Here's to a fresh start...

Happy New Year (albeit 11 days in)... So, I've let myself get quite behind on the blog, and the sights and impressions that I'd like share from Budapest have piled up, but I do want to start the new year with a well-wish. I always used to think that while any given year may be good or bad for any given person, that on balance there aren’t really any differences in years for the world as a whole. An individual looks at their year through from their own perspective, but given the amount of individual perspectives there are out there, the quality of a year lived collectively by the world balances out, or neutralizes. To the extent I'm questioning this notion in light of an accumulation of destructive current events in the world, I wish everyone reading this a better year ahead.

Before I share the scraps recently gathered in Budapest, I’m going to return to where I left off on the blog before Christmas, and attempt to give an impression of Sarajevo. Honestly, I think I've been intimidated about how to approach descriptions of that place because we were so touched by it, and I've been concerned about adequately conveying what a special place it is using its own merits and without glorifying anything. Beginning with my next post I'll give it a try.

Before I go back to that trip from November, however, here’s an impression of the New Year's celebration in our part of Budapest. Andrássy út, closed to traffic and filled with people in party hats and carrying champagne bottles were kissing, hollering and dodging firecrackers. The fireworks were being launched from all directions and, as some of them landed among openings in the crowds, red and blue sparkles bounced in all directions causing thrilled shrieks all around. 

Scenes from Budapest at Christmas

Budapest has emerged from an ideally quiet Christmas. Almost all of the shops were closed and the streets were mostly deserted. After a month of crowded Christmas fairs, hot spiced wine and stores filled with beigli and candy, everyone seemed to go home for a few days. 

This contrast with the gaudy sales-pitch I've been getting used to in recent years highlighted for me how distorted the holiday is becoming from the sentimentality everyone has for it in their imaginations. Some of my favorite parts of the holiday were always in the brief silent moments when I'd be outside walking in the boring grey afternoons before dinner, or after the feast when everyone is full, tired, satisfied and together.

We spent the few quiet days here walking through the overcast city with our hands shoved into our coat pockets and scarves pulled up around our faces, seeing only an occasional family carrying packages down the street. Even our neighborhood homeless man was gone from his usual door vestibule Christmas night.

Save it while you can

The sun is setting at rush hour in Budapest now. This weekend it'll be rushed ahead some more when daylight savings time ends. 

The length of the day is slightly exaggerated for me since Budapest is about 5 and a half degrees latitude further north of where I've come from. Days were longer in the summer here, so I suppose I should get ready for the longer nights to come.

Another old bomb, another evacuation

On my second day in Budapest last July I learned that a district downtown here was evacuated the previous day because of a WWII bomb. The live 500-kilogram bomb was discovered during an excavation. The next day I read about another one having been discovered elsewhere in Hungary. Since then other stories about other bombs found during construction have continued to pop up. From my count there have been five more stories since July, including the one in yesterday's news, about an area around the Margaret Bridge being evacuated while a bomb was lifted from the Danube. Often story includes some version of an account from a neighbor having lived above a buried bomb for years without realizing it.

It makes me curious about how common this sort of thing is elsewhere in Europe...

Old school Hungarian geography

We went to the Agricultural Museum in the Varosliget here in Budapest on Sunday. The building housing the museum isn't that old by local standards. It was finished in its current form in 1908 for the Millenary anniversary of Hungary to showcase the various indigenous architectural styles. 

100 years is still plenty old enough to build up whatever blend of wonderfully smelly particles that go into "old museum" musk. The exhibits have the density that comes from years of squeezing in new 

displays in among the older ones. Many of the cards listing information about the exhibits have long ago yellowed, and some are written with a heavy dull pencil tip. All of these textures add up to a rich, dense sensory reminder of the old Catholic school I attended until 5th grade. 

While I was swept up in the atmosphere, a lot of insight is still offered about the role its landscape has played in Hungary's evolving hunting, fishing, forestry, conservation, crop and livestock traditions. I've always enjoyed the dioramas in these types of museums, and the ones here interestingly blend the building's gothic architecture into the scenes of Hungary's plains, marshes, and prehistoric cave life. (By the way, either the cave dwellers of prehistoric Hungary had particularly big boobs, or the clay models of them here were just a lot of fun to make.) 

As a kid I used to love those old maps in which colorful images of mines and cows and fish were superimposed over the regions that chiefly produced those products. This was like finally getting to walk around inside of one of those.

   

Hungarian park sleepers

I'm noticing that in the parks throughout the city, people love to nap in numbers I haven't seen before. I'll try not to speculate yet about what this says about the Hungarian character or the quality of life in Budapest or whatever, but all types of people  seem to love to enjoy beautiful summer days by going out in the parks and drifting off in the grass under the sun or a tree. The parks might be tiny, surrounded by buildings and filled with people, or the sprawling 300-acre Varosliget (City Park) or 1.5-mile long Margit-sziget (Margaret Island) in the middle of the Danube, despite all of the people around (or perhaps because of them) people love to sleep outdoors. 

Admit it: you would too.