In February of this year I was a recipient of The Half-Century Wanderlust Grant, a.k.a. a bunch of lovely people put together a bunch of lovely money so I could travel on the occasion of my 50thbirthday. By March I had booked my trip to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest and in May off I went. Whether or not all my benefactors have the time to get through this chronicle filled with random observations, a few stories, confessions, and a sprinkling of facts coupled with not always pertinent photos, I do hope they know it a testament of my inestimable gratitude.
PRAGUE
Ivan, Martina–forever
I arrived in the land of my teenage tennis crushes stewing in jet lag, dislocation, and general sense of improbability—Prague? what’s a Prague? what’s a Czech Republic? —and reeling from the fact that I might have taken out something like $500 in Czech koruna at the airport ATM. What can I say, I was tired, and I panicked with the German tourists queued behind me snorting impatiently.
I mentally if not physically staggered around looking for coffee and WIFI connection and found myself near a bus ticket booth. I decided one of these buses was the bus I needed. I lucked out that it basically was. I kept waiting for everyone who got on that bus to look like a fashion model—I don’t know why that is. “I am in the Czech Republic,” I chanted to myself, “notice, notice, notice, what it’s like.” I got off the bus. I felt rather drunk. The taxi driver I flagged down, on the other hand, you could fairly say was drunk, about 65, smoking heavily, eating a tiny pie, and listening to an excellent deep cuts classic rock station. When I gave him the thumbs up pointing to the radio, he said, “for me, it is best,” as if he’d had many debates on the this point and resolved to no longer engage in them. He pointed out the Russian embassy and I’m pretty sure we both made jokes about how sinister the vibe was but it’s hard to say.
Workers Working
There it was. Prague rolling out in front of me. The driver gestured to former Communist party headquarters area making a brief expressive noise that I thought meant many different things at once. I’d not been to a former communist country before and growing up in the Reagan-lovin’ burbs of the 80’s this forbidden ideological fruit had piqued my interest. I wanted to fishing around questions for the driver’s thoughts or perspective but figured my ignorance + our language gap would make my chances of saying something stupid/regrettable high.
We arrived, and he pulled my suitcase out, looked at it in a satisfied matter, “There,” he said, a sort of punctuation to conclude our transaction, and zipped off. Yes, “There,” but: here. I mean I was there and here. So odd, that.
***
Sneaker Narcissus
Zrcadlové bludiště
Zrcadlové bludiště Petřínor (or the Mirror Maze) is a superneato well, mirror maze, built in 1891 as an exhibition hall and one of the top locations in the world to accidentally bonk your nose. It also gave me an opportunity to admire my new sneakers in a way that only a sneaker narcissus can—multiply. I wondered if the Mirror Maze, like other notables built around that time, were begotten in a spirit of nationalist competition. Like, say, having seen a fancy pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair, a muckety-muck of the Czech Lands might plot to top it. No, I’ve no historical evidence to back this up. There was a clutch of posh (Italian?) women wearing fancy hats. Europeans, usually in the over 40-demographic, sometimes dress up in matching hats/shirts/outfits when touristing. On the funicular on the way up to Petrin park, I watched—as everyone else was as, perhaps, like myself they’d never seen folks in that state of inebriation still ambulatory —3 men in matching orange golf shirts, shorts, and giant beers (and tattoos, and glasses, but that didn’t seem intentional). Further toodlings around Prague I’d see European tourists again wearing matching outfits often the exact same color/logo/etc. Hmph.
***
Charles Bridge in the Prague
Charles Bridge, one of those standbys which I didn’t realize how famous it was, stood stolidly, bless the thing, having waited all these years for me to show up. If only I could get the goddamn tourists off of it so we could be alone. I infrequently have thoughts like this, but it occurred to me I’d have liked to have seen what it looked like 500 years ago. Maybe at the walk of shame hour? I imagine everyone dressed as if in Cadfael. One of the nice things about spectacular bridges, is it’s nice to be on them, but it’s almost as nice to see it from another bridge.
***
Attempt at art potato chip photography
Do these seem marketed like condoms to you?
Here we see a coalescence of firsts a) night in Prague b) ingestion of a new species of potato chip (although how indicative MAXX DEEP RIDGED are of Czech culture I know not), c) attempt at potato chip art photography (see utiliziation of parallel parallel lines of AirBnB studio’s venetian blinds) d) stay at an Airbnb. My belief in the depth of human inequity certainly extends to an apartment where hundreds of people have had access to the keys. It has struck me as a horrible idea. And yet, too many people I knew had good experiences and as it was so much less $$$, I caved, squelching my old-cop type world view for the moment, and gave it a twirl. I had an excellent, accommodating, helpful host (shout out to Pavel) who was everything that one hopes for in this essentially social-contract-based exchange.
