Riding the Train With My Old Friend

When you move often, it becomes difficult to keep lasting friendships alive. In middle school, I lived in Brazil and had three really good friends -- a real sisterhood of the traveling pants type thing. We used to run around the hallways of school wreaking havoc, and spent many hours roller-blading at each others houses.

I only lived there for two years, but a few years later, when I moved to Sweden, I was able to reconnect with one of these friends, Eli. At the time, she lived in Austria, and after we both graduated from high school, we embarked on a classic backpacking-around-Europe trip. We spent the better part of a month exploring different cities and countries, racking up plenty of shenanigans to tell stories about later.

It was a great trip, but of course it ended, and life continued. We went off to colleges on different continents, and stopped talking as often. Before I knew it, ten years had gone by without seeing each other.

Right: Awkward middle schoolers. Left: Awkward high school graduates.

Until now!

As coincidence would have it, Eli recently returned to Austria, and her home town of Vienna is only two and a half hours away from Budapest. Last weekend, she came to visit me, and it was like we had never been apart at all.

Eli had been to Budapest before, so she had seen most of the main sights already, and we were free to explore one of Budapest's hidden gems -- the Children's Railway. This is a railway almost entirely operated by children -- a remnant of communist times where children were encouraged to train for practical professions that would add value to the society. The railway's popularity meant that, after the fall of communism, it stayed open and just changed names from the Frontier Railway to the Children's Railway.

I thought it might be a mini-train, but it's full size!

Unfortunately, the Children's Railway is stuck in the past in the sense that there is very little useful information about it online, so we decided to just go and see what's what. We found the station easily, but arrived just as a train was leaving. A woman hastily ushered us onto the train, telling us "You buy ticket on train. Go!" The ticket operators were, of course, children, and for some inexplicable reason seemed unwilling to sell us tickets. We heard them speaking English to others, so language wasn't the problem... and yet every time we asked to buy a ticket, they would mumble "Just a second..." and disappear. We arrived at our desired stop having never paid for a ticket...

Sell me a ticket! I want to give you money!

The railway winds its way through the picturesque hills of Buda, and stops quite close to the tallest point in Budapest, Elizabeth Lookout Tower on Janos hill. We decided to head up there, especially since I read online that there's a chairlift you can use to get there. Well, we found the chairlift, but it went the wrong way -- down the hill, not up. So we trudged through the snow the rest of the way to the tower and enjoyed the view (Jasmine, who decided to join us at the last minute, was wearing Converse in the snow and did not enjoy herself quite as much -- but the view was worth it!)

Beautiful view from the top!

After taking in the view, we availed ourselves of the chairlift we had previously found and used that to get back down instead of taking the railway again. At the end of the chairlift, there was a sign that said "Smile!" When I saw it, I turned to Jasmine and said "Look! I sign that says 'Smile'!" and of course, the moment my mouth was awkwardly mid-sentence was when the picture was taken.

As usual, I'm yapping away and Jasmine looks afraid to be with me.

We both decided to buy this photo, because it cracks us up. Elisabeth, who was behind us, also had an amusing photo where she looked like there was nothing more she wanted to do in the world than ride the chairlift. One might say she looked chuffed to bits.

On the way home, we managed to overshoot our bus stop by several stops, and had to retrace our steps to get to where we wanted to go. Hey, just because I live here doesn't mean I don't get lost!

It occurred to me as I watched the child-conductors do their thing that it seemed fitting to explore the Children's Railway with Eli -- after all, when we met, we would have been at exactly the right age to work on the train ourselves. Eighteen years later, and we had become the awkward adults trying (unsuccessfully) to buy a ticket.

Here's to nearly two decades of friendship!

First Day of Class

This morning, bright and early, I walked into my first class of the semester, put my things down, and then said to the class, "Good morning! Welcome to American Culture, if you're not here for that, then you're in the wrong classroom." I expected lots of exuberant head nods, but instead all sixteen of my students stared at me like I was growing a second head.

"Um..." said one student hesitantly, "This is supposed to be American English." My brilliant, confident smile started to fade.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Are all of you here for American English? Not American Culture?" Of course, that's when they began exuberantly nodding.

"OK... um.... just a second." I said, and I ran downstairs to the department secretary's office, feeling a sense of impending dread.

I knocked, and feeling stupid, I told the secretary that my students were all under the impression they were in a different course than the one I was prepared to teach. She checked her schedule, and-- sure enough-- I was supposed to be teaching American English, not American Culture. 

Joy of joys, what a way to start the day!

