Still in Budapest

BKV. Önnek Jar. *

When I was in Amsterdam, I opted against public transportation in favor of hoofing it all around, but in Budapest I decided to invest in a 72-hour public transport ticket. Not that you can’t get around central Budapest on foot—in fact, it’s the best way to see the city, and I certainly did my fair share of walking. But I wanted the security of knowing that, in case of emergencies, I could hop on a tram or a metro that would bring me back to Deak Ferenc ter (a central metro station close to my hostel) safe and sound. I was definitely glad of the decision on the afternoon I trekked out to the “green lungs” of Budapest, City Park; and also on my last night in the city, when I got stranded on the north end of Margaret Island, a good two-hour walk from my hostel, as the sun was going down. There are some occasions when you really just don’t want to walk anymore; several times in Budapest I reached my limit, and being able to jump on a streetcar and watch the scenery along the Buda side of the river hurtle by (the trams in Budapest travel at what feels like breakneck speed compared with those in Frankfurt) felt like a miracle.

It’s actually not as difficult to decipher metro and tram schedules in a foreign language as I thought it was going to be: as long as you know which station you want—and maybe write it down in advance—it’s just a matter of matching. That being said, it was a much slower process getting from point A to point B in Budapest than it was in Vienna—which is a much larger city with a much more confusing layout but where I had the advantage of speaking the language. And you definitely don’t want to rely on the intercom voice on public transport in Budapest because the intercom is often A.) drowned out by the noise of the train or B.) broken, and anyway C.) spoken Magyar doesn’t always sound like what it looks like, and it’s entirely possible you won’t be able to tell which station the lady is talking about.

One other thing about Hungarian public transport: Budapest is super intense about blackriding— it costs the equivalent of about 60 Euro if you’re caught. BKV posts three or four super-intimidating-looking security officers at every metro station (Sarah the Tour Guide warned us at the useful post-tour information session that metro guards “are not nice people,” but the ones I interacted with seemed all right—once I showed them my ticket, at least. One even smiled at me.). They asked to see my ticket no less than four times in three days. Meaning, if I hadn’t had the ticket, I would have been 180 Euro in the red.

*I copied these words from the receipt I got along with my ticket. I have no idea what they mean.

And Speaking of Money

While Hungary is a member of the European Union, it is one of the countries whose economy is not yet strong enough to support the Euro, so the first thing I had to do upon getting off the train from Vienna was swap out some Euros for Hungarian florints—at an exchange rate of about 300 florints to one Euro. While intellectually I understood that being in possession of 30,000 florints did not mean that by crossing the Hungarian border I had suddenly made my fortune, it still felt incredibly extravagant to hand over 250 florints for a glass of wine, 4000 florints for a novel, etc. And it’s also sobering to realize, as Sarah the tour guide pointed out, that while the exchange rate makes Budapest a heaven for tourists—food and booze and entertainment are all incredibly cheap— it also makes it a less than excellent place to actually have to make a living.

House of Terror

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn’t spend as much time visiting museums in Budapest as I did in Amsterdam. While that certainly did wonders for my wallet, though, I also feel like I gained less of a sense for the city and its history as a result. In my defense, there is a lot more history to be grasped in Budapest than in Amsterdam, where the first human settlers don’t even appear until the double-digit centuries—it’s one of Europe’s youngest cities. Budapest’s history is much more extensive and, I think you could argue, much more complex, with the endless series of occupations, the ever-changing borders of the country, and the city’s status as a meeting-point of east and west.

One museum that I did visit was the House of Terror on Andrassy Avenue, a swanky up-scale neighborhood that includes the “Broadway of Budapest.” When I first heard the name House of Terror, I couldn’t help but think of the ride at Disney World, Tower of Terror. The Hungarian House of Terror is is nowhere near as much adrenaline-pumping fun as the Disney ride, though: it’s the former headquarters of both the Hungarian branch of the Nazi Party, the “Arrow Cross Party,” and the Communist State Security Authority. Today it houses a museum which details the atrocities committed by both groups—concentration camp and gulag transportations, illegal surveillance, specious arrests, interrogations and murders—as well as the experiences of the victims. (As in Amsterdam and Vienna as well, there’s special attention paid to the rebels and resistors, as if to say These were the real Hungarians. We want nothing to do with those other people.)

Recreation of a communist interrogation room
in the House of Terror.

The museum concludes with an agonizingly slow elevator ride into the basement of the building, during which a former Communist operative describes in bone-chilling detail (backed by the same excessively ominous, emotionally manipulative soundtrack that has followed you through the museum up to this point) the conditions in which prisoners were kept there, and the methods by which they were executed. The elevator then releases you into the basement, which has been restored to look exactly as it did when the Communists were in power: bare-walled stone cells with bare light bulbs overhead, which were often kept on day and night to keep the prisoners from sleeping; interrogation rooms dominated by sinisterly bureaucratic-looking desks; one chamber containing a gallows which you can only hope is a recreation and not an actual artifact from the period. The walls of the cells are lined with photographs of people who were kept there, along with their names and their dates of birth and death.

The very last room of the museum is also lined with photographs, names and dates. But in this case the names and faces belong not to the victims but to the perpetrators, members of the Communist party who were responsible, whether directly or indirectly, for the imprisonments, tortures, and murders that took place in the building over the decades. As I made my way through this last room, I found myself in the midst of a cluster of older Hungarian women, who nudged me out of the way in order to crowd close to the photographs. I couldn’t help but wonder what these women were searching for—they were of an age where they could very well have been looking for an ex-boyfriend, a neighbor, a childhood friend—or the person responsible for the death of any of those people. Then again, they could very well have been looking for themselves.

In our collective cultural memory, if it’s fair to speak of such a thing existing, we tend to assume that mass murder ended when the noble Allies rousted the big, bad Nazis from power in Germany, but the truth is people have continued to be cruel to one another long after the last concentration camp was liberated.

