America governing

A couple of weeks before we were to leave Hungary, I started listening to stories about the United States Congress toying with its debt ceiling. And once these stories began, they were the headline story every day. It seemed a group of U.S. representatives, elected to change politics as usual, had done just that, and were engaging in what appeared to be political theater by holding the United States credit rating hostage to its every demand. The news stories were increasingly nervous, calculating the risks and consequences of refusing to pay back what was already borrowed; but towards the end of every story, reporters reassured the audience that this really was political theater and the crisis would be solved in spite of the posturing, pointing to markets and investors whose calm proved a solution was expected.

But now we are only a few days away, and an agreement seems as far away as ever. Over the weeks, we have watched Obama and Democratic representatives and senators agree to concession after concession, gutting the safety net -- raising the eligibility age and premiums for Medicare, shrinking Medicaid, changing the formula for Social Security payouts, and other cuts to discretionary spending with greatest impact on the middle and working classes and vulnerable. He had requested in return closing corporate tax loopholes and ending tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. Eventually, these requests were dropped too until every Democratic signature on the package was gone, everything conceded; but somehow there was still no deal.

We have returned to a United States in crisis. While this could be a difficult return for someone out of the country for a year, what makes this moment even worse is the absurdity of this crisis. Though failure could make borrowing and the therefore governance and infrastructure more expensive -- in perpetuity -- to name only a direct consequence, Congress just needs to say we agree to pay our bills, and that's it: crisis averted. This is not a Depression, or a war, or a hurricane. This is a tempest stirred up in a building out east. But every hour the crisis becomes more and more real. 

We have returned to a United States where the government doesn't govern. It throws tantrums. And the safety and well-being of its citizens and resources, not to mention the most basic constitutional checks and balances, seem a distant thought.

Drinking & peeing, dining out

Almost as soon as we returned to Seattle, we made our way to a Thai restaurant for one of the cuisines we had missed in our Hungarian year. It was a joy to have cold tap water automatically served to us before we even ordered.

In Hungary, and in most countries we visited, water was something ordered and paid for; and while in some countries like Greece or Croatia, you could get big bottles (1 or 1.5 liters) cheaply, water in Hungary usually came in little 200 or 250 milliliter glass bottles. Our kids accustomed themselves to ordering soda instead, pretty much the same price and more fun I guess. Sophie always wanted to see the drink menu but almost always ordered Fanta citrom anyway. As for myself, I soon discovered that for 40 cents more I could order a beer which came in half liter bottles. By volume, beer was cheaper than water, and I like volume.

The price of water seemed compatible with another Hungarian nuisance, pay toilets. I came to appreciate pay toilets because they were another source of jobs: you don't just put a coin in a slot; you pay a pee clerk who sits in a chair with a cash box. So I appreciated their place in the job economy but resented them too. Pee clerks were very exacting. A few times I was desperate but short and was turned away; and they preferred breaking big bills to missing a couple pennies from the amount. But Hungarians -- on trips, on the town, especially on long bus rides -- never seemed to need toilets as often as I did, because, I don't know, maybe the disincentive to drinking and peeing. Perhaps also the large bowls of soup Hungarians eat at lunch make the tiny little bottles sufficiently quenching.

The Thai food was good, sweet, spicy, tender and pretty. We ordered too much because there was much we wanted to taste again. Something that I missed too was spicy food. Many things in Hungary are called spicy, or csípős, but with the exception of actual peppers and one fish soup in Szeged, everything seemed mild to me. So we ordered a few dishes with a two stars spiciness rating, low on the scale to start us off. And it burned! This was eating and blowing noses, drinking glass after glass of water.

About that glass after glass of water: we sit and eat and don't call any attention to ourselves, but when our glasses get low, here comes the waiter with a pitcher to fill them back up. I didn't know that I had missed that! And sometimes the waiter came by just to ask how we were doing, or if there was anything else we needed. 

In Hungary, our restaurant routine was like this: We'd sit, be handed two drink and food menus, and then the girls would fight over who would get to read them. The waiter would ask right away if we knew what we wanted to drink. Sophie, Amelia and Maisie always wanted to look at the drink menu first, and so the waiter would go away while they studied and studied and studied and then ordered Fanta orange or Fanta lemon. When the waiter would return with our drinks, she'd ask if we were ready to order our food, and we were never, ever ready. We'd take turns with menus and hopefully we'd know what we wanted after the waiter's second or third pass. All this is to say that the waiters were genuinely attentive, up to this point. Close to the food arriving, we'd be given silverware and napkins on a single plate and sometimes a strange number of place mats. Then, after the food arrived, that'd be it. No more waiter until we approached one ourselves.

How different here in America. I drank maybe eight glasses of water. And I peed all night.