So there I was, with sixteen students waiting to hear about a course that I had not prepared for at all.  Thankfully, I did actually teach the American English course last semester, so I quickly ran to the printer and printed out a few copies of my old syllabus, and I happened to have my laptop with my lesson plans on it with me, so after explaining the situation to my students (who took it in stride, bless them), I winged it. After class, I quickly updated the syllabus and e-mailed it out to everyone.

The problem is, since I'm not a permanent teacher at ELTE, for some inexplicable reason they can't grant me access to the on-line system that manages course registration and student information. To find out who is in my class, or even what time or where my classes are, I have to ask the department secretary. Before I left for the break last semester, the department chair told me I would probably be teaching two sections of American Culture -- at some point, that must have changed, and I just never got the memo.

Luckily, at this point, literally nothing phases me anymore. One time in Mozambique. I thought we had a month left in the trimester, and my colleague informed me that, in fact, the class I was going to teach an hour later was the last time I would see my students for the year. One time in San Antonio, my students were so advanced that they blew through the material I had planned an hour for in five minutes, and I just made stuff up for the rest of the fifty-five minutes. Then of course, there was the time that I was sitting at the school in the middle of nowhere with a dozen girls ready for an overnight field trip, and our bus driver canceled on us, leaving us stranded. So, in the grand scheme of things, messing up on Syllabus Day isn't really the worst thing to happen.

Still, it felt a little bit like that nightmare that I'm sure everyone has had, when you show up to school and there's a test you forgot to study for, or you go to work and you're supposed to give a presentation that you didn't know about.

I also got splashed by the bus and soaked with muddy water on the way to work, and I've come down with a cold just in time for the start of school. You got anything else to throw at me, Spring Semester? BRING. IT. ON.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

While January was a bit sleepy around these parts, things have really kicked into gear this month! Time is flying, and gone are the quiet days of winter break. Here's a recap of some of the things that I've been up to recently:

The Good: In Which I Did A Cool Thing!

There's an initiative of the State Department called American Corners; these are offices located all over the world and serve to promote and strengthen understanding of Americans and American culture. The American corner in Budapest often hosts events and discussions related to the United States, from holidays to politics to religion. The director of the Corner (and a good friend of mine) Vali, asked me a while back to host a discussion. So, just over a week ago, I led a conversation at the American Corner about volunteerism. 

The people who attended had all been involved in volunteer work in some form or fashion -- from one lady who does children's programs for siblings of cancer patients so the parents have time to focus on their sick child, to another woman who works with an organization to help people living with multiple sclerosis. I talked about my experience in the Peace Corps, as well as some of the things I am doing here in Hungary, and it led into a really interesting discussion about volunteering. How can we make sure that the volunteering we do is effective? How do you overcome burnout? How can we motivate more people to engage with their community?

It was a really interesting discussion, and I was so glad that Vali asked me to do it. Those of you that know me well know that I don't particularly enjoy public speaking. (I know, I know, I'm a teacher. I do this for a living.) But through my teaching, and events like this, I am getting better at it (and more confident) every time. Plus, I got to have a lovely evening with some intelligent and community-minded Hungarians. Success!

The Bad: In Which I Witnessed an Operatic Disaster

Since the first grade, when I was cast in the prominent role of "mouse" in our class production of The Little Red Hen, I have nurtured a lifelong love of theater, and especially musicals. So when a friend of mine invited me to a special showing of an opera about to open here in Budapest, I accepted without hesitation. Little did I know what I was getting into!

This was a production of Porgy and Bess -- which, if you haven't seen it, revolves around members of a poor Black community in the slums of 1930's Charleston, South Carolina, and it is traditionally performed by an all-Black cast. Given that the Black community in Budapest is pretty small, I immediately wondered how that would work. The answer? Imagine a cast of all-white Hungarian opera singers, highly trained in German, English, and Italian operas, attempting to get through lyrics like this:

"No, no, brudder, Porgy ain' sof' on no woman;

They pass by singin',

They pass by cryin', always lookin'.

They look in my do' an' they keep on movin'.

When Gawd make cripple,

he mean him to be lonely.

Night time, day time,

he got to trabble dat lonesome road."

It. Was. A. Disaster.

Now, usually, I am all about sharing of cultures, and would hypothetically support a show that might serve to educate Hungarians more about American culture and history. However, this show was so staggeringly bad that I am still shocked that it ever even got off the ground. Apparently, none of the designers talked to each other, because the set looked like the inside of a contemporary art museum (think: white walls, bushes, and metallic shapes) complete with escalator. The costumes looked like someone just went nuts in a thrift shop with the concept "homeless chic". For some reason, half the cast wore neon colored wigs, but you couldn't tell because the actors were in dark pockets the whole time. The lighting designer inside my cried the whole time. Even if you could have seen them properly, the characters were flat and lifeless, and it was really hard to follow what was happening despite the fact that there were subtitles in English. 