Budapest is for Lovers

I’ve seen a fair amount of PDA in all of the European cities I’ve been in thus far, including Frankfurt, but Budapest wins the prize by far, both for ubiquity and for intensity. I saw couples making out on the top of Castle Hill, on the banks of the Danube, on the subway and on the tram, in museums, in churches, everywhere. There was even a couple going at it in the HOUSE OF TERROR, for pity’s sake. And most of these weren’t even teenagers—they were couples in their upper twenties and older.

It got to the point , after three days of this nonstop barrage of hormones, where I had to actively repress the urge to shout at random strangers, “STOP walking around with your hands in each other’s back pockets. It’s tacky.” Or, “I hate to interrupt your spit-swapping session, but could you please get out of the way so I can get off this tram now?” Is PDA this bad in the States, and I just haven’t noticed?  Is what I saw actually completely within reason, and I’m just hyper-sensitive and over-reacting to it due to my own breakup woes? Questions to ponder.  

Goin’ on Walkabout

No one does world travel quite like the Australians, and I don’t think anyone does it nearly as well. By far my favorite random-stranger interaction from the whole two weeks I spent traveling was with David, an Aussie backpacker in his late thirties/early forties that I met on the free tour. David, as he explained to me while we waited for the guides to show up (tourists who showed up after us asked whether we were the guides, I guess because we were both perched on a fountain the square, which could be interpreted as an official kind of stance) was in Europe for three months “on walkabout.” “I saw my chance and I just took it,” he told me, “’Cause you never know if it’ll come along again.” He had no concrete plans for his trip, as far as how long he was staying in each location, or even where exactly he was going. He was mind-blowingly friendly: as the tour group shuffled between sights, he flitted up and down the procession, chatting with anybody and everybody who would speak to him, hustling up to the front every once in a while to ask Sarah a question or three that had popped into his head.

View of Budapest from atop Gellert Hill 

By the end of the tour, David was unquestionably my new travel hero. In an instance of small-world kismet, I ran into him again: as I was climbing up Gellert Hill the next day to get a look at the Liberty Monument (and, of course, the stunning view of the city), he was on the way down from doing the same thing. He seemed genuinely thrilled to see me again, asked what I’d been up to around the city and what I thought about what I’d seen. He told me was thinking about “shipping off” the next day, maybe heading farther east, or maybe south, towards the Balkans (a locale a fellow ETA near Frankfurt came back from Herbstferien raving about and which I therefore now feel morally bound to visit.) After a few minutes of pleasant chit-chat, David and I parted ways again—although, as we did, he jokingly told me, "See you in the next city!" 

What I love about Australian backpackers is how they seem to want to genuinely experience the places they visit. So often tourists have a sort of zombie-like affect: they go for the sake of having gone, they see for the sake of having seen. Australians, by contrast, see to see and do to do— it sounds cheesy to say, but they live, or at least travel, completely in the moment. In the original aboriginal context, the term “walkabout” has a spiritual connotation: it’s a coming-of-age journey a young man undertakes on the way to becoming a man. It really seems that Australians have taken this spiritual component of travel, this idea of travel as a transformative experience, to heart. One even hesitates to call them tourists. 

A Few Quick Words on Food

There is one ingredient that you absolutely have to have a taste for if you are going to experience Hungarian cuisine—an element of their culture of which the locals are extremely proud—properly: paprika, Hungarian red gold. Paprika appears in practically every traditional dish, which is why so many of them take on a brownish-red color. In addition to going into the preparation of the dishes, paprika very frequently appears on the table next to the pepper and salt as a condiment. Hungarians love paprika. (Disclaimer: this may be an unfair and reductive cultural stereotype, but whatever. I ate a lot of paprika in Budapest, okay?)

Another piece of Hungarian trivia closely related to food: apparently Hungary is the world leader in heart attacks and high cholesterol. When you learn that they traditionally cook their food not in vegetable oil, not in butter, but in PIG FAT, you can easily see how that might be a case. It’s actually somewhat difficult/dangerous to travel in Hungary if you’re a vegetarian, because even the “vegetable” dishes are cooked up in pig fat. Apparently, Hungarians even fry pig fat up on its own at eat that. Yum.

In Amsterdam it was the cheese; now, for Budapest, I’d like to take a few moments to rhapsodize about the wine. Because the wine I had in Hungary is without question the most delicious wine I have ever tasted. Granted, that might not mean much coming from me, seeing as how my experience with wine is largely limited to the now two years that I have been over twenty one (ah, how weird, being twenty one!). But I genuinely cannot imagine wine getting much tastier than this. I bought a small bottle of tokay at the Great Market Hall—honestly mostly because I remember “A Decanter of Tokay” as the title of The Golden Compass—and took it back to the hostel with me (fortunately the communal kitchen was equipped with a bottle opener). The stuff is liquid gold, I tell you. Sweet nectar of the heavens. Helplessly under the spell of this astonishing concoction, I desperately wished to buy a full-size bottle or two to take back to Frankfurt with me, but I worried, since there were five days in Vienna between me and home, that packing glass bottles might not be the best life choice in the world. 

So, regretfully, I left Hungarian wine in Hungary, as I left Dutch cheese in the Netherlands. Of course, the Hungarians couldn’t be so greedy as to horde all their wines to themselves. I need to get my butt to a wine store here in Frankfurt and see what I can turn up… 

And now I give you: sunset over the Buda hills. 

Herbstferien, Episode 2: Budapest

Royal Palace

“When you are in Budapest, you don’t walk around like this,” says my Hungarian tour guide Sarah, tucking her chin under and staring at her feet. “Or like this,” she adds, this time looking at us, the thirty-odd tourists she was shepherding through the city, head on. “When you are in Budapest, you walk like this.” Sarah lifts her chin and raises her arms, gesturing at the buildings that surround us on Vöröszmarty Ter as if to say, Look at this! And this! We are in Budapest, isn’t it amazing?

