Anya, Apa in Hungary

Living alone, in a world of your own, is a funny thing. Often times it's hard, often times it feels like a purely unnatural fiction. Without friends and family, or even conversation partners much of the time, it's hard to ground yourself. It's hard to know what's going on, inside and outside of your mind. That's why I was a bit scared of my parents coming to Hungary -- would I be able to handle a sudden invasion into my secluded, reclused world?

My parents had never been to Hungary before, of course. They'd never been behind the Iron Curtain, a huge swath of this wide world they learned to loathe and disdain, back when that was the way of the world. In Europe, they'd only ever been to Italy, even with as many Rick Steves videos as they've watched.

So after they finished their week of revelry in the Italian Alps, basking in the warm glow of the best of the human spirit, they decided to come to Hungary. They decided to visit their son in Hungary, the second time they would visit one of their children teaching abroad. They switched their flight, booked a cheap flight midway through their stay, and declared that Friday, February 17th would be the day the touched down on Hungarian soul.

Ferihegy 1 handles Budapest's discount airlines, and the ultra-modern newly-renovated airport is certainly a welcoming arrival point. Two years ago my sister and I had arrived in the gigantic Keleti train station a little after midday. The crowds were a swarm, the station a beehive. We had to navigate the city subway for our first taste of Budapest. Even the escalators were scary. Mom and Dad got off much more lightly, whisked from modern airport to hostel in Eva’s new car.

After unpacking at the hostel and pondering the nationality of our missing roommates, I led my parents out to the streets of Budapest. A Friday night, just before midnight, the ritzy streets around Vaci Ut were quiet, excepting rare pockets of liveliness. One corner, and all the streets leading from it, though, was lit by a violinist playing Bolero. (Think Torvil and Dean.) They smiled the biggest smile I’d seen on their faces yet, I smile when you travel. My parents had found a happiness, a contentment in that man sitting at that corner at that time. It really was wonderful. (My dad did manage to convince the violinist that he knew both how to speak French and how to play the violin in our short encounter with him.)

Saturday:

Morning visit to the hectic Grand Central Market
Picnic atop the Citadel
Olympic luge down Gellert Hill
Napping, as I am travelling with 50-year-olds
Olympics on TV while drinking MGD

One of the highlights of a Saturday in Budapest was the city’s most recently-opened museum, the House of Terror, a new stop for me. The same unassuming mansion on the stately Andrassy Ut served as the headquarters of both the Nazi-sidekick Arrow Cross gestapo and Soviet communist enforcers, many decades ago. Opened in the past five years in a politically-charged climate, the museum aims to tell the horror stories of Hungarian history when either the right or the left assume totalitarian control.

The museum is different than most, in content, presentation and character. In tenor, it is much like Washington’s Holocaust museum, a tribute to the victims of mass atrocity. Rather than beginning a story, weaving different pieces of a story together and finishing the story with a satisfying conclusion --  like a well-rounded novel -- the Terrorhaza was more artistic. It slams the visitor with room after room of shocking stories and artistry, often without a satisfying link between the progression of the rooms.

The centerpiece is a wall, four stories high, of black and white photos of victims. Nameless pictures, black and white, rising from a pool of flowing water. A battle tank seemed to float above the water, the tears, the cleansing rebirth. Another room, giving a bit of information on church-life in Hungary under socialism, offers a glimpse at a few religious knick-knacks, but the main focus is a brightly-lit pearly white cross, revealed by torn up floor boards. A third room lets visitors trample over a gigantic carpet version of the former Soviet Union. The room gives some facts, figures and feels about life in a Soviet-prisoner gulag, but better gives a feel of the scope and size of a massive life-form, expanding and swallowing its neighbors.

Sunday:

Internet blogging time, as requested by Dad
Jewish Synagogue, although they wanted an entrance fee
Castle Hill, simply delightful
St. Istvan’s Basilica, yup, saw the petrified hand
Szechenyi Bath, awesome first visit to the grandfather of all Hungarian baths

We ventured to the majestic Opera Sunday night for a ritzy evening at the opera. The building is one of the most famous in Budapest, a turn-of-of-the-century masterpiece. Not far from the Terrorhaza, the Hungarian National Opera House is one of the original inhabitants of Andrassy Boulevard, one of the many 1896 tributes to a millennium of Hungarian Magyars in the Carpathian Basin. On the way, we picked up a new CETP teacher I hadn’t met yet. We had an extra ticket, after Eva proclaimed that she had no desire to see an opera, and I figured the best way to commemorate the Valentine’s time of year was to invite a random American girl on a blind date to the opera with my parents and I.

Jessamay, a Minnesota native and recent Duluth graduate, proved to be a good sport about the opera adventure, I’m excited to get to know her better over the spring. If there would have been MTV cameras around, it would have been an odd combination of "Date My Mom," starring my Mom, and "Dismissed," with my Dad and I competing for the honor of avoiding the dreaded "You are dismissed" cue to exist stage-left. And in truth, my Dad might have won. He was really on top of the "I’m in love with a new city and new country!" game, whereas I was busy reverting to some sort of childish embarrassment. "Oh my god. Did my parents just drop their chap-stick in the middle of the opera? Oh no, are they looking under those peoples’ feet for it?" You know, that kinda stuff.

The opera itself was in many ways like a hockey game. There were three periods. We got up, stretched, and pounded a beer during each intermission. They were surprisingly very inexpensive. Some of the upper-class folk there chose wine, instead. After the curtain fell on each act, we applauded and demanded a curtain call. It was a bit like post-goal antics, except I’m not sure exactly what we were celebrating. And just like I probably won’t ever really understanding the icing penalty, I gave up on understanding the undercurrents of the opera not long after the puck-drop. And just like my little-pond-perfected skating skills wouldn’t serve me well in making the jump to the National Hockey League, my mutt-of-a-breed German skills didn’t translate into much ability to understand Wagner’s German sung at high-pitch by Hungarians.

The final curtain call, though, came four-and-a-half-hours after the overture began.