Jetlag

I'm barely functional as I write this. We've been back in Seattle for less than a day after 26 hour traveling and not much sleep. But we're here. I'm eating the enormous Bing cherries that are three times the size and heft of any other cherry I've had the last year. They were part of a $200 grocery expedition this morning. Goodbye breadbox-size half-brown loaf for 80 cents, hello $5 bread the size of a pencil box.

The flight...sssz were okay. I was mostly worried about the airports, especially Frankfurt's, but everything went fine, even in Frankfurt, when we had just the hour layover, and still had to wait for everyone to deplane then board a bus and then ride to a faraway terminal and then walk to a farther away terminal and then go through security again and then arrive at the last second for the transatlantic fight, five middle seats in five different rows. There was no horror show with wedding rings and metal bottles that separated me from my family for forty of the most stressful minutes of my life as there were the first time. Even in the Denver airport, where we would go through passport control, baggage claim and customs, and then re-check our eight bags and go through security once more, we were okay. But by the time the weather kept us on the runway for near two hours, we had already been seated for 19, and the extra time was difficult. Stephanie sat beside me kicking her feet while I read the Skymall catalogue over and over again. But happily, this wasn't stress; it was fatigue.

First glimpses of America came by way of the American airport: In passport control, a woman in boots and a ten gallon hat and a volunteer pin, generous with a chipper greeting and where've you been,  waved us to the next line. And thereafter, service workers seemed thrilled to help and anticipated so many needs or desires or discomforts explicitly, it was like they were hosting a party. On the airplane, we were told to watch our heads, or that they had closed the overhead bins that were full so any bin still open is available, and is that all right for you, and I know these seats are a little tight and we're sorry. America! The customer service, man: I never paid that much attention. There was also so much context for everything: On the plane people were given the usual passenger rules, like wearing seatbelts or people at exits wearing shoes for emergency contingencies, or turning off electronic devices, but everything was also explained in such detail and with such sincerity, one felt like the people giving the rules had thought of the ideas themselves. And the flight attendant actually checked every single seatbelt, really checked, because she seemed to really, sincerely care that everyone was securely fastened. We've been through so many security checkpoints and borders in Europe, and almost always I felt the agents were just going through assigned steps, confirmed at various points when language barriers ended in exasperated waves for me to just go on through.

In the two American airports we visited yesterday, there were fat people in wheelchairs and motorized scooters everywhere.

Interruption: We just spoke to our friends Brett and Jed. Jed said, "So you worked less, exercised less, ate more, and drank more. I want to move to Hungary."

Goodbyes

Stephanie is packing behind me. In addition to the too many clothes that we've brought, we're returning with some difficult items like archery bows, decorative eggs and wine bottles. Tomorrow we're waking up at four in the morning to catch an eleven o'clock flight with three stops before reaching Seattle twenty hours later. But overwhelming as this may be, we feel the sorrow of our goodbyes all over the skin.

Yesterday, Kata, Tibor and their girls Kata and Lili returned. They all look wonderful, and they are so happy to be here. After having spoken English with their girls, they will go back to Hungarian in the home, because they've been all too successful: Lili answers everything in English. When all the girls were playing with Zoé yesterday afternoon, Zoé needed an adult to translate Lili's words.

Once again, spending time with the Devais felt so natural and good. It's strange how little time we've spent with each other, and how much and how intimately we've shared our lives.

A few days ago, we were at Tünde's house. The night ended only because Stephanie and I were exhausted from travel preparations, because Tünde was so welcoming, and the girls, including Tündi and Matca, were in the middle of a roaring game in which they took turns calling for and evaluating poses. It was very emotional saying goodbye to them yesterday. I was surprised, but also so moved when Matca wept.

Here we are at Tünde's house, with her daughters and father, frying bacon (szalonnasütés) -- a Hungarian tradition with slabs of pig blubber I dreaded then enjoyed. Below are pictures of the szalonna in various cooked stages and a video, followed by a picture of the girls posing as some kind of animal.

We had a lovely farewell dinner with Kornél and Kata, who has been so tremendous throughout the year, starting with accompanying us from Budapest when we arrived, and ending with accompanying us to the plane tomorrow and a moment when we are certain to cry once more.

Tibor, Kata, Kata and Lili's return was an absolute joy. And how wonderful to see the Devais reunited with their good friends, the Göcseis. All the girls, Sophie, Amelia, Maisie, Kata, Lili and Zoé were soon yelling and bellyflopping in the pool the Pressings built (including tiling a new patio with Kata and Lili's names) for their granddaughters' arrival.

 

 

We met Tibor's parents yesterday too. Here are both grandmothers and grandfathers (the latter in the middle of a political debate, one grandfather representing the Jobbik point of view, the other Szocialista).

