Heves. Ma Volt.

(Blogspot used to let me cheat. I could edit the dates, after I wrote the story, to make them fall chronologically. Apparently I can’t do that anymore, I apologize for any inconvenience.)

Heves and I have an up and down history.

My intro to the town, before I’d ever stepped foot in it’s little park, was a two-hour long conversation on the drive from Budapest two Augusts ago. Tirade would be the best word selection if we wanted to capture the tenor more fully. Peter was the ambassador and he found the little town of 10,000 suffocating and impossible to escape.

When I arrived in the town, I couldn’t agree more. Agi bombarded me with German, I couldn’t work the blinds, the neighbor yelled at me for not locking the door. It took me a week to make a friend.

So I escaped. For 12 straight weekends, I left to visit the other Americans in Hungary. Kalocsa. Budapest. Tiszaujvaros. Nyiregyhaza. Anywhere but Heves.

I realized slowly, that I was being silly. Part of the adventure of being abroad is discovering happiness in your surroundings. So I set out to enjoy Heves. The about-face corresponded directly with my first visit to the local weekend disco.

Students bought me beer, because that’s the way Hungary works. I bought them beer, because that’s the way Hungary works. That might be ketchier than shit in America, perhaps, but sustenance in a little Hungarian village.

So I found happiness in befriending them – they were much more willing to talk in English or German or any combination of the two at the disco. It liberates where the classroom is claustrophobic. And I met their older brothers and sisters and friends, home in Heves for just the weekend. That’s how I made my friends, like Miss Petra, and how I learned to be able to find enough happiness in Heves to stay every-other weekend, sometimes more.

When I finally left, I had been in the process of saying goodbye for more than 30 days. I was ready, and said goodbye with the vain flick of a wrist.

But here I was, standing in front of the Heves train station again, planting two kisses on Petra’s cheeks. Suddenly back in Heves, Petra translating the discourse of a meal of pork. Her mom is fun, but hardly speaks a lick of English. Petra’s taken only literature and grammar classes lately, it took her a while to regain the ease of fluency. Or maybe it was the new braces.

The same, but different, she explained on a backyard swing under Hungarian csillagok. Things had changed, she didn’t want to be heart-broken when I left again, as I had to do. She knew, of course, Heves isn’t home for me.

(She still thinks, though, that I’m a good story-teller, when she reads the tales on this page.)

The school, too, was different. Peter and Viktor are both gone. Left for the promise of better opportunities. It makes me happy. And thankful that I didn’t stay a second year without my two best teacher-friends. I got to meet the Canadian couple who replaced me, they’re charming and wonderful. It was odd to know that they enjoyed Heves so much to know that if they weren’t expecting a grandchild come July that they would stay another year. Kitti bobs on in German with Agi while petting little Bandito, who finds himself at home in the school lobby. Rob has the confidence of a businessman that I could never have, the kids said it worked well.

Handshakes with Bandibacsi were the same, but a high-five with the kids was different.

7A has grown so much. They’re taller and stouter and broader and more. They bubbled with the same energy, though, so much so that I promised them that I would always consider them “my little 7A,” even if now they’re 8A.

I got to visit with all of 8A, both the German kids and the English. They all learn both languages now, and we bounced back and forth with the playfulness of young trilingualism. I wish those kids could join me in some sort of classroom of life, they’re all so eager and heart-warming and bright.

Ricsi and Petra never moved on from 9D. They’re still there this year. The rest that blossomed into 10D gained too little in the transition, I fear. But because they were excited to hear my name, the teachers assumed that I should visit them, so I was sentenced to visit even those I never grew to hold dear.

The first question out of every class? “Have you got a girlfriend?”

I was almost excited to escape the school, one last time.

And the evening return to Unikum Disco that I had so long treasured? Seven people playing cso-cso, closed out early. None of my iwiw friends who had promised excitement to welcome my return. I didn’t even stay for a beer. Bulis happen only on Saturday, Petra explained on an early walk home. Or maybe exams were better to blame, she offered, as I quietly sang whatever song was pulsating through my thoughts.