If you ignore the fact that anyone who actually walked around the city like that would probably A.) draw some very strange looks and B.) walk headfirst into a building, a statue, or an oncoming streetcar, you can see Sarah’s point. Budapest isn’t a city where you can hurry from landmark to landmark and museum to museum, and during the in-between time put up your blinkers and focus on what’s directly in front of you. Or, more accurately, you can take this turbo-tourist approach, but if you do, you do so at your own peril, and if you miss something, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Geographically and architecturally, Budapest is an absolutely stunning city, built on the banks of the aquamarine Danube, which splits the city neatly into a western part, Buda (or the fireplace side) and an eastern part, Pest (or the water side); holding court atop Castle Hill in Buda, the Habsburgs’ Royal Palace and the Matthias Church dominate the skyline, facing off with St. Stephen’s Basilica and the Parliament building on the Pest side. The two halves of the city are connected by a series of five bridges, which light up at night. And everywhere you look in the city, there’s something interesting to look at—a statue commemorating some Hungarian hero or a stunning piece of nineteenth-century architecture (Pest, it turns out, was largely designed by the same architect who designed nineteenth-century Vienna).

St. Stephen's Basilica. St. Stephen was the first king
of Hungary. His mummified hand is on display in this
church (I decided against seeing that one). 

I logged much less time in museums and churches in Budapest than I did in Amsterdam, in part because walking or tramming around the city gave me plenty to do during daylight hours, and also because the weather was absolutely spectacular—a balmy sixty-five to seventy degrees and not a cloud in the sky. During the tour, I asked Sarah if there is an equivalent to “Indian summer” in Magyar, and she said they call it “old spinster summer” (which, incidentally, is also what it’s called in German—Altweibersommer). But, since high tourist season in Budapest lasts through the middle of October—I was there on the tail end of it—I have the distinct feeling that the weather I saw in Budapest wasn’t even unusual for that time of year.

\Of the three cities I visited over the last two weeks, Budapest was by far the biggest “risk.” Geographically, historically, and culturally, it was the farthest removed from my sphere of familiarity. Yes, Budapest is still a major metropolitan city and, yes, Hungary is still (technically) in Western Europe. Nevertheless, in Budapest I had a “you’re not in Kansas anymore” feeling that I hadn’t before, for all of the culture shock I went through during my first couple of weeks in Frankfurt. 

View of Parliament from one of the five bridges. Sarah
said that the building is a lot prettier than the mess
that goes on inside it. By which she means the government.
She was a very outspoken and opinionated tour guide.

As if to underscore this point, that Budapest is a different kind of city from those you find in Western Western Europe, while we were waiting in Vörösmarty Ter for the other two tour groups to get a head start on us and Sarah was attempting to give us a ten-minute overview of the incredibly lengthy and complex history of Hungary and Budapest in particular, a Hungarian man sauntered over to a tree next to the statue where we were perched, dropped trou, and promptly started to relieve himself in full view of a group of about thirty tourists. Sarah, clearly annoyed and a little bit embarrassed—whether it was on behalf of the man or herself or her country, I’m not sure— interrupted her oration, turned and exchanged a few words with the man in Hungarian, then turned back to us and announced, “He’s completely pissed.” She then went on to explain how this kind of behavior was representative of a certain post-Communist attitude one encounters in Budapest, and in Hungary in general.

Contributing a great deal to my discombobulation, of course, was the language barrier. Hungarian, which in Hungarian is called Magyar. is a curious anomaly of a European language with absolutely no ties to the Romantic, Germanic or Slavic languages families, despite the fact that over the centuries nations with languages of all these persuasions have had influence in the area. The only language even remotely related to Magyar is Finnish, and the similarities there are slim. According to Sarah the Tour Guide, when Hollywood moviemakers want an alien language in their movie, but they’re too lazy or cheap to actually invent a new language, they use Magyar. This means that when space movies are dubbed into Magyar, the alien dialog has to be dubbed out, otherwise the audience will know exactly what the aliens are saying, and the effect will be ruined. Additionally, the unusual syntactical patterns of that most beloved of little green aliens, Yoda, is modeled on Magyar: all of his lines were written in English, translated into Magyar, and then mirror-translated back into English, with the Magyar syntax left in place.

In the end, I managed to master about five words of Magyar: igen (yes); nem (no—particularly useful when I first got off the train and was accosted by sketchy men wanting to know if I needed a taxi); kerem (please); köszönöm (thank you); and egészségedre (Cheers. Also bless you). Of all of these, köszönöm was probably the most useful, and the one I used most frequently: good manners are appreciated in any language.

Of course, my failure to master Magyar in four days would have been no problem if Budapest were one of those cities, like Frankfurt or Amsterdam, where everyone understands English at least well enough for a tourist to get what she wants from them. And in truth, everyone under the age of 35 (which comprises most of the people in the tourist business, like hostel employees and waiters, anyway) does speak English pretty well. Over the age of 35, meaning those people who were in school before 1989, and thus when Hungary was under Communist control, your chances get considerably slimmer, and with the over-60 set, you might as well forget about it.

However, my complete inability to communicate with them did not prevent me from having a few delightful interactions with members of Hungary’s most distinguished generation. While I was waiting for the number 2 tram on the Pest side of the river, a tiny, stooped Hungarian woman came up to me and started asking for directions. At least I assume that’s what she was saying, though for all I know she could have been cheerfully hurling the worst kinds of profanities my way. I found this immensely funny, of course, because just by merit of being Hungarian, she was automatically more qualified to decipher the Budapest public transit system than I was. When I made clear that I had no idea what she was saying, she laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and continued to chatter away happily at me for a further two minutes, while I did my best to smile and nod politely.

Great Market Hall, with stands selling everything from
vegetables to wine to cute touristy "Hungarica."

Langos. Also known as a heart-attack waiting to happen.

