Palacsintas in Budapest

Today has been a great day of exploring without being travel-weary and jet-lagged (for me). Currently, we are sitting in a man's apartment drinking wine with him and a Polish man and a girl who just came over. Luckily we (and aforementioned Polish man) are the only ones staying in his hostel tonight so it feels more like a bunch of friends. We stopped at an ABC store which sells groceries on the way home from dinner and taking pictures and stocked up on sour-gummy worms, water, beer, wine, and snickers all for $6. My favorite part of today was the Grand Central Market, just off the Danube River, where about 300 merchants set up shop and sell everything from weird meats to nut rolls (like Dad makes) and lots of cool Hungarian stuff. I stocked up on presents and realized how easy it is to spend lots of Forint (Hungarian money). It was great fun to talk to the local vendors, although one lady accused me of breaking a box because I didn't use the little key hidden inside of the bottom of the box - needless to say, I did not do business there. Then, we rode the metro for the 12th time in 2 days and finally got busted by an officer of the subway for a ticket violation ("Zere ees a broblem vit yur ticket.") We got a huge fine of 5000 forint, which is about 30 dollars, but it was payable immediately, and included a receipt in case we wanted to write it off as a business expense - the officer seemed pleased with his work! Sometimes, after talking to locals, I turn to Aaron and talk to him slowly as if I want him to understand the English language. Good times! We are thinking of acting out our subway incident by way of photos so you may see that later (missing tooth and all). I swear I saw all my long-lost relatives today - I am so Hungarian! I could definitely live here for a while. And now, Aaron for some actual details ... but first, I gotta give a shout-out to my sister - what's up lil' sis'!
-Annie

Budapest is actually the union of two old Hungarian towns across the Danube from each other: Buda on the west bank and Pest on the east. The Danube is a wide river by Colorado standards. Five bridges join the twenty-something districts of Pest and Buda.

Yesterday Annie and I arrived in Budapest at eight o'clock in the morning after a nine hour ride on the oldest train still in service. The toilets were reminiscent of my experiences in India. The paragraph informing passengers not to use the lavatory while the train was in a station (for the consideration of those on the platforms) was written in Czech, Russian, Italian, and Spanish but not English. The passenger compartments were designed to hold eight people, but luckily were only booked for four. Another four companions in our compartment would have been intimate.

After fending off several touts, we headed downtown in search of pleasant-sounding accommodations Annie found on the internet. A two-mile walk later, we had still not found the place and decided to try accommodations on one of the fliers that had been pressed into our hands at the train station: Helena's House in eastern Pest. As I pause to search for a suitable description of Helena's House Annie and I look at each other and laugh. It was substandard. Eight mattresses sat on the floor in a small family apartment--two in one room and six in the other. During our short tour around eleven o'clock in the morning, six men still slept soundly in the room with six beds. The "room" that held the remaining beds was more of a hallway. After a very short conference ("It makes me feel like crying.") on the landing outside we were quickly back in the street searching again. (A few tears at this point)

We did eventually find a nice hotel not too far away with a quiet, private, pricey double room. As Annie and I were both hungry and exhausted, we stepped out to the corner market, bought fixin's for lunch, and after a great meal got the most from our beautiful accommodations by sleeping for four hours in the middle of the afternoon.

Refreshed, we set out for our first look at the Danube, for although our misadventures earlier in the day had taken us within a few blocks of the river, we had yet to actually see it. We took the Metro to Parliament, walked along the cobbled riverfront, and crossed to Buda on the Chain Bridge at dusk. Castle Hill in Buda is a long ridge rising steeply above the river, covered with old, beautiful buildings interspersed with large swathes of trees. There were also a lot of large swarms of bugs, like, maybe the largest swarm I've ever seen.

From the foot of Castle Hill we walked north and found a nice patio on which to eat dinner. Annie had traditional Hungarian stuffed peppers which her parents make at home. After dinner we continued north and found a local creperie that Annie recognized because of it's Hungarian name Palacsintas, another homemade favorite at the Rigo residence. We stopped to share a couple palacsintas, filled with nutella and banana.

This morning after supplementing our nap with an actual eight hours of sleep, we breakfasted at our hotel and then checked out in search of more "authentic" quarters. It was again a non-trivial search, but it turned out well (see Annie's portion of the entry).