I’m having a problem these days…with expectations. To high. Always. Rationality perversely miss-guided by romanticism. And when the expectations flop, I get disenchanted, but refuse to lose optimism for the next bend around the river.

There’s only one phrase for Heves and my trip. Ma volt. Already done. Used up, taken. Been there, Heves, done that. Treasured always in memory, but no longer my story.

Ma volt.

So it goes.

Another day, another California Coffee Company date with a beautiful English-speaking Hungarian gal, another day of hunting for a place to call home for a coupla months. Eva didn't have to work all day because she had an interview with the police, regarding her recent break-in!

Live from the California Coffee Company, apartment searching online thanks to the wicked Hungarian-speaking skills of Miss Noemi.

Headed to Heves

Boldog Csutuktokt. Happy Thursday.

Hungary, at first glance, is exactly the same.

Hungary feels the same. A pair of Ferihegy kisses on Eva’s cheeks is the same warm happiness. I still stand on tiptoes to hug Kat, but I can wrap all the way around Harpswell’s neck. Joyous indifference. My fingers still remember their way over the keypad of my recycled t-mobile cellphone. (36-30-812-85-91, if you ever have the urge.)

Hungary tastes the same. The ice cream is the same, more dainty than delicate. The gryo tempts with the same grizzle. A simple two deci-liters of Coke Light satisfies so much more fully than back home. Otthon. Palinka still burns. It always will, of course.

Hungary hits the nose the same, too. The same stench of sewer lingers in exactly the same way, wafting every now and then, even when you least expect it. The train is the same sweet sweat of hundreds of weary Hungarian travelers. And others with less certainty of their surroundings.

I’m the later at the moment. As familiar as it seems, I’m completely uncertain of my surroundings.

Empowered this time around with a laptop, I’m typing on a train. The car is new, I’ve never seen this style before. The seats are green. Comfortably fuzzy, not well-worn and repeatedly torn. Each car has an individual smoking booth, like a dunce-cap of a time-out-chair in the corner, sealed in with glass. The luggage rack above the seats peeks into the aisle in a stylish peak, as if more than a moments thought was given to form, not just function.

As familiar as some parts feel, Hungary seems so different to me at this moment in time.

I oscillate wildly between feeling almost certain I’m on the wrong train to vaguely optimistic that I’m headed in the right direction. I started worrying when Matt, Noemi and I started to run to Platform One at Keleti because we lingered too long over delicious shakes on List Ferenc ter. Then the ticket-sellers kept closing their windows right before we stepped up to get buy a ticket.

(The price is different, too. It used to cost 1420 forint to get from Heves to Budapest. Now it costs 2040 HUF to cover the same distance. Coupled with a weak dollar, the price jumped in the one year I’ve been gone from $6.45 to $11.33 for the 140 km journey.)

I didn’t have a lot of time to double-check as we ran to the platform. The final destination was right, Miskolc is well past Heves in the right direction, but the middle city was something I’d never seen before. There are certainly many tracks between Budapest and Miskolc, was I sealed into a train headed down the right track? Not a single twist and turn looked familiar. Not a tree or town or hill struck me as something I’d seen before. The train went under highways I’d never seen before. Stopped at stations I’d never laid eyes upon. I was so worried I debated calling Kat or some interneted friend to double check the itinerary on that former bible-of-sorts, www.elvira.hu.

It might be dehydration. It’s ridiculously hot in Hungary, summer arrived early.

But even as unfamiliar hills and forests and lakes whizzed by, the map confirmed that each stop, labeled by big white block letters on the front of each train station, was one step in the right direction. And slowly, I was able to recognize the big things, they were the first things that I recognized. The big Matra hills were just were the used to be, just like they used to be. The nuclear power plant just south of the hills was etched in hazy clouds and a setting sun, just like it used to be. And the Kal/Kapolna station was just like it used to be, so I hoped off.