Later that same day, I went to the Great Market Hall in search of what Sarah assured our tour group was “the best Langos in town” (a Langos is essentially a Frisbee-sized piece of fried dough, to which can be added a wide variety of toppings). I found the place, which I counted as an immense victory in itself, and ordered my Langos—traditional style, topped with sour cream and cheese—then turned around and realized to my dismay that there were absolutely no free seats to be found at the tables lining the walkway opposite the Langos stand and its neighbors. Until, that is, an older Hungarian man noticed me standing there, and immediately stood up and started gesturing insistently at his seat. Because I was starving, and because this Langos was clearly a sit-down kind of culinary adventure, I took it. The elderly gentleman promptly disappeared, and returned a few seconds later with a pile of napkins, which he proceeded to place on the table in front of me, all the while talking to me in rapid, to me utterly unintelligible Magyar. From his manner and his gestures, I got the distinct feeling that he was lecturing me—whether on the history of Langos or the importance of neat eating habits, or some other random topic, I guess I’ll never know. 

Amsterdam, Part 2

The Real Sin City?

Ask a typical American the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the word “Amsterdam,” and nine times out of ten they will probably say either “drugs” or “sex.” Amsterdam’s tolerance for vice of all kinds is legendary, and where sex is concerned, the Red Light District stands squarely in the spotlight.

Canal in the Red Light District

While my trusty guidebook proclaimed Amsterdam a city safe for women traveling solo, it did advise against walking in the Red Light District alone at night, reason being that the rough atmosphere could be “intimidating”. So, naturally, intrepid explorer that I am, I went walking in the Red Light District alone at night. Granted, it was Sunday, and it was about 9:00, so the debauchery was probably not in full swing, but even if it had been, I don’t think I would have had anything to worry about. The men were far too engrossed in the tarted-up, scantily-clad “merchandise” in the windows to take much notice of a grubby, slightly-damp, umbrella-bearing American girl skulking past. And, as if the utter disinterest of the entire male population weren’t enough insurance, police presence in the Red Light District is stronger than anywhere else in the city—just in case.

The Oude Kerk

In reality, though, the most shocking thing about Amsterdam’s Red Light District is how un-shocking it is. Amsterdam really has managed to take the fascination out of sin merely by laying it all out there in the open. Tour groups wind through the  alleys, much as they do in every other part of the city (there’s a lot to see there, apart from women in their underwear). Parents push strollers through the area without much apparent concern. Hilariously, but also somehow fittingly, the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam’s oldest house of worship, stands sentry over the whole district. In fact, there’s a generous row of red-light windows on the alley directly next-door to the church. Really, the only indication that the Red Light District is different from any other neighborhood in Amsterdam—apart, of course, from the women in the windows— is the men. There are a lot of them: they travel alone and in packs, cast nervous glances from side to side. Their hands are restless. When they’re contemplating a purchase, they pace back and forth in front of occupied windows, circling, almost, like vultures. (That analogy makes it sound way more dramatic than it actually is.)

In any event, I needn’t have gone as far as the Red Light District to find sex in the city. There are plenty of sex shops in the city center and elsewhere, and the Amsterdam Sexmuseum is a stone’s throw away from the train station (yes, I went. It was amusing and, for the most part, pretty non-sensational, much like sex everywhere else).  Not to mention the fact that there turned out to be a whole 17^th-century house full of red-light windows right across the street from my hostel.

Over the course of my four days in Amsterdam, I tried several times to assess my opinion about legalized prostitution, without coming to any satisfactory conclusions, and even now I’m still not entirely sure what to think. Part of the problem is that I don’t know how I’m supposed to react: is the feminist thing to be enraged, or approving? Should I feel sorry for these women? Should I be morally outraged? Decry the objectification and dehumanization of women? Maybe the problem is that I’m just too desensitized: the U.S. may not have legalized prostitution, but sex is unquestionably everywhere in our culture, and just like drugs and, to a lesser degree, alcohol, the repressed atmosphere around it only serves to sensationalize it further. Maybe I just watch too much HBO.

I toyed briefly with the idea of paying a prostitute for her time just to ask her questions about her profession, but then I had to wonder how often these women must see people like me who do exactly the same, fancying themselves enlightened, trying to get a sense for the “human” side of the story, maybe even doing the woman a favor. And the more time I spent around the Red Light windows, avoiding eye contact with the women in the windows, the more I felt that my motives for being there were far worse than those of the men around me: they were at least potential clients; I, on the other hand, was really only there to gawk.

Het Achterhuis: The “Secret Annex”

As I was walking along the Prinsengracht on my first or second day in Amsterdam—I mentioned in my last post that it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the city— I realized that the name was familiar to me from somewhere, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where. Then, I pretty much ran into the Anne Frank House, and I remembered.

(Part of) the to get into the Anne Frank House. shortly after I left.
It probably took the people at the end of this line between
one and a half and two hours to get in.

While planning my trip to Amsterdam—deciding which museums to go to and so forth—I went back and forth several times on whether I wanted to visit the house where Anne Frank and her family went into hiding. I’ve read The Diary of Anne Frank, like pretty much everybody else in the world. Twice, in fact: once in fifth or sixth grade and then again for school in eighth. But there seemed to me to be something morbid about traipsing through the house itself: I remembered a comment by Ruth Kluger, a Holocaust survivor and writer, calling Holocaust memorial culture and the tourist business surrounding it “pornographic.” I was determined, too, not to let the Holocaust take over my trip to Amsterdam— the same goes for Budapest and Vienna, as well. In the end, though, I decided to abide by the principle that it’s better to regret something you did do than something you didn’t, so on Sunday morning I joined the queue—the longest I encountered in Amsterdam—to see the Secret Annex.

Walking through the house itself, I was struck by how closely it matched the vision of it that I had in my head from reading the diary, which I guess is a credit to Anne Frank’s talent as a writer. Apart from that, I very quickly began to feel claustrophobic—as I stepped through the legendary secret passage behind the bookcase, my pulse was actually racing. Granted, this might have due in part to the fact that I was being hustled along in a stream of dozens of other eager visitors. Still, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like to be trapped in those rooms, day in and day out, terrified that the slightest creak of a floorboard could give you away.

