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.

A walk through Margaret Island

Most people enter Margaret Island through Margaret Bridge to the south because that is closer to downtown Budapest, but the two-and-half-kilometers-long island runs all the way to Arpad Bridge to the north, where there’s another entrance. A bus runs from one end to the other, and small rental cars run by motor or pedal, but most people walk to take in the foliage that sometimes hides from view the Danube on either side. To walk along the river they have to move to the edges, where runners and bicyclists take up a red road and couples, readers, and picnickers sit on the slanted stone that gives way to the water, on which cruise ships and kayaks glide by.

Back inside the heart of the island, people buy ice cream, dine on a restaurant’s terrace, work out at the athletic center, or visit the zoo, attractions as hidden as they are in Central Park. Around the large fountain, (distance) the first landmark upon entering through the south side, people sunbathe. A bit further on and trees open out onto an open field more reminiscent of Golden Gate Park, for people to play music or Frisbee or huddle in groups. Past this, a track and a football game in progress, and eight English children in two teams, in two lines, in a relay race: the ball (or is it a water balloon?) passes over one child’s head, through the legs of the next, over the head of the next, and so on, until the last runs to the front. Repeat.

Beyond this, dark busts of unknown historical figures stare out at passersby. Some stop to sit on the oversized tree, whose branches descend so low as to form seats. Others navigate the labyrinthine walls of Roman ruins. Could be Greek. Could be a product of the city planners’ imagination. And just before reaching Arpad Bridge: a manmade pond with benches and rocks forming the perimeter, and inside, green from the water lilies, from the reeds, from the mold at the bottom or from the trees reflected in the water.

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Listening to: Shakira

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 simple life

Conditions in the French countryside were slightly less primitive than those in the Vietnamese village where I visited family last summer, but I resisted the low-speed Internet and landline and filled my time with Dostoevsky, grassy hills, and freshly picked leeks. (In fact I may be the last person I know to have heard about the swine flu outbreak.) I spent the better part of a week in Rossas, a hamlet of at most a dozen houses nestled between mountains 200 kilometers southwest of Lyon.

When the weather permitted, we trekked through patches of yellow-green grass and newly bloomed trees, sometimes to a stream that my friend’s brothers dammed themselves, or to a field like an oasis naturally cleared amid the trees. When the weather didn’t, we buried our noses in books, listened to Bach, and watched smoke on the mountains (well, if there can be smoke on the water…). For a split-second I considered that this fog might actually be smoke, the way it rose from the mountains. It was worth watching the low-lying clouds, because to see them drift east to west, in and out of the hills, was to see them connect the earth and sky, to see that the white wisps are much closer to us than to the ceiling, and to see beyond the two dimensions of the sky.

Indoors, we also prepared easy meals, sometimes with vegetables straight from the garden outside, which we tilled when the rain let up. Because we were staying with my friend’s parents and because they are vegetarians, I learned to eat more sustainably than I have in my carnivorous past. Except for a month in sixth grade, my weeks in France were the longest I’ve gone with little or no meat, and I left with a renewed desire to give vegetarianism another shot – for moral reasons, but also because the crap we get from the slaughterhouse is injected almost beyond recognition. So it’s less about avoiding meat (because I will still eat meat) and more about eating real food. It reminds me, why do we cook anyway? In our early days it made sense to grill beef and boil bamboo for health reasons, but I wonder at what point we decided we needed to put things like carrots and tomatoes to heat, too.

Each course was very simple – lettuce with tomatoes or rice, vegetable soup, stir-fried potatoes, bowtie pasta, cheese, fruit yogurt, or chocolate. I didn’t think these alone would be enough for me, but when you have course after course (and that seems to be the French way), it’s more than enough. It also helped that I have learned to like things I used to think I hate:

• Radishes
• Uncooked cauliflower
• Cooked carrots
• String beans
• Lentils
• Cheese
• Unsweetened yogurt
• Celery
• Olives
• Spinach
• Peas
• Ravioli
• Pesto
• Plain pasta

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Reading: Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck
Listening to: Bjork
Watching: Scarface

I climbed this:

Hitchhiking, mountain-climbing, ski-less skiing – I did in one day things I could only imagine and some things I had never imagined at all. Of these, hitchhiking was the most necessary because there was no other way to get to little Barnave from Valence (and to get there we took a train from Lyon). All the horror stories and warnings had succeeded in deterring me from hitchhiking before, but now there were three of us, two girls and Iohan, a veteran hitchhiker because, he said, people here are nice. And he was right. So right that between the five cars it took to reach our final destination, we never had to split up, as we’d feared. So right that I might consider hitchhiking again. So right that (and this is more likely) I might consider picking up hitchhikers one day because the drivers we met were conversational and because I understand the pain of rejection (though, actually, we were quite lucky and didn’t have to wait long between being dropped off by one car and picked up by another).

