Saturday, August 30, 2008
Solar oven
This solar oven is based on the plans by Joe Radabaugh. They are very well thought out: the mixture of water and glue goes onto the foil smoothly; the pieces fit together pretty well, the collector folds up nicely. And you can cook many, many dishes in one of these. Today, we baked cookies, which we overdid a little; cooked an egg; boiled water for tea; and started pepper-parmesan bread. So easy! Free cooking! No fuel required! No pollution! Brilliant!
Solar cooker
Made a solar cooker from a car windshield shade! Simple, and cost about $9 in materials. It is incredibly straightforward to put together. The windshield shade cost about $6 from Pet Boys, and I also bought some velcro for less than $3. And a special oven bag. The whole design is a mini portable greenhouse (the plastic oven bag) that sits inside a solar collector (the windshield shade folded up in a cone.) The whole thing folds up nicely, is relatively easy and light to move around and reposition, and it works OK. I've used it lots of times to boil water for making tea.
But the bag isn't large enough to fit much into. And the cooker is difficult to position. The original plans must have used a shade that was much stiffer than the one I bought, which was the cheapest one stocked by Pet Boys. You can mold it into the desired shape with your hands, but a moment after you let go, it flops and sags. I ended up pinning strings to the border of the shade and using the strings to stake out the collector. This makes it quite inconvenient to shift with the sun. And the cake rack kept falling into the bucket. This isn't an easy cooker to use, at least not the way I built it, with the floppy shade.
Oddity of online purchases
OK, trip done, back to 2008.
An oddity of buying things online from Amazon--whose website I love, for their enormous investment in the infrastructure and development for storing all those reviews by customers -- is their weird policy for free shipping. I just bought something for which the total came to $24.99, one penny less than qualifies for free shipping. The shipping total was a bit over $5. So anything less than $5 shipped from Amazon is free, but it's hard to find stuff for less than $5.In the modern age, it is just guaranteed that someone has put a solution to this problem somewhere on the web, and as expected, here is a whole compilation of various solutions:
http://www.wisebread.com/filler-strategies-for-amazon-s-free-super-saver-shipping
Ha! So Amazon paid me about $5 to accept an espresso spoon, whatever that is. This is a nonsensical business decision on the part of Amazon -- why does anyone still think the macroeconomics idea that the market is rational?
An oddity of buying things online from Amazon--whose website I love, for their enormous investment in the infrastructure and development for storing all those reviews by customers -- is their weird policy for free shipping. I just bought something for which the total came to $24.99, one penny less than qualifies for free shipping. The shipping total was a bit over $5. So anything less than $5 shipped from Amazon is free, but it's hard to find stuff for less than $5.In the modern age, it is just guaranteed that someone has put a solution to this problem somewhere on the web, and as expected, here is a whole compilation of various solutions:
http://www.wisebread.com/filler-strategies-for-amazon-s-free-super-saver-shipping
Ha! So Amazon paid me about $5 to accept an espresso spoon, whatever that is. This is a nonsensical business decision on the part of Amazon -- why does anyone still think the macroeconomics idea that the market is rational?
Monday, August 18, 2008
Seaside Daisy (Erigeron glaucus)
Nice little low green plant with daisies. The daisies look white, pale pink, pale blue, or lavender, depending on the light. The ones in the photo are in partial sun in the summer, full shade in the winter. They get a little bit of supplemental water: I spray them for a few minutes when I water my street tree every few weeks in the summer. They have spread out to make a pretty nice groundcover. In the picture, the seaside daisy is the green plant to the center bottom left-ish with 2 white flowers in the center. This one has been there about a year and has been blooming periodically the whole time.
Dwarf Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis Twin Peaks)
For me, this has formed a low, dense, green mat of groundcover, filling a spot in the hellstrip that gets very little supplemental water for the last 4 years. Las Pilitas apparently hates this variety, but I bought this plant before reading their opinion, and it has worked very well for me in an awkward spot so far. I'm 4 miles from the ocean, and they seem to have had trouble with it inland, so perhaps that's the critical difference. Or maybe it's going to die in the middle in a few more years. Hope not!
It's nice because it's completely green, no hint of gray. A nice contrast to other CA natives. And it totally covers the ground, looking lush and dense. It has yellow flowers, but they're barely noticeable.
Has received no care from me since the first summer. This nursery says to shear hard once a year. Have never done that.
This spot gets full sun in the summer, partial sun in the winter. The width of the planted area in the photo is 4 feet. The Theodore Payne website says it should be in full sun, but it has been OK for hte last 4 years in pretty dense shade during the winters at my house.
Giant Wild Rye (Elymus condensatus Canyon Prince)
Very cool-looking grass. Big! Mine is about 4 feet wide after 4 years, and starting to look a bit squashed in the spot it lives in. Las Pilitas says it should get about 30 inches of rain a year, so our 15-20 inches in LA is a bit low, but my Canyon Prince is near a street tree that has to be watered, so it gets a little extra water anyway.
In the closeup photo, the wide, bluish leaves belong to Canyon Prince, and the narrow, green ones to deergrass.
It has blue-gray-silver strap-like leaves, about an inch across at their widest, and a couple of feet tall. It has a pleasant, mounded shape that doesn't need pruning or attention. It looks good all year. Mine is in full sun in the summer, partial sun in the winter. Has never needed any work after the first planting and watering.
I liked this big guy so much that I went back to several more 1-gallon pots of it at Theodore Payne. They were out of the Canyon Prince variety, so I bought 3 of the plain species Elymus condensatus. Big mistake. Totally lame-looking plant. Flops over, looking messy, lacks the nice, dense, moundy shape of the Canyon Prince, and is a boring plain pale green instead of the cool blue-gray of Canyon Prince. They never looked like anything but weeds, and I pulled them all out after a year and threw them away. An expensive mistake.
Yarrow, Achillea
Yarrow (achillea millefolium) is pretty, is easy to grow from seed, has lovely soft, ferny foliage, big flower heads that dry in place and still look pretty good. It's one of the few natives that has grown well from seed for me. Although several references say it's good for dry shade, it hasn't done much for me in the totally unwatered part of my shady front yard. Each plant is still a couple of inches across after a couple of years. But the somewhat watered ones look great.
It appears that there is a European yarrow and a native one...can't tell what I have. The seeds came from Theodore Payne.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Deergrass
The deergrass grows quickly and is nice, thick and healthy. It has handsome seedstalks for a lot of the year. A really nice, large mounding grass. After I saw how these did the first year, I got some more. And last year the first year's bunches were big enough to divide, so I risked a division and moved the littler parts down to the other end of the hellstrip, where they;re now thriving. I love this grass and can't recommend it enough. It's also nice because it's green year-round.
The Las Pilitas nursery website has a nice description of this grass, but a few things were different in my garden from their description: it does grow quickly, but took more like 4 years to get to "mature size", assuming that these large mounds I have now are finally mature. (But they're not next to a seasonal creek, so probably get less water than they would in their natural habitat. No, actually, I have no idea how much water they get, because they but up against the neighbor's lawn, and he waters a lot.) And the seed plumes are more like 5 feet tall, not 2 feet, in my garden.
For reference: shown here are 3 plants that came in 1-gallon pots from Theodore Payne nursery, planted in my garden at the beginning of February 2009. The hellstrip planting area width is 4 feet. The pictures were taken in August, 2008. This area receives full sun in the summer and partial sun in the winter. After the first 2 years, the grasses have received NO supplemental water from me, although they probably receive a little from the neighbor when he waters his lawn, which starts where these end. Last fall (fall 2007), I divided 2 of these plants and put the (much smaller) divisions on the other end of the hellstrip. The divisions are doing well, are the same height, and are now about 1 foot in diameter.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Discovery in the passion fruit vine
I was halfway through pollinating this passionflower this morning when movement fractions of an inch from my fingers caught my eye -- this guy was shifting around. There's a native Californian praying mantis, maybe this it it.
The hellstrip
This seems to be the new name for the section of "lawn" between the sidewalk and the street. Difficult to water, compacted by walkers, surrounded by hot concrete impermeable to rain, they're difficult spots to garden. In LA, they're also apparently legally required to be planted with short-mown grass.
Here is mine in June, 2008 (above) and May, 2007 (below.)
Using our little car as a guide, I measured where the door of a car that was parked on the street with its front bumper right up to our driveway opening would open onto the hellstrip. Then I dug the dirt out and filled it with decomposed granite to form a path. Then again on the other side of the street tree. Turns out most cars are so much bigger than my car that their doors open right into hte tree, so this was almost pointless. Still, it does seem that people mostly walk on the "paths" I made for them rather than on the tender plants. (Or LA is just so car-happy that all the cars that park there contain only their driver, so no passengers have to get out onto my hellstrip anyway.) I hope this is a good balance between a safe and neighborly offering of convenience for passengers, drought tolerant design, and plantings that please me.
And here, in detail appealing only to other people trying to garden with natives in LA (all 2 of them) , are the lists of plants shown.
Top pic: the grasses are deer grass (muhlenbergia rigens) and little baby fescue grasses (festuca glauca siskiyou blue), santolina (not native), lots of recently transplanted little chalk dudleyas (dudleya pulverulenta). The small flowers on the left are some yarrow grown from seed. In the center, the dark green mat is a manzanita, arctostaphylos edmundii parviflora. The yarrow are really best with more water than falls naturally here. With supplemental water, they're lovely, though.
The pink flowers are clarkia, grown new from seed each spring and self-sowed. Easy, aggressive, self-seeding, tolerant of medium to minute amounts of water after germination.
Next Long Topic: Front Garden
Living in California, it strikes me as reasonable to garden primarily with plants from California, especially local ones. So mostly my garden contains local natives, except for plants that have other very appealing features, like edible parts that I actually want to eat. Or unless they were here before I was.
When we moved to the little house we live in now, it had a pretty jewel-green lawn. I like the soft, velvety look of that sort of lawn, but it had to go. Neither of us was willing to mow it, fertilize it, put the required water into it, pamper it. So I sliced it off and used the topsoil to build raised beds in my backyard. Then I planted it with California natives appropriate for dry shade in southern California, surrounded them with lots and lots of shredded redwood bark, and waited.