It’s very clear that the Dutch are proud of Anne Frank, and of the numerous other stories of Jews in hiding in Amsterdam and the people who helped them. Along with the February Strike, in which workers across Amsterdam stopped working in protest of the treatment of the Jewish community under German occupation, it contributes to the legend—some would say myth—of Dutch resistance. But one can’t help wondering if the giant of Anne Frank has cast a shadow over other stories, other lives that were lived and then lost in Amsterdam during that time. For example, the Joods Historisch Museum has in the portion of its exhibit covering the years of the Holocaust another collection of diaries written in the early 1940s. These were written by a woman named Etty Hillesum, 27, also Jewish, also an aspiring author, also deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Etty Hillesum’s diaries have also been published—I tracked down an English copy of An interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillseum 1941-1943 at a bookshop in the Jordaan district. But her story is decidedly less palatable, I’d go as far as to say less commercial, than that of thirteen-year-old Anne Frank: she’s a grown woman, she dabbles in psychoanalysis and has affairs with her landlord and her psychoanalyst/mentor, she works for the Jewish Council and volunteers to go to the transit camp at Westerbork. Holding the stories of Etty Hillesum and Anne Frank side by side, and noting the immense difference in how those stories have been received, raises a lot of interesting questions about which lives get remembered by history and which don’t, who decides, and why.

(**Side note** Something that I must have known at some point but forgotten is that Anne Frank was actually born in Frankfurt am Main. Her family moved to Amsterdam when she was four—right around when Hitler came to power.)

“Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to…”

Once again, in Amsterdam as in Frankfurt and Cologne, I found myself the target of a large number of inquiries and requests for directions from other lost and confused tourists. Having devoted much reflection to the question of why these people think I have any idea where I’m going, much less where they’re going, I have come to the conclusion that it must be the trench coat. Back in the States, I bought a black trench coat with the express hope that it would help to disguise my American-ness. What I realize now, though, is that it’s doing its job almost too well: it’s disguising my tourist-ness. Tourists don’t wear trench coats. Tourists wear fleeces and insulated vests and Northface jackets. Tourists overdress for the weather because there was no room in their suitcase for a second coat, and it’s better to be over-prepared than under. When you wear a trench coat, you are subtly signaling that you are not concerned with such practical matters, as you have a second, and in all likelihood a third, warmer coat stashed away in your houseboat on the Herengracht, or your apartment over in Nieuwmarkt. People see “trench coat” and they think “local.” I look forward to testing this theory in Budapest and Vienna. 

Let’s Talk About Food

As a rule, the Dutch aren’t known for their world-class cuisine, but OH DEAR LORD, THE CHEESE. Dutch cheese is a miracle sent to Earth by the God of Cheese. Cheese shops are the churches of the Cheese God, the shopkeepers are his priests, and the FREE SAMPLES are his communion, enabling you to taste the divine without paying for it. That being said, I wish I had shelled out the ten Euro for a wedge of aged goat cheese. Or maybe Gouda. Of course, on the whole, cheese (and also bread) is something to add to the List of Things Europe Does Better Than The States. I mean, what does it say about America that the cheese named after our country cannot technically be called cheese? I think it says that we are a sick and depraved nation.

Also mega-tasty: Dutch pancakes. They’re flatter and flakier than their American cousins, and they come in a surprising array of flavors both sweet and savory. Also, they’re highly traveler-friendly, being relatively affordable and also extremely filling: I ate an apple pancake at Pancakes! at around 3:00 PM, and I was good to go for the rest of the day. Also, Pancakes! gave me a free wooden-shoe key chain (okay, so not free, obviously the expense was hidden in my check) so I got to have a geeky souvenir without having to set foot in any of those awful “Authentic Dutch” souvenir shops.

Less delicious than cheese or pancakes but no less Dutch is broodje haring. A broodje haring is a herring on what is basically a hotdog bun, topped with onions and pickles (“Onions and pickles?” asked the lady at the counter of one herring cart, my first of three. “Whatever comes on it,” I answered, in an effort to convey my desire to be authentic. The lady nodded. “Onions and pickles.”). Because it comes in what Lonely Planet describes as “an edible napkin,” a broodje haring is a great grab-and-go snack or lunch. It’s also gentle on the wallet, at between  2,50 and  3,00 depending on the cart.

Over on the beverage side of things, we have genever, or Dutch gin. I had a taste, and I can’t say I was a huge fan. Apparently, though, working-class Dutch men in the mid-to-late nineteenth century were hooked on it, and Heineken opened his brewery so that the men could get off the hard stuff and drink good, wholesome beer instead. Speaking of beer, I had several. I tried to stay away from Heineken, being pretty sure that it tastes the same in the Netherlands as it does in the States, and go for the more hipster beers instead. My greatest success was at the Eet-&-Bierencafe (meaning they have good food and god beer) De Beiaard, where I had the house Bock, or fall beer, and something called De Manke Monnik (according to google-translate: “the crippled monk”, which is just about as great a name for a beer as I can imagine). I think De Manke Monnik was supposed to be a “Trappist” beer, except there’s only one Trappist brewery in the Netherlands, and it isn’t called The Crippled Monk. But whatever, De Manke Monnik was delicious, and it’s not like I can really afford to be a label snob where beer is concerned.

Vaarwel, Amsterdam

That pretty much does it for my trip to Amsterdam. Well, except for the part where I construct my imaginary future life there—something I think I’ll do in every city I visit:  owning a houseboat (which actually would never happen, because they’re apparently super expensive and require TONS of upkeep); running an English-language book shop with a generous supply of Dutch literature in translation (something I found to be lacking in the shops I found there); living exclusively on pancakes and cheese and keeping off the pounds by taking long walks along the canals…

Herbstferien, Episode 1: Amsterdam

It hardly seems possible or fair, but after only three weeks in school, I’m already on my first break: two-week-long Herbstferien (fall break). Of course, two completely empty and commitment-free weeks immediately screams TRAVEL, and I accordingly planned trips to Amsterdam, Budapest, and Vienna.

