A (re)-Introduction to Budapest: Buda and the Danube

Before I got too far along with this blog entry, I stepped back to read my first impressions of Budapest the last time I was here.  They were a bit superficial (given the time frame and the fact that I had been to three countries that I was unfamiliar with immediately before Hungary), but that's not terribly surprising.  It of course takes longer than three days to really get a sense of the place.  Longer than two weeks as well.  So I won't intend for this to be comprehensive, as there's much of Budapest left to see and left to experience. 

Much of modern Budapest dates from the turn of the century.  Most of the most famous Budapest buildings were all built for the 1896 millennial celebrations, celebrating the 1000th anniversary of Árpád settling in the old Roman town of Aquincum (currently located in the northern parts of the Buda side of the river).  The role of the river - as well as the strong differentiation between the banks - gives Budapest sort of a Paris-of-the-east feel at times. 

That said, there's a grittiness to Budapest in ways that the inner arrondissements of Paris lack.  The ordinary stone buildings, though architecturally beautiful, show the scars of 50 years of Communist apathy.  Of course, the further you get from the center of the city you can see the apathy of communist design, not maintenance, so it's a trade off. 

Just for some semblance of organization to the rest of the post (and as a method of conveying pictures to appease some people who shall remain nameless), I'll do a bit of Buda/Pest/Danube division.

THE DANUBE:
So far, Budapest has an interesting relationship with the Danube.  There's an architectural nod to be sure - buildings façades often face the river rather than anything more logical for an engineering point of view.  But there's no readily apparent sense that it was the economic lifeblood of the area in a fashion like the Mississippi has been for most of the cities on its banks.

Budapest does do Bridges fairly well.  All of the inner city bridges are in completely different architectural styles.  I'll go through the four major ones from north to south.

The Margaret Bridge is the longest of the inner city ones and connects Buda and Pest to Margaret Island, an outdoor recreation center that is one of the biggest parks in the city.  It's currently under reconstruction, but tram lines are still running across it.  

The most famous and first bridge across the Danube in Budapest, the Chain Bridge.  It, of course, was reconstructed after World War II as well, but still retains its original character.

 The Elizabeth Bridge, a more traditional suspension bridge, with the moon rising in the background.

The wrought metal Freedom/Liberty Bridge (depending on your translation - and depending if you've also rejected the recently rejected name of the Franz-Joseph Bridge).  Hungary has a peculiar habit of renaming things when new administrations take power.  On my metro line there are two stops that have been renamed for purely political reasons within the past year. 
There is one historical center-city bridge missing - just south of the Parliament was the Kossuth Bridge, a bridge that the Soviets had to rapidly construct as a river crossing after the retreating Nazis destroyed all of the existing bridges in Budapest.  Rumors have it that a new bridge will be constructed on the site sometime in the next decade to make river crossing easier.   If you want to put that in river order, it would fall between the Margaret Bridge and Chain Bridge.

There are of course other bridges further north and south, but they are A. outside of the typically walked inner city and B. much less architecturally interesting.

BUDA:
Buda is the wealthier, stodgier, and more omnipresently touristy of the halves of Budapest.  Not to say that there isn't touristy stuff in Pest or that no one lives in Buda.  It's more that no one WORKS in Buda.  It simply moves from tourist sites along the river (Buda Castle, the Fisherman's Bastion) to progressively more expensive houses as it feels like you're moving further up into the Hollywood Hills.  It's much quieter than Pest.  I would like to say slower paced, but everything is at the more leisurely European speed; perhaps I can say even more slowly paced. 

Beyond the economics of the situation, the biggest difference between Buda and Pest is elevation.  Buda is hilly, whereas Pest seems to be the beginning of the plains of eastern Hungary that the country is so famous for.  I've spent a couple days within the last week going up two of the more significant Buda Hills: Géllert Hill in the city and János Hill out the far side of Buda.

János Hill is the highest hill in Budapest proper.  It's peaked by a stone lookout tower that emerges from the trees looking like a Lost set.  The day we climbed was a bit smoggy, but you can still oversee all of Buda and much of Pest - if you look closely, the Parliament is visible on the right side of the frame just above the river.  Apparently on clear days you can see as far as 77 miles.

