Photos

have posted some more photos of Romania. Cheeeeck.

Rumination: Social Welfare and Social Behavior or Expression in Finland

The freedom of self-expression is quite interesting here, because, as Josh tells me, Finland is a social-welfare state, equalizing the socio-economics within the country (well I guess it's more economically..I'm not really sure about the "socio" part). So with this welfare that takes care of everyone, you get this financially equalizing effect. I am looking for the seedier parts of the city, for communities of young people where the coffee shops are cheap, for people struggling. I haven't found them yet.


Most families own summer cottages, where they spend the season whiling away, and enjoying an escape from typical life. I told our Finnish friends that this was very uncommon in the U.S. and that only wealthy families would ever be able to afford this type of additional house. Their responses treated cottages as if they were just entirely normal.


Additionally, the saunas here are really popular, and they are unisex, and everyone is naked. (This isn't self-expression, then, necessarily, but can be looked at as a gender-equalization, thus making co-ed naked saunas an non-socially progressive thing. Just normal. People also maintain that the sw-system here promotes a "female-friendly gender regime", perhaps further equalizing power in gender interactions and therefore allowing for naked interaction to be less provocative [if women are seen less as objects, if they have higher status, more respect, and power, then perhaps the image of their naked bodies also warrant these things.)


The way that I thought that individualism and individual self-expression would play into an equalizing, social-welfare state, isn't exactly what happens here. When we walk around the city, Josh points out the dull colors of the outfits. I notice the non-descript and modest architecture that seems purely functional, not decorative or celebratory, at all. This seems to fit the idea that a sw-state affects social equalization. Josh also said that Finnish people like their physical distance, are not at all socially outgoing, don't really use a lot of facial expressions in public (walking around, faces seem stern--effect of the weather, maybe?), no one crosses streets unless the walk sign has changed. I made sense of this by thinking that if people start with equal-ish means, then perhaps they only stay within equalish grounds. Doesn't necessarily make sense that an equalization of social and financial resources would lead to an equalization of social behavior.
But now here I am in the library, and each kid in here has his or her own, unique style. They are all dressed quirky, some display socially deviant accessories like tattoos, wild piercings, freaky hair. So instead of stream-lining behavior, I see with the younger crowd more individual expression and comfort with individual expression (not the desperate cry to be recognized as an individual that I see in the States), and I can't quite fit that into the larger, Finnish equation. Is it just the activity of the youth, that youth expresses and is allowed to express more than other people? Will they change drastically and conform like all the other people on the street when they get older? Is this a new, contemporary phenomenom--is Finnish culture changing, and, if so, how does the sw-system play into that?


Perhaps it is the blanket of base equality (starting with equal resources) that allows the youth to express individually. Like upon the base of sameness, this is the perfect catapult to express. And therefore individual expression is mandatory, is possible for everyone, is a necssary part of Finnish life. What's confusing is the disconnect between what I see in the streets and what I see in the buildings of the University. Maybe students are typically not out because they are in classes and studying, etc. Maybe this is a particularly big university town so the youth acts more strongly, socially. Perhaps there's a large international student population that leans the culture of the student population in a progressive direction.

Perhaps we are seeing the wrongs sides or parts of the city. I am confused. Is this a free society or closed? What forces are acting here to make the Finns act in such opposing ways? Does the social welfare system even have anything to do with it?



Or maybe I need to ask larger questions, like does a social-welfare state lead to social egalitarianism? SW-system + what in Finland = the behavior I observed? Is it and how is it diff from behav in other sw-states?



Also, I really need to look into these beggar women in Helsinki. They are all dark-skinned, wear long, flowing skirts and scarves tied around their heads. They seem to have a community: I often see 2 or 3 of them together. Where did they come from? What brought them here? How do they play into the social make-up of Helsinki? What do people think of them?

Photos now have captions!

Hey all! I am in Berlin.

Wanted to let you know that my captions now ALL have photos so look through them to know where I was and what was going on!

Cheers!
-Mal

Photos

I posted some of my photos from Slovakia, Vienna, and the beginnings of Romania.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mallory.nezam/UploadPhotos?authkey=Gv1sRgCOTV4ougrpnCDg#

We Transition. I want this to be big(ger).

What's interesting is that now that Alison is leaving and I am beginning a new part of my journey, alone, I realize that all that everyone has been saying about how wonderful it is that I am traveling and therefore challenging myself has really not rung true to me. Here is the thing about traveling in Europe: I am not challenged; I am having fun. Here is the thing about traveling: I sort of feel like in order to truly challenge myself in the way I want to be challenged, I need to be a part of a community and that I can't be moving around like a waif so much.

Again, I want a project. That project could successfully be completed on the road (writing. but it has not yet been possible with the lifestyle that alison has wanted to keep up. i am not so much into seeing castles right now as i am about learning. castles teach me minimally).