The first leg of my adventures is already behind me—three hours after school let out on Thursday, I was on a train to Amsterdam, and I returned yesterday afternoon in time for my appointment with the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner office) today at 1:15 (Everything went smoothly there, thank goodness). I’m going to try to fit as much as possible about Amsterdam into this entry, and then follow up with another tomorrow, but I get on the overnight train to Budapest tonight at ten, so we’ll see what happens…

More fun with Deutsche Bahn:

One thing my experience with German trains thus far is teaching me is to appreciate the miracle that is travel that runs smoothly. I booked a train that was scheduled to get to Amsterdam an hour and a half before check-in time at my hostel, just to be on the safe side. But, what do you know, between Cologne and Düsseldorf the train squealed to a halt, and it was an HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES before it started moving again. The mood on the train went through several phases during this time, ranging from calm to bemusement to irritation. In the end, though, conversations broke out across aisleways, people started to make their way back to the BordBistro for a beer (I myself had my first Radler, which is a mixed drink consisting of beer and lemonade or soda), and the train seemed to settle into a collective attitude of, “Well, we’re going to be here for a while, might as well get comfortable.”

The notable exception to this easy-going atmosphere was an older American couple sitting in the row behind me: at about the twenty-minute mark they began complaining loudly about “service” and how “unacceptable” it was that their travel plans were being interfered with, and by the time the train got moving again they were deeply involved in composing the complaint they were going to lodge with the Deutsche Bahn higher-ups. Watching this whole drama unfold, I was struck by how typically American their attitude was—in the worst possible way. What does it say about Americans that we’re so quick to anger at the slightest inconvenience or perceived slight?

For my part, once the train finally got moving again, I spent the rest of the journey nervously eyeing the clock, comparing scheduled arrival times at the various stops with actual ones. In the end, the train pulled into Amsterdam Centraal at 9:45 PM, an hour and fifteen minutes later than it was supposed to, and I walked through the door of my hostel at exactly my scheduled check-in time of 10:00. Which just goes to show you, sometimes things don’t go according to plan, but they still work out.

Near-Death by Bicycle

Actually, by bicycle, tram and automobile. During my first full day in Amsterdam, I came to the conclusion that the city is nowhere near pedestrian-friendly: bicycle lanes masquerade as sidewalks, sidewalks become impossibly narrow and disappear altogether in some places. I thought Frankfurt was bicycle-obsessed, but it’s nothing compared with Amsterdam, and cyclists seem to have way fewer qualms about mowing down wayward pedestrians—woe betide you if you happened to be walking in a bicycle lane during a period of heavy bike traffic. Same goes if you happen to be walking too close to a tram track: those things graze so close to the sidewalk, if you’re holding your elbow out even a little bit, you run the risk of losing an arm.

In truth, though, the city is very walkable: you just have to figure out what the rules are, and then abide by them. The first commandment of Amsterdam-by-foot: obey the bell. If you hear a bell, whether bicycle or tram, LOOK OUT YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE RUN OVER. This means that blasting your iPod as you wander through the city is not a responsible life choice. Once I pulled my earbuds and stowed my iPod in my bag for the entirety of the second day, my number of near-death encounters decreased dramatically.

An overcast morning on the canals (that's the famous
Amsterdam Bloemenmarkt, or Flower Market, on the left) 

I wish I’d had one of those portable odometers that tell you how many steps you’ve taken in a given day, so I could say for certain how far I walked in my four days in Amsterdam. (A friend reminds me that there is an app for that. Oh well, there’s always next trip.) It’s got to be in the mid- to high-tens of kilometers. I probably could have decreased this amount considerably if I’d approached my explorations of the city in anything resembling a systematic fashion: Amsterdam is a city neatly divided into compact neighborhoods, which the Lonely Planet travel guide I borrowed from my roommate very nicely explained to me, and which I proceeded to ignore. In my defense, I did this with the best of intentions: there were certain big-ticket items I wanted to be sure of seeing—the Rijksmuseum, with its Rembrandts and Vermeers; the Van Gogh collection, temporarily relocated from its own museum to the Hermitage; the Rembarandthuis and the Jewish Quarter, just to name a few-- and in pursuit of these sights I zig-zagged back and forth across the city dozens of times. When you factor in a considerable amount of extra walking as a result of disorientation and a good deal of aimless wandering in the evenings, when the museums were closed and I didn’t know what else to do, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spanned the city two or three times a day. Ultimately, though, I think I’m glad I went at the city as haphazardly as I did: it afforded me the opportunity to see some things I might have missed out on otherwise, and I learned my way around the city as a whole a lot more quickly.

Rain, Rain, Go Away—Or Not.

It’s no wonder the Dutch masters were as obsessed with light as they were, if they saw as little of it as I did during my time in Amsterdam. It rained constantly for the first three days, though the sun did make a few valiant attempts to break through the cloud cover. Fortunately, I was prepared for this, both practically and psychologically, having checked the weather online before leaving Frankfurt. “Rain and the Netherlands go together, somehow,” observed a Kollegin at the Elsa when I ruefully mentioned the forecast for my first international excursion.

Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue

The weather did very little to dampen my enthusiasm for the city, but I can’t help but wonder how my experience might have been different had the weather been more cooperative—would I have seen more? Done more? At the very least, I might have saved some money, as I spent a lot of time ducking into cafes to get out of the rain/cold, and buying coffee and/or beer to justify my presence there.

On Monday, it very considerately turned gorgeous for my final day, including my visit to the Portuguese Synagogue, where the early-morning sunlight flooded through the eastern windows and set the brass chandeliers to shining. The canals, too, transformed in sunlight—the Prinsengracht, in the Western Canal Belt neighborhood, was my personal favorite. I had originally planned a day trip to Haarlem, just fifteen minutes away by train, for my last day in the Netherlands, but I’m glad that I ended up giving the extra day to Amsterdam instead.

A quick terminology lesson

In Amsterdam, a café is like a pub, and sells mostly beer and liquor, and a coffeehouse is where you go for the (in)famous not-legal-but-universally-tolerated cannabis. It is possible to order coffee at either of these establishments— in the afternoon/early evening, cafes in particular more closely resemble cafés as we know them in the States—but coffee is not what they’re “selling,” so to speak.

Cafe Hoppe, a classic "brown cafe" on the Spui,
traditionally a popular hangout among left-leaning
writers and intellectuals. 