Closer to the main city... Géllert Hill - next to the similarly named Géllert Hotel

 - is notable for two things.  This statue:

 The Hungarian Statue of Liberty, which is visible from pretty much anywhere in Budapest.

and this view:


With that I'll leave you for today, as classes start tomorrow.  I'll talk about Pest sometime soon, as well as my day trip to Eger and whatever else grabs me in the interim.

Bureaucracy

Germany was rigorous in its application of rules, but there seemed to be an inherent logic to how everything worked, ultimately.  Regulations seem to - at least generally - have purposes that even as a foreigner one can generally surmise the meaning of.

Hungary is an entirely different beast.  I've spent much of the past two weeks trying to navigate the municipal, national, and university bureaucracies.  I still haven't completed.  And it makes little to no sense whatsoever.

The university layer of bureaucracy is perhaps the most frustrating.  I've been in universities for the past six years of drastically different characters, sizes, and purposes, but nothing has quite reached the level of pure arbitrariness of restrictions as I've encountered here.  Telling us to come to meetings and then kicking us out for not bringing the documents that they didn't tell us to bring; organizing mandatory things simultaneously; requiring the student shuffling papers from office to office in the same building, only the offices are all open different sets of hours on different days, requiring multiple trips; telling us that our temporary student ID cards couldn't be ready for a week and to buy a week pass, and then turning around and giving us them the next day.

The temporary student ID is necessary because it takes up to two months to get a real Hungarian student ID - which of course is not the same as my Central European University ID (or my student pass for the Budapest public transportation).  When one factors in that my lodging uses a hotel-style key as well, the Hungarian bureaucracy requires carrying 5 extra credit-card style objects in my wallet at all times.

The fifth among those is the residence permit.  Unlike in many places, where residence permits appear as a stamp/sticker/long term visa in your passport, I will receive yet another official ID card to carry around at all times.  That is, once I have the opportunity to finally finish collecting all of the documents needed for it.

Despite all of that, nothing quite sums up the post-Communist bureaucracy quite like the post office.  The Hungarian Posta fills all of the roles of the Western post office.  But it's much more than that.  The Posta also serves as the method of payment for basically all government functions.  One has to go to a post office (and figure out what button to press on the machine to get the appropriate numbered slip for when getting called to the desk) and pay fees for any and all unrelated government functions.  Then, the receipt is taken to the government office you actually need to go to wherever that might be in the city.  The appropriate government offices cannot take payment and you will be directed back to the post office (and have to wait in the long lines again) if you don't have the correct receipts ahead of time.

Even small functions like opening a bank account (where you usually receive the check card day of in the US) or picking up a pre-paid cell phone (which in the US you can do at a gas station with no forms of ID as far as The Wire has taught me) are lengthy processes here.  I had to sign several pages in Hungarian, give photocopies of my passport and address papers - all for just a prepaid SIM card in my existing German phone.

If nothing else, the Hungarian bureaucracy has taught me to appreciate the at least theoretical modicum of logic that is the DMV.  I have had a bit of time to (re-)explore Budapest a bit more, so I hope to write a more fun broad city scope post soon.

Reopening for business

Well, as most of you know (since most of you told me to restart doing this when I arrived), I am now in Budapest. And rather than go through the whole creation of blog process, I figured the best option would be to simply re-utilize the existing system we had going. Of course, the Adam Ant song lyric based title is no longer applicable. I could theoretically use a song lyric from "Budapest" by Poni Hoax; however, that song is sort of creepy. Somehow I don't think people would want to read a blog called "What is soaking is now croaking in Budapest." Though "Street cars tearing up the skies" out of context is a little poetic and not so disorienting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQCQ3yWJDoU

Youtube, as always, an effective resource if French electronic with odd Budapest references intrigues you.

Lyrical digressions aside, this will be my first long term foray abroad since Freiburg. I've attended a couple conferences in the interim, so I have made brief returns to Prague and Bratislava and visited Vienna for the first time, but I didn't find it to be a cohesive enough experience to coherently write about at the time. Maybe I'll devise some thread for incorporation into a larger, retroactive thematic element in the future, but either way, this is a new chapter. And though I've only been here a few days, Budapest is already proving to be a completely different animal than Germany was.

The differences from the United States are predictable and perhaps a bit banal. They are what you would expect. That said, the differences from Germany are a lot more interesting and suggestive of the diversity of Europe. After all, the distance between Budapest and Freiburg is roughly similar to those between Tulsa and Minneapolis.

