HUNGARIAN GOULASH: a mixture of many different elements

embers

2009-01-07T01:32:00.003+01:00

every great passion is hopeless, if not it would be no passion at all, but some cleverly calculated argument, an exchange of lukewarm interests. 156.

life becomes bearable only when one has come to terms with who one is, both in one's own eyes and in the eyes of the world. 157.

sandor marai

Scrolling and Circles

2007-08-20T17:56:00.001+02:00

If you do some scrolling, a serious amount of scrolling, if you scroll so much that lives and times and people and places and the world have changed as you scroll back in time - you'll come across this:

"made it to Budapest safe and sound! yesterday we watched a boat sink (seriouslz! apparentlz it's important, when on a fast-moving river, to anchor off the bow of your boat, as opposed to the low-profile stern...) on the Danube River, then both an air show and fireworks above the Danube. hungarians know how to celebrate the signing of a constitution! today Eva is driving me to Eotvos Collegium so we don't have to do it before she works tomorrow morning. hungarian is marginallz improving. z and y are switched on hungarian computers, please be forewarned for the upcoming ten months!"

August 20, 2005.

Two years ago to the day.

August 20, 2007.

So, so long ago. To get there, you'd have to scroll back in time, through me and my stories. And yet I can remember it. In some ways I miss it desperately. The planes flying above the Danube seemed so fresh and new and scary and invigorating. The twisted keyboard so full of mystery and potential and wonder and intrigue. Hungary was still magyarorszag, sometime delightfully unfamiliar. A challenge. An adventure.

I leave, tomorrow morning, a bona fida tour guide.

Emily and her friendly Hungarian boyfriend are sleeping on the makeshift guest-room on my porch. an amazing hungarian girl is sitting on a train right now, making a bee-line from the second-to-last day of Salsa camp to the sweaty capital, just to be with me. eva's waiting for me in her apartment, half an hour from now. this time, two years later, she doesn't have to pick me up, i can navigate there myself.

the tall black shelf in my room is the last thing I have left to pack, sandwiching three bottles of wedding-gift wine. i'm standing in front of it, typing on my laptop set on the fourth of five shelves. the tears have a long way to fall.

it's harder, much, for me to say goodbye to hungary this time. so, so much harder. maybe it's heves vs. budapest. maybe it's three months vs. ten months. probably its because of noemi. maybe it's because of friends. maybe it's because of school. probably because i know it's for good. probably because it's the same pang of autumn - just after the first back-to-school ad, just before the excitement of the first day of school - that pang that has made me cry since i was a little boy.

yesterday emily and i stumbled upon a wine festival. if we had arrived 6 minutes earlier, admission would have been free. another random turn took us to concerts up and down imperial Andrassy. We smiled, in silence, in delight of simply watching Hungarians for block after block. that same amazement i've always felt.

At the last block, a fitting tribute to two years in the books. Hevesi Tamas. Not simply is he "Thomas from Heves," but he's the singer who has haunted me since i arrived. his wailful ballad has followed me with every turn. The song, simply, is titled "Jeremy." students in heves who had never even sat through one of my classes and couldn't even speak a single language i could, would serenade me with the cry. Don't leave me, Jeremy, Hevesi Tamas and all the subsequent crooners would beg. The world will have no meaning without you. Don't go.

As much as I shouted as he stood on stage, entertaining a few hundred holidaying Hungarians, the song didn't come. Jeremy vagyok, I pleaded, certainly one of only a handful of folks in this whole country who can say that with a straight face. I am Jeremy, I am leaving, I begged silently. Please play my song.

It never came. The tribtue, though, was a good reminder in silence. Hungary isn't about me. Hungary will keep going on being Hungary long after i've snapped my seatbuckle on the plane at Ferihegy tomorrow. I leave having touched hundreds of friends, making their lives sparkle in many different ways. they'll just have to know that they have all done nothing less for me.

Just as there are flavors that go unnoticed in gulyas, there are stories that will go untold in this goulash. wonderful stories of twenty-year old american girls learning to enjoy celebrating an evening, and birthday, in Little Heves. and 4:50 am bus rides home. stories of friendships and goodbyes. tears and waves. stories of coworkers discovering themselves in the fineprint of a largely anonymous blog. stories of hungary.

my story, one of just a million billion stories in hungary, is ending. mixed into the gulyas, one delcious spice of a savory whole. i pass my story off to others, those with hungarian stories yet to come. michal the traveller. jenny the visitor. alison the student. dave the dentist. trever the scholar.

little pieces of the Hungarian gulyas. My goulash. Egeszsegedre!

Ta-da!

2007-08-18T17:45:00.000+02:00

Ta-da. Here it is, hot off the presses my last day of work. Basically a summation of the totality of what I've done. This page of a chart, one of about 40, was the big kahuna of my summer's efforts. Here's hoping it might be of good use to someone someday!

ejszekatek

2007-08-10T03:12:00.000+02:00

typikus magyar ejszekat van.

Paying Tribute to Pecs

2007-08-04T23:42:00.000+02:00

Noemi had a bad week. Among other things, she accidentially spilt a glass of wine on her laptop. A shocked gasp later, it was fried. Her mom took it to tech staff at the National Museum of Fine Arts, but they’ve been oscillating all week on whether or not it would be possible to save any information at all. The computer itself, though, goners.

I figured that just treating her to a nice Jeremy-cooked meal (all the ingredients used to be enclosed in one bag) wasn’t enough, so I suggest we whisk ourselves off to Pecs (Pay-Ch) for a weekend overnight. Three hours by IC train, it’s a perfect weekend destination, long built up by guidebooks and stories. We took off early Saturday morning with smiles.

Pecs is the biggest city in southeastern Hungary, perched on rolling hills just before Hungary slopes into Serbia. The hills are flush with wine, the southern side of the mountains has a Meditteranean feel to it. The climate goes as far as to offer fig trees along the streets in Pecs.

Two architectural highlights crown the city. In the main square, a green-domed church stands as proud tribute to the 150 years of Turkish dominance. (Shown in the picture, alongside one of the delightful nationalist rallies that you run into every once in a while in provincial Hungary...) After conquering Pecs in the 16th century, the Ottomans razed the largest church and made a grand mosque out of the rubble. When the Hungarians (fine, Austrians…) retook the city late in the 17th century, they were strangely more sentimental and, in rather unprecedented act of foresight, converted the main mosque into a unique Christian church rather than razing it in retribution. Inside, you can still read verses of the Koran painted onto a few of the walls. At the other end of the downtown area, formerly encased inside a city wall, is the four-spired cathedral. On this particular Saturday, at least ten brides stood white against the picturesque towers.

We ate food, we drank wine, we touristed. Come Sunday, we hiked in flipflops up the hills that grows from the north end of the town. First we wove through residential streets before settling on a footpath to the TV tower atop the bluff. While we weren’t properly afooted, the trail was nice hiking and the view from the top even better. After the long stroll and a good meal, we dashed back to the train for the last Sunday afternoon train, refreshed from a quick night out of the city.

Corny

2007-08-03T22:27:00.001+02:00

hetveget

2007-07-30T18:24:00.000+02:00

Julia and I skipped an afternoon of work, in protest, when her goodbye lunch was pushed back from Friday to Monday. Our rebellious ways took us to the Ethnography Museum, which was quite nice. Right across from the majestic Parliament, it was originally the home of the Hungarian supreme court. The traditional Hungarian displays were free, they charged only to see two temporary displays that may or may not have been worth the 400 HUF.

Noemi and I discovered the joys of 499 HUF frozen pizzas, three to a box. Austerity measures and tastebuds both agree that the pizzas are a good find. I don’t have an oven, though, so we can only make them at her house on Raday utca.

Kalli’s cousin inspired our first trip to Rio. It’s wonderful people watching, our personal favorite was the cow-pantsed young man seducing the mini-skirted young lady. After the music and 700 HUF beers got to us, though, we crossed the street to Zold Pardon, back to where we belong.

I made Noemi take her first trip ever to Csepel, an island just south of the city center on Sunday. It was a planned suburb from the 1960s or 1970s, and to this day retains much of the feel. It’s connected to the city proper by a quick and easy section of the suburban HEV rail line. The reason for our visit was the nearly deserted northern half of the island. It’s rumored to be a tentative site for a potential Olympic village down the road, so I wanted to check it out with my own eyes. It looked, truthfully, quiet promising for the purpose. Close the city center, nice views, and absolutely nothing of value to knock down. Potentially really good.

On the way back, we stopped at the National Theatre. It’s an eclectic building, surrounded not only by a beautiful spot on the Danube at the southern reaches of the city, but also by quite a controversy, but I loved it. The boat part of the design is glorious, and the odd-tidbits surrounding it are engagingly fun. In my SimCity world, the Olympic Stadium is right across the road from the theatre. ☺

And the weekend finished with a screech. The almost rusty-screech of a foot-powered air pump at 11:00 Sunday night. Janos brought over a queen-size inflatable mattress that his brother and sister-and-law had bought to sleep on when they were visiting. Slipped underneath my futon mattress, it’s a wonderful addition to my home! I have a bed finally!!!

Glorious...

Eastern European Propaganda

2007-07-27T20:40:00.000+02:00

Greetings from Gyongyhaz! Enjoy the show. :-)

Inkak

2007-07-26T19:50:00.000+02:00

Okay, enough with the drama, it's not hot anymore. The front passed, and by Monday it was delightful. The mercury might creep back up again, according to the forecast rumors, but we'll take it as it comes.

Noemi's mom smuggled Noemi and I into the Museum of Fine Arts' Inca Exhibit on Monday. We reveled in the air conditioning and enjoyed the artifacts, too. It inspired dreams of visiting South America someday.

Up next? The long anticipated video of my new apartment!

Hot. A lot.

2007-07-23T01:42:00.000+02:00

(The dateline is right. Monday morning. 1:42 am. The city and I have become nocturnal in the brutal summer heat.)

Office Manager Reka asked last Monday how it felt to be 27. I gave the obvious answer, old. But I was wrong. I feels hot at age 27. Ridiculously hot. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday was the hottest seven-day experience of my life, bar none. Unbe-freaking-lievable. It's hard to know the actual damage, as i don't speak the language of the weather reports, but I've heard accounts that the mercury topped out at 43 celsius.

CNN says it's causing havoc.

Even the rhinocerouses need cold showers.

According to Pestiside.hu:

• A train carrying a load of yellow phosphorous crashed near Lviv, Ukraine, releasing a toxic cloud that some predict will travel west through Hungary. This would be a big deal, except that by the time it gets here, we'll already be dead from the fucking heat. [mno.hu]

The government is taking action.

Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky told a news conference on Thursday the city would never again try to save money by buying buses or trams that were not air-conditioned.

The city of Szolnok has bought 1.2 tons of melons from local farmers, which it has been distributing to elderly residents and families with children.

It's a level-three heat warning.

In short, it was the hottest temperature ever in Hungary, since records have been kepy.

Cities were not designed for 43 celsius. I never really knew this, the incompatability of cities and summer. The past eight years I've had the privilege of summering in forests, mountains, islands, lakes, rivers and meadows. Occasional trips to Denver, Charlotte and Seattle were only rare adventures, where an afternoon of heat could be blown off as part of the adventure.

But living in a city of 2 million during the summer? Ugh. Sixth-floor apartments, with southern-exposure windows. Ugh. Each step up is a notch up the thermometer. The city smells like dog urine. Parks aside, there are 18 trees in the entire city. Suffocating trams. Smelly people. Stagnant air.

Of course, though, there are occasional respites. It's wonderful to take joy in simple pleasures. WestEnd is pleasantly cool. It's less of a pain to spend time in the office when the air-conditioning switch is enchantingly easy to manipulate. The Buda Castle cave tour is refreshingly 60-degreesed, even if the content is maddeningly unimpressive. And dusk and dawn are colorfully pleasant.

So the city, and I, have taken to modifying ourselves. We nap through the day. Accomplishing even one thing during daylight would be a highlight. The streets are deserted during the day. This weekend, an absolute ghost town. The only souls braving the sidewalkes were the same old cycle of revolving tourists, clutching their maps in the hopes of figuring Hungary out in 48 hours. Here for only a day or two, they marched through the sun and heat in the hopes of seeing all that they could. The regulars, though, either escaped the city or escaped the daytime.

At dusk, at dawn, at night, we move. Noemi and I went to see The Snows of Kilimanjaro at the square fronting the Parliament tonight just after the sun set. The website said it would be in English, with Hungarian subtitles, so I got bored after a while. Not before, though, Noemi earned a set of precious goosebumps as the evening breeze picked up. Afterwards, I went for a 10 pm jog. People were walking their dogs. Sitting on sidewalk steps, emerging from summer sun bomb shelters. Plus it's prettier this time of day, watching a parchment-colored half-moon set, just beyond the Buda hills, capped with stately stone buildings of the same tone.

But there's only so much playing with ice cubes I can do before I start to wonder if I would ever be able to acclimate myself to the idea, the terrible notion, of spending an entire summer cooped up in a city, when there are so many wonderful places to be and explore and see and do. and even if I were able to trick myself into that domestication, the urbanization of summering in cities, would that be any way at all to live? ahh cities. they push and pull...

A Sweet Saint

2007-07-21T15:33:00.000+02:00

I did it. I cracked. I caved in. I succumb/succumbed/succame/succambed.

Driven mad by heat in my 6th floor, southern exposure apartment, I bought a fan. 5,000 HUF well spent, if initial reviews are anything to go off of.

I named her Melissa, when Noemi began to worry that I had too strong a romantic attachment to my new fan. Within an hour, she was Saint Melissa, as I began to pray to her. It works. She listens, and keeps me (relatively) cool and comfortable all night long...

Olympic Rings

2007-07-15T15:06:00.000+02:00

A wonderful evening with Noemi and Janos last night, as well as his friend who was leaving town come the following morning and was flush with forints to get rid of. The results, absinthe, which you can’t get back home. A not unpleasant drink, much akin to the Ouzo we had for the first time in Greece. A fun little experiment in one of our favorite atmospheres, Potkulcs.

And on the occasion of birthdays, it’s hard not to feel old. Especially yesterday, when I stopped to think how far away the year 2020 is. It's not really all that far away. And it's, courtesy of simply math, the year I will turn 40.

The reason I was focused on the year 2020? A good one. Budapest is beginning to start the process of bidding to host the Summer Olympics in 2020. While the 40-year-old realization carries with it a tinge of concern, I'm jazzed about the prospect of a Budapesti Olimpia.

I first took a curiosity to the pamphlet handed to me at the Bryan Adams concert weeks ago, something along the lines of “Do you want Budapest to host the Olympics in 2020?” Immediately I was inspired and developed a fascination.

I took to researching. Budapest was originally scheduled to host the 1920 Olympics. This was, of course, in the hey-day of Budapest’s imperial grandeur. But along came that darn first world war. And just like how the Treaty of Trianon ripped 66% of the territory and 50% of her population away from Budapest, the IOC ripped the right to host the games away. (And the Hungarian athletes were uninvited to the entire 1920 Olympics.) Around these parts, they’re still irate about the former, if they’ve long-since forgotten about the latter.

More Olympic trivia? Hungary’s been successful in the games. Hungary ranks in the top ten countries in summer Olympic medals. Water polo, weightlifting and fencing glory have paid off. And guess which country among the top ten is the only one to have never hosted an Olympic games. Yup. Magyarorszag.

When calculated per capita, Hungary ranks third all-time in the most medals won! Rick Steves’s figures show Hungary behind on Australia and Cuba, when medals are tallied per person.

The committee of companies and leaders who have banded together to bid to bring the Olympics to Budapest reads like a who's-who of modern Hungarian economics. Malev. OTP. Danubius Radio. All their CEOs and executives make up the high-powered board of directors.

And so, excited beyond believe, I sent an e-mail, asking if I could help. The next day, a response, straight from headquarters:

Dear Jeremy,

Thank you very much for your letter. We were glad to read your lines about your intention that you would be a volunteer of our movement. As you have a special skill you can really help us occasionally. You could review any translations and fine-tune them to ensure the highest quality professional tone, as you had suggested. The only problem is that you will be in Hungary only until the end of August. Do you think you can still help us after returning to the US ?

Best regards,

Akos Baranyai
General Secretary
BOM

So there you have it, I'm an Olympic volunteer. Jo lesz!

Heat Wave!

2007-07-15T09:07:00.000+02:00

North African heat wave!! How much is 42 degrees Celsius, you wonder? It's probably more dramatic if you do the calculations yourself...

Happy Bastille Day!

2007-07-14T19:14:00.000+02:00

My first birthday abroad ever. Twenty-gasp-seven. Young at heart. More gray hairs peeking out of my left temple than my right, wonder what that means?

Fathers and Daughters

2007-07-13T19:07:00.000+02:00

Two months, two daughters in Europe.

A year ago, I was her father. Robyn and I were tutoring her in the ways of being a productive camp counselor, a self-sufficient community member suddenly dedicating her happiness to others on an island just off of Washington State. We lived out of teepees.

Yesterday, though, Michal and I were friends. I was the tour guide, she and her boyfriend Clark were the tourists, stopping in Budapest just long enough to catch their breath on a whirlwind seven-week post-graduation tour if Europe. Things are different now. We can toast her mother, of sorts, and Four Winds with palinka and stories.

They had they fair share of stories and adventures getting here. Midnight ticket collectors in Croatia, demanding 60 euros each, on the spot, because Eurail passes aren’t good in Slovenia or Croatia. They battled my Romanian “…and I almost died!” stories tit-for-tat.

Thursday, a late arrival to Keleti from Venice. A schnazzy new hostel, just down the street, catering to the artsy type. Laundry, lunch, the usual logistics. Then Szechenyi bath and the exquisite uncertainty of Hungary’s favored relaxative. I gave the usual, less-than-definitive history of Hungary in the shadow of the heroes that ring Hosoktere. Dinner, Fisherman’s bastion, then a nightcap above the blustery Corvinteto.

Friday, they met me at my office. After lunch and a long spiral up to the views at the crest of St. Istvan’s Bazilika, I sent them off the Terror Museum and Synagogue. Come quitting time, we raced back to Keleti, as all trips to train stations in Hungary must necessarily be rushed. We hurled their bags onto the rain, just seconds before it slowly rolled to Vienna. Hugs and handshakes were rushed, but firm.

I rather liked the company, as fleeting as it was. Michal’s off to Stanford come fall. Clark to Indiana. If he liked his taste of Hungary enough, and they said they certainly did, he could be plodding through Hungarian languages classes in just 6 weeks…

On Why Romania's Nice

2007-07-09T23:37:00.001+02:00

It's easy to like Romania.

My favorite reason to like Romania is the simple difference, compared to the Hungary I know, in how they approach village life. In Romania, people sit outside their fences. On benches. It's delightful. Drive through a little Romanian town in the evening, perhaps sometime between 7 and 8, just as the sun starts to molt from yellow to a shade or orange.

Pleasant old folks, chatting with neighbors, abound with smiles. Playful teenagers, congregating on other benches. Little families, content as can be, as if painted on the outside of their fence.

Life, happiness, the community happens outside of the fence in Romania. It's a welcome change of pace.

That's one of the reasons I like Romania.

Twists and Turns in Mountain Country

2007-07-08T22:52:00.000+02:00

We awoke in our barrel early, but unsure of what we would find outside. Fearing the worst, another day of the same drizzle, we braved a peek outside. The morning air still sucked previous warmth out of self-heated barrel, but the skies were blue. We smiled.

I don’t usually wake early, but we started packing before the rest of the sprawling camp. We took still-damp clothing down from our make-shift mid-barrel clothesline and jammed them all into our packs. Carefully dividing our dwindling food, we gobbled breakfast before filling our canteens in a sketchy second-world bathroom sink and setting out.

An hour into our hike, having chosen to go the scenic route, the sun started beating down on our little trail, skirting a little creek cutting down an alpine valley. It was as good as it gets, the sun so easily erased the memories of rain and make the whole hike worthwhile. Elli and I were all smiles as we started to hang wet clothes from the backs and bottoms of our packs, letting the sun and gentle summer breeze air them. Even river crossings became joyous and pain-free in the sunshine, although Elli learned that she preferred to ford streams with her spare pair of shoes. (This silly man had neither a spare pair of shoes nor sandals.)

Three hours into our round-about descent from Padis, we came to the Castles of Ponor (Cetatile Ponorlului). Our blue dot trail suddenly gave out as five-hundred foot sheer cliffs of white limestone dropped straight to the bottom of a tight valley. The whole region is a karst-craver’s dream, speckled with caves and odd geologic formations. The view was marvelous, but the 1960s-era viewing platforms failed to meet several key safety guidelines and were in poor repair. We trekked on after snapping pictures. We’re not sure if any of them will turn out. Our little German disposable camera took some falls and water exposure over the course of our travels. But it did survive, it will have captured some pretty places.

After lunch on top of a ridgeline pass, we caught up with a slow-moving group struggling down the far side of the ridge. Two city slickers tip-toed down the muddy trail while their better-equipped guide led the way in obvious boredom. As we passed, he was so desperate he asked us where we were headed, then invited us along when he found out we were headed in the same direction. It could have been that he was impressed with Elli’s new Arctryx backpack, but I think Alex would have taken any company at that point. His friends didn’t enjoy their first – and presumably last – night in the outdoors. He was practically licking his chops at the prospect of adventurous friends to tackle the next challenge, the greatest challenge, ahead.

Alex guided us, in chiseled English, down a hill and around a river that emerged from an underground karst tunnel like a giant spring. The backside of the spring was so tight against the cliff that a cable was bolted against the rockface, four feet above a small ledge. Elli couldn’t believe the mission-impossible at first, then changed her mind in excitement and demanded I take a picture as she billy-goated her way across the traverse. Just as she crossed, our three friends from our warm-soup-dinner the night before came from the opposite direction. Even with smiles on their face, the demanded in impassioned Romanian that Alex not take us on the trail ahead, especially with backpacks. It was too dangerous they pled, that’s why they had turned around. Elli and I looked at each other nervously, but Alex was confident.

By the time we got to the third cable, we began to wonder what we were getting into. The rock-climbing-esque uphills and downhills weren’t designed for large backpacks. Or for tired hikers ready for the end. But as we traversed the edge of a tight valley, limestone cut by the river that stitched the terrain, above and under ground at different points, we crept lower and closer to the river, with beautiful cliffs rising above us. But then, the path gave out for good. Our two choices? Go back, uphill, or start really dangling from cables.

Ropes courses are generally pretend, safe for me. But this was real. I think that’s what made it so fun. Elli decided to kick off her shoes and ford her way, thigh deep, downstream. I had only one pair of shoes and a bit of an adventurous streak. I took the cables.

The river, emerging from another karst tunnel, cascaded back to the surface in the form of a waterfall, dropping out of the middle of a cliff. After a frothing into a river, the water turned right, completely occupying a thin crack of a canyon. On the left side, an old cable, 30 meters long, bolted six feet above the water level. A series of primitive footholds were chiseled into the rock, four feet below the cable, two feet above the water. Compounded by slippery rocks, my pack pulled me backwards, away from the cable toward the foaming river with each carefully placed step, but I slid along the cable until I was able to leap to a shoreline as the river slowed as the ravine spread out just a little.

Feeling like champions of the world, Elli and I patted ourselves on the back with giant grins, amazed by our accomplishment. Little did we know we hadn’t even finished half of our cables to traverse the rest of the ravine to the road. We still had to pull ourselves up cables through caves. Up ahead were cables with chain-link footholds straight across the river. One by one we battled them, I was way impressed at how Elli tackled each one. Lesser folks would have given up. We battled through. In essence, we survived.

At the end of the ravine, smiles and pictures. We waved goodbye to Alex, who raced uphill to rejoin his city-folk friends, who hadn’t braved the two hour voyage through the heart of the ravine. More friendly Romanians offered us (bad) advice on short-cuts to Pietroasa, and we set out with smiles down the long forest road (20 km) that twisted down to the little village. Our plan was to find our long lost old-lady friend Flori and sleep in her yard before catching a bus to Oradea on Sunday. Anything would be fine, just as long as we could get to the border city by 5 pm.

On the way down I drank the riverwater. Maybe I shouldn’t have, and I don’t think I ever have before, but it was hot. And I was thirsty. And my schnazzy Euro canteen looks so invincible I was lulled into the risk. Plus, I figured I wouldn’t have to pay the price for the luxury of cold water on a hot day until I was long out of the woods and back home in Budapest. It tasted good. I wouldn’t let Elli drink any, she still had plenty of tap water left, even if it was luke warm. Results? No problems.

We debated hitching a ride down on a logging truck, but none lumbered past, at least none with room in the cab, and we weren’t quite willing to ride, rodeo-style, atop the logs. All the cars were headed up-mountain, the opposite direction we were hoping. Some of the cars motoring up the incline, though, stopped for advice as they saw us rambling down the road, all spoke rather good English.

Things weren’t looking good after a grueling “short-cut.” To save 1 or 2 kilometers of trail, we had to bushwhack a non-existant trail, then march up the steepest incline of the whole trip, with no trail cutting up the tall-grass slope. But a funny thing happened just afterwards. Elli shouted up to me, she had been walking 10 meters behind me, asking if we wanted a ride. One of the cars we had given advice to on the way up and stopped on its way down, and offered. We weren’t that far from Pietroasa, so I thought about recommending we decline the offer, but it seemed too good to be true. We through our packs in the back, apologized for our muddy shoes, and climbed in.