Before starting, I read a lot of landscape books. I also did a lot of reading about native plants before choosing the ones I used. I looked at other gardens in my neighborhood and everywhere else we visited. It was difficult to find examples of plants and settings similar to mine: in Los Angeles, fully shaded in the winter, mostly shaded in the summer.
I had never grown California-native plants before. If other gardens were using them (mostly, they weren't), I didn't recognize them when I saw them. And looking at images of the plants in entries in book encyclopedias and websites just doesn't give you a good sense of what the plant will look like in your garden: the shades of color, the texture, the shininess or matteness of the parts, the final size and shape. And these are among the essential things you need to know to grow a lovely garden.
I don't have a lovely garden. But it is thriving, fully of interesting bugs and creatures, and very low in water use. So I would like to list all the plants I put in, what happened with them (a few died or had to be moved), and include lots of pictures with scale. Some pics with closeups, showing the detail of leaves and stems and flowers, some more distant, so you can see the size and shape of the plant relative to other plants. And when possible, how the plants grow over time. I bought everything in 4" or 1-gallon pots. I hope this will be useful to others who are experimenting with these plants.
Above is what the front garden looked like in May, 2007. Below, June 2008.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Milan
We spent a couple days in Milan, partly to meet an American friend who was passing through. We had our first brush with the famous Italian bureaucracy there. We had a package of 7 rolls of developed film to send home. We looked up the address of the main post office on our transit map and confirmed it with our guidebook. It turned out to be a massive gaudy building stuffed with ornamentation, with 'Poste Italia' written in story-high letters on the top. Inside, the cavernous lobby was lined with windows -- 1 through 47 or something like that. None of them were labelled except with signs that say they are closed or are for mail. So we stood in a short line for awhile. Eventually, when we got to the front and showed the woman working behind the window the US address on our package, she said something long and passionate in Italian that included the number 4. So we went to window 4 and stood in line. There the woman behind the window eventually told us something passionate in Italian that involved pointing back toward the building entrance, and included the number 4.
We walked back toward the building entrance where she had pointed. There was nothing there except the building entrance. We walked out the entrance and around the corner, looking for another door. All the way on the other side of the building was another door. It was labelled Bank of Italy. We peered in. It appeared to be the Bank of Italy. We went back to the plaza where the map indicated to see if there was a building 4 on the plaza. An Italian man was telling some young English tourists, in
English, where something was, and we asked if they were looking for the international window of the post office. We and the English couple and another guy who had apparently also been searching for an international postal window finally reached the
right building, down the street a bit, not on the indicated plaza at all. The building was labelled with the names of lots of little unrelated office businesses; it had no Posta signs.
We went inside the first door on the left, as the friendly Italian guy had instructed. After standing in line for awhile, we got to the window, where an Italian guy asked us in Italian whether we wanted express mail or normal mail. I asked (I thought) in Italian, how much it would cost to send it express. He said, express or regular. I said regular. He said, "No, there" and pointed at the entrance of the big room. So we left the room and found another room with post office-like windows. We stood in line at the huge window that said Internazionale. The guy told us in English, "Stamp! Stamp! 4!" So we stood in line at bullet-proof glass enclosed window 4. Getting stamps involved going down to another window and putting our package into a box in the counter from which the number 4 postal worker retrieved it. She weighed it, sent it back through the box in the counter and we got our stamps. We glued the stamps on with a sticky brush and a pot of glue and went back to the Internazionale window. They tossed our package into a box of packages and we hope someday it will arrive in the US. We did not, among all those transactions, fill out any of the customs forms that are customary in other parts of Italy and Europe, so we may never see our 7 rolls of film again.
Also in Milan is the stupendous Duomo and the gorgeous Galleria, which if we have to have shopping malls is definitely how they ought to look.
We walked back toward the building entrance where she had pointed. There was nothing there except the building entrance. We walked out the entrance and around the corner, looking for another door. All the way on the other side of the building was another door. It was labelled Bank of Italy. We peered in. It appeared to be the Bank of Italy. We went back to the plaza where the map indicated to see if there was a building 4 on the plaza. An Italian man was telling some young English tourists, in
English, where something was, and we asked if they were looking for the international window of the post office. We and the English couple and another guy who had apparently also been searching for an international postal window finally reached the
right building, down the street a bit, not on the indicated plaza at all. The building was labelled with the names of lots of little unrelated office businesses; it had no Posta signs.
We went inside the first door on the left, as the friendly Italian guy had instructed. After standing in line for awhile, we got to the window, where an Italian guy asked us in Italian whether we wanted express mail or normal mail. I asked (I thought) in Italian, how much it would cost to send it express. He said, express or regular. I said regular. He said, "No, there" and pointed at the entrance of the big room. So we left the room and found another room with post office-like windows. We stood in line at the huge window that said Internazionale. The guy told us in English, "Stamp! Stamp! 4!" So we stood in line at bullet-proof glass enclosed window 4. Getting stamps involved going down to another window and putting our package into a box in the counter from which the number 4 postal worker retrieved it. She weighed it, sent it back through the box in the counter and we got our stamps. We glued the stamps on with a sticky brush and a pot of glue and went back to the Internazionale window. They tossed our package into a box of packages and we hope someday it will arrive in the US. We did not, among all those transactions, fill out any of the customs forms that are customary in other parts of Italy and Europe, so we may never see our 7 rolls of film again.
Also in Milan is the stupendous Duomo and the gorgeous Galleria, which if we have to have shopping malls is definitely how they ought to look.
Bologna
Bologna had a great covered farmer's market in the center of town with all the usual fresh veggies, sausages, cheeses and game, plus lots of strange local delicacies. We saw something in an elegant little jar called homogenized rabbit.
Bologna also has one of the highest remaining medieval towers in Europe (it told us which rank it had but that was a week ago, sorry) and along the (498) steps up to the top they have proudly placed plaques showing the heights of lesser towers.
Bologna also has one of the highest remaining medieval towers in Europe (it told us which rank it had but that was a week ago, sorry) and along the (498) steps up to the top they have proudly placed plaques showing the heights of lesser towers.
Florence
September, 1999
Florence is filled with an astonishing number of famous original works of art and architecture. But it is a stunning return to the world of cars after Venice. The buses and scooters are for some reason really loud, much louder than usual so that whenever one goes by conversation has to stop until the vehicle goes another block away. In fact, you often have to yell to talk at all outside. And the scooters dont seem to have catalytic converters - they trail thick cones of foul sooty stink behind them. The sidewalks have been retrofitted from their medieval designs to accommodate cars on the streets, which means that the sidewalks are now about 2 feet wide, not wide enough for 2 people to walk together and definitely too narrow for all the people who want to use them. And cars park on them anyway, so they're often completely blocked. Even the lovely areas around the Duomo, the cathedral, which have, at least according to our books, been designated pedestrian-only areas, have taxis and scooters bargeing down them every few minutes scattering tourists everywhere.
Things are outrageously expensive here; Florence costs even more than Vienna. And so far the food has been less than excellent or not very good. Food costs about twice as much as in Venice. We're trying to be a bit thrifty with our eating, and perhaps that is our problem in Florence. The gelato is wonderful and not terribly expensive, but pizza by the slice, bruschetta (the regional specialty) and the little tramezzini sandwiches in all the bakeries are mostly just not very good and very expensive.
The Bapistery, an octagonal building started in the 7th century and used for many centuries as Florence's great cathedral, is an amazing building. The vast mostly circular interior is completely empty of furniture or walls. You lose track of scale until you see some tiny figure on the other side of the space and realize it's really people-sized.
Every interior surface is carefully decorated. The tile floor is made of brightly colored marble tiles that form various patterns with completely different designs every few yards (most of them completely unrelated to their neighbors. The marble is from different mines in the mountains nearby -- some mines yield green, some white,
some red marble. It has been used to embellish important buildings all over town. In the last century Florence decided to improve the Baptistery's exterior with marble, too, so they covered the old medievel brick with bright marble designs. It is a busy exterior.
After awhile the Florentines got tired of their little cathedral and decided to build a new one more suited to their greater economic and political standing in the world. So the Duomo was built (after quite awhile of figuring out how to actually construct a dome of the size they'd specified.) It is gargantuan and wildly elaborate. The outside is of course completely covered in red white and green marble designs, and the interior is equally embellished though with other materials. We also visited the San Croce church, which is also enormous, but we thought much lovelier.
Galileo, Michaelangelo, Machiavelli and lots of local politicians are buried there. Florence also built a huge magnificent tomb for Dante there, too, but they had previously banished him from the city so he stayed put and they just have a big empty tomb. (They don’t tell you that in any of the church literature, though. They just say they have Dante's tomb.)
Florence is filled with an astonishing number of famous original works of art and architecture. But it is a stunning return to the world of cars after Venice. The buses and scooters are for some reason really loud, much louder than usual so that whenever one goes by conversation has to stop until the vehicle goes another block away. In fact, you often have to yell to talk at all outside. And the scooters dont seem to have catalytic converters - they trail thick cones of foul sooty stink behind them. The sidewalks have been retrofitted from their medieval designs to accommodate cars on the streets, which means that the sidewalks are now about 2 feet wide, not wide enough for 2 people to walk together and definitely too narrow for all the people who want to use them. And cars park on them anyway, so they're often completely blocked. Even the lovely areas around the Duomo, the cathedral, which have, at least according to our books, been designated pedestrian-only areas, have taxis and scooters bargeing down them every few minutes scattering tourists everywhere.
Things are outrageously expensive here; Florence costs even more than Vienna. And so far the food has been less than excellent or not very good. Food costs about twice as much as in Venice. We're trying to be a bit thrifty with our eating, and perhaps that is our problem in Florence. The gelato is wonderful and not terribly expensive, but pizza by the slice, bruschetta (the regional specialty) and the little tramezzini sandwiches in all the bakeries are mostly just not very good and very expensive.
The Bapistery, an octagonal building started in the 7th century and used for many centuries as Florence's great cathedral, is an amazing building. The vast mostly circular interior is completely empty of furniture or walls. You lose track of scale until you see some tiny figure on the other side of the space and realize it's really people-sized.
