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

Red, white, and green

In emails and local publications, I'd been reading warnings about the violence that has become typical on March 15, equivalent to Hungary's Fourth of July. I even read lists of hot spots to avoid, but yesterday was mild compared to the egg-pelting of years past, especially the destruction of 2006, following a leaked tape of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitting he'd lied about the dismal economy. I say mild, partly because I didn't get out much, but mainly because, aside from a few arrests (including one person with a case of eggs), there were few reports of conflicts.

But expectations of unrest were understandable. As seen in 2006, Hungary has been suffering economically since long before the current crisis; little has been said since an International Monetary Fund bailout was announced in October, and the European Union's rejection this month of a proposed $240 billion bailout isn't making things easier for Gyurcsany, whose Magyar Szocialista Part (MSZP) surely won't survive the next election.

I passed by a rally organized by Jobbik Szervezete, an extreme right wing party, but by the looks of the thousands-strong crowd at Deak Ferenc Square, you wouldn't know it's a minor party. I understood little, except for the choruses demanding Gyurcsany's resignation, that much scarier when you saw the hardliners dressed in something resembling black military fatigues. They held (and wore) flags of all kinds: the official flag, the party's flag, the old Arpad flag (associated with the Nazis, among others).

Everywhere, riot police lined the streets, many of which were closed for much of the day, as were the square in front of St. Stephen's Basilica (so I had to walk another way home) and the Chain Bridge. On the other side of the Danube River and away from Jobbik Szervezete, the main opposition party Fidesz held its own rally. I arrived at the tail end, so there was only time to get forralt bor (hot wine) and overcooked chicken, but two days earlier I'd caught a taste of what the conservatives were all about. As it does every year, Fidesz hosted a small memorial to General Jozsef Schweidel on the street that bears his name. He was one of the 13 Martyrs of Arad executed by the Austrians on 6 Oct. 1849 (hence the street named after this date) after Hungary's failed War for Independence from the Habsburgs.

Five paragraphs deep, and I am just now mentioning this event, but that's appropriate because much of the historical significance is lost on March 15 (when the abortive revolution began with a reading of a 12-point list of demands). Instead of commemorating the events of 1848-49, Hungarians are more likely to hold political platforms to criticize the incumbents, which indeed is what Fidesz did at the memorial. In all fairness, they also sang the national anthem and recited "Nemzeti dal," the national song Sandor Petofi penned for the occasion. There's now a bridge and radio station dedicated in his honor, but details of his death are still unclear.

Much less political are the activities on the Chain Bridge, decorated end to end with the country's flag and stages meant to give a snapshot of life in the mid-19th century. Specifically: horse-drawn carriages, a game of jumping over a stick, and some kind of ash-covered metalsmith. I liked the blown up black-and-white photos that stood alone, but stopped taking pictures after no one could tell me who they were. Some wear paper hats that look as though they're off to war, and everyone (and I do mean everyone) wears the red-white-and-green pendant called kokarda. Anyway it probably beats our Independence Day fireworks.

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Reading: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Watching: John Merriman, "The Origins of World War I" (Yale lecture via AcademicEarth.org)
Listening to: Elton John, Greatest Hits