Reality Bites

Carbonated Water Dispenser from Soviet Era

At first I couldn't quite grasp why Polish and Hungarian people call themeselves Central Europeans, rather than Eastern Europeans.  Now I understand; as soon as I boarded the overnight train from Budapest to Lviv, I had clearly crossed the Eastern threshold.  Suddenly, nobody spoke any English and any concept of customer service or courtesy was irritatingly lacking.  At the Ukrainian Border, the agents who boarded the train for passport control had a chuckle when they saw my American Passport.  My interpretation of his chuckle was, "why the hell would an American want to go to Ukraine?"  I started to wonder the same thing when, several hours later, I disembarked in Lviv and was smacked across the face with an arctic blast of post-Communist desolation.

In all fairness, I believe my experience to have been somewhat corrupted by the November weather.  The temperature hovered around freezing for most of my stay, with a ground-hugging fog that broke only momentarily...enough time to snap a few photos of the beautiful UNESCO-listed historic center.  Like Krakow, Lviv was spared the decimating German bombing of WWII.  I witnessed the architectural and Medieval city planning similarities between the two cities, owing mostly to the fact that both were part of the historic region of Galicia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Due to its proximity to Poland, the Ukrainian language shares much of the same vocabulary and grammar, giving me a very slight language advantage when interaction with locals was necessary. That said, local interaction was limited as most people were shuffling as quickly as possible from origin to destination to minimize exposure to the elements, which included suffocating air pollution.

Lviv Theater of Opera and Ballet

The most humorous attempted exchange was at a cemetery located on the edge of the city.  I was tooling around looking for interesting Jewish tombstones when a woman approached me.  Although we both were skilled in other languages, none were in common.  Somehow, through a mixture of Polish and Dutch (me) and Ukrainian and German (her), I learned that she was cataloguing the cemetery residents and that she worked at an aviation museum near the airport.  She became supremely annoying after a while, asking me to accompany her to the depths of the cemetery because she was scared to go by herself.  This happened to be the coldest day of the three in Lviv, so by the time I was able to disengage, I was already chilled to the bone and had quite a walk ahead of me to get back to my apartment.  To my surprise, my puffy black jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf are not sufficient deterrents to the 100% humidity of the cold air here, which is different from the dry cold that I once knew in Alaska.

Apart from the Yanivsky Cemetery noted above, which was incidentally an assimilated cemetery (Jewish, Ukrainian Orthodox, etc), I also made it a point to visit historic places of interest of the former Jewish community who thrived in Lviv for about 500 years.  Lviv actually had a larger Jewish population than Krakow, but you wouldn't know that given the relative lack of evidence.  In fact, the apparent lack of recognition of Jewish contributions to the community and the remoteness of any memorial to said community was a painful realization.  The lowlight is the story of the Old Jewish Cemetery, which can be found here.  In a nutshell, the 500-year old cemetery was destroyed by the Nazis and has since been paved over and used as the city's largest outdoor marketplace.  Although Soviet and post-Soviet authorities recognize that the marketplace is built on top of more than 25,000 Jewish bodies, no progress has been made in restoring this site.

Holocaust Monument at Entrance to Former Jewish Ghetto

In Lviv, I felt depressed.  The buildings were muted and warn, just like the downward-turned faces of the city's inhabitants.  The feeling of desperation and desolation pervaded the city's parks, churches, and monuments to Ukrainian nationalists.  Soviet-era housing blocks were just a stone's throw away from the 14th century churches and restored Baroque facades of the historic center.  I could not find a soul nor a heart in this city of 1.5 million. 

One of the challenges I am facing during this phase of my travels is that I am barely able to keep up with all the new sights, sounds, and history that I am encountering in each new place.  By the time the revelations occur to me, it's onto the next city and a whole new bag of surprises.  This is the downside of lumping my checklist of must-sees all together in one big trip.  Hopefully over time I'll manage to sort through and make sense of what I've experienced in Central and Eastern Europe; I'm hoping that this brief diary will offset my less-than stellar short-term memory.  To maximize the benefit of this adventure, I must come away from this with some conclusions or self-awareness that will stay with me for years to come.

Land of the Magyar

Hungarian Parliament

Eight days in Budapest was not enough to get an adequate introduction to all the city has to offer.  I realize that many travelers only spend a long weekend or a few days of their European mega-tour in Hungary; I must be spoiled after my 7 weeks in Krakow.  Part of the trouble is that the winter season has arrived, and with that season comes dramatically shortened days.  Coupled with my lack of discipline when it comes to waking up at a decent hour (I'm on vacation!), 2 days in Budapest in November is equal to 1 day in London, Amsterdam, or Krakow in September.

I walked around aimlessly most days until my legs fell off.  I had no preconceived itineraries or must-sees as this is the beginning of my travels in unknown lands sans Lonely Planet.  I love to travel this way as you never know where the day will take you and what pocket-full of mysteries will challenge your knowledge of the world (or lack thereof).  There was so much eye candy with all the different styles of architecture, a true marriage of East and West!  In fact, I couldn't stop taking photos of all the exotic facades that I encountered on my meanderings - see Facebook photo album for the highlights.  This awakening of my unknown architectural sensibilities made me think of my Mom's reaction to Gaudi's designs during her visit to Barcelona several years ago.


Art Nouveau Facade

I stayed in a great neighborhood in Distirct VII, which is where the Jewish Quarter is located.  Unlike much of Eastern Europe during World War II, a large number of Budapest Jews survived the Holocaust, which means there is a thriving community still in existence today.  Still, there is no lack of horrors to be told in the city's memorials to the Jews who did perish in the ghetto or were deported to concentration and extermination camps.  As I was wondering through the Great Synagogue complex, which is the largest synagogue in Europe, I happened upon the Family Research Center, where I was able to scan microfilmed birth records of Jews born in Budapest in the 19th Century. 