Now that I have the freedom to decide my next step, I am considering countless options, including Helsinki and a trip up to the Northern lights (one of the things on my list of things to do in life), immediately make my way to Spain where I have nothing prepared (only a lead on a WWOOFing job), go home, or go somewhere else crazy--like another country (where challenge will be ever-pressing)!

On this slightly cloudy and life-noisy day in Prague (which is a nice little city, but nothing interesting, despite all of my fantasies), I spend the morning looking up the alternatives.

I don't feel like this is my calling.

Alison officially leaves in like 30 minutes and I can feel something changing. The leaves are rustling.

The Romaniacs overcome Endless Obstacles and YOU wish you were there to join the fun

Today my words come from somewhere in the outskirts of either Hungary or the Czech Republic. Alison and I are on a bus making our way to Prague. But why are we going to Prague right now? On a bus? That wasn’t the original plan, Mallory. Oh yes and don't worry that we are just coming from Timisoara, making our way back through Budapest, back through Bratislava, and then up to Prague. No worry that we are Actually, Literally backtracking the ENTIRE course of our trip. Yeah that's not weird or anything. Maybe I should tell you a little story..

Mallory and Alison embark upon a lovely journey toward the Retezat Mountains (13th wonder of the modern world) southeast of Timisoara. We awoke early this morning (I have no idea what day of the week it was) and jumped on a train at like 5:20 AM or something. This train, we had pieced together through out detective work the day prior, would take us to Simera where we would have to transfer to another train (a real janky one. hello india traveling, right? only it was a little better than the ones in India) and that would land us in Ohaba, where we were to take a "minibus" to Carnic, where we would then ascend into the mountains. So all goes according to plan so far, we are nearing the Ohaba stop where a train worker comes into our car and tells us we must hop out now. Thank god he told us to get off of we would have had no idea.

The Ohaba train station isn't exactly a train station. It consists of an old, abandoned, pee-smelling building, men in overalls on tractors, horses carrying wooden carts, a few families lying under shaded trees on the other side of the track (hiking equipment and backpacks..clearly returning from a trip), a few porter potties, a plastic bear 'statue' (more like figurine), a "map" of the mountains, a small, nondescript white van, and a lovely man in a blue tank top that read (in red, white, & blue, of course) "THE U.S.A.". Alison and I are literally made to jump off the train as it slowly rolls on by the Ohaba 'stop'. Right on.
On this mini-bus, we wait, and if you know me, you know that I can't deal with a viod of air circulation, so i spent most of my time outside of the bus (Alison was exhausted so stayed inside): I took pictures and chatted with a family who'd just come down from the mountains. They gave us a lot of advice as to where to go, how long it would take, how to deal with transportation when we return. They were also, like everyone else we told our "plan" (who has plans?) to, worried and surprised by our attempt at such a trip (only two of us, girls, americans, plan-less, map-less, with limited time. No Big Deal.)

The minibus ride to Carnic was gorgeous: we had great views of the mountains and our bus driver was a doll. Upon arrival in Carnic, we are approached by a seemingly kind older couple (who actually turn out later to be eviiiil) who try to sell us a "tent" (a trash bag on sticks), coffee, and rip us off on a map for 20 lei (which is essentially 7 bucks. what the fuck) but we were feeling like we might be completely effed if we don't have a map in the mountains, so we bought it--what were we to do?!

At Retezat, you don't exactly have a lodge or information center at the foot of the mountains. No. Instead you must make the 5¬-6 km hike up a mountain to get to the first cabana. So Alison and I hiked with all of our stuff, up the mountain for about 3 hours or something (of course going past the side trail to the cabana, and needing to backtrack as the sun was starting to wane) and finally, starving, we reached the cabana! It was gorgeous here--a pleasant little haven among the mountains. Here we were actually able to buy food. We had been really worried that we were going to be stuck up in the mountains for 3 days sans food (besides the bread and nasty cheese that we'd brought up from Timisoara) but we got lucky (luck will be the theme of this story, you will see).

