Anyway, when I finally got to the main bus station in Oslo, my plan was to withdraw Krona and go straight to the hostel, check in, and meet Stephanie and Tommy there. The ATM wouldn't let me withdraw, though, so I tried to call Stephanie to tell her that I couldn't pay for my hostel and couldn't thus meet them there. I was downstairs and had no service and took the escalator upstairs. As I was disembarking the escalator and still didn't have service, I looked up. Stephanie and Tommy were standing right in front of me looking up at the departure/arrival screens, their heads tilted at a perfectly similar angle.

So we went to the hostel, then went out into the town.

There was one guy at the hostel who we dubbed "our best friend," mostly because he never talked (except to exclaim "shit!" once when he dropped an aerosol can of something) and snored incredibly loudly. He also walked around rather scantily clad. The girl who was there the first night was really nice and had already befriended Tommy and Stephanie a bit. She apparently was in Oslo to interview an ex-Guantanamo detainee.

Overall Oslo was very nice. Very expensive, and very light (it didn't get fully dark until about 12 at night, and was light at 3 or 4). We went to the Viking Ship Museum (which was, I think, the entire reason Stephanie wanted to go at all) which was awesome. These ships have all been dug up from old burial grounds. For rather high-ranking people their bodies were prepared, then put in ships along with anything they might need for the journey to the afterlife, so by finding these, archaeologists actually found a goldmine of information on ancient Viking lifestyles. So it wasn't just ships (which were amazing) but also cooking utensils, boxes, carts, fabrics, agricultural tools, etc.

We also went to the Edvard Munch Museum ("Scream," anyone?) and watched some really bizarre movies about his artwork and a documentary about his life, then went into the exhibit. It was really cool, especially considering what a controversial artist he had been. His art style wasn't widely accepted (and his first exhibit was actually shut down due to criticism) but he refused to change it. He also had social problems relating to a woman he had been having an affair with, and was probably not quite right mentally anyway but was never diagnosed with anything. He had studied at an art institute (in Berlin, maybe?) and was technically very advanced, but he hated the precision that was assumed to go along with great painting. He just saw the world differently and painted it the way he wanted, and was eventually (obviously) considered an acclaimed artist. It was so bizarre to see the Scream in person because I've spent so much time studying it, but I also really really liked his sketchings and etchings. I found them much more moving than most of his other paintings.

Leaving the Munch museum, we actually ran into some of the Japanese students we study with in Trier (which was crazy!) so hung out a while.

We also went to an anti-authoritarian bookstore which was AMAZING. We had an address for it and a name we couldn't pronounce, but when we got to No. 3 Hjelmsgate, we found a bike shop a little bit off the road. Stephanie went into the bike shop and asked if there was still a bookstore, and the guy said it was around back and upstairs. So we walked out behind this rickety-looking building covered in stickers and graffiti, and up some stairs, and found ourselves completely alone in a café of sorts (it was mostly an empty room with a few tables and benches, a table in the corner serving as a bar, and stacks of books everywhere). A girl about our age completely covered in piercings, and heavy eye make-up, dyed black hair, and black leather clothing came out and we asked again for the bookstore, and she got this older man to take us even further upstairs and unlock the bookstore for us. There were stacks of books in all sorts of languages about everything from anarchism in sci-fi works to communist and anarchist ideology, to history books of revolutions, to manuals on revolution (peaceful and violent), noam chomsky books, propagandist pamphlets, etc. There was one book I was tempted to get entirely devoted to a street corner in Hyde Park, London, which has historically been a soapbox corner, I guess. I ended up buying a book entitled "Evasion," which is about a fictional group of people in the United States who choose to live completely outside of any system - squatting in old buildings, stealing out of dumpsters for food and clothing, and essentially living on less than a dollar a day. I haven't finished it yet, but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

There was also a jazz café we went to where we spent ages talking to the guy working there. You could actually listen to the CDs before buying them because they were all kept behind the counter, but the CD players weren't all working so he just played various CDs for us over the PA system, giving us all sorts of recommendations on jazz harpists, folk jazz, widespread jazz, etc. We asked if there was a Norwegian jazz scene, at which his eyes just lit up. He played a CD for us that was a pianist from his hometown in the north who was playing with a Portuguese female singer that was just amazing. There was a group that dug up old Norwegian folk songs and revamped them in a jazz style, and then a Norwegian violinist who does an old film noir kind of sound. We each bought one of these CDs (Tommy took the first, Stephanie the folk songs, and I bought the film noir sound). When we left, the guy bowed.