That said, the friend who invited me is a professional dramaturg, so we had a grand old time discussing the production with her and her other dramaturg friends. It's been a long time since I got to hang out with "theater people" so even though it was an awful show, weirdly enough, I had fun.

To see what I'm talking about, you can watch a "trailer" for the production here.

The Ugly: Piggies Big and Small

Hungarians really like festivals. Since coming here, I've been to a dessert festival, a chimney cake festival, and a few others. This weekend, Jasmine and I took the opportunity to go to a sausage festival. (Yes, you can laugh. Get it out of your system).

It was perfect timing, actually, because we had been out late the night before with the other Fulbrighters, and were in need of some fresh air and greasy food. We could smell the festival before we could see it, and it did not disappoint. So many different types of sausage, as well as cheeses, wines, honey, crafts, soaps... it was fun. 

To warm up the appetite, there were some pens that you could look into, containing some huge, smelly pigs. Mmmm. Naturally, after looking at the pigs, we went and bought some pork sausage, which we ate with traditional Hungarian stuffed cabbage. Delicious! 

This morning (the next day), I was sitting in my favorite coffeeshop doing some lesson planning, when in walks a lady with her pet on a leash. Now, it's quite normal in Hungary for people to bring their dogs into coffeeshops (especially since, as a whole, Hungarian dogs are about a thousand times better behaved than the average American dog.) However, in this case, it was not a dog. It was a pig! A little piglet on a leash, complete with a mini sweater, walking around on its tiny little hooves, sniffing at people and wagging it's little curly tail. The pig looked so happy, and I couldn't help but feeling a little guilty for eating his peers less than twelve hours before.

OINK

Sarajevo

Two weeks ago, my friend Jasmine found really cheap tickets to Sarajevo, so she, Tanya and I decided to have a last-minute weekend getaway. A perfect mix of adventure and frugality! 

Unfortunately, my first impression of the Sarajevo was not good; the first thing we did upon arriving was to get lost in a semi-autonomous area, where the streets were creepily empty and the buildings riddled with bullet holes. As my travel companions and I tried to find the tram stop (all the while being followed by large, stray, barking dogs) we wondered “What are we doing here!?”

The tram is a hand-me-down from the Czech Republic.

However, three days later, my opinion on Sarajevo has completely changed; it was one of the most fascinating places I have been to in a long time. Although still recovering from the ravages of the Bosnian war, it has a lot to offer for such a small city. The memories of the war are evident everywhere, and many of the most interesting places we went were related to the Siege of Sarajevo, but battle scars are not the only thing Sarajevo has to offer; It is a fascinating place, steeped in history, where many different cultures and religions intersect. There is one particular intersection in the city where, if you look East, you might think you’re in Istanbul—but then you turn to the West, it could easily be a street in Vienna. This is a city where you can walk by beautiful Orthodox and Catholic churches while hearing the Muslim call to prayer from neighboring mosques.

Sarajevo from above.

East-West Divide

The historic heart of Sarajevo, the Old Town, clearly showcases Sarajevo’s Ottoman legacy. To me, it was a refreshing change from the Old Towns in so many other Central European cities, which tend to blend together in my memories. I could (and we did) spend several hours wandering the Old Town, browsing the copper wares, and periodically stopping for Turkish tea or traditional Bosnian Coffee (served with Bosnian Delight, different from Turkish delight because it’s “bigger and better”, according to one of our Tour guides.)

Bosnian Coffee

Speaking of which, the food in Bosnia: OH. MY. GOODNESS. IT. IS. DELICIOUS. Lots of people make a big fuss over the cevapi (little meat rolls in a bread pocket), but my favorite meal was pita. Bosnian pita is nothing like the pita we know in the United States – it’s so much better. Bosnian Pita consists of filo dough stuffed with one of several ingredients (cheese, spinach, potato, meat…) which is coiled up and baked. It’s sold by the slice, and you can get a large, hot serving for only $2. My favorites were the potato and spinach kind – I could have eaten it every day, but I had to show some self-restraint, so I only ate it two days out of the three. However, I did indulge in daily servings of various types of baklava. My favorite was a hazelnut-filled piece of heaven called the Queen’s Baklava at a family-run place. My mouth waters just thinking about the crispy pastry and the sweet honey.