Every interior surface is carefully decorated. The tile floor is made of brightly colored marble tiles that form various patterns with completely different designs every few yards (most of them completely unrelated to their neighbors. The marble is from different mines in the mountains nearby -- some mines yield green, some white,
some red marble. It has been used to embellish important buildings all over town. In the last century Florence decided to improve the Baptistery's exterior with marble, too, so they covered the old medievel brick with bright marble designs. It is a busy exterior.
After awhile the Florentines got tired of their little cathedral and decided to build a new one more suited to their greater economic and political standing in the world. So the Duomo was built (after quite awhile of figuring out how to actually construct a dome of the size they'd specified.) It is gargantuan and wildly elaborate. The outside is of course completely covered in red white and green marble designs, and the interior is equally embellished though with other materials. We also visited the San Croce church, which is also enormous, but we thought much lovelier.
Galileo, Michaelangelo, Machiavelli and lots of local politicians are buried there. Florence also built a huge magnificent tomb for Dante there, too, but they had previously banished him from the city so he stayed put and they just have a big empty tomb. (They don’t tell you that in any of the church literature, though. They just say they have Dante's tomb.)
Besotted
Before we went to Venice, I really didn't want to go. It sounded touristy, expensive, corrupted, creepy, and totally unromantic. Some of this impression came from the movie "The Comfort of Strangers" which I saw a long time ago but which really creeped me out. Icky! But it left a lasting impression that Venice is sinister. Also the book Death in Venice--more corruption and unromantic creepiness.
But the reality totally bowled me over. Some of the marvelousness of Venice is just the lack of cars. What a relief. What a fine way to live. Your senses are so happy in Venice. But it also is just such a celebration of beauty, set in stone. I love that the people who built it, maintained it, rebuilt it, genuinely care about community beauty. It's true of every public thing. The bridges are lovely, graceful shapes, and further embellished with decorations. The public lights are handsome. The signs are discreetly attached to walls -- no big, ugly metal poles. The esthetic quality is just so high. And all further enhanced by the fact that evveryone is on foot, and there are no motor vehicles polluting the quiet or the air.
I am totally besotted with Venice.
But the reality totally bowled me over. Some of the marvelousness of Venice is just the lack of cars. What a relief. What a fine way to live. Your senses are so happy in Venice. But it also is just such a celebration of beauty, set in stone. I love that the people who built it, maintained it, rebuilt it, genuinely care about community beauty. It's true of every public thing. The bridges are lovely, graceful shapes, and further embellished with decorations. The public lights are handsome. The signs are discreetly attached to walls -- no big, ugly metal poles. The esthetic quality is just so high. And all further enhanced by the fact that evveryone is on foot, and there are no motor vehicles polluting the quiet or the air.
I am totally besotted with Venice.
Visiting Pecs, Hungary
Pecs is a little art-oriented university town of 160,000 people. It has one of the oldest universities in Europe, a (they claim) famous pottery factory, and lots of famous (in Hungary) artists, writers and musicians. And a truly grand basilica. The basilica is enormous -- what you might expect for a city like London or Paris, not a town of 160,000. Awesome.
We also visited a striking stone church in a building that used to be a mosque when the Turks were in charge in the 1500s. The Turks built it out of the remains of a Medieval Christian church that they had destroyed, so some of the stones have a really distant provenance. It has the typical onion dome, some elegant prayer niches, a few Arabic inscriptions, and lots of gold-accented murals of Jesus and various martyrs and heathens being beheaded.
Pecs is also the home of an artist I. is fond of, Vasarely, who started the Op Art movement. I. can elaborate on this more since I don’t know anything else about it, but we went to a fun Op Art museum with lots of original stuff.
And another museum with an eerie installation art thing. (Sorry for inept vocabulary for art.) We were the only visitors, so the woman we paid at the reception desk gave us a tour. She told us in almost-slow-enough, almost-simple-enough Hungarian who the figures were and what it was all about. I got about 30% of what she said (or at least deluded myself I did) and magically managed to understand her questions when she asked them, so she probably thought we understood more. (Or she was too tactful to let us see that we answered her simple questions with completely unrelated answers.) Anyway, this installation thing gets a whole building of its own, a dim high-ceilinged absolutely silent edifice.
Inside is a street. The work is called "Street" in Hungarian. We read that it is the artist's description of how she felt when her lover left her. Several small buildings front onto this little street, each with one or more windows or doors partly open. You can see a figure from the artist’s life through each open window or door. A lot of the figures are Hungarian writers or actors or actresses. One is Marx. One is the artist's mother. They are all very white-skinned and clothed entirely in white. The only color is their hair, which is made out of spun metal. One woman has bright brass hair. Literally. I think at least some of them were cast from real people, because except for their unnatural whiteness they look convincingly real. Standing at the end of this silent street with all these white cold figures looking out at you windows and doors is really genuinely eerie. We had a great time in there, even though I thought it was kind of creepy. It is certainly the most effective, emotion-provoking installation art thing I've ever seen. Not that I've seen many.
The first night we stayed in Hotel Palatinus, which was on all the maps and tourist brochures. We saw it from the main pedestrian street-- a heavily embellished, yellow and white hotel with balconies all around, flowers everywhere, and wonderful Deco murals inside. The lobby was all tile and marble and gold gilt. The room itself was dim and hot and smelly. We opened the window and sealed off the bathroom and after awhile it was all right, but barely. The staff seemed to resent our taking up their time.
The second night we spent in a cute little place with friendly staff and a hot, odor-free room for less than half the price. They were full the next night, so then we moved to yet another place where the room was small and clean and the bathroom looked immaculate, smelled horrendous. Hungarian toilets, like so many around the world, are designed to separate you from the sewers only visually.
Each night we found a new outdoor cafe on a pedestrian street to sit at. From sundown on we sat outside and drank hot chocolate, cheap wine, or espresso and watched the foot traffic on the cobblestones. We read cheap American novels and talked or just sat. It was quite lovely. Two nights around 8 o'clock we noticed a mysterious sulfurous smell. It hung around for a couple hours and then disappeared. We have no idea what it was.
There was a skinny middle-aged guy selling pretzels from a pushcart on one of the pedestrian streets with a really strange voice. I called him the Pretzel Demon. He had an incredibly creepy, totally unintelligible voice. It sounded completely humanly impossible -- like the results of a Vocoder, not a person. After the first night, we always avoided his street when he was selling his pretzels. Another Pecs mystery.
On our last full day in Pecs, we took a packed local bus up into the hills to some lakes. We had read that there were some special summer festivals up there with folk dancing, local bands, and lots of people. After our 40 minute, 18 km trip up the hills, we found the lakes by getting off the bus when everybody else did. We trailed along after the crowd to an area where you paid to get behind a fence. So we paid to go behind the fence ($1 each) not really knowing what we would find. We found a nice lake with a few acres of shoreline fenced off. The few fenced off acres were filled with THOUSANDS of Hungarians. Families, cruising teenagers, old folks, happy naked babies. Except the happy naked babies, all the men wore Speedoes and all the women wore bikinis. Sunning, running, cruising, playing water soccer, eating. Sort of in the center there's a huge many-times-Olympic-sized swimming pool so crammed with children you couldn't swim a single stroke without running into one. There were people lined up at the snack bars, which had only Hungarian food -- fried bread, sausages, Hungarian crepes, and local beer and wine.
Most people completely ignored the lake itself. We didn't see anyone swimming. A little old lady had a few boats to rent, but that seemed to be the only use of the lake water. And people seemed to be having a great time. For the first time in a crowd since we got here, were heard only Hungarian -- no English or German.
We decided to rent a boat. The boats were booked for awhile, so the best bet for us seemed to be to rent 2 Crocodile boats -- floating mini-boats in bright plastic toy colors for 1 person each. We had a few minutes, so we wandered off to get some sun tan lotion. When we came back at the pre-agreed time (all negotiated stricly in Hungarian, but we were pretty confident we all understood each other) our 2nd boat wasn't there yet. Our little old lady told us it would be a couple more minutes. After 10 more minutes we realized that the cute little boat floating in the middle of the lake with the guy sound asleep in it was probably "ours." We waited a few more minutes and then decided not to wait for him to wake up from his nice rest in our boat.
After awhile we wandered around the lake past the pay area, where people had what we thought were probably their summer homes -- teeny homes with sunflowers and grape vines and homemade docks with rotting dinghys tied up to them. I think it looked like a lovely place for a little summer home and a lovely way to spend a summer with your family.
We also visited a striking stone church in a building that used to be a mosque when the Turks were in charge in the 1500s. The Turks built it out of the remains of a Medieval Christian church that they had destroyed, so some of the stones have a really distant provenance. It has the typical onion dome, some elegant prayer niches, a few Arabic inscriptions, and lots of gold-accented murals of Jesus and various martyrs and heathens being beheaded.
Pecs is also the home of an artist I. is fond of, Vasarely, who started the Op Art movement. I. can elaborate on this more since I don’t know anything else about it, but we went to a fun Op Art museum with lots of original stuff.
And another museum with an eerie installation art thing. (Sorry for inept vocabulary for art.) We were the only visitors, so the woman we paid at the reception desk gave us a tour. She told us in almost-slow-enough, almost-simple-enough Hungarian who the figures were and what it was all about. I got about 30% of what she said (or at least deluded myself I did) and magically managed to understand her questions when she asked them, so she probably thought we understood more. (Or she was too tactful to let us see that we answered her simple questions with completely unrelated answers.) Anyway, this installation thing gets a whole building of its own, a dim high-ceilinged absolutely silent edifice.
Inside is a street. The work is called "Street" in Hungarian. We read that it is the artist's description of how she felt when her lover left her. Several small buildings front onto this little street, each with one or more windows or doors partly open. You can see a figure from the artist’s life through each open window or door. A lot of the figures are Hungarian writers or actors or actresses. One is Marx. One is the artist's mother. They are all very white-skinned and clothed entirely in white. The only color is their hair, which is made out of spun metal. One woman has bright brass hair. Literally. I think at least some of them were cast from real people, because except for their unnatural whiteness they look convincingly real. Standing at the end of this silent street with all these white cold figures looking out at you windows and doors is really genuinely eerie. We had a great time in there, even though I thought it was kind of creepy. It is certainly the most effective, emotion-provoking installation art thing I've ever seen. Not that I've seen many.