One thing I thought was really cool about actually being in Norway, though, was seeing the diversity. Wherever we walked people seemed to assume we were Norwegian (I had to refrain from using Norwegian phrases on occasion so people would know we did not actually speak it), but there are so many different ethnic groups. The Scandivanian countries (at least Norway, Sweden, and Finland) have really good social systems (I think Denmark does too, but I'm not entirely sure). Sweden has historically been a prime immigration state because they have such good integration programs, social welfare programs, etc. that make starting a life there much easier. I really enjoyed being amidst such a diverse group of people who were all speaking and cooperating in one language - it was like the normal tension that the US, Germany, France, and many other countries I've now been to tend to have in regards to ethnic minorities getting pushed to the borders of things was simply not an issue here.

PIctures to come soon, for all of my remotely recent posts. Promise.

]]> Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=70960 0 59.9166667 10.75 Each of us is either a head of state or a foreign minister of a member-state of the EU. I was the foreign minister for Cyprus.

The foreign ministers and the heads of state each had their own conference room, and were given their own sets of issues. Heads of State dealt with expansion, the Lisbon Treaty, and something to do with Iceland I didn't quite understand (I find Turkey a more pressing issue than Iceland, but France set the agenda). As a foreign minister, I was an expert on Cyprus's positions on environmental and energy conservation and internal and external security.

It's pretty obvious that a summit of 30 students of the EU is not quite the same as an actual summit. Our decisions don't actually make a difference. In three days, though, it was practically impossible to get anything done. And thanks to parliamentary procedure (which I now hate with the passion of a thousand fiery suns) I managed to royally screw over Cyprus. It was one clause of a proposal on security that Slovakia had put out. J., the representative of Slovakia, put this clause in about involvement in frozen conflict zones SUCH AS Moldova (?) and Kosovo. Spain eventually proposed a amendment to reword it as "involvement in the frozen conflict zones OF Moldova and Kosovo." The speakers list was closed by somebody, and a vote ensued. Only a majority is needed to pass an amendment so, even though I voted against it, it passed.
So, now, thanks to the fact that no one got to me on the speakers list and I didn't get a chance to speak, the EU is not actually permitted to get involved in security issues on Cyprus, which is a frozen conflict zone. Half of the island is still occupied by Turkey. Awesome!

I don't know if I can grow up to be a politician. It's too ridiculous.]]> Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43581 0 48 7.85 It was actually really cool. Our guide is finishing up his studies at Universität Freiburg and is half German, half Yemen, I think. He took us downstairs into the room used for children's Arabic classes and a sometimes-prayer-room, and we all sat down in a circle, and he basically explained the Islamic faith and practices to us. It was a massive question-and-answer session.

What I really liked was that we got more of an inside look at it. Like in America there are societal issues about Muslims more than Islam because we live in a post 9/11 world. In Europe it's worse, because the Muslim minorities are so much more populous, and a lot of socio-economic tension ensues anyway (about things like living conditions, wages, jobs, etc.) so it's much more intense anyway. Even though I, and many of the people I know in the program, have always been very wary of general statements about anything, we don't understand. It wasn't until I went into the mosque that I could really begin to understand it as a faith as well. Not that I didn't think it wasn't, or that it should be classified differently, it's just that I'd had minimal exposure to it. As had a lot of the students in the class. So it was really really good for me to be able to go in there and see not only what a mosque looks like (though it's really just a converted office building, not the stereotypical grand mosques with minarets and everything) but how people move in it, and speak, and treat each other. Overall I did get the impression, though, that our guide was sugar-coating things a bit. We asked about the presence (or lack of) of women in the mosque, and he kind of avoided an overall gender-relations-look at that relationship. He said that women were, because of their traditional roles in the house, not expected to come to the mosque 5 times a day for prayer. They learned to pray at home.

