Zee rules are zee rules

Ok, so I am on the overnight train to Serbia. Yes, I am aware it sounds like the start of a bad joke. Or an Eagles song. It's bad enough I will be awoken at 3am for an aggressive passport check (Twice! The Hungarians have to say goodbye before the Serbians can say hello), but I was just subjected to the most cranky rule-abiding Austrian who runs a tight ship on train carriage 417. You see, the wackiness of inter-Europe rail is you end up with the strangest amalgamation of actual train carriages all mixed together like a multi-cultural mixer circa 1878.

But I miss the Hungarian overnight train conductors because they look out for a single gal traveling alone such as myself on these smuggler's trains. Last time, I had a conductor insist I change carriages to one that had 3 working locks rather than 2. As much as I appreciated his concern, the thought that a mere two locks might not be enough did give me a moments' pause. Although the train ticket sales people are among the least friendly civil servants, the actual train conductors are sometimes among the nicest, at least the ones who are infused with a sense of pride in their job working the rails, traveling these dark and dusty byways of Eastern Europe. My biological grandfather rode the rails for the post office so I feel entitled to essentialize train conductors!

Anyhow, back to my Austrain carriage en route from Vienna to Belgrade via Budapest. There are two sleeping compartments with human life in them on this carriage of about 8 compartments in total. One has a couple in it, the other, the one I was assigned to, had an grey, bearded man who smelled a bit like Palinka. Not to judge, but it seemed perfectly reasonable that I might be given the chance to move into an empty. Nische don't think so.

"If you wanted a cabin to yourself you should have reserved a private cabin. You can pay for a private cabin if you want one." "

"But there are so many empty cabins - this one is also for 6 people just like I paid for. Why can't I stay there?"

"You think I should open up all these cabins to make a private cabin for everyone on this train?"

And back and forth we went. The weird thing was, he only responded to me when I got a bit huffy - you know, the kind of reaction you finally come to when you know all is lost, the snotty "I just don't see what the big deal is? Why is this so complicated?!" I finally snapped, preparing for a night of bunking with Father Christmas. The something even stranger happened. He just started to unlock an empty and told me to get inside and give him my ticket. Maybe some people just like the rough talk.

Sensing a frost, I thanked him sincerely, but thought I had cooked my own goose when I asked him if he was Hungarian or Serbian. "From Vienna!" he replied. Not even bothering to claim himself Austrian. I should have known. Not just from the interchange, but the clean train car, the matching embroidered button down shirts, and oh, the German he tried to speak to me at first.

Anyhow, that is likely an unnecessarily long recount of my adventures in cross cultural communication. Now I should go to sleep. And hide my stash before the border crossing. Kidding!

The right continues to implode on itself, angers mustard lobby in process

Ketchup is of the people, mustard is of the man.

See also.

Pretty!

Hungarian countryside I visited on May 1st at the top of a lookout we hiked to. This is the Danube Bend (or 'Dunakanyar' !) where the river gets all crazy and heads due north towards Slovakia.

Christmas for scavengers!

Today is one of my favorite days of the year in Budapest. It's Throw Your Crap in the Street Day.

This is the day that each neighborhood gets twice a year to literally kick to the curb anything they don't want, regardless of size of condition, and the rest of it get to go picking through it in search of treasure.

Ok, the scavenging aspect is an unintended consequence, largely attributed to rising poverty, declining state support, and a society devoid of yard sales. I think the only people out there looking through the tat are me and a couple of ex pats and a lot of middle aged Roma people, many of whom strikingly spent the night on the abandoned couches on my street in preparation. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. I mean, there isn't the kind of thrift store culture here. People used to buy well made things and they lasted. And you would never think to throw out a desk or an armoire or a working but dated vacuum cleaner. That's what yard sales and the Goodwill are for! Yes, there are flea markets and of course antique shops, but one cultures' 1960 retro minimalism is another's 1980 Soviet socialist functionality.