***
The Metronome, red and gigantic
I’d been tipped off by a local that the prole Praguelodites/Praguers/Pragueans (i.e. people actually from Prague) gathered at the Prague Metronome (a 75 feet tall, red metronome, built 1991, at spot of former Stalin monument) around sunset. So up, up, up went I on the stairs of Letná Park. The evening had a classic beauty of mild warmth, soft breeze, near-cloudless sky—I mean, let’s face it, ’twas heaven. Two DJs played the most—there is no other word for it—chill—music conceivable. In fact, it was so relaxed the two seemed almost competing for the most chill vibes, which probably says more about me than them. There is nothing like the those in the European union when they’re relaxing. I detected no smell of pot, kind of odd, that. A DJ pulled out a plastic baggie with two sandwiches. I (really) wanted to know what kind sandwiches those were. The Metronome stopped at sunset. I asked around why that would be. No one seemed to have noticed or find it a point of interest and no one knew. It’s hard to talk to strangers when they have to speak your language for it to work even a little bit. I often feel a dunce, a drip, or a drag. A chilly breeze kicked what was a gentle and mysterious crepuscular hour into night, my precious phone died, and I scampered back to my rented home.
***
on the back of a seat on the metro
I had been noticing everyone, including myself, seemed to be sneezing a lot one day, and wondered if this was some Prague/pollen phenom. In the thrift store someone sneezed in rapid-gunfire fashion and I heard the girl at the counter say “everyone’s sneezing today” and we had a nice if brief conversation about sneezing. I bought a too-small striped Lacoste t-shirt that smelt so strongly of perfume I had to wash it four times to get rid of it, although unlike other perfumes it didn’t make me sneeze.
***
An older priest, trying to get out the doors as a clutch of gabby tourists barged their way inside, rolled his eyes in classic, theatrical fashion. Turn the other cheek, but not the eyes (?).
Seemed like something Edward Gorey would love.
The contents of this bowl easily weight like 5 lbs.
You might wonder why I purchased the heaviest of hot gloop at high noon on an unseasonable 90-degree day. One, HUNGRY. Two, regional delicacies (which I’d been lax on finding), not that I can remember what they were. Three, it had vegetables which hadn’t gotten much air time of late. I watched a man wearing a sandwich board of hand-made posters who in the U.S.ofA. would have most likely been a rogue apocalypse-invoking attention-seeking evangelical. I asked a few people what the signs said but they were unresponsive, uninterested, and/or just didn’t like the look of me. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. I slid the leftovers into a plastic bag which was unsettling to come upon when fumbling around for my wallet. Needless to say, I didn’t wind up eating them. Even my depression-era Grandma tendencies have limits.
***
Dyed birds to get your pix taken with.
CONFESSION, I never got in the Pražský hrad or Prague Castle. Sure, I rambled around the gardens (where I saw the only squirrel of my trip and a tufty-eared beauty it was too), overheard conversations from a tense newly-married British couple being talked down by their mother-in-law, and two girls discussing their imminent careers as lawyers (on a bench–ha, life’s ironies), asked soldiers going through my purse what were some of the interesting non-dangerous things they found (a smile and knowing “no-comment” shake of head), and I circumnavigated the Palace (or what I thought it was–look, there’s a lotta big fancy buildings around there, and I had to have done so at some point) from the outside. But no, to the famous, unmissable inside I did not go. Go I did not. While you’re listening to my various travel sins, take note, I also didn’t get into the Kafka Museum except a quick dash around the gift shop.
***
Unassuming packaging for this day n’ age.
Perfect stopgap between street food feeds, carrots purchased from the small grocery across the street with Czech-y pretzel rods. I was right by the very famous Dancing House Tančící důmwhich (or Fred and Ginger) which had a giant OFFICE FOR RENT sign spread across the outside which I assume the architects, if they are still living, despise. The Dancing House is one of those places that simultaneously is a little disappointing and totally lives up to the hype. At the park, did I watch a man watch me or was I watching a man watch me to see if I was watching him? Felt more Cold War rather than cruise-y.
This is the two oddest exchanged glances between Mary n’ Jesus I ‘ere did see.