Then, at the very end, we got to sit in the back of the prayer-room and observe the 5th daily prayer at sunset. That was awesome. I have no idea what anyone was saying, because it was in old, poetic Arabic, but to actually see the ritual and hear these verses read and sung as they have been for years and years was really cool.]]> Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43580 0 48 7.85 Our German professor is ridiculously nice, but we can't figure her out entirely - politically, that is. Our entire class is composed of grammar lessons or discussions of themes including globalized media, immigration, diversity, German culture, etc. Things that can get politicized fairly quickly. We know that she hails from former DDR, but she doesn't express her own views very often (though we're all pretty convinced she's left-wing). But for 2 others in the class and for me, this has opened up a few possibilities. This mainly translates to the radical stances we take in our essays, or choose for our presentations, etc. The three of us leave class and joke to ourselves what our professor's reaction is when she goes through our work. Sometimes we think she loves it, but most of the time we figure she's got to think we're a little crazy. Which is okay by us. I think we've all become a little cynical about a lot of aspects of our program and of living in Germany, and the idea of being the radical kids kind of pleases us. In a mischievous 5 year old kind of way.

A. and I have been conspiring a little bit together about our Referats (a Referat is a spoken presentation, generally accompanied by a very short summary paper). We just watched "die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" (in English, the Edukators) because she had never seen it and it's one of my favorite movies, which spurred us a little bit on this anti- streak we've been on, and we both wanted to do similarly slanted Referats. She took direct inspiration from d.f.J.s.v. and flat-out presented yesterday her Referat on "Anti-Kapitalismus in Deutschland." She played Pink Floyd really loud too. It was pretty sweet.

I did mine today on the revolutionary movements of the 1960's era in Germany. Yep, I just presented on Revolutions. It was pretty awesome (it's been a while since I was so excited about a project that I did well on it simply out of wanting to work on it). It was over the SDS (in German it stands for Sozialistischer Demokratischer Studentenband, and was not directly related to the SDS in America but had similar goals), the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) and Kommune 1. It so happens that there is a movie out in German cinemas right now called der Baader-Meinhof Komplex about the RAF, so I got to show the trailer for that and a bunch of us might go see it together now. And I got to ask really fun discussion questions like, at what point is a revolution legitimized, at what point is violence legitimized, how do you define these terms, have these movements died out? kind of things. I had entirely too much fun.

It's all in German, so you might not understand, but I thought i'd include the link to the trailer anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyCi4cObmI
]]> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43579 0 48 7.85 Keep in mind that I really don't eat meat. But I decided I would try a Käsewurst because they're supposed to be really good. It's basically sausage, but it oozes cheese. And I love them! It's ridiculous, I don't think I've ever finished a sausage in my life until now. But there are also crépes and roasted nuts and chocolate-y things. I could eat so much there.

Another standard of Christmas markets, which we experienced at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Freiburg and at the Marché de Noël in Strasbourg (France) is essentially mulled wine. In German it's Glühwein (which means something along the lines of glowing wine) and in French it's vin chaud (or hot wine). But it's obviously hot wine, and they add spices and generally some citrus fruit like orange or lemon. It's so good. Our German professor took us to get some and showed us, in the Freiburger Weihnachtsmarkt, where all of the Freiburgers go for Glühwein. It turns out there's a little offset of the markt right down the street, and the wine they serve is actually from Freiburg. You can get red or white, and they're both delicious.

Anyway, we went yesterday to Strasbourg for two reasons: it was the opening day of their Marché de Noël which is one of the biggest and most famous Christmas markets in Europe, and there was a RATATAT concert. The market was HUGE and too crowded to be functional. It was impossible to stop at booths because you couldn't break through the crowds!

We also saw a demonstration (and we know I'm attracted to those like a moth to flame) on behalf of the Palestinian populations of Gaza and West Bank. We stopped to talk to one of the women there, and she explained to us what the pamphlets we'd been handed said (A. and I are both fairly function en français, and K.W. is practically fluent, but it would've taken us a while to know we had grasped it, and no one had a dictionary). It was a petition for the EU to apply pressure to Israel because of human rights abuses.

The EU is really big on human rights, on paper anyway. One of the stipulations in most of its trade and/or cooperation agreements is that all parties must respect basic human rights to everyone. Israel wasn't honoring that, and so the EU needed to apply pressure because both parties had already agreed to this contract, or whatever.

Then we made our way to the RATATAT concert which was completely on the other side of the city. When we finally got there, it was this awesome ware-house kind of thing converted into a concert hall. The concert was amazing.