That’s how I came to be riding in the trunk of a Romanian station wagon, drinking non-alcoholic beer, gripping anything within reach as a crazy Romanian man with an Australian accent zipped down the Transylvanian Alps…

They asked where we were going, we said Pietroasa, then Oradea. They laughed, they were headed to that very city at that very moment. The man had to drop his sister off back at home – they’d simply come into the mountains for a Saturday afternoon drive. Tickled pink by our good luck, we couldn’t do anything other than shake our heads and laugh. We were almost back home, misadventures far behind us.

Ahh, Romania…

Ups and Downs on the Transylvanian Trail

2007-07-07T23:36:00.000+02:00

In between snide comments from the middle-aged Hugh Grant fan, who later tried to sell us a bed in his home for 11 euro, Elli made friends with Flori, a kindly old Hungarian woman. After bragging about her cats, who speak both Hungarian and Romanian, Flori invited us to spend the night at her brother’s house, her final destination on the microbus. As the clouds perched at the top of the ever-growing mountains looked a little ominous with each passing kilometer we seriously considered the offer. But for some reason we didn’t hop out with Flori when she got out at Guranyi. Instead, we were left standing with a piece of paper, her address, in Elli’s hand when the bus driver threw us out of the bus at Pietroasa, 20 lei later. ($4 per person for a 2 hour bus ride.)

Even with two hiking maps, a giant map of the village underneath a welcome sign alongside the road and river to orient us, we had no idea where to go, what to do. In our minute of paralysis, a fun thing happened. The whole village came out to help us, almost as if Romanians decided to come out, come out wherever they were, like when the munchkins realized Dorothy wasn’t a threat. An old man with an odd number of teeth twisted our map, almost hopelessly, trying to orient himself. A young woman and her mom got out of their car when they saw our befuddled maps. They left their car running on one side of the narrow bridge. When a man needed to get through, while they were still talking yellow dots, red triangles and blue dashes to us, he simply got in their car, moved it to the other side of the bridge, then went on his merry way.

They pointed us in the direction of Padis, and we marched away. We didn’t tell them our goal was a little more grand: hiking all the way across the mountain range in front of us, from south to north, until we got to the railroad connecting Oradea and Cluj-Napoca. They might have laughed at us like all the Hungarians did.

We hit the trail, after one last provision of food. I talked to a bunch of young Hungarians on our way out of the village. They had just come back from a long hike and offered unhelpful reports of rainy weather. It helped explain, though, why the river we hiked alongside was churning so brown, like a chocolate milk kayak park. It felt good to stretch my legs, kilometer after kilometer as we inched our way on the map up the mountains. The simplicity of wilderness has its way of soothing worries. We didn’t have very much food. We didn’t have much money either. (The later was important, for the first time on a trekking adventure, because the no-longer-nomadic Hungarians had convinced Elli that we would die – bears – if we tented, rather than staying at a cabana.)

We trekked through, and past, a village where the accommodation help didn’t seem so friendly. It’s an odd feeling, for an American backpacker, stumbling through the villages that speckle the European wilderness. It’s a nice, but odd, pleasure to be able to buy a coke, beer or soft bed along your hiking path. But in the itsy-bitsy crossroads of Boga, we found a guesthouse of vacationing Hungarians, quite willing to invite us into their Thursday evening’s festivities, complete with wine and grilled meat, hot off the bone. Elli chatted up a storm with them, while I amazed the kids with card tricks and shuffling skills.

Come morning, we set off, despite their protestations that we were foolish and should spend the entire weekend with them. We set out on the trail north, determined to get as far as possible so we could make it to the railroad on Sunday, or Monday at the latest. Our high spirits pushed us upwards, towards the misty clouds that tickled the tops of the green mountains. The train, an old road of some importance, snaked up the hillside cascading down into a steep ravine. The views backwards were amazing, and along the way we encountered pictaresque bridges and even mine shafts.a

But then, two hours later, the trail stopped. Just like that. We rounded a bend and nothing. The map showed the dashed line continuing to an important trail junction. It simply didn’t. I was disheartened. Elli wasn’t impressed. We bushwhacked just 10 meters, not a lot knowing me, before giving up. We started to slink all the way back to Boga.

On the way down, just as things couldn’t get worse, it began to rain. We stopped to put on our raincoats, cursing our luck. Ten seconds later, still fumbling with zippers, we gasped at the crash.

Falling timber! Crash! I almost died.

Lumberjacks, we deduced as we ran furious past the fallen tree and out of danger, dropped a tree, just ahead of us and above us, on a steep hill overlooking the trail. The massive trunk crashed violently onto the trail, shuddering everything near it, thundering down onto the very spot we would have been walking if we hadn’t stopped for rain gear. But we had a hard time appreciating our good luck, though, too busy curising dead-end trails and rain. We slumped our packs down on the guesthouse porch as the Hungarians who had warned us about the rigors of hiking the night before laughed at our return. We were back to where we started.

We devised a plan: just get to Padis, that mountain sanctuary that people had been talking about since yesterday, and see what happens from there. Unfolded maps were our table mats as we lunched. We didn’t have any other choice, it was raining. Hard. We crouched under the shelter of the porch. It was a bad sign, but we were optimistic it would stop any moment.

The afternoon of Friday, July 6th proved to be the absolute worst hiking experience of my life. Bar none. I almost died. Repeatedly.

We made a dash for the hills when the rain stopped at 1. We sloshed through wet grass and rained out gravel roads until the end of the village. Then the hills began. Each muddy footstep took us higher and further, except when we slipped back in the mud. The trail got narrower, the brush tighter. But the map said keep going, so we did. And then it started to rain again.

With an unhappy Elli, I had no choice but to be an exceedingly optimistic camp counselor, luckily a role I excel at. It wasn’t fun at all, nor is there any rational way to view it as fun, so I pretended. I encouraged Mother Nature to bring it, we could handle more of a challenge. So she did. It rained for two hours straight at we stomped uphill, in heavy shoes, soaked clothes and sinking spirits.

I proclaimed, as I looked up from underneath my blue hood for the first time in a long time “the greatest moment ever” when we arrived at an alpine meadow. And sure enough, our new setting traded rain for wind. We had a hard time despising our new unfriendly element, until it started biting through wet clothes. But the view was good, the meadow opened into a treeless alpine valley, flush with green grass. A small log cabin sat cozily in the middle, smile drifting lazily out of the chimney. Off on the far side of the valley, a flock of sheep sat like slow-moving chunks of white marble. Only fuzzy.

After we passed a stationary horse in the middle of the road, it certainly acted confused as we walked passed, we veered off the road, up a mountain pass to take the trail recommended by our map. The trail was hard to follow, so we blazed our own up the bushy, rocky terrain. Half way up the first rumble. Elli and I looked each other, mountain passes are bad places to be during storms. But it wasn’t ominous. I pushed us up the mountain with a nod of the head.

The next time I looked up, sheep. Coming straight down the pass at us, a whole flock of them. I laughed, “Ha ha, we’re be attacked by a flock of sheep, Elli!” It’s funny, of course, because sheep are as non-violent as a khadi-clad Gandhi. I stopped dead in my tracks as the cuddly flock exploded in angry, attacking barks.

Sheep dogs! Attacking! I almost died. Again.

It turns out that sheep dog are firmly at the opposite end of the Gandhian spectrum. Two packs of four dogs each burst from each flank of the flock, rushing downhill at me, teeth barred in the growl of anger. Elli was at least 20 yards behind me, I didn’t look back, I couldn’t. My eyes widened, my jaw dropped, as they charged, barreled down. I couldn’t even say a word as the stormed within striking distance. As if to accept my fate, I put my hands out in front of me, nothing but open palms facing the flurry of eight jaws ripping me apart.

Miracles of miracles, they each stopped, snapping loudly a foot from my feet, snarling a venomous warning to this and any other trespasser. I might have squeaked out a “nyugi, nyugi tigris,” but it’s hard to talk when you’re scared that badly. I almost died.

An ancient Romanian shepherd, as saintly in my book as Jesus or any Good Shepherd, called them off in a stoic Romanian I couldn’t understand. He was wearing a clear, plastic poncho. Grudgingly, the dogs retreated with a few warning snaps. I stood in place for a full minute, Elli did, too, before putting a foot forward and drudging uphill again.

Five minutes later, half the way up to the crest, thunder. This time a crack, then a flashbulb pop of bright white.

Lightning! Mountain ridge! I almost died. Again.

We beat a quick retreat down the bare slope, slipping and sliding down the wet grass as I gave Elli the quick run-down on what to do during a lightning strike in the mountains.

Two near-death encounters later, still wet and cold, we found ourselves back at the same road that ringed the entire alpine valley like a lazy necklace. We pushed on with plan two, take the road, rather than the trail to Padis. Ten minutes later, that’s when the “grindina” started. What does the Romanian word “grindina” mean, you ask?

Hail! Falling hard! I almost died. Again.

We sat out the painful hailstorm under an evergreen tree. By now, the misadventure was almost comic, except that we couldn’t be certain of the ending with so many near misses. We were far from home and uncertain of the terrain. We didn’t know how we were going to get back home, how we could just make the adventure end. Plus we were cold. And wet. And hungry.

As we plodded on, I began to invent a tale. A tale to trivialize the hazards, the celebrate the unknown. The basic premise was the long process Elli would have had to gone through if I would have actually been eaten by the sheep dogs. She would have been distraught, of course. The shepherds would have taken her into their warm cabin, she would have traded our Nutella for warm clothes. The next day, after riding back to the closest bus stop on a sheep, should would have had to wind her way to the nearest American embassy. There, via helicopter, she would have escorted U.S. officials to my remains on the mountainside, then back to Hungary. The story continues, of course, but it didn’t need to. By the time the story was over, we could see the start of the shacks of Padis.

It really isn’t more than a cross-roads. Think an Everest base camp. A few plywood huts that sold beer and other necessary supplies out of a front window. Three places that rent small rooms cramped with beds for the night. A bevy of tents in the corner of a field, a community of hikers huddling for warmth and friendship. And two drowned Americans, stumbling through it all in delusion.

We finally walked into a door in desperation. My glasses fogged up as we stepped into a raucous room of stranded hikers, determined to make the best of a cold, rainy day with beer and games, and friends both new and old. We asked at the counter if they had any beds available – we were too cold and too wet for the back-up tent in my pack – she pointed toward the back. She pointed to the set of six extra-large wooden barrels, each with a flimsy roof on top and a thin door on front. 40 lei. 15 dollars. We slammed the money down in joy.

Our electric heater didn’t work, but we stripped of wet clothes and put on whatever was dry from our packs. Not much survived the day without taking on lots of water. I was under-packed. I shivered in my sleeping bag for two early evening hours, trying to light myself with the paperback History of Hungary that has suffered water-damage as well. It didn’t work. My sentences started to lose coherency.

Hypothermia! Closest I’ve ever come. I almost died. Again.

Elli insisted on warm soup, even though we were worried about spending all of our money, without being able to withdraw more. It was a great choice. The charda, or something along those lines, was warm and wholesome, a traditional Romanian specialty. And we made new friends at our table, three hikers who had just finished studying in Cluj-Napoca. Flori, for example, had just finished degrees in a geography and tourism. They all spoke great English. By the time we ambled back to our almost-dark barrel, we were warmer, drier and three friends richer. But the verdict on the weather was still out. The sky was red at sunset. According to legend, we were in for “sailor’s delight,” as opposed to the warning a sailor takes from a “red morn.” We decided to figure our course of action in the morning, when we knew what the weather would be like. Good weather, see some amazing sights before heading back to Pietroasa. Another day of bad weather, though, and we’d pack it in as soon as possible.

That’s how we came to spend the night in a barrel, considering ourselves lucky for making it through a day in the Apuseni alive. Barely.

Visiting Oradea (Nagyvarad) Romania

2007-07-06T23:47:00.000+02:00

Visiting Oradea (Nagyvarad) Romania

Train from Budapest, HU

7200 forint (30 euro roundtrip)
3.5 hours (two direct trains a day, three additional possibilities with transfers)

With the train station to your back, walk left down the busy Republic Street. After the McDonalds on the ground floor of a massive communist building taking up a big chunk of land on the right side of the road, veer right onto the Republica pedestrian street. The two main squares are at the end of the pedestrian street, straddling the river Crişul Repede.

To get to the hostel, take the very first right after the bridge, heading downstream. After a block, just before another massive monolith, most of the traffic will split left, following the river, but you should continue to walk down Vladminscu Street.

The churches are gorgeous, whether they be proudly catholic, ornately orthodox or stately (but deserted) Jewish synagogues. Guidebooks offer good explanations.

The city is abound with taxis. Capitalism run amuck. But use them to your advantage, as a cheap alternatives to going to the hassle of figuring out the relatively expensive public transportation, especially if travelling in a party of two or more.

Adventures in Oradea

2007-07-05T23:33:00.000+02:00

I’m the most un-tan I’ve ever been in my life and I hate it. So I figured it was time to bust out of the suffocating office and shirts with buttons long enough for an outdoor adventure. And when you’re in these parts, why not Transylvania for the Fourth?

Elli and I go way back by now (even though by my calculations we’ve only ever met up a grand total of three times). Thanksgiving Elli. I taught her the joys of backpacking last year, on a short two-night trek through some Hungarian hills - her first unplanned adventure ever! Back in Hungary this summer, too, she was anxious to put her new backpack and boots to use, so we’ve be talking a Transylvanian trip for quite some time now.

It’s a fascinating land of twisted history and confused culture. That’s half the intrigue, I suppose. And having been there once before, bussed from village to village with a slew of Americans, I consider myself a bit of an expert. I thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifink that’s part of what led me, perhaps to underestimate the adventure. I was surprised, perhaps I shouldn’t have been, when we almost died. Repeatedly.

I left from Keleti Palyudvar a little after noon, Elli left Nyiregyhaza a little later. The theory was that our trains would met up at Puspodokladany and she would jump into mine. Late trains and frantic phone calls later, the train half of the adventure was a bit more complicated than that, as it generally is. Elli just managed to hop out of her train, follow my voice and hop into the train that was waiting for us. At the border, we had forgotten about the one hour time-zone difference, and weren’t ready to get out of the train when we pulled into less than 10 kilometers over the border. The city is called Nagyvarad in Hungarian. We managed to dive out, onto the unimpressive platform behind the city’s main train station, just before the train rumbled eastward, headed to Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvar).

We stumbled around for a while, trying to orientate ourselves and our map – a piece of paper printed off from the hostel website. Elli, it seemed, was still undecided on the merits of unplanned adventures. But as we wove our way through a long pedestrian street, things began to look up. Storefronts and words are intelligible in Romanian – it isn’t hard to guess many words. And people watching, of course, is good. We crossed the river, quite impressed by the grand facades of the churches and buildings fronting the main square.

We got lost, of course, on crumbling Romanian back alleys. Street names were different on our map, the scale was confusing. The usual. But after a half-hour search, we found our nearly unmarked hostel, right where the map said it would be. We knocked cautiously on the door. On the other side, six Hungarian painters, in town to paint a roof. Covered in green paint, but not shirts, they wound up being rather charming in an undereducated sort of way that reminded me of Heves. They did nothing but smoke, drink beer and slam palinka. They were kind enough to share the later, and became quite enamored with Elli’s Hungarian. Huddling in the other corner was the lone woman until Elli arrived. Helen was a Canadian wandering a giant swath of Eastern Europe alone. She had giant bags of medical supplies, including an electronic thermometer. She was worried she was sick, surprisingly enough.

The hostel’s run by David, a man sent down from Budapest to open the joint and get the subterranean wine cellar up and running. After he gets the hostel off the ground, he’ll head off to Targu Mures (Marosvasarhely) to do the same with a new hostel there. He’s such a committed host that he ran after Elli and I when he realized he’d given us incorrect directions to a restaurant down the road.

That’s when our misadventure with weather began, walking in between two possible restaurants. The day of clouds finally broke. We laughed as a gentle rain forced us under a narrow overhang, pressing our bodies against the closed store window in the hopes of staying dry. We made a break for it when we thought it lightened up after five minutes, but that was just before the dam burst. We found ourselves sprinting through the most ferocious downpour I’ve ever been apart of. Serious rain.

We gave up any hopes of dryness and sloshed our way back to the hostel. It was raining so hard I had to take my glasses off and peek through my fingers as I ran. My shoes were soaked within a minute. My shirt within two. My shorts within three. My passport was in a cargo pocket. Half of my face was washed off my old Hungarian visa, the Ukrainian passport is almost schmeared clean. Romanian money might be water-proof, but passports aren’t.

I’d taken a minimalistic approach on packing for this adventure, I think I’ve been lulled by a year of books and libraries into a complacency. I only had one pair of shoes. Just two shirts. Only three socks. Things were getting off to a sloppy start.

Come morning, it was still raining. I didn’t let Elli come with me to the bus station, despite her Hungarian skills, because I knew I would get lost, and am much more comfortable getting just myself lost, when no one else is following along, worrying. I sent her off to get groceries and supplies, instead. (Note to self. When giving a new backpacker a list of good food possibilities, always include a note about the increased amount of food required to sustain two backpackers for multiple days on the trial…)

The bus station, a city bus ride away on the east side of town, was a notch below Hungarian bus stations in terms of modern conveniences or information provided. The missing-toothed counterwoman spoke only Romanian, but a kindly man offered to translate into Hungarian. She was adamantly opposed to the idea of a 14:20 bus to Pietroasa, our proposed basecamp. But he assured me that it would be okay.

Two maps from a local bookstore completed my errands, and I rushed back so Elli and I had time to pack and hit the road. David called a taxi for us, despite the fact that he and the Hungarians thought we were crazy and should cancel our plans so we could spend a long weekend in Oradea instead.

Less than half of Oradea’s citizens are native Hungarian speakers, but our taxi driver was one. He was impressed, as they all are, with Elli’s linguistic prowess and offered to help us figure out which platform we needed to wait at when we got to the bus station, five minutes early. As we stood with our packs, outside of the car, though, he ran out of the station waving his hands. Vissza! Vissza! Vissza! He ordered, jumping back into the car and slamming the door. He explained as he sped off, that the old lady had reexplained that the bus wasn’t a state-owned one, operating out of the bus station, but a private micro bus running out of a small gas station on the south side of town. He sped off, unsure he’d be able to get us there in time.

Darting in and out of traffic, he finally screeched to a halt in front of three buses. After he deliberated with the drivers, he furiously drove off to the other end of the gas station, where a small van was already starting to move. He cut it off in the driveway and lunged out of the car. The driver shook his head during the first round of negotiations. He only had one seat left and was ready to leave. “But they’re two Americans,” the bus driver pled. It won us some sort of compromise, as the microbus driver got out and threw the back door open, tossing our packs in. One of us, he warned, would have to stand.

And that’s how I came to be sitting, sandwiched between the door and a seat on a crowded microbus as it darted through Romanian villages of no-note, weaving its way toward the mountains we had come to climb.

I was laughing. Elli was smiling. And the man on the seat between us, unable to do more than string a few English words together, was happy to inform us, using a copy of the day’s paper that while Hugh Grant had to pay a million dollars for oral sex in America, that in Hungary it was free.

Ahh, adventures... This was to be a good one, as we were left shaking our heads already...

4th of July = Romania

2007-07-04T11:17:00.000+02:00

It's Independence Day and Thanksgiving Elli and I are off to one of the world's great bastions of Freedom - Romania. Err, something like that...

A couple days wandering through the Transylvanian Alps sounds good. Real good.

Uncle George

2007-07-03T20:28:00.000+02:00

Uncle George came to town yesterday. That's seriously what the staffers call Soros in the office, Gyoribacsi. He and other economistis/political scientists/thinkers arranged for a little roundtable discussion to kick-off the start of the Central European University's summer session. The topic? Open Society in Fragile States.

I dragged Noemi along. We got good seats because we were among the first people to sit in the little CEU auditorium. Paul Collier's an important man, they say, but the digital camera flash bulbs didn't pop when he opened the discussion. Everyone saved their picture for Uncle George's turn at the microphone. Eight billion dollars and political activism will create a funny sense of celebrity.

The most interesting observation? The resource curse.

Developing democracies with vast amounts of valuable resources will often regress toward authoritarianism. Why? Certainly there's more incentive for plunder the state coffers if you're the leader of a rich country. But perhaps just as importantly, the people don't have much incentive to complain. Resource-rich countries don't have to tax their citizens much, if at all. And as taxes decrease, so too does citizen participation in governance. There just isn't as much incentive to be actively involved in criticizing and correcting governance. Just think what kind of blinders the pledge of "tax cuts" buys even in our own America.

Bryan Adams Fan Club

2007-07-02T23:36:00.000+02:00

That Summer Seemed to Last Forever

2007-07-02T22:56:00.000+02:00

My old German student Jenny has been in Hungary, her homeland until age 9, for the past couple of weeks. Our plans of meeting up finally happened Saturday, one of the greatest days in the history of Budapest: T-Mobile’s annual free concert at Heroes Square. Starring Megasztar Ruzsa Magdi and…

Yup, Bryan Freaking Adams.

Now ordinarily you might look at the Canadian crooners reproitre and feel unsatisfied beyond the classic jolting chords of Summer of ’69, but for me, BA’s always meant a little more. You see, everything I do, I do for Bryan Adams. Back at the end of 6th grade, way back before the summer of ’92, we chose his Robin Hood serenade to close out our elementary school career with a tribute to our parents who suffered through so much in the Lakeshore gym-turned-theatre.

I was stoked, as you should be for a free concert in a European capital. Others weren’t so excited, and opted for the utterly commonplace occurrence of an evening of gypsy music at local hotspot, West Balkan. It’s akin, I suppose, to a New Orleans resident skipping out on a Tom Petty show for another night at the jazz club. Regardless, I was joined by Noemi, legal intern Alla and student Jenny.

Magdi opened. She’s the most famous of the Megasztar’s, Hungary’s very own version of American Idol. She switched back and forth between English and Hungarian seamlessly and rocked pretty well. She covered Janis Joplin and Queen to rave reviews. My favorite, though, was a wild take on Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life.

But the 200,000 who showed up in the shadow of Hungary’s heroes didn’t come for Magdi. They came for Mr. Adams. Hungary and Canada have many links. Many Hungarians live in Canada, especially Toronto. Recently, Canada was so moved by some marker in Hungary’s history that they donated a waterfall – a Niagra falls – to the WestEnd shopping mall just four blocks from my flat. And apparently history and political cooperation extends into music. Hungarians dig Bryan Adams.

He popped up, in the midst of the crowd, on an elevated platform to start his set. After a rockin’ intro. His band disappeared, replaced by only an acoustic guitar. He asked us to forgive him, he knew not what he was doing. I wasn’t the only one ready to forgive him. The ladies were squealing at each song they recognized, even if they didn’t know before that it was him who sang it. I was probably squealing, too.

We’d been anticipating, for several hours, and even the several days leading up to the concert, that the singular moment when we realized the chords he has banging out were Summer of ’69 would be one of the greatest moments in the history of our lives.

I am here to testify - today, tonight, forever – that it was. It was good. So very good. Egeszegedre-good. I bought my first real six string. So so good. Bought it at the five and dime. Wow. Waves of goodness. Played it till my fingers bled. Yes. Yes. Yes. Was the summer of ’69.

The moment was so good that I could do nothing but call Kat and Janos and put them on speakerphone so they could taste the moment. I don’t think it worked.

By the time dusk set, he’d rocked through 2 hours of songs, laced with hits if not stuffed full of them. He strained his way through All for One, All for Love as the grandest of finales, he’d given his voice to Let’s Make it a Night to Remember, 18 Until I Die and Cuts like a Knife.

I guess I didn’t have a good answer, swaying with Noemi, Jenny and Alla as he asked, rather repeatedly, if I’d ever really, really really ever loved a woman. No good answer except a wistful smile.

But I do know now that I’ve ever really, really really ever had a man crush on a Canadian rocker. Well, sort of ever really, really really ever…

Housewarming

2007-07-01T23:20:00.000+02:00

Third haircut in Hungary means it’s becoming commonplace. Noemi made the appointment, even though I probably could have done it alone. I walked in alone, gave my now standard “nem vagyok okos” apology (I am not smart) and let her do her thing. The result was the shortest hair cut, I think, that I’ve ever received, but I like it.

The haircut came just in time for Mel and Kalli’s housewarming party. All of the interns came, along with any friends. As the only intern with Hungarian friends, I invited as many as I could. Eva came, and met Janos for the first time. A Facebook friend Fruzsi came. The Wisconsin Dells ladies come. It was a jo buli, complete with my new favorite cheese – smoked karavan – until loud pounding at the door led us to take our party elsewhere around 10:30.

Moving Company

2007-07-01T18:29:00.000+02:00

Goodbye Imperial Kodaly Korond, Hello Nyugati and WestEnd, my new neighborhood. Four blocks from my new house? The wireless god-send of Central Europe's largest mall.

Highlights of new apartment will, of course, find their way to you via video special real soon!

Eager Eger

2007-06-29T18:10:00.000+02:00

By now, I’m just about as well-versed in Eger as Rick Steves or any other English-speaker in the world. It’s a good thing, of course, as Eger is still as charming and wonderful as when it was my cultural escape from Heves. It’s a perfect blend of small-town charm, colorful history, ecclesiastical delight, baroque architecture, posh urbanity in little, consumable portions and, of course, wine. So it made sense that the magical county seat of my old county-du-jour would be my recommendation for the first law-interns weekend.