Pita

Baklava -- the Queen's Baklava is the rolled-up one in front.

The fact that Bosnian food is so amazing made it somehow even sadder to imagine how it must have been in the city when there was no food to be had -- during the Siege of Sarajevo, the almost four-year period where Bosnian Serb troops surrounded, blockaded, and assaulted the city. The Bosnian war ended only twenty years ago, so most Sarajevans still have very vivid memories of that time. Signs of recent warfare are evident; all over the city, on the pavement you can find “Sarajevo Roses,” the remnant of mortar shells that were later filled in with red resin to mark the places where mortar explosions resulted in deaths.

Sarajevo Rose

We wanted to learn more about this time of struggle in Sarajevo’s history, so we signed up for a half-day tour to take us to the places we couldn’t walk to. First, we visited the Tunnel of Life, an underground tunnel dug by Sarajevans to smuggle supplies and food into the desperate city and transport wounded people out. The tiny, cramped, and often wet tunnel was a lifeline. We were allowed to walk through a small segment of the tunnel, and I tried to imagine the desperation of the people who built and depended on the tunnel as I followed in their footsteps.

Tunnel of Life

 Later, we also visited the Olympic bobsled track. When it was built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, the track was a shining emblem of Yugoslavian pride; just ten years later, it would become a bloody battleground and defensive position for Bosnian Serb forces. Nowadays, the track is largely abandoned, but you can walk down it; covered in moss, graffiti, and bullet holes, it is hard to imagine a place with so much natural beauty that once held such promise being the scene of such horror and death.

Bobsled Track

You might think that Sarajevans would be angry, depressed, or jaded after the ordeal they went through; and yet, almost everyone we met was extremely friendly and genuinely interested in talking to us about their lives and finding out more about us. On one occasion, we went to visit one of the famous mosques in the city, Gazi Husrev-Beg’s Mosque. The man who sold us our tickets to the mosque struck up a conversation, and when he found out it was our first time to enter a mosque, he took the time to show us around and give us an impromptu tour. We learned that he was in fact the imam of the mosque, and he even gave us a demonstration of a prayer. 

Gazi Husrev-Beg's Mosque

Similarly, later in the day, after eating dinner we asked our waiter if there was a grocery store nearby. Not only did he tell us where it was, he walked us most of the way to the grocery store – which was good, because he kept telling us the name, and we all thought he was saying “horse shit” (a weird name for a grocery store). Turns out it’s called “Hose” (hoe-sheh), so if he hadn’t walked us there, we’d probably still be wandering the streets of Sarajevo looking for horse shit.

One thing that really surprised me about Sarajevans was the attitude expressed by several of the people we talked to about Yugoslavia. Both of our tour guides expressed a profound sense of nostalgia for the time before the war, when Yugoslavia was united under the firm control of Marshal Tito. There was almost a feeling that independence had brought nothing but war and death to Bosnia. This is so very different from the feeling I got in other countries (such as Mozambique) that also fought bloody civil wars and wars of independence. There, people seemed to value their right to self-determination even more because they had paid such a price for it. I did not get that feeling in Sarajevo. I also felt an uneasiness from a lot of Bosnians, several of whom expressed to us that the peace is a shaky one, and there are still deep divisions and unresolved issues between the ethnic groups in Sarajevo. Of course, the most obvious manifestation of this is the fact that the country is still divided in two, with the Bosnian Federation (Bosnia and Herzegovina) controlling one portion (including most of Sarajevo), and the Repubika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Republic) acting as an autonomous nation, complete with a different language (politically, anyway), alphabet (Cyrillic), as well as their own, very Serbian-looking, flag.

All of this just adds to my fascination with the city. This is a city that was ruled by Romans, Ottomans, and Austro-Hungarians, before becoming a part of Yugoslavia and then gaining independence. It’s a city of only 200,000 people, but it has as much or more to offer as any other capital city in Europe. A picturesque river runs through the middle of town with several unique bridges spanning it (incidentally, one of the bridges was the location of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which sparked World War One).

Latin Bridge, assassination point of Archduke Ferdinand.

Right now, the scars of the Bosnian war are still painfully evident everywhere, but I can imagine what Sarajevo will look like in another few decades, when it has had more time to recover and rebuild: a beautiful city, nestled in the valley, surrounded by mountains, with so much to offer. In any case, if you’re ever in the area, I would highly recommend it as a place to visit. It was one of my favorite places to explore in a long, long time.

Travel buddies :)