Language and food aside (again, those differences aren't surprising), in my first 30 hours, Budapest has thrown a few curveballs at me. The most interesting to me has been wardrobe: shorts and flipflops appear to be perfectly prevalent attire. The long-stated French/Italian/Spanish aversion to them appears to not be in effect here. More than anything, it makes me immediately regret packing decisions. The idea of fanatical disgust at the idea of shorts is one long-enduring European stereotype in the minds of Americans, and it had been reinforced in my own mind after spending 95º days in Florence, Madrid, and Paris surrounded by locals wearing dark jeans. Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled if this is a socially acceptable wardrobe choice (as long as the weather is appropriately summery, presumably), but it was certainly an unexpected development.

The most positive difference from Germany has been more of a conception of a service culture. I landed in Budapest late on Saturday, which in Germany would have meant I couldn't go to a store with any measure of success until Monday morning. Here, grocery stores and malls are open on Sundays, allowing me to accomplish errands I was afraid I would have to leave until my lunch break tomorrow.

I live in Budapest proper, though I live in the Xth district. Budapest X is the biggest district in Budapest and is outside the center of the city (though another layer of districts is still beyond Budapest X). I have not quite figured out the subdistricts of the area yet, but live past the end of the Metro line by three bus stops. I've spent minimal time going into the city thus far (There are two malls in the Xth and school is downtown so I'll be spending more than enough time there to not rush in until I get my student passes for travel), but I have walked to where the Metro station is several times. Needless to say, the walk is rather different than I was used to in Germany. On the occasions I walked to the IES villa instead of taking the straßenbahn in Freiburg, I walked past old buildings, an occasional vineyard, and the Dreisam. here, I walk past communist apartment blocks, decaying light industrial facilities, and car dealerships. At least urban planners can take solace in the fact that major apartment blocks are indeed concentrated around the end of the metro line to maximize ridership.

German walk to school

Hungarian walk to school

Another major shift is in the student facilities. The student housing in Freiburg certainly had its sets of rules and regulations as much of German official society does. But underneath all of that, Vauban retained a bit of its anarchic spirit: not so much in check-out procedures and room inspections, but at least in terms of self-expression. Rooms were extraordinarily nonstandard within the same complex (and building at times), they were decorated differently, and you never really got the sense of significant oversight. CEU's student housing doesn't have the flexibility or even pretend to encourage personalization of any sort. We are forbidden from putting anything on walls at all. And there certainly aren't pirate ships, hippie vans, or multicolored rolling metal grates. (Sadly, the system of linens with only a duvet and bottom sheet - no top sheet or blankets of any sort has remained).

German Room

Hungarian Room

German Building Complex

Hungarian Building Complex

In an especially minute difference that became apparent to me very quickly, CEU actively discourages you from opening your windows. This is completely opposite from the German system of wanting you to open your windows all the time to get good air into rooms, regardless of the weather outside. (For a comprehensive account and explanation of that apparently-peculiarly German routine, there's a well-written summary here by a travel blogger based in Freiburg: http://www.groundedtraveler.com/2011/02/18/german-obsession-with-fresh-air/).

German apartment view

Hungarian View

With time, I might acclimate myself to the Hungarian apartment situation better, but so far it seems like some of the more endearing qualities of the German WGs (like having a kitchen! and that whole pirate ship thing) are going to be difficult to replicate. School responsibilities will begin in the morning, so my next post can take me further afield from the Xth district if you want to see pretty things. Of course, if you're wanting immediate Danube and Parliament gratification, you can scroll back in time and see my first go round from Budapest while living in Germany to tide you over until the next time I am able to blog.

Well, I'm back

As surely all of you are aware, I am back in the United States. And have been for a couple weeks now. It's perhaps not my finest blogging hour, but I wanted to give you all a run-down of the last few weeks in Europe nonetheless, on the off chance any of you who are still interested haven't already asked me about it in person. I'll try to keep it brief since there's obviously a lot to cover.

We had finals, but the end of our semester was really the Model EU. This was pretty much exactly what it sounds like, in which all of the students in our program took a role to play in a two-day EU Summit. The vast majority of people were Heads of State, Foreign Ministers, or Finance Ministers. Because I was "resourceful," I was a Secretariat, which doesn't serve any official function beyond facilitating the meeting and trying to broker deals between people. I worked with the foreign ministers, and our topics were resolved successfully in our two day summit. Or at least as successfully as acting out and drawing fictitious conclusions can be.