The first night we stayed in Hotel Palatinus, which was on all the maps and tourist brochures. We saw it from the main pedestrian street-- a heavily embellished, yellow and white hotel with balconies all around, flowers everywhere, and wonderful Deco murals inside. The lobby was all tile and marble and gold gilt. The room itself was dim and hot and smelly. We opened the window and sealed off the bathroom and after awhile it was all right, but barely. The staff seemed to resent our taking up their time.
The second night we spent in a cute little place with friendly staff and a hot, odor-free room for less than half the price. They were full the next night, so then we moved to yet another place where the room was small and clean and the bathroom looked immaculate, smelled horrendous. Hungarian toilets, like so many around the world, are designed to separate you from the sewers only visually.
Each night we found a new outdoor cafe on a pedestrian street to sit at. From sundown on we sat outside and drank hot chocolate, cheap wine, or espresso and watched the foot traffic on the cobblestones. We read cheap American novels and talked or just sat. It was quite lovely. Two nights around 8 o'clock we noticed a mysterious sulfurous smell. It hung around for a couple hours and then disappeared. We have no idea what it was.
There was a skinny middle-aged guy selling pretzels from a pushcart on one of the pedestrian streets with a really strange voice. I called him the Pretzel Demon. He had an incredibly creepy, totally unintelligible voice. It sounded completely humanly impossible -- like the results of a Vocoder, not a person. After the first night, we always avoided his street when he was selling his pretzels. Another Pecs mystery.
On our last full day in Pecs, we took a packed local bus up into the hills to some lakes. We had read that there were some special summer festivals up there with folk dancing, local bands, and lots of people. After our 40 minute, 18 km trip up the hills, we found the lakes by getting off the bus when everybody else did. We trailed along after the crowd to an area where you paid to get behind a fence. So we paid to go behind the fence ($1 each) not really knowing what we would find. We found a nice lake with a few acres of shoreline fenced off. The few fenced off acres were filled with THOUSANDS of Hungarians. Families, cruising teenagers, old folks, happy naked babies. Except the happy naked babies, all the men wore Speedoes and all the women wore bikinis. Sunning, running, cruising, playing water soccer, eating. Sort of in the center there's a huge many-times-Olympic-sized swimming pool so crammed with children you couldn't swim a single stroke without running into one. There were people lined up at the snack bars, which had only Hungarian food -- fried bread, sausages, Hungarian crepes, and local beer and wine.
Most people completely ignored the lake itself. We didn't see anyone swimming. A little old lady had a few boats to rent, but that seemed to be the only use of the lake water. And people seemed to be having a great time. For the first time in a crowd since we got here, were heard only Hungarian -- no English or German.
We decided to rent a boat. The boats were booked for awhile, so the best bet for us seemed to be to rent 2 Crocodile boats -- floating mini-boats in bright plastic toy colors for 1 person each. We had a few minutes, so we wandered off to get some sun tan lotion. When we came back at the pre-agreed time (all negotiated stricly in Hungarian, but we were pretty confident we all understood each other) our 2nd boat wasn't there yet. Our little old lady told us it would be a couple more minutes. After 10 more minutes we realized that the cute little boat floating in the middle of the lake with the guy sound asleep in it was probably "ours." We waited a few more minutes and then decided not to wait for him to wake up from his nice rest in our boat.
After awhile we wandered around the lake past the pay area, where people had what we thought were probably their summer homes -- teeny homes with sunflowers and grape vines and homemade docks with rotting dinghys tied up to them. I think it looked like a lovely place for a little summer home and a lovely way to spend a summer with your family.
A Visit to the Baths at the Gellert Hotel
We went to the baths in the Gellert Hotel. Since Budapest is famous for its curative baths, and this is one of 5 or 6 famous ones, we thought it would be a good first choice, with clear instructions and some translations of signs since it is attached to the 5-star Gellert Hotel. Not so. Everything is in Hungarian, all the staff speak Hungarian proudly as their only language and there are no signs or instructions. So, we wandered into the wrong areas and couldn't figure out what we were doing, to the horror of the staff, and our amusement. Ugly Americans again!
Men and women are completely separated. In the women's area, you go into a big steamy locker room with little cubicles with doors set here and there. An attendant gives you an apron and points you to a cubicle (we decided later that I did this wrong and I was supposed to find some stairs and go to another area with lockers, but I just went into a nearby cubicle without a locker.) You take off your clothes and put on this apron. The apron has been designed for women shaped like Russian babushkas, and if you can attach it at all, it modestly covers your belly button and leaves everything else bare.
Then you and your apron go to the showers. The showers are in a steamy room lined with tiny blue tiles from another era. The water is hot and there is lots of water pressure. After showering, I wandered back out of the shower room looking for the steam baths, which is what I bought a ticket for. A friendly old lady who was vaccuuming her hair, which she had rolled tightly onto pink curlers, asked me where I was from in English and sighed happily when I told her I was American. She told me where to find the steam rooms. I went back through the showers to a little unlabelled glass door and opened it to a room full of steam. There were a few wooden chairs and I saw that the women sitting in them had laid their aprons down on the chair seats and sat on top of them. The chairs were really hot. So I steamed myself to a nice tomato-ey soft sodden redness and then moved on to the pools.
The rooms with the pools are also lined in the tiny decorative tiles and filled with steam. The ceilings are 30 or 40 feet high and arched. There are water statues and fountains along the rims of some of the pools. You can go in pools that are a few degrees warmer than body temperature, or a few degrees cooler -- a suprisingly different sensation. There are also some cold plunges, which everyone completely ignored. And a szauna, which is dry heat. Extremely dry. And except for the steam rooms, everything is really old and really grand, and the damages of time are hard to see through all the mist.
It was swoony with its misty, ancient romance. So elegant, so grand.
We read that the baths would be sulfurous and stinky -- the curative minerals -- but these weren't. They didn't have any particular smell at all, as far as I could tell.
When I was ready to go, I went back to the area where I got my apron, and lots of attendants came over to tell me I was doing something wrong. I suppose you aren't supposed to be naked in that area. So I wandered back to the showers and then the pools and followed someone else who was leaving. We went into yet another room, where we exchanged our little aprons for sheets. The other woman dried herself off with her sheet and walked back to the cubicle area, so I dried myself off with my sheet and returned to the disturbed attendants. They let me back into my cube and all was well! All in all, a marvelous experience.
Men and women are completely separated. In the women's area, you go into a big steamy locker room with little cubicles with doors set here and there. An attendant gives you an apron and points you to a cubicle (we decided later that I did this wrong and I was supposed to find some stairs and go to another area with lockers, but I just went into a nearby cubicle without a locker.) You take off your clothes and put on this apron. The apron has been designed for women shaped like Russian babushkas, and if you can attach it at all, it modestly covers your belly button and leaves everything else bare.
Then you and your apron go to the showers. The showers are in a steamy room lined with tiny blue tiles from another era. The water is hot and there is lots of water pressure. After showering, I wandered back out of the shower room looking for the steam baths, which is what I bought a ticket for. A friendly old lady who was vaccuuming her hair, which she had rolled tightly onto pink curlers, asked me where I was from in English and sighed happily when I told her I was American. She told me where to find the steam rooms. I went back through the showers to a little unlabelled glass door and opened it to a room full of steam. There were a few wooden chairs and I saw that the women sitting in them had laid their aprons down on the chair seats and sat on top of them. The chairs were really hot. So I steamed myself to a nice tomato-ey soft sodden redness and then moved on to the pools.
The rooms with the pools are also lined in the tiny decorative tiles and filled with steam. The ceilings are 30 or 40 feet high and arched. There are water statues and fountains along the rims of some of the pools. You can go in pools that are a few degrees warmer than body temperature, or a few degrees cooler -- a suprisingly different sensation. There are also some cold plunges, which everyone completely ignored. And a szauna, which is dry heat. Extremely dry. And except for the steam rooms, everything is really old and really grand, and the damages of time are hard to see through all the mist.
It was swoony with its misty, ancient romance. So elegant, so grand.
We read that the baths would be sulfurous and stinky -- the curative minerals -- but these weren't. They didn't have any particular smell at all, as far as I could tell.
When I was ready to go, I went back to the area where I got my apron, and lots of attendants came over to tell me I was doing something wrong. I suppose you aren't supposed to be naked in that area. So I wandered back to the showers and then the pools and followed someone else who was leaving. We went into yet another room, where we exchanged our little aprons for sheets. The other woman dried herself off with her sheet and walked back to the cubicle area, so I dried myself off with my sheet and returned to the disturbed attendants. They let me back into my cube and all was well! All in all, a marvelous experience.
Ice cream!
(June 21)
I.:
Ice Cream --- the word is fagylalt, but many people just called it fagyi (pronounced-sort of- fawdgie). It is a BIG deal here... there are stands on most major streets and many restaurants have windows open to the street to sell it to passers-by. The consistency is more like gelato than american ice cream and the flavors are certainly different... chocolate and vanilla, yes, but also walnut, tiramisu, poppy seed (I haven't tried that one yet, but I am curious) and many fruit flavors including Puncs (punch).
4 PM is snack time--people fill cafes and eat cake or they promenade down the wide boulevards eating their fagyi. A nice tradition.
I.:
Ice Cream --- the word is fagylalt, but many people just called it fagyi (pronounced-sort of- fawdgie). It is a BIG deal here... there are stands on most major streets and many restaurants have windows open to the street to sell it to passers-by. The consistency is more like gelato than american ice cream and the flavors are certainly different... chocolate and vanilla, yes, but also walnut, tiramisu, poppy seed (I haven't tried that one yet, but I am curious) and many fruit flavors including Puncs (punch).
4 PM is snack time--people fill cafes and eat cake or they promenade down the wide boulevards eating their fagyi. A nice tradition.
Mayonnaise in Budapest, June 1999
Mayonnaise: Budapestians love their mayonnaise. Every Hungarian-run ethnic restaurant we've encountered substitutes mayonnaise for some important ingredient or other. We saw a cute little Greek place with Greek salads smothered in mayonnaise, presumably to replace the feta and vinaigrette. You can get mayonnaise on your hot dog or your fried bread. You might enjoy it on salmon or scrape it off your falafel.