Leaving the concert, we had to find the train from Strasbourg to... Offenburg, I think (as students we can travel to Offenburg for free). The train was, at 1:00 in the morning, quite literally two cars long. And it was one of the dinky white ones (there are three gradations of trains that we can see: the sleek white/silvery ones are the long distance express trains, the red ones are the standard, and the dinky white box-y ones are the ones you never want to have to take!). Everyone on the train was from our program, so we basically had a party on the way back. It was fun.]]> Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43578 0 48.5833333 7.75 Our program was nice enough to reserve an entire restaurant so that all 60 of us students, plus all of the professors and staff workers, could have a Thanksgiving meal. It was absolutely delicious, but the proportioning was a little bit off (aka, too little stuffing and too much Turkey on my plate).

I need to keep in mind to figure out a recipe for pumpkin soup. It sounds weird, but whatever they served us definitely had curry in it, and it was the best part of the whole meal. Yum!!

Despite that, though, it was really weird not to be at home. And to have school. I can't wait until next year, when I have a real Thanksgiving.]]> Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43577 0 48 7.85 Freiburg. The band is called Ahead to the Sea and it's a band from Freiburg. It was their last concert because one of the members is pregnant and going on leave. Of sorts. If there's an official maternity leave from being in a band.

Anyway, they sound kind of like Flogging Molly, but with ridiculously political lyrics. It was a lot of fun.]]> Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43576 0 48 7.85 It sucked. But we had our first snow here.]]> Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43575 0 50.1166667 8.6833333 Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43574 0 48.8666667 2.3333333 Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43572 0 50.8333333 4.3333333 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43571 0 49.6116667 6.13 As we were approaching Bertoldsbrunnen (which is a main plaza in the center of town, with a statue so old I'm only halfway sure its' a guy on a horse), in a cold, misty, night, when we heard chanting. Loud chanting. Our thought process, or at least my thought process, went along the lines of:

Well, there's no soccer game tonight...

Protest?

We hustled up to Bertoldsbrunnen and sure enough, about a hundred people our age were marching in a circle around the statue, holding signs that had the logo for Die Linke in the corner (Die Linke is the political party that formed out of the government of the DDR upon reunification - it literally translates to The Left). But I couldn't understand the chanting and we didn't have a good enough view of any of the signs to read them, so we stood there a few minutes trying to figure it out.

Finally a guy broke away from the crowd with some fliers and handed Meg. one, then asked, in German, if we knew what was going on. He explained that there was a tuition raise which, in Germany where there's a huge emphasis on public education being affordable and accessible for all, is kind of a big deal.

Then he asked if we students on the university. I explained, still in German, that we were Americans studying with a program that was tied to the university, but not directly on the university itself.

He got this shocked look, then in English said, "Americans? Well, you pay much more than us anyway... it wouldn't be a big deal for you."

Turns out they're protesting a raise from 50 Euro to 500 Euro. Which I think is still a big raise, all things considered. But we had to convince him that, despite the fact that without scholarship money we'd all be starving to be educated, we supported his cause. It might have been Meg. who literally said "we don't want you in Germany to go down the same path we in America have."

I was giddy all night.]]> Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43570 0 48 7.85 1) Europeans love Obama. It's practically a love affair.
2) A lot of Germans have this habit of going on, and on, and on, and on. They'll tell a ten minute story to preface a really simple question for you. Or when they answer a question, when trying to get from point A to point B, they'll visit J, L, P and X on the way, and not necessarily in alphabetical order.

So, today is election day. Things are insane. As in, INSANE. I somewhat reluctantly agreed to participate in a Podiumdiskussion at the Mensa.

The Mensa is the student cafeteria-ish place, and also where a lot of events go down. The university actually had a Wahlnacht Party - a party for the election night. In Freiburg! And it wasn't the only one. Universities all over Germany did the same thing.

The one at Freiburg had a bunch of events - there was a meal (put on by McDonald's, of course) and a blues band. Speeches and Podiumdiskussions. The whole thing.

I was told it was going to be kind of a small affair. I was going to show up about 6:30 to be interviewed by a television network, but the questions were going to be really easy. Then at 8:30 I would be on a podium, and a couple moderators would just ask me questions that weren't going to be too hard either. And I'd be done. Not too big a crowd. This is all in German, of course.