In the afternoon, we bought our train tickets headed east to the shore of Lake Balaton for tomorrow and then stopped by the National Museum to see the exhibit on the history of Hungary. It was pretty amazing. I would have liked a more comprehensive overview of who the Magyars were before Saint Stephen I, and perhaps a few more dots connected during the subsequent centuries, but on the whole it was impressive. Annie felt very Hungarian again. I found the struggle between the Hungarians and the Ottomans fascinating having just recently seen the seat of Ottoman power in Istanbul. Several of the period costumes were fantastic--we found some amazing dresses and I might be an Ottoman Turk for Halloween next year.

We've got a few more short hours in Budapest before our train tomorrow. We're both looking forward to a slower life in the countryside (the lake, thermal baths, bikes, and wineries).
-Aaron

Annie! in Prague

My first 24 hrs in Europe has been quite the adventure. A few points I'd like to touch on: hostels, walking, and money. My first experience in a hostel turned out to be like a bad camp experience. The beds were cute, like a little man whittled them out of wood himself. We were in an 8 bed room and we went to bed before anyone else was in there. The hostel gives you 5 keys, none of them labeled, so all night, every time someone came in the room, you heard them try all 5 keys because, of course, it's always the last key! Then, there was the snorer, the sleeptalker, and me, the one who woke up at 3am and felt wide-awake. I thought about how to convert the local currency, where my lost face wash was in my bag, and how I hoped I would be able to make it through the whole next day. In the morning (after I finally fell back asleep), I had the pleasure of finding my glasses just in time to see naked guy get up, put on his bikini underwear and go into the bathroom for a shower. It was the same place I wanted to go to put in my contacts, etc, but I waited the extra time, just in case ! Today has been lots of fun - Aaron is good about feeding me beers, water, candy, and finding the WC when needed. We have an 11pm train to Budapest tonight and it will be my 3rd night to sleep in an abnormal place. It's such an adventure though. As far as walking and money, the streets are old school stone, which is great, but really uneven and hard to take in flip flops. And, the money is crowns and it's all I can do to keep it in my head that 100 crowns equals 5 dollars. We're about to find dinner and go buy some Praha tshirts and other goods!
See you in Budapest!!!!
-Annie

Well, so much for finishing some entries about Istanbul and Spain before arriving in Eastern Europe. I guess I'll have to catch up later.

Annie arrived in Berin at five after eight on Tuesday morning. I'm sure my hostel bunkmates enjoyed the six o'clock alarm. Annie and I had a train reservation to Prague at a quarter to one, which gave us a few hours to kill. We spent them at the train station because lugging our bags around Berlin seemed tiresome.

Our train was nice. Our second class seats were in a six seat compartment, which we had to ourselves. After the green and yellow farmlands of Germany, we had our passports stamped by some serious officials and found ourselves in a beautiful, narrow river valley with high, blocky cliffs on the east side, standing over cute clusters of vacation homes. We arrived in Prage just after five o'clock in the evening to be accosted by several people speaking poor English trying to get us to their hostels. After the third or fourth encounter, we made a fast getaway into a convenience shop to buy water.

The Metro system in Prague does not seem as comprehensive as those in Berlin or Madrid, but it seems to take us where we want to go. Three stops from the northern train station, we got off in the old town section of Prague to search for accommodations. We found a hostel without too much difficulty and, after settling in, set out to explore the city before dinner.

The old town section of Prague is amazing. Every block seems to hold some architectural marvel. We've heard that Prague has retained so much of it's old charm because none of the last century's wars have ever had much reason to destroy it. The sun slowly set during our exploration, throwing a slanting light on colorful buildings. We crossed the Vitava River on the Charles Bridge, which has stone statues on each side set about fifty feet apart. The view east from the bridge into the old town is picturesqe. We had a flavorful dinner on the west bank of the Vitava.

Today, after a large breakfast at our hostel, we stopped by the central train station in Prague to buy our tickets to Budapest. It is a short walk from the train station to the new town section of Prague where a wide, boulevard called Wenceslas runs roughly north from the imposing National Museum. In the afternoon, we stopped in a few clothing stores, trying to get a feel for the local flair and then went to the _very_ intense Franz Kafka Museum. Since Kafka wrote in German, I always thought that was his nationality, but he was Bohemian, born and raised in Prague.