Pritty, pritty, pritty
and to…VIENNA
Like a Gill in a Snowglobe Museum Shop (did not to break anything)
Sachergloben
Original Wiener Schneekugelmanufaktur A.K.A. Snowglobe Museum. I had the joint to myself which perhaps added to something a little unsettling in the air as snowglobes, like dolls or marionettes, seem like they might come to life in the middle of the night especially assembled en masse. Couldn’t tell if snow globes seemed more like wombs (amniotic fluid) or coffins (embalming fluid). I was SO HAPPY to find a snowglobe in a snowglobe. Oh, there’s opportunities to put all kinds of crazy shite in there.
***
I saw Sisi Museum at the Hofburg Palace on the day Harry n’ Meagan married, so, ya, ya, that monarchy racket is STILL going on, if you can believe it. Alas, photography was prohibited. Sisi (that’s Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary to you) had hair to die for and so much like a horse mane I wondered if she noticed actual horse’s manes. She wrote a lot of unhappy poetry. An anarchist killed her with a needle file—man, the museum seemed to be burying the lead there. WOW. Austrians (and Hungarians, I would later discover) use the color red most effectively. No mention of secret passageways on the tour—but surely there must be. Emperor Franz Joseph I looks like a wearying person to have as one’s life partner.
***
Sadly not only did I fail to buy the plastic crow I wanted in Vienna I failed to take a picture of it. Here is instead is one of the most surprising things to appear in my vision, ever, the Flak Towers or Flaktürme at Augarten.
***
Not to do with described art opening,<—-but PUBER has left his/her name all round Vienna
I walked past an art opening and ducked in on impulse thinking it an opportunity to compare/contrast with its USAian counterpart and huff some culchewar. There was so little art on the walls and display pedestals, and, of the art that was there, it had been so un-laboriously brought into this world (a few lines to comprise a small framed drawing, minimal modeling to stubby clay objects), it seemed that those two aspects combined was actually the art (?). Was this anything indicative about art-of-the-moment Vienna? Ich weiß es nicht. The crowd was young and rumpled and chic and sat in relaxed negligence, chatting and smoking.
***
Strip clubs: I suppose Ogling Story Bar or Tales of Getting By in a Patriarchal Society Bar was taken.
The beauty of my Airbnb was well, a) it was beautiful as in art deco-y b) in close proximity to the Iranian grocery store which carried a brand of pretzels sticks I’d tumbled in love with c) had 9 strip clubs within 10 minutes walking distance. I thought the Internet did away with these? One was called Love Story Bar. I almost thought I should go in just to transcend various gender barriers/norms, but it seemed like too much work. Due to a lock difference on par with needing adapters to the euro electrical outlet, I locked myself out of my Airbnb (Pomepeii?levels of traveler anxiety) and a locksmith—originally from Israel he later told me—came within 15 minutes and took care of it within, oh, 20? 30? seconds, bless him. He seemed a nice dude, I got no bad vibe off or him and I sure didn’t want to seem like a xenophobic USA-ian ladyjerk, but I surreptitiously (I hope) photo’d his license plate (#solotravel) before I got into his car to go get the cash to pay him. We chatted. He told me he’d become a locksmith after locking himself out of his own places like 10 times. That’s kinda beautiful I thought and very likely said.
***
Walk around Vienna just a little bit you realize that Imperial Austro-Hungarian empire has some serious flex.
Did not buy…oh, but I thought about it. #dirndl
I will say while there was some supercool stuff, the pomp/circumstance/statues/topiary in Vienna were suggestive of a tiresome stuffy uncle who is prone to long, humorless lectures. I often imagined snow on the statues (and then was that snow more like underwear or clothes?). In about 10 minutes walk from here (<—), heading to the Museumsquartier I’d start seeing crops of young men dressed as Mozart. I hope there are young women getting in on that action. I don’t believe a Mozart getup would be flattering to me nor do I feel motivated to find out. I’ve seen a fair amount of specialized museums and one devoted to wigs and toupees through the ages would be a fine one. Maybe in France though with that crazee towering wig shite in Versailles.