The saddle and the tunnel

My bike commute to work is pretty glamorous for the most part, so far as bike routes go. My ride takes me casually through a park, down one of the rare and illusive actual bike routes in this city, across one of the more elegant bridges in bridges in Europe across the Danube, with a view of the Basilica and Parliament there, and the Castle Hill and St Gellert on the way back. Not bad! The downside is that it also involves dodging photo snapping clueless tourists on the bridge, one of the most stressful roundabouts, and this tunnel as pictured here. The tunnel is a cross between the Second Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles, minus the endless car commercial filming, but with all the urine smells of a pedestrian underpass in Echo Park and the air quality of Centralia, PA. It's a ride done quickly and with full knowledge that a little piece of you (or your lungs) die with every pass made without a full face respirator.

This, however, is a photo of the tunnel the other night while I was biking home. Being from LA my first thought was "Skoda commercial? Here?" Nope, just a freshen up. But it was a thrilling ride with no cars, minimal lighting, and a number of pedestrian lookeeloos.

Ship Ahoy

Pirate music for Christian kids!

I don't know what to be more frightened by - the video from Funcle Sam telling the tale of Pirate Saum and talkin' bout being a soul winner, the ventriloquist dummy on the boat, or the fact that Mrs Hook is wearing glasses.

Go for the music, stay for Believin' Bear and the Confession Canon.

Back in the saddle!

(photo of Critical Mass Hungary 09 from Time magazine of all places!)

I am back riding my bike to and fro, commuting as a biped to work each day just in time for Earth Day! This, thanks to a generous and very pregnant friend who is lending me her bike.

It's such a cliche, but I feel a renewed sense of freedom and liberation. The downside is that Budapest remains a decidedly unfriendly city for bikes. Despite the biggest Critical Mass rides, the roads are too narrow, drivers too aggressive, and paths too nonexistent. I have already had two minor mishaps and the problem for me isn't so much the sense of eminent danger as it is the growing feeling of righteousness within.

I am a Libra's Libra, and my sense of fairness, of balance, and clearly of wreaking justice and judgement are in my nature. So when a middle aged father stopped his car to yell at me for blocking his passage on a super narrow bit of road behind the Mammut mall where I was riding as close to the parked cars as I could without rubbing against them for a cuddle, I was outraged. Of course, I felt obliged to let him know how I felt with my instinctive middle finger making its obligatory salute. Then something happened. We were stuck at a light together and thus began the battle of the self-righteous expletives, concluding, or so he thought, in an almost trance like utterance on his behalf of "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck YOU." I mean, how could I top a quad? Well, after reaching into the darkest corner of my insult bag, I grab the most obvious, but perhaps most deadly insult to throw at him. So with all the haughtiness and tut-tutting I could muster, I yell back at the man who has been screaming the f word at me while leaning across his 9 year old expressionless daughter: "you are a horrible driver and a terrible father."

Bamb! Gotcha!

Of course I couldn't quite leave it at that and followed up with some blah blah how dare you yell at me in front of your daughter blah blah to someone on a BICYCLE (like he had afronted the gods of lance). But somehow, it didn't make me feel any better. I felt little high calling him on his bad parental role modeling, but I didn't get the satisfaction I thought the trump card would have gotten me. But more to the point, what strikes me about me in this regard, is my obsession with thinking, nee knowing, I am right. But not just that I am right, actually, but that I must right the world of its unfair ways and behaviors. Sadly, this doesn't manifest itself in organizing productive responses to the evils of the world. Instead, I am like the Fairness Police, conducting verbal citizen arrests to right the petty wrongs of the world. Last week, I Let The Manager of the Pizza Stand at the Budapest Airport Know that they were ripping people off with the lack of difference in size but double the price salad bar bowls. She hardly spoke English but I just Had To Let Her Know. Politely of course. Just like how I can't help myself from letting people know their cutting in line Did Not Go Unnoticed.

Righting the petty wrongs of the world. I am indeed a crank old lady before my time.

Katey likes the blue dolls

In a moment of headache desperation, I asked my Romanian colleague if she had some aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen, anything to stop the pain. She did one better and with a gleam in her eye, dug into her purse and handed me her wonder pills.

"Take these! They are magic! From Romania."

"What is it?" I inquired, eyeing the package and not recognizing a single ingredient except for caffeine, which got me immediately perked up.

"Dunno, but take 2!" was the enthusiastic reply.