At first, it’s hard to plan for and travel with detail-oriented people who aren’t quite yet accustomed to traveling and living in a world that borders very nearly to second at times. They insisted that they heard Intercity trains were the only way to go. I countered with the realities of train transportation to Eger and promises that fish-heads-under-seats is, in fact, “culture.” Hungarians recommended reservations, they clamored. I begged to differ, never once having bought a ticket earlier than the moment before I jumped on the train and never once having ordered a seat, and paid more for it, unless it was compulsory. That’s just the laissez-faire see-what-happens Hungary I’d come to love last year.

The crew was impressed by the train when we finally hopped on Saturday morning, Melanie, Kalli and I running to catch up with the rest of the group, lunging onto the train in fear that it would leave any second. As they snapped pictures as we whizzed past the not-so-tall tallest point in Hungary, the Matra mountains, I gave them just the facts. I didn’t tell them what it’s like to hike, without a map, from that highest point, Kekesteto, to the village of Sirok, 40 km away. Maybe it’s because they wouldn’t have been interested, maybe it’s because tour guides should leave something for their clientele to explore and learn on their own.

Julia’s the Columbia gal in the Open Society office with me. You’ve already been introduced. She looks good with a wine glass in her hand, no? A contentment of sophistication.

Melanie and Kalli, too, are old news. I didn’t know, though, of Kalli’s proclivity for photography until she snapped 565 digital pictures over the course of the weekend.

Canadian Dave is, you guessed it, Canadian. From way up where the Carlyn sails, so north of Vancouver that it’s almost Alaska. Melanie and Kalli met him through Facebook after they almost rented an apartment from him. They didn’t though, and they felt so bad about jilting him that they invited him out for drinks. He came to Hungary in pursuit of an adventure and a license at dentistry. After high school, he absconded college to learn through more experiential adventures and picked up far more applicable trades like construction and Swedish.

Now, four years later, he’s without the Bachelor’s Degree that isn’t such a prerequisite in these parts of the world. He’ll study for five years at Semmelweis University in Budapest, mostly with other foreign students, and earn a medical degree that’ll be valid anywhere in the EU (and strangely enough, California). He’s gotten much better in Hungarian during his year in Hungary so far than I did in the same amount of time, I’m a little envious.

Stephanie works with Mel-n-Kalli. (He, I can’t believe that I didn’t come up with the melancholy nickname before right now!!) She’s at Princeton now, but hails from Florida.

Kate is an Australian who earned her entire Bachelor’s Degree at a Japanese university. Now she’s landed at Columbia, and just finished her first year of law school. The Trabant-top picture may or may not have been at my late-night instigation!

Saturday, after finding our Guesthouse just underneath the castle, we set out see Eger. At lunch, Dave and I sampled bikaver while Kate settled on beer. The waiter gave an impressed “Really?!” when he set the big beer down in front of the lady instead of the two gentlemen at the same table.

We finished the last of our ice cream cones before entering the cathedral, we gulped down the last of our dip-n-dots before entering the Mennonite temple, We spun our way up the minaret, as all good tourists must. Claustrophobia and heights struck half of our group, but we battled through. I lectured the short history of Eger and its role in a brief tour of Hungarian history in the shadow of the 17th century sliver of a testament to Turkish dominance of the city. There might not have been applause, but I think they were duly impressed.

An afternoon in the wine-cellar-ringed Valley of Beautiful Women is where the photo madness began. To amazing results, Kalli and the others started snapping away. While it’s normally a photogenic place, this afternoon was more amazing than most. A smiling 7 year old. A week-old bride shrouded in a droopy hat. A four-toothed violinist. Endless glasses of deep-red shiraz. Smiles.

We got lost in wine and conversation and laughter until a late supper. Most of the girls went home after a long day, but Dave, Kate and I stayed in the valley to make some Hungarian friends. We thought we heard some Australians do an Ozzie-Ozzie-Ozzie-Hoi-Hoi-Hoi, but they just turned out to be skinheads, according to two new friends at the top of the valley.

The crowd in street became younger and younger and Dave and I became restless for a disco. We decided on the infamous lava-tube disco underneath the Bazilika instead of the disco in the city park, despite directions to the later.

At Amazon, much smaller and quieter than I remember, I teamed up with a cute gal on the foosball table. I don’t think her older brother took it kindly when she and I destroyed him and his partner. Not much English was spoken.

Sunday morning, as we packed up, I made our sixty-year-old hostess cry. We wanted to leave our bags at the guesthouse until we were ready to take the train a few hours later. I tried communicating that in Hungarian. She, on the other hand, wanted to go to the baths. She communicated that by crying, I gave in, of course, and she got her way. We hauled our bags off to a breakfast of fruit at the market. Again we found ourselves strangely photogenic. Even normal meals looked better in black-and-white. By the time we rolled into the same train station – Keleti – that we had rolled out of less than 30 hours ago, the photo ladies had managed certainly no less than 600 pictures. That, of course, is more than 20 an hour! I just feel bad for ruining so many of them with my presence… :-P

2007-06-28T13:14:00.000+02:00

Fun with Hungarian Bathrooms
Budapest, Hungary
Jeremy Jewett

2007-06-27T10:58:00.000+02:00

Find all the pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kalli.kofinas/EgerEgSzsGedre?authkey=q-PbdWq5Cy0

Egri Hetveget

2007-06-26T17:38:00.000+02:00

One of the best aspects of travelling abroad with law students, etc? Talented folk galore. Kalli's one with the camera and took over 500 pictures of our (barely) 24 hour stay in Hungary. that's 20 an hour, if you're doing the same math i'm doing. Her smile makes people feel comfortable and her eye for the lens makes the results magic. Here're the teases before the storeis.

(from left Kate, Columbia Law, PILI; Stephanie, Princeton Undergrad, European Roma Rights Centre; Julia Columbia/Amsterdam Law, OSJI; Canadian Dave, Semmelweiss Medical University; the tour guide; Melanie, Wisconsin Law, EERC.)

2007-06-24T22:10:00.001+02:00

wondering and wandering are two good ways to go

Up-to-date

2007-06-24T21:22:00.000+02:00

I’ve come to realize the reason for the ungodly plug-in air freshener. My bed smells like urine. It’s not good. I tried scrubbing. Hard. But it still smells like old-lady urine. I speculate that bed-wetting may be why the old lady was shipped off to the nursing home. The can’t-wait-to-move countdown is at less than ten days!

Feeling a little underutilized at work. And the work that I’m doing seems more chart-perfecting than a valuable learning experience. Hmm.

Said goodbye to Harpswell on Wednesday at a little good bye party of the old standards (Janos, Kat, Aran, Matt, Noemi) and the law ladies I invited a long (Julia, Melanie, Kalli). Harpswell is headed back to Maine for the summer, than staking out a new life in Chicago. She hopes to go to nursing school there after a year. We toasted the last of her two-years worth of nights with Drehers, watching hot Hungarian salsa dancers and gyros. They’re so good.

Thursday was a wild evening storm. Noemi and I were shoved in from an outside table at the restaurant down the street. We loved the swing in temperature at the crack of the storm. Luckily there's a night bus between my house and Noemi's.

Friday was Zold Pardon, Buda's hot night spot for rockin' music. The teenagers dig it. Melanie and Kalli were skeptical, but Janos and I managed to convince them of the merits of the joint with the 100-forint entrance turnstill, pulsating tunes like "what is love" and "eye of the tiger," and a fantastic blend of merry young hungarians and sketchy Chinese businessmen.

And Saturday morning before heading to Eger? I woke up early to catch the train, but Janos was already up and about, slamming doors at 7:00 am in the morning. I didn't know what he was up to, I didn't open my door until i hear him stomp down the courtyard walkway. I shook my head at his antics, and opened the door to head into the shower.

But then what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a girl. Standing in Janika's room, looking out the window. Her hair, like a dream, was most likely flowing in the breeze. I gaspes a "Szia" before dashing into my room to better clad myself and find my glasses. When i popped back out, capable of seeing this time, she was still there. Redish hair flowing. 20 or so.

She spun and smiled. She stuck out her hand. She introduced herself as Monika. As if to explain her magic apperance, she said she was Janos' niece. She spoke a beautiful English lacking in communiation between Janos and I.

Her t-shirt, I kid you not, I swear to god: "Porn-Star-In-Training." Branded across her chest.

She's headed to Debrecen next yeat to become a translator. She was in town with her mom - Janos's sister - to see the Night of the Museum festivities. (All the city's museums stay open until 2 am with special programming, the Saturday night closest to the Summer solstice.) And she came, apparently, to stuff my freezer full of meat. More meat than I've ever seen in my life. Certainly more meat than our little kitchen can handle...

The Reality of Returning to Writing

2007-06-20T18:43:00.000+02:00

Sorry. I’m not getting much out of writing stories this time around... The trail of a blog I left behind last time meant/means so much to me that I wonder why the change. Some thoughts?

It’s so much easier to write and publish and communicate this time around. Perhaps that means it couldn’t be as meaningful. Last year I had only an hour of computer a day, thanks to my 800 HUF library card. I'd compound and compact stories for days and weekends on end, so I'd have one glorious tale to tell by the time I let my fingers race across the keyboard, complete with inverted Z and Y.

This time, there’s a cosmopolitan city full of distractions galore.

I spend all day look at words of all sorts on a computer screen. It’s hard to want to do more of it after a long day of work.

The stories simply aren’t as good. They aren’t as adventurous. For the most part, I understand what’s going on in this country now. There isn’t as much of that glorious uncertainty that makes stories of retrospection so much fun.

And there aren’t any characters. I have a plethora of friends here, of course, almost more than the whole population of Heves. Old and new. Young and old. American and Hungarian and any other sort of English-speaker. But no characters. Look carefully at those who peppered my stories last year:

English Peter.
German Peter.
Old Barbara.
Smiling Betti.
Pretty Petra.
And especially, Super Gitta.

People weren’t just themselves. Coupled with an adjective, they were characters. Persona attached in a simple adjective, they were somehow larger than life. Figments of creation. Just a part of a story, an animation in my story. I couldn’t even comprehend most of the time that they had their own stories...

An update on two of those characters?

I called Super Gitta this afternoon. She’s good. Probably studying too much exams. I only recognized her voice two or three times the whole conversation. I hope she comes to Budapest this summer and we can have the chance to get together and talk.

Thanksgiving Elli and I are planning a little backpacking trip in Romania. Maybe out of one of the Transylvanian cities I’ve been to, maybe out of somewhere new. It’ll be her second career hike, after last year’s successful Bukk adventure.

(And as you can see in the picture, we're in the middle of a heatwave! Apparently it's coming from North Africa. Toasty warm!)

Back

2007-06-18T18:16:00.000+02:00

My roommate from orientation, of all people, is back.

We shared room keto-keto-harom, back when Hungary was still so new and absurdly foreign. He’s an unlikely returnee. We met up Sunday morning, an hour after his plane touched down, in a little basement pub next to Keleti. His first urge, back in Hungary, was a Borsodi, even though it was 10:30. He’s always been more comfortable talking to me than just about anyone else, I think, and he chain-smoked his way through his entire story as I listened on in a condescending disbelief.

He was a little older than us, on a year's sabbatical-of-sorts from a major movie studio in Hollywood. He was quiet during orientation, then they sent him off to his little village. It's in the same league as Heves and Gaines' Mezobereny. Those kind of places can mess with your mind. Plus It's a kilometer from the Romanian border. Many of the students come from Romania each week, staying in the dorm-like kollegium, so they can learn in their mother-tongue, Hungarian.

His first problem was contractual. They wanted to change the terms of his contract because the county was nearly bankrupt, or something along those lines. Scared that nothing was the way he envisioned it, he argued back, calling Hajni down to mediate.

After a rough start, he began to bond with the students. He's not a teacher by trade, but he was willing to become invested in their lives and offer English lessons to anyone in the town who was interested. When his washing machine broke and flooded the office below him, he offered a handshake and English lessons in apology.

He came back from a Christmas break back at home to more problems with his principal. That's about the time, too, when the drama began. The teacher who lived above him was disappointed when he didn't want a relationship. The twenty-something college girl from the town, though, was excited when he did. (So, too, was her little sister, one of his 9th grade students.) The teachers were mad that he didn't have a strict Hungarian-teacher attitude with the students. A gay student was too close for comfort. And the cutest girl in the school started coming to his apartment, alone, for private lessons.

He explained the culmination best in an e-mail i received in September or so. "I got mixed up in whole love triangle," he confessed, "and it all exploded one night at the disco in Romania." What did that look like, you might wonder? "I ended up walking the streets drinking and basically crying and later I learned the cops were looking for me the whole time." So it goes.

The sordid details were no less tumultous than some of the other misadventures of his life, that i've strangely and detachedly been privy to. He finally straightened everything out, to the satisfaction of the principal, police and himself. But his departure was tainted. He sees his stay as a success, as a positive, because of the relationships he built with students and because of the positive impact he had on them. But back home, it affected him so much that he was nearly comatose for several months, dazed by Hungary. And that village. Finally, he found a really good job in another movie studio that he really enjoys. But just as he was set to move past Hungary, he decided to come back.

He's looking for a little closure, I think he'll find it. It might be dramatic, as tends to be his panchant strangely enough, but i think it will be good for him, but that's just a guess. I warned him about the strange sensations of going back to a place that you come to romanticize and glorify, if those are the right words. He listened, then lit a cigarette.

He disappeared just as suddenly as he appeared. Like a shadow. I haven’t heard from him since he boarded that train to a little town far from here three hours after we met up. Who knows if I ever will. So it goes.

The Second Badger

2007-06-17T18:12:00.000+02:00

Melanie arrived safe and sound Tuesday, the anticipated arrival of Wisco law student #2 to hit Budapest this summer. We didn’t have any classes together last year – and she knows a whole different law school crew than I know – but we got to know each other a little through the Wisconsin International Law Society and pre-Hungary excitement. I failed in an attempt to give her a Hungarian-language base before she arrived, but I’ll do a better job of being an on-the-ground tour guide.

Noemi and I met her for supper her first night here. I was so full afterward that I could hardly make it home, but it was a good intro to Hungary. By Friday, I was helping her and Kalli, a Brooklyn Law Schooler rightfully proud of her Greek heritage, look for an apartment.

They lucked into a beautiful place, recently renovated, no more than six blocks away. Kalli’s parents started talking to a man on a train and he knew a friend who had a friend with a solution to the problem. The Serbian man now works with an Irish invest who renovates flats in Budapest. (And I learned a trick that’s happening across the city. Building “associations” are selling the rights to renovate the 4th or 5th story attics that have gone unused since the building was built decades or a century ago. They use the proceeds to renovate the entire courtyard/outside entrance, etc.)

They’re both working at the European Roma Rights Centre this summer. I enjoyed, tragically, Melanie’s reaction when she talked to her first Central European about the Roma. At a cozy courtyard bar after the ladies signed a handwritten contract Friday night, the Serbian-born landlord treated Melanie to the traditional tirade of Roma stereotypes and disdain. Melanie was shocked, I think, to walk into the uphill battle of public opinion in these parts of the world. But of course I should be cynical, I used to teach at a segregated high school…

Since then, the ladies have hardly stopped shopping, pausing just long enough for a dusk-lit tour of Castle Hill and the Fisherman’s Bastion. They took loads of pictures, maybe someday they’ll land online. Occasionally they call in to evening gatherings as too tired to arrive, but we’ll see if a short stay in Eger next weekend can jumpstart their late-night performance!

2007-06-12T15:26:00.000+02:00

Another hard day at the office, this time listening to a presentation on the Sudanese legal system, trying my best to make a map of the continent of Africa. Not so hot...

Nary a Straw-Berry

2007-06-12T15:18:00.000+02:00

Hungarian festivals are my favorite. Sausagefest (Kolbasznapok) in Bekescsaba. Paprikafest (Paprikanapok) in Kalocsa. Harvestfest in Hernadnemeti. Ribbonfest (Szalavagatagatagato) at school, bested only by Studentfest (Diaknapok). I’m sure next weekend it will be a Cucumberfest…

These festivals are remarkable in my mind mostly for their amazing ability to make the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary ordinary. Only Hungary would find reason to celebrate the pepper or a sausage for an entire weekend, they’re not as glamorous as the walleye, after all. And the monumental festivals in each part of the land, celebrating their own unique-ity wind up being exactly the same. The same booths of traveling peddlers pushing souvenirs, candies or other merriments. The same kettles of goulash, whether with or without intestines. The same singing and dancing, the same traditions. The same Big-Hungary pride.

This weekend? Eperfesztival. Strawberryfest 2007.

Julia and I had plans to visit Esztergom or Visegrad, but we were having hard times deciding which one. (Do you happen to have an expert preference?) So when we heard that Szentendre was hosting Strawberryfest, we scrapped our previous plans and agree to meet up with the other law interns here in Budapest and take the HEV to the quintessential touristy Hungarian village. We all agreed not to wear white, as we envisioned stuffing our mouths with strawberries until our chins ran red like savages.

Saturday morning, we met up with Vanessa (a French gal turned Canadian law student who will be working with fellow Badger Melanie Black at the European Roma Rights Centre) and Kate (an Austrialian turned New York law student working at a place called PILI). But when we got to Szentendre after 30 minutes on the commuter rail, we were shocked to find, block after block, nary a strawberry.

We relied on Noemi to find out why, as we strolled the crowded cobblestone streets linking shop after shop under the bright sun. The first woman she asked knew nothing about strawberries and festivals. The concept sounded familiar to the second woman. The third, and other clues like signs, broke the unfortunate truth. The festival wasn’t in Szentendre, but 15 km away in a little village, Tahitotitotoititfalu.

Undaunted, and thirsty for the sweet nectar of that little red triangle of goodness, we caught a bus to the village after a one-sided debate with a nice old lady about the validity of International Student ID cards for a discount on the bus. (Nem.) Breast-feeding, cranky bus-drivers, unique smells and uncertain destinations are all part of the fun in the adventure of getting to Hungarian festivals.

True to form, a carnival of sorts opened after a bend in the road, and we hopped out. Still no strawberries. The temperature and uncertainty were beginning to take a toll on the faint-of-heart. I put my nose to the ground to find what I’d come for. The berry of straw. Which seems, in retrospect, to be a rather silly name for a berry.

After a hundred meters of searching, I found them, tucked under an umbrella in front of a wrinkly old woman. For 400 forint, a half kilo was mine. I gulped them down as I made a hasty escape, the woman was trying to entice me into a black auto. Or something devious that entailed her chanting “fekete auto” at me even as I walked away.

Unfortunately, though, those were the only strawberries to be found, minus the four or five Hungarian schoolchildren parading around the grounds inside strawberry costumes. In fact, there were almost as many camels (2, disgusting), archery competitors (a handful), country-western bands playing “Country Roads” (1) and Lauras-in-tank-tops (also 1) then strawberries at the damn festival given in their honor.

By the time Kat, Noemi and I took to dipping our toes in the Danube, the law ladies had decided they’d had enough of provincial Hungary and were taking the bus back to Szentendre and then a boat down the Duna back to Budapest. Traveling in big groups is so annoying that I was almost relieved, but I was glad they’d made it out of the cosmos of Pest.

Come evening time after nap time, I made my first trip to Szimpla, long built up by Janos and Matt as their favorite evening destination in Budapest. With only a vague idea of how to get there, I led the three law ladies, two cute Spaniards and a Canadian guy to the courtyard club.

(Cultural Question Distraction: Did you know that 2 million people live in the Canary Islands? That’s 5% of the entire Spanish population!)

Towing the three first-time-foreigners-in-Budapest and the three law ladies, it seemed like I knew half the bar when we found Noemi, her friend and later Matt. And we hadn’t even met Clay yet, who dropped by during cso-cso matches. It was hard to recognize him without the facebook-familiar fur hat. But it seems like he, and his girlfriend Inna, will be a great addition to the slew of interns abroad in Budapest this summer. After all, he wrote the darn guidebook! (When he was on the staff of Let’s Go Eastern Europe back in the day.)

As for Szimpla itself? Two big thumbs up. ☺

Just Like a Prayer

2007-06-11T09:23:00.000+02:00

After a meandering Friday night with the teachers and Noemi, I started to weave my way through the 6th district, homeward bound, about 2. A block from Szinyei Street, I was surprised to hear Madonna pulsating through the empty streets. The closer I got, the more I started to wonder what kocsma was played the song. How had I missed a neighborhood bar, at first glance, that would have been willing to blast Like a Prayer late on a Friday night?

I debated investigating the sound, but decided against it, resigned to tiredness after a long day of work/play. Instead, I slipped the blue key into the keyhole of the big double door that guards the 3 Szinyei courtyard. A funny thing happened, though, when I opened that door: the music got louder.

At first I was worried, disconcerted that a neighborhood bar could be so loud that the sound would permeate the walls and invade my tranquil little courtyard. Two sides ivy, two sides balconies. But as I walked up the steps, the music only got louder. That’s when I saw the young man passed out on the stairs, that’s when I knew for sure: I have young neighbors and they were having a party in my little building!

Momentum was pushing me toward bed, but I figured I had to take advantage of the opportunity to meet my neighbors. I started in Hungarian to the first person I met when I walked into the open door. But I quickly switched to an English “Who lives here?”

The man pointed to a couch in the corner with an accusatory “Andras.” I introduced myself. Under the threat of German, he admitted to knowing English, and quickly apologized for being too loud. I laughed and promised I hadn’t come to complain. He brought another neighbor into the conversation, and a bottle of homemade wine. They both were artists of sorts in their spare time. I never learned what their jobs are, but they were both out of school.

We talked a while, then the police knocked on the door, telling Andras to be quieter. People across the street had complained. He obliged and I went home not long after, still amazed at having young neighbors in what had seemed to be such an inactive, almost elderly, building.

I also am proud to report that my room is beginning to smell less like old woman, a fragrance that had begun to suffocate me in a sort of asaematic clenching of the lungs. A Glade Plug-In, or however they brand it in these parts, was the culprit, injecting its rotting stench into my precious 14 square meters (an approximation) of living quarters. Now that it’s been removed, I’m starting to breath a little better, and apologizing less to myself and visitors.

A Week at Work

2007-06-08T09:58:00.000+02:00

Week two down. Successfully moved into a new room and tackled two projects: the monitoring mechanism and now a summary of India's case law surrounding Freedom of Information. Sweet! So who are the cast of characters running around this place?

Julia’s a really friendly world-traveller who’ll be finishing up law school in Amsterdam next fall. After time at Georgia Tech, she peace corps-ed for two years in Africa. She never really took to liking Columbia, but has good stories. We invited her to the Children’s Railroad with us and she watched Pirates III with the ladies. I feel a little guilty about not inviting her totally into my trove of friends so far, but I’d feel bad if I gave her all the answers and didn’t let her explore and learn on her own, too.

Ira has a Russian wife who’ll be joining him next week. He’s a Yale guy, smart as snot but a little dry at first. Pest seems hardly an adventure for him, he’s spent a lot of time in Russia and the Stans.

Eszter’s my boss, of sorts, who I met for the first time yesterday. She was in New York and Panama for two weeks, but I think I’m really going to like her. A Hungarian raised in-part in Peru, she has a infectious enthusiasm and optimism that makes her a little rare around these parts.

Reka’s a more typical Hungarian, proclaiming to be tired with Budapest, an expert at pretending to be gruff. I can read through her sarcasm, though, and I’m quite convinced that she’s thoroughly charmed with my Hungarian, as most of the natives are.

And Zaza’s the head-boss around here. He’s Georgian – the former Russian republic, of course, not a Hot-lanta suburb. He’s got a great laugh and seems well-organized. This week he’s in Brussels. Next week it will be London.

Roommate Janos and conversing at astonishing rates. Today we discussed Wisconsin and where he used to live. I brought out the ole Wisconsin State Highway map, and he pointed a few blocks down Szinyei Street.

And thanks to a random facebook connection, I weaseled my way into the company of a fun group of Hungarians last night. Viktoria had worked at Wisconsin Dells last summer, that was reason enough for a Facebook friendship. When she came to Budapest to visit a half-dozen or so Dells co-workers, she invited me along. It became a downright international party, complete with a Pole, a Mexican, two Koreans and I. There was a surprising comfort to a random facebook friendship. Perhaps it was Viktoria’s finely-tuned Missouri accent that soothed me.

Back to the grind. Well, either the daily grind or conversations with Julia about wack theories like how cold cucumber soup could actually be delicious...

Balaton Bash

2007-06-08T09:44:00.000+02:00

After two weeks, I’m back to fluid in moving about Hungary, but it’s always the wacky things that remind me of how adventurous it really is. On the train to Balatonfured it was a fish head – and the spine of that same fish – laying underneath my seat, picked clean by whoever had been in that compartment on the stop previous. I tried to convince the distraught middle-age woman across from me that it was “nem baj, nem baj,” but she insisted on calling MAV employees to discard of the skeleton.

I was proud of myself, just as Balaton came into view and the tracks started to skirt Central Europe’s largest lake, for talking to the cute girl who had been sitting in my compartment as we gazed out the window, mesmerized by blue water and floating sails. Timi spoke English, of course, so we talked about swimming and sailing and studying as we got closer to Batalonfured. From there, she’d catch a kics-piros train to Zanka for a weekend with friends.

This weekend, just like last year, I was off to Lake Balaton for a welcome-to-summer bash with American teachers. This time we crashed the north shore, Balatonfured, rather than overstay our welcome on the south shore near Siofok. I only knew a handful (Janos, Emily, Harpswell) of the 23 from last year, but I’ve gotten to know Matt and our token Hungarian Noemi well in the first weeks of being here. The rest of the crew were new teachers I’d only heard about in so many stories.