The completely logical thing after this was to use my study days wisely. In doing so, I went to Croatia for a few days, notably Zagreb, Split, and the island of Brač. Croatia, especially the latter two places in it, is hopelessly beautiful. Really, all of the Balkans seem to be. Split is centered around a Roman Palace from 300 AD that has since been completely integrated into the town, which is pretty interesting. The beach on Brač we went to is one of the most famous in Europe, part of a regional park, and is not enhanced by man at all. Which made it all the more impressive.


The Beach in Brač


The tower of Diocletian's Palace in the center of Split


Split overall

Anyway, came back, had finals. You don't particularly care about that. Subsequently, I did not return to the United States. Instead, I jetted off to Italy for some sightseeing in Florence to visit a friend there, with day trips to Bologna and Venice. Italy as always is physically beautiful while making me culturally uncomfortable. It is difficult to explain what exactly about Italy does, but I get a perpetual sketchy vibe. Perhaps most importantly, though, I did successfully visit Venice before it inevitably collapses into the ocean in a few years due to global warming. So that mission was accomplished.


The Grand Canal in Venice


The Duomo in Florence

From Italy, I flew to Madrid, where I met six friends from Tulsa flying to Europe after graduation there. We subsequently embarked on an eight day train trip from Madrid to Paris, with stops in San Sebastián and Bordeaux. The weather was not entirely cooperative (especially with the upper echelons of the temperature range), but it was an enjoyable last hurrah through Europe nonetheless. I enjoyed both of the Spanish cities immensely and for very different reasons. Madrid is grandiose and spectacular, completely imbued with the history and power of the Spanish state. San Sebastián is a much more intimate city, completely avoiding the monumentalism of Madrid and having a much slower paced atmosphere. Also, as the cultural center of the Basque movement, San Sebastián (known as Donostia in Euskera, the Basque language) provided a cultural experience completely unique to the Basque territories. It so happened that on the day of our arrival, the Basque populace was instituting a general strike. Businesses were closed, almost all restaurants were closed, bars and clubs were closed, the entire city was just shut down. Fliers were scattered everywhere. There were sporadic vocal protesters milling through the streets as well. I never once feared for my safety in anything (which I surely would have if I had been in Italy, for whatever reason), but it was really interesting to see the general belief for the Basque cause among the general populace. However, it was very difficult to see if this passion was only the passion of a select few who intimidated the rest into going along with the strike or if the tenets of the Basque movement were truly held dear to all.


Madrid bullfighting ring


Madrid's national bank


San Sebastián

Bordeaux, along the Atlantic coast of the France, marked our next stopover. It was largely enjoyable except for a train snafu that ended up costing us a substantial amount of money. Bordeaux, unlike many of the cities in the latter parts of my journey, allowed me an opportunity to see the real parts of a city, rather than just the tourist parts. I usually find this far more enjoyable than merely hopping from tourist point to tourist point, so I appreciated some insight into how local people actually manage to live, especially in a city as expensive as Bordeaux. As the Euros were beginning to run low by this point, I really really wanted to know how they did this.


Bordeaux

Finally, we ended up with my return trip to Paris. I attempted to find some different things to do in Paris this time around. I still went to many of the main tourist points, as some of my friends had never been to Paris, but I managed to get to Versailles, the Père Lechaise cemetery, and the Pompidou Center, where I had not successfully navigated last time in Paris. It was good to get a little further down the seemingly endless list of worthwhile destinations in Paris, since it's hard to say when I will make it back.


Versailles

Finally, I left my friends in Paris, hopped on a train to return to Germany, where I remained overnight in my apartment's kitchen pulling my second all nighter in as many weeks (the first being my night of constant travel [10 pm train to 3 am bus to 6 am flight] to reach Italy), had one last train snafu, and then departed Frankfurt for home on the 27th.

Anyway, now that I've been in the United States, I've been trying to reflect on things a bit. It's hard. It's impossible for a trip like this to not affect my outlook on life and things. Things about the United States that already annoyed me - like urban sprawl and poor recycling - will only annoy me more. Being able to get international perspectives on issues is always enlightening, and I certainly wish more of our leaders would do the same. In the United States we have a tendency to get self-righteous tunnel vision, sort of the logical extension of manifest destiny and the Puritanical self-importance that the country was founded on. Just because it's a long standing tradition doesn't mean it's right, and it's something that the country needs to get better about. Different historical experiences lead to new insights that can help solve some of the problems we've developed. Hopefully we can do that.