I will leave off now. I have more to say, and I anticipate the kind of cultural sensitivity when we return that leads to observations that otherwise I'd never notice to notice. In any event, several people have asked me to keep writing here on the blog. I will. 


But for now, the march to Barcs comes to a close, and we're off, to skedaddle to Seattle. Our love to you, Hungary. Ta ta for now...

Romania

We knew we had one last trip in us, and there was so much we wanted to experience, like Estonia's capital, Talin; or Istanbul, not so far a reach only two weeks ago; or Paris, or Krakow. But for our final trip in Europe, we felt we'd miss a part of the Hungarian experience if we didn't travel to Transylvania, a region on the other side of the Romanian border Hungary still feels its own. Having it back was enough to lure the nation into Hitler's side of the war (although this is simplistic), because so much history and identity belongs to the totality that contains it. At this point, 7% of Romania is Hungarian. We heard a great deal of Hungarian in several spots, and learned that there are a couple towns in the middle of the country that speak nothing but Hungarian.

Another draw was the beauty of the place, the Carpathian mountains and the architecture we'd glimpsed in our imaginings of Transylvania especially, steep-pitched steeples and gothic churches. It turned out that many places we visited were as dramatic as anything we'd seen in any movie: fortified churches dotted all over our drives in the middle of our trip, their wooden towers, medieval towns, farmers riding atop huge piles of grass pulled by a horse or two, mountains in every direction, and much more.

Our itinerary was to drive first to Oradea (Nagyvárad), the next day to reach Sighişoara (Segesvár), then to visit a fortified church on our way to Sibiu (Nagyszeben), and, after stopping at the Hunyadi castle, to spend a final night in Timişoara (Temesvár) before heading home, a total of four nights.

We drove through Hungarian fields and past forests, through villages and  more fields, then crossed the border of Romania and were immediately met with smokestacks and potholes. The change was immediate and jarring. What we found throughout our visit through Romania was a casual melding of tremendous natural and architectural beauty and industrial decay.

Oradea was a great example of this.

Close to the border, Hungarian is spoken by many and signs and advertisements are largely bilingual, but proximity is not the cause: this is one of the areas that was long part of Hungary until the close of World War One. While we continued to try our Hungarian elsewhere, this was the only place where people didn't blink back at us and wait for some English.

The architecture was stunning here, familiar in its Austria-Hungarian roots and in examples of Art Nouveau. But I found myself twisting and dodging cars to get around the electric wires that were growing everywhere like black weeds, and so many buildings looked like they were in the middle of restoration abandoned years ago, facades held together in great swaths of dusty netting.

The main square of Oradea, painted, restored, a beautiful river cutting through it, tells one very fine story.

Other streets told another story, one telling of a glorious time past and slapdash modernity. Note the turret below, which looks to be held together with duct tape.

The grafitti at the base of this riverside building and its fading paint don't hide its grandeur.

This synagogue is impressive from any vantage point except the close one, where fallen timber and broken windows are all too evident.

We arrived in the late afternoon. The heat was in the mid-nineties, low for what we would experience the rest of the week. The girls were happy to stay in the hotel room playing with shower caps and bathrobes while I quickly explored and came back to get everyone for dinner. Our girls were happiest outside after the sun had fallen, true again the next few days; and when they discovered a ranging playground surrounded by statues and fountains. They wondered whether the playground was as good as the one in Salzburg. They said no.

Driving to Sighişoara, we pased numerous large, mutli-storied buildings with shining metal roofs built in an unfamiliar style, like the one below.

Churches are also being built with metal roofs in the region. This looks like copper. These two pictures, taken in what were essentially suburban villages, suggest there's some money coming in, but the wheres and hows remain a mystery.

There was nothing shiny about Sighişoara, one of the few medieval fortified towns still inhabited. The Transylvanian town has two and half as many people as Barcs, and so isn't very big, but it has an outsized draw. Artisans have been centered here since the Hungarian king invited German tradesmen to settle the region in the 12th century, and it still carries this tradition, craftsman chipping or firing or potting beneath tents inside the Saxon citadel, which is, in itself, worth visiting.

This is also the place where a Wallachian prince named Vlad Dracul lived in exile, and had a child who came to be known as Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler for running a pike through the anus and out the mouth, avoiding organs and prolonging death. Vlad III had been allied with King Mathias, perhaps the greatest and most successful Hungarian king, memorialized on the 1000 forint bill; but Vlad was later imprisoned in Visegrád by the same king when the Pope asked for a scapegoat to appease the Turks. In any event, Stephanie and I discussed it, and we decided that the Blood Countess Báthory Erzsébet (described in this entry) still seemed like a better source for Dracula than this warrior prince. The yellow building in the third picture below is considered Vlad III's birthplace.