Kicsi Piros (little red) was waiting, it always is. Heves is only two stops down the track that runs from Kal/Kapolna to Kisujszallasz. But even on that little line to Heves, one I’d taken so many times before, the unfamiliarity was shocking. I noticed a cemetery for the right time on the west side of the tracks. Cemeteries, almost by definition, cannot be new. A lake. A grown forest I’d never seen before on the east side of the tracks. Where had they been every other time I’d kicspirosed down the line. Or had I kicspirosed down some other line? Was I where I had always been? Or was I somewhere new?

Hungary is the same, of course, even in the newness, but not too me:

I was watching a movie after reading the book.

The big picture might be the same, but I was unnerved by the differences in the delicacy of details. I felt like I was entering a story. Someone else’s story. A story I had memorized because I had treasured it so much every time I heard it, the many times I had heard it.

The church steeple.
The water tower.
Highway 31.
The retired railroad car turned watermelon stand.
A pretty girl in a pink dress.
The little white station branded “HEVES.”

I stepped off the train, slowly, one foot at a time. I was home to a place that had never been my home.

London Calling

Heathrow officials don’t advise leaving the airport unless you have more than a 6 hour layover. But even with long customs lines nipping away at my six-hour layover in London, I decided to do it anyways. It’s simply too easy: the Piccadilly Line of the Tube runs directly from the airport to the city center. It’s a quick and easy 50 minute trip for 4 pounds. (The conversion rate is bad. The dollar is weak. Don’t remind me!)

And the reward was far too great: a mid-morning coffee date with one of the most spectacular persons I’ve ever worked with at a camp, Miss Hadden.

She’s a San Francisco girl turned Londoner. She's been in London for the past seven years, with plans for citizenship and hopes of admission to Oxford. She's magnificent and caring and generous and gregacious and heart-warming and all other adjectives good. On more than one occassion last summer, she knew exactly what i needed to find balance or happiness, all while i was being paid to be HER counselor and teacher. Whenever she's able to steer herself back to Orcas Island for a summer, she'll become one of the greatest counselors to walk Four Winds. Nagyon jo lessz.

After our two-hour tea-and-buscuit, without either of course, I jumped back on to the Tube at South Kensington Station, happier than I'd been, inspired by the enthusiasm of a camp friend. In a bit of a happy daze, i was shocked back into realization only when i found myself surrounded by Hungarian-speakers at the Budapest-bound British Airways flight gate. I really am headed back to Magyarorszag...

Freedom of Information and Expression

Hungary has one-upped its usual penchant for thriving on the fly! Unlike learned the specifics of my job when I arrived in Heves (key factors like "German" had previous been left unmentioned...), this time I find out my mission the morning before leaving for O'Hare! :-)

I'll be manning the Freedom of Information and Expression project, and I'm jazzed!

"The Justice Initiative is in the midst of a project to collect “best law and practice” (BL&P) concerning freedom of information from around the world. The project will result, by November 2007, in an on-line resource and print version. This is the first such effort of its kind and will provide the basis for advocacy to establish “evolving standards” that eventually may ripen into cognizable norms and be codified in international instruments, such as that being developed by the Council of Europe. The resource will be organized by topic. Under each topic heading will be paragraphs about positive precedents with links to relevant documents where available, or else with citations to where the information can be found. Topic headings include the following:

• International Standards: declarations and treaties
• International Jurisprudence re the right to information
• The right to information in national constitutions and Constitutional Jurisprudence
• The main elements of access to information laws
• Recognition of access to information as a fundamental right (inc. justifications)
• The scope of access to information laws
o public bodies
o types of information
o private bodies
• Exemptions: Overview, and Harm and Public interest tests
• Information of High Public Interest
• Environmental Information
• Public Health Information
• Information Necessary for an Informed Electorate
• Specific Exemptions
• National Security
• Commercial Secrets
• Privacy
• Criminal Proceedings
• Working Papers and Drafts
• Written and oral requests
• Timeframes
• Costs
• Positive and Negative Silence
• Proactive Publication of Information
• FOI in Practice
o Information Officers
o Information Commissioners
o Good practice on information management
o Impact on Security (police) & Intelligence Units"

What will that look like on a daily basis?