In Retezat, we spent 2 nights and basicly 2 days. It was obviously really lovely to take a break from city life, pace, scenery, culture, etc. I have learned that no matter how much we enjoy traveling through cities, we must must absolutely take breaks and leave the city, venture into nature. It makes us appreciate the opposite more and allows us to get back in touch with things as we re-adjust our pace. We went on a full day hike our 1st complete day there. It took us up the mountain and to one of the glacial lakes that Retezat is so known for. It was extremely nice to finally be moving around a lot and get some hard exercize. I think our bodies were thankful. The hike up started in a forest and then went about this forest line and took us higher than the clouds. Planes from a military base in the distance danced and traced designs with smoke in the sky as Al and I wrote poems underneath a cloudless atmosphere.
Retezat happenings to note: The cabanas had electricity only for 1 hour, between 7-8pm. Interesting. We ate a lot of polenta (mamaliga), and met two (North) American dudes working for the Peace Corps in the mountains of Romania (teaching english). We talked with them about life and why they chose what they did, if they like doing it. We also made friends with a little Romanian guy named Alin who really liked to talk (was interesting to talk with), taught us Romanian card games, was couchsurfing on the mountain (yes, if you ever go to Retezat, aparrantly there is a couchsurfer who lives right by the Pietrele Chalet. Check it out) and coincidentaly studies in Timisoara.

Finally, the descent back down out of the mountains, reversing our trek from foot to bus to (hothot) train. At the station in Simeria, Alison and I realize that A.) We are not sure if Marco knows that we are coming back today, what time we are coming back, and B.) we needed to swap sleeping spaces in the apartment so that we could sleep in the living room where the computer was so that we could work on croatia stuff when we got back (we'd arrive very late and leave for croatia quite early the next day). Payphones never work for us, so we had no luck with this, but asked some nice girls if we could borrow a cell and send Marco a text with all the info that we needed. Thank goodness that worked out. Our ride back to Timisoara was really fun (just a lot of laughing and good conversation) despite the fact that we had an actual insane person in our train car. She kept singing really loudly (and terribly) with headphones on, and rocking back and forth (?). She would say and shout things really loudly in Romanian to us, she dressed like a man, and kept yelling into her cellphone whenever anyone would call. It was awesome.

What was not so awesome, however, was when Alison realized that she'd lost her purse. Yes; it is true. We've just jumped off the train onto the platform in Timisoara and immediately Alison yells "oh my god--where's my purse". She jumps back on the train (it has actually stopped this time) and scours it, but it is nowhere to be found. We both check ALL of our bags to see if we put it inside of anything else. I go back on the train myself and check with a train worker. Then Alison does one last go-around on the train as it is starting to take off and has to jump back off for an escape. Her purse had in it her Passport, credit card, some cash, and her i.d. Pretty bad.

After talking to some officials at the station, trying to figure out if anyone has picked it up, and/or who we should talk to about a lost or stolen passport, we run into Marco and Tania, who have been looking for us. After telling them what happened, we all go to the police station, where we begin reporting and talking things over with the policemen, only to suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a police v. homeless slaughter. A homeless man had aparrantly hit some man in the train station. This man complained to the police. The homeless man was brought into the station while we were inside. All of this was going on in Romanian so really all that Alison and I witnessed were actions. Later Marco told us what people were saying to each other. The homeless man began to speak, maybe loudly, and babble some things that were really angering the police while they were trying to speak with us about the missing purse. The oldest, fattest policeman aparrantly has a very short temper and stomped over to the homeless man and smacked him, then spit in his face and began shouting things at him. The policeman's temper escalated and he grabbed his baton and began beating the homeless man. I definately witnessed a few blows to the head. Other police began to gather around him as the homeless man was shouting and the police man was bashing. The police got the homeless man on the ground, the older cop began kicking him, they hand cuffed him, put a hood over his head and sat him down on the bench next to us. All that just while we were there. Aparrantly this happens all the time.

I have never actually seen this type of police brutality or police-homeless interaction ever in person, only in movies or on t.v. But it happened, right in front of us, with an air of oh this happens all the time so it's not something unusual and scandalous that we should have to hide you from. No one acted as if we shouldn't have seen it. No one really seemed to be trying to excuse it or cover it up.

You could feel the energy of the cops starting to heat up, so they directed us into another, small room where the door was closed and we couldn't observe what was about to occur, or continue to occur in the main room. Here, Marco gave us the impression that this isn't too terribly uncommon from the police here, that there is general corruption amongst this branch of the law, and that 'he hates to say it, but they guy might have had what was coming to him' (because of what he was saying?). Perhaps the homeless man was saying things much worse than Alison and I could have imagined. Anyhow, it was pretty scarring to watch this scene, to feel like you can't to anything even when you feel, as a natural impulse, the need to help anyone in pain, and when anyone in a position of power seems to be abusing it. I don't know what we can do in Romania. I don't know how the law works. What would have happened to me if I'd said something? Would I get beaten? Would I disappear? What would happen, I don't know, so I didn't do anything, just felt...And now I'm telling you this. I'm sure Catherine will be interested in this story.