***
I met my spouse/at the Schmetterlinghaus
I went to the Schmetterlinghaus (pardon my immaturity but yes German can be hilarious), even though there are butterfly houses other places and I’d be in Vienna probably once in my life and had limited time and resources, because, yes, BUTTERFLIES. Fine entertainment, such a Haus, but can’t we use this place to shore up the butterfly coffers globally? Or would that lead to Cane-Toad-like problems? They are miracles, these fluttery beings, and how pure of heart one feels if one of them lands on one’s hair. Ten or twelve butterflies rested on platforms half-toppled over each other supping on rotting banana slices, looking drunk. I have noticed in my travels that people everywhere appreciate the international now-don’t-panic-but-you-have-a-large spider/beetle/bee/wasp/roach-on-you gesture. This was the case of a couple standing by a fake tree getting their engagement photos taken, when I indicated there was a big black beetle-ish bug on the bride’s butt (couldn’t resist that alliteration).
***
10 second when there were no tourists in frame
Ye olde Wiener Staatsoper a.k.a. Opera House. There is nothing quite like the sound of the compliant shuffle of feet as tourists follow their guide and make their way from one noteworthy thing to another…not enough for an opera but I think a good weird-noise piece. The Opera House itself? Big. Fancy. Mostly carpeted.
***
startled me–on display at the Freud Museum
On display at the Freud Museum. Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Waldeby Felix Salten published in 1923. Wuuuuuut? Salten, turns out, had close ties to the Freudian community and knew Freud, if not well. From the museum text: “Salten explicitly counted ‘Freud’s teachings’ among the greatest achievements of the new age.” Well, how amusingly probable does that seem when you think of it, our dear wee bonnie baby Bambi and all of us generations weeping in the movie theater. The museum text says “Salten is also regarded as the author of what is arguably the only German-language pornographic novel of international fame: the fictitious memoirs of the Viennese prostitute.” Would SF call this a new twist on Madonna/Whore complex–Madonna Lost and Sex Worker Realized. The interesting thing to me about Freud both from what I’ve read and photos I’ve seen, is that he’s never, ever struck me as someone you’d particularly want to confide in. A visit to his working quarters of 20 (?) years did nothing to disabuse me of this feeling. The museum has his waiting room just as was when he worked there, and I imagined the cumulative exhalations of anxiety like nicotine on the walls. Sad lack of kitsch in the Freud Museum gift shop (as I found in my brief dash through the Kafka museum gift shop in Prague—would it be so hard to make a cockroach shot glass?) except Freud rug drink coasters.
***
Museum about the history of forgeries
Loved this place Fälschermuseum or MUSEUM of ART FAKES. Some of the fakes the forgers made were great and some of them were not great. You might speculate in the case of the not-greats if it was inattentiveness, greed, or a fear of seeming like a know-nothing noodle that motivated buyers/dealers to not argue their provenance.
***
#HarryLime and I heart Joseph Cotten
I watch The Third Man at least once a year and had been quivering with anticipation to see the The Third Man museum whilst in Vienna (although, alas, it turned out not to be open the days I was there). So it distressed me to realize, mid-ride on the Reisenrad ferris wheel, I’d completely forgotten JUST WHICH FAMOUS FERRIS WHEEL I WAS ON, as I’d only been thinking of wanting to see what an Austrian amusement park looks like and to hurry to get there before it got dark. While we made our slow circular scrape round the sky, the sound of a woman on a ride screaming in bloodcurdling fashion floated across the park. We all at some point peered out the window, searching for the source, looking dubious or worried. That level of volume is a talent, if a mostly hidden one, and not one I’d have thought particularly Viennese. But then again, maybe she was in the opera.
***
cautionary tale and in any case #FFF (French fries forever)
I ordered French fries in a falafel place. They were out. Reader, I’m embarrassed to say I sighed. Loud n’ Huffy. I’d waited too long to eat. This happens because of boring, circular conversations with myself about what do I want to eat, will attempting to find the desired food be likely in reasonable distance, will its cost of time/effort be worth the reward, should I actually eat it considering there is some nutritional element lacking in travel diet, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. This can go on so long that at least 75% of the time I wind up just eating French fries. At this point I should just go order from the nearest place, bless freedom fries ubiquity. That day I was tired, hot, the place was stifling, my foot hurt as a result of an accident the previous month, I’d gotten lost 15 times haplessly circling things a mere block away, a thing that I do which makes me crazy, and I was just not springing back from jet lag. So I huffed. The proprietor got some money, hurried out, fetched a bag of frozen fries, made them, beautifully golden and crispy, brought them out to me, apologizing for the delay. How do people in the service industry, particularly those who have to manage racism and/or xenophobia and/or religious prejudice to survive financially put up with tourists unsuccessfully suppressing their pouting? Maybe at that moment his feet hurt, the meat guy was late, his employee forgot to wash the parsley before chopping, his neighbor said shitty xenophobic things to his wife, and his kid had just announced he was dropping out of school to become a professional skateboarder. I thanked him, at least, when I left and told him I was sorry I was grumpy I had been very hungry. He waved it away but what else was he going to do? Every day, my friends, is full of opportunities not to be an asshole.