It’s worth mentioning here that Amsterdam’s coffeehouses are overwhelmingly left to tourists: marijuana use—like prostitution, which I’ll (hopefully) get to later—is something the Dutch might experiment with in their teens, but before long the allure wears off and they get bored. Either that, or they get put off by the obnoxious behavior of tourists (largely American) who, in a frenzy of excess, very frequently wind up over-doing it.

Gezelligheid

Café culture lies close to the heart of a Dutch virtue of sorts known as gezelligheid. It’s one of those words that doesn’t have a direct translation in English (in German, though, it’s Geselligkeit). It’s variously translated as sociability, coziness, conviviality. Basically, it’s what happens when you and a bunch of friends (or strangers) get together and swap stories over a beer or a coffee. I got a first-hand glimpse of gezelligheid when I ducked into a cafe called De Baronesse on Friday night. From the safety of my corner table, I watched as the other customers—clearly regulars—laughed and joked in Dutch. One particular gentleman, who looked a lot like a young Jack Black with dreadlocks, was obviously the life of the party—at one point, “Brown Eyed Girl” came on, and he immediately started to sing along, sashaying up and down the bar, giving the bartender (who looked a lot like the actress who plays Esmee Cullen in the Twilight movies) a twirl when she stepped out from behind the bar to bus a table. On the wall next to the bar at De Baronesse there was an index card reading, “Oh how lonely at the bar…” surrounded by pictures of people sitting at the bar looking anything but lonely. Whether they’d known each other for years, months, or minutes was impossible to say—and that, from what I can tell, is the idea behind gezelligheid.

Speaking of Language…

I really regret not taking the time to learn some basic Dutch phrases before going to Amsterdam. Not that I would have had much opportunity to use them, since everyone in Amsterdam speaks English, especially everyone in the tourism industry—museum docents, waiters and bartenders, hostel employees.  Still, at least making the effort to speak the language seems like the polite thing to do, and according to Lonely Planet it can go a long way in opening doors with the locals. It wouldn’t have been that difficult, either: Dutch, like German (or English, for that matter) is a Germanic language, and the grammatical similarities are pronounced.  I frequently found I could make out whole sentences on museum signs and restaurant menus, particularly when I compared them against the English translations. Pronunciation is a different story— the best way I can describe the sound of Dutch is to say that it sounds like German spoken with a heavy Minnesotan accent. Still, “Hello,” “goodbye,” “please”, “thank you”, “I’d like…” and “How much” wouldn’t have been too hard to pick up, and I can't help but feel like I dropped the world-traveller ball a bit. The only excuse I can offer is to say that my whole Herbstferien trip came together very much at the last minute, and I didn’t really have the time to do the research. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to haunt me in Hungary—Magyar is supposed to be an incredibly difficult language, and I don’t think English is quite as widely spoken in Budapest as it is in Amsterdam. 

I so desperately don’t want to be that American, the stereotypical tourist who expects everyone to “talk American” and doesn’t take an interest in the local culture. Hopefully I can find other ways to convey that, and next time I wander somewhere linguistically far afield, I’ll be sure to do my due diligence.

 To be continued… 

Fühl dich zu Hause

“Fühl dich (wie) zu Hause” is the German equivalent of “Make yourself at home,” and in the course of my first few weeks in Frankfurt, I found myself on the receiving end of this phrase more times than I can count: from S, from S’s children, from C, from the Schulleiterrinnen (principals) and several teachers at both the Elsa and the Bettina. But no matter how many times people told me to “feel (like) at home” during those first three weeks or so, I could never bring myself to feel like anything but a visitor and even, at times, an intruder. And I think—in fact, I know—this was in large part due to my lack of “home” to feel in.

Obviously, I was not living on the streets during my “homeless” period– my Betreuungslehrerin S had a free bed in her apartment, which she very generously offered to me at no charge and with no scary, looming expiration date attached. But despite S’s generosity—or maybe, out of my perverse American pride and need for independence, because of it—I was still impatient to put down roots, so I (fairly) quickly set to work searching for a suitable WG.

A Wohngemeinschaft, or, WG is the same as a shared apartment in the U.S. and in Frankfurt it is pretty much the only affordable living arrangement for a person on my income (other than student housing, which I missed out on by a long shot—unlike at most U.S. universities, it’s extremely limited here. Another reason for my impatience to find a place: starting in October, Uni-Frankfurt students would be returning, and the already-fierce competition for affordable real estate would become even fiercer). There are, in broad terms, two types of WG: Zweck WG, in which everyone minds their own business, eats their own food, and adheres to a strict cleaning schedule, and kein-Zweck WG, in which your roommates are also your bar buddies, your TV-watching pals, and your dinner dates.

In Frankfurt, real estate pickings are like Hollywood actresses—slim and expensive—and the entire time I was on the hunt, I was convinced that mine was the most impossible of all the apartment searches in Germany, or at least among Fulbrighters. In retrospect, though, I realize that I actually got off pretty easily. In about a ten-day span I sent out a total of 30-odd enquiries using the websites wg-gesucht.de and studenten-wg.de, which are basically virtual bulletin boards for people searching for and/or offering housing across Germany. Out of those 30-odd enquiries I sent out, I received six invitations for a Besichtigung, or visitation. Out of those six invitations, I wound up visiting a total of four WGs—all in the space of three days, Tuesday-Thursday, September 18th-20th.