Wandering the churches and courtyards and teetering gravestones of a beautiful old town was good, but it was also so hot. After a mountain of heat and a slightly less-muggy lunch in a stoned inner room, Stephanie and I left the girls in our hotel to play with more shower caps and bathrobes, returning for them in time for an evening dessert of pancakes and fruit.

 

From Sighişoara to Sibiu, we passed several fortified churches, but we cut down a country road to Biertan to visit one of the largest. We spent a long time looking out at the beautiful countryside hills surrounding the walls, at the friezes in the wood within the church, at a lock on one of the old doors, and then, longest of all, at the wood tower where the majestical bells rang and rang at noon, waiting for the woman Maisie spotted just before the tolling to emerge, and there she came, short and stocky, slacks and a pedestrian shirt and unfocused expression, trotting by us and down the hill.

 

We saw many hay carts along the way, but this picture, taken through a very buggy windshield, is my only depiction. The Romanian horse carts were plentiful, and different than ones we see in Barcs, which are capacious and boxy. In Romania, all the carts are small and angular, often seating five or more people nevertheless. I suspect that under this giant wad of grass is a surprisingly small frame.

My favorite place we visited came next: Sibiu. By the time we arrived, we didn't even take the kids out for a spin: we just let them play in their room while Stephanie and I walked the old town in the heavy sun. The churches towered over large, shapely squares, and the Carpathians stood tall in the distance.

Along our walk, Stephanie and encountered some very old churches hidden among rowhouses. Outside, crusty walls and wire and debris; inside, frescoes and stunning craft.

Outside this particular church, we also saw a port-a-potty with a logo that caught our attention. In Timişoara, we would see a similar picture on a bathroom door, with that demonstrative bend in the leg.

I was also charmed by the bicycle race that was occurring the day we arrived. Imagining the ride past medieval walls on cobblestone roads lined up some of my longings. 

Maybe if it weren't so hot, there'd be romance enough for the rest of us.

I was very excited the next day to stop off at the Hunyadi castle. This magnificent building has a replica in Budapest, and it's no wonder: it is the place where the great Hungarian king discussed above, Matthias Corvinus, grew up, and it is a marvel to behold. Earlier in the year when we talked about going to Romania, it was one of the images we collected and yearned to see in person.

But when we arrived in Hunedoara, we thought we had certainly come to the wrong town. This one had smelters and smoke stacks every few feet, an entire hillside shorn off for mining, the trees bitten and the sky grey. But turn the corner, and there, in the midst of it, is the great Hunyadi castle. From the turrets, through the arrow slits, over the battlements, not 500 meters away lie the dead factories and fallen churn of Soviet era steel production.

Inside the castle we heard Hungarian almost exclusively as buses of tourists came to visit. We all read about the bear pits and torture tower and the enslaved Turks who, when promised freedom, dug a well for 15 years and met with execution instead, and we wandered the old halls in wonder.

We didn't have to drive far to reach beauty again.

Finally we came to our last destination: Timisoara. We drove by this impressive cathedral without stopping, so ready were we to settle in after a long morning or driving and castling. 

I spent some time arguing with the hotel receptionist about what I did or didn't ask for, and later when we were better friends, we spent some friendly time reviewing what I did or didn't ask for; later still the receptionist talked to me about what I did or didn't ask for, and told me about his job and about how he has complained about the reservation software but no one listens because he is only a minimum worker. He also described hotel history, how it was taken by the communists to be used for State leaders, and how it reverted to the original owner who flipped it to a guy who flipped it to someone hoping to turn the rooms into apartments before he ran out of money and turned it into a hotel. Then we talked about what I did or didn't ask for again, and he told me he is always on the side of the guest.

We brought the girls out into the heat to eat dinner, dragging them from one square to another, hoping that the many sheltered tables being shot with mist like hothouse flowers would serve food, and finding that the many people happily sitting there were drinking only, or eating ice cream. Again, what would this experience be like without the heat? There was much to explore and find impressive, but the girls were miserable until we escaped into a basement pub and emerged in the growing dark.

For myself, I was fascinated by the little street scenes I observed walking by, the crowds of men playing chess, the remarkable graffiti, the policeman ticketing a man sitting on a bench, the large man in the small suit checking his engine, the bronze triple-chinned bust, the arrogant gaze of a monacled man with bare shoulders: there was much to see.

As before, with the angry sun going elsewhere, the girls livened up and we were happy once more. But when we pulled back into our driveway in Barcs for our last week before we return to the States, we were relieved to be home, the bend in the road and trees familiar, the house gates enclosing friendly yards and people who shout their hellos.