***
A new kind of Hagiography
I was so pleased to find a vending machine in a church–and alas I forgot to write down which one–I swearz this is not photoshoppo. I suppose it seemed another form of statuary, usually reserved for the usual saint, Mary, and Jesus suspects. I beamed at it, I think the way people do at their kids when they score or a goal or ace their clarinet solo in jazz band. Imminently, I’d order my first Schnitzel at I ❤️ SCHNITZEL and discover Schnitzel looks much like a sheet of crumpled deep-fried card stock.
***
They call it the Müllverbrennungsanlage Spittelau. No, really.
For someone terrified of heights I would keep climbing up towers this trip—Petrin, the Prague Old Town Hall, Žižkov Television Tower, Donauturm, Astronomical, Mary Magdalene Tower, etc. I didn’t however even attempt to see if I could get up the Müllverbrennungsanlage Spittelauas it was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser who I’d taken (aesthetically) against after seeing his house/museum.
and then…
As the sign seyz. All cities on this trip were exsqueeesite but I gotta say Buda/Pest was my favorite.
***
smothered in touristy goodness
It’s clobberin’ time
I found myself wondering what makes a tired tourist troop in lemming-fashion (or pack-mule fashion) up endless stairs when she doesn’t know where those that she’s following are heading? It would be more energy to stop somehow. I’d like to have just such an arduous climb that ends with a tiny blue pebble glued to a cement block with no explanation. Really. Sometimes the big question “Why are we here?” could be supplanted by “What are we looking at?” or “Why are we looking at this?”
But in this case, oh, baby, PAYDIRT. Vista that won’t quit, and the Szabadság-szoboror Liberty Statue. I’d climbed Gellért Hill I discovered. I overheard tour guides said the Liberty statue wasn’t built when I thought it was or for the reasons I’d imagined—my interpretation, anyway, of what they were saying. A man who lost his shirt to a 3-card card sharp next to the lemonade stand became volubly angry. I admired him for not trying to be a good sport or save face. I observed that of the capital cities I’ve visited Budapest has a higher than average number of statues of someone or something about to get clobbered.
Later at a picnic table I daintily supped on my sausage, onions, and peppers snack suitable for family of 4, I struck up a chat with two young gamers from Prague and Johannesburg who’d arranged to met up after murdering each other hundreds of times on an online game. They were quite sweet and sane and droll and, as I occasionally do, I felt reckless hope for the future.
***
It was only slightly less romantic looking in person rather than in this photo
What is there less of in Budapest? In my experience: Pilates classes, baby carrots, movie theaters, beards, chimneys, oatmeal, tanning beds, diet coke (coke zero prevailed), boho/Brooklyn-y flaneurs, enormous strollers, seltzer, suave eyeglasses, and, I’m sad to say, openly LBGTQ people (as deduced by hand-holding, t-shirts, flags). More of: well, of course, smoking. Also, I think people eat sandwiches earlier in the day.
***
Oh, baby. As good as anything at any State Fair.
Now, travel truthz. I hear funicular, I must find. I hear narrowest street in the city that only one person can get through at a time, I must find. I hear of some very specialized museum, unless it is about torture or misguided medical procedures, I must find. I hear of any regional’s version of deep-fried dough (or deep-fried anything, really), I must find. And Budapest is home to langos, a dishtowel sized slab of deep-fried dough covered most often with sour cream and grated cheese but other toppings as well. I found a restaurant-kiosk and ordered my langos straight up, as I knew successful ingestion of the bread/oil alone would be enough of a challenge. Delish. Hot. Nice texture. Crispy, maybe not superflavorful but who cared. As I ate, with a focus nothing less than hyper, I dimly became aware a few pigeons had hopped up on the toppings part of the counter unseen by the workers busy cleaning dishes. The pigeons began with a few experimental pecks, piercing saran wrap and getting sour cream on their peaks. So pinioned was I by my langos consumption (I’m only glad the restaurant was not going up in flames) I was unable to stop chewing and began snapping my fingers at the birds. Finally, I could make a noise. The women hurried over and waved them away but no further steps were taken. I tend to have better psychological barriers to renegade nature/food encounters than some, but I was kinda glad I had chosen my langos minus anything. I am not casting aspersions to the cleanliness of Hungarian proprietors as such things are universal. And possibly necessary in practical terms as much as uncomfortable as that be.