According to my records, my great great grandmother Lena Kline was born Budapest in 1872.  Unfortunately, I was unable to locate her birth record after two hours of searching +/- 5 years of records.  It is possible that she may have been born in a village near Budapest, or maybe her age was more than 5 years off from what is shown on her death certificate, or maybe she had a different first name that wasn't anything like Lena (I looked at as many variations as I could imagine).  Despite the failure, I enjoyed the search and it did help me to confirm three things:  1) the name was definitely spelled Klein in the old country, 2) this was a VERY common name, 3) Lena's mother's name, "Saly", was very likely a short version of the common Hungarian/Jewish name "Rozalia".

Tree of Life Holocaust Memorial - Victims Names Inscribed on Leaves

Budapest was full of Vienna-style coffeehouses (kavahas) with delicious pastries and warm drinks offering refuge from the frigid Transcarpathian air.  I found a few favs, but there were many more that I would've loved to patronize had I had the time.  The intake of rich, calorie-laden delights helped make a dent in the weight loss I suffered in Paris...that is, until I got take-out from a Bangladeshi restaurant on day 5.  Big mistake, but at least I can still fit into my skinny jeans!

Let's see, what else...I spent a day at a Turkish bathhouse that was built about 5 centuries ago, took the suburban train to the picturesque Danube settlement of Szentendre with it's Serbian Orthodox churches and marzipan museum, got a haircut at the most exclusive salon in Budapest on Andrassy Street (think Champs Elysees) for $25, saw the 1000-year old right hand of Saint Stephen (the first King of Hungary) in an ornate box called a reliquary, got lost in the hills of Buda populated by wealthy villa-dwellers, and visited the American Embassy for notary services on Nov 7th, a day of jubilation for 50.7 percent of Americans.

Rudas Turkish Baths

Budapest was a beautiful city, full of surprises and delights.  I cherished my time there and can't believe that I've spent all these years unfamiliar with this jewel of the Danube.  I hope to make it back one day soon and perhaps I'll be able to share it with someone special.  I'm in Lviv, Ukraine now; the contrast between Central and Eastern Europe couldn't be any more dramatic.  More on that in the next post!

I'm Back!

Rewinding the clock back a couple of weeks to talk Paris.  Where to begin...

My 10 days in Paris began with a high-octane tourism blitz co-piloted by none other than Yuko Furugori.  Yuko and I went to University of the Pacific together back in the 90's and our friendship is one of the few from that period that has stood the test of time.  Although I have yet to make it to Japan to visit her, our paths have crossed in Long Beach, Amsterdam, and now Paris over the course of the last 15 years.  Yuko loves Paris as much as I do, which is why she invited me to hang out with her during her vacation.   

The Clock at the Musee D'Orsay

Although I've spent a lot of time in Paris over the years, I've never given in to the popular attractions to the extent I did during my first four days with Yuko.  Bottom line is I'm cheap and Paris is not, so I am typically reluctant to hand over my hard-earned dollars for the exorbitant entry fees to museums, churches, palaces, etc.  Our apartment was beautiful (and free for me!), in the 7th arrondissement a couple blocks away from the Eiffel Tower and the American University of Paris.  We visited Versailles, the Orangerie, St Denis Chapel, the Musee D'Orsay, the food hall at the Bon Marche, and Sex and the City filming locations.  We dined on steak frites, Basque cuisine, and the famous and pricey macarons of Laduree.  We packed in so much in such a short period of time; not an easy transition for me considering the relaxed pace I treated myself to in Poland.  At the end of our time together, I probably blew more cash than I spent in Krakow in a month.

The Grand Trianon at Versailles

After Yuko left, I went to stay with my friend Celine Battestini and her husband Olivier.  Celine is the sister of Frederique, who was a childhood friend that I met during my first ever overseas trip to Corsica when I was 14.  Celine lives in a suburb of Paris called Chatillon, a very quiet and restful place that was the perfect balance after being run ragged by Yuko.  Unfortunately, my first night in Chatillon I came down with a gastro-intestinal virus...aka the stomach flu.  The doctor said that there is an epidemic in Paris at the moment, and the subway is one of the primary breeding grounds.  By day 3 I had lost about 7 pounds and was considering upgrading the title of my malady to the Bubonic Plague.  Luckily, the involuntary discharge tapered off and I began to regain my humanity.

As soon as I was up to it, we went to see Skyfall at Bercy, weeks before it had been released in the US.  What's up with that?  We then went hunting for a new iPhone for Celine; I have never been in a household with so many Apple gadgets before.  Without the support of Celine and her husband, Apple would likely be bankrupt.  I spent my final days in Paris visiting some of my old stomping grounds:  the Marais, Montmartre, and the Ile St Louis.

Rainy Day at Montmartre

Due to my current interest in and focus on Jewish sites of interest, I also made my way to the Shoah (Holocaust) memorial and the Great Synagogue.  I also noticed for the first time a number of memorial plaques at the entry to Parisian elementary schools, in remembrance of the thousands of Jewish school children who were deported to labor and death camps during Nazi occupation.  In almost every instance, the memorials to the Jews of Paris who suffered during this period included verbiage assigning equal blame to the French government's for their complicity.

Overall, Paris was a welcome break from the challenges of being alone in foreign lands.  Spending time with friends in a familiar place, speaking a familiar language helped me to recharge my adventure batteries.  Hungary and Ukraine, here I come.