Friday night was the drama and uber-americanism that the stories had promised. Apparently the group isn’t as tight knit as last year, not a smallish band of brothers and sisters battling through a foreign land with the comforting drunkenness of quick-tongued conversation with fellow Americans. So it goes, that sometimes you’re a part of something magical, and trying to recapture that is more difficult than in should seem. So instead of take part in naplos and merriment, I convinced Noemi that we should climb into the bar’s tree-house and talk an hour of the evening away.

Saturday was summer, and it felt good. Sunshine warmed our walk to the beach, and after a minute or two of trepidation, the water felt good. A brief afternoon thunderstorm was the perfect preventative cure for sunburn and allowed a nice lunch break. By evening we were ready for the pitcher after pitcher of free white wine samples that our guest house arranged for. They really treated us well for $10 a night. And while eating supper before drinking wine might perhaps have been advisable, it’s hardly a necessity if you’ve got a pole to lean against.

But, of course, there’s no getting around the absolute highlight of the weekend: Not once, but an amazing twice, I found myself locked inside a bathroom…

The first, definitely, was the charming Noemi’s fault! We let ourselves into what might have been a locked bathroom at the beach. Thinking that I must have finished before her, she locked the hallway door on the way out. A minute later, I found myself trapped on the inside of a locked door, inside a darkened hallway. I stood befuddled for a few minutes, pondering exactly how I found myself locked inside a bathroom. I was just about to start knocking on the door, from the inside, when an employee unlocked the door. I think he was surprised to see me in the locked, darkened hallway, but I koszonom szepan-ed him and walked past before he could ask the obvious question.

The second incident, though, was no one’s fault but my own. Back at the guesthouse, about to take off for the train station, I thought I’d be smart and use the flushable facilities rather than wait and use the more primitive accommodations available on-board the train. On my way out, I struggled with the key. It’d been giving me problems all weekend. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the lock mechanism to budge.

Not about to be caught trapped in a bathroom twice in one weekend, I decided to get smart. Rather than bust my fingers trying to click the lock open, I’d use mechanical advantage. I picked up the doorstop and the can of aerosol fragrance – I’d squeeze them together like a pliers, using mechanical advantage to force the lock to give way. With fierce determination, I put my plan into action. I squeeze the key between the doorjam and aerosol can, and turned. I smiled when I felt it easily give way. But then I heard a terrifying clink – one-half of the key falling onto the hard bathroom floor, snapped completely off of the operative end of the key.

I let my head crash into the door in disgust. And again I found myself pondering being locked inside a bathroom. With imagines of missed trains and eventual starvation creeping into my psyche, I began to knock on the door, from the inside. Five minutes later, help arrived. We concocted a plan. They’d get the other bathroom key, and try to open the door from the outside. I was ready to plant kisses on my saviors when the plan worked, a hostage freed of misfortune, but that would have only increased the intra-group drama and intrigue, so I simply offered thanks.

Needless to say, I avoided bathrooms on the train-ride home. Luckily, the most excitement at Deli Pu was recognizing Timi and waving a hello. Hungary made a little smaller by a familiar face, a voyage come full-circle.

At Work

2007-06-06T12:48:00.000+02:00

The first three days in the OSI office – I’m not gonna lie – were a little dull, a little too much like the first year of law school: Lots of reading, interrupted with frequent checks of Facebook, iwiw, or some other kindly reminder that the rest of the world is more interactive than casebooks. Sure, there was more of a point to the reading this time around, I was learned all the background information about Freedom of Information that I needed to know, but sometimes it’s hard to appreciate background work, even if every glance out the window catches the spires of St. Istvan’s Baszilika.

But then came Thursday afternoon and a phone call. Just before I was ready to pack it in for the day, a voice on the other end of the line gave me a mission. Like a game of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, the mysterious voice from New York – it belongs to a certain Sandy – gave me an adventure, a puzzle, a project.

What, she wanted to know – and had wanted to know since the day before, but had only asked an e-mail account that hadn’t yet been activated – were some of the monitoring mechanisms that the Council of Europe used to supervise various human rights initiatives in the past. How did the Council’s Committee of Ministers delegate the task of watching over member states in key areas like the racism and intolerance, the prevention of torture, the protection of national minorities, upholding the European social charter and fighting human-trafficking? And what could we learn from those structures (organizations, tools, methods, etc.) as the Justice Initiative helps recommend the best monitoring methods for the Council’s upcoming Freedom of Information convention?

So Friday morning I dove into international law and the realm of the Council of Europe. The Council’s website was just about my only source of information. Adequate, if not well-rounded. So I plunked away for eight hours until I’d found a slew of information, some more helpful than other parts. I e-mailed off a narrative report and chart to New York and Abuja, Nigeria. Monday morning, when I came back, an e-mail box full of feedback, other ideas, etc. Time zones are fun. There can always be an e-mail and an assignment waiting in the morning. When I finish in the afternoon, I send it off, knowing that when the seven hours of difference work themselves out between here and New York, I’ll have all my questions answered come tomorrow.

Home

2007-06-03T22:24:00.000+02:00

After a week as Kat’s house-guest, I finally have a room of my own! It’s in the heart of imperial Budapest, a block off of ornate Andrassy Ut and the Yellow Line buried below it. The stately 6th district. Two metro stops to the northeast? Heroes’ Square and the gateway to City Park. Two metro stops to the southwest? The eight-sided heart of pedestrian Budapest: Oktogon.

3 Szinyei Ut I.6

I’ll have my own little neighborhood stores and restaurants to patronize for the first time. The OSI offices are just four stops, a five minute commute on the first underground metro on continental Europe. A dark and soothing inner courtyard, ivy creeping up the far building under the shade of a sprawling tree that must have been planted as the building was built seventy or eighty years ago.

Eva was the connection. Dezso, a PhD-holding retired Colonel of the Hungarian army, had a room to let. His aunt, a nicely old lady, judging from the pictures of three generations of moustachioed Hungarians hanging on the wall, left last month, off to the nursing home. So I sleep now in a bed, crunchy with springs, that smells a little like old lady.

And down the hall? My new best friend Janos. He’s 40. A salt-and-peppered marketing manager of a local Metra store. Metro’s a magyarized Sam’s Club. It turns out that Janos and I are going to be talking mostly in German, as his English is more limited than his limited German. Luckily, conversational language is all we’ll likely be needing for the next month.

After June, I’m moving toward Nyugati Station. One of Noemi’s friends is renting an apartment to teacher Matt. It’ll help everyone out that I can stay there in July and August, and Matt doesn’t come back from his summer in America until three days after I leave. Moving won’t be hard, as I own three garbage bags full of things in this country, and it’ll be nicer to live by myself, not to belittle Janos’ company, of course.

First meal at the restaurant at the corner of Kodaly Korond? I was feeling daring in my first taste of my Magyar independence, I went with a milanoi dish I’d never heard of. I wasn’t impressed at all, but it was easier to choke down knowing that it was a part of the adventure of finding myself smack dab in the middle of a Hungarian neighborhood.

A scrawled message to Janos in the morning, auf Deutsch, of course, and it was off to the office then Lake Balaton!

Song and Dance

2007-06-03T22:12:00.000+02:00

Once upon a time. Not so long ago.

Favorite moment of the first week back in Budapest:
A Saturday evening of make-shift fun.

Tommy used to work on the docks.

Janos was kind enough to host us at his favorite neighborhood bar, The Squirrel, if we translate away. An outdoor café spilled out of the wood-panelled interior, complete with a native group of young Hungarians who were kind enough to bring a guitar and sentimental enough to play Wonderwall. Liz would have made fun of me for faux British accents if she had been there. But as our conversation turned rowdier – as it has known to do – Janos ordered us on, lest we ruin his reputation with the help and regulars.

Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck.

A missed metro, the last of the night, left us wandering down a street we’d never wandered before, and likely will never wander again. Block after block of search for elusive night bus stops created inspiration or desperation, or some combination of the two. I was adamant that we take advantage of the first oasis of sorts that we stumbled upon. A sketchy karaoke bar.

It’s tough, so tough.

We ordered beers as two Hungarians battled their ways, surprisingly well, through Barbie Girl. When they reverted back to Hungarian favorites, I was nominated to kickstart the English.

Gina works the diner all day.

Harpswell handed the balding man behind the kareoke stand a request, a minute later he called Jeremos up to the front of the bar. that's when Bon Jovi's rhythm started to pulsate.

Working for her man, she brings home her pay for love.

I burst into song as Laura burst into dance. We were rockstars.

She says w'eve got to hold on to what we've got
cause it doesnt make a difference
If we make it or not
Weve got each other and thats a lot
For love - we'll give it a shot

Most impressed? The Hungarian lady who had sang Barbie Girl. She clapped wildly. She was digging me. By the end of the song, but voice was cracking and hoarse, but I managed a koszonom szepan as I handed the mic back. Walking back through smiles and high fives, the Barbie-singer jumped me. She thrust a new request sheet in my hand. A translator explained that she wanted to sing a duet with me. I didn't know the song written on the top, but i scribbled Jeremos down anyway.

Whooah, were half way there
Livin' on a prayer

But as I finished writing, scrawling myself into a contract of collaboration, she smiled. A bit of a smirk. Then the translator-du-jour told me why.

"She wants you to put your telephone nymber next to your name."

Take my hand and well make it - I swear
Livin' on a prayer...

Heves. Ma Volt.

2007-05-30T16:59:00.001+02:00

(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.

2007-05-30T10:03:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-05-28T21:20:00.000+02:00

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

Headed to Heves

2007-05-26T15:36:00.001+02:00

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

2007-05-25T16:24:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-22T18:07:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-21T02:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-21T01:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-16T20:48:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-16T20:21:00.000+02:00

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.

gyere gyere!

2007-02-07T00:04:00.000+01:00

I might be going back to Hungary!!!!!!!!!!!

Summer legal research associate intern at Open Society Justice Initiative in downtown Budapest!!!!

www.justiceinitiative.org

The End.

2006-06-09T16:14:00.000+02:00

Home. The End.

(Some folks, generous in praise, have thanked me for telling stories. The pleasure, of course, was all mine. There's a strange comfort and understanding in writing, literature, and even fiction. They wondered, certainly in varying degrees of sincerity, if I would keep writing stories in Washington and law school and beyond. Yes, of course. But I don't think I will blog it.)

Jeremy Jewett-Staff
286 Four Winds Rd
Deer Harbor, WA 98243

2006-06-07T13:13:00.000+02:00

With five bags packed, an empty apartment and a rinsed-out piece of tupperware that I need to return to Barbara - that random English-speaking grandmother of a woman here in Heves - I can't help but reminiscing.

What was this year?

...A year in Hungary...

292 days. 35 spent out of Hungary.
292 nights. 35 spent ouf of Hungary.

...teaching English...

And German, it turns out. Didn't see that one coming. So it goes. But again, I found myself not so much of a teacher, so very uncomfortable in demanding that others achieve, controlling even just 45 minutes of their existence. I'm a facilitator. I gave kids the opportunity to learn, grow, practice. Some took wonderful advantage, others - I hope - might learn in retrospect to make the most of their chances, not a bad skill at all.

...a cast of characters...

Old Barbara. Super Gitta. Thanksgiving Elli. Peter English. Gaines. Zuper Zita. Pencil-Shop Zsofi. JCz. Liz and Janos. Dixie. German Peter. Tour-Guide Etelka. Agi. Neighbor Erika. Smiling Betti. Tall Creepy Dude. Feri. Mariah. Anton and the Ukrainians. Harpswell Old ladies on bikes. Herr Direktor. Kati. The lunchladies. Great Gabor. Mister Hungarian. Brent. Well-Belted Eszter. Denis. The ladies in the disco. Kyle. Emily's lovers. Chad. Pretty Petra.

...set in the town of Heves...

Wow. A land I despised, a home of fences only it sometimes seems, became my friend. And honestly, it didn't start until I started drinking at the disco with the students... So it goes.

...ten-thousand people...

Give or take. Most are reserved. I think most know my name. Still not sure what to think about the anomosity between Hungarians and the Roma half of the town.

...the Eotvos Jozsef kozepiskola...

The absolute craziest thing I've ever seen, that still manages to function nearly seemlessly.

...and a wandering young man who likes to tell stories...

I earned stories, I told stories. The CETP teachers have learned to groan when they hear my story voice coming. And those who watched closely, those people might argue I became obsessed with life as simply a story, caught within the ungrounded fiction of my own world and literature. Or maybe that's me, in my own world, just thinking too long and too hard and too lonesomely to make it anything other than just a theory.

I guess, in a way, all that this year was - and all that it could have been - is goulash.

Hungarian Goulash.

Wanna Hear a Quote?

2006-06-06T11:02:00.000+02:00

Of course I’ve always liked to read. That’s a given, by my pedigree. But I’ve never survived off of literature like this year. If we’re brazen enough to count guidebooks and Hardy Boy books the total’s 25, but here are the 20 books I read this year, chronologically.

On the Road

Frankenstein

Lajos M., Aged 42 (The only Hungarian book I read…)

The Human Story (A rather traditional history of the world)

War and Peace

Dracula

Khrushchev Remembers (autobiography)

Prodigal Summer (Kingsolver)

Waldheim and Austria (A boring Austrian prime minister/UN secretary general)

(General) Lee after the War

Cat’s Cradle (Vonnegut)

Populaton: 485 (Perry’s Northwoods Wisconsin Volunteer Firefighter Stories)

The Quiet American (Greene's Diplomatic intrigue in early Vietnam)

The Affair of Gabrielle Russier (boring story of a lambasted French teacher)

Under the Tuscan Sun (Italian travel/renovation journal)

Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver)

Bless the Beasts and Children (Swarthout)

This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald)

Gorbachev (1986 biography)

A range from classic non-fiction to completely random books pulled off the one shelf of English books in the school. A pretty heavy international flavor, many inspired by travelling.

Best Five? War and Peace. Frankenstein. Poisonwood. Paradise. Slaughterhouse.

And of course I wrote enough to fill two more books…

The whole way through Transylvania in the fall, I would turn to Liz and offer my treasured brown journal like a bible of sorts. "Hey, Liz, wanna hear a quote?" I would ask to the inevitable no.

But I think they’re worthy to show, because these are the words from those pages that resonated with me, more than any others. As if some of the very thoughts and feelings I harbored, here in my own little world, were transposed onto that page. So I lifted them. Scribbled them in the leather book of all things important. The thoughts I thought, as told by others this past year:

"…a traveller’s life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyment. His feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties." Dr. Frankenstein

"And I don’t have any other complaints, either. I don’t complain about nothing. ‘Cause at least I’m home." – Lajos M., former Soviet P.O.W.

"His dispair was all the more bitter because he felt that his own weakness was the cause of his own unhappiness." Count Rostov, War and Peace

"But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him not – and to know not is to care not for." Dracula’s Jonathan Harker

"If there were anyone to talk to I could bear it, but there is no one…I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place." Dracula’s Jonathan Harker

"Americans…are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places in can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier." Cat’s Cradle.

"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed." Cat’s Cradle

"Every great man is a plain, average man before he takes the step which makes him great." Khrushchev Remembers.

"Motion wed itself to freedom, and from that day forward, I incubated a stray-dog jones for the road. It is a quasi-religious thing, in which the pilgrimage is religion, and movement is that purest form of worship…To this day, my two favorite things in the world are solitude and motion. I’ve found them in the enxt county, in a semi crossing the Nevada state line, on a Hungarian train, and on a bus approaching the Guatemalan border." Michael Perry, Population: 485.

"Most trips have an underlying quest. We’re looking for something. What? Fun, escape, adventure – but then what?" Under the Tuscan Sun.

"If the first handful of dough is consecrated, the whole mass is, and if the root of a tree is consecrated, so are its branches. If some of the branches have broken off, and you who were only a wild olive shoot have been grafted in, and made to share the richness of the olive’s root, you must not look down upon the branches. Remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you" (302). Romans, Chapter 10, courtesy of Kingsolver, Poisonwood Bible.

But even more than any of those quotes, one phrase has permeated my thought process, and these web pages, at an almost alarming rate. Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five.

"So it goes."

By unofficial count, I’ve peppered these (web) pages with that little seasoning of a phrase more than a dozen times over the last two months. It’s a phrase that sounds nice when you’re telling a story, sure, but what does it mean that it has come to litter my stories so regularly?

It says a little something about a stay in Hungary. So it goes.

You can call it destiny or you can call it randomness, but there’s no good reason why I wound up in Heves, of all the places in this world. There are a couple reasons for Hungary, of course. It’s not as scary as some parts of the world, but more interesting than others. I visited once and liked it, and I have a Hungarian friend. The program was easy to find and join, and Mary Rose is from Fond du Lac.

But Heves? Absolutely no reason I’m here and Chad, for example, is in Szolnok. No reason to pick Heves over Sarkard, straight out of a brainless hat. For better or worse , I wound up here, in this particular spot. I didn’t really control it. It doesn’t seem like any one did.

Jeremy. Heves. So it goes.

There are lots of funny phenomenom anytime you live somewhere else as a foreigner, especially when you’re an American living in Hungary. Blatant tonguing at train stations. DJs in the school lobby. Cow intestines in a pot that people eat from. Sometimes it's best not to understand. Just shake your head, put a silly grin on your face and go "Huh, this is like a foreign country or something."

Hungary's unique. You're not in control. You can't change it. So it goes.

And when all the uniqueness catches up with you, and you realize that you have no idea what your role in all this madness is, or how to get back to a situation where you're in control, one of the best strategies seems to be just standing there. Understanding that you don’t understand everything is especially easy in a foreign country. The world is happening, even if you just stand motionless. What to do when pulled over in Bosnia? Just stand there. It's called "negotiating." What to do if an entire class is missing from their classroom? Just stand there. It's called "wondering." What to do if you can't figure out the different cuts of meat? Just stand there. It's called "selecting." Wait and see.

If you just stand there, something good will happen. So it goes.

But at the same time, if you hang out with Hungarians long enough, you'll be depressed into a mindset of predetermination. Born in Heves? Well, shit you're gonna be staying there because it's obviously impossible to do anything to improve you standing in life - even if you have two Masters Degrees - other than making your fence look nicer. There's an inherent, and inforunate inability to chance the immediateness of your surroundings, short of escaping, in the (stereotypical) Hungarian mindset.

That's why they kill themselves, I guess. So it goes.

Destiny/Randomness. Acceptance of non-understanding. Willingness to flow with the way of the world. Okay-idness with your lot in life.

So it goes.

The Debrief

2006-06-01T16:28:00.000+02:00

The Debrief:

I began the emotional process of leaving Hungary on May 3rd. That might seem a little extravagant, more than a month before my physical departure, but that’s when the seniors were leaving school. So it just seemed like a fitting time to begin thinking about my own inevitable farewell. But now that it's June, it's a reality. One week from today, it's airport day. Budapest. Brussels. Chicago. Fond du Lac. Imagine that...

I live life, and then I learn from it. I’m a nurturer, I like to facilitate the ability of myself and others to grow and expand, to think and become. I like to reach conclusions and answers and successes. I like truths. I like to understand. I have a tendency to build sentences that start with "I" because I like to showcase my understanding of the world around me and my place within it.

So it goes.

I came of age in a school of thought that seems to say that life is a string of experiences, that living and learning from the challenges is the way to grow. Giving people the opportunity to step into a new realm of comfort, or even well-beyond, and then the forum to share the lessons with others was healthy, if not a completeness of answer.

This time around, the "best choice for me" was a ten-month stay in Hungary, rather than ten-minutes on the high-wires of a ropes course. (By my calculations, that means the experience was approximately 43,200 times more powerful, even if not as adrenalized…) Unfortunately, though, my facilitator is biased in his assessment of the world and my performance in it.

So it goes.

But he’s presented a multi-media, multi-sensory, multi-learning-style plan for debriefing the experience. Celebrating the successes. Reflecting and learning from the process. Extrapolating to other areas. Sharing stories and lessons. Building a sense of togetherness with my community. Saying goodbye and moving on.

You will be involved in part.

Sharing some "best of" lists.
Sharing the on-going collage-making process.
Sharing personal blog analysis.

And others are more personal, or more rooted in this place.

Showing off my final proficiency in living in this foreign land (Rachel and Margaret).
Saying goodbye to the disco.
Saying goodbye to the teachers.
Saying goodbye to the football boys.
Saying goodbye to the good Americans.
Packing, giving away, throwing away.
Saying goodbye to Eotvos Jozsef Kozepiskola.
Saying goodbye to Eva.
Saying viszlat to Hungary...

All The News That's Fit to Print!

2006-05-31T16:08:00.000+02:00

The June - and Farewell - Edition of the Csillag-Dispatch, set to hit the presses, the palms of these silly little pupils, tomorrow...

(Click to enlarge! - Tentatively... Otherwise email a request for .pdf)

Summer 2006

2006-05-28T16:34:00.000+02:00

I have developed a "mild life crush," as I’ve taken to calling it, on mountains and the sea.

They’re both just so good that I find them almost irresistable. I particularily like being sandwiched between the two. The geologic utopia of places like Norwary, Greece and Croatia.

And next, the state of Washington. The summer of 2006.

I’ll be living on an island in a teepee, snuggled between green mountains and the blue sea, inspiring high schoolers to make the most of life, four weeks at a time. My coworker wife is Canadian, I’m hoping for dual citizenship.

A new camp, another corner of America. New friends, new stories. Sailboats and kayaks, experiential education and life. Upper-middle class gifted and talented clientle – my specialty. And a new experience – a private camp, complete with four-week stays and uniforms. Wife Robyn says that later’s a good equalizer when you’re working with "the kids of Russian billionaires, country-clubbers, kids on scholarship, and Orcas locals..."

It means flying off two days after I wake up for the first time in a long time on American soil, and there’s an opportunity cost of being gone so soon after being away. But I figure I’ll have plenty of time to grow old just as soon as I matriculate to that looming law school.

Until then, summer.

Used!

2006-05-25T17:34:00.000+02:00

I've been used!! I've been had!!
(And I like it.)

From "Global Voices Online"
(Some sort of crazy travelling meta-blog...)

May 1st, 2006
Eastern & Central Europe
Croatia, Travel

Jeremy Jewett of Hungarian Goulash comes up with “the ABCs of a Spring Break in Croatia”: “The stories of a spring break well-spent in the northern-half of the former Yugoslavia will be told alphabetically, chunked into a little tale or nugget of wisdom beginning with the letters A through Z.”

19th

2006-05-24T10:29:00.000+02:00

The results are back... Big Kinga is the 19th best German-speaking 8th grader in this whole country!

I would like to take this moment to stake claim, of course, to the title of 19th-best German-teacher in Hungary.

Girls Gone Hevesi!

2006-05-20T10:16:00.001+02:00

(double – even triple! - meaning!!)
This phrase can be twisted to convey any of the following:

1. The girls are now (unfortunately) gone from Heves!
2. The girls went native, became hevesi (from Heves), during their stay here!
3. The girls went heves (wild, passionate), during two nights in Heves!

In Eger, we prioritized the Palincsintavar (pancake castle) over the Egrivar (the famous castle above Eger); the chicken liver lunch just hadn’t fit the bill. After loading up, we walked the churches, squares and streets that make Eger wonderful.

Atop the 16th century minaret, we befriended 5 little girls and a boy who heard us speaking English. The fifth graders spouted off impressive phrases, and we made each other giggle all the way down the ancient spiral staircase. The kids in Tiszaujvaros are getting a good English education, it seems! (Unfortunately they didn't know Teacher Liz...)

After a bus ride and nap, we set off for a "traditional Hungarian graduation party." Bandi Bacsi (Uncle Andras) and others had invited me to the Friday night get-together, and they assured me that the girls were welcome, too.

Yea they were welcome!

The party commemorated class 14C. For some reason, they stuck around the trade school for two extra years and were just now being handed a mechanics diploma. That made them the exact same age as the beautiful American girls I had imported for the evening.

We walked in a little late, but cheers went up as soon as we did. Without any open chairs at the long banquet table in front of us, the ladies and I sat down at a side table. The class of 15 or so boys – not a single girl – wouldn’t have any of that, though. They whisked a table next to their end and urged us to join them. We couldn’t resist the honor.

Rachel started to meet the boys first, as she was sitting next to one rather charming young lad. I didn’t know any of them, they weren’t my students. It’s important to note that the English they have learned comes not from a classroom (Viktor their English teacher confessed that he spent many of the English lessons discussing the more pertinent topic of entreprenuership) but from pop culture.

The boys threw down shot glasses in front of us – that was the last time they were empty all night. As soon as the ladies could manage to gulp one down, it was filled with a new beverage of various levels of strength. Mostly high. We gobbled down another meat and potatoes dish, this paprika-y specialty was much more to our liking.

About the same time as we hit the bottom of our plates, we started to notice that the boy next to Rachel seemed to have fewer buttons buttoned on his shirt than before. This is a trend that will continue throughout the night. It also the formal beginning of the true sketchiness of the evening…

The boys asked the girls if they knew how to play strip poker. This is when the girls decided it was important to learn the word "nem."

For some reason, immediately after this discussion, Rachel peels off her sweater. The boys, of course, like this. Button-boy grabs her arm. Rachel swats him away.

One boy handed Rachel his cell phone. On it, the word "nookie." I don’t know if it had a question mark or not, but it got a "nem" from Miss Modesty.

Another boy handed Rachel his cell phone. I don’t know why she looked at it. On it, a movie. And an actress that Rachel thought looked like Margaret.

So she pointed at Margaret and yelled to the boys "porn star!" Rather loudly. The boys were agreeable to the concept. Marge and I were rather concerned.

Another button undone by sketchy-boy. Another leg touch. Another nem. There are some classic, classic pictures that document the progression.

