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

Boldog Nonapot!

Yesterday was International Women's Day, so maybe I should have given voice to the quiet feminist in me, but the commemorations around Budapest were nearly as quiet, so I'd rather use the holiday as an excuse to make some observations about romance. In fact I didn't know about Nonap until reading a sign that mentioned it. But after that I did notice women carrying gifts from men and Eliza Doolittle's approaching people in restaurants and cars at stoplights to peddle their flowers. And one friend always brings flowers to his mother and has lunch with her on Nonap.

I don't think I would be exaggerating in saying Hungarians treat Nonap almost like Valentine's Day (plus I've just watched the V-Day episode of The Office and my sense of time is a little off). Not that they don't celebrate Feb. 14, too, because there were plenty of red candy boxes and other useful heart-shaped things in stock a month ago. But, strangely, I was in Vienna that day and was hardpressed to find any Valentine paraphernalia there (nor in Bratislava).

In just about each European city I've visited so far, though, love is evidently in the air. In Rome, it could have been that the city just inspires romance. My friend and I even received roses during our last dinner there (OK, they were dying, and we never figured out if they came from the waiter or the septuagenarian who winked at us, but still). But I don't think it was Rome. Public displays of affection reign everywhere on the continent, and somehow the couples transcend the realm of distastefulness and are actually sweet to see.

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"

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"