Essentially a Selfie

 And here's a picture that I snapped in Budapest. Where? I'm not certain. I'll do some research and get back to you.

I kind of remember this cathedral . . . more soon.

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.

Pazmany Peter Catholic University

The process of finding new GM partners is an odd one. There is a lot of thought that goes into picking out countries and universities, but some of it is just a process of adapting on the fly. A few days before taking off on the last trip I almost cancelled the Hungarian leg of the trip because I didn't think it made sense as I was balancing out the cost of the trip and the reaction I was getting from a couple Hungarian universities. I actually contacted my travel agent about just flying back early, but in the space of a couple hours I heard what it would cost to change the flight, and found a cheap hotel, and received a couple very hopeful emails. As it turns out the Hungarian leg of the journey ended up being remarkably productive and Hungary may end up being a foundation of the expanding network. I've already talked about one of the universities, Corvinus.

The other Hungarian university is Pazmany Peter Catholic University. You take a pleasant forty-five minute train ride out of Budapest to the village of Piliscsaba. Finding the right train station can be a bit iffy in Hungary because they don't spend a lot of money on signage. Instead of a series of signs that run parallel to the tracks, you often only have one sign that is facing towards the front of the train (so it benefits you to sit up in the front of the train). I kept getting out of the train at each stop to see if I could spot the sign. Luckily, the stop for the university, Pazmaneum, was very well marked and had a quaint little station, which you walked through and right into the university itself. The university is a smallish school, about the sign of Champlain itself, with a very strong liberal arts tradition. I had a series of great meetings with Marton Beke from the international program, Gyorgy Domokos, the Vice-Dean for Foreign Affairs, Kathleen Dubs from the English department, and Karoly Kopasz, a student who works with Marton Beke. Kathleen Dubs had some wonderful ideas for Global Module themes, including using portions of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for a Global Module focused on perceptions of "the other." Karoly Kopasz was tremendously excited about the project and was checking out the new GM website while we were having the meeting. He couldn't wait for me to get back to the states to get the official OK so that he could get other students at the university to post on the general discussion forum.

The Glamorous Life

At every new stop one of the first chores is to find Internet access. It might be at the hotel, but it might not be. Some of the Internet cafes are really nice, and others are a bit iffy. I remember sitting in an Internet cafe in Aurangabad, India taking care of staffing issues and, with the exception of the electricity in the city giving out every twenty minutes or so, the system worked pretty well. There was a great Internet cafe (albeit a bit too expensive for my blood) right around the corner from the Hotel Wandl in Vienna - the great advantage was that you could get a melange brought to your little table while typing away. I spent six hours propped up in front of a big window in an Internet cafe in Madrid, which provided a great location for taking care of business and also watching the world go by. In Budapest I was staying at the Mercure Budapest Buda, which was cheap as long as you didn't get wifi (or eat breakfast). They essentially wanted $10 an hour for wifi or a special deal of around $40 a day. Instead, I went across the street to a little Internet cafe, although calling it a cafe probably does disservice to the work cafe. That said, Internet access there was only around $1.50 an hour. You went up the stairs past the Lego store and took a sharp left. There was a round table with computers, which half the time was in complete darkness. While all of the computers worked, only one worked really well (it's the one on the right in the picture - I still have very fond memories of that computer).

Bizarre

There are many reasons to visit Castle Hill in Budapest. Rising above Budapest on the Buda side of the Danube is Castle Hill, which is the old historic center of the city. There are several museums, including the National Gallery. There is St. Mattias Cathedral, which is beautiful. There are narrow cobblestone streets, shop and restaurants. There is also one of the odder places I have ever visited - the Labrynth. It is a little hard to find, although there are some signs. It is on Uri Street and it is very easy to walk by it without even noticing it - in fact, it looks like the entrance to a basement cafe. The Labrynth is, on one level, what the name suggests - the old series of caves that run under the Castle Hill. I thought I would check it out because it sounded sort of like the Catacombs in Paris, which I love. However, this is very different. A lot of folks over the years have used the Labrynth, from various Hungarian rulers to the Soviets, so I suspected it would be heavy on the history. Actually, there is none of that. There is no guided tour at all. You just walk down into the darkness by yourself. There are sound effects, ranging from heart beats to rhythmic drums, but very little lights - only the occasional candle or dim bulb. It's as if the entire Labrynth was given over to a mad art school student with a budget. There are human like figurines that wait in the dark for you. I actually just about scared an old woman to death. I was kneeling down at the base of a staircase trying to get a picture of some very spooky crosses placed on the stairs when I suddenly stood up - the old woman next to me screamed because she thought I was one of the figurines. In one of the last rooms there is a giant head half-"buried" in the rock. There is also a fountain with red wine flowing, although it looks like blood. I don't know if I learned anything, but it was definitely entertaining.