***
Ronnie!
Yes, that is Peter Falk as Columbo
How long I could keep up the fiction that I know Hungarian in Boston? Not only do not that many people know Hungarian but it is such an unfathomable language to English-speaking ear, who could discern my making it up (the way you might simulated German/French/etc.). It slid over, cupped, blew into, waved around like a gnat, and gently squeezed my ears, Hungarian did, but nay, I never understood a single f-in’ word. Here are pictures of Columbo and Ronald Reagan statues.
***
HUNGARIAN MONEY is the BEST-LOOKING MONEY IN WORLD
I passed soldiers, maybe military police, with various guns including large ones, getting into the back of a military truck listening to “Fuck The Police.” I began to call “hey, ‘F—” then realizing this could sound like an invitation to trouble/hail of bullets and I managed to come up with “Straight Outta Compton.” They waved, quite friendly. That was confusing all the way round.
***
this statue baffled me but the subway was very easy to use
Harry Houdini (a son of Hungary before family moved to WI) Museum
Have you lived until you seen about 25 fully frocked priests and one monk, who is eating a giant pretzel, murmuring in Hungarian and laughing urbanely. Maybe, but maybe not.
PIGTAILS + LUXURIANT FACIAL HAIR=A++
PIGTAILS + LUXURIANT FACIAL HAIR=A++
***
Goulash, goulash, everywhere but nothing to eat.
It’s too bad Kinsey Millhone—Sue Grafton’s heroine—never made it to Budapest considering how much Hungarian cooking she eats in the series. That slab of bread (—->) was the size of a bible.
***
Gilding the lily–this marvel was in a church in a cave.
Platonic ideal of neat-O
Sziklatemplom, St. Ivan’s Cave Church. I believe I said here as I had at other points in Budapest wanderings, I’m not sure if it’s good for me to see so many cool things in one day.
***
Retirement home for pre-revolution communist statues
Budapest was home to some of the largest bumblebees I’ve ever seen. None of them would stay still enough for me to take a picture of ’em when I saw a few in Memento Park. Instead, here’s one the many pre-revolution communist propaganda statues that reside in the park, which is probably more interesting to many of you anyway. There are many funny, cynical, snarky names the Hungarian people came up with to re or sub-title them, and again, propagandists make a mistake when underestimating the power of human wise-ass-ery. I wondered if something might be revealed to me if I went around a second time and took pictures of the back of the statues. I knew a Jungian psychologist who said she learned a lot from watching her patients backs when they left. I got nothing, however.
***
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias
St. Mattias was the best church for a bored kid I have ever seen and may I say I can speak with authority. Ceilings, floors, walls, PATTERNS, PATTERNS, PATTERS. These pictures do no justice to ’em as we all say. It was horrible to leave but overstimulating to stay. My brain chemistry was being played like a Theremin. Not really being prone to research has its down side–you don’t really know where you are, you don’t have a context for what happened, you can miss essential stuff–but, boy, you can be surprised.
***
Gallery 8, Budapest
Damian Le Bas
Damian Le Bas
In Budapest, I was happily (willfully?) oblivious to the rising tide of fascism. Hey, I didn’t understand a word people said or a headline around me. I traveled in mostly tourist-y districts. And had I read much before I left? Of course not. I did however take a tour offered by Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation around Romany neighborhoods, places in the guidebooks suggest travelers avoid with varying degrees of urgency. Our guide was young, funny, smart and handled the hostile people of the neighborhood (“tell them the realstory,” said one man/douche watching our tour group go by) with aplomb and added that as a Romany woman she has to field people saying shitty things on regular basis (I paraphrase, BTW). Even a superficial read from faraway USA, one sees the Roma, the largest minority in Europe, face crushing discrimination and marginalization. The Critical Approaches to Romani Studies conference was going on the next day so some of the scholars were in the tour group—from Poland, the U.S., Argentina, Macedonia—and interesting to hear their asides and try to strike up conversations by mentioning Ian Hancock a Roma scholar heavyhitter who wrote a book I read once. The tour culminated in an opportunity to see an opening at Gallery 8of “Maps by Damian Le Bas.” Gallery8 “is the Roma Contemporary Art Space: of the European Roma Cultural Foundation.”
***
There’s so much more. But that’s all.