At four o'clock, we found our way to the old square, which is a large, heavily touristed, cobbled square surrounded by incredible buildings. We sat for a taste of the Czech brewed Pilsner Urquell and watched the various nationalities flow by. The internet rates here border on the extortionary, so it's probably time to close. Ciao.
-Aaron

60% of the Oakley Family in Spain!

So, it's been a while since I've written (as those of you who try to read often might have noticed). I left Istanbul on Wednesday, April 11th, on a flight to Madrid via Dusseldorf. My layover became hectic when I happened to notice my bag, which was supposedly checked through to Spain, emerge on a carousel in Dusseldorf. I spent my short time in Germany sprinting around the airport trying to recheck my bag on the flight for which I was already late. I was shocked when both I and my bag made it to Madrid that afternoon.

The first thing I noticed upon stepping into the streets in Madrid after the long but efficient Metro ride into town was that I could read. After eleven weeks in six countries whose languages I've never spoken, I was again literate. This was a complicated but comforting emotion that is hard to describe. Not to say that my Spanish has survived the last ten years of disuse intact, but it's a far mite better than my Hindi.

I still have some comments that I'd like to write about Istanbul before I go on to Spain, but before I got backwards ... My parents arrived in Madrid for a short vacation last Sunday. I met them at the airport after their twenty-four hour journey and we got to explore a bit of the city before heading south on Monday.

There are many great things about travelling with people who are important to you. One of my favorites is the common memories that you then share. In ten years, I won't be able to turn to someone and say, "Remember that time in Hanoi when I thought I had malaria?" I'll probably not have time to write about all the fantastic places my parents and I saw while we drove around the last Moorish foothold in Europe, but the images and experiences have been recorded in a much more dynamic medium. Even in the age of the internet, there’s something special about an oral tradition.

I will still write about Spain, but I'm feeling a bit behind. Tomorrow, it's off to Berlin to meet my friend Annie!

Half Asian, Wholly European

A colony named Byzantion was founded on the land of present-day Istanbul in 667 BC by an Athenian named Byzas. Placed between Thrace and the Balkans to the west and Anatolia to the east, the region's history seems defined by almost incessant conflict. By the time Alexander the Great took Byzantion in 334 BC, it had already lived under three different foreign rulers: Lydian, Persian, and Athenian.

Byzantium came under Roman control in 64 BC and served as an important administrative center for the eastern parts of the empire until Constantine the Great moved his capital there from Rome in 330 AD. The city, renamed New Rome, was more commonly called Constantinople. Constantine's successor divided the empire between his two sons in 395 AD and when the western half fell to the Europeans in 476 AD, Constantinople became the sole center of Roman power.

Aside from the fifty-eight year period when the Latins of the Fourth Crusade controlled it, Constantinople remained free, albeit in decline until 1453. The Ottomans had been chipping away at Byzantium possessions to the east since Osman I declared their independence in 1301. On May 29th, 1453 Sultan Mehmet II finally took Constantinople and begin rebuilding what he had just took so much time to destroy. Instead of starting from scratch, many of the old Byzantine churches were converted to mosques and still exist in roughly their original proportions today.

The Ottomans controlled Constantinople with widely varying levels of competence until the Sultanate was abolished in 1922 with the declaration of the secular Turkish republic, led by Mustafa Kemal Pasa, also known as Ataturk (Father of the Turks). The issue of a secular republic ruling a Muslim majority is a large issue for modern-day Turkey. The first few pages of the Turkish Daily News normally contain at least two stories about government conduct in relation to religious beliefs.

Istanbul feels like a European city, not only because of all the European tourists, but because the buildings are well maintained, the streets are clean, and the people have a sophisticated fashion sense. The cleanliness was a pleasant shock after ten weeks in Asia.

Istanbul stradles the south end of the Bosporus, the waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Central Istanbul, which holds the highest concentration of historical sights, sits on the western side.

I stayed in Sultanahmet, a district built over and around some of the oldest pieces of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture. After a bit of a fiasco where I found that the hotel I had chosen no longer existed, I checked in to a small, family run hostel literally in the shadow of the Haghia Sofia, or Church of Holy Wisdom. The Blue Mosque was a mere two hundred yards further south, and the Topkapi Palace, overlooking the Bosporus, just a little further to the east. The Bazar Quarter is immediately west of Sultanahmet and an inlet called the Golden Horn separates this section of Istanbul from the busy Beyoglu district to the north.

