Ljubljana

Were we worried about driving by the Slovenian Alps in a nine-seated van in the end of December after a thorough snowing in Barcs on narrow, unfamiliar roads?

Absolutely not. We were headed to Ljubljana, and after that, to one of the most romantic cities of the world, Venice, and two parts of our family were happily reunited to share in this together. Dad and Wendy had never heard of Ljubljana, and we could none of us hardly spell it, but we were excited to experience it. My good friend, Laurel, is a committed traveler, and she had proclaimed Ljubljana to be one of her favorite cities, a high recommendation. Google Images is already a heady introduction to a town backgrounded by Alps, transversed by footbridges and canals, and preserved in stunning and colorful architecture.

Windshield wipers did double-time against cold, driving rain through a three or four hour drive, and we arrived at a resort on the outskirts of town, and settled in to a liberating, off-season solitude, picnic tables covered in a grey snow, the resort's pool complex locked in the distance, icicles hanging from a ropes-course strung through the trees.

Behind the sleeping apartments, we looked out towards the train tracks and saw what we suspected were also busier in sunnier days.

Wendy had been reading about the Roma before she arrived in Hungary (she recommends Bury Me Standing, by Isabel Fonseca, a book Katalin owns too), and she thought these huts off the tracks fit descriptions all too well.

Our own settlement was spacious, although it looks a little crowded here.

We were happy to park the van colossus and take the bus into town. Dad was always very alert to the possibility of family separation, which was the only disadvantage of a crowded bus, but we emerged from the experience happy and whole, as we did in other moments out of eye-shot.

And then, this is what we saw.

 

It was bewitching. It lacked the chaotic bustle of Prague traffic but was a town, in its shapes and colors and shutters and steeples, one could easily love. But this too would be transformed in only a few hours, when Slovenians came from all over to walk the wide streets, and the real magic would make itself known to us in a city's absolute and unembarrassed vibrancy.

More on magic later. But here's a taste, as darkness begins to fall.

Throughout the trip, we ate a hotel breakfast and one big meal a day, snacking for the rest. Below you see us parked outside a pastry shop, and below that, having coffee. The kids are drinking hot chocolate, which, in much of Europe, is something very different from hot cocoa. Hot chocolate is a pudding -- hot, thick -- a sweet sludge that stands above the ladle of the spoon a few millimeters before rising in a swell in the middle.

We had good meals in Ljubljana. My gnocchi were pillowy soft. It was also a happy treat to be served a large jug of tap water again. The two deciliter bottles to which we never became accustomed always made me feel foreign and guarded.

I don't know what Amelia's doing.

Emerging into the night is where we first discovered something else about Ljubljana, where we looked up at the buildings and the lights and the pixillated castle on the hill and the joyfully strolling people that we became swept up in it, looking up with the delight of a kite-flier for whom wind and sun and sky and the expanse of space become all of a sudden a magic of play and lift and dance.

Our second day, we travelled up the hill to the castle.

Although the road was of less grade and the hill was shorter, our walk was not so unlike the ascent to the castle in Salzburg, another energetic, Alpine city that won a place in our dreams. On the walk, Wendy said she and Maisie would take up the rear because they both wanted to climb at a slow pace, but they were the first to the top.

The view from the caste's tower was thrilling, the mist rolling so thickly across the valley we could feel it moving in our lungs. When Wendy was buying tickets to get us in, she was given a generously discounted price, our kids getting toddler rates, and Dad and Wendy dawdler rates, and I figured the ticket agents felt uncomfortable charging people money to go up such a stubby little tower. But the city appeared in every direction over the the parapet, however hazy through the fog, and the air was delicious.

A small castle chapel was open to the public. Within, a styrofoam baby Jesus with ball.

What we found, here in the castle, in the chapel, and elsewhere, was an open celebration of art -- serious art, abstract art, and above all, playful art. In the basement of the castle, a great deal of money was obviously spent preserving the foundation and incorporating it with modern structures to provide aesthetically striking contrasts, and with this backdrop, there were multiple galleries and settings for concerts. The fact that Ljubljana would honor its artwork in this intersection of history and civic investment is such a clear statement. And this was by no means mainstream work it was displaying. Dad and Wendy found the photographs of punk Alice and Wonderland shots pretty tacky, for example. Tacky, perhaps; playful, definitely. And everywhere we saw this institutional appreciation for art. In the Town Hall, we were followed by a security guard who finally ushered us towards an art exhibit in a hidden room and then left us alone with it.