• Review rough drafts of various sections of the BL&P resource submitted by partners from around the world; draft emails to the authors to ask for clarifications and additions where the writing is unclear or incomplete; edit papers.
• Compile a library of useful, recent articles on freedom of information, written in or after1996, and an annotated list of these articles, including urls where available. Electronic versions are preferred to hard copies.
• Sift through and select documents for the appendices from websites and Justice Initiative files.
• Search on-line websites and databases, including www.foiadvocates.net and www.freedominfo.org, for examples of good law and practice not already included in the drafts submitted. Write summaries of the on-line information.
• Assist Eszter Filippinyi with organizing files concerning FOI laws, posting information on the Justice Initiative website, and completing other tasks needed for FOI or FOE projects.
• Assist Eszter with editing a final report on activities and a paper for donors drafted by our Peruvian partner concerning lessons learned during its 2-year FOI implementation project.

Nagyon jo lessz!!

Jeremy Jewett
Legal Research Intern
Open Society Justice Initiative
Oktober 6. str 12.
H-1051 Budapest
HUNGARY
Tel: +36 327 3100 ext 3122/2247
Fax: +36 327 3103
www.justiceinitiative.org

Professional Packer

This must certainly be a never-ending packing/unpacking/packing!! :-( I deserve part of the blame, though, stopping to "try out" what clothes I would pack based off of twin needs of dressing-to-impress as a young professional and as a not-very-good salsa dancer. (Perhaps you can see where Mandy Jones' infamous "you-look-like-you're-on-a-treadmill" comment stems from...)

Hi Aunt Barb. Thanks for reading along! I'm happy that you'll have some summer reading now and proud that you've earned your first-ever blog-mention!!

Csokolom Noemika. I'm happy that you've decided to read, from August through to last June my adventure that mirrored your stay in America. Magyarorszagon nagyon kurva jo lessz!!

Jeremy on Soros

George Soros is a financier turned philanthropist with a fascinating biography. Just as important to my story, Soros is the sponsor and driving force behind the Open Society Institute. (Again, like Heves, the “s” must be pronounced “sh.” Think “Shorosh.” And know that the name is rather poetic. In Hungarian, the word means “next-in-line.” In Esperanto it means “will soar.”)

Born to a Hungarian family of Jewish background that spoke Esperanto at home, he survived World War II in Budapest and fled the Soviet occupation in 1947 to attend the London School of Economics. He emigrated to America in 1956 and soon after started investing. His hedge Fund returned 3,365% between 1970 and 1980. I think even Investor Earl would be impressed!

Soros topped out at $11 billion at one point, but now you have to scroll to Page 2 of the Forbes List to find his $8.5 billion fortune. He amassed his fortune by bringing a unique philosophy to investing. One of his LSOE professors Karl Popper impressed him with the concept of “reflexivity.” In short, “true” and “false” is too simplistic. You can get a better understanding of reality if you consider your own biases. And you can make a buck if you understanding global biases/misconceptions before others do.

He earned a fortune of enemies, especially with currency speculating. He made a billion dollars in one day when he ”broke” the Bank of England in 1992. Thailand, too, was caught flirting with bad economic policy. Soros was called an “economic war criminal” after the baht collapsed in 1997. At home, the American right regularly calls him a “meddling moneybag.” But, hey, anyone who Bill O’Reilly finds disagreeable must be a friend of mine. And if these nutbags are against him? Wow.

Like Robin Hood and the Robber Barons before him, Soros has dedicated himself and his fortune to good causes around the world. He won fame for supporting Solidarity, the Rose Revolution and other anti-communist uprisings since 1980. His grants helped keep Soviet scientists working while the government collapsed in 1989. Today, his influence reaches in America and abroad.

