New Destinations

This summer's first trip is going to be different because I will be making my first visit to four countries: Kuwait, China, Slovakia and Ireland - and even in Spain I'll be visiting a new city in Barcelona. Except, even here it won't be all that bad because I have contacts in every one of the countries. It's not like my first visits to places like Kenya or Egypt where I didn't know a soul. Now that Rochelle has put together the itinerary I can buy guidebooks and begin looking around for hotels. Luckily China is already organized, and so is the UAE and the conference folks in Slovakia are taking care of everything because I'm speaking. I won't jinx the trip quite yet by pointing out that it is starting to come together (doh!).

Summer Travel Redux

OK, it looks like the summer trip is coming together, although, as my poor, long-suffering travel agent can attest, these things are never easy.

26 May - Burlington to Kuwait to visit one of our newest Global Module partners, the Gulf University of Science & Technology (GUST). This will be my first visit to Kuwait. It should be really interesting. We ran our first GM with them this semester. The school segregates their classes by sex and we agreed to separate out the Champlain students as well - a great learning experience.

29 May - Kuwait to Dubai, where I'll be presenting at a Globalization conference and visiting our GM partner Zayed University.

1 June - Dubai to Beijing, where I'll be presenting at a Humanities conference and talking to some Chinese universities about the GMs. This will be my first trip to China.

11 June - Beijing to Xi'an, where I'll begin a CIEE Silk Road faculty development program - that's a whole other adventure and I'll post the itinerary for that later on.

23 June - Lanzhou, China t0 Bratislava, Slovakia (by way of Frankfurt and Prague) to present at an Ambiguity Conference and talk to the good folks at Catholic University of Ruzemberok about the GMs. Then there will be a little travel around Slovakia provided by the conference folks. This will be my first trip to Slovakia. From there will be taking the train to visit GM partner schools in Austria and Hungary.

5 July - Bratislava to Barcelona, Spain to present at a conference a visit one or two Spanish universities. I've been to Madrid a couple times and a side trip to Toledo, but this will be my first trip to Barcelona.

10 July - Barcelona to Dublin, Ireland. This is one of those odd trips that came together simply because of the peculiarities of travel. I had a layover in Dublin, so I decided to stretch it out a couple days and visit one or two Irish universities I've been talking to on GM business and take the opportunity to see Champlain's Dublin campus. I've never been to Dublin before.

14 July - Dublin to Burlington - and total collapse.

Summer 09 Travel

Well, it looks like it's time to try and put together the first of two extended summer trips. This is one of the situations where my travel agent, Rochelle, just dreads the appearance of an email from me. Essentially, I need to take off in late May for a quick trip through Kuwait, to visit the Gulf University of Science & Technology on Global Module business, and then move on to Dubai to present at a conference. Then from Dubai I fly on to Beijing, China to present at a conference in early June, and then have a little down time for exploring the city before my Faculty Internationalization Initiative funded CIEE trip begins later in the month. Several of us are heading to China this year (last year's Middle East trip was FII funded, and there are several Champlain folks who are headed back to the Middle East for a refresher trip, but I don't think I'll make it back to the Middle East until next Fall at the earliest - I think my late summer trip will probably be to Africa to visit Global Module partner schools, or maybe attend a conference related to a government grant proposal I'm part of), although, typically, everyone else is taking off on a CIEE faculty development tour of southeast China, and I'm the only one headed to central China on a Silk Road trip. Now, to get there I need to fly to Xi'an from Beijing to meet the tour, which will then take off for a couple weeks (more on that later, it sounds very cool). The tour will end in Lanzhou, which will then mean a return trip to Beijing. All of this has to be done seemlessly and quickly (something Rochelle excells at) because I have about one travel day from the end of the tour to get to Bratislava, Slovakia to present at a conference - and then I'll be dragging my sorry, tired body home. Believe me, none of this is as exciting as it sounds. First off, filling out the paperwork for the China visa.

Abu Dhabi

I'm buried, but I wanted to get a few thoughts down on (virtual) paper before they fly out of my addled brain. On this trip through the United Arab Emirates I spent more time in Abu Dhabi than I have had the chance to do in the past, and came away liking it a lot more than Dubai. Whereas Dubai is the business tourist center of the Emirates, Abu Dhabi is trying to become the cultural center. They have just completed construction on the world's third biggest mosque, the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, which boasts the world's largest hand-made Persian carpet (65,000 square feet). I haven't had the chance to visit the Sheikh Zayed Mosque yet, although non-Muslims can enter it during certain hours of the days. Abu Dhabi also has signed agreeements with the Louvre and the Googenheim and will be building what will essentially be branches of those two famous museums on a man-made island. So, you'll be able to go to Abu Dhabi and, besides visiting one of the world's largest mosques, you'll be able to see part of the collections of the Louvre and the Googenheim. Amazing.

Sunny Budapest?

OK, I'm packed, paid up, and ready to go - and it is a brilliantly sunny day in Budapest. Ever since I arrived late Monday night it has been appropriately gloomy and rainy, but today, by way of saying goodbye, Budapest is providing me with a sunny send-off. I have a 12:30 pm flight from Budapest to Paris. As always, I am already nervous about the mad dash through Charles de Gaulle Airport, although I think I have enough time so it won't be too terrible (insert foreboding music here). The flight across the Atlanta is on Air France which makes me happy. Then a short layover and the flight home to chilly Burlington.