One of the worst things, though, is that when we left that room and walked through the main room to exit the entire station, we had to walk past through the room of the scene and there were more people in now, all sort of crowded around this one man, and there were these two younger boys who were maybe just random station workers or security guards (not police), who had faces of pure pleasure. They were laughing and smiling when I made eye contact with them. Laughing when they looked my way as if to say ha we all this this is fun and amusing; I want to share this mutual feeling with you, but I could and did not share this with them. Instead, I just kept a solemn, serious, and I think disapproving face, very stern, as I walked past them. Who knows if anyone saw anything in my face, but I really do hope so. Perhaps that is idealistic, but I felt that that was the smallest way in which I could have done something, just a very very small disapproval and a small little critique.

We go home empty handed--Alison's purse is nowhere to be found. We begin the project of cancelling credit cards, contacting embassies, etc., and it is late at night and we can obviously not leave for Croatia in the morning. The next day we are still working on Alison's loss of important things but decide, at least, to go grab a movie that evening.
Inglorious Bastards is the film that wins for the evening. The film is in German, French, and maybe 25% english. The subtitles are in Romanian, so I got a really excellent language lesson in (kind of in French and Romanian). (It's really amazing--Alison and I are learning SO MUCH Romanian. We can understand SO much of it and our language acquisition is improving rapidly). During the film, Marco gets a breakthrough text message. Apparrantly someone has found Alison's purse (!) and we meet her at a hotel after the film to retreive it. Her story is strange and there are holes, but Alison is unconcerned because she has her purse back with everything in it except for the little bit of money the left, which really isn't an issue. Back in business, Alison immediately begins talking about leaving for Croatia tomorrow morning on the 5am train. I am like whoa no I dont think we can to that. I think this idea is too haphazard, even for us. (I'm like you dont have a credit card, your parents still think your passport and cc are stolen, we dont have anywhere to stay, it is already really late at night, etc.) So we decide not to leave in the morning, enjoy the evening with friends, and plan when we get up in the morning. We bar-hopped with the crew, which includes Marco, Tania and their friends Amira and Soltar.

As Alison and I are researching transportation options to Croatia this next day, we come across the information that SkyEurope has officially closed (bankrupcy) and they have stopped ALL of their flights. So our flight from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Prague was cancelled. And Alison's flight from Prague to London was also cancelled. Our plans were once again tossed in a hamper. We had gone from plans to no plans to all plans back on track to absolutely no plans and a blank slate in the course of like 60 hours. My being was going insane being hinged and then unhinged and then hinged again, and then unhingedhingedhinged, etc.

We shared this news with the Romanian crew and went for lunch at Marco and Cristina's parents home. Their parents were very close to Clara and Emilian Taranu when they lived in Romania. They told me that they were all each others' best man and head bridesmaid at the other's wedding. Lunch's end found us all a bit sleepy and sloppy, and then we decided that the best thing in life would be to go back to Marco's house and play the game that we witnessed in Inglorious Bastards. At home we drank coffee and played a game where we write the names of people (we later extended this to places and things) on a piece of paper and stuck the paper on the head of the person next to you so that each player can not read the name on their head. The game is then everyone asking yes or no questions about their character to try and guess who they are. We played for hours and it was really fun. Soon it became late and the night had to end, as they often do.

Guess what--the next day was my birthday! I spent the first few hours (from like 2-330am) talking to my little Catherine online, which was, who can argue?, a stellar way to start any 23rd birthday, right? In the morning Al and I went into town where we bought watercolors, drank in cafes in our favorite square, then walked to the botanical garden where we painted a lovely joint picture. We briskly made our way back to the apartment where we met Marco and Tania and went out to dinner at this place pretty far away from the city. Amira and Solan met us up there and we went next door to this crazy complex (connected to the restaurant) that had indoor soccer, bowling, a bar, game tables (some romanian game), and pool tables. We played many hilarious rounds of pool (I'm not as good in Romania/without Kevin as I am in the States). [[I am listening to Graceland right now and it truly and phenomenom]]
[[I must interrupt here, because the following note is of the utmost importance. I think I have just witnessed the absolute most annoying thing in all of my life. There is a couple in front of us on the bus and they are actually kissing THE ENTIRE RIDE, but that is not the bad part. The bad part is that it is so disgustingly audible and muchy and smacky and fucking loud and the other most annoying thing is that they need and have to do this stupid kissy thing ALL fucking ride long. There is honestly something seriously crazy about your relationship if you can not leave eachother even semi-alone for more than 1 minute (i am not kidding. i hear this slopping at least once a minute) during a 6 hour train ride.]]
At the end of the night, the 4 of us finally took some group pictures, said our undesired goodbyes [[ooh i want those potatoes from the restaurant right now]], and Alison's camera, unfortunately broke.