The Mediterranean

The Mediterranean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean) is the only real common thread between my last two trips. The first weekend in April, I headed to Barcelona (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona), which is my favorite city that I've been to yet. The next weekend I headed to Nice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice), Cannes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes), and Monaco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco), which was an entirely different experience.

First, though, Barcelona. I hardly had enough time to fully appreciate Barcelona, but I surely did my best. Soon after arriving, we headed to the Montjuïc area(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montjuic) to see the Font Mágica, which is an impressive fountain/light/music show. The next day we got up early to go on a Gaudí tour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD). I always have appreciated architecture, so this was the part of the trip I was most looking forward to. It didn't disappoint at all - I was able to have time to see his four most famous buildings: Casa Battló (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Battlo), Casa Milà (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Mila), Parc Güell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parc_Guell) and La Sagrada Família (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Familia), the still-under-construction cathedral in the Eixample (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample) district. Sagrada Família is unlike any building I have ever been in before nor will ever be in again. The intricacy of the architecture is impossible to adequately describe, and I could have easily spent an entire day just in that church. Construction is currently projected to be complete in 2026, at which point, it will have several more towers added to its already imposing façade.

A couple other quick notes about Barcelona that don't fit easily into the paragraphs. My favorite part of the trip ended up stumbling across a graffiti-encrusted Spanish Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War) bunker at the top of a hill in one of the parks in Barcelona's hill district - I believe it was Parc Guinardó, but I'm not sure. It was amazing, a piece of history abandoned except for its location in the center of a park, but abandoned in such a place that it maintained complete panoramic views of the city. Completely unexpected, but completely wonderful. Unrelatedly, Hospital de Sant Pau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_de_Sant_Pau) fits in well with the capricious architecture of the city and is the most absurd hospital I've ever seen. Finally, we ended up staying in a quaint apartment right off Las Ramblas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Ramblas), which proved to be the perfect base to be located.

One of the most interesting things about Barcelona is the amazing singularity of the city's districts. Each district has a completely different personality from one another. Eixample is perhaps the most obviously unique, being that you feel as though you are walking around a landscape from a Dr. Seuss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Seuss) book with its whimsical turn-of-the-century architecture. But it was apparent wherever we walked when we were entering a new area. It's a fascinating feeling. The feeling exists in other cities as well (Berlin, New York, for starters) but I have never felt it quite so singularly.



Font Mágica



Me, jumping between the broken parts of the Spanish Civil War bunker atop the hill.



The Barcelona harbor from Montjuïc.



Parc Güell, Gaudí's architectural park.



The Olympic Stadium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estadi_Ol%C3%ADmpic_Llu%C3%ADs_Companys) and communications tower.



Sagrada Família.

The French Rivera (aka the Côte d'Azur) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Riviera) is a coastline of constant traffic and ostentatious wealth. One thing was apparent to me the entire trip: I did not have enough money to be there. And no one was afraid about letting me know that, either. It was the first place on my entire European journey - Paris included, mind you - where I was treated at all rudely by anyone in a service sector. I didn't belong, so they didn't care.

That said, the French Riveria is indeed beautiful, and it's quite apparent why the rich would want to flock there. The cities have plenty to do, but are not completely overdeveloped, and the natural terrain is incredibly picturesque. But it still felt with all of the beauty around completely devoid of any real humanity, or any personality. Monaco's character solely comes from its association with Monte Carlo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Casino), the most famous casino in the world. Gambling in it was an unparalleled experience to say the least. I broke even and would have been significantly ahead if I hadn't misinterpreted my divine sign. Monaco at least was classy. Cannes, devoid of its film festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival), felt like any generic beach front town, filled with all the expected American beach front tourist traps. Nice has a bit more substance and culture to it, but it still feels as though it is missing any real personality of its own. Rather than emphasizing many of the cultural attractions there, the city subordinates them to focus on - just as the rest of the Riveria - the beach and shopping. I'm very glad I went there, but unlike most places I went in Europe, I feel no compelling urge to ever go back.



Monte Carlo Casino



Nice, its beach, and its sea.