So the television network cancelled, which was probably good. They decided to go to the university in Heidelberg instead. It was then that someone decided to tell me it was the National TV Network for Germany. All of Germany.

I get up on stage for the Podiumdiskussion, and realize what I've gotten myself into. All of these German faces are peering at me. A couple questions got pitched to other members of the board, most of whom went into these long abstract-sounding answers I didn't quite understand. Then my first question comes along:

Did you vote?

Um, no, actually. I applied for my absentee ballot but it didn't arrive in time. But really we have such a complicated election system that I didn't have to. No matter which way I vote, McCain is going to win in Texas.

At this point, I heard a lot of clapping and cheering. My American friends who had all showed up to cheer me on! You know, a support network! Most of them had offered to buy me a drink afterwards.

The guy next to me was the old President of the University, and he went off on some rant for a while. All I understood out of it was that Iraq is not, in fact, the "new Vietnam War" for America. Afghanistan is. I didn't follow his logic, but I disagreed. Something about the war in Afghanistan kind of maybe being legitimate...? The Germans are all for getting out of Afghanistan, though, and I don't quite understand why. You know, besides the whole "we don't want to be involved in a war" thing, which I understand.

So, it seemed like things were going okay. Then one of the moderators says, "Okay, this one is for Emily," and goes into a MEGA long rant about something. I didn't understand it the first time, so I asked him to repeat the question. He summarizes whatever his rant was, which involved something about how polarized the American public had become regarding the two candidates. Then asked the question.

I had to start my answer off with "Okay, so wenn ich richtig verstehe..." which literally translates to "if I understand correctly..."

His question was basically whether or not Obama would last as president due to the polarization of the public. What?!?!

I explained that in pretty much every other election I'd ever been alive for or studied, the public has been polarized. It's what happens in a two party system. But a president is president. Unlike Germany's own parliamentary system, the government doesn't have to make coalitions, so it's not going to collapse. Obama will be president because he was elected president, simple as that. He could be impeached, but he'd have to do something worthy of impeachment and frankly, that's going to be hard because of the race card. What a weird question!!! These people study the American political system!! They should know the government doesn't just collapse the way they do here (look at Belgium!)

So, in the aftermath of the Podiumdiskussion, I discovered that it was not, in fact, the Americans who had cheered for me, but the Germans. They liked my answer. No one really knew why. It wasn't until I was wandering around afterwards that I figured it out. People I didn't know kept coming up to me and saying in German and English "you did very good! you were down to Earth! We didn't understand the other people either!"

I ended up just leaving the party at the Mensa, and we all went to O'Kelly's. It's an Irish pub near the University that plays American-style football every Sunday night. They were putting up continuous CNN coverage for the election. Pretty much 40 Americans sat in front of the big screen TV until 4 in the morning, when the guy actually had to close, drinking beer. We went back to the dorm, and I got ready for bed with CNN on mute on my TV, and literally crawled into bed with the TV on so that I could wake up to it during the night to check on progress.

Right as I crawled into bed, Obama went up as the projected winner. A. skyped me, saying we had to drink to Obama, and H. was there, too. So I dragged myself out of bed and went down to her room, and we all drank wine and watched his speech. I dozed through part of it, though. I was tired!!]]> Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43569 0 48 7.85 Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43568 0 39.5666667 2.65 Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43567 0 51.7333333 18.5166667 Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43566 0 50.0833333 14.4666667 Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43565 0 48.15 17.1166667
on the sidewalkIn my mind, Hungary fits into the same category as Estonia in that I never imagined I would go there. Or it did before I got there. Now Budapest is in the same category as Berlin - cities I could live in.

I'm rooming with A. for this whole trip. We got to our room and immediately discovered that our window faced the street and opened all the way. Which subsequently meant that she and I spent quite some time sitting on the window ledge, one leg in our hotel room and one on the roof, watching people walk by. K.J. and Meg. joined us in our room. We had arrived too late, though, flying out of Stuttgart, to really do much. We went out, and ran into some fellow IES-ers at a bar just down the street, but everything was closing down. So my first night there, we just wandered.

The first day was perhaps the most enjoyable. We attended lectures at the Central European University. It is in the middle of town just a few blocks away from one of the landmarks of Budapest (another famous cathedral).