Stateside, Soros is one of the most important champions of liberal policies, especially with his checkbook. He supported numerous left-leaning platforms in the 2004 election. My favorite story is that when Cheney misspoke in a pre-election debate, challenging viewers to double check his fact at the wrong website address, Soros quickly propped up the other domain name, with his own article “Why We Must Not Re-Elect President Bush” atop the page. His biases are perhaps visible through his anti-drug-war, pro-gun-control stance.

But abroad, his influence is stripped of political tilt. Instead, the goals are simply the promotion of democracy, open societies and education. He created and financed the Central European University in Budapest. It’s an American-accredited English-medium graduate school that draws students from across Eastern Europe and around the world. (Mariah and I met the Ukranian Anton, a CEU student, last year on our adventure back into the USSR. Just last week I found him, of all places, on Facebook.)

And most importantly for our purposes, Soros created the Open Society Institute to continue his progressive advocacy abroad. The two main offices are New York and Budapest, the later office being in the same downtown office complex as CEU. My assignment with the Justice Initiative is just one of the operational arms of OSI. “Promoting rights-based law reform, building knowledge and strengthening legal capacity worldwide” fits well into the greater OSI goals of promoting democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform around the world.

I think a summer in the OSI will be an amazing opportunity to learn from professional advocates from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and experiences. I’m excited to be a part of a mission that’s bigger than myself – that couldn’t be a more stark transition from the self-centricism of the first-year of law school. So game on, let’s embark once again on making the world a little better, one day, one smile at a time.

(And here’s my open society disclaimer. This spring I read Soros on Soros and The Bubble of American Supremacy. Both are clear, concise and intriguing. Beyond that, though, I must admit to an over-reliance on Wikipedia and a proclivity to label myself liberal and progressive. So I bought into the “open society” concept and offer you a slew of links so you handcraft an opinion of your own on one, of many, ways of looking at the world. Enjoy the adventure.)

The Cast Since Then

It was less than a year ago that I left Hungary. The cast of characters, myself included, has changed completely. And they've stayed the same. All at the same time.

Heves:

Little Janka and Big Kinga both have language certificates now.

A Canadian couple, Rob and Kitty, share little Deak Fer u. 4. All reports are that they are wonderful.

Well-belted Eszter, one of my favored German students, now lives with the English-speaking grandmother Barbara because her family moved to Kecskemet. I think it will be good for both of them.

English Peter finally quit the school, after years of moaning. He left for France with his fiancée. I’m proud of him.

Petra has braces now.

In Hungary, the prime minister Gyurcsany Feri admitted that he lied. He was caught on tape saying that the MSzP had been lying about economic figure for two years for political reasons. Perhaps they’re spoiled, but the Hungarian were so disappointed that they rioted. A lot.

The forint is trading at 185 per dollar. When I left, the exchange rate was 205 per dollar.

Friends:

Emily and Laura are the same. I think they always will be.

Kat is still traveling, but I think a boy with an accent is reeling her in.

Liz had to leave Hungary two months early, and it seems like she’s done a lot to support her dad back home, as he battles with cancer.

Gaines has learned she that she has no interest in the law and instead will carve out a different future in Dallas.

Jenna and Yerik divorced. Yerik’s in Chicago. Jenna will be going to med school in Hungary.

Chad’s in a band on the east coast. I would imagine that he’s well.

Brent landed a great job in one of the motion picture studios in Hollywood. But even after his departure, the confusion of love in Hungary still swirls his mind. He has plane tickets already, but is still undecided on a return trip this summer.

Thanksgiving Elli now has a year of college under her belt. Her Hungarian professor at Indiana kicked her out of class because she’s too good. She’ll be in Hungary this summer, back with her beloved host mom. She recently purchased hiking boots and a backpack. Her teeth are now braces-free.

Eva and the Ministry of Defense have gone separate ways. Same with Welder-Boy, too. Both changes are for the better, she asserts. She works for a Korean tire company now, orchestrating their training department. Not quite as she fulfilling as she thought it would be, she’s weighing job offers across Europe.

She took to writing a Hungarian-language blog, to better understand her own world after drawing inspiration from what I had written. My favorite quote from her musing on being an angstful young Hungarian in the midst of angstful times in Hungary? "I don’t have a movement, I am only a silent observer of the world around me who still believes it can get better and nicer."