So Rachel ran off to the kitchen to hide from the boys. She turned her (apparent) Hungarian sexual irresistability to the teachers, instead.

One of the boys turned to Margaret and smiled. He knew a couple important English words. "No Rachel? You next!"

Shatabi, shatabi, shatabi...

There comes a time at every school-canteen graduation-party where you are consumed by the urge to begin taking riding-tractor pictures. It also served as a good excuse to leave the hormone-fest for a while. We hopped on a good three or four tractors, all sitting like an outdoor-museum on the school grounds. We tried not to leave any prints on windshields.

About at the same time that our tractor-photo shenanigans had run their course of amusement – John Deere’ll get you only so far - Viktor and the boys realized we were outside. Viktor put on Rachel's previously small green "jumper," then made her strip it off of him. All under the shadow of a rusty tractor.

Fun does not usually come in this fashion, folks.

Another urge took us to play foosball, as all nights of revelry generally boil down to that primordial instinct sooner or later... I think it has something to do with Neanderthals, going for the kills, then twirling hunks of meat over a roasting fire...

There, Rachel and Victor battled Marge and I. The Boston Babe and the Heves Hunk (Margaret and I…) battled the bad guys furiously for four rounds, but lost the tie-breaking fifth round. It cannot be said that Rachel didn’t do enough to encourage me to win one for the team, we just lost to a superior squad, as much as that moniker stings. It was, of course, the second time that Margaret was a loser in one day...

By the time Margaret had posed for pictures on a motorcycle and I introduced the ladies to one of my ninth-grade students who was at the kocsma, we figured it was time to leave. The arrival of Button Boy only sealed that commitment to esxpediency. We did, though, manage to stage a rather stunning reenactment of The Sound of Music in the "downtown" park gazebo and hop on nearly half of the cities statues for commemorative "I spent time in Heves" pictures.

As we waited for the train Saturday afternoon, the ladies and I debriefed their stay in Heves. They weren't impressed by the market, but the library made their day. They decided they enjoyed the personal tour of this little outpost of Eastern Europe, and that the overt "sketchiness" of parts was half the fun. That was even before they saw the little two-car train pull up. That made them laugh.

In BP we met Eva and hit up Statue Park. Don't go. It's lame. The (massive) advertising campaign makes it seem like the 5 km trip outside of the city limits would be well worth the trip. Massive soviet statues. The cruel eyes of Lenin or Stalin bearing down on you. A trip back in time to a very different Hungary. Instead, it's a little plot of land with completely underwhelming memorabilia. Even with Eva's personal stories of learning Russian long ago couldn't bring it up to any sort of magnificence. The ladies liked the Fishermenás Bastion, riverfront-walking, and a (compulsory, with a girl named Margaret) short tour of Margit Island better.

Sunday morning it was off to the train station rather early. The ladies were bound for Slovenia, the same train I'd taken a few weekends before. Portoroz was their next port of call, but I've heard rumors that they were considering making a (short) detour off of their 21-page itinerary in the forthcoming days.

I thanked the girls profusely for coming during hugs. It had meant so much that some friends were willing to come and share this little experience. Rachel will be able to stand testament next fall to all (well, some) of my stories, when we call some little white house on Johnson Street our own.

And then they were gone. Whisked away on an Italian train. I was left alone with me.

So I went to the Hungarian National Musuem. (Go. It's free. And good, lots of understandable history. Well presented and displayed. Lots of English.)

The Ladies Go to School

2006-05-19T12:15:00.000+02:00

As the girls beautied themselves after we woke up Friday morning, I had a feeling that it was going to be a sweet, sweet day. Even if we were feeling a dash dehydrated. Cloudy skies, but at least it wasn’t raining.

We were standing in the teachers’ office at 8:00 when the bell rang, the girls were amazed at how little significance it played in the minute-by-minute operations of everyone in the school. First hour, which officially begins about five minutes after the bell rights, would be class 10C: Sixteen horny sixteen-year-old boys and four girls. Not a one of them is gifted in English or destined for much of an international lifestyle.

Visitors are awesome because they’re a two-week lesson plan. The actual visit, plus a class period of preparation the week before. The sophomores concocted a tri-fold plan to amuse Rachel and Margaret. A third of them (or really only a slicked-hair-boy named Tamas) would teach the girls elementary Hungarian. Another third would ask the girls pre-written questions. And the last group would offer them a little Who-Wants-To-Be-A-Millionaire action. (In forints, it’s not quite as impressive…)

As Tamas strode to the board, the lights went out. The girls were a little alarmed, but the kids and I motored through the distraction. Funny things happen in the second world. He wrote five words on the board, and made the girls pronounce each one, with plenty of help from the audience. Sör, iskola, egy, kettö, harom. The girls laughed at his priorities when the translations came up next to the foreign words: beer, school, one, two, three.

Strangely enough, the ladies struggled to pronounce "köszonöm szepan" when the lessons took a turn toward the more difficult "thank you very much."

When the bell rang, we were forced to make headlamp and torch jokes as we weaved through the darkened halls. We’d really never had this kind of power outage problem before, except when all the teachers were drinking around candles in the teachers’ office one night… But the girls were a bit skeptical. Under the cover of darkness, though, the gals were able to slide through the halls and escape the stares and remarks I’d promised.

We passed hordes of administrators flying about as we walked back toward the office. It turns out that the power problems came at a bad time, the school-leavers were scheduled to complete their information science final exams that morning. Information science requires computers. Computers require power. Agi was still hospitable enough, despite it all, to rope us aside, welcome the girls (through my translation service) and invite us for coffee just as soon as the power was restored.

Second hour, or rather a couple minutes after the start, we wandered up to 7A, the little class of TGIF-screamers. Threw the door open, they were all milling around as usual.

"Oh, they’re so little and cute!" Margaret said, surprised to find little dwarf-pupils in this Hungarian high school. They really are pretty much little wee-people, like an elementary-school-museum encased inside of a rough and tumble high school. We walked in, and it almost looked as if the girls were ready to pick them up and pet them.

And that’s when they charged us.

Three of them. Seventh-grade boys. In unison.

They screamed a blood-curdling war-call and lowered their heads to charge.

As if Braveheart was their leader. Or inspired by Sparticus. Called to arms by Alexander the Great. Feet pounded toward us, little boys hurtling.

We leapt back in fear – Margaret, Rachel and I – as they drew their weapons. They aimed for the kill and fired with lethal accuracy.

Blood-thirsty vengeance. These were the descendents of Attila the Hun.

Something wet seeped through my fingers. I envisioned my lifeblood draining away from a hole in my chest. I wondered if the three of us would be buried with honors here in little Heves.

I looked down at my own chest and the same moment the girls looked down at theirs.

In shock. Damning Hungary. Mortified.

A deep indigo stained the front of their tops.

Then it made sense.

The deep indigo of invisible ink…

It wasn’t until we looked up again, still aghast, that we saw three little metal flasks – yes, those kinds of flasks! – sitting on little TGIF Kristian’s desk.

"Welcome to Hungary, ladies," I whispered under my breath, shaking my head, continually amazed for nine-months-running by Hungary.

"Please note the invisible ink on your chests and the flasks on that little boys desk, then let’s go ahead and speak some English with these little folks!"

(7A was uneventful after the initial shock. Introductions, questions, etc, until Rachel decided it was imperative to sketch a moose on the board. That’s when I decided that the camera needed to be broken out…)

The lights came back on during the break, and I toured the ladies through the school. They were amazed at the chaos, but I assured them that it all worked out somehow. They stood in disbelief and the singing in the halls, the music on the loudspeakers, the whole affair. They noticed the segregation. I think they probably agree with my mantra "interesting to observe."

(And after the power came back on, the ladies were able to hit up the internet in the teacher lounge. That’s when they began preaching the gospel of Facebook. I am beginning to show early signs of addiction…)

Fourth lesson was with 8A, my favorite little angels. We’d planned Jeopardy the week before. After learning what Jeopardy was (although they struggled with the whole "answer must be in the form of a question" concept…) the kids wrote up five categories worth of answers: Football, Soap Operas, Famous Hungarian Cities, Cars and Stars.

Margaret, who can get a little feisty in a competative setting, jumped out to an early lead. But these kids love the underdog, and quickly began to give Rachel covert assistance. By final jeopardy, Margaret had a sizable lead, but Rachel was within striking distance.

The category: The School. The girls placed their blind bets.

The answers? This is the name of the school you are sitting in. The girls scribbled their answers while I hummed.

Margaret unveiled her answer. "What is Joszef-famous Hungarian man?" The kids decided it was okay. She bet conservatively, but we added it onto her total.

Rachel was next. She looked uncertain. "Who is a famous Hungarian man?" The kids conferred, and the vote was unanimous: Rachel the underdog’s answer was okay! She bet the house, of course, and won. (There is a forthcoming picture as proof!)

Lunch was terrible. Little curled hunks of chicken liver swimming in a bowl of noodles. Even the soup was disasterous. The ladies were not impressed, and we set off for Eger by bus with crummies in our tummies, needing a second course. And we hadn’t even hit noon yet…

I've Got Friends (In Heves, Of All Places...)

2006-05-18T13:13:00.000+02:00

(Substitute the blond cutie on the right with the blond cutie who authors this website, and you've got the sleeping arrangement on my bed/couch/desk Thursday and Friday. At left, the raving beauty Margaret. In center, the heavenly Rachel)

Rachel Jones is a sparkling gal. She used to just be a former camper and the little sister of a friend. Mandy, taller by an inch, is one of my best friends from Camp Nan A Bo Sho and UW-Madison. Without her, I simply wouldn’t be the same me. Bones, as we used to call her summer long ago, is now a special ed teacher lucky enough to find herself holed up in Jackson, Wyoming, under the shadow of the Tetons.

Next year, though, Rachel will be more than just another camper I’ve befriended. She’ll move into a new category in my world of acquaintances: roommate! Five of us will share a pad in Madison, two block from the state capital, two blocks from James Madison park.

And Margaret Bermingham’s one of her good friends, a wonderful girl in her own right. They worked together two summers at NABS, the two summer after I left. She goes to Boston University now, but makes it home on occasions like Halloween in Madison and camp reunions. She spent the spring in London, studying and interning, and has been travelling since classes ended.

If you are so enabled, facebook them. (Uh-oh, Jeremy learned a new verb!)

When I heard that they wanted to make Hungary the third country on their spring-time European travels, I was jazzed. These ladies are good shit, and I had long been advocating that anyone and everyone should come experience a taste of Hungary with me.

So far, only my parents had been willing. And there are inherent differences between parents visiting and friends visiting. Chess museums and handiworks cooperatives are traded on the itinerary for gypsy ghettos and bars. So it goes.

The girls arrived from Salzburg by train on Thursday, but they assured me that they felt capable, with good directions, of weaving through Budapest, boarding a little Hungarian bus by themselves, and then manage to get off at the right town. I vowed to help by waving like a madman outside of the right station. Heves and I were both excited. Not often that beautiful young gals come from America!

In truth, I was distracted from my waving duties by picking flowers and talking to students, the girls managed to negotiate their way to Heves and get off the bus at the right spot all by themselves. It’s an accomplishment, I’m not exactly sentineled on the beaten path. They even managed to get their bags outof the bottom of the bus by the time I saw Heves’ two new blondish heads awash in the confusion of a foreignland. And the provencial parts of a foreign land, at that. I’m sure the bus driver was skeptical of their sanity until I greeted them. I was happy, these were my first camp hugs in a long time…

As soon as the bags hit the floor, I welcomed them with palinka, one of our favored Hungarian traditions, before we wandered through the streets of Heves. I’ve been here a long time, I’ve forgotten the shock they felt. Despite it, they smiled. I loved how fast wecould all talk together.

Despite Hungarian advice to the contrary, I made them peek into the gypsy ghetto with me after ice cream. Long lines of small houses, set tight against dirt roads with the leoparacy of potholes. Broken windows mar walls, garbage paints the ditches unfortunate rainbows. It’s (not) affectionately known in these parts as "krakko." The Hungarians insist that it’s impossible to enter and exit alive. We disproved the skeptics (and/or racists…) because I wanted to show the girls the first and the second (and maybe even the third) world natures of Heves. There are many. And its hard to understand the school without seeing that side of town. I wish you all could. They asked a lot of questions, but I didn't have good answers. I don't know if there are any.

We made Italian spaghetti and drank African wine, but when the lights at the Hungarian bar were turned out on us, we figured it was time to hit the hay in anticipation of a deeeelightful Friday ahead.

Up Next? Rachel and Marge tackle Hungarian seventh graders, moose-drawing, 16th century towers, rural trains and, of course, Hungarian men!

RMJ, MBA DO HU!

2006-05-17T17:55:00.000+02:00

IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS RACHEL JONES AND MARGARET BERMINGHAM WILL BE STEPPING FOOT IN HEVES, HUNGARY!! WOO WOO!!

YEA FOR CAMP FRIENDS! YEA FOR LITTLE-SISTER-OF-FRIEND FRIENDS! YEA FOR BOB-KONRAD-JOKES! YEA FOR TIE-RELATED-SHENANIGANS! YEA FOR FUTURE ROOMMATES!

Thursday: Hug, Palinka, Tour of Heves, Tour of Apartment, Tour of a Hevesi "Kocsma"

Friday: 7A, 10C, 8A, Lunch, Eger, Dinner Party, More "Kocsma-olni"

Saturday: Morning Market, Hungarian Train Network, Budapest, Statue Park

Sunday: Budapest, Train to Next Destination

spring fling

2006-05-15T17:45:00.000+02:00

The yogurt that I bought yesterday is stamped to expire on the very date that I am set to leave Hungary... June 8th...

The Hungarian commitment to spring-time education matches mine almost equally. Of my five classes yesterday, three were cancelled. One group was on a field trip, one group was watching a national-government-mandated video, and one group was taking a literature exam. (Little Eighth graders up against an oral examiniation!!) As a result, time to write, so please enjoy the burst of stories, sequences as they happened.

Love,
me

Why I came to Hungary...

2006-05-15T16:40:00.000+02:00

The kids often ask why I came to Hungary. This essay, written two years ago this spring, is why.

The fourth Tuesday of April
2004

The joy of traveling is discovering hapiness where you never knew it existed. Happiness, of course, is everywhere, but to find it outside your own experience is to travel.

Yesterday, I traveled to Hungary.

Budapest bites you the moment you step off the train. Hungary is not the United States. For the first time, I was behind the Iron Curtain, even if the sharpness of that divide has rusted for the last fifteen years. Heavy women are quick to peddle open rooms in their home to overwhelmed foreigners. Broken English invites each confused visitors who steps off the train, affluent by default, to share lovingly-stirred goulash for some petty sum. For these mothers, these grandmothers, bringing the West into their eastern home is the only means to support their way of life.

But the gauntlet of unfamiliarity continued even after we managed to convince the heavy women that we were visiting a friend. Even as familiar a thing as escalators becomes foreign, and frighteningly so, in Hungary. Not one of the native Hungarians worried about having to jump, rather than step, onto the fast moving steps. And no one worried about the steepness or the claustrophobic tunnel that seemed to be closing in over us. With metal gears churning, clanking below us, it was a long, long ride down.

And beyond the dangerously-efficient escalators, above the harrowing subway tunnels, Hungary was no less foreign. The challenge of housing nearly two million people gave the central planners of yesteryear a platform to showcase a rather drab outlook on life. For me, the sameness and grayness of concrete block apartment building, side by side, one after another, seemed like it would suffocate happiness, silence life.

But against the smog of a sterile gray, simple colors shine the brightest.

In pieces, I began to realize that Hungary, and I would imagine a majority of the world, contents itself with a much different joy than ours. More simple, more pure. The joy isn’t like ours, it isn’t a purchased high.The happiness isn’t an entertainment that dulls the senses until an even more colorful, more sexy flash of mindlessness can startle you into the shock of instant pleasure

The joy was more simple. The happiness was the celebration of color. A glimmer of goodness in a world more centered around survival. The joy was the flowers of Budapest.

The flowers of Budapest carried in the arms of a Magyar-speaking grandmother, who had seen her country through so much, a past that made as much sense as the present much of the time.

The flowers of Budapest alongside the thin pankcakes that each customer ordered at the family-owned restaurant.

On tables, behind ears, between lovers.

Under feet, around fountains, across parks.

Against gray.

The flowers of Budapest made me smile.

"I’ll AGG your TELEK!"

2006-05-14T11:23:00.000+02:00

In Hungary, when your plans to gallop off to a UNESCO world heritage site fall apart, you can always go the other direction and find a different one! The traditional village of Holloko gave way this weekend to Aggtelek National Park, home to Hungary’s biggest and best cave. The Baradla cave system stretches 25 km, all the way into Slovakia. At the border, steel bars block any illegal immigration, but tourists are free to visit and explore many of the other chambers and halls.

We used Liz’s place in Tiszaujvaros as our base camp. I’ve been there so many times this year, more than anywhere else except Budapest, but each time I love it. You can ice skate in the summer, you can swim in the winter, you can eat good Italian food any time! It’s some sort of unexplainable utopia, built from scratch in the middle of the Hungarian great plain. This weekend TUV kept us amused with a "Spanish Party" that consisted of venison goulash, sangria by the pitcher, and music that alternated between Rammstein and polka.

On a related note, the wonderful and charming Liz is the worst dancer ever…

We set out on the rather length train-train-bus voyage to Aggtelek, unsure of quite a few segments of the plan, but unconcerned. Our group shrunk as formerly-interested-parties missed necessary trains, a troubling-phenomenon that continues to plague American teachers almost 10 months into our stay. (Although the new-folks have only had 4 months to perfect the ability to get to a train station on time…) Our conversation is always fast and furious when we see each other.

After much debate without a single pro-active measure taken, we landed miraculously at the Aggtelek National Park headquarters. A tourinform office, a couple of restaurants, a few hotels, and the same tourist-friendly shops selling the 34-incarnations of Big Hungary memorabilia that we’ve been accustomed to since Transylvania. Be warned though, the nearest ATM is 30 km away…

I bought an awesome green squishy ball for 300 ft that amused me for hours until white gel started seeping out of a weak spot in the construction.

We signed up for the short tour, a one-hour walk through the most famous parts of the cave. We were lumped into a Hungarian-speaking production along with an army of teenage boys and camcorder-totting families.

My favorite sight was the famous Concert Hall, a slab of poured concrete that becomes, when coupled with plastic chairs, a 600-seat auditorium with amazing acoustics. Famous singers and orchestras come to play under stalactites, but for us they arranged something even better. Another Hungarian playing of Chariots of Fire. I was in heaven, a four-year-old boy running laps around a doily-shrouded coffee table. Unlike the interpretative ice-dancing episode in Tiszaujvaros, though, this time I (somehow) kept the swelling passions bottled up.

But my favorite room was the Columns’ Hall, where eons of slowly dripping mineral-rich water have froze stalactites, stalagmites and columns galore into a poetry of colorful stone. Some are so impressive they’re given names. The Minaret stands alone in center stage, seeming to tower almost as high as the real thing in Eger. The Library is off to one corner. The Church-Organ in another. You expect Fraggle-Rocks or some other invention of Jim Henson’s mind to jump out at behind every dripstone. AS you walk out of the cave, there's a small sign announcing the Slovakian border to your left.

On the subject of caves, I’d like to give a quick thank you to that timeless computer classic "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego" for teaching the generation of Americans who were kids between the years 1988 and 1992 the word "spelunking."

Aggtelek National Park – a beautiful place to visit. But it is possible for you to "successfully complete" Hungary without seeing it. If you’re up for the adventure, we would have benefited from this wisdom:

Recommendation:

You’ll only be hungry for more after the standard short-tour. And who wants to visit the most famous cave in Hungary without even getting dirty? Bring a student ID to get a 40% discount and take any of the torch-lit, on-your-knees tours. Giggle, giggle. By "torch" they mean "flashlight." (4 hrs – 2400 ft, 5 hrs – 3600 ft, or 7 hrs – 4200 ft) Advance reservation required. Might be worth it to ask for a guide who knows a little English. (36.48.503.000, aggtelek@tourinform.hu)

Transportation:

Take the once-a-day direct bus to/from Aggtelek via either Eger (2.5 hours) or Miskolc (1.5 hours). The longer tours start at Josvafo, which has twice-a-day bus connections with Miskolc (1.5 hours).

Accommodations:

With all the hassle of getting to the boondocks, relax and enjoy your stay! Take a longer tour and spend the night! The national park (36.48.503.005) operates a hostel, with beds for only 1800 ft a night. Right alongside, there are quaint cottages for rent, at a really good price. For 5300 ft per night, you get a charming 4-bed cottage with electricity (shared kitchen and bathroom facilities in a different building). A 6-bed cottage with kitchen and bathroom costs only 15000 ft for the night.

Big Kinga and the Lone White Hair

2006-05-11T11:04:00.000+02:00

Nagy Kinga’s her name. Every time you say that, what you’re really saying is "Big Kinga." It makes me chuckle, because it’s true. She’s an eighth grader and she’s taller than me. And she speaks better German than I do…

Last month, she was in a German-speaking Wettbewerb (competition) and took first place in the whole darn Heves county. This is due, of course, in no part to her conversational German teacher. But the school administration decided that to prepare her for the national competition in Budapest next month, she should practice as much as possible. With me.

So we meet a couple times a week, and we’ll keep meeting until her competition. We usually go outside, speaking German is so much easier out-of-doors in the spring sunshine. Yesterday I gave her a choice. "Kinga, du kannst wählen," I said, offering two choices. "Wir können über Slovenia sprechen, oder wir können ins Friseur gehen. Ich brauche eine Haareschnitt!"

I lost a lot of emotional attachment to my hair in Slovenia when Yerik noticed, and plucked as proof, a ghostly white hair from my scalp. I was mortified in one moment into the apathy of old age. Just a day after a nice Croatian girl on the train had guessed that I was 17 years old, here I was, half the way toward whizzened…

A white hair! Ahh! I’m young at heart! I’m a youthful adventurer! I reject stress and worry! My trademark is wild and crazy curls of gold falling from a always smiling face! I wear flip-flops and blue jeans with a sport coat! And we haven’t even mentioned yet that I nuzzle my head and those precious hairs every night onto a Sesame Street pillowcase!

Unbelieveable.

Thankfully, Kinga picked the later, and we marched off the barbershop. Just me and my 13-year-old star-pupil-turned-beauty-consultant-and-translator. Ildiko the hairdresser was excited to see me, it had been a while since I’d visited her. She likes experimenting on my blond curls, I guess, not the most common type of hair in these parts. Kinga and I flipped through the books. She taught me the word for curly – apparently it’s welle – but neither of us knew the German word for straight. We improvised.

Ildiko’s silent assistant washed my hair while Kinga selected the best style and pointed it out to Ildiko. She lifted her scissors and curls started to fall. Ildiko’s hair is bright orange and she kept using the word "fru-fru" when discussing my hair with Kinga, but for some reason it’s easy to trust her. Inches later, she whipped out the hair straightener and began smoothing out what was left of my bangs. When we all agreed it looked good, I handed her 5 USD and we all were happy.

Kinga and I walked to the park and sat down with ice cream cones, my treat to her for her hard work in the long process of attempting to make me beautiful. Students walked past without recognizing me, but once they did, I figure it took about ten minutes for the whole damn town to know that Tanar Jeremy got a hair cut. Ahh, life in the small town…

Loob-lee-ah-na and the Yugoslav Five

2006-05-10T17:27:00.000+02:00

(Typed while watching a Jackie Chan movie in German. Apparently the enjoyability of his cinematic artistry is able to cross language barriers. Maybe it explains any typos, too.)

Come May, only one country’s passport stamp was missing in my book before I’d tackled the Yugoslav Five, the Jeremy-given-title for the five former Yugoslavian republics. Serbia & Montenegro and (The Former Yugoslavian Republic of) Macedonia were tackled in December. Croatia and Bosnia & Heregovenia were crossed off in April. (I must admit, of course, that the Bosnian authorities did not actually stamp my passport during our brief encounter…)

Slovenia, the most northern and well-off of the "land of the Southern slavs," was the only country left to discover. Old roommate Nate Fronk had been there in the fall, and we’d only heard good things from others as well. Tucked between Italy, Austria, Hungary and the rest of the Yugoslav Five, Slovenia is a natural paradise. Entrusted with just a sliver of Adriatic coast, the Julian Alps more than make up for the minimal seashore. Still snow-capped in early May, they’re no less dramatic than the other stretches of the range further to the north and west in Austria and Switzerland.

Another short overnight stay in Zagreb gave us just enough time to uncover new side streets and a chunk of the best cheese I’ve ever tasted. Smoked. Salted. Fresh from a little German-speaking man in the market. I couldn’t stop eating it all the way to Ljubljana.

The train ride was beautiful, the track follows the Sava River in a tight canyon most of the way upstream from Zagreb to Ljubljana. While the others slept, I befriended a gaggle of Croatian veterinarian students headed to the Netherlands. I wish would could have talked more, but once again, trains were stealing my conversation partners off to different locales. (I’d run into Australian Emma of Dubrovnik fame, completely by chance, in the massive Keleti train station, but she was off to Prague instead of Heves because she hadn’t been able to get in contact with me.)

With the luck of the planless-traveller, we managed to secure the last two "prison cells" at Ljubljana’s most infamous hostel. The Celica Hostel (celica is the Croatian word for cell) is a recently-renovated prison. The middle floor features 22 prison cells, complete with caged door and one small barred window. Each room was redesigned by a team of artists and given a unique touch. Jenna and Yerik had a lofted bunk for two along with some stylized artwork. Mariah and I had a split level cell with a blueish, devilish theme.

