Monthly Archive for June, 2002

Budapest was cool. It’s hard to explain what I saw exactly. The thing that stuck with me was how hard hit it was by communism. I’m really starting to get an honest sense of how many people were pawns in communist expansion, and how much better capitalism is for the average person than communism. Communism is just like nazism, actually, in its ease to adoption. It provides an easy way out. Hitler made scapegoats of the Jews and anybody not fitting his masterrace criteria. For downtrodden people, this was easy to latch onto. It’s not their fault anymore, they recover some dignity at the expense of someone they didn’t like all that much anyway. Communism appeals to the same sort of feeling. If you’re downtrodden, communism is the easy way out. ‘Psst. Listen. If you come with us everybody’ll get paid the same. That aristocrat down the street with his huge house, he’ll make just the same as you.’ The problem with Nazism was that not only was it inaccurate, but it turned out to be evil. The problem with communism is,not only is it designed to be easily warped (� la Animal Farm) but it functionally brings an economy to a standstill. If people are going to make the same amount of money, regardless of the effort they put in, they’re going to put in the bare minimum. After communism fell in Hungary (that’s where Budapest is, you ignorant Americans ) there was a whole generation of people accustomed to, well, not working. Capitalism, supported specifically by a new attempt at democracy, doesn’t deal with that well, so they got fired. Thus high unemployment. Thus a new generation of ‘downtrodden’ people. Guess what happened? The communists just won the last elections. Here we go again. This is extremely fascinating for me, more than any tourist site or memorial or hip bar or something, because I just can’t insert myself into the mindset of someone who would look at public services that don’t work (transport is laughable, and though we got around alright, my guess is that it took a long time for it to get to a semi-consistent basis), restaurant service that takes a minimum of a half-hour for just about anything, even just a coke or a coffee (except at McDonalds, it should be noted. God bless American Capitalism), and says ‘Yes, I want more from the people who gave me this great system.’ My only guess is that if you’re poor and hungry, your first concern is immediate food, thus immediate money, and anyone who can promise you that, you vote for, regardless of the side-effects of that decision. Budapest was one of the most interesting places I’ve been to yet.
This was originally in email form to Bethany, but she was nice enough to say that I could post it, as it sort of summed up my whole feeling on my Budapest trip. Thanks, Beth, and much love!

Yet another night basically without sleep. This train ride was actually worse than the one with the drunken Russians, from Budapest to Munich, as it was a bit more unnvering. I had a couchette and below me was a gypsy woman and her maybe four year old son, next to her bunk was a rather large spanish woman, above me was a vietnamese cigarette addict, and next to him was a nice french woman. The bunk next to me I think was supposed to be occupied but was not.

From this description, though, you wouldn’t think it all that bad. I wouldn’t either. But I’m in Europe, and some fundamentals that Americans take for granted are ‘debatable’ here.

Take hygiene for example. I honestly fear for the life of that gypsy woman’s son. At such a young age, yea, kids should get dirty, roll around, have fun, but should probably be washed off after that. Apparently his mother didn’t think so. I would estimate that he has not had a bath in 3 months. His mother, true to her philosophy, had not bathed in maybe a third that much time. It’s as if we’re back in Elizabethan times, and people think the more dirt caked to your face the better, as the ‘bad spirits,’ now known as microbes, can’t get in. And they honestly did have dirt caked to their faces. When the boy scratched his face with his surprisingly long fingernails, a thin line of off-white skin shown beneath. He did it again later to the otherside of his face and it looked like warpaint. Now the great thing about the modern world is that we read about thins like hygiene in the Elizabethan age, dirt-caked faces, muddy, manure-laden streets, etc. and we can shudder at the thought of it. But what reading about it, or even seeing movies set in that time do not do (thank god that this technology hasn’t yet been developed) is let you understand exactly what that smells like. It is like a physical barrier to be walked through when you enter a room. It has the effect of immediately unsettling stomachs. My first instinct was to not put down my bags but to run to the window and open it. This was smell number one (well, one and two if you count the fact this the mother smelt of something slightly sharper than the son).

The large spanish woman was a case all her own. She had on some kind of business suit, in a low green, like turquoise or the color of the statue of liberty. It was heavy looking for early summer, and she was obviously feeling the effects of it. She was sweating when I got to the couchette, and, here’s what I honestly cannot fathom, later when she settled down to go to bed she not only kept on her whole business suit, heavy jacket mit sweatstains included, she didn’t even open the package with the light cotton sheets in it, she just threw the heavy wool blanket over her. Am I missing something? Did someone spike the that coke I bought at Gare de Bercy? Perhaps needless to say, after a few minutes of this, I could see the sweat rolling down her face, and the sweat stains that before had been darkness at folds and fabric borders became long lines. My guess is that she had something spicy for dinner before she got on the train, as the smell that soon competed with the dirt twins was, in addition to natural body odor, sharp and gave a strike high in the back of the nose like when you smell hot peppers. This was smell number two.

The Vietnamese guy, though nice, was a chain smoker. Thankfully he spent a large portion of the evening at the train door, blowing smoke out into the french countryside. He was clean and well dressed, too, and left his heavy blanket on the eave over the door. He slept with just one sheet and the only smell that came from him, thank god, was that of heavy smokers around the world. Seeing as I’ve spent now three months in Europe, where people like to smoke even in the shower if they can manage it, I’m actually well used to this one and it didn’t bother me. Other than the fact that he was figgety, and would occasionally pull some precise gymnastics to turn from one shoulder to another in one fell swoop and without actually moving his body from an apparently well grooved spot, he was great.

The person I was happiest with was the french woman. She looked Mediterranean in origin, and wore all black with a black bag. We had fluid and funny conversations in French, and, despite the popular and generally accurate preconception of the French, she did not smell. Given that half the people in the cabin were battling for pungent dominance, you have no idea what a relief that was. When she got off in the morning at some small stop in Italy, she walked past and smiled, and for the first time the whole train ride, I smelled something honestly beautiful and refreshing: French perfume. And with that I laid back and got a whole hour of sleep.

Firenze
…Is beautiful. I’ve only been here for a few hours and have not explored much, but it is quite beautiful already. I lucked out, as well, that it rained all last night and now the sun is shining and there’s nary a cloud in the sky. More updates on that later. I’m gonna go have lunch and check out the Duomo.