Heves visitor Rachel spent four months in Spain. Apparently the Spanish boys were not as tempted/tempting as the Hungarians lads.

My friends R.J. and Gaby got married back home. As the only single delegate to the wedding, I was nominated to give a toast. The microphone shook in my hand. Wandering and love are the only two concepts I remember from the babble. Afterwards, I took it upon myself to throw a bowling ball blindly down a darkened lane. I’m not sure if I knocked over any pins in my lane or any others. The last I heard from them, they wanted to adopt a Hungarian child.

Me:

I turned 26.

I learned in Washington that I outgrew camp, somewhere along the line. I learned at the ALPs ropes course, that I’d outgrown ropes courses, too.

Washington also taught me that islands are beautiful, but claustrophobic. Maybe I was tired, but I didn’t make many friends there. And again, I proved better at establishing connections after the fact. Regardless, Rainer and her sisters charmed me.

Law school taught me that Baskerville is my favorite font. And that I miss writing.

Books and concepts are something I can only handle for so long before I need to actually do something. One year of casebooks and dicta was too much. I’m excited that next semester I’ll be manning the appeal of an actual prisoner in the Wisconsin prison system, likely writing for an international law journal and perhaps competing in an international moot arbitration. Two thumbs up for interactivity.

I earned a spot on the dean’s list in a completely overwhelming first semester. While I’m not a legal genius, and won’t ever be, I have some skills that work well in a field like law. My mind might not be aflutter with hypothetical situations and niceties of preciseness, but I’m good at analyzing problems and I’m getting better at arguing on behalf of my solutions.

I learned, though, that I do best in those wondrous challenges you can’t fully appreciate during the fact, you could never enjoy them until they’re over. Without any challenge like that this spring semester, I’ve regressed into half-heartedness. I left for Hungary, emotionally at the least, in about March.

A girl in the law school wished me the best socially, romantically and professionally last fall. I don’t think it worked, unfortunately. I worry now, in my old age, about my abilities in the area of interpersonal love. Maybe I’m allowed that fear when little sister Megan's moving in with her boyfriend, high school friends Shawn, RJ and Peter are either happily married or on their way to their second marriage, the ole camp girlfriend Sara’s engaged and freshman-crush Kelsie sent, just shy of her 5 year wedding anniversiary, an e-mail picture of adorable Mia Joan, almost 2 years old. She shares her mother's middle name. The introspection, coupled with a litany of fleeting crushes over the course of a spring, led me to question/realize/wonder most recently if writing and love might be mutually exclusive, either one or the other, at least in the way that this man approaches both.

I have started to use the phrase “this man” to replace I. Hmm…guess we’ll have to see what that literary device means.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died. Heaven, too, continued with it started last year, stealing my third and final grandmother. “Family” now means something far different than when I set out for Hungary almost two years ago.

So it goes, I suppose. Things always stay the same and things always change completely, both at the same time. That's what makes the adventure so much fun.

Hungary for More

It's official: The countdown's at one-week until arrival at Budapest's Ferihegy. :-)

I couldn't be more excited for another trip to Hungary, this time to learn the trade of international human rights law as a young professional working for a global-minded progressive international NGO. Woo woo!!

Thanks for the interest in joining, or re-joining, in the adventure. As promised to many, I'll again be telling the thoughts and stories of trials and tribulations as a visitor in Hungary. They'll all be here, prefaced with the warning that the tales are all mine. The words are guaranteed to make no sense to other people, places and times, but know that in at least one flash of a moment they were the thoughts in the experience of this man's life. If they resonate with you, well that'll just a be a bonus that puts a smile on my face. Active participation through commentary is more than encouraged - it's soul-sustaining.

To come? An update on the cast of characters, since I left Hungary a year ago. A look at what i'll be doing for the Open Society Institute. And the initial game plan. Enjoy the ride.

The best part of goulash? The never-ending kettles.

Welcome back to Hungarian Goulash.