instruction in English: Copenhagen, Prague, and Budapest. The price tag and the level of immersion ultimately determined my decision.

Then again, I don't know if it is so bad to blindly point to a map. I encourage everyone to travel, to study abroad; for someone who is easily bored, it is one of the perks that make life interesting. And there is so much interesting out there (out here!), why do I need a reason to go to Budapest?

Much as I loathed the prospect last term of wasting time taking Hungarian (one of the hardest languages to learn), doing so changed my expectations. Eventually, I was not just going abroad, I was going to Hungary. I set my Google Alerts to it, learned a bit about 1956 and 1989, talked to anyone with any connection to the country.

But then I arrived. To put it one way, my paltry knowledge of Hungarian is one of the more advanced of my study abroad group; it might even beat that of our point person here, who is Romanian. Another point person is American (granted, with very good Hungarian). Maybe it is just us, I thought. But it seems to be true of Central European University in general. In my first class, the professor went around the room asking our names and backgrounds. There was another American, one or two Hungarians, and the rest from nearby countries (Romania, Poland, Russia, etc.).

But I do not complain. If there are two traits I value, they are these: open-mindedness and optimism. It is true, all of this might limit how much I learn about Hungary, especially if I am spending more time traipsing around Europe than appreciating what is right here. But either way, am I not learning about different cultures? Meantime, I focus on Hungary, starting with teaching you the most important word you would need here: koszonom ("thank you"). Learn it, and you will be better prepared to visit Budapest than some of those already here.

Vietnamese lesson, part 2

Words like “Internet” and “photocopy” have no Vietnamese equivalents, so they’re plastered ubiquitously across the city in their original forms. But much more interesting are the non-Vietnamese words that people have adapted into Vietnamese. And all this time I thought my parents were making these words up:

bia --- beer
cà phê --- coffee
xe buýt --- bus
cà rốt --- carrot
xúp --- soup
sô cô la --- chocolate
phim --- film
căn tin --- canteen
tivi --- TV