The first lecture was a political science one, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Our entire trip is on Central and Eastern Europe, and all of the countries we are visiting in the next week have similar stories. Soviet-backed Communist governments stand for years in the face of opposition then suddenly collapse, and these countries suddenly have to transition to a status worthy of the EU. But at that point, they begin to differ some. Poland and Hungary were the two countries seen as most promising by the EU and were first approached. Poland's doing well, Hungary is not now.
The issue in Hungary is at its basis political. About 15 years ago, when the government seemed to be stabilizing, word got out that the government had corruption. More specifically, the president was caught telling his cabinet in a private meeting something along the lines of "We have screwed up this country with corruption and we have to fix it!"
It was a liberal government, so the conservatives went to the street. Ever since, there has been no middle ground - the government goes back and forth between the conservative and liberal factions every election period, and nothing ever gets done because things have become too polarized for anyone to work together. When this took hold, everything else destablized, including the economy. Hungary now has no timeline for joining the Eurozone.

The university itself teaches in English and offers mostly post-graduate programs based on law, human rights, and international politics. I picked up a few brochures.... but won't tell my mother yet.

We had the afternoon free and A. and I got left with Dan. leaving. Everyone else just disappeared on the subway. So we decided to stick in the area and explore. Dan. wasn't terribly accustomed to how A. and I explore yet, so we introduced her to our unorthodox methods of navigation. Which most of the time mean no methods of navigation. But on this particular day, we followed graffiti.

We were wandering, and I peered down one street and said "hey! there's a big building! want to check it out?" so we went down the street. When we reached the big building, we discovered that it was just an abandoned factory (but it had looked a lot more epic from a distance!). So we kept going down the street just for lack of anything else to do. Europe is full of these little tunnel-looking alleyways, and we passed one in which the outside was painted purple with white polka-dots. The three of us peered inside and saw graffiti, and so agreed to go 5 feet in just to look. We went 5 feet in and realized it went further, so in increments we followed the graffiti through the dark tunnel into a brightly lit courtyard. Absolutely covered in gorgeous graffiti. It wasn't just tagging, it was art.

courtyard

entryway

courtyard

courtyard

courtyard

courtyard

courtyard

courtyard

courtyard

As we were poking around in the colorful courtyard, music suddenly started. Very loudly. And I recognized the band as Seeed... which is essentially German reggae. And so our navigational methods shifted from following graffiti to following music (which, in all honestly, is not the first time we've followed music either...). And started opening doors.

What we found was an old warehouse, probably Soviet era, which had been converted into a bar. We never figured out what it was called, but we had to go through a few levels of doors to finally get inside. Everything was covered in newspaper/wallpaper, posters, and graffiti. We talked to the DJ a bit, and he explained that the Trabat in the corner, which was almost cut in half and reconstructed at an odd angle, was his stand. There was a massive scorpion skeleton (even though scorpions don't have skeletons) hanging from the ceiling. Overall, utterly amazing. The barkeeper laughed at our aweful Hungarian skills but let us try, galiantly.

graffiti bar

the DJ's stand

graffiti bar

A. went into the restroom and emerged a few minutes later, telling us we had to go in, and to bring our cameras. It turns out that the insides of the stalls were completely covered in anime, and there was a comic-strip of sorts ... I don't know... reminding us of what the proper order of things was? There were huge, thick ropes hanging from the ceiling (rather creepily, actually) but, being as obsessive about absurd decorating techniques that I am, I took a few pictures anyway.

... in case you forgot?

the anime covering the walls

We went back later that night with more people (an odd group of people, actually, who rarely hang out with each other but were all interested in going) and stayed for a few hours when there were actually people there. Shthi. taught the Hungarians the electric slide.

We explored a little more afterwards, walking mainly on the one sidestreet where the bar was. We passed one building twice. The second time we passed, about an hour later, a balcony suddenly wasn't there anymore. A. has the picture, I think, of the building with the balcony (because it was a cool looking building anyway) and I have the picture of the building without one.

there was a balcony there about an hour before

watch out for cars!

We also found a market. We took money out of an ATM to do a little shopping - I've never held a 10,000 note of anything, and you'd think you'd feel rich. Turns out it's a little less than 100 dollars.