Ljubljana, you are exhilarating!


Examples of this sensibility are below.

1. Stairs descending below the castle.
2. Art gallery. Dad still deciding.
3. Floating art in the hexagonal room.
4. No more castle. Faces you step on as you walk a pedestrian path.
5. Weird melty woody figure in the middle of a foot bridge.
6. Table pedestal, for serving hot wine.
7. Dad and electric crown, probably antique hair dryer.
8. Detail from previously seen night lights, including sperm and egg, mitosis, and various planets. Not pictured but observable in earlier shot: double-helix DNA and xx, xy chromosomes.
9. Raised fairy seat in front of Town Hall.

Above is the raised fairy seat, mysterious and wonderful even empty. But it was occupied by evening. The woman below, a fairy's helper, explained the tradition, saying we could go to the Good Fairy and ask for three wishes. Dad and Wendy were ready to wish that the fairies could be warmed up, maybe with some hot tea, but someone had already made this wish, and the capes and layers were apparently plenty warm. 

Wendy was able to convince Sophie to go the Good Fairy by telling her she could make a wish for someone other than herself. Good-hearted Sophie. Wendy was right: Sophie would never have stood before the Fairy for herself alone.

Amelia's wish was to feel the wishing balls on her head.

I don't know what Stephanie was wishing for, and she's very careful not to ruin her chances by telling, but look at that concentration. I hope she is happily answered.

So these are examples of Ljubljana's artistic soul. Before launching into this illustration, I was describing the castle. We walked down the hill by way of a terrific, winding bridge. One short detour led to a terraced playground in the shadow of slightly malevolent Hansel and Gretel tree.

And then we were down. At every hour, our affection for Ljubljana grew.

We absolutely let loose on the final night, warming to a group of gospel carolers, and then chasing after Amelia who ran across the bridge to follow the organ grinders.

We helped draw a crowd for the organ grinders, as Amelia danced circles on the wet square and then partnered with Wendy for a polka, and Stephanie for a waltz, and then Grandpa for something in between, until Dad was dancing with two girls, and the organ grinders were throwing us their best turns.

At our first restaurant, we toasted to our adventure, and to how special it was to not just share our European lives this year, but to experience it together, with people we love.

Karácsony

Happy holidays, Seattle, Barcs, wherever you are. The day after Thanksgiving, stores and storage were opened to the Christmas season, and on this day in Barcs, lights suddenly draped the streets. Be prepared for a similarly lit blog entry, two-dimen-sate, with sight and sound.

Santa Claus does not come to Hungary the night before Christmas. Instead, he comes on his name day, December 6th, the name day for Mikulas. Instead of double-wide socks, Hungarian children shine and shine their boots the night before and leave them on the windowsill for Szent Mikulas, who travels around with two little devils or one big one named Krampusz, either with sweets and small gifts for the good children, or a bundle of small sticks and onions for the bad ones.

Many Hungarian children receive both sticks and candy, being neither all good nor all bad. You may notice that Sophie, with no boot to shine, was judged thusly. 


At my school later this day, a group of students travelled with St. Mikulas and visited classes, distributing candy and making students sing Christmas songs, sometimes swatting them with the bundle of sticks in flirtatious censure.

Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve, while Americans wait for their fat, red-felted Santa to squeeze through chimneys and eat their cookies to commemorate the birth of the Christ, Hungarian children will actually receive a visit from baby Jesus, which frankly seems like the better deal.

All over Hungary, cities, towns and villages decorate with lights and nativity scenes and hold Christmas fairs, selling ornaments and honey, gingerbread and ceramic, candles and hot wine. 

We went to the Christmas fair in Budapest after touring Parliament. On the left, a small band plays on a balcony on the third floor of the building you see in the background at right. Every night they emerge from a different numbered window, as in a giant advent calendar.

The Pécs Christmas fair, held in the shadow of the great synagogue, was far less crowded and we were less cold with better socks. 

The nativity scene from Barcs was not as sophisticated as the one from Pécs. Feel free to stake your guess which is which on the comment line at the end of the blog.