And here's another variation on expectations: to accommodate those who dislike tomatoes, you can get your pizza normal, or white -- meaning without ketchup.
And here's another variation on expectations: to accommodate those who dislike tomatoes, you can get your pizza normal, or white -- meaning without ketchup.
Open-Air Museum in Szentendre
Museum with typical topics for a museum-- local and national history, illustrated with local and national artifacts. But, yay, it's OUTDOORS. More museums should be outdoors. I love it! The weather is perfect!
The old part of the town, Szentendre, near the museum, is quite lovely. We spent a good amount of time wandering around it. Great langos. (Most langos is awfully good, but we thought this garlicky fried bread was especially tasty.) Here is a pic of an old building in the old part of town. It didn't have any special plaques or markers indicating that it was thought of as old or special in this old and special town--it's just part of the scenery.
More False Friends
False friend of the week: csok (pronounced
like choke). It means kiss... oh, well. Also fog
(unfortunately, not pronounced like English) means
tooth.
Our Hungarian is fairly good for two weeks of class,
but we still only speak in the present tense and it
takes us so long to form sentences that people
sometimes get impatient with us... my new favorite
sentence that I constructed: Én kilépek a lakásból és
az Országházhoz setálok. It means, "I step out of the
flat and walk to the Parliament." Not much, but it is
progress.
like choke). It means kiss... oh, well. Also fog
(unfortunately, not pronounced like English) means
tooth.
Our Hungarian is fairly good for two weeks of class,
but we still only speak in the present tense and it
takes us so long to form sentences that people
sometimes get impatient with us... my new favorite
sentence that I constructed: Én kilépek a lakásból és
az Országházhoz setálok. It means, "I step out of the
flat and walk to the Parliament." Not much, but it is
progress.
False Friends
PassionFruit: I'm starting a list of "false friends" -- words that you think you
know, but that turn out to be something entirely different. For example, the Hungarian word szelet, pronounced the way Hungarians pronounce the English
word salad, means steak. The word hello means goodbye. (As well as hello.)
This is our favorite tea-house, Ezer Tea. We're spending hours here, studying, reading, gossiping and just generally hanging out. They have a fine loose-leaf tea selection and a very comfortable, pleasant place to sit.
Learning Magyar (Hungarian)
June 1999
PassionFruit:
This is a difficult language for us. It has only three tenses, but each one comes in two flavors, definite and indefinite. These don't really correspond to any classifications in any other languages I've ever studied, so the distinctions, though critical, are pretty baffling.
Words are dauntingly long. Like German, whenever you have some sequence of words that describes something you think you might talk about more than once, you make it into a single word, like "the little white house down the street with the dog that barks a lot." Also they use declensions rather than prepositions, so you stick these extra endings on the ends of nouns to show that the noun belongs to you and you are going towards it, or that it is inside or far away.
But native speakers seem to have gotten pretty sick of these long words, because they shorten them again too. There's a phrase you're supposed to say whenever you meet a senior lady, "I kiss your hand." But people have shortened it to "I kiss" or just "kiss." And goodbye went from "Viszontlatasra" to "Viszlat".
Hungarian uses the same phrase for greeting people and for leaving them. So we hear people say "hello!" right before they hang up their cell phones all the time. And salespeople say "hello" to you as you leave their shops.
We have enrolled in a 2-week intensive Hungarian class that starts in 2 weeks. It is taught exclusively in Hungarian.
I.:
Hungarian has 168 suffixes. Our intensive language class (which lasts 2 weeks and 3 days) has covered about 15 in a week. Yoiks. I can now construct many simple sentences: Én amerikai vagyok és én újsagirovagyok. Most itt Magyarorszag és Budapesten magyarul tanulok. (I'm American and and I am a journalist. Now I am in Hungary and I study Hungarian in Budapest.). Not too shabby eh? Now if I could only understand more...
When ever we say anything to a stranger and say it properly, they decide that we can speak Hungarian and they just bombard us with a flood of the language. My ear can not pick it up that fast. Also, I can recognize many of the root words, but not the suffix attached to them. So I might now that the sentence is about an apple, but I wouldn't know if it was about something on, in near, around, with or without apple
We started our language class, but no one can agree on how long it is supposed to last. Our receipt from the school says two weeks, but the teacher says her log shows 3 weeks and some students signed up for a 4-week course. Ah, Eastern Europe! The class is a real motley crew. We are the only Americans (surprising). There are 2 Canadians, 2 Russians, 1 Italian student, 1 woman from Taiwan and a few former Yugoslavs (Bosnian, Croatian and Slavs all in one room).
The war really has had an impact on the immigration patterns here. People seemed concerned at just how many Bosnians and Croats have moved here.
Anyway, the class should help, especially with pronunciation. Words like Gyongyos are not coming easy. It would help if we had our books and tapes, but they won't be ready for a week, so for now we struggle. By the way, for the uninitiated, gy is supposed to sound like du in during and oe is like the German oe and s is sh... so we get something like djoendjoesh. You try that 10 times and see if your mouth forgives you.
PassionFruit:
This is a difficult language for us. It has only three tenses, but each one comes in two flavors, definite and indefinite. These don't really correspond to any classifications in any other languages I've ever studied, so the distinctions, though critical, are pretty baffling.
Words are dauntingly long. Like German, whenever you have some sequence of words that describes something you think you might talk about more than once, you make it into a single word, like "the little white house down the street with the dog that barks a lot." Also they use declensions rather than prepositions, so you stick these extra endings on the ends of nouns to show that the noun belongs to you and you are going towards it, or that it is inside or far away.
But native speakers seem to have gotten pretty sick of these long words, because they shorten them again too. There's a phrase you're supposed to say whenever you meet a senior lady, "I kiss your hand." But people have shortened it to "I kiss" or just "kiss." And goodbye went from "Viszontlatasra" to "Viszlat".
Hungarian uses the same phrase for greeting people and for leaving them. So we hear people say "hello!" right before they hang up their cell phones all the time. And salespeople say "hello" to you as you leave their shops.
We have enrolled in a 2-week intensive Hungarian class that starts in 2 weeks. It is taught exclusively in Hungarian.
I.:
Hungarian has 168 suffixes. Our intensive language class (which lasts 2 weeks and 3 days) has covered about 15 in a week. Yoiks. I can now construct many simple sentences: Én amerikai vagyok és én újsagirovagyok. Most itt Magyarorszag és Budapesten magyarul tanulok. (I'm American and and I am a journalist. Now I am in Hungary and I study Hungarian in Budapest.). Not too shabby eh? Now if I could only understand more...
When ever we say anything to a stranger and say it properly, they decide that we can speak Hungarian and they just bombard us with a flood of the language. My ear can not pick it up that fast. Also, I can recognize many of the root words, but not the suffix attached to them. So I might now that the sentence is about an apple, but I wouldn't know if it was about something on, in near, around, with or without apple
We started our language class, but no one can agree on how long it is supposed to last. Our receipt from the school says two weeks, but the teacher says her log shows 3 weeks and some students signed up for a 4-week course. Ah, Eastern Europe! The class is a real motley crew. We are the only Americans (surprising). There are 2 Canadians, 2 Russians, 1 Italian student, 1 woman from Taiwan and a few former Yugoslavs (Bosnian, Croatian and Slavs all in one room).
The war really has had an impact on the immigration patterns here. People seemed concerned at just how many Bosnians and Croats have moved here.
Anyway, the class should help, especially with pronunciation. Words like Gyongyos are not coming easy. It would help if we had our books and tapes, but they won't be ready for a week, so for now we struggle. By the way, for the uninitiated, gy is supposed to sound like du in during and oe is like the German oe and s is sh... so we get something like djoendjoesh. You try that 10 times and see if your mouth forgives you.
Langos, yum
Now in Budapest, we already have favorite foods. First is langos, a chewy fried-dough
concoction that must be healthier than some other food, but I am hard pressed to name what. There are also these delightful little fresh strudel-ish pastries that we found in both Eger and in the main market hall of Budapest. These have some emotional
significance for me as well because ordering them in Budapest was the 1st time that I succesfully communicated more than a few words in Magyar. A few sentences even!
Budapest has the most wonderful buildings, many in the most appalling condition. They
are crumbling, though perhaps genteelly. We are staying with a family that lives in a building with amazing amounts of trim and statuary on the front. It has a large courtyard with wrought-iron railings and seems fairly typical for buildings from
the 1890s. Quite a beautiful place.
We have to figure out how shopping works here. Stores are only open from 10-2 on Saturday (Szombat - which we have affectionately dubbed wombat) and not at all on Sunday. How people who work all week get their shopping done is a mystery to me. The main market hall, in a gorgeous 19th C. former Customs House, also follows these hours.
We are trying to learn Hungarian, which necessitates long hours of study in gorgeous coffeehouses that serve rich Austrian pastries.
Sziastok (which means
roughly "bye y'all")
To Budapest, June 1999
Yesterday we came to Budapest. We arrived in the afternoon and all the
hotels recommended by our guidebooks were full. We took a room in the only hotel the travel agency we tried said was left. It was more than we were
expecting (I think we paid a 20-30 dollar dumb-people-who-arrive-late-in-the-day-without-reservations surcharge,) but the hotel itself was in a neighborhood that seemed convenient enough and pretty much OK. The room was small and clean. *But* from around midnight til around 4am it was really noisy. People were walking around in the halls talking and bumping into things, and there was some really long-lasting sex in some rooms above us (I mean
like 4 hours). I thought the hotel was probably renting rooms by the hour to prostitutes, but I. believes we just happened to have some really enthusiastic neighbors with a lot of endurance.