That night, our program treated us to a boat tour of Budapest on the Danube. Budapest is actually established on two older towns on opposite sides of the river, Buda and Pest coincidentally. Apparently it's still somewhat of a defining factor, which side of the river one lives on (or builds on). The city is absolutely gorgeous by night, and the Parliament building is absolutely absurd.

Parliament building

boat tour

oldest city bridge

Parliament by night

The next day we actually got a tour of the inside of the Parliament building. The building itself is, to me, gorgeous on the outside, but way too gold on the inside. But it was impressive none-the-less. And is a source of pride for Hungarians in general - it has always been a symbol of the Hungarian people and their own independence, even in times of occupation or oppression.

Parliament hall

crown and sceptre of royal family

Parliament entryway

oldest mainland subway

victims

officer's desk

files

At first things went all right; the exhibits seemed very structured. It wasn't until the room of files that things really hit me. This room had a television screen running peoples accounts of experiences in this building, but the walls were entirely composed of bookshelves full of records. The benches and desks that one could sit at had plastic covering, and underneath this were more records. The room was full of paperwork on citizens that, until the collapse of the Communist regime, were a representative of completely one-sided observance. The government had everything on their citizens, and the citizens knew nothing of the government. An issue that came up in Berlin and Estonia, and no doubt will in the next few stops I make.

row of cells underground

cell door

prisoner

prisoner

prisoner

prisoner

torn flag

The very last room was covered in tiny, framed pictures, about 2 inches wide and 4 tall. There must have ben 300 of them, if not more. They were all of the people who were known to have worked in this building against their fellow Hungarian nationals.

I was one of the last to leave the museum (I always take entirely too long in museums for others) and Jen. was kind of enough to wait for me. The others went off to eat. We walked and talked, mostly. She and I had found ourselves in similar situations as we studied the EU - it's easy to get lost in and lose faith in the political system. The EU is so bureaucratic, and my own opinions of it are waning. The House of Terror was a reminder of why I study politics. The idea that something like this could happen is, to me, horrendous, and the idea that it is still occurring around the world is even worse. For me, it was a reaffirmation of why I have chosen what I have, even if my direction is still a little iffy. It was also an indicator of the fact that, I think, this trip is going to be a little rough for me, even though it's the one I've been looking forward to the most.

What I find intriguing about Europe in general is the relationship between the past and the present, and what is seen or not by the public (even the buildings, or in the case of Freiburg, the openness about victims of the Holocaust). But Hungary isn't just dealing with that, which is what I expected in terms of dealing with Nazi occupation and Soviet-based authoritarian regimes, but the relationship between the government and the population in general is still prevalent.

The other thing I really wish I'd had time to try to understand is the language. I figured out enough in the House of Terror to recognize a few words, and I tried at various bars and restaurants to speak it. But it's very hard. I love the difference between how it looks and how it sounds. I've never had to remember street names based on how many Z's were in it, but that was actually a fairly effective method here. There are lots of "z"s, "v"s "t"s and "g"s that all get smushed together a lot, and to me, written Hungarian looks very sharp and angular, if that makes sense. Not necessarily harsh. But it is a very soft sounding language, with a lot of "sh" sounds and what "j" sounds like in French. The grammar aspect was interesting, too. In many languages, gender is a big grammatical factor (French and Spanish both have male and female nouns, German has both, plus a neuter and plural case which is treated as a gender). German has, along with 4 "genders," 4 cases for the subject of a sentence, the direct object, the indirect object, and possessives/indefinite time, which all change the articles of the nouns. This is part of why people find German grammar hard, but once you become accustomed to it and can think in it, it changes the way you think about objects. I think about inanimate objects differently in English and in German and thus see them differently, I suppose. The same thing happens with verb cases. Anyway, to wrap up my language rant, a lot of languages like English and French (in my experience) have, essentially in terms of articles for nouns, one case. German has four. Magyar has sixteen. I can't even imagine how that aspect of the language would change perception.

After another half day or so of exploring (and discovering mulled wine, which in Hungary is delicious!) we hit the road for Slovakia.

Hungarian day waning

Hungarian sunset

]]> Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43564 0 47.5 19.0833333 Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43563 0 47.0833333 8.2666667 Freiburg game - won 5 - 0]]> Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=3589 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=43562 0 48 7.85