Out of those four visits, one turned out to be my new “zu Hause.” See if you can guess which:

Wohnung #1: (Schwanthalerstraße) I almost didn’t go to my first Besichtiguntstermine on Tuesday evening because C had invited me to have dinner at her apartment the same night, and to my culture-shock addled brain the idea of rescheduling either of these things—or of doing both—seemed plainly impossible.  Fortunately, I mentioned the appointment to C in passing, C suggested that we look up the address on Google Maps, and lo and behold, it was a mere ten minute walk from C’s place in Sachsenhausen, so we went apartment-visiting and still had a delicious Maultaschen dish (the recipe for which I need to ask C for at some point). Thus I had a native speaker with me on my first Besichtigung—a tactic I highly recommend to anyone apartment hunting in a foreign country, as it enables you to deflect attention from your own linguistic clumsiness and social awkwardness. The apartment was located in a sanierter Altbau (refurbished old building) right around the corner from the Schweizer Platz U-bahn station, the Rewe grocery store, and a branch of Sparkasse (my bank); the room was spacious, generously furnished with IKEA bed, desk, wardrobe, and (best of all) bookshelf; the kitchen was fully decked out, complete with washing machine AND DISHWASHER; and the prospective roommate, M, was friendly, tidy, put-together, and clearly not a psychopath. Naturally, I fell in love with the place immediately. And had to actively work to conceal my dismay when M explained that she was entertaining several possible Mitbewohnerinnen (flat mates) and would need the weekend to decide.

Wohnung #2: (Münzgasse) I arrived at this 4-er WG, located in a giant apartment complex directly in the Innenstadt, on Wednesday evening thinking I had made an appointment with the people who lived there—to meet, to see if we had compatible personalities and living habits, to sniff each other out, so to speak, seeing as how they’d advertised as a keine-Zweck WG. Instead, I was greeted by dark windows, and by a cheerful middle-aged landlord/property manager carrying a blue duffel bag. Because I am an American, and a conscientious television viewer well versed in crime procedurals, I promptly became convinced this man was going to murder me given the chance. So I clutched my keys in my fist, ready to slash at his face if he made any sudden movements, as he led me through the empty apartment and showed me my prospective room—into which, as politely as I could given my terror, I declined to follow him. The room itself wasn’t bad—carpeted, a little oddly shaped, furnished with solid-looking pine bed, wardrobe, and dresser—nor was the apartment. But unlike in many German cities, where the Innenstadt is typically the oldest, most charming part, in Frankfurt the Innenstadt is all concrete and fiberglass, and it was hard to imagine myself feeling at home there, even given the proximity of the more-picturesque Dom-Römer area and the ready access to public transportation.

Wohnung #3: (Wolfsgangstraße) SUPER swanky four-bedroom apartment located in another sanierter Altbau in Westend, the same part of town as my schools, and owned by A, a (to me) impossibly self-assured and socially graceful woman in her early forties. A, as it turned out, works in publishing. Actually, I’m pretty sure she owns a Verlag, or publishing house, here in Frankfurt. Yes, I googled her when I got back from the visit Wednesday  night—“NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY,” my brain screamed at me, impressively, given how deaf my brain usually is to things like that. Anyway, A belongs to that strange German breed known as the Wochenendheimfahrer , meaning that she herself only lives in the apartment Monday through Thursday, spending weekends in southern Germany with her husband and family. To help with expenses, she rents the other three bedrooms to other Pendler (commuters) and Gaststudentinnen (guest students, like me). This WG was the Zweckiest of WGs: no communal dinners, no loud music, no visitors allowed. The apartment was incredibly clean, incredibly quiet, and incredibly mausoleum-like, complete with marble flooring and elaborate floral arrangements. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, if I lived there, I would scarcely ever encounter another human being.

Wohnung #4: (Battonstraße) Or Sketchy Landlord: The Revenge. That’s right, my fourth and final Besichtigung on Thursday led me back to the Innenstadt, to another apartment complex apparently managed by the same rosy-cheeked serial killer from whom I had narrowly escaped with my life a few days earlier. This WG, another 4er, was at the top of six cardio-respiratory-testing flights of stairs, and the room-to-rent wasn’t so much a room as a closet. But it was fully furnished, including a very comfy-looking armchair, and it had a balcony, which overlooked the Main River and Alt-Sachsenhausen beyond (okay, with another row of lower-rise apartment buildings obstructing the view). Unlike at my last Besichtigung with Sketchy Landlord, this time one of the current residents was at home—however, it was girl I would hypothetically be replacing, so again no chance to test for potential roomie-chemistry.

It occurs to me that presenting these four living arrangements to someone and asking them to choose which apartment I ended up living in might not be half bad as a litmus-test of sorts for that person’s level of optimism. It could be like one of those personality quizzes that show up constantly in women’s magazines: if you picked #1, you are an bright, sunny human being who believes that things work out for the best; if you picked #3, you are a pragmatist, who hopes that I at least jumped on the opportunity to advance my professional prospects, etc. etc.

In reality, it came down between Wohnungen numbers 1 and 2: I crossed my fingers and my toes all through the weekend for number 1, wishing all manner of unseemly habits and ungainly social defects on M’s other prospective Mitbewohnerin(nen), but I had number 2 on standby just in case, because I was determined to be out of S’s apartment by the end of the week regardless. Monday night I was camping out at Starbucks, the internet at S’s having gone kaputt in a strangely prophetic/symbolic way, and I was ready to pull the trigger on my second choice when, finally, I received an email from M…

… the first words of which read, “Es tut mir Leid” (“I’m sorry”).

Disappointment came down on my head like a ton of bricks, but eventually I gathered the wherewithal to read further, realize that what M was apologizing for was taking so long to get back to me, and learn that I had, in fact, gotten the place on Schwanthalerstraße. 

Score one for the optimists.

So, once again, I found myself instructed to “Fühl dich zu Hause.” Only this time, I felt like I finally could. By Thursday I had gotten the keys and, with M’s help, moved all of my suitcases from Westend to Sachsenhausen. By Saturday I had the all-important name on the mailbox. Monday I went grocery shopping and cooked for myself for the first time since leaving the States. A week ago yesterday, the October 1^st deadline my mother and I set for my potential retreat to the United States passed without my even realizing it. I’m finally starting to conceptualize this thing I’m doing here in Frankfurt as a life, something that will continue to grow and develop over time, as opposed to just an existence, to be gotten through moment by moment. Hessen’s two-week Fall Break begins at the end of this week, and I’m planning to travel to Amsterdam, Budapest, and Vienna during that time. Written on my iCal for October 27^th,  the date I’m set to return to Frankfurt (and also, incidentally, my birthday) is the phrase nach Hause, (to) home.