This morning we moved to another place. Our new room is in a family's
apartment in an amazing building built in 1893. It has a pretty courtyard in the center, and lots of rather dilapidated beautiful sculptures and trim and statuary. And lacy wrought-iron railings. We're on the 3rd floor and have french windows that open from our room onto a little balcony out onto a famous square. And it costs less than $12 a night. We share the bathroom with the family and they have a yipping little dog
that hid under the table as soon as we got anywhere near it, but it looks very enjoyable. The dad of the family showed us around when we got there, and he
seemed friendly and delighted that we spoke a teeny amount of Magyar. And the mom of the family talked to us as we were leaving and she was also really friendly
and smiley and glad that we spoke a little Hungarian.
hotels recommended by our guidebooks were full. We took a room in the only hotel the travel agency we tried said was left. It was more than we were
expecting (I think we paid a 20-30 dollar dumb-people-who-arrive-late-in-the-day-without-reservations surcharge,) but the hotel itself was in a neighborhood that seemed convenient enough and pretty much OK. The room was small and clean. *But* from around midnight til around 4am it was really noisy. People were walking around in the halls talking and bumping into things, and there was some really long-lasting sex in some rooms above us (I mean
like 4 hours). I thought the hotel was probably renting rooms by the hour to prostitutes, but I. believes we just happened to have some really enthusiastic neighbors with a lot of endurance.
This morning we moved to another place. Our new room is in a family's
apartment in an amazing building built in 1893. It has a pretty courtyard in the center, and lots of rather dilapidated beautiful sculptures and trim and statuary. And lacy wrought-iron railings. We're on the 3rd floor and have french windows that open from our room onto a little balcony out onto a famous square. And it costs less than $12 a night. We share the bathroom with the family and they have a yipping little dog
that hid under the table as soon as we got anywhere near it, but it looks very enjoyable. The dad of the family showed us around when we got there, and he
seemed friendly and delighted that we spoke a teeny amount of Magyar. And the mom of the family talked to us as we were leaving and she was also really friendly
and smiley and glad that we spoke a little Hungarian.
Eger
Eger is a beautiful town. The Romans liked it for its hot
springs, which they built public baths around. The
Turks took it over for awhile and it now has the
northernmost remaining minaret from its age in the world. The
minaret is a lovely sight visible from most parts of
the low little town.
The town is in a valley ringed by hills. The hills along one side were perfect for a
fortress and different groups over all these centuries of use built or added to the military buildings there. The fortress wall is really long and underneath it are
dungeons that seem to go on impractically far. The dungeons are cold and stale and damp -- wherever there's a little light, the walls are coated with moss. To get
into the dungeons (where it's apparently easy to get fatally lost), you have to take a tour. So we took a tour.
Our tour group consisted of a class of little kids, their teachers, and me and I. The guide said lots of stuff in Hungarian and the little kids would chorus back an
answer sometimes and we couldn't understand enough even to guess what we were missing.
Farmers grow wine grapes all up and down the hills and in the bottom of the valley they sell their wines. In the town of Eger most little restaurants have big soda
bottles or jugs filled with the local wines, labeled with the year and the maker. We walked down one evening to a row of little wine cellars at the valley floor where the wine makers will let you buy a bottle or even just a glass of their home-made wine for 30 Forints, or about twelve cents.
The cellars themselves seem to be where the wine is really made --they're
dark and damp, made out of stone (or cut out of the hill or a natural cave -- we couldnt tell which) and they smell overwhelminly of fermenting fruit. But some
of them have a few little tables right outside, and we ordered a glass of wine at a few of these. We're not wine aficionadoes and really haven't had enough wine
to appreciate its variations, but this stuff wasn't our favorite. It was fun, though!
We visited I.'s grandmother's sister in Eger. She lives right off the main square in a Soviet-era complex that wasn't too bad. She used to live in the beautiful old, old
building right across the street, but the government at some point kicked all the tenants out in order to make that building a public monument so more people
could appreciate its history and charm. They built the block apartments she now lives in to house the people they kicked out. Then they gave up on the idea of the
public monument and filled the lovely old building up with souvenir shops.
I.'s grandmother is quite elderly and is cared for by an upstairs neighbor who is slightly less elderly but completely active, lively, sweet, funny, and adorable. We didn't have much language in common, but she kept talking to us, and some of
her joke-a-minute goofiness needed no translation. It was a wonderful visit.
They fed us so much we need a few days to recover.
springs, which they built public baths around. The
Turks took it over for awhile and it now has the
northernmost remaining minaret from its age in the world. The
minaret is a lovely sight visible from most parts of
the low little town.
The town is in a valley ringed by hills. The hills along one side were perfect for a
fortress and different groups over all these centuries of use built or added to the military buildings there. The fortress wall is really long and underneath it are
dungeons that seem to go on impractically far. The dungeons are cold and stale and damp -- wherever there's a little light, the walls are coated with moss. To get
into the dungeons (where it's apparently easy to get fatally lost), you have to take a tour. So we took a tour.
Our tour group consisted of a class of little kids, their teachers, and me and I. The guide said lots of stuff in Hungarian and the little kids would chorus back an
answer sometimes and we couldn't understand enough even to guess what we were missing.
Farmers grow wine grapes all up and down the hills and in the bottom of the valley they sell their wines. In the town of Eger most little restaurants have big soda
bottles or jugs filled with the local wines, labeled with the year and the maker. We walked down one evening to a row of little wine cellars at the valley floor where the wine makers will let you buy a bottle or even just a glass of their home-made wine for 30 Forints, or about twelve cents.
The cellars themselves seem to be where the wine is really made --they're
dark and damp, made out of stone (or cut out of the hill or a natural cave -- we couldnt tell which) and they smell overwhelminly of fermenting fruit. But some
of them have a few little tables right outside, and we ordered a glass of wine at a few of these. We're not wine aficionadoes and really haven't had enough wine
to appreciate its variations, but this stuff wasn't our favorite. It was fun, though!
We visited I.'s grandmother's sister in Eger. She lives right off the main square in a Soviet-era complex that wasn't too bad. She used to live in the beautiful old, old
building right across the street, but the government at some point kicked all the tenants out in order to make that building a public monument so more people
could appreciate its history and charm. They built the block apartments she now lives in to house the people they kicked out. Then they gave up on the idea of the
public monument and filled the lovely old building up with souvenir shops.
I.'s grandmother is quite elderly and is cared for by an upstairs neighbor who is slightly less elderly but completely active, lively, sweet, funny, and adorable. We didn't have much language in common, but she kept talking to us, and some of
her joke-a-minute goofiness needed no translation. It was a wonderful visit.
They fed us so much we need a few days to recover.
To Hungary, June 1999
I.:
From Helsinki, we flew to Hungary. At the airport in Budapest, we were met by Gyuri, a cousin of mine who acts for all the world like a lovable New York cab driver. He used
to drive tractor trailers to Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Finland (among other places). He drove us to a bustling bus station that we might never have found without him. We hopped on an Expresz Busz to the city of Eger. We met more relatives there and learned that we really don't speak that much Hungarian yet.
From Helsinki, we flew to Hungary. At the airport in Budapest, we were met by Gyuri, a cousin of mine who acts for all the world like a lovable New York cab driver. He used
to drive tractor trailers to Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Finland (among other places). He drove us to a bustling bus station that we might never have found without him. We hopped on an Expresz Busz to the city of Eger. We met more relatives there and learned that we really don't speak that much Hungarian yet.
Tallinn, Estonia, June 1999
After a difficult trip on Czech Air from
Prague to Helsinki, we sped to Tallinn. The Helsinki
airport is really modern and clean and coldly elegant.
Even the toilets are modern and clean and coldly
elegant. Every adult has a cellphone, and there are a
few variations on them for the really dedicated, like
cellphone headsets so you can wave your cellphone
around for emphasis as you trot along talking to your
far-away friend. (Boy is that a dated comment now! But
the cellphone use was notable in 1999.)
The info desk in the airport was
great-- several friendly Finns helped all the people with problems in front of us in Finnish, German and British English. They told us exactly how to cross the city, how to catch the ferry to Tallinn, how much everything would cost and what the schedules were. Then we found they were right-on to within 5 minutes.
Tallinn is beautiful.
Tallinn's old town center is really old -- medieval again. They're just now starting to restore it, so you can see workers taking apart and putting back together the heavy cobblestone streets and the 3-foot thick walls of old buildings.
Estonians look like the stereotypes of Scandinavian. The streets are
full of attractive, tall, thin Nordic young people. (And for some reason in spite of the daily high temperature of barely 50 degrees and icy winds, the young women are mostly wearing mini skirts that hang to about 1/2 inch below their butts, accompanied by 3 or 4 inch heels.)
It seems that in the center of the city, everyone under the age of 30 speaks intelligible English, and most speak excellent English. This morning we went to
a "bed and breakfast" service that hooks up tourists with locals who want to rent out rooms in their homes. We met the owner, who told us she was an engineer in
the department that built roads and bridges for 25 years. Her department had 600 architects and engineers until 1991, when the "velvet revolution" kicked out the
Russians. Then they pared down to 80, and she needed a new job. A year later, she put out ads in the paper and on TV, and now she has a network of these private
citizens with rooms to rent.
So we chose a little house in the city center, right near the old town. It turned
out to be right next door to the Tallinn Patent Office. The building is crumbling -- the paint is peeling, the cement internal staircases are chipped and uneven, the windows don't close all the way -- but the residents are comfortable leaving their sleek modern bicycles unlocked in the corridors. Our host, Margitt, showed us our little room (with another window that doesn't close all the way). It doesn't have a lock or a handle on the door, but we've determined to enjoy the sense of trust so apparent on our way in.
This morning we walked up a narrow cobblestone street to a spot above the old town walls to look out over the city. An Estonian guy approached us and in quirky English that I think sometimes became Finnish and whatever other foreign languages he speaks, he pitched a bagful of Estonian music to us. He had a Walkman, a DiscMan, and about 30 tapes of various sorts of local music, and he got us to listen to
Estonian bagpipes (not too different from Scottish bagpipes), an Estonian baritone singing Cole Porter tunes in Estonian, some horrible rock, jazz from 1990, and some military-sounding folk music. He had photos from a huge rock concert Tallinn hosts every 5 years, and he urged us to come to that in July. Actually, he urged us to tell all our friends about it too. He was a real character -- really excited and open. He gaveus tips for all the places he thought we should visit, and told us which bars with and without covers have good music, which have tourists and which are just locals. And when we bought a tape, he told us thanks, he really needed the money and now he had to go hunt some more music lovers.
Last night we had dinner in an Italian-run place our guide book recommended. It took
us awhile to find it, since it was hidden down an alley that from the main street just seemed to be a tiny entrance into a private parking area. The walls and cobbled floor of the alley were being reconstructed with huge heavy stones. Huge stone slabs
that had apparently been recovered from some archeologic excavations were hung along one side. They had those swirly engravings of fierce creatures and
elaborate, difficult medieval letters that you see in
history books.
