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.

Reflections on Oman

This was my first trip to Oman and I really enjoyed it - and wished that I could have stayed for more than just a couple days. I was scheduled to visit Muscat this last summer before the Great Unpleasantness changed everything - although I'm sure I would not have been as enchantened in 135 degree weather.

I found the people to be very friendly and out-going. You actually saw Omani folks working at jobs, which is not something that you are as likely to see in the United Arab Emirates (where the work force is almost entirely legally temporary immigrants, even if they have been there for generations). It was both very exotic, but also very comfortable. The men all wear the traditional white dish dash with very cool hats while the women wear black abayas. I'll use some net-drawn pictures because I haven't been able to download my own pictures yet. There is creeping westernization, to be sure, but the Omanis are very sensitive to it, especially the ecological damage, and clearly don't want to become another Dubai. The funny thing was that the last night Johanna and Francois took me out to eat at a local nice mall as a going away treat, and the mall was alive with young folks in western garb, both men and women. I had not seen any Omanis in western dress all day long until that moment. So, Oman is definitely on the cusp, which is why they're such a natural fit for our Global Module expansion. If we can get in at Sultan Qaboos with this program I think we'll be very well-positioned.

And Sultan Qaboos University. It is only around thirty years old, and is one of the prettiest campuses I have ever seen. It is an odd place because there is absolutely no exchange, unless it is very subtle, between the male and female students - they just pass each other like ghosts. They are not segregated - and there are clubs designed to let them spend time together in regulated activities - but you certainly never saw any guys hitting on girls or vice-versa. Now, what happens at night in the mall, of course, is anybody's guess. Several women, again in their traditional black abayas, went out of their way to come up and talk to me when I was waiting outside a professor's office. They were very friendly and one of the girls actually gave me a poem to read and critique, both the poem and her English (both were quite good). I spent a goodly portion of the day at Sultan Qaboos with George Rishmawi, a great guy. George is a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem, and actually knew some of the folks I've talked to at Bethlehem University and someone I know at the University of Jordan. He invited me back to his house for lunch and I met his wife. I had not picked up on the fact that he was Christian until I entered his house and saw several icons and a cross on the wall. His daughter lives in San Francisco and they are very interested in visiting her more often. I had commented to one of the secretaries that I had, unsuccessfully, tried to buy some of the Omani hats down at the old souq downtown - they wanted more than I wanted to pay - although, typically, I've been regretting I didn't buy about ten. I think the problem is the exchange rate - I've just had too many of them on this trip: it's about $1.30 to one Jordanian Dinar; and around 3 Emirati Dirhams to a dollars; and one Omani Rials equals three US dollars, and one US dollar equals around 200 Hungarian Forints - too much confusion and I was afraid I was being cheated worse than usual so I hesitated - of course, I also almost bought something at the market here in Budapest the other day and thought it was an acceptable bargain at $19, and then redid the math and realized it was actually $190 and quickly bowed out. Anyway, I made this one simple comment to the secretary and it became her life mission to get me some hats - and no amount of argument on my part could change her mind - and she eventually went home and returned with three hats that she had initially bought for her brothers! Again, she wouldn't take no for an answer nor accept any payment. Typical for this amazingly generous part of the world. So, definitely visit Oman - I can't wait to come back.

Stuck in Budapest with the Muscat Blues Again

Actually, I love Budapest (especially now as I'm sitting in the Club Alibi off the Szerb Utca, feeding off free wifi, and devouring a plate of garlic spinich chicken). However, on Tuesday I had my doubts. I was sitting beneath a low-lying, almost claustrophobic, caliginous sky, and found myself dreaming of the heat and blue skies of Muscat, Oman. Of course, that may have just been a case of the fact that I was freezing to death. Not only was it 30 as compared to the 95 I have left behind in Muscat (mainly because the heat had broken in Oman and everyone was happy for the cooler weather), but I didn't have a coat or a sweater, which were stuck inside my suitcase that had picked a particularly bad time to go missing.

To make a long story relatively short, I got stuck in the Air France strike the other day. I flew out of Muscat at 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning and arrived in Dubai around 1:30 a.m. Now, I wasn't scheduled to fly out until 12:30 the next afternoon and I had already thrown away $200 for a nine hour stay on my first trip through Dubai so I just hunkered down and slept on the floor of the airport. Wow, it was cold, really cold, which at least took my mind off how uncomfortable the floor was. That was the first time that I wished that I had my coat, if only to act as a blanket - instead, I used my extra pants as a pillow and my extra shirt as a blanket. My suitcase was already checked through from Muscat to Dubai to Paris to Budapest. Anyway, after a long cold night I woke up to the news that my Dubai to Paris flight had been cancelled because of the Air France strike, which led me to track down an Air France agent (who were, not surprisingly, lying low). I finally found a very nice young woman at the Air France lounge who confirmed that the Airlines had already moved me over to Emirates Air, and that I was flying out at 2:30, and passing through Frankfurt instead of Paris. Beggars can't be choosers so I didn't complain - plus, she let me hang out in the posh Air France lounge for several hours. So, I eventually boarded the Emirates flight at 2:30, although it then didn't take off until an your late, making my layover in Frankfurt a bit iffy. When I landed in Frankfurt I had to run throughout the entire airport and by the time I made it to the Malev (local Hungarian carrier) counter I was told it was too late to get on the flight - I had already been turned back by a security agent who had sent me to the Malev counter in the first place. I didn't accept that as an answer and they held the plane, thankfully, because Frankfurt is too nice of a city for that level thermo-Scudderian explosion. After some more running I made it onto the plane and on to Budapest, only to find, not to my surprise, that my luggage had not followed me. It could have been flying out of Muscat, or the layover in Dubai, or the Air France strike and redirection, or the short layover in Frankfurt because of the late Emirates flight, but my suitcase didn't make it. So, the next day I had to walk to all my meetings in just the shirt and khakis that had served as blanket and pillow the night before - and Budapest was pretty cold. I am staying at the Hotel Gellert, a spa that has seen better days, although they are fixing it up even as we speak. That said, I could look out my window and I could see Corvinus University on the other side of the Danube, so it could not have been more convenient. My luggage eventually showed up late Wednesday night, and the sweater and coat were greatly appreciated - I can now leave the hotel!