The hostel is simply the most magnificent I’ve seen or stayed in. The rooms and bathrooms are great. The lower-level common room, bar/restaurant, and outdoor terrace are fantastic. Free internet to boot! The hostel even adds features beyond the usual. A room for quiet reflection and an Asiatic sitting room with Turkish water pipes. The cells are pricey (25 Euro a person a night), but if you plan ahead, you can get a bunk in the bigger dorm rooms upstairs for half the price.

Ljubljana must be one of the world’s smallest capital cities. Only 280,000 people live under the shadow of the Ljubljana castle. The city center is delightfully pocket-sized, easily accessible by foot. The old town is split by the Ljubljanica River. Memorable bridges straddle the clear waterway, hardly bigger than a large stream. Four bronze dragons stand sentinel on one, another is buttressed by two pedestrian bridges. Cafes flourish along the riverwalk; restaurants and shops pave the next street up from the river.

We toured the hilltop castle the second day. The view is more spectacular than the architecture. The city and her rivers wound through valleys peppered with green hills. Further in the distance, the Alps rose sharply. It started a good conversation: From what national capitals are mountains visible?

Ljubljana, Slovenia. Bern, Switzerland. Quito, Equador. Kathmandu, Nepal. Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Vienna, Austria? Oslo, Norway? Mexico City, Mexico?

Others? Submit nomination in a comment below!

From the top of the belltower, we saw men setting up a fireworks display below. As many people as we asked, no one knew for sure why there would be fireworks. We decided to use the mystery of the occasion to our advantage, and spent the afternoon concocting fireworks-related pick-up lines. For us before, during or after a fireworks display. Some of the favorites:

I hear there will be fireworks above Ljubljana tonight and between us!

Let’s make sure that these fireworks aren’t the last delightful explosion tonight!

These Slovenian fireworks are nice, but interested in seeing a real American rocket?

The best nights begin and end with fireworks…

If you liked that showing, I’m willing to arrange a second round of fireworks just for you.

…Or submit your suggestions in a comment!!

Unfortunately, none of these lines were actually enacted, tested against the intricacies of the Slovenian mindset. We simply sat in an outdoor pizza café next to the river to watch the fireworks. A dixieland jazz band decided it was a good spot, so they set up their five-piece band right next to us. Fireworks, pizza and dixie proved to be quite the combo on a beautiful spring night. (Leading, as-of-yet unconfirmed report is that the following day was the start of Euro Week or something in the EU…)

A short bus is the easiest way to get to Lake Bled, high in the mountains, one of the prettiest sights tourists ever get to. Either I'm a bit spoiled when it comes to mountains, or the dreary rain got to me, but it's still a magical sight to see.

Adios Amigos

2006-05-06T11:30:00.000+02:00

First the school-leavers sang, then they left school.

Their graduation ceremony – ballagas in this tongue – was on a Saturday. A beautiful blue sky graced the outdoor ceremony, smack-dab in front of the school. There was enough wind to ruffle skirts and whip the dozen symbolic balloons away in the same hurry many of the kids feel about leaving Heves for any, and all, directions.

The underclassmen laced every hallway of the entire school with pine boughs and lilac, all the flora coming from the expansive school grounds. It’s quite beautiful on our little campus this time of year, even with the rusty tractors and uninspired statues cluttering the property.

The ceremony was long and in a language I don’t speak. There were no gowns. There was no ceremonial tossing of caps to mark the end. I clapped when others clapped. I smiled at their smiles, their tears, their hugs. I smiled at the flowers in their arms, set against anything but gray. The flowers of Hungary…

The most bittersweet moment was a simple glance in the graduation announcement. There was Jeremy Jewett, along with a parade of Hungarian names. It was the first time I’ve seen my last name used by the school.

But there, in the middles of the "Apples (Alma)" and "Bigs (Nagy)" and "Goulashes (Gulyas)" and "Smiths (Kovacs)," were four other sets of given names first, family names second.

Brian Ravenel.
Christine Osl.
Doris Norton.
Julian Swan.

Four years of predecessors, four foreign missionaries preaching the gospel of conversation. Still shining down on these Hungarian pupils in memory.

For five more years, until little TGIF Kristian and Smarty-Pants Eniko have grown from rambunctious seventh-graders to school-leavers on the brink of life, my name will be in the little graduation announcement at Heves High, smiling at new graduates.

That makes me happy.

Zooming through Bosnia, Options B and C

2006-05-05T15:04:00.000+02:00

OPTION B: COMMEMORATIVE HAIKU-LIKE RETELLING

Trueman, a man i've worked for on a few rather glorious occasions, sent me an e-mail a while back. He closed with "Good to hear from you, stay safe and out of jail."

uhh, on a related note, Trueman... This story was my reply:

i recently went to Bosnia.
"Went to" is a little strong of a verb, though.
20 km of Bosnia separate one half of croatia from the other.

Croatia has coasts, mountains and history.
Croatia is a beautiful tourist destination.
Bosnia is not.

And in bosnia, a little man with a red stop sign jumped in front of my rental car.
i pulled over, figuring it was some sort of border control.
it wasn't.

it wasn't the border control.
it was the bosnian police.
shit.

i was going 74 kmph in a 40 kmph zone.
endangering the lives of poor little bosnia children.
they must walk on the side of the road, after all, because of landmines.

he didn't speak a lick of English, German, French, Hindi or Hungarian.
i don't speak a lick of Bosnian.
we figured that out right away.

he laughed when he looked at my license.
then he told me to get out of the god damn car.
i was not laughing: bosnian police and land mines.

I looked at my friends, three of them in shock.
"Well, I guess I'll talk to you guys later..."
Then I walked to his squad car.

on a piece of paper, he wrote 40. he circled it.
then he wrote 74 and crossed it off repeatedly.
i got the point.

then he wrote 26 on the paper.
followed by the international euro sign.
here was my penalty.

i began to haggle him down in price.
that process looked like me standing there.
motionless. except for scratching my head.

his partner spoke a little german.
but he was busy with another car.
so we waited. and waited.

finally he reached for his pen again.
he crossed of the 26 and wrote 16.
then he said "minimum."

i winked back at my car of friends.
i had successfully negotiated my way to a lower price.
in Bosnian.

i decided to press my luck.
i insisted on waiting longer.
waiting for the german translator.

we waited forever.
it probably seems longer than it was.
because i was in bosnia.

then, like a heavenly angel, i heard a voice.
it was the sound of the police radio.
in Bosnian.

the two police officers snapped to attention.
they handed me my Wisconsin drivers license.
and hopped in the squad car.

he waved me to drive on.
he waved goodbye.
i stood shaking my head, still trembling.

i drove slowly for the remaining kilometers in Bosnia...

OPTION C. TO THE POINT

I was driving too fast in Bosnia. I was pulled over. I was scared. The Bosnian police officer wanted to give me a fine. But then he had to go save the day at an emergency. So I was free. The end.

Trail Review: Lillafured - Szilvasvarad

2006-05-04T14:29:00.000+02:00

Elli’s the young American gal who lives a couple towns over, spending the year here in Hungary at a culinary trade school. I met her on Thanksgiving, and to this day I still call her Thanksgiving Elli in most references.

I didn’t really think that she would be game for an adventure when I sent her a text message, proposing the idea of a backpacking trip. After all, this is a gal who’s turned me down before. (Transcript of actual phone conversation.)

Jeremy: Hi Elli, it’s Jeremy. I’m leaving Nyiregyhaza in an hour or so. Interested in getting some ice cream before I go?

Elli: No. I have to work in the garden.

Jeremy: Okay, then, I have a better idea. How about I buy some ice cream, bring it over, and then help you with the garden work?

Elli: No.

Jeremy: Okay, bye.

But for some reason, she was feeling inclined for a weekend of fun – what she called her first unplanned adventure ever – and promptly got her host mom’s permission.

We hit the trailhead in Lillafured, a little resort town most famous for its palace hotel. Just a short narrow-guage train ride up the foothills from Miskolc, Lillafured is like the personal hill-station getaway for Hungary’s second-largest city. Beautiful green hillsides, charming lakes and waterfalls and even some white-faced cliffs shooting upwards.

We set out for the trailhead with our new map of the Bukk National Park, a wooded preserve of rolling hills laced with hiking paths and old logging roads. Trail blazes, though, proved hard to find and we spend hours wandering up and down little towns until we found the red squares painted on trees.

It was Elli’s Hungarian that earned us the trailhead, and I must say that I’m impressed with her prowess with the difficult language. She came at the same time as I did last fall and has embraced the challenge of submersion into the language. I’m proud that she maximized that part of the experience way more than us teachers.

Our job is to demand that kids speak the languages of the world other than Hungarian, it’s best if we don’t let our kids communicate in Hungarian. Her role, on the other hand, is to attend Hungarian language cooking classes, work in a kitchen with Hungarian coworkers, and come home every night to a wonderful host mother.

The result is that she’s earned a passable proficiency with the language. She could talk to all of the people we met on the trail. She can hear their story and make them laugh. She’s taken to liking it so much that she’ll enter Indiana University’s Hungarian-language program next fall, sight-unseen. In four days, she even taught me more Hungarian than I usually learn in a month. I’m a bit disheartened at my own effort when I look at her progress and successes…

She’d never been backpacking before and claimed to have a vague dislike for hiking itself. I think the very first hill, too, caught her off guard. I bet she was beginning to question her judgement in following me into the woods. But by the time we found our first campsite 5 km down the trail, she was getting into the groove of hiking, the two slips into the muddy trail not-withstanding. Spaghetti was good, but nighttime temperature was low. And it rained…

The second day, the terrain was speckled with caves, waterfalls and great woodlands, but without the soaring views of the Matra blue bar trail. We spent time on almost ten different sections of trail, the straightest line across the web of trails toward Szentlelek (10 km). We meant to stop at the private campground there for just a quick beer, but ended up staying a bit longer…

A man who would introduce himself as Jozsef waved at us as we took our packs off next to the mountain hut. He surprised us with English, then an invitation to join a goulash fest. He and his wife, along with another middle-age couple, had bussed to the mountaintop (fine, hilltop…) campsite for a long afternoon of bubbling goulash to perfection. He proved to be a very friendly man, chatting away most of the evening.

My favorite snippits of conversation:

(Overlooking a view that stretched for maybe a hundred kilometers) "Did you know Slovakia is Hungary? Have you heard about Trianon?"

"Jeremy, you have an Irish accent. Yes, it is an Irish accent. I am positive."

"Elli, you are Polish? Polish girls are the best lovers in the world! (His wife looks on in concern.) Jo bula! Mwa!"

So we drank their wine, ate their goulash and joked in Hungarian. We never ate our instant potatoes, instead found ourselves in the unique backpacking situation of packing more food – all the extras they gave us! Camping place was about six dollars a person, complete with running water and complimentary view.

As Monday morning broke, the temperature was cold and skies dreary. And unfortunately, we still had half our hike – 15 more kilometers – to go. After a drizzly 5 km, we stopped for a warm lunch at Bankut, a ski-resort at a different time of year. Grey skies and raindrops escorted us the remaining 10 km after lunch, a rather scenic walk down the valleys to

Getting lost, being cold, seeing neat things, noticing litter, putting up with uncomfortabilities, hearing about Trianon, and drinking wine while eating goulash on a mountain top…doesn’t get more Hungarian than that!

Next trip: Green Club backpacking trip! With the kiddie corps!!

Full Circle: Goodbye to the School-Leavers

2006-05-04T14:07:00.000+02:00

Wednesday, May 3rd
22:45

Hungary invented a grand cure for senioritis, the dreaded curse of apathy that haunts all those about to leave school behind. They ship ‘em out a month early, under the rouge of "school-leaving exams."

All year they’ve been preparing, only taking break for December’s Szalagavato shin-dig. Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday their high school career hangs in the balance. For the rest of us it means no school. But this week, it means my very last classes with 12D, 12B, and 12A.

12D is the police class. I’m not sure how bright the future of Hungary’s finest is. I’ll miss just a couple of them, those that can speak English like Adam and Tamas. I won’t miss those like Lajos who don’t favor the English language or things like effort. I confiscated a gun from him in November. Then I found out it was okay for him to have it because he’s a police student.

(I shouldn’t write such mean thoughts…they all just showed up at my window to serenade me and say thanks. Full circle.)

I wrote a lot about 12B. Attempts at recycling and a girl named Georgia. They’re good kids, some good English speakers throw in the mix, too. And two sets of mis-matched eyes, my new favorite phenomenom.

For class today, I let them look at my photo album and yearbook, while those who wanted to practice for the oral exam spoke with me. In between two "individual short term interviews," I slipped Georgia a note. I congratulated her, wished her good luck, and told her about a story I once wrote. About her. I told her where she could find it online, the school doesn’t like it when I print things.

After my last afternoon class, I walked to the teachers office. I found a meeting in progress. I don’t ever attend them, so I snuck in to get some work and then found a bench in the sun outside. I was so consumed when Georgia sat next to me.

"Thank you for the note. I read what you wrote," she said. She speaks hesitantly, carefully. I’m sure she wasn’t aware of the rhyme.

I closed my work and smiled at her. "Congratulations on finishing high school, Georgia. You are a clever girl and a nice person. I am proud of you."

She nodded. "It was interesting to read from a different…" she trailed off as she didn’t know the word.

"Perspective. I have a different perspective. My perspective is different because I am an outsider," I said, explaining the word, reiterating it in an attempt to pound the word in.

"Yes, a different perspective," she agreed. "I cried when I read it."

"I cried when I wrote it," I admitted. Then I held her hand in an aborted handshake. We thanked each other and she walked away. Full circle.

And 12A is Gitta’s class. Super Gitta. I haven’t written the name Gitta in a long time. I’d be nice to say that we simply lost touch after the holidays, but it was something more than that. We both became disenchanted with each other, I suppose. We stopped having private lessons, our hour-long weekly chats on life in general. She stopped participating in class, I stopped including her. Then she stopped coming all together.

If she weren’t a wonderful person with feelings of her own, Gitta might just be a symbol of my emotional failings this year. I’ve developed the habit of calling happiness fiction and accusing those who bring happiness to be simply figments of my imagination. Aaryn was real. Gitta is real.

This year, I must admit that I have reverted to a horrifically self-centered person, left only to my own imagination and thoughts, my words and my interpretation of other’s words. My world revolves around the living of my stories and the telling of my stories. The rest of the world exists as a supporting actor. I’m not so sure that’s healthy.

With only one delicate exception at the moment, every personal relationship I broach crumbles. I have too many feelings, or not enough, but never just the right amount. I’m easily convinced that people are amazing. I seem to have gifts that convince others into a likewise deduction. But then it all falls apart. I shake my head and blame myself. So it goes.

But Gitta isn’t a symbol. She’s a girl. A woman, she’d demand that I write. She’s the best English student at Eotvos Jozsef Kozepiskola. She’s a caring and special person.

And she’s my friend. For a long time, she was the first person, and for a long time the only person, who was interested in me. Who asked me questions. Who inspired a Hungarian happiness here in Heves. I probably would have asked to be transferred somewhere across Hungary without her.

She’s leaving in one week, and I’m leaving in five, so we called a truce by text message. I owed her the scarf and gloves that she lent me in December, after all, and she said she had something for me. She came to class and we all played Family Feud.

I had her sign my yearbook afterwards, a foreign concept here. After she closed it, I handed back the borrowed winterwear in a bag. I felt guilty. Just like I had used the gloves and scarf to keep my hands and neck warm during the cold Hungarian winter, I had used Gitta to keep my heart and soul warm in the cold Hungarian loneliness when i first got here.

She handed me a long cardboard tube. It turns out that a Hungarian movie poster for "Wedding Crashers" will be one of the prize souveniors I will take home with me. We had gone to see it together in December. I had to buy four tickets because we were the only people in the theatre.

I peeked into the yearbook after I said goodbye and walked out of their classroom for the last time. I know Gitta’s handwriting. "Your happy smile warms the world." I smiled at the reminder of my charge. Full circle.

And tonight, they serenade. All the seniors. They walked around town, as a class, singing outside of the houses of their teachers. 12B came first. Erika and Ildiko, Georgia and Norbi, and the rest. They sang. I popped two bottles of champagne in their honor. I forgot to suck the first one and half of it’s on my floor now. I played a Hungarian song on my CD player for them. Loosely translated, the chorus is "right here, right now, I’m at home."

12D made me go outside, an hour later, in flip-flops. Lajos thanked me and said it was a good year. Even the kids I don’t teach talk to me in German. I felt bad that I had given all my champagne to the first group, so I started handing out small American flags. They were a hit.

And now we wait for 12A. Erika, my neighbor, and I. They will come late, Erika is their form teacher and their last stop. She’s been with them for 6 years. I’m simply a visitor. Saturday they’ll walk across a graduation stage, on to the better and brighter things that we all know await them. It’s hard to be so certain, though, when you’re in their shoes.

I’m not sure if Gitta will be among the carolers. She lives in a different village. But if she does, a bottle of wine will be waiting for her. She gave it to me in November, destined for a dinner and conversation that simply never happened. Not because of any faults on her part, just the craziness of my mind.

Until then, we wait. For everything to come full circle.

(Either 12A came really late, after I had fallen asleep with Poisonwood Bible open across my chest, or they didn't come at all...)

Just Walking Down the Street

2006-04-28T17:43:00.000+02:00

I ran into Zsofi today. She was my very first friend in Heves. From the pencil shop. We ate ice cream and I asked her questions. I clung to her English. I haven't seen her since.

It was good to see her. It was almost if Heves came full circle in that one moment. One American boy. Eight months in and out of a Hungarian village. I greeted her in Hungarian. I answered some of her questions in Hungarian.

She said I looked good, I looked happy. She was proud of the things I had learned. The words and the more important things, too. She was happy I'd made friends.

It was almost as if Heves had come, in human form, to congratulate me. To say nice work, job well done, you have our permission to return home now.

Spring is wonderful here. Really, really good. After this weekend, just five more remain for me in Hungary. Wow. I try to make weekend plans, and all the last minutes hopes clog together. This weekend, though, it'll be backpacking with Thanksgiving Elli. Her first backpacking trip. Mine, too... At least in the Bukk National Park.

After finding so little time or motivation to write of late, I have so much to say. Just as the librarian is booting me it.

So it goes...

Students Rule

2006-04-24T14:03:00.000+02:00

Students Rule
April 19, 20, 21

Diaknapok – "Student Days" – is a bit of a bribe. If the children are willing to come back to school after Easter, a bit early than any of us would really like, then the school administration is willing to give them full control of the school.

And, really, it worked so well that it should happen more often…

The centerpiece of the three-day-festival was an election. Not for president or student council, per se, but for one class to be able to proclaim themselves the best class in the whole darn school. Three classes 10A, 10B, and 11B threw their hats into the ring for the prize…the key to the school.

Wednesday and Thursday, the three classes had all day to win the votes of their schoolmates with random acts of kindness and campaigning. After seeing the country in full gear over April’s parliamentary election, it wasn’t easy to miss the similarity between adult and juvenile campaign tactics. Just like the whole country, little Heves High was plastered with stickers, posters and even spray paint, all enthusiastically endorsed by the school staff.

10A is a feisty group of kids. When subbing for another teacher, I sat through one of their planning sessions. It most closely resembled World War 3 in scope, scale and spirit. I sat in a corner, fearing the loss of life or limb – perhaps even my own. I rang my little orange bell every time more than one person spoke. I said, in English, "One at a time, please."

But by gametime, 10A had solidified their act. They sponsored amateur salsa dances in the hall, a short visit by a professional singer and the traditional Hungarian "roasting of chunks of fat above a fire like a s’more, then the delicate dripping of said material onto a piece of bread." I brought one of my two precious bags of marshmallows, unheard of here in Hungary and equally unobtainable. I thought it would be a good way to form a peace treaty with a class that doesn’t usually like me. Instead, everyone said the marshmallows sucked and lacked flavor. So it goes.

But I must give them credit for the highlight of their campaign, and chance to showcase their main man: Attila. On Wednesday, the first day back from break, they assembled a giant pyramid of boxes on the front terrace of the school. It was taller than a man and wider than a car. Everyone was left to wonder until Thursday.

At midday, just as the lunch bell rang, the 10A kids started banging on a large gong outside, drawing everyone’s attention to the courtyard. There, a city firefighter had covertly dumped gasoline on the boxes and had lit the backside. Schoolchildren jaws hit the ground as the flames leapt above the boxes, almost licking at the school.

From the front gate, a firetruck came blazing in. Two masked firefighters leapt out with the fire hose, one was shorter than the other. He aimed at the disintegrating pyramid and doused the fire, drawing heroic cheers. When the fire was out, he lifted the mask. It was Attila. He smiled, bowed, and shouted "Vote for 10A!" in thee crazy language that they understand around here.

11B’s campaign tactics were mild in comparison. They simply offered room service for three days, darting in and out of classrooms to offer food and drink. Another day, they held a karaoke contest and an arm-wrestling tournament. They held beauty pageants and dancing contests in the gym. I was roped into both. I won the beauty contest, but not the dance-off. So it goes.

The winning class, though, were the kids of 10B. Their secret weapon? As simple as turning the school attic into the hottest spot in Heves for three days. A working bar, even if it was dry, and a subdued atmosphere carved out of a bland storage space. Snacks and deejay-spun music were served up during each 10 minute break between lessons. Even after school, kids would linger in the "padlacs" café, and 10B would cater to their every move. I’m not gonna lie, I did conduct a few classes in the attic…

Friday was the capstone. No classes all day, and we didn’t have to show up until 8:45, so I moseyed (?) to school. Halfway there, I heard a strange pulsating. Vaguely rhythmic. As I got closer, I made out the sound. A marching band.

Like a Hungarian kid is drawn to the thump of disco music, I was pulled toward the sound of the band. As I rounded the corner, I saw an amazing sight.

A parade in little Heves.

Five majorettes. A ten-piece marching band. And all my 10A, 10B and 11B students.

I’m not modest. I walked to the middle of the pack like I belonged there. Struck up a conversation in German with Klaudia next to me, and began to wave.

Heves turned out for the parade, even without floats or candy. Moms and kids in strollers, old people walking around the town, everyone stopped to smile and wave. The closed the streets down for us, police officers safeguarding our slow crawl down the main street. There was a giant farm thresher behind us. I’m glad he saw the humor in the situation, otherwise we all could have been harvested.

Needless to say, I was downright giddy walking in the middle of an Eastern European parade. I nearly piddled my pants in excitement, but we made it to the school without incident.

And Friday evening, the Diakbal, a dinner and dance for kids interested in shelling out a couple hundred forints for a nice evening. All week Kriszti had been insisting, in German, that I dance with her and the other teachers on Friday. I’d do any dance that Kriszti wanted me to, and when I heard it was the Twist, I agreed doubly fast. The afternoon before, I’d ripped her up from her seat in the crowd to be my partner when the children demanded that I enter the dance competition. I thought we were a good couple. The judges didn’t agree.

I didn’t even balk when she handed me a green skirt, polka dotted with all the colors of the rainbow. I had just enough cross-dressing over the course of six summers of camp for this to make sense, anything to make the kiddies laugh.

We snuck into the kitchen before the show, warming our bellies with liquor safely out of sight of the kids. In Hungary, I assure you this is normal. We heard the Twist in the main room, and dashed on stage.

Safe to say, the kids roared when they saw me among the ten skirted ladies on stage. The ladies had given me a quick blush job, I’d pulled my not-recently-cut hair back with a rubber-band-headband, and Kriszti had lent me a red elastic top. My flip-flops broke at the first twist of the twist, and I kicked them off barefoot. When we took to the audience to find a dance partner, I asked Herr Direktor Kerek Laszlo. He seemed legitimately taken aback. It was a convincing performance, me in a skirt.

Quite the festival, student days, in a Hungarian high school. As I stood on a balcony overlooking one of the events between classes, I shook my head and started to think to myself. I’m rather embarrassed to admit the statement that actually popped into my head.

"Wow, this is like a foreign country or something…"

Perhaps, folks, I’ve been here in Hungary for too long.

Zooming through Bosnia

2006-04-24T13:25:00.000+02:00

Zooming through Bosnia - Stepping Foot in Herzogovenia

Sometimes I get feedback on my stories. A lot of times, people like my stories. But sometimes people are like "uhh, you’re so dramatic!" Or "that was the longest story in the world."

Well folks, I've got a nice little story to tell today. About a time I stepped foot in Herzogovenia... So I thought I’d offer this story in three levels, you can choose the style of your liking.

A, A little over the top. Admittedly.

B, Haiku-commemorative edition originally offered to a man named Trueman.

C, To the point.

_______________________________________________________

A. A Musical Tribute to Bosnia: Stepping Foot in Bosnia!

(This is a musical. It is an accurate re-telling of actual events that happened to actual people. The cast is five characters, including four friends driving through Bosnia.)

Jeremy – a bumbling college professor who lectures in the form of Elvis songs

Janos – a revolving-assortment of 1990s Boy Bands

Kat – Hip-swaying Latin-sensation Shakira

Liz – Ageless diva Madonna

And a Bosnian police-officer in blind-sighted pursuit of vengeful justice along the lines of Hugo’s literary figure Javert from Les Miserables.

Scene 1 opens as a black rental car slows in anticipation of the border crossing.

Jeremy: Well folks, looks like we’re coming up to the Croatian-Bosnia border. Liz, want to hear a quote from my book? Maybe about the history of the break-up of Yugoslavia?