In Barnave, a mountain village of sixty or so in southwestern France, we slept in a temple on those blue mats used in gym class and wrestling matches. Both (the temple and the mats) were indispensable to Iohan’s sister, who is a trapeze artist and who hosted us because she lives in the house adjacent.

For a backyard she has the fields, the forests, and the mountains, and also one of the many vineyards that seem to make up the town. Wind tossed the clouds around unpredictably, and in the distance, it shook the grass of just one field, seeming eerily to touch nothing else. I noticed there, and on the drive there, the variety in the hills and mountains, because each peak that rises behind each other is different from that other. One is fully forested with evergreens. Another sprinkled with rocks. Another with dead grass and bushes. Another still frozen in snow. I counted at least five different greens.

At breakfast one friend scared the other and me, saying we’d better eat enough for the day ahead on the mountain. But in the face of necessity we survived those ten or so hours on apples, sweet biscuits, and water, some of which we bottled ourselves at a spring one-third of the way up the mountain. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Living in the mountains was enough, I thought, but in fact we had to hitchhike three times to reach Valcroissant, the site of the mountain we would climb.

“I didn’t know hiking would be this easy!” I smiled in the first car, into which I had crawled under the back door and half-sat, half-crouched over a box of nails and a hammer. “Oh, so you think we’ll be riding the whole time!” my friend shot back.

There is also a little church with a hostel at Valcroissant, which I am beginning to understand better. Few residents do not amount to few tourists, and it was a pair of tourists, actually, who drove us the final leg.

Vertically, we ended up covering nearly 2,000 meters; horizontally, perhaps ten kilometers there and ten kilometers back. I knew going into it that I would want to quit and it would become unbearable at some points. But more accurate is to say that your body seems to be able to carry on in these situations as long as your mind doesn’t know about it. And in fact I would have second winds, bursts of energy when I just wanted to run (I would pay for that later, in the days it took to recover), but I think that had more to do with impatience than energy.

The terrain here was as varied as the hills I’d seen earlier, if not more so. One hour we would be trampling over damp and dead leaves, the next we would be fording a cool spring. Or running through dirt and stones, or picking our way through grass and twigs. On one grassy knoll we walked within a few meters of a ram, lying so carefree we thought it might be sick (but probably not because it was gone on our way down). Sitting on a cliff almost worthy of Pride Rock, we eventually saw more like him, probably a dozen rams in the distance fading into the boulders behind them, except for a baby ram that somehow ended up nearby.

To top it off, untainted white snow survived into this late spring at the top of the mountain. I unwittingly wore ankle socks and capris, so Iohan dug a hole into the snow with each step, creating a path for us to follow. Uphill, that is. I didn’t consider that we would have to find a way back down, possibly because I was sick of the snow and just wanted to reach the summit.

Making our way downhill in the snow, it turned out, was the best part of the expedition. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there, but we slid down the slope in nothing but our shoes and T shirts! Terrifying but thrilling, difficult but efficient. Simply saying it doesn’t seem to convince me that I glided down a mountain, more than 1500 meters above sea level, riding the crest of the snow. In some places the snow was too soft, so we’d sink down past our knees, or I’d ride piggy back or on shoulders. But mostly I wanted to make it down myself and realized that this, in spirit, was exactly what I’d come out here to do.

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Reading: Dostoevsky, The Possessed
Listening to: Heart

Heart of Lyon

A woman I met briefly in Lyon compared the city to Budapest: in either, one can look down from the hills on the western part of the city (the "Buda" side), to see the river and the rest of the city. The main difference is that Lyon has not one but two main, surprisingly green rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, though they do converge. Indeed, in the hilltop apartment where we stayed two of the three nights, a window faced east (in the end I couldn't get myself up early enough to watch the sunrise), giving us a view of much of the city, the Saone, and the garden immediately below where we sat for breakfast.

It seems there was no shortage of high-altitude vantage points that offered breath-taking views of Lyon, with its red ceramic shingles and darker red chimneys that look like so many top hats tossed onto the roofs. But for this the best part of the city might be the Croix-Rousse (like Red Cross, but "Rousse" isn't quite red, more like fox red). I went there a couple times but even better than the panoramic views was the second evening there, when a light fell over the hill like none I can remember. I was initially unhappy that dusk came on because the eastern sky clouded over so ominously, but after a few meters we noticed a brightness in everything west of the stormy section of the sky, almost like night and day, as if we had stepped from one to the other. To describe it might be impossible, but if I could remember what an eclipse looked like, I'd probably compare it to that. Or like a painter had applied one new glowing color so lightly but evenly across the already colored sidewalks, faces, trees and clouds. It was a pink and orange that changed so quickly that when I looked back at my photo (main, above), I was afraid I might have changed the settings.