In the morning Alison made quick to pack and run to catch a taxi. We had only 9 lei left so we crossed our fingers and hoped that the meter read less than that. It did! Hooray! At the ticket couter at the train station we were informed that the times the woman at the train info office had told us the day prior were incorrect and there was a train that had just left 2 minutes ago for Budapest, and a train that leaves at 5pm. [[*Note: we thought we were going to have to take a train from Timi to Buda and then Buda to Prague and that this (bummer) train would cost us around $140/person which we both thought was a lot to swallow (especially seeing as we were not sure if we'd get our $ back from SkyEurope). I did a little bit of genious research and found a cheap bus from Buda to Prague, so we bought train tickets to Bud, and now are on the bus to Praha. Yay for cheap alternatives! Yay!]]. So the lady quickly improvises (appreciated) and tells us of a train to Arad and then a train from there to Buda, but train #1 would be leaving in 5 mins (!) [ps-we cant take later train because we have bus tickets booked for 4:15pm]. We pay and wait for the semi-archaic process of issue Romanian train tickets slugged along, and at 7:12am, the exact time that the train was to leave, we are able to grab our tickets and run (with our 20kilo bags) to platform 5, where we make it just in time to grab our train to Arad. In Budapest, during our layover, we eat and check to see if our Prague host has gotten back to us about directions and official permission to stay that night (highly needed, ee....). She hadn't, so we tried to call her from Skype and left a msg. Our bus was to get in at 11:30pm and therefore we needed to have stuff figured out before we got in. The alternative was to book an expensive hostel even though we have the possiblity of having a free place to stay, OR to stay out all night and romp around the town (not like it hasn't been done before. Each city deserves a full 24-hour rendezvous, we decided). Our decision was to go grab something to drink and then check back on the internet breifly before we had to run over to the bus station. When I checked, Brieana had gotten back to us!! (Brieana is a friend of a friend, Tom Wortly, who I met while we were both living in Hyderabad, India) She gave us an address and thorough directions from the metro station. Excellent. Things were set. We maneuvered through the metro, tried desperately to find the bus station, used the last of our Hungarian forents on some drinks, and headed onto the bus.

On the bus, that Hugh Grant movie with Drew Barrymore and the Hugh Grant singing was on, and I started thinking about Naguine (because obviously she introduced me to those god-forsaken [but catchy] songs), and Alex Black, because obviously everyone says he's the American Hugh Grant. Sorry, Alex. It's still funny. I'm pretty excited to see him in Barca.
But for now, I am plotting the ways that I will kill this couple in front of me and I think I will give my hands a rest. You have no idea how long this post is. Well, wait, no. I guess you do. Paul Simon. Peace.

Birfie

Happy Birfday, me!

Charmed in Romania

It is the evening of our first full day in Romania. Yesterday we arrived midday and were greated by Marco and his girlfriend Tanja. Marco is the son of Emilian Taranu's (Emanuel's father) best friend from Romania. He and his sister Cristina live in an apartment near the Universitatea de Vest and this is where we are staying. Marco, his girlfriend, Cristina and her husband are really accommodating and such a sweet group of people. We went out to dinner with them (save Marco, who was still at work) and then went into the city centre--all cities are absolutely gorgeous by night. This was no exception.
When we first walked into the room we would be staying in, which is Cristina and her hubby's room, we were amazed by the lighter collection, or altar, in the room. Totally weird. We learn later, at dinner, that Cristina and her husband work in sales and work for JTI, Japanese Tobacco International, under which products like Camel and Winston operate. The lighter collection now made sense. Cristina's husband used to work for Coca-Cola, turns out, and he hated his job. He worked long hours (would often come home around 8-10 pm) and the work was difficult. He eventually quit because his schedule was so terrible. There is a large Coca-Cola plant here around 10km outside of the city. This was really my first time hearing from a real person right in front of me, the terrors of the Coca-Cola industry. I had been educated about it at Oxy, but this was the real thing. It's true--Coca-Cola is a moral-lacking company that cares little about its employees. I am glad that he was able to find another job. He seemed quite unhappy and a shade of gray came over him when talking about his previous job. I wonder if there was more there than he spoke of. I kind of got the feeling that there was.
Also at dinner we chatted with Tanja about bikes. Tanja is in the Green for Bicycles Club in Timisoara, which promotes biking and campaigns for infrastructure and city development that is bike-friendly! She was very proud of her bike and passionate about promoting bike riding. It seemed like the organization contained a lot of young people, but she also mentioned that there were some older folks who came out for the group bike rides and attended the weekly meetings. She claimed that there were around 3,000 members on their Yahoo page. For more information about biking movements in Timisoara: http://www.greenpacks.org/2008/10/24/romanias-green-side-bike-counting-in-timisoara/ . I get the sense that Timisoara is a more progressive city, with the large influence of the University and all of the young people. It also has a history which seems to paint a picture of this type of character. The first city in central europe to use electric street lamps, the city in Romania where the people rose up and overthrew Communist dictators (http://www.timisoaraguide.com/history/revolution.html - some illustrative photos here). We also saw an art exhibit on the second day in Romania (today) that promoted environmentalism in the country and critiqued the disdain. [Also on the note of environmentalism, go Europe for having airdryers in bathrooms rather consistently instead of paper towel.]
The second day in Romania, Alison and I took care of personal chores like washing clothes, etc. and then had a picnic in the park with an excellent bottle of romanian wine, walked to the centre of the town, tried on Italian designer clothing (why not?), spent a lot of time at the tourist office trying to figure out how to get into the mountains and how to make our trek to croatia.
We are now sitting in a square in town near a museum surrounded by a bunch of cafes. Birds fly everywhere here which is really poetic, and the church bell has been ringing for a good three minutes. Not sure what that means.
We leave for the Retezat Mountains tomorrow, stay for 3 days and then make the epic, long trek to Croatia. Wish us lots of luck.