The harbor in Monaco, complete with yachts worth tens of millions.



The beach in Cannes.

I'm entering my last few weeks in the program now. From May 3 to May 6, I will be visiting Croatia, otherwise, I will be staying in Germany until my final departure from Freiburg on May 15, a bitter sweet day indeed. After the program ends, I'll be doing a little bit more traveling, which will take me to Pisa, Florence, and Venice in Italy, Madrid and San Sebastian in Spain, and Bordeaux and Paris in France. I'll be back in Minneapolis, presumably safe and sound, the evening of May 27. So if you're planning on greeting me in any form of an excited fashion, that should be the day you shoot for.

Eastern Europe Part II

Following Prague, we departed for Bratislava, where we would only spend a long afternoon. Slovakia recently succeeded in joining the Eurozone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone), which has left the Slovak economy in far better shape than any of its neighbors that we visited. It also meant that on this single day, we needed to use three different currencies, which was an interesting experience.

I had very little free time in Slovakia, actually, given that we had two extended meetings in our seven hours in the country. I had to skip two meals to really see much of anything at all. Bratislava is an incredibly small city for a European capital though, so that made it a little easier to browse the sights. Bratislava is dominated by its castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratislava_Castle), which is unsurprisingly on the highest hill above the city overlooking the Danube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube). It also gave me the opportunity to feel really nationalist, which is essentially at the core of the European experience. Despite all their unity and lack of patriotism, nationalism is still the huge driving force behind Europe.

The most interesting thing about Slovakia I was able to notice in my limited time there was the incredibly rigidity of its districting. The commercial area and old town are united on one side of the Danube. Opposite it directly is the residential district. Further down the river, but on the same side as the residential zone, is the industrial zone. There seems to be no overlap between these areas of any note. It's perhaps the most telling legacy of the Soviet era.



Slovenský rozhlas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovensk%C3%BD_rozhlas), the main radio broadcaster in Slovakia. Soviet architecture might have not done everything well, but consistently the Eastern Bloc produced fascinating communications towers.



Nový Most (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nov%C3%BD_Most), the most important Slovak bridge over the Danube.



The main square in Bratislava.



Bratislava's castle, once again, complete with scaffolding.

Budapest is a quite different city entirely. Bratislava is small and compact - Budapest is incredibly populous and quite sprawling. It is divided into main areas that reflect the old towns that merged to form the Hungarian capital. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these two areas are Buda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda) and Pest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pest_(city)), each on opposite sides of the Danube. In my free time, I attempted to see them each one at a time, if nothing else for ease of transport. I failed, really, but regardless got to see large swaths of the city. We also took a Danube River cruise, which really split the middle. Literally even.

Budapest has some amazing architecture for certain, and was well preserved just as all the other cities were. It was pleasant to be in cities that had avoided significant World War II damage. That said, it also felt the most foreign. Part of it has to do with the simple absurdity of Magyar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language), as it is not in the Indoeuropean family of languages. Other parts simply had to do with the cultural differences and norms. Certain behaviors for hire that would not be considered acceptable for public knowledge (and indeed ruin political careers) in the United States were carried out in parks in Budapest with little caring about the potential awareness of passersby. Public behaviors were generally just a little bit different.

Among the most interesting things in Budapest was the House of Terror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Terror), a museum about the oppression of the Hungarian people by the Nazi-affiliated and Soviet-sponsored (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81VH) secret police. The Nazi cell in Hungary was known as the Arrow Cross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party). The museum could hardly be called unbiased in its coverage, and seems to be very much designed from the political right designed to simultaneously discredit leftist opposition and give the impression that Hungary itself was not complicit in these crimes. It was interesting to compare it to the Stasimuseum in Berlin, though, which was - like the House of Terror - housed in the same facility once used to torture and interrogate victims. The Stasimuseum was quite stodgy and traditional. The House of Terror was incredibly modern, relying on extensive media incorporation, a constant industrial techno soundtrack, and the most amazing carpet I have ever seen, an extensive map of the Eastern Bloc. I would pay approximately $14,000.00 to have this map replicated somewhere in my house in the future.



The Hungarian Parliament building, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_parliament_building), perhaps the most ornate national parliament in the world.



Buda Castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda_Castle).




The Chain Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sz%C3%A9chenyi_L%C3%A1nch%C3%ADd) with Buda Castle.