Liz: TIME GOES BY (So Slowly When Jeremy Talks)

Time goes by so slowly

Every little thing that Jeremy says or does

he's hung up / he's hung up on guidebooks

Listening to his facts / Baby night and day

I'm fed up / I'm tired of listening to data

Time goes by so slowly for those who have to listen / No time to get away

Those who buy ear plugs seem to have all the fun

I lost mine / I don't know what to do

Kat and Janos: (In choral support) Time goes by. So slowly. Time goes by. So slowly.

Jeremy brushes his companions off with a wave. Cue the music.

Jeremy: (Yugo's) ALL SHOOK UP

Ah well, I bless my speedo / What's wrong with Tito?
His country's fallin' apart / like the wheels off a cart

and that's just the start

Yugo's all shook up!
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

Confederation was shaky and Serbia's weak
Slovenia decided it can stand on its own two feet
Croatia said they're next, wouldn't you know?

That's just the first blow

Yugo's all shook up!
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

Mace'donia said Bye! The UN said Hi!
Then little Kosovo 'cided to give it a try
But Slobodan said he loved it best
Wouldn't let it go if it cost him his death!

He grabbed for his pistol what a chill we got
Europe saw problems like a volcano that's hot
And that's when NATO involved.

with many bombs.

Yugo's all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

Redraw the maps, kids...all shook up!

Jeremy: Looks like we were waved through the border, guys! Let’s put the passports away and see what Bosnia has to offer.

All: (Pointing out the car window.) Ohh! Ahh!

Janos stands in the small car, as the others fade to the background. He sweeps his arms in wide sweeps as he sings.

Janos: I DO (Cherish Bosnia)

All I am, all I'll be / Every country in this world

All that they'll ever need / Is in Bosnia

Shining with wealth / Full of beauty and smiling people

All their passion unfolding / to build a glorious place

And a thousand wonders / Seduce me 'cause I

I do...cherish Bosnia.

For the rest of my life / I won't see a better place

I will love you forever

From the depths of my soul / It's beyond my control

I've waited so long to say this to you

If you're asking do I love you, Bosnia...

I do

Jeremy: Uhh, friends, there’s a policeman with a stop sign in the middle of the road. What should I do?

Kat: WHENEVER, WHEREVER (You See a Red Stop Sign, You Must Pull Over.)

Whenever, wherever!

You see a red stop sign, you must pull over!

The cops'll be there and you'll have fear, but that's the deal my dear!

They're angry, you're a pee-wee, You'll have to pay a large fee

Or you can speed away from here, that's the deal my dear

Jeremy pulls the car over. The Bosnian police officer approaches.

Policeman:

JavertValjean, επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ ",Θα φορέσετε μια διαφορετική αλυσίδα.ValjeanΠροτού να πείτε μια άλλη λέξη, JavertΠροτού να με αλυσοδέσετε επάνω όπως έναν σκλάβο πάλιΑκούστε με! Υπάρχει κάτι που πρέπει να κάνω.Αυτή η γυναίκα φεύγει πίσω από ένα υφιστάμενο παιδί.Δεν υπάρχει κανένας αλλά εγώ που μπορούν να παρεμβουν,Στο όνομα του ελέους, τρεις ημέρες είναι όλη η ανάγκη ι.Κατόπιν θα επιστρέψω, δεσμεύω τη λέξη μου.Κατόπιν θα επιστρέψω...

Jeremy: Uhh, I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t understand you. No, nem, nicht, nahi, non, nyet Bosnian. Do you speak English? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Beszel Magyarul? Aapko Hindi aati hai? Parlevous Francias? Hablos Espanol?

Police officer: I most certainly speak none of those languages, but for the sake of the musical, allow me to break out into English:

Police Officer: THE CONFRONTATION

Jer'my...at last...we see each other plain. `M'sieur le Tourist', You'll wear a different chain.

Jeremy: Before you say another word, Mister Bosnian Police Officer! Before you chain me up like a slave in a Bosnia jail, listen to me! There is an excuse for this. I'm a foreigner in a foreign land. I can't understand the signs, I don't know how fast to drive.

Police Officer: You must think me mad!I've hunted you from down the road. You were going 74 kilometers per hour in a 40 zone! A man like you can never change. A man... such as you...The driver of JCZ-949...

Jeremy: I am warning you, police officer, I can't understand a word you speak!

Police Officer: You know nothing of Bosnia! We're a stronger country by far. 26 Euros is the price you have to pay, there is power in me yet. My race is not yet run!

[Jeremy breaks a chair and threatens the police officer with the broken piece. Turns to Fantine, er, the friends in the car...]

Jeremy: And this I swear to you, my friends.

Police Officer: There is no place for you to hide in Bosnia.

Jeremy: I will not pay a 26 Euro Bosnia speeding ticket.

Police Officer: Fine, mimum 16 Euro?

Jeremy: And I will negotiate the price.

Jeremy & Police Officer: I swear to you, I will be in Bosnia!

[They fight, Javert is knocked out. Valjean escapes.]

Curtains close on Scene 1. Wild Applause.

Scene 2 opens with four friends sitting in the car, a Bosnian police officer holding a small red stop sign standing outside the driver's window.

Janos: Jeremy! Wake up, dude! Quit dreaming! The officer looks pissed!

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Liz: Keep it together. Uhh, I think he wants your registration papers.

Jeremy hands over the rental papers with a smile. A forced smile.

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Kat: Maybe your drivers' license? Give him that.

Jeremy slips his Wisconsin drivers' license out of his wallet and hands it to be police officer. After one glance, he starts laughing through his four-toothed mouth. Everyone except Jeremy laughs and is quite relieved. The police officer makes another unintelligible comment, then waves his hand outward, motioning the driver to join him outside.

Jeremy: Well, uhh, I guess I'll talk to you guys later. (Begins to sing softly)

BUT I CAN'T HELP IT (I'm Under Direct Police Command)

Wise men say / only fools get out of the car on Bosnian land

But I can’t help it / i'm under direct police command

Shall I disobey / I don't want to pay their fines

And I can’t help / fearing of la-and-mines.

Like the Nerena / flows surely to the Adriatic Sea

Darling so it goes / I'll spend the night in a jailcell 103

I must say goodbye / so take my hand

For I can’t help it / I'm under direct police command...

Police officer manhandles Jeremy to his squad car. There, he gets out a little notebook like a gumshoe reporter. On it, he writes the number 40. He circles it.

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Jeremy: Okay. 40.

Then he writes 74, frowns and crosses it off.

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Jeremy: I see. 40 good. 74 bad. Sorry.

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "?

Jeremy: 40 good. 74 bad.

The officer scribbled a third number. 26. Behind it he scribed the internationally recognized euro symbol. He wanted 26 euros. 35 USD. 7000 HUF. 200 HRK. Who knows how many Bosnian rubbles or crowns or goats, whatever they use.

Officer: BARS

There, out in the darkness, Jeremy is running

Fallen from grace, Fallen from grace

God be my witness I never shall yield

Till he pays a big fee For driving to speedily

He knows his way from the map Mine is the way of the speed trap

And those who follow the laws of this country will have no run-ins with me

And he drives As Michael Schumacher drives

The flame The sword!

Bars!! In Bosnian prison cells

Scarce to be broken Filling the darkness

With order and light He will have sentinels

Silent and sure Keeping watch in the night Keeping watch in the night

And if he drives as Schumacher drives he falls in flame!

And so it has been and so it is written In the country next to to paradise

That those who drive way to fast Must pay 26 Euros!

Lord let me find him That I may see him Safe behind bars

I will never rest Till then This I swear This I swear by Bosnian jail-cell bars!

The police car radio crackles to life as Jeremy and the police officer are "negotiating." The police officer races to the car in alarm, waving his partner near.

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Jeremy: Umm, why are you handing my license and registration papers back to me?

Officer: επιτέλους,Βλέπουμε ο ένας τον άλλον σαφής` δήμαρχος LE του μ "!

Jeremy: Wait, sir, why are you getting in the car? Why are you waving goodbye?

As the police car drives away, Shakira, Madonna and the new Wyclef Jean leap out of the car, bursting into the climatic grand finale of this 25-minute long musical opera.

PIGS DON'T LIE (Shakira, And Janos as Wyclef)

Janos: Ladies riding in the back seat tonight No fighting, no fighting

We got the refugees up in here No fighting, no fighting

Shakira, Shakira I never really knew that she could dance like this

She makes a man wants to speak Spanish Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa

Shakira, Shakira

Kat: Oh baby when you wave us on like that

You make a woman go madSo be wise and keep on Reading the signs of my body

And I'm on tonight You know the pigs don't lie And I'm starting to feel it's right

He's waving us on, no more tension Don't you see baby, this is perfection

Janos: Hey Girl, I can see his car is moving And it's driving down the road

And I didn't have the slightest idea Until I saw him get in and go

That we would make it through Bosnia alive

Nobody cannot ignore the way we are free to go, girl

And everything so unexpected - the way you right and left it

So you can keep on taking it I never really knew that Jeremy could negotiate like this

He makes a man want to speak Bosnian

Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa Shakira, Shakira

Liz: (Madonna impressating Shakira) Oh baby when you talk like that

You make a woman go mad

(Gets a dreamy look in her eyes, like "Shakira" around any accented boy)

So be wise and keep on Reading the signs of my body And I'm on tonight

You know my hips don't lie And I am starting to feel you boy

Come on lets go, real slow Don't you see baby asi es perfecto

Oh I know I am on tonight my hips don't lie

And I am starting to feel it's right All the attraction, the tension

Don't you see baby, this is perfection

Jeremy, Janos and Liz in Chorus, as we all break into my favorite song at the moment:

Shakira, Shakir

Oh boy, I can see your body moving

Half animal, half man I don't, don't really know what I'm doing

But you seem to have a plan My will and self restraint

Have come to fail now, fail now

See, I am doing what I can, but I can't so you know

That's a bit too hard to explain

Baila en la calle de noche Baila en la calle de día Baila en la calle de noche Baila en la calle de día

I never really knew that she could dance like this

She makes a man want to speak Spanish

Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa Shakira, Shakira

Oh baby when you talk like that You know you got me hypnotized

So be wise and keep on Reading the signs of my body

Senorita, feel the conga, let me see you move like you come from Colombia

Mira en Barranquilla se baila así, say it!

Mira en Barranquilla se baila así

Yeah She's so sexy every man's fantasy a refugee like me back with the Fugees from a 3rd world countryI go back like when 'pac carried crates for Humpty Humpty I need a whole club dizzy Why the CIA wanna watch us? Colombians and Haitians I ain't guilty, it's a musical transaction No more do we snatch ropes Refugees run the seas 'cause we own our own boats

I'm on tonight, my hips don't lie

And I'm starting to feel you boy

Come on let's go, real slow Baby, like this is perfecto

Oh, you know I am on tonight and my hips don't lie

And I am starting to feel it's right

The attraction, the tension

Baby, like this is perfection

In Bosnia In Bosnia

The car drives down the road, all four friends singing "Feel the Love Generation" as the curtains fall. And so it came to pass, that we made it through Bosnia...

Hooked on Croatia

2006-04-22T11:01:00.000+02:00

A Giant Piece of "Art" along the Split Seaside Promenade Shows that it's Not Hard to Get Hooked on One of the Most Beautiful Countries in the World!

And Kat, Too, Was Nearly Swept Away with the Natural Beauty of Falling Water at Plitvice Lakes National Park in Central Croatia.

All 'Bout Croatia

2006-04-19T16:37:00.000+02:00

The ABCs of a Spring Break in Croatia

The stories of a spring break well-spent in the northern-half of the former Yugoslavia will be told alphabetically, chunked into a little tale or nugget of wisdom beginning with the letters A through Z. The grand finale, I promise you, will be good.

Adriatic Sea, The

I was a bit wimpy back in December. Kat and Harpswell both braved an icy Aegean Sea to be able to say, forevermore, that they swam on Christmas Eve Day. This time around, I wasn’t about to let anything keep me from the water!

The Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic is renowned as one of the most magnificent seashores of the world, ripe with islands, coves, and some of the bluest of blue waters. On our very last day in Croatia, driving back from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, Janos pulled the car over at a bend in the road that suited his taste. Tiptoeing through overgrown brush and some nagging doubts, we managed to find ourselves a deserted pebble beach and called it our own.

The water was cold, the swimming was admittedly short. But the sun felt good. And yes, I was naked. I figure that’s the way you do it in Europe…

Bosnia

Croatia came out of the disintegration a winner, to say the least, holding dominion over a huge tract of amazing coast. The country stretches far down the Adriatic, oftentimes only a couple dozen kilometers wide, before the start of the Bosnia and Herzegovina border. But thanks to a little quirk of geopolitics, Croatia doesn’t have the entirety of the coast. Bosnia was given 20 km of seashore, just enough for one town and one navy base, splitting Croatia into two parts. To drive between the two unequal halves of Croatia, you must drive through Bosnia. There’s a chance that Bosnia will be discussed again in these chronicles…

Car Talk

I’d never driven in Europe before, and I was excited to give it a whirl. Roundabouts, autobahns, liberal passing policies – I reckoned these parts are a driver’s paradise! We rented a car in Budapest without too much trouble. Unfortunately, the original quote, advise from Harpswell, blossomed from 25 USD a day to 70 Euros a day by the time we finally had a car.

We picked up our big, long black beauty in Budapest, and Janos navigated through the city like a native. Because the ladies considered themselves inadequately trained in the art of stick-shift driving, all 2000 km behind the wheel were up to us boys. Kat had made a point to ask if the car had a CD player, but unfortunately they gave us the wrong answer. None of us brought CDs, even though it turned out we had a beautiful little CD player, so we were stuck with Balkan radio waves for all our musical needs. (Turns out that left us a little unsatisfied, it wasn’t quite "finom (delicious) for the ears.")

As for the actual driving? Stressful as shit!! I haven’t driven for 8 months, and it was a rough return. It’s hard to know the rules and expectations in a foreign country, where you know nothing other than numbers. And European drivers are jackasses; tailgating and passing on blind turns are some of their favored hobbies. There’s a lot to look at, pay attention to, and learn – I wasn’t comfortable going as fast as the traffic demanded. Parking was always a headache and tolls were plentiful. (Although the system was better than, say, Illinois…) The exception to stress was the Croatia autobahn system. Brand new, uncrowded, efficient, just a delight. Better, even, than Hungary.

But travelling by car was really fast and very comfortable, and it let us be far more mobile than if we had gone by plane, train or bus. Plus, we didn’t have to plan beforehand, instead we could just get in the car and drive. After six days, though, it was a tremendous relief to hand her back to the rental company, without even the slightest scratch. There’s a chance that driving in the Balkans will be mentioned in the capstone…

Default

Janos and Liz are dating, or something along those occasionally-hand-holding lines, so Kat and I found ourselves as a "default" pairing. We had a lot of fun on our day long walks together, exploring the nooks and crannies of Croatia. We usually didn’t run out of things to talk about, even if we tend to recycle the same topic over and over. And we always know when we’ve had enough of each other.

Back in Greece, we perfected our traveling routine. I talked to everyone, find out if any of the guys have accents, and if they do, Kat becomes romantically attached to them. It’s a pretty slick operation we’ve got going, well-practiced. For those services, she trades advice that I usually fail to put to good use.

Now that we’ve tackled the upper and lower Balkans together, it’s safe to say that Kat and I are legitimate travelling professionals. She’ll be staying in Budapest to teach again next year, I’ll have to come visit.

Emir

When I was in sixth-grade, our family hosted a high school boy from Yugoslavia. He lived with us because he didn’t get along well with his other host families, so my dad brought him home from school like a stray puppy. Like the rest of sixth-grade, it’s pretty uneventful in my recollection, although I remember being resentful that he made my room smell for a long time, a souvenior after he went back home.

We did not run into Emir during our travels in Croatia.

Finances

Croatia, it turns out, is more expensive than Greece. We spent way more money in 6 days than we had in 8 days, we weren’t expecting to spend that much. We spent 88 USD per person for six nights of sleeping, not bad at all. But then we spent 217 USD per person for the car: rental fee, gas, parking and tolls. Pivo (beer) and food costs went untabulated. It’s probably better that way…

When we arrived in Budapest, we all looked at our wallets and bank accounts and grimaced, hoping that the May pay day might be kind enough to hurry.

Getting Sidetracked with Cultural Questions

It took a while to find, but the Dubrovnik hostel treated us well. After the long (and perhaps story-worthy?) drive into town, the nice terrace with plastic furniture was calling my name. Four new friends to meet and a beer were just the relaxation I needed on Easter Saturday.

By sunset, more than a dozen hostellers had joined our table. Aussies, Germans, Italians, French, Norwegiens and other Americans – we came to Dubrovnik from all corners. The conversation was wonderful, even if it was dominated by the native English speakers.

I took to talking with Emma, a nice girl from Australia. We traded the stories of our adventures, she’s exploring southern Europe after completing a chef training back home. And here, a horrific thing happened: I got sidetracked with cultural questions. I was more interested in finding about the foreign language education policies of an isolated island continent than, say, if she was single.

When I spun 180 degrees to introduce myself to the Norwegian girls, the same damn problem. Distracted by cultural inquiry… Neither was blond, but that’s not an excuse. I forgot flirting in the name of asking about Norway and questioning why they had seemless American accents.

So no good stories, but I can tell you that Norway has 4 million people. Australia has 20 million…

Height

Walking the streets of Croatia, you’re struck with a sense of panic. Shadows are cast down upon you. You must look up to make eye contact. The legs under skirts are loooooong. Croatia is a land of giants.

Men. Women. Children. They’re all way tall to the point that we took to wondering if we’d all just shrunk on the car ride, rather than the people of one nation being this blatantly tall…

Intestines

Poor Liz had a horrible introduction to Croatia. It might have been the roast lamb (delicious-looking spits dot the rural roads every couple of miles) or perhaps water at the waterfalls, but something invaded her intestines our first night in Split.

Janos won a "champion of the year" nomination for his early-morning toilet paper when things in the bathroom got desperate. Unfortunately someone else was up at 4:00 and stole our hard-earned parking spot. One positive was that the guest house had absolutely wonderful bathrooms, probably the best I’ve seen in this side of the world.

Jokes

Some of our favorite jokes from the trip? There were plenty.

We giggled often at the notion of Ukrainian night trains, wondering how other teachers on a trip to Ukraine were fairing in a more "exotic" destination in a more "dubious" means of transportation.

One time, Kat was silly enough to tell a boy "Can’t we just talk?" Then, she was silly enough to tell us about it. Safe to say we failed to let the matter rest.

We spent days in Dubrovnik laughing about a tyme machine (non-Wisconsinites read: ATM) that was, unsurprisingly enough, tall.

Kukoc, Toni

Toni Kukoc is Croatian.

Toni Kukoc is tall.

Toni Kukoc is approximately six-foot-forever…

For years, Toni Kukoc won fame and glory as a member of the Chicago Bulls. Now he’s old and plays for the (a-hem) playoff-caliber Milwaukee Bucks. Every day, the Croatian newspaper has a picture of Toni Kukoc from the previous night, along with points, rebounds, assists, and the number of inches he grew during the game...

Landmine Alert

In Wisconsin, there’s not much to worry about beyond stray deer hunters.

In Colorado, it took a while to get used to the threat of bears.

And in North Carolina, snakes were the problem du jour.

Strangely, boars are the only thing you have to fear off the trail in Hungary.

But in Croatia? Yup. Landmines.

Get this, mankind thought once upon a time that it would be a good idea to fight over things. To kill other humans in the name of gold, God, grace, gates, glory and greed. In that spirit of death and destruction, someone invented a bomb that you could plant, just like a seed. The fruit? Your brother, father, son, neighbor or maybe your enemy blows off his foot. That’s if he’s lucky.

Not too long ago, the world awoke and said "Goodness, landmines are bad!" So they met in Ottawa, Canada, to declare that landmines would forever and evermore be forbidden. Simply to vile a tactic for civilization.

There are lots of pariah nations like China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Israel that failed to sign it. And strangely enough, there was one rather significant country that refused to sign the treaty. They argued that they would get around to agreeing with the international community on the badness of weapons that maim thousands long after soldiers go home...just as soon as their five-sided headuarters finds "alternatives to anti-personnel landmines." That made sense, though, because the country is sandwiched between Canada and Mexico, two of the most malicious countries I’ve ever been to...

(I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH MY NATION’S POLICY ON LANDMINES. IN FACT, IT’S BULLSHIT. PERHAPS MY NEW FOX-NEWS-ENDORSED PRESS SECRETARY CAN EXPLAIN IT TO ME…)

Magnificent, Simply Magnificent

Dubrovnik began as a bit of a fable. No one who we talked to had ever actually been to the walled "Pearl of the Adriatic," they’d all just "heard good things." It’s a long, if beautiful, four-hour drive (car or bus) from Split, but we’re proud to report back that it’s well worth the effort.

The city, now home to 50,000 people, was once much larger, the capital of the Dubrovnik Republic. Five hundred years ago, it was one of the naval powers of the world, with embassies around the world. It even sent ships on voyages as far away as pre-colony America. But then an earthquake came in 1667, and as they like to say in Hungary, game over.

Beginning in the 8th century, the city built an amazing series of walls and fortresses that now ring the old town. Over 2 km in circumference, the linked bastions helped fend off the Veneticans and Turks, among others. A two-hour tour atop the city walls is one of the cultural highlights of the world. At every point, you overlook marble streets, 14th-century water systems that still work, kids playing football in small courtyards, or 15th century monasteries. Or on the other side, the most wonderful blue you can imagine…

Amazing islands are just short hostel seemed to encourage intermingling and meeting new people. And there are restaurants in the city to last a lifetime. Good place. Darn good place.

Not Half Bad, Either

Split, it’s safe to say, is one of the grandest retirement homes in the world! The port town of 200,000 began in AD 400 as a palace and fortress for Diocletian, the first Roman emporer to abdicate the throne. The first Roman retiree! He’s also noted in the history books as one of the harshest persecutors of Christians of all-time. Set right along the Adriatic, at a spot where sulfur springs bubbling into the sea, Diocletian built a giant self-contained square compound.

By 700, the palace had fallen into disrepair, and some Illiyan folk moved into it when the Slavs started attacking. They built their city inside the walls, intertwined with the old buildings. The result are the most amazing alleyways, all trodden with fine marble cobblestone. Wonderfully erratic architecture. The best irony, though? The great Chistian-killer’s masoleum was turned into one of the oldest Eastern European cathedrals. The bell-tower is a spectacular sight. Both on top and from a distance.

The city is down-right hip. There must be a university somewhere the old town, the were a lot of beautiful young people, doing their best to prove Croatia chic and fully European. Lots of Americans out and about. We even managed to run into one other CETP teacher by chance!

Omis (With a Funny Thing Over the S)

In Croatia, even the cities that aren't in the guidebooks prove to be amazing! One our way down to Plitvice Lakes National Park, we stumbled upon an amazing village built on top of a cliff of waterfalls! Canals lined the houses and shops like sidewalks, and each building had it's own waterwheel, spun by the spring overflow. Rastoke. Amazing, but never mentioned in any guidebook, too far off the beaten path.

And on the northward leg of our journey, we decided to stop in Omis for a much-needed dinner, only to find a delightful town. Just a block of the main street, tight alley ways and corridors were lined with cafes. Picturesque mountains rose up over the timeless buildings. A river of molten azure flowed through the heart of the town. Delightful

Powderkegs and Pivo

The Balkans have long been a powderkeg. Serbian nationalism sparked World War I. And Croatian nationalism triggered the break-up of the old Yugoslavia when "things started to happen here in Europe" in the late 80s and early 90s. We figured it would be a good to give our spring break trip an explosive keyword. Powderkeg it was. And pivo? Well, that means beer in Croatian!

Quite the Capital

Zagreb's a delightful city. it's compact and quaint. It makes you feel all 19th-century Austro-Hungarian on the inside. if you haven't felt it. that's a warm and fuzzy feeling, complete with stately architecture and broad streets. Especially recommended are the city's bakeries, and jaunts through the main square.

A tribute to Zagreb's goodness? We drove into the city at 11:00 at night with only the sketchiest of maps and managed to find our hostel without a single wrong turn or legitimate clue where to go. Liz has eagle eyes.

Republic of Ragusa

When Dubrovnik was doing it's thing back in the Medieval days, it went under the monikor "the Republic of Ragusa." Lots of other countries held dominion over it, including the Venetians, French, Turks, Bosnians, Hungarians and Austrians, but it always had a bit of autonomy.

Friendly Wikipedia claims that Ragusa was the first foreign government to recognize the fledgling United States of America in 1776. That's sweet stuff. It's also the first time I've written the word fledgling in a long time.

Since Roman Days

The territory of Croatia used to be the Roman territory of Dalmatia. I guess that's why it's called the Dalmation coast these days. Then some folks who called themselves Croats came when the Roman empire collapsed. By the 1100 years, the Croatians linked themselves with the Hungarians. They shared kings for quite some time. The Turks overran Hungary and Croat not long after, so the Croats turned to the Austrians for help. Then WWI came and it came unglued... That's the short version.

Together?

Croatia is not a member of the EU. The reason lies somewhere between Croatia being well-enough-off without the EU and the EU having concerns with Croatia's wartime behavior and negligence in cooperating with the post-war international tribunal. But they'll be there someday.

Uskrsni Popusti

Croatian for "Happy Easter."

Vales and Trails

There's some bizarre, bizarre landscape in Croatia and Bosnia. Wow. Alien. Martian. Not from this world. Weird, weird stuff. Go see it.

Waterfalls

And while you're at it, go see the Plitvice Lakes national park. You just stand there going, wow. How did this happen?