Fun? National Poet of Romania, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihai_Eminescu , http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poeti_tr/eminescu_eng.php . There's a statue of him near the town square.

Delayed Slovakia, Vienna, and Budapest

Not long after crossing the border of Hungary, Alison and I find ourselves in the 4th largest city in Romania: Timisoara, “the city of flowers”, the “first free city” in Romania. Timisoara is where the Romanian comunity overthrew their communist dictators in the week long violent riots in 1989 (check out Wikipedia: Romanian_Revolution_of_1989) . More interestingly, Timisoara is the birthplace of my dear friend Emanuel. He lived here only for a few years as a child, but I figured that if I am going to Romania, I ought see his city; and thus, for better of for worse (“Why are you going there?!”) we find ourselves here.
I have absolutely no conception of time here. I am without a time-keeping (ha, keeping!) device and therefore am unaware. Consequently, the many filled days that have quickly passed since my last post seem like a quick blur and I can’t even believe that time was passing or that it existed or that it is a thing that runs the world. Because of this huge gap in my blogs, I owe you back-up stories. And so we begin.
The last time I wrote we had only spent one day in Slovakia and I was just beginning to ease into Europe and understand it all. I think that now that we are moving further east and into areas that are less western European and that aren’t a part of the EU (and therefore haven’t taken on a lot of the same EU things that all EU countries like to have), the culture finally feels to me to be distinctly different. We have been moving progressively into less western-feeling culture and I think where we are now (Romania) is the most drastic of a cultural difference from what we’re used to.