The view of Budapest and the Danube from Gellért Hill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell%C3%A9rt_Hill)

As a whole, Budapest and the trip entirely was a positive experience. Certainly not destinations that I would have immediately thought to travel to on my own, but entirely worthwhile ones as well.

Eastern Europe Part I

Apologies for the long durée, coming back from the Eastern Europe trip has been a bit chaotic. Lots of homework to catch up on. In fact, you are only getting this update right now because I was unexpectedly informed right now that a paper got delayed a week.

Our Eastern Europe trip - the final major field study trip for our program - took us to four cities over nine days: Kraków, Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakow), Prague, Czech Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague), Bratislava, Slovakia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratislava), and Budapest, Hungary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest). By the way, any politicians in these countries would probably have stabbed me through the heart by now for calling these places Eastern Europe. They believe they are in Central Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe. As far as I'm aware, Central Europe as a (tourist) concept did not exist before 1990, so I'm not buying it. As far as they would have you believe, only Belarus and Armenia really count as Eastern Europe.

Anyway, as should not surprise you at all, I'm going to have to split this up into a couple posts. We'll start with Krakow and Prague and finish with Bratislava and Budapest.

Kraków was somewhat surprisingly my favorite city of the three. It's at a different pace than the others: it's not a capital, so it doesn't have the same political emphasis as the other cities. Also, the food was amazing. Potatoes and sausages and bacon as the staples of a diet can hardly go wrong. It was also considerably smaller than the other cities (well, not Bratislava, but that was a special case, as you'll see in the next entry) and fairly compact, so it was very easy to get around solely by walking. Perhaps most importantly, I found a pierogi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierogie) fast food restaurant.

Absurdly, Kraków is named after a guy who supposedly slew a seven headed dragon. Let's just think about that for a second. It is also very cheap, another huge plus. All together, a lovely, laid back city. It avoided World War Two bombings rather successfully, so the old town is remarkably still intact. By the same token, the Soviets didn't get to rebuild all of Kraków, so it's not bland everywhere either. Good luck for a major Polish city.

I feel like there was some more interesting stuff to talk about, but it's been quite some time and I've been quite a few other places since then, so I can't remember the specifics. The weather was chilly, but sunny for the most part with one evening of snow, which one cannot complain about at that latitude in March.

We on the way between Kraków and Prague had a short visit to Auschwitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz. Nothing I can say can adequately describe it. So honestly, I'm not even going to try. That is an experience that every person must have on their own. It will not be a pleasant one.



The Vistula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_River), as seen from Wawel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel).



Town Hall Tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Hall_Tower,_Krak%C3%B3w) in the Main Market Square (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Market_Square_in_Krak%C3%B3w) during a snow storm.



Roofs of the city of Kraków taken from Wawel Castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel_Castle).



Wawel Cathedral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel_Cathedral), where Polish royals were crowned and Pope John Paul II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II) wanted to be buried for a time.

Prague was another matter entirely. It's big and a little less concentrated than Krakow, with one of the most impressive castles in the world, Pražský hrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Castle). The views from the hills above the city are amazing as well, amply demonstrating why one of its nicknames is the town of one hundred spires. The weather was also incredibly dysfunctional - over the course of one day, and really in about a seven hour span, the weather went from rain to snow to sunny to hail to sunny to rain to freezing rain to snow. Impossible to adequately prepare for.

Prague felt much more active and harried than Krakow. Mainly, this is because Prague has fashioned itself as the Paris of the 1920s - ie, all the self-important, self-styled Bohemian expatriate Americans go to live there and feel superior about themselves. There were times, especially in main areas like Wenceslas Square (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenceslas_Square) when I would only hear English spoken. With occasional interludes of Japanese when flashmobs of tourists would go by.

Also contributing to this development was that the Czech government collapsed while we were in there. Honestly, there was no real tangible result from this: no protests, no demonstrations, no excitement, no real nervous energy throughout the capital like one might expect. I think the people who were the most excited was our group. Because we took credit for it. We were hoping to take out Hungary's government when we got to Budapest too, but they held on for a couple weeks. We had a couple days in Prague to explore the city as best we could, and then we headed still further south.




The skyline of Prague, with several of the one hundred spires visible, as taken from the Prague Metronome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Metronome).



The bridges of the Vltava (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vltava).



The Pražský hrad from the opposite banks.



The Charles Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bridge).