Brief tangent:


In addition to dressing up the towns, cities are also protecting their artwork and stone memorials from the sharp winter. The result can be a little macabre.


Tangent complete.


Christmas is a time of holiday and community, family and fellow-feeling, and this year, in spite of being far away from many we dearly love and missing a yearly gathering on Whidbey Island with fresh salmon and walks in the woods and puzzles and games in sunken couches, we have felt entirely embraced here; and in Hungary where jobs are so few and money so scarce, we have discovered riches every night in their community halls and schools, their auditoriums and dining tables.


Consider this, for example: My path to the door of the 11th grade gymnasium class was barred last Thursday, as one student gathered all of the class's language teachers. When finally we were permitted to enter, the room was darkly lit with tea lights on the table before us, chairs set forward as seats of honor. The students stood in the back of the class and they sang -- three Christmas songs, interstitially reading poems one by one, until the music was over and we were quietly and unashamedly thanked.


Songs and music are so important in this way, all-embracing, unifying, emotive and open, and every day songs were prepared and presented as gifts to be shared and had.


And we do have people to share with this Christmas. Last week, after spending a few days in Budapest, we met Dad and Wendy in Pécs. Pécs may be my favorite city in Hungary, but we were so excited to take them back to Barcs and show them our lives here. And truly, it has been so good to have family in winter, witnessing our lives and our community at its highest pitch.

We were also so fortunate to have Luke Greenway come and stay with us for much of the week. Luke was my student as a ninth grader, and then again in Shakespeare class in 11th grade and Philosophy in 12th, and now, two months from starting college at Middlebury, he is in his third month couch surfing through Europe. He came to four of my lessons on Thursday and scored a night out with the beautiful women of 12th grade Drama. He encountered three invaluable cultural points with them: One, a fishy pasta covered in a mound of pastry sugar. Two, discovery that hope and excitement for the future is the province of American teenagers, not Hungarian. Three, pity rather than envy that he might spend Christmas in Vienna, or New Year's beneath Prague's Old Town clock, alone.

He is pictured here with 9th grade Marketing, who spent most of the period gathering information about themselves to share with him. This is their happiest moment during the class period.

So, with Dad and Wendy and Luke joining us in the same week and the schools and town dressing themselves up with music and dancing and craft, we have had a very full and joyous week.

At Dráva Völgye Középiskola, almost all lessons were suspended for the week as Croatian, Hungarian, French, German, Russian and English songs and dances were assiduously prepared, repeated without pause until student pitch and rhythm matched that of the recorded artist. Below, English students sing to Train's "Shake Up Christmas" song, while seventh graders dance.

The evening Christmas concert featured several lovely performances, and also Botund, at left, demonstrating necklace and shadow. I am sorry to have captured only eight seconds of the haunting song below, but listen to what you can.

Students were not the only ones meeting for choir practice. Stephanie and I joined the teacher choir to sing a song called "Gyertyák." Barna, a wonderful colleague (Drama and Hungarian) and our Hungarian teacher also, went through the lines with Stephanie and me, and we were moved by the meaning of the words: Light a candle for each and each person, those who you've forgotten, for those you've lost, for family moving beyond you, for those full of anger, and those shackled by war, for those on the street, for those looking towards home, light a candle for each and each person; and the light of every candle will shine throughout heaven. Barna told us the song was one of deep feeling for Hungarians, and in our first rehearsal this came to be so as three teachers openly wept and as I myself, during the performance below, felt in our unadorned singing together.

Our girls performed in far more venues than this. During the week, Dad and Wendy were able to see them perform in the Music School, in the front stage of the Barcs Culture House, in the big auditorium of the Culture House, and in the Szulok Culture House, during which the children joined others in choir, dance, violin and piano recitals. They missed Sophie playing in the Catholic Church, which I restore below for 19 seconds.





Here is the girl's szolfézs choir singing, "Itt van a szép vigy karácsony" at the Barcs kultúrház. Below that, Sophie plays "Mennybol az angel" at the same venue.

Below, the szolfézs class dances to "Santa Claus is coming to town." Note that Sophie, not pictured in the video, objects to the flirtatious flip of the hair required in the dance.

At the Szulok kultúrház, meanwhile, the girls were absolute stars. It was standing room only in the village theater, which again made me re-assess material priorities and use of time in my American life.