Slovakia ("BUMmin' Around"), and 24-hour Vienna trip: The remainder of our time in Slovakia was excellent. Once again, I can not stress how nice it was to stay in someone’s house and to break into traveling so easily with the wonderful accommodations of the Blahovas. So I begin with the second day: This day we decided to go into Vienna with Maja and her friend Jenni. We packed a picnic lunch and made the drive from Slovakia to Austria and into Vienna. We first went to the Schönbrunn (fatty palace where the Hapsburgs lived), remained mostly in “the gardens” because they were so beautiful and we had our picnic here and then the tired Maja and Jenni (and also the non-tourists who have done this before) stayed around while Alison and I trekked up to the top of the hill and looked at the view of Vienna. Then we trekked around on some little trails and chatted, enjoyed the beauty, and met a very adorable little girl in a pretty dress and hat who was lost but eventually found her mommy. After the palace we went into the city proper where Alison and I once again went off on our own and explored the impressive St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It is just absolutely gorgeous and officially my first piece of stunning European architecture. We also got to go inside which was sweet because we haven’t gotten to do that at all places. One of my favorite parts of that church is the roof, which is surprisingly colorful and a really interesting style. We then strolled around Vienna, exploring small side streets, making our way to the Museums Quartier, attempting to penetrate their glorious library (hard without a card but cool to look at from outside!), saw other cool old buildings, had dinner outside in front of their grand parliament building (there was an film festival going on and a bunch of food). We met back up with the girls only to learn that Marie’s friend Clay had called Maja’s phone while we were gone and we promptly made plans to meet up with him and Maja and Jenni went back home to Slovakia while Alison and I made the decision to “figure out” how to remain in Vienna until the sun comes up.
We met up with Clay at an open café in the middle of the Museums Quartier and had some drinks. Clay is amazing and Alison and I got along with him really well. I’m super glad I got to meet a good friend of Marie’s. I now know that she was in excellent hands while abroad and that is good. Clay, Alison and I then walked over to another bar, Donau, and around 2am left to find Clay some kaiserkreiner (some sausage thing wrapped in bacon that Marie used to rave about) at a food stand and after quite some walking, we found it, Clay left, and Alison and I attempted to penetrate the Viennese night. Per Marie’s recommendation, we searched for a place called Flex, which was apparently open until quite late, but we got royally lost and couldn’t find the place for the longest time (it is in such a secret location, Marie!). Eventually, we made it, and grabbed beers and danced to that crazy Euro techno awesomeness. We made some friends who wanted us to continue partying with them when the club closed, but after their other friend “Yemen” came up to us with greasy hair, looking like somewhere in between a car salesman and a ring leader (of a circus), we definitely declined the offer. On our walk out, we ran into an Indian and a Pakistani guy (“excuse me…you look…are you Indian?” ßthat was for sophie. They find me everywhere ahh!) who wanted to help us on our 24-hour game by inviting us to hang at their place. Although the Indian guy was very sweet, saying things like “we are like family because you are also Indian”, we know that travelers must always be on their guard, so, no mother, we did not go with them. Instead, (and this is the much safer option, right?) we just roamed around Vienna allll night. We went exploring, wrote a joint poem, crept up into a fancy hotel and ran up to the top floor to see if we could catch the sunrise (we couldn’t), saw St. Stephen’s at its finest (sunrise), and then found a very nice man at another hotel who helped us out with figuring out how to get back to Bratislava that morning. Around 6 am, we left. The story doesn’t end there, though, because we get on the train and the train stops at some place and then turns around and starts going the other way (WTF?) before it has gotten to Bratislava. We asked around the train and we were told to get off at the next stop and hop on the next train heading east. We did. And we were in the middle of nowhere and then I started my period and then we feared that a train might never come because there was only one track and how could one train be heading west while another train is heading east on the same track? But it came! Hooray! And we arrived back in Slovakia, tried to figure out the phone to call Maja, and she picked us up all cheery and wonderful like always. We slept the whole day.
Although we had partied hard the night before, we knew that we had another celebration coming that night. Maja and her friends had been planning on having a party that evening and when we woke up, we basically got ready for the party and went over to her friend Milan (or Hugo)’s house and drank a Slovakian liqueur with peaches in it (real ones in the bottle) and sang many songs while Hugo played the guitar adorably. Her friends are really fun and Alison and I really liked hanging out with them. We left the apartment and went down into the center of town to a place where we could dance. Hugo is a crazy guy and, accordingly¸ a crazy dancer and we spun around many times in circles. Then everyone needed fresh air so we went walking and running and spinning some more and made our way to the big castle on top of the hill in Bratislava where we had sweet views of the city at night (all cities are just gorgeous by night. They are so much kinder; you can taste a sweetness).
The following day we went swimming at a lake with the whole gang and said our goodbyes. The evening found Alison and I in the city for dinner and for WiFi where we planned a little bit more of our Budapest trip. We would leave in the morning. When we got home Maja, Alison and I stayed up chatting and sharing photos of important people in our lives so that Maja could get an ample life update. Bed ensued.