Twenty-two hours in Mumbai

The train from Jaipur to Mumbai takes eighteen hours. The outskirts of Mumbai stretch for miles out from the city center--the train seemed to pass through dense developments for over an hour before we arrived. I was surprised when we pulled in almost on time at eight-thirty in the morning. My flight departure was scheduled for 5:55 AM the next day, which gave me very little time to look around. I took a taxi from the train station to the Colaba neighborhood in the southern part of Delhi and found a coffee shop for a much needed espresso.

Colaba is a bustling center of activity both tourist and commercial. It reminded me a bit of Saigon with its fast paced capitalism. However, whereas the sense of commerce seems quite new in Saigon, in Mumbai it feels modern but old and well-ingrained.

After trying to update my blog at a frustrating connection, I went on a walking tour of some of the sights. My first stop was the Gate of India, which is a huge arch right next to the water, commemorating a visit to Bombay by King George and Queen Mary in 1914.

Colaba is filled with old, beautiful buildings. From the Gate of India, I walked north past the Eliyahal Synagogue and the David Sassoon Library to Flora Fountain, which is an intricate construction in the middle of a large boulevard. West of Flora Fountain is a large grassy park called Oval Maidan surrounded by more impressive buildings. The State Public Works Department, the High Court, and the University of Mumbai all stand one after another up the east side of the park.

Mumbai was hot and the humid air prevented any sweat from evaporating. My shirt was constantly soaked. I stopped to watch one of the several armature cricket games in Oval Maidan for quite some time. The players were grown men, and the game seemed well organized, with referees and a scoreboard. As I watched, I realized how athletic the sport must be at the professional level, which is not always evident on television. A traveler I met here said, "I don't watch sports where they break for tea and crumpets", which is a sentiment I used to share. However, my respect has grown with my understanding.

After my afternoon walk, I headed to the recommended Leopold Cafe, a busy restaurant in Colaba with an incredibly diverse clientele. They seemed evenly split between Indians and foreigners. I met a Kenyan airline stewardess on holiday in Mumbai for three days and a young Irish man named Kevin who is four months into a six month stay. Kevin and I stayed until closing time when he returned to his hotel and I took a cab to the airport. I caught just short of an hour's rest before check-in for my flight began.

Jaipur, Rajasthan

A little more than three hundred kilometers from Delhi to the southwest, Jaipur is the primary tourist destination in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is much drier than the areas surrounding Delhi, and although I didn't see it, I've heard that you can take camel treks through the desert.

Jaipur sprawls to the south and west of a plateau that would be called a mesa, were it located in the American Southwest. On top of the plateau sits an impressive fortification called Nahargarh, or Tiger Fort, constructed, like most of the attractions, in the 18th century. The modern sections of central Jaipur have grown around the older buildings leaving a interesting mix of old and newer (not new) architecture. In that heterogeneous jumble are the City Palace, Hawa Mahal, a royal residence, and Jantar Mantar, an observatory.

I arrived in Jaipur to the usual bustle around the train station, encircled and besieged by half a dozen rickshaw drivers offering fares at a discount. Always hurried and always pushy, I've found that the best way to deal with them is to just stand still, not following anyone, not moving, for at least a couple minutes. The act of doing nothing seems like a simple way to assert that you're not pliable prey.

After the short wait, I had a driver take me to a hotel I'd selected in a quieter part of town, away from the dusty center. When I took my room I thought it was quite nice, but it turned into the worst of anywhere I've stayed. The mosquito net was completely ineffective and mosquitoes entered the room at will. I even tried sleeping in repellent, but the heat caused me to sweat it all off. I think I was bitten more in two nights than the entire rest of my trip combined.

On Sunday I visited the City Palace, the observatory Jantar Mantar, and the Amber Fort, with Mario, a Mexican that I met at the hotel. I had expected the city palace in Jaipur to somehow resemble the palaces in Old Delhi and Agra, but it is completely different The palace is a collection of square plazas enclosed by a network of a building. The facades are painted in a striking contrast of colors: blue balconies on yellow buildings, bright white trim on reddish brown walls, and multicolored works surrounding doorways.