In the video of the girls dancing to "Jingle Bell Rock" below, you might recognize Wendy's laughter against the backdrop of what seems to be the Hungarian demonstration of respect: total silence and placidity.

Here, all girls play "Mennybol az angel" together. The final video is the entire student body of the girls' school, and all their teachers, singing "Nox: Eskü." Maisie and Amelia are hidden behind the boy next to Sophie.

We also went to a concert by the girls' music teachers, pictured at right.


And we went to the Barcs Dráva museum and were given a great tour of Barcs history, which includes a Turkish castle beneath one of the Chinese department stores (seen in the background with Maisie, in the second to last picture).


The historian, Marton, is pictured below, explaining the elements of the Barcs crest.





Merry Christmas, everyone. Boldog Karácsonyi Ünnepeket.

Dear Roosevelt,

How are you doing? How are the kids? The bears? The Source? The Honor Code? Have you missed me?

It’s now a third of a year that I’ve been gone, but I haven’t forgotten about you. I think of you fondly, sometimes with wistfulness, sometimes with all-American irony.

Many things are different here. Barcs is very small, with 12,000 people and two miles of narrow streets shared by cars, bikes, tractors and horse-driven wagons. But many students are from villages far smaller, and I was confused in early classroom conversations when students referred to a crowded, well-provisioned city: while imagining the clamor and bustle of Budapest, where a fifth of all Hungary lives, students meant Barcs, with its many grocery stores, smoke shops and bars.

School is different for me too. The daily schedule changes every day of the week, and it’s shared by every student within a grade level and program, which, at Dráva Völgye Középiskola, includes an academic program, Drama, Marketing, Forestry, and Water Management. Groups stay together with three dozen classmates every day, every hour, for four years (and six in the Academy, which starts at 7th grade). Having the same daily schedule also means that students do not choose their courses, except for their first and second foreign languages, usually German or English, but also Russian, Croatian and French.

A typical day has seven to nine 45 minute classes, some double-blocked for greater depth. The school rooms, unadorned but for desks, chairs and a blackboard and pictures, belong to student groups, while teachers travel every period. Meanwhile, breaks between classes are ten to fifteen minutes -- and effectively longer, because teachers don’t head for classes until breaks are over. And I can tell you, this is not a hurried rush through the halls. When teachers do arrive, however, students are expected to be in the classroom, by their seats, standing, attentive, and courteously waiting for the teacher to give permission to sit. And once class begins, no one leaves until dismissed at the bell. A downside of the longer afternoon breaks is that lunch -- which includes a walk to the cafeteria, a wait in line, mastication, ingestion, and the walk back -- is expected to occur all in this 15 minutes, and lunch is the big meal of the day, including a big bowl of soup, bread, and a heaping pile of noodles or meat or stuffed vegetables.

There are assessment differences as well. While you put students through credit paces and hundreds of little assignments and projects and the HSPE and Senior Project, students here must pass five major exams in Literature, History, Maths, Foreign Language, and a fifth chosen subject, each exam containing a written test lasting between two and three hours and an oral examination occurring a few months later. Meanwhile, teachers cannot, by law, grade homework because of plagiarism concerns. Take these together, and it means the burden of learning falls directly on the student.

Scores and tests also account for who goes to what schools. Barcs has three high schools. To choose between DVK and the bilingual high, students need good marks in elementary school; otherwise, they go to the trade school. But school choice extends far beyond regional borders. Many schools have dorms, enabling access to villagers and choice of schools all over the country. DVK, a magnet with one of only three forestry programs in the nation, has two dorms, and one third of the 600 students live here on the weekdays.

People live here, which is how we can call an assembly that lasts two and half hours ending at 5:30, or decide that next week students will attend for six days rather than five.

I’m not ready to say what’s better, Roosevelt, but I can tell you that some of the most fundamental relationships are the same. Teaching is still a delight one day and the next a chore; teenagers still laugh at peculiar times; and, as always, students can be energetically curious or stubbornly bored.

I think of you, dear Roosevelt -- your crowded halls, your exuberance, your pizza and chocolate milk. I hope you think of me sometimes.

I miss you! Don’t forget to write.

Affectionately yours,
David Grosskopf