Corvinus University

OK, sorry to keep hopping back and forth between Austria and Hungary (I feel like a Habsburg emperor), but now that I have finally figured out how to post on this one computer - and before I start the trip home tomorrow and things truly get crazy - let me try and get caught up a little. The first university that I visit in Budapest was Corvinus University. It has a long and storied and wandering history. For a long time, under communist rule, it was renamed Karl Marx University (and, as you can see above) there is still a statue of Marx in the main part of the building. There is also a small, wall-mounted plaque honoring Imre Nagy on the far opposite wall, but it has now been obscured by a tree that has been moved in front of it (and, if you know anything at all about Hungarian history it all makes sense). The very fact that I was buying Corvinus University t-shirts for my son in the former Karl Marx University is about as obvious an indication of the victory (at least for now) of the capitalist world over the communist/socialist one. The building itself is very historic. It is located right on the Danube, on the Pest side, and it used to be the old customs house. There used to be a train track that ran right through the middle of the building (where Marx is sitting now). After the fall of the Soviet Union it was named Corvinus in honor of a scholarly Hungarian king of the fifteenth century (a golden age in Hungarian history).

Corvinus is very excited about the Global Modules project, especially in the economics, business and history departments. We should have at least a couple GMs up and running with them in the Concepts of Community classes this coming spring semester. I think they are so excited about the project because of Hungary's own struggle to join the EU and to fashion a more lasting connection with the rest of the world. In one of the many meetings I had with faculty members and administrators, I also had the chance to sit down with some doctoral students in economics, and I think they were the most excited of anyone. They were suggesting GM themes during the meeting and started emailing me more ideas before I had made it back to my hotel.

Terror Haza

If you ever visit Budapest (and you should definitely visit Budapest) be sure to travel out to 60 Andrally Ut to visit the Terror House. Andrally Ut itself is a lovely, wide tree-lined bouelevard with a vague Parisian feel about it. If you walk the distance of it, from the city center out to the monuments and the park, you will get a sense of the city's former grandeur, its decades of decay, and its current efforts at resurgence. The Terror House is dedicated to the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944 and especially the decades of Soviet domination. The location itself, 60 Andrally, has special significance because it was the actual headquarters of the Soviet secret police. It is a very spooky place, with pictures on the wall of every person who died there during the decades of Soviet control. In every room there are those heavy black rotary phones that used to be the norm - if you pick one up it will tell you the story of the room. The phone messages are in Hungarian, but the rest of the museum is fairly English friendly, including handouts in most every room and some of the films subtitled in English. There are a couple rooms I don't think I will ever forget. In one of the rooms, which was lined with the actual case files of prisoners, they were showing a Soviet documentary of the trial of Imre Nagy after the aborted Hungarian uprising of 1956. Sitting there in that room, watching that film, with a few very old Hungarians, some with almost ashen faces as they viewed the documentary, was staggering. When you get on the elevator that takes you from the second floor down to the basement, the lights suddenly go out and a film starts playing on the back wall of the glass elevator. It is a man talking about the process for executing prisoners. While you watch this you can see the pictures of the dead on the far outside walls and a huge Russian tank in the lobby. In the basement there are the actual, reconstructed prison cells, along with the pictures of people who actually died in the rooms. Devastating, but also something not to be missed.