Jantar Mantar is just across a narrow dusty street from the City Palace and is a collection of structures built to aid astronomers in tracking celestial bodies. A tall tower dominates the courtyard. On each side of the tower, a circular marble strip rises from the base to form a semi-circle with markings for degrees to accurately locate stars and planets. There are several similar smaller, and therefore less accurate, structures, one for each sign of the zodiac plus one or two more. The stairways that lead to the top of some of the structures have no railings and are somewhat perilous.

Amber Fort is a palace and fort extending along a high ridge about eleven kilometers outside of Jaipur. Built at the end of the 16th century, it was the center of Rajput power until Maharaja Jai Singh II moved administration to Jaipur in the 18th century. There are elephant rides to the ridge top, but Mario and I elected to climb the cobbled pathway. The fort walls command an impressive view of the surrounding plains and Jaipur itself. In addition to a Hindu temple, and museums on the region's history, the fort also contains a cannon foundry complete with a mule driven drill for boring precision holes in the solid, cast barrels.

Monday morning, Mario and I visited Hawa Mahal, which is a tall, intricately carved facade hiding a complex of stairways and balconies overlooking a courtyard. The complicated facade is riddled with small windows for observing the busy street below.

I had my train reservation to depart for Mumbai on Monday afternoon, but Mario had not yet gotten his ticket. We spent a significant portion of the day both before and after the Hawa Mahal, walking the train station, from one ticket window to another, directed by some authoritarian decentralized bureaucracy neither one of us understood. My Spanish seemed marginally better than Mario's English and so I acted as translator. As I boarded my train in the afternoon, Mario had some kind of receipt that would allow him to ask the conductor of his train for a seat when it arrived. It turns out that advance reservations are the way to go.

Again in Delhi

In India, I've come to prefer rail travel to buses, but as there are no tracks to McLeod Ganj, I booked an overnight tourist bus back to Delhi. The trip was supposed to take twelve hours, but due to two flat tires, one while the bus sat parked during dinner and the other while we were driving through a town the next morning, we arrived eight hours late. On the bus ride, I met Aruna, an American who came to India to study yoga. After the interminable bus ride, we agreed to meet up for dinner after checking into our hotels.

In Delhi for the third time, I found an entirely different experience. Aruna and I explored further parts of the city that neither of us had yet seen. On Wednesday, we took a rickshaw to a neighborhood in west Delhi called Patel Nagar to see a film called the Namesake, about an Indian family that has emigrated to the United States and the issues that their firstborn son has fitting his identity into both his traditional family and community and American culture. The film is primarily in English and was quite good. Seeing it here in India gave me a much greater appreciation for the cultural differences. The movie is filled with subtle (and not so subtle) cultural juxtapositions, not all of which I would have understood before I came to India.

On Thursday evening, I accompanied Aruna to a devotional service by Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, who is known as Amma, the hugging saint. I'm not sure "service" is the right word, but I don't know one more appropriate. Amma has followers from all parts of the world--the devotees in attendance were mostly Indian, but I saw quite a few Westerners as well. The type of yoga that Amma practices sees song and music as the path to devotion. After a ritual where most of the attendees sat on the floor with a small candle on a leaf in front of them, the event organizers set up chairs and everyone sat and listened to Amma and her companions on a stage sing and play. Aruna found a seat close to the stage and I listened to the mesmerizing music for about an hour before hunger got the better of me and I sent in search of a restaurant.

In addition to those outstanding excursions, we also looked through quite a few shops, saw India Gate and explored the beautiful park that runs east from India Gate to the Parliament building. One of our grand discoveries was the Metro. After seeing the Namesake, Aruna and I decided to try returning to central Delhi by Metro if we could figure out how. As it turns out, the Delhi Metro is not only straightforward, but also cheap, clean, fast, and convenient.

A quick note from Mumbai

I've just arrived in Mumbai this morning after an eighteen hour train ride. Since leaving McLeod Ganj, I've spent a few days back in Delhi and then two days in Jaipur, which is in the Indian state Rajasthan. I had not intended to spend so much time in Delhi, but some details for law school needed sorting out at a reliable internet connection.

I'll have to write more about that and my experience in Jaipur another time. I only have this afternoon to explore Mumbai and I've already spent two hours trying to process my pictures on this frustratingly slow computer.

Hopefully more from Istanbul tomorrow!