X-Rated

We started the trip with a fifth passenger. A gift from me to Janos. Her name was Titty McTitts. I cut her out of the front page of the newspaper. She hung on our rearview mirror, an incentive pulling us all the way to the Croatian coast.

I’m not gonna lie, she’s a pretty girl. We smiled every day when we pulled her out of the glove box and wished her a good morning. We even started the trip by taking a picture of her. Because of the mirror, Janos’s smiling face is superimposed over hers.

The other day, we got a text message from Liz:

"Hi guys. So I brought my camera to my 6th grade class to take a picture of them. I passed it around so they could see. Oliver hit the next button to find Ms. Tits. Thanks Jer…"

Yugoslavia

Who would have thought…Yugoslavia proves to be an awesome spring break destination. I didn’t learn that kind of stuff back in world geography class!

and Z... Top Secret until the Final Installment!

Dober Dan!

2006-04-15T10:28:00.000+02:00

GET YOURSELF TO CROATIA!!! AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!! UNBELIEVABLE!!!

The water!! The color!! The blue skies!! The mountains!! The sea!! The cobblestone!! The city walls!! The friendliness!! The waterfalls!! The merriment!! The old men harmonizing to Croatian music in a tiny seafood restaurant!!

Zesterdaz: Plitvice Lakes!!

Todaz: Split!!

Tomorrow: Dubrovnik!!

Powderkeg!

2006-04-11T17:25:00.000+02:00

Doin' the happy dance, doin' the happy dance! Why?

'Cause we're going to Croatia, we're going to Croatia!

Tomorrow Kat, Liz, Janos and I are packing into a rental car in Budapest (that's the tentative plan, at least...) From there, we'll drive through the night to the northern-half of the former Yugoslavia. As usual, no solid plans, but this time we'll have a map!

We will drive through Zagreb, dunno if we'll stop. We might go to Istria, or we might go to Plintvicka Jezera. We might hit up Dubrovnik, or maybe we'll just go to Split. The funny thing that we're learning about Croatia is that whichever darn way you turn, you bump into amazing sights! The Adriatic Sea, azule waters and loads of history...Wow.

For six days, we will be champions! We will tame a region of the world better known as a powderkeg of world wars and the disintegration of multi-ethnic empires, and we will make it our Spring Break 2006 domain! Yee-hah!

Trail Review: Kekesteto-Sirok

2006-04-10T16:25:00.000+02:00

Blue Bar Trail
Kekestetö Tower to Sirok Train Station
20.4 km
7 hours at moderate pace

(All trail distances are quite unreliable estimations!)

First solo backpacking trip in this country or any other coincided with a weekend too beautiful to be spent sitting in a Budapest office taking the Foreign Service Exam. A little stir crazy after enough Heves for a while, I high-tailed it an hour and a half north to the Matra Hills. On clear days, you can see them from here. They taunt me.

Marching with a plan, map, compass or fire-igniting device (the first three were intentional voids, the latter was not...), it turned out to be an awesome over-night. Many more trails to be explored in the hills, and I hope to take the Green Club that way sometime this spring. In case I went missing in the mountains, I left a note on my kitchen/living room/bedroom/dining room table offering a destination and expected return time of 6:00 pm Saturday evening. My muddy boots and I walked back into the door at 5:59 pm...

Kekesteto (Szanatorium) is a scenic and easy bus ride (45 minutes, 254 ft) from Gyöngyös, the Gateway of the Matra region. Another option is to take the narrow gauge railroad from Gyongos to Matrafured and hike any of the 5 trails to the summit. That choice would add an additional 600m elevation gain over the 6km distance.

Kekes summit, the highest point in Hungary at 1013m, offers a post office, tourist gift shops, a hotel and a restaurant. The dominant feature, seen from all direction for many kilometers, is a massive red and while television tower. During the winter, the summit doubles as a mini-ski hill. In early April, most buildings still had Christmas decorations and were closed on a Friday afternoon. Many people were climbing to the summit as a nice day hike.

Blue Bar trailhead is located east of the summit marker, just downhill of the tv tower. Coupled with the Yellow Bar trail in the beginning, the trail skirts past sanitarium buildings (and the leashed-domain of one frightening German shephard) before dropping from the peak through a dense forest. The uppermost hundred meters of elevation were still snow-covered on April 7th. Shaded portions of the uppermost 200 meters of elevation also had lingering snowbanks.

No official word if camping is actually allowed or in any way regulated, but a level clearing, perhaps 1km below summit, offers a large possible campsite. As the trail continues, expansive views to the north open up on balds and crests. At 2km, a rocky top labeled disznokö (pig-stone) showed evidence of campfires.

Over the next kilometer, the trail weaves downhill. Be forewarned that Hungarian trail-builders have rejected the concept of switchbacks and prefer push their trails straight up and down long hillsides. The following kilometer of trail snakes through recently lumbered hillside and cross a logging road and wood piles. Cell phone reception on the trail is generally good, at least at the crests where I would stop and check. I did, however, get a text message welcoming me to Slovakia, so no guarantees.

At approximately 5 kilometers, there’s a nice level hilltop just above the trail. If you need a campsite or picnic spot, look for it on the left hand side just you pass a logging road with a checkered gate on your right hand side. Offers a shaded view of a pretty lake (Markazi-to) and a nuclear power plant. Ahh, powerplants and strip mines…what a view. (Strangely enough they don't ruin the wilderness experience at all.) One kilometer further, there is an established campsite with fire ring. Signs declare it to be site E4, but it looks seldom used.

Past the campsite, a private boundary forces the next 2 kilometers of trail to go straight up and then straight down a high crest. The top offers good views, the bottom features a cool pine forest and a deserted log cabin. Saw only one person on the trail, right before the cabin. He gave me rather inaccurate information in broken German. No sir, Sirok did not turn out to be two hours away, and all downhill… Did manage to see 4 deer.

There’s a beautiful bald and rocky summit close to the midpoint of the trail (10km). Untrampled valleys and hillsides stretch out before your eyes, and you can see the crest you’ve followed. The next four kilometers of the trail follow fenced property line, and while the views can be grand, the trailside scenery is less than spectacular. Trail seemed overgrown in some parts of the second half. But blazes are fresh and easy to follow.

Up and down. Up and down. Up and down.

At 12km, there is a green barn sitting above a lumbered hillside that looks like it holds wild summer-time goulash weekends. Lack of switchbacks gets discouraging. So, too, does the number of lumbered hillsides. Two kilometers later, after a long washed-out descent, there is a spring and reservoir, which seems to be one of the few dependable sources of water on the trail.

The trail begins to follow a broad logging road for quite a while after the spring. There is a nice established camp site, nestled at a junction with the Blue Dot trail, at 16km. The camp fire ring has nice benches and there is a lot of level ground. In April, though, much of the ground was soggy. The stagnant ponds didn’t look like good sources of water. Bring it from the spring as you pass.

A kilometer’s hike up a ridgeline brings you back to grand views. Just before an impressive rock face, there is a level step, just below the trail, that would make a nice campsite area. The next kilometer takes you down the crest, the final big hill of the trail, into a rather ugly recently logged area. Boots got muddier in last 3-4km than rest of trail combined.

Once out of the hills, the final two kilometers of trail meander through nice mixed forests. A little stream flows next to the trail for some stretch, and even carves a nice gulch next to the trail at one point. After a little clearing and cabin next to the river, the trail cuts across a tall-grass prairie in search of the highway.

As the trail hits the road, turn left and hike along the shoulder. Blue Bar blazes will continue to guide you to the little train station, 400m. There, a little sign will confirm that you just marched 20.4km and a one-car train will take you back to Kal/Kapolna (30 minutes, 124 ft) at irregular intervals. Be prepared to wait.

There is no Saturday bus service from any of the bus stops along the highway by the train station. You might have better luck in the town of Sirok (2,500 people), 3km up the road. The city is best known for its scenic medieval castle perched on a ledge above the town. If you walk down the train tracks for 200m, you can catch a glimpse of the stone ruins in the distance. Eger is 26km away by bus, Kal is 35km away by train.

No Proof of Petra Necessary

2006-04-05T15:43:00.000+02:00

No Proof of Petra Necessary (or Hickeys as Lesson Plans)
April-ish, 2006

I met Petra’s grandparents at lunch Saturday. I was wearing a scarf. It’s not scarf-weather here in Heves, we’re in the midst of a delightful Hungarian spring.

They must have though I am a bit odd, wearing a scarf during a noon-time meal and not speaking any Hungarian. Both of Petra’s grandparents were born not more than ten miles from here. I wonder if they’ve ever left.

We ate chicken soup with long, thin noodles, then turned to the main courses of wedding potatoes and beer-friend chicken. It was new to me, back home we only know how to beer-batter fish on Friday nights. Then Petra and I excused ourselves so that our two-party conversation, playfully uninhibited around the ears of non-English speakers, wouldn’t feel as awkward.

Things have progressed with Petra to the point where I actually know to say her name now. I must admit I still make mistakes, though, when I forget to concentrate. It’s "pet-tra," as opposed to the "pay-tra" that I had been saying for so long. Start out saying the word "pet," as if you were talking about a dog or cat, but then chop downwards with a rolled "r" and an almost-aspirated "a." No word yet, though, on whether the ending should be most exactly a "tra," "chtra" or "chra" sound. I figure just nailing the beginning syllable is battle enough.

We see each other once a week, sometimes twice. Our conversations have a relaxed comfort in them, but also a flirtatious energy. In a flash of domestication that makes me panic in retrospect, we opted to watch Dances with Wolves on tv Saturday night instead of going to the disco.

And truth be told, we also take pleasure in the warmth of the human kiss. We wondered and wandered, but it didn’t take us too long to realize that we are not exactly soulmates. Not much compatibility beyond language. Petra’s like this whole damn country, in most regards. For example, she likes to discriminate more than she likes to recycle. I’m content to be the opposite. This one girl showcases the complete opposition I feel to Hungarian inclination big chunks of the time.

An example from just today: My neighbor Erika, a history teacher and the washer of my dirty laundry, yelled at me for filling up the garbage can. Over the weekend, I felt a primordial spring-time urge to clean up the litter on Deak Ferenc utca, the street I walk down, in front of our house, every day. It’s some sort of an answer to a divine discontent, a tangible way I can feel good about making the world a better place, if only for a moment. These Hungarians look at such altruism differently: it’s somebody else’s trash.

The little two-block stretch around my house yielded two bags of trash – which meant that Erika and the other gal who I share a wall with weren’t able to cram their garbage in. I delighted in the unfortunate humor that this complaint was filed by someone who mindlessly tosses recyclable plastic (big liter jugs) into the trash can without a moment’s hesitation. That’s what’s filling the can up, the recyclables crying out desperately to be reduced, reused, recycled. Unfortunately, it turns out that Petra doesn’t recycle, either...

You crave another example, beyond environmentalism? A story. We were in Tokaj two weekends ago. Over a dozen American teachers crammed into a tiny wine cellar to sample the delightful whites of one of the world’s foremost stretches of vineyard. Kings, nobles, and poets have raved about the joys of Tokaj’s best for centuries, and here it was, in our little plastic cups. We had brought so many people that they had run out of glass stemware…

The weekend that surrounded the wine was good, too. Jenna and Yerik are delightful hosts in Nyiregyhaza, just a short train ride from the hills of Tokaj. (They are not, as my mother speculated expecting a Hungarian born child. The stomach problems on the train stemmed from an altogether different problem of the belly…too much wine!)

Thanksgiving Elli lives in Nyiregyhaza, too, and she was in desperate need of some American friendship in her study-abroad-world. I was only too happy to provide that. It was fun to talk again and meet her host brother and Hungarian boyfriend. She confided that as much as her smile and friendship had meant to me at Thanksgiving – the epicenter of my most difficult stage in Hungary – that evening of introduction and intrigue was just as important to her. She was disappointed that I hadn’t asked for her number right then and there…

But 18-year-olds have curfews, and the rest of us went out when Elli went home. One girl met a Hungarian boy, one fended a boy off, and the rest of us went home after an uneventful evening. But on that walk home, we came across a drunk, a man-boy we had first met at the train station hours and hours ago.

His name was Szabolcs, he re-greeted us like long lost friends. In truth, we had been quite relieved when lost him and his friends at the train station. They were obnoxiously drunk, and their overly-friendly demeanors quickly turned harassing, even under the late afternoon sun.

Now, well past midnight, he was still somehow upright. He chased after us when we tried to covertly walk past. No such luck. He started to strike up a mumbled conversation, until he noticed my coat.

A left-over from March 15th, I still was wearing a red-white-and-green tricolor ribbon on my coat, the great common-denominator of all those celebrating Hungary’s history and patriotism two weeks previous. Etelka had given it to me. She and everyone else smiled when they saw that I was still wearing it, they would boast that I am more Hungarian than even the Hungarians.

Szabolcs, though, would have none of it. He grabbed it with his fingers, pulling at my coat. "No," he shrieked, in a jumbling combination of languages. "You’re a foreigner, you can’t wear that," I understood him to say.

Everyone else kept walking, but I was ready to argue the point. "I know what it means," I said, then offered a brief outline of Hungary’s 1848 history, hoping to impress the lad with a regurgitation of big English words. And yeah, I am proud of Hungary’s revolutions. It’s not an easy thing to do, to stand up and die for your freedom from the rule of others.

He was sticking to his corporate line, though, whining "You not Hungarian!" That point is hard to argue. And as the confrontation progressed, he slowly slid into a desperation. He was like a confused bear, half crying and half bordering on becoming violent over a ribbon.

After debate, I tried walking. After walking, I tried running. He was still there. The issue wouldn’t solve itself, it wasn’t worth this, I handed him the ribbon. Who would want to boast Hungarian pride if this is what it looked like?

There are about 20 Americans that came to Hungary with me. We all have shared much of the same experience, but we all have our own take on it. Many, certainly more than I would have originally expected, have signed on with great gusto in the past month for year two. I think my own personal truth is that Hungary and I aren’t permanently compatible. We look at the world differently, but it sure has been fun being here this year. I learned a lot, I felt new feelings, I was inspired to write, yada yada yada. Petra is Hungary. We aren’t compatible except in the shortest of time frames, we’re just different. But it’s fun sharing spring with someone. I learn a lot, I feel feelings, I write… The usual.

But matters of the heart, as they say, even in the broadest definition, has consequences. And Friday night somebody not-named-Jeremy got a little carried away. I wasn’t worried at the time. And Saturday it was rather funny to have to wear a scarf sitting next to her at her family’s dinner table. But Sunday, though, when the necklace of note hadn’t begun to fade, I was a little more worried, and a little more disgruntled.

At Camp Nan-A-Bo-Sho, I had the same problem once, the same reminder of a night well-spent on the side of a neck. There, problems are easier to solve, as a general rule of thumb. It took only a few minutes of brainstorming. I quickly declared that Sunday to be the start of Western week, donning a well-placed banana over my neck and a bucket hat pulled lower over my eyes. There was a twinkle in Sara’s eye as we escaped the hot seat. The staff giggled all week, the kids were none the wiser, and we all managed to have good fun with cowboys that week.

But now I’m a teacher in a town of 10,000 folks. The young rock-star American who everyone in the town knows by first name, and first name only, strangely enough. Elvis. Madonna. Jeremy…And here comes that Jeremy, sauntering into school on Monday with, ahem, multiple deep-red marks, like a gaudy necklace strung haphazardly around my neck. Vörös, not piros. And bad, not good…

I went through multiple outfits Monday morning, trying to find anything that would offer a trace of cover for my debauchery. I refused to wear the scarf again and I plum forgot all my turtlenecks in childhood drawers back home. I settled on three vaguely collared shirts, all the collection of collars propped at various angles skyward. Not well hidden, I marched off to school uncertain of how well my conceal and carry plan would work.

Within a minute of stepping into the school, I had my answer. It would not work at all. The pointing and starring, snide comments understood despite a foreign tongue, began immediately. I had set myself up for possibly the worst day of teaching, the most embarrassing low point, in my illustrious career.

I avoided any and all eye contact in the teachers’ office before the first lesson, then dashed off to the first class. A group of German-speaking ninth-graders. I was hopeful, trusting in their youthful innocence, but that faith was misplaced. Their jaws hit the floor immediately. I grimaced. But I managed to smile through the grimace.

After scrawling the word "hickey" on the board, I began to tell the kids a story. I told that same story to four other groups of kids that Monday, in whichever language – German or English – they study. "I was thinking about you guys this weekend," I start, just as soon as I get their attention.

"And I know that (insert the appropriate language here) lesson isn’t always that excited." They nod like they’ve never nodded before. "So I took to wondering, how can I make class more exciting for you guys this week?"

With a flourish, I present my idea: "I realized that if I got a hickey this weekend, you all would be tremendously fascinated, even captivated, and have something to talk about." That’s when I whip out the scarlet letters branded onto the sides of my neck. They gasp.

For a minute they bounce up and down in their seats, regardless of age, shouting "Ki?! Ki?! Ki?!" louder than Kat in a quiet Greek restaurant. It’s the question "who?" repeated over and over. It takes a while to simmer them to the point where I can give instructions over the sound of their voice.

"Take out a piece of paper and write two stories about why I wound up with red marks on my neck this weekend. Only one can involve a girl," I demand. For some reason, they listen this week. They’re mesmerized, whipping out paper and writing utensils like a grade depended on it.

For twenty minutes they create thoughts in English or German or some other vaguely intelligible member of the Indo-Aryan language branch, pausing only to ask the past participle form of "suck" or if the present continuous form of "bite" has an "e" in it. Then to giggles, they read their stories out loud.

As the last student closes the last syllable on their story, they all spin towards me and hush in eager anticipation. I think I actually saw some drooling in delightful suspense.

"I was reading a book this weekend," I begin, the same speed and tone I would use around a campfire. As if to prove the point, I show them the book in my hand. I’d picked it off the shelf five minutes earlier. The title? The Throat.

"But you know that I’m not perfect in English, I don’t know every single word," I admit, to both English and German classes. "And I was confused by the title of the book, The Throat. I wasn’t sure what it meant." The kids look at me a little confused. Most of them know what throat means.

"So I got on my cell phone and called the best English student in the school, a girl named Gitta and asked her what throat means. She said she didn’t know, it was too hard of a word. She said I should call Bencsik Peter." Peter’s the most native of the non-native English teachers at our school.

"So I called Peter and asked him about the word throat," I continue. Most are still interested in the story, but I lose some in each class. "He said he’d never seen the word before, said he couldn’t be sure what it meant. He told me to call some Americans and ask."

"So I dialed up some American teachers here in Hungary. But none of them were any help, no one knew what the word throat meant. I was sad all weekend."

"When I came into school this morning, I was still sad. But your English teacher, (insert her name here), came up to me and asked why I was sad," I say. Whether their regular English teacher is the 50-year-old Etelka, the 40-year-old Kati, or the 30-year-old Csilla, the looming punchline still works to the children’s delight and disgust.

"I looked at your teacher and told her that I’m sad because I couldn’t figure out one silly English word, it was driving me crazy. The darn word throat..." I tell the kids.

"’Oh, that’s an easy word,’ your teacher told me," I say to the kids, building the joke to where it needs to be. "And that’s when she said ‘I can teach it to you!’ And guys, that’s when she leaned into my neck and planted two long kisses on my neck and starts sucking my throat!!"

The smart ones gasp, mortified. I don’t start to laugh and smack the book against the table in mock humor until after they’ve mostly finished the translation for the slower kids. That’s when I start to say "April Fools! April Fools!" too. I must say I’ve been lucky, almost all the time, the bell has rung right on that cue.

And the other times? Well, I still consider myself lucky, getting away with hickeys as a lesson plan, woven so closely alongside April Fools day mayhem that most of the kids are left wondering if I just painted to red splotches on my neck for the fun of it. An April Fools joke on my neck.

And I guess that’ll leave you wondering if all of Petra, the whole damn story, is just an April Fools joke in my head.

Knocking on Petra's Door

2006-04-04T17:04:00.000+02:00

Petra’s door was the third door I knocked on in Heves. It’s also the door I stayed behind the longest.

She lives four blocks away from me. But that’s just an approximation, they have funny irregular streets in these parts. Her house is green. From the street, the roof is long and low and straight, but from the side her house would look like the capital letter "A," with short, stubby, straight legs. Inside lives the Varro family. There’s a line over the "O," standing like a cowlick to elongate the verb sound.

She invited me over on a Thursday evening. She always comes home from university, three hours away, on Thursdays, thanks to her class-free Fridays. I can’t remember why I agreed, it’s a school night for me. But I walked over just after dark, causing great consternation amongst the neighborhood dogs.

I stepped inside as she opened the door widely. She was smiling widely, too. I planted two kisses on each of her cheeks and kicked my shoes off. She led me to the living room.

Introductions to people who don’t speak even a lick of English are fun. You can speak as quickly and as irreverently as you want. Petra’s parents fall into that category. She didn’t even bother translating, we relied on smiles rather than understanding to convey meaning.

She whisked me off to show me her room. When she was growing up, she had to share it with her older brother – the room was split in two with a curtain. Nowadays, it borders on spacious; two desks, two loveseats and a bed are sprinkled along the outside of the room, against the yellow walls.

I giggled at baby pictures, international in humor, but I could understand only a few of the book titles on the bookshelf. Her backpack was full of books just like back home – she’s had to read almost as much Shakespeare as I have. But it seemed a bit foreign when her mom kept offering food a drink. First cake and juice. Then bottles (plurality intentional) of wine.

We talked for a long time, comfortably. Sooner or later, we found ourselves in a position where I felt the urge to offer a foot massage. Sarah Patschke taught me that trick of seduction a long time ago, and promised me that it would come in handy in the future. In this instance, it earned me a hastily-rubbed shoulder massage.

The play-by-play of how we actually came to be kissing is mostly trivial, but highlights the brand of sweet-hearted clumsiness I can’t seem to escape. I felt a bit like a safe-cracker, armed only with a bottle of wine, fingers willing to knead feet into happiness and the golden curls. I sat before the safe, spinning the dial until I found a combination, any combination that worked. In this one instance, it was the question, "Hey, do you know what ‘Spin the Bottle’ is?!"

I left at 2. She snuck me out the bottom of the house, through the garage – an underground railroad of dubious morality – so we wouldn’t wake her parents…

Over the past seven months, I’ve become convinced that one of the favored exports of Hungary is its women. Americans arriving to spend a year in the country carry certain expectations, especially young men. And while we’re here, the Hungarians are rather adamant that we find a Hungarian girl to fall in love with and take back home. Or alternatively, a young lady so spectacular that we decide to stay forever.

And what enlightened visitor, who wants to be an observer than a tourist, doesn’t have the aim of "sampling the culture." I’m willing to take a liberal definition of that charge. Drowning the palate with Hungarian wines and spirits falls somewhere within an acceptable boundary, as does soaking the soul in flirtatious friendships with the girls.

Much can be said of the Hungarian womenfolk. Eastern Europe as a whole can claim pretty ones, and Hungary is no exception. They’re pretty. And as an added bonus, they like to be looked at and appreciated. They dress accordingly. Even the students…

But I have to admit that one of my favorite things about the Hungarian girls falls outside of the realm of sexuality. Shocking. It’s even a bit paternalistic, a bit of confirmation that I’m a language-loving, story-telling teacher at heart.

I love the way they create language.

Back in the School of Journalism, I never really understood the rampant critiques of the cliches that pepper our language. Aren't even tired, old sayings and expressions better at bringing words and language to life than nothing at all? But professors of every stripe would constantly lambaste the sayings and expressions that we use so often. They called them tired. Stagnant. Lifeless. I tried to weed them out, but it’s hard.

Hungary's a rather out of the way place to learn about English, but I've come to treasure the lessons that those who know less than you can teach. These Hungarian folk, it is safe to say, know less English and you and I. But just as they don't know the vocabulary and tenses that we do, they don't know the bland expressions we take for granted when sharing our emotions, our feelings.

Over the past six months, but especially in the last month, I've amassed a cell phone full of numbers, a text message box full of SMSs, and an inbox full of emails - from Hungarians. It's a really nice happiness to know that I built this out of scratch, combing the town many times over for people capable in communicating in English or German, the second-languages of choice. For most Americans, it’s hard to even contemplate, addressing yourself to someone else in a foreign language, a foreign way of thinking and constructing thoughts.

Now imagine yourself as one of those users of a second language. You have two choices, either mesh words together to try and convey what you mean or translate your own languages expressions word-for-word. Both ways create delightful twists of language that seem playful, exuberant and alive. You’re willing to overlook typos and mistakes when language is used with such passion. It’s cute to watch novices begin to experiment with the art of language.

Petra responded to an online card once with "Thank U very much for your felicitation."

Uhhh....You're welcome?

But I think my favorite scrap of writing sample came the morning after I knocked on Petra’s door. I had to wake up early, on not too many hours of sleep, to teach 12-year-olds how to create thoughts in English. Most of the time it’s a losing battle. On this particular Friday, it was a song – a camp favorite, A Ding Dong – that had failed. Miserably.

I was a bit discouraged, more than usual, when I plopped myself in front of the staff office computer. An e-mail from Petra made me smile.

"Good morning, Mr. Jewett!!! I think, it’s high time to get up. I am not relaxed at all, I’m terribly tired out, and it’s all your fault. Shame on you. But I had an awesome night with you, I must tell. And the way you kissed…ohhhhhhhhh. wonderful. But I don’t want to glorify you so much, otherwise you turn to be concident too much."

All in the name of sampling the culture and teaching English to the natives, folks…