The restaurant is in a medieval building with meter-thick walls covered with
inches-thick white plaster. Some skilled artist drew lions and vines every here and there on the walls. The windows are all stained glass. When we sat down, I
said "Who cares about the food, I'm just happy with the looks of the place." But the food was great Italian basics, just what we'd want in an SF eatery.
Today we ate lunch in an equally elegant Indian place. The food was pretty good (the raita was actually mayonnaise with paprika in it and the rice was Chinese
rice with saffron in it, but everything else was excellent. I. says I am being a real food snob for mentioning this at all.) It was just as fancy and ambitious as the yuppy places San Francisco goes through so fast. The only surprising thing on the
menu was that the section after Pork and before Vegetable was Moose. Moose gets its own section on several menus we've seen here.
We can say "Check, please", "yes", "no", "room", and "thank you" and we're probably not going to learn much more, but we'll do better at the
next stop.
That nice lady Ms Margit turned out to have rented us a room we couldn't really sleep in. The bed was about 3 feet wide and was covered with a quilt of exactly the same width. Since I. and I are not pancakes, this was *not good*! The window didn't close completely and it was *damn cold*. That didn't bother I. as much as it did me, but he didn't like the mattress, which appeared to be constructed of some sort of hairy wool
over sprung springs. (The sprung springs were heat-suckers, too.) It was lumpy and hairy and had little spokes that stuck into your unpadded parts through the cloth. And sunlight shone right in on us all night. We'd already committed to a second night
there, so the next night we got a second quilt, I. slept on the couch, and I slept fully clothed with long johns in the bed.
After that we moved to a B & B in the suburbs which was *great.*
One night we watched Estonian TV, where they were showing a world championship of some sort of weightlifting. Big blond men with love handles wearing diaper-like loincloths
heaved up logs with hand-holes carved in the center and weights on the end. The object (apparently) was to get the log over your head, lock your arms, and maintain that position for a few seconds. Then you could un-lock your arms and sort of run out of the way of the log-with-weights so it crashed to the ground and bounced a couple times. It was narrated in British English in that usual breathy, ungrammatical
sportscaster way and subtitled in Finnish or Estonian. We watched for a minute or so, and the sportscaster said, "and this is
challenging the world record with 275 kilograms!!" Whatsisname couldn't do it, but he was quickly replaced with some other big blond guy who the sportscaster said had never failed before. And lo, as we watched, he broke the world record for log-with-weight lifting! (BTW, that's about 600 pounds.)
Our guidebook mentioned that Estonians are famous for being unwilling to smile. They "prize emotional control." We found that to be very true. In some really modern tourist places we had what we would consider typical interactions with the people who
worked there -- they smiled some and we smiled some -- but most people we met just didn't smile. We went to the Russian market out in the suburbs and while resting on benches there we watched a little kid and his dad. The little kid had just recently learned to walk and he was excited about all the colorful things going on around him. He'd see something interesting and turn around to face it and stare happily, and then
see something someehere else and sort of teeter around to look at it, too. And every now and then he'd look at his father as if to say, "look at all these
exciting things!" and his dad just looked at him
stony-faced and blank. He never smiled at his little kid. I got kind of depressed about all this no-smiling cold place. We gave it another 2 days to give it a good
chance, but we ended up leaving after 5 days in Estonia instead of 10. So we went to Helsinki instead, which though climatically no warmer is a lot warmer socially.
Prague to Helsinki, we sped to Tallinn. The Helsinki
airport is really modern and clean and coldly elegant.
Even the toilets are modern and clean and coldly
elegant. Every adult has a cellphone, and there are a
few variations on them for the really dedicated, like
cellphone headsets so you can wave your cellphone
around for emphasis as you trot along talking to your
far-away friend. (Boy is that a dated comment now! But
the cellphone use was notable in 1999.)
The info desk in the airport was
great-- several friendly Finns helped all the people with problems in front of us in Finnish, German and British English. They told us exactly how to cross the city, how to catch the ferry to Tallinn, how much everything would cost and what the schedules were. Then we found they were right-on to within 5 minutes.
Tallinn is beautiful.
Tallinn's old town center is really old -- medieval again. They're just now starting to restore it, so you can see workers taking apart and putting back together the heavy cobblestone streets and the 3-foot thick walls of old buildings.
Estonians look like the stereotypes of Scandinavian. The streets are
full of attractive, tall, thin Nordic young people. (And for some reason in spite of the daily high temperature of barely 50 degrees and icy winds, the young women are mostly wearing mini skirts that hang to about 1/2 inch below their butts, accompanied by 3 or 4 inch heels.)
It seems that in the center of the city, everyone under the age of 30 speaks intelligible English, and most speak excellent English. This morning we went to
a "bed and breakfast" service that hooks up tourists with locals who want to rent out rooms in their homes. We met the owner, who told us she was an engineer in
the department that built roads and bridges for 25 years. Her department had 600 architects and engineers until 1991, when the "velvet revolution" kicked out the
Russians. Then they pared down to 80, and she needed a new job. A year later, she put out ads in the paper and on TV, and now she has a network of these private
citizens with rooms to rent.
So we chose a little house in the city center, right near the old town. It turned
out to be right next door to the Tallinn Patent Office. The building is crumbling -- the paint is peeling, the cement internal staircases are chipped and uneven, the windows don't close all the way -- but the residents are comfortable leaving their sleek modern bicycles unlocked in the corridors. Our host, Margitt, showed us our little room (with another window that doesn't close all the way). It doesn't have a lock or a handle on the door, but we've determined to enjoy the sense of trust so apparent on our way in.
This morning we walked up a narrow cobblestone street to a spot above the old town walls to look out over the city. An Estonian guy approached us and in quirky English that I think sometimes became Finnish and whatever other foreign languages he speaks, he pitched a bagful of Estonian music to us. He had a Walkman, a DiscMan, and about 30 tapes of various sorts of local music, and he got us to listen to
Estonian bagpipes (not too different from Scottish bagpipes), an Estonian baritone singing Cole Porter tunes in Estonian, some horrible rock, jazz from 1990, and some military-sounding folk music. He had photos from a huge rock concert Tallinn hosts every 5 years, and he urged us to come to that in July. Actually, he urged us to tell all our friends about it too. He was a real character -- really excited and open. He gaveus tips for all the places he thought we should visit, and told us which bars with and without covers have good music, which have tourists and which are just locals. And when we bought a tape, he told us thanks, he really needed the money and now he had to go hunt some more music lovers.
Last night we had dinner in an Italian-run place our guide book recommended. It took
us awhile to find it, since it was hidden down an alley that from the main street just seemed to be a tiny entrance into a private parking area. The walls and cobbled floor of the alley were being reconstructed with huge heavy stones. Huge stone slabs
that had apparently been recovered from some archeologic excavations were hung along one side. They had those swirly engravings of fierce creatures and
elaborate, difficult medieval letters that you see in
history books.
The restaurant is in a medieval building with meter-thick walls covered with
inches-thick white plaster. Some skilled artist drew lions and vines every here and there on the walls. The windows are all stained glass. When we sat down, I
said "Who cares about the food, I'm just happy with the looks of the place." But the food was great Italian basics, just what we'd want in an SF eatery.
Today we ate lunch in an equally elegant Indian place. The food was pretty good (the raita was actually mayonnaise with paprika in it and the rice was Chinese
rice with saffron in it, but everything else was excellent. I. says I am being a real food snob for mentioning this at all.) It was just as fancy and ambitious as the yuppy places San Francisco goes through so fast. The only surprising thing on the
menu was that the section after Pork and before Vegetable was Moose. Moose gets its own section on several menus we've seen here.
We can say "Check, please", "yes", "no", "room", and "thank you" and we're probably not going to learn much more, but we'll do better at the
next stop.
That nice lady Ms Margit turned out to have rented us a room we couldn't really sleep in. The bed was about 3 feet wide and was covered with a quilt of exactly the same width. Since I. and I are not pancakes, this was *not good*! The window didn't close completely and it was *damn cold*. That didn't bother I. as much as it did me, but he didn't like the mattress, which appeared to be constructed of some sort of hairy wool
over sprung springs. (The sprung springs were heat-suckers, too.) It was lumpy and hairy and had little spokes that stuck into your unpadded parts through the cloth. And sunlight shone right in on us all night. We'd already committed to a second night
there, so the next night we got a second quilt, I. slept on the couch, and I slept fully clothed with long johns in the bed.
After that we moved to a B & B in the suburbs which was *great.*
One night we watched Estonian TV, where they were showing a world championship of some sort of weightlifting. Big blond men with love handles wearing diaper-like loincloths
heaved up logs with hand-holes carved in the center and weights on the end. The object (apparently) was to get the log over your head, lock your arms, and maintain that position for a few seconds. Then you could un-lock your arms and sort of run out of the way of the log-with-weights so it crashed to the ground and bounced a couple times. It was narrated in British English in that usual breathy, ungrammatical
sportscaster way and subtitled in Finnish or Estonian. We watched for a minute or so, and the sportscaster said, "and this is
challenging the world record with 275 kilograms!!" Whatsisname couldn't do it, but he was quickly replaced with some other big blond guy who the sportscaster said had never failed before. And lo, as we watched, he broke the world record for log-with-weight lifting! (BTW, that's about 600 pounds.)
Our guidebook mentioned that Estonians are famous for being unwilling to smile. They "prize emotional control." We found that to be very true. In some really modern tourist places we had what we would consider typical interactions with the people who
worked there -- they smiled some and we smiled some -- but most people we met just didn't smile. We went to the Russian market out in the suburbs and while resting on benches there we watched a little kid and his dad. The little kid had just recently learned to walk and he was excited about all the colorful things going on around him. He'd see something interesting and turn around to face it and stare happily, and then
see something someehere else and sort of teeter around to look at it, too. And every now and then he'd look at his father as if to say, "look at all these
exciting things!" and his dad just looked at him
stony-faced and blank. He never smiled at his little kid. I got kind of depressed about all this no-smiling cold place. We gave it another 2 days to give it a good
chance, but we ended up leaving after 5 days in Estonia instead of 10. So we went to Helsinki instead, which though climatically no warmer is a lot warmer socially.