Budapest ("Boyfriends, Baths and Bikes"): Budapest, Budapest. Absolutely amazing. Breathtaking. Awe-striking. Unforgettable. Happy. Intelligent. Creative. Teeming with life—good life. People soaking it up. So we changed our plans quite last minute and instead of going to Romania and\then going Hungary, we chose to go to Hungary first (it seemed to make more sense according to the people we were talking to in Slovakia). We tried really hard to find another couchsurfer who could accommodate us at the last minute but that day we seemed to be failing so we booked a hostel which actually ended up being pretty\excellent. Arriving in the Budapest train station, the station was gorgeous (go figure), but the walk in the heatheatheat with huge heavy backpacks, not so fashionable.We found Casa de la Musica (hostel), moved in, and then got advice on where to exploring the city via stroll. Oh my god were we blown away. I wish I knew more about the technical term for architecture, but I don’t. There is just such a mix of interesting buildings in Budapest and these gorgeous buildings are EVERYWHERE. It is not just a few of them that are stately and impressive in the centre of town, but these buildings that seem to capture you as if they were universes of their own, were every and anywhere. And of course I like then when they are slightly falling down or not entirely being kept up in immaculate condition because it gives a sense of reality and time, things actually being lived in and used, building that show the face of their identity and of their country, what it has been through. All different colors, all different feelings, all different styles. It’s like a unique architect took this ONE building into his hands and it was his little baby and he made it the best it could be. It’s like every one of them is like that. I’ve never seen this before. We strolled around a lot and eventually grabbed dinner at this place where our waiter stopped being nice to us when we specifically asked for tap water instead of the mineral, sparkling and bottled stuff he was trying to sell us (oh, America). He then became our “bff” in Mallory and Alison lingo. We still refer to him as such. And then, super-Americanly we brought out leftovers home (people don’t do that) and tried to take it easier that night by not going out (we were rather ridiculously exhausted) and attempting to write stories only to find ourselves chatting with some boys from the hostel over bottle of wine. One of the boys we met at the hostel works in Spain (San Sebastian) and I chatted with him for a little bit about that endeavor and I got his info (hopefully I didn’t lose it. I think I did). It was around this time that I started thinking about going to Spain earlier than later (like after Helsinki, France and Portugal) and heading there right after Berlin!
In Budapest, we did quite a lot, but we were also spending time trying to figure out couchsurfing. The first night we got an email from a CSer in Budapest who gave us a phone number to call. He was quite elusive on the phone and I was so very confused and intrigued. Sure, sure. We always have room, he said. He and a girl host people at “The Place”. He said to come into the cottage, that he most likely will not be there, but there will be a key on top of the fireplace and a note underneath explaining “how things work”. Enjoy “The Process”, he said. Hmm. We ditched that because we looking further at their profiles and it was the sort of stuff like “dancing like fireflies in eachothers’ hearts” “the glorious force of etenarnal souls ahhh” (c_____ shit, sophie) and it seemed like it kind of ran like a cult where the group had to self-govern and like forage together and stuff.
We just didn’t want people telling us what to do and we weren’t into intentional mystical soul-opening encounters in isolated communities where they are just too enlightened to deal with you other, normal drone-slave people. Maybe if we’d had more time in the country it would have been an interesting experience, but our time was limited and it was therefore not on our map. Luckily, Josezf came through. On Day two, Alison and I walked around the city, crossed the Danube river from Pest into Buda. Budapest is divided into two parts. Pest is on the eastern side of the river and Buda on the west. Pest is the newer, more cosmopolitan part of the city and Buda is older, has castles and caves and is more residential. Most tourists, at least budget tourists, stay over in Pest, though traveling between the two is quite easy. Al and I had a picnic on a bench in front of the huge St. Stephen’s Basilica in Pest (we randomly found a bench and it happened to be there). We snagged spots on a free tour about communism in Budapest and I am embarrassed to say that, although the information was really interesting to both of us, when we stopped for a little lecture in the park and got to sit on the grass, both Alison and I began falling asleep. We were just so tired. Oops. We actually decided to leave the tour in the middle and we went back to the hostel where we figured out where we would stay for the night, dipped in the pool (a plastic blow up thing) with one of the guys that work at the hostel and chatted about Romania, then had a dinner of cheesecake and lattes (because we wanted to). The cheesecake was weird.
After dinner, we were planning on moving our stuff out to Joszef's apartment, but when we shared this new information and his address with our hostel running friends they were skeptical. The area, although only only a few blocks away from our hostel, is filled with tricky gypsies and Alison and I were planning on walking by foot around like 10pm with huge backpacks to draw everyone's attention. So our plan became that I would ride on the back of our friend Alex's motorcycle and him and I would check out the situation. The situation was okay, Alex and I decided and then the three of us walked over to Joszef's, Alex left, and Alison and our new friend chatted, checked out some stuff on the internet, talked about music and film (Joszef is an "indie" music buff).
The next morning Alison and I spent the day at the thermal baths. The thermal baths that people still use today in Budapest are Turkish. They are indoor and outdoor in these really gorgeous old buildings, and it's kind of a like a huge huge huge public pool complex, only the baths are mostly heated. There was a whirlpool, fierce sauna, an ice shredder thing where you brought ice into the sauna and put the ice all over yourself, let it melt while you also melt in the sauna, and then there was a freezing cold bath outside of it to counteract. Check out? http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/things_to_see/thermal_baths . That night Joszef made us salata de vinete, a Romanian dish that I used to eat with Emanuel a lot. Joszef is originally Romanian and I mentioned my connections to the country, dropped the name of the dish, and we made it for dinner that night. Afterwards the three of us went out to explore the underground music scene at some reallyreally excellent venues, open garden bars, and a club underneath a pool/fountain thing in the middle of the city that had a clear roof so that you could see the water above. The music was good, but the clubs excellent. Budapest has a really delicious night scene and Alison and I made like 2342352 boyfriends there. There were all of these fights that night because all of our Hungarian boyfriends were finding out about each other and getting pretty upset. We felt bad but obviously can't help it. The night ended around 3am.
On the morning following, Alison and I shopped for a picnic, rented bikes and rode around the city, eventually landing on an island in the middle of the Danube where we had a lovely picnic in the middle of a park. We then rode to the other side of the city, to Buda, and explored the castles and the castle district a little more, and chatted about our experiences abroad last year and all of the social and political issues that we still haven't been able to get out of our heads over "American coffee" (the cheapest on the menu. Go figz). Afterwards we made Joszef dinner (our little present to him), and, because we had to wake up early, spent the evening planning Romania (aka figuring out how to get there), and then watched a really excellent film that Jozsef recommended, Factory Girl. Andy Warhol was Slavic, don't ya know.