I get bad headaches. They come on unexpectedly and cane wipe me out for a day if I am not careful. Advil Liquid Gel caps are my drug of choice - the only meds that ever work and that I can swallow. But Advil had yet to have its Liquid Gel Caps infiltrate the Hungarian market. Regular ibuprofen just doesn't work - believe me, I've tried. I've tried everything in fact. Everything except these mysterious, uncoated generic white, flat pills about the 2/3 the size of a dime. I took two as suggested, sat down, and felt my headache just wash over me, leaving me within a mere 15 minutes, headache free, relaxed and ready to get back to work. I was curious, but not one to look magic in the eye and ask it for a reference, I quickly asked how I could get my hands on more of these wondrous and apparently over the counter pills from Romania! And proceeded to have a ridiculously productive afternoon.

I was convinced they were maybe some kind of codeine derivative, maybe a vicodin-lite. I feared addictive qualities in the long run, but figured that until my next visitor arrived with the gel cap delivery, whatever these dolls were, they would get me through the spring.

But file this (predictably) under too good to be true. I decided that ignorance was not the best policy when it came to meds, I did a proper (Google) search for the only to learn that metamizol sodic was actually banned by the FDA in 1977. Apparently, in .2-2% of users it can cause something to happen that could possibly lead to death. Whatever. A small price to pay for such good headache relief I say! I also learned that it is the most popular headache / pain relief med in other countries as well like Spain, Turkey, Mexico, Nigeria and other parts of Eastern Europe. The FDA spoils all the fun.

Did I mention it has caffeine in it?

This, of course, does raise some serious questions about differing standards across countries. At the same time, it really works! Ibuprofin is supposed to rot livers, but the pill that works even better 'might' kill me. Dilemmas dilemmas.

Ok, I will cut myself off from the wonder med, but not until someone comes to visit with a big box of gel caps! In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my temporary new lover while it's around.

Exedrin Migrane anyone?

Big in Bosnia

Not me, Obama!

Happy May Day!

I was a Campfire Girl when I was a kid, what I suppose was some kind of neo-hippy suburban alternative to the Girl Scouts. Where they had Brownies, we were Bluebirds. To their (albeit addictively delicious Thin Mints, an industry unto themselves), we had Peanuttles and Sunkist Fruit gems. We earned not badges but wooden beads, and would stitch them on our felt vests in random patterns whilst in deep thought selecting our Indian names that we would be called by during the campfire ceremonies. My name was Wah Ton Yeh, or "Brave Bright Eyes". My mom picked it out for me. At the ceremonial campfires we would chant "Wo He Lo" (in extended, drawn-out, dramatic fashion, a rise and fall so it sounded more like "wooah HEEE low". This stood for work, health, love. What else did a Bluebird need?

What does this have to do with May Day? Nothing on the surface, but it represents my only point of reference for May Day, which was not a celebration of workers' rights, revolution, standing up to the man, or what could today in Eastern Europe be considered a more complicated connection to a Soviet socialist past, but it was about wearing white and wrapping colorful crepe paper around a tether ball pole in Mrs. Fogg's backyard and afterwards, practicing our do-si-do and eating homemade donuts. I know flowers were involved but I forget how - I was way more interested in the donuts.

My research into the subject (consisting of a Google search and quick skim read) tells me that the Maypole is connected to German Paganism.

Now, here in Central Eastern Europe, the red countries have a big public holiday akin to our Labor Day. It's still a big holiday here and while I celebrated by going on a hike with friends in the nearby Pilis Mountains, Hungarian comrades have big worker's celebrations at Hero Square. I even ran into some labor groups getting off the train
while I was leaving the city. They were full of energy bringing some life into Nygati Station with their chating and team spirit. But to me it seemed anachronistic, or just weirdly misplaced. Even though I should be cheering for the May Day ideal, to an outsider, it's hard to tell what this all means in post-Communist Hungary, with a corrupted (even if recently changed PM) Socialist government, the economic crisis, falling forint and near bankruptcy of the entire country and subsequent rising nationalism, racism and violence against Roma people, it's hard to read what going on in the streets on 1 May anymore.

Makes me miss the days of the Peanuttles and Do-Si-Do's.