Budapest and the West

Hungary is the process of joining the EU, although it has been a bumpy ride (as it has for much of eastern Europe). They desperately want to be considered part of the European mainstream (much as it is with the Spanish as well). However, the transition is not easy. They have not converted to the euro yet, although they were supposed to have completed the process by 2006 amd then 2008 and now the target date is 2010 (although many experts think 2014 is more realistic). In the meantime they continue to use the Forint (often shortened to the HUF). The exchange rate is something like 174 Forints to a dollar. It is interesting because the historically weak US dollar is also suffering against the Forint - last year the exchange rate was something like 213 Forints to a dollar. I know this is supposed to help the US in trade with Hungary (as part of that huge US-Hungarian exchange of wooden figurines and chess boards), but it makes it tough for Americans travelling overseas. The Hungarians are having trouble qualifying for EU investment money because they have a very high national debt and are currently in the midst of some tough governmental economic reforms for EU membership. I talked to Istvan Benasces, the economics professor who has been a big supporter of the GM project here, about the whole process of EU integration and globalization. I was talking about whether or not Hungarians were opposed to the whole McDonaldization of the world. He said that when McDonalds showed up in Hungary it was actually viewed a good thing because it meant that Hungary was becoming a part of the bigger world trade picture and felt that it represented capitalism and democracy as Hungary came out of communism. He also said that McDonalds was appreciated because they have famously clean bathrooms, a relative rarity in Hungary. By the time you do the currency exchange here it ends up costing around five or six dollars for a meal at McDonalds, the same as in the US, but it is a much more expensive five or six dollars here than in the US, so in a way it is a symbol of new found wealth. Istvan told me that as an assistant professor he makes around five hundred fifty dollars a month, but is OK because he has other sources of income and his wife works as well.

Generally Americans are viewed very positively in Hungary, although they have their own frustrations with the Americans. One of the biggest is that even though the Hungarian leader supported Bush on the Iraq War it is still necessary for Hungarians to get a passport to travel to the US, while their neighbors in Austria do not have to jump through that hoop. For this reason the Hungarians feel sort of let down - why is it that the French and Germans, who were actively opposed to the war, get to come to the US without a passport but the Hungarians cannot.

The Budapest Metro System

Just a few minutes because I am running off to meetings at Corvinus University (the former Karl Marx University, but more on that later). Budapest, like the rest of Europe apparently, has a great public transportation system. It is easy to figure out, even if you don't speak Hungarian (and no one speaks Hungarian). That said, I have doubts if OSHA would be so impressed with the system. I was riding the other night thinking that the subway trains just seemed to be travelling faster than the metro trains anyplace else I have ever ridden, and boy those cars do bounce up and down a lot. The stations themselves are very clean and look new, even though it is supposed to be one of the oldest metro systems in all of Europe. The cars, on the other hand, are pretty rundown. What struck me was the fact that the escalators that connect the different lines have to be the fastest and steepest escalators I have ever seen anyplace. Naturally enough, after thinking this, the other night I was riding up a steep escalator when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see someone falling down the down escalator next to me. Falling does not do it justice really - it was somewhere between flying and the opening sequence of the skier from Wide World of Sports going head over heels. He eventually ended up a crumpled mess on the stairs and the last I saw of him he was not moving - just gently travelling down the escalator. He was surrounded by other commuters who were looking after him and the metro officials were hurrying to his aid - and I am sure, sadly, that they are well-versed in the process. So, definitely visit Budapest, but definitely hold on tight to the rail on the metro.

The Internet or the lack thereof

OK, so I have moved on to Budapest and am still having Internet problems. I have some great pictures that I would love to post, but inconsistent or expensive Internet access is making it a little more difficult than usual. Apparently I will have to put some pictures on my memory stick and then transfer them. I am sitting in a little hole in the wall Internet cafe in Budapest that is across the street from my hotel, the Mercure Budapest Buda. In the hotel it will essentially cost me around ten dollars an hour to get wifi (if I can get it to work, it is the same system that I struggled with at the Hotel Wandl in Vienna). So, I walked across the street and am paying around a dollar and a half an hour. Of course, I am also sitting in the dark at one of five computers set up on a round table. Still, I do have a budget to nurture . . .
No trouble getting here this morning. Again, that amazing European public transportation system. In Vienna I paid 67 euros for a round trip ticket to Budapest. The train left on time and was perfectly comfortable. I figured out the Budapest metro system and bought a week pass so I am set there. Starting tomorrow morning I have a series of meetings stretched over three days with Corvinus University in regards to the Global Modules project. They seem really excited, so I am looking forward to the conversation. No time to sight-see so far (the hotel has a fitness center so I booked for the rest of the day). Maybe later in the week.