I really like Budapest quite a bit, and wish I could get out to see more of the cointryside. They are definitely struggling with the transition from the old communist days to a market economy and entry into the EU (and who knows when they will ever switch to the euro). While waiting for the train yesterday I walked next door to a mall - and the clash between the posh West End Mall and the wonderfully seedy Nyugati train station tells you everything you need to know about this clumsy time in Hungarian history.

If you ever pass through Budapest be sure to visit the Cafe Alibi. If you are at the great indoor market (fresh food malls on the ground level, souvenirs on the top) next to Corvinus University, just walk down Vaci Utca (the main pedestrian shopping area in Budapest, it runs on forever). Take a right at the second street, Szerb Utca. You will pass a church on your left and then the Loch Ness Pub on your right, before hitting the Cafe Alibi on your right. The staff speak impeccable English, the food is great (I had the garlic spinich chicken one day and then the creamy leek chicken the next - both great - and good cafe lattes), and great free wifi.

Loved my visit here again, and can't wait to come back. I'm supposed to be speaking at a conference in Slovakia in June and I think I'll have to make a return visit to Budapest.

Train to Pilscsaba

Well, in this case, the train from Pilscsaba to Budapest. Pilscsaba is where Pazmany Peter Catholic University is located and I've made the sojourn out here two straight days. From the Hotel Gellert on the Buda side you walk across the bridge, which they are still working on a year later - and I suspect they will be working for a while yet, to the Kolvin metro station on the Pest side. There you pay your 270 forints (just over a dollar) and ride to the Nyugati train station. There you buy your ticket to the Pazmaneum statuin, which is on the Esztergem line, which is 900 forints round trip (about $4.50) for a trip that is an hour each way. I love the European train system - it is so great. Now, if I can only get one of those cool red Hungarian station master hats!

Hungarian National Gallery

On Wednesday morning I had some time to myself before an afternoon full of meetings at Corvinus University so I used it to climb back to the top of Castle Hill. I spent an entire day there last year and loved it - and wrote all about it earlier in the blog. However, on the previous trip I missed out on going into the National Gallery because a wing of it was closed for repairs. So, I was determined to get back up there. It was a lovely way to spend a couple hours, not simply because it is located high on Castle Hill and you'd be looking at a picture and suddenly look out the window and have this spectacular view looking across the Danube to the Pest side (Castle Hill is on the Buda side). The view looking over the chain bridge and towards the Parliament building was pretty amazing.

I, sadly, didn't know much about Hungarian art, and now I know a little more. Every place I visit I always end up at the local art museums, which I guess is the hallmark of the utter nerd. I usually bring along a pen and small pad of paper so that I can make notes to myself as I wander through the museum - you never want to go to a museum with me, it can take hours - and then I'll want to go back through it again. Anyway, this time I forgot my pen, but stopped an ancient Hungarian woman who was working there are borrowed her nub of a pencil to make notes on my Budapest map. There were several artists that I found quite interesting. There were several painting from an artist named Soma Orlay Petrich, but the one I found most interesting was his painting of the Greek poet Sappho, not only because she looked very Hungarian as compared to Greek, but also because she looked like a younger version of his mother (another painting that was featured there) - submit pop psychological analysis here. There was also a really arresting painting by Jeno Gyarfas entitled The Ordeal of the Bier, which featured a woman, with an utterly mad look on her face, stumbling out of a room where her lover's body is on display - there is a bloody knife on the floor and you can see the wound, vaguely, on his chest. However, it is the passionately deranged look on her face which kept me coming back again and again. They also had some of the studies leading up to the final painting and it looked like something right out of Goya. However, the painter that I found most interesting was the great Hungarian romantic painter Bertalan Szekely. His paintings are featured all over the museum. He had an entire collection simply called the "loose women" collection which was pretty interesting, including a painting of a Japanese woman changing out of her traditional dress - the painting is quite beautiful, although the woman is a very Hungarian Japanese woman - and considering how great a painter Szekely was I'm sure that's not representative of his inability to render the image. There were also a series of paintings which were very nationalistic and almost messianic. The destruction of the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohacs in 1526, which marked the greatest victory of the Ottoman leader Suleyman the Magnificent and also the destruction of the Hungarian kingdom and the beginning of four centuries of subjegation, is a very popular topic for Hungarian painters, and Szekely is no exception. He also did a painting entitled Mihaly Dobozy, another theme copied by other Hungarian painters. It deals with a Hungarian hero being pursued by the Turks and trying to escape with his wife or lover (I'm not completely familiar with all the aspects of the story). In Szekely's version the hero is standing next to his dead horse with the Turks rushing towards him - and the woman is opening her blouse to give him a clear path to plunge in his knife so that she (and, metaphorically, all of Hungary) will not have to undergo this degradation. Obviously, very romantic and very messianic, but also pretty moving. So, if you make it to Budapest, plan to set aside several hours to spend at the National Gallery.