Helsinki, Finland, June 1999
I.'s comments:
Helsinki, which was supposed to only be a brief stop, turned out to be a wonderful place. We loved the 19th-century feel of the architecture (actually a nice change after medieval Prague and Tallinn) and the endless cafes. The weather was a bit cold--after all, Helsinki is as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska (brrr...), but still a wonderful place.
We were very lucky to have an unofficial tour given to us by an amazingly generous friend of a friend who is living there doing research for his Ph.D in Finnish military history.
One very odd experience in Helsinki --- whilst walking down a crowded shopping street, we passed two men dressed in Victorian outfits (very much like Sherlock Holmes actually) who were "riding" ostriches. They actually were on stilts and in ostrich suits (as well as the Victorian get ups).We had no idea why they were dressed this way. A tiny yappy poodle also seemed upset and confused by these bizarre creatures. The dog couldn't decide whether to attack or cower. All very mysterious.
PassionFruit's comments:
We got a really wonderful tour of the city from Nick, a friend of a friend and a perennial PhD candidate from Minnesota who's an expert in Finnish military history (actually his specialty is 6 years near the turn of the century.) Here are some of
my favorite tidbits that he told us, none of which have to do with his specialty.
Finland has 2 official state religions. One is Eastern Orthodoxy, which not
that many people there follow, and the other is (I think) Lutheran Christianity. So all the church-related staff are state employees. And the churches are state property.
Finland also has 2 official languages, Finnish and Swedish. All the official communications are duplicated in Swedish. That means every street sign comes in 2 flavors, the Swedish mounted right below the Finnish. And although they're usually mostly the same, sometimes the 2 names are completely different. This is a result of the treaty they worked out with Sweden when they separated from it. Now only about 6 % of the population speaks Swedish as its first language, but the law remains.
The taxes on new cars are extremely high. Nick thought a new car might cost a couple hundred thousand dollars with taxes included (when pushed he wasn't quite sure.) The funny loophole is that anyone who works for the UN is allowed to buy a car tax-free and after keeping it for a couple years sell it an enormous profit to a Finn who doesn't work for the UN. This is one of the incentives for joining the voluntary Finnish delegation to the UN peacekeeping forces.
My last favorite tidbit is a story about a statue in the center of market square (sensibly enough, this is the square right on the harbor where the daily farmer's markets with fresh produce, fish and flowers are held.) The statue is actually a woman
above a fountain. She was really controversial when she was commissioned at the turn of the century, because she is both naked and modeled on a Paris
prostitute. One of her biggest critics was a guy who lived in a building facing onto the square. The sculptor therefore installed her so that she faces off to one side -- with her bottom aimed right at the detractor's front door.
Helsinki, which was supposed to only be a brief stop, turned out to be a wonderful place. We loved the 19th-century feel of the architecture (actually a nice change after medieval Prague and Tallinn) and the endless cafes. The weather was a bit cold--after all, Helsinki is as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska (brrr...), but still a wonderful place.
We were very lucky to have an unofficial tour given to us by an amazingly generous friend of a friend who is living there doing research for his Ph.D in Finnish military history.
One very odd experience in Helsinki --- whilst walking down a crowded shopping street, we passed two men dressed in Victorian outfits (very much like Sherlock Holmes actually) who were "riding" ostriches. They actually were on stilts and in ostrich suits (as well as the Victorian get ups).We had no idea why they were dressed this way. A tiny yappy poodle also seemed upset and confused by these bizarre creatures. The dog couldn't decide whether to attack or cower. All very mysterious.
PassionFruit's comments:
We got a really wonderful tour of the city from Nick, a friend of a friend and a perennial PhD candidate from Minnesota who's an expert in Finnish military history (actually his specialty is 6 years near the turn of the century.) Here are some of
my favorite tidbits that he told us, none of which have to do with his specialty.
Finland has 2 official state religions. One is Eastern Orthodoxy, which not
that many people there follow, and the other is (I think) Lutheran Christianity. So all the church-related staff are state employees. And the churches are state property.
Finland also has 2 official languages, Finnish and Swedish. All the official communications are duplicated in Swedish. That means every street sign comes in 2 flavors, the Swedish mounted right below the Finnish. And although they're usually mostly the same, sometimes the 2 names are completely different. This is a result of the treaty they worked out with Sweden when they separated from it. Now only about 6 % of the population speaks Swedish as its first language, but the law remains.
The taxes on new cars are extremely high. Nick thought a new car might cost a couple hundred thousand dollars with taxes included (when pushed he wasn't quite sure.) The funny loophole is that anyone who works for the UN is allowed to buy a car tax-free and after keeping it for a couple years sell it an enormous profit to a Finn who doesn't work for the UN. This is one of the incentives for joining the voluntary Finnish delegation to the UN peacekeeping forces.
My last favorite tidbit is a story about a statue in the center of market square (sensibly enough, this is the square right on the harbor where the daily farmer's markets with fresh produce, fish and flowers are held.) The statue is actually a woman
above a fountain. She was really controversial when she was commissioned at the turn of the century, because she is both naked and modeled on a Paris
prostitute. One of her biggest critics was a guy who lived in a building facing onto the square. The sculptor therefore installed her so that she faces off to one side -- with her bottom aimed right at the detractor's front door.
Prague, June 7, 1999
Prague delights us. Prague
itself isn't as expensive as we were led to believe
and is more beautiful than I had expected. The
buildings are hulking structures with elaborate trim,
some with fresco-style paintings on the outside...also
lots of great sculptures (yup, on the buildings). The
streets in many quarters are narrow, windy cobblestone
lanes that meander and change name at whim. The feel
is completely medieval -- without the stench, I
suppose.
We've done some of the tourist stuff -
walked through the grounds of the old Palace, climbed
the tower of the old gothic St. Vitus cathedral,
visited the tomb of Good King (now Saint) Wenceslas.
We watched an "astronomical" clock strike the hour
with a skeleton statue ringing a bell. In a stroke of
good luck, we arrived here during the famous music
festival and we watched a performance of Vivaldi's
"The Four Season" in a grand old church in old town
square-- the hall had delightful acoustics-- ringing
tones and amazingly long echoes. We will try and see
another performance tonight - not at all surprisingly,
Dvorak appears on many of the scheduled sets.
Our command of Czech has extended no
further than "Um" and "Ah." We're ugly americans for
this part of the trip. Maybe Estonian will be easier
to pick up (well, maybe not). We leave tommorow for
Helsinki and then Estonia.
itself isn't as expensive as we were led to believe
and is more beautiful than I had expected. The
buildings are hulking structures with elaborate trim,
some with fresco-style paintings on the outside...also
lots of great sculptures (yup, on the buildings). The
streets in many quarters are narrow, windy cobblestone
lanes that meander and change name at whim. The feel
is completely medieval -- without the stench, I
suppose.
We've done some of the tourist stuff -
walked through the grounds of the old Palace, climbed
the tower of the old gothic St. Vitus cathedral,
visited the tomb of Good King (now Saint) Wenceslas.
We watched an "astronomical" clock strike the hour
with a skeleton statue ringing a bell. In a stroke of
good luck, we arrived here during the famous music
festival and we watched a performance of Vivaldi's
"The Four Season" in a grand old church in old town
square-- the hall had delightful acoustics-- ringing
tones and amazingly long echoes. We will try and see
another performance tonight - not at all surprisingly,
Dvorak appears on many of the scheduled sets.
Our command of Czech has extended no
further than "Um" and "Ah." We're ugly americans for
this part of the trip. Maybe Estonian will be easier
to pick up (well, maybe not). We leave tommorow for
Helsinki and then Estonia.
Trip Around the World
In the late 1990s, we had a plan to leave our high-tech, high-stress, long-week jobs in Silicon Valley to travel around the world for a year. We aimed to stay in 3 or 4 countries for 3 or 4 months each, rent an apartment in each place, take language classes, meet our neighbors, live like normal people there (sort of.) We sold our cars and our loft in San Francisco, gave away a lot of our stuff, packed the rest of it up into a rented storage space, and quit our jobs. We left with around-the-world tickets and the intention of living in Budapest, Hungary; somewhere in India; Bangkok, Thailand; and somewhere else lovely.
We planned by getting stacks and stacks of guidebooks about hte places we knew we wanted to visit. We estimated how much we thought we would need for airfare, travelers' medical insurance, places to stay, food, expenses like washing clothes, and play money. When we sold our place in San Francisco, a city we love, we did so thinking we might never be able to return to our beloved and expensive home, but that this experience would be worth it.
And it was.
We didn't actually live in 3 or 4 places for 3 or 4 months. Instead, we lived in Budapest for 4 months, traveled constantly in India for 4 months, lived in Thailand for 6 months, and traveled through 8 other countries for the balance of a year and a half. The next series of blog entries will be our old notes from those travels. They include entries on:
Prague (Czech Rep.)
Tallinn (Estonia)
Helsinki (Finland)
Eger, Pecs and Budapest (Hungary)
Krakow and Wieliczka (Poland)
Venice, Florence, Pisa, Certaldo, San Gimignano (Italy)
Athens, Corfu (Greece)
India
Thailand
Singapore
We planned by getting stacks and stacks of guidebooks about hte places we knew we wanted to visit. We estimated how much we thought we would need for airfare, travelers' medical insurance, places to stay, food, expenses like washing clothes, and play money. When we sold our place in San Francisco, a city we love, we did so thinking we might never be able to return to our beloved and expensive home, but that this experience would be worth it.
And it was.
We didn't actually live in 3 or 4 places for 3 or 4 months. Instead, we lived in Budapest for 4 months, traveled constantly in India for 4 months, lived in Thailand for 6 months, and traveled through 8 other countries for the balance of a year and a half. The next series of blog entries will be our old notes from those travels. They include entries on:
Prague (Czech Rep.)
Tallinn (Estonia)
Helsinki (Finland)
Eger, Pecs and Budapest (Hungary)
Krakow and Wieliczka (Poland)
Venice, Florence, Pisa, Certaldo, San Gimignano (Italy)
Athens, Corfu (Greece)
India
Thailand
Singapore
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