Nearby we also saw a cathedral, something meant to look like a mini-Eiffel Tower I think, and Roman ruins, amazingly. The maze of hand-laid stones were not much less impressive than the ruins in Rome, except that we could jump across these freely (I think so... didn't really think about the sacrilege at the time). Imagine our surprise when we walk past these and happen upon the Amphitheater of the Three Gauls. Row upon concentric row formed the half circle before the stage, which I hope is still in use, and then healthy green trees and lawns. The wind would blow leaves and other yellow-green specs from the foliage in misty waves, as well as whole clouds whose shadows we could see racing across the amphitheater.

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Reading: Vaclav Havel, Temptation
Listening to: David Bowie

Another weekend in Paris

My last couple days in Paris, last weekend that is, felt as close to bohemian as I ever may, for superficial reasons but perhaps understandable ones also. We lived out of a friend's friend's studio, with a curtain to separate the bathroom and making pasta every night (it's become a running joke), unintentionally talking into the sleeping hours rather than going out. The daytime, too, does not go as planned, so plans become pointless.

On one day we walk and walk and through Promenade Plantee and other gardens, and the cemetery where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and I'm sure some French people are buried. Wilde's grave was a flowing Egyptian-like sculpture (of a woman I think) on top of a block of stone "defaced" by proclamations of love to the playwright and hearts and kisses. But I really could not tell if it was defaced, or sanctioned by authorities, and in either case, if Wilde wanted this. I don't know how he could. We arrive some time later at Grand Palais hoping to see Dali and Arcimboldo in action. On the way my friend is sure we run into a bit of a celebrity, the ex-minister of culture, who holds open the exit at the subway for us, because he's a leftist and would do that kind of thing (take the metro, I mean). But it's a rainy day so many have the same idea as we do - i.e., the line at Grand Palais is not worth it so we settle for Petit Palais across the street, to see exhibitions on William Blake and the Byzantine Empire / Mount Athos.

On another day we take the rental bikes (a recent innovation in big French cities) to that bohemian stronghold, Montmartre, then walk past the sex shops and Moulin Rouge to the top of the hill, one of the best views to see all of Paris. In another way I've already seen all of Paris, thanks to the host of the other friend I met here. He gave me a quick driving tour of the city, hitting the Place de la Bastille, the Eiffel Tower ("See how the flowers bloom?" he said. "I arranged it just for you."), Arc de Triomphe (he says he's the only person in the city to drive around it twice at times like this), Les Invalides - basically the things I'd only want to see for a few seconds anyway.

That last day, we were lucky because the sun came out, so we could sit on the Seine waiting for our train. Surprisingly I couldn't tell which way the water flowed, but ducklings crept by periodically (five in all I think, or the same one five times), and sadly I think they had lost their mother.

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Reading: Camus, Exile and the Kingdom
Listening to: Janis Joplin

The spirit of protest

If I'm lucky, I thought, maybe I will get a taste of the demonstrations for which France is known. Columbia - which had its share of civil disobedience in fall 2007 when students went on a hunger strike against the university's lack of diversity - warns study abroad students to avoid similar conflicts in foreign countries. They have reason to fear, as even during the protests at the G20 summit in London, heralded for exemplifying nonviolent resistance in the civilized world, a nearby nonparticipant died of a heart attack after being shoved by police.

Here in the northern port of Boulogne-sur-Mer is the closest I've come, as fishermen have shut down the harbor (among others along the coast) to protest quotas on cod and sole. According to the New York Times, "fishermen have resorted to dumping fish that they had caught overboard before returning to port because of the quotas." It reminded me of summer 2007, the only time I've been fishing. Off the southern coast of Long Island, we had to throw a lot of fish back into the water because they were too small according to fishing regulations, although I did win a prize for catching the biggest fish that day.

News crews stand out in otherwise quiet Boulogne-sur-Mer. Mostly they sat around waiting for something to happen, but it was slightly ridiculous to do man-on-the-street reporting near the beach, filled mostly with English tourists. But at least now that I've seen the crowded harbor and smelled the salty waters hitting the beach, I can understand why anyone would visit this small town.

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Listening to: Bee Gees

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.