Chronicles Of The Return

From the travel journal:

Budapest to Berlin Train: River metaphors seem appropriate right now. Crossed the Danube. Leaving Hungary. Was it from Priene where Heraclitus looked out on the Meander and asked if we can ever really cross the same river twice?

Last night I began reading Patrick Leigh Fermor’s “A Time For Gifts” to analyze his prose but the tale sucked me in immediately and I was lost, swept away in the reverie of an old man remembering his youth. “Give me whiskey, give me wine, when I recall that my youth was divine,” or so Tennyson wrote. If my youth was divine (and it was) then what is this?

I’ll cross my fiftieth border in a short time. Borders and rivers and time, melted into a whole. Did I ever imagine, that cool June day in 1993 when I first landed in London, on my first journey, that I’d be where I am today? I have finally, in the words of Magris, “left the enigmatical fabric of the universe to look after itself.” What a hard won lesson it has been.

Berlin to Hamburg: Sitting in the middle. Some day I will be old, like the couple sitting to my left and once I was young, like the happy youths to my right. Today I just am.

I’m looking out at the gorgeous rolling farmland on the North European plain and all I can think of is, “I miss the East.” That’s not living in the moment. But I miss the East. I miss the energy, the ‘never-knowing-what’s-going-to-happen-nextness.” The most important leg of the journey began in Istanbul a few nights ago. I realize now. It’s that tale that rarely gets told: the return. Am I ready? Perhaps not, but each journey has its own ineluctable iambic not to be denied.

Hamburg to Copenhagen Train: Three contrails streak across the Baltic sky. Seagulls twirl circles in the salty summer wind. Here I am sandwiched between yesterday and tomorrow; two hours ago and dinner this evening; the smoke I just had and the moment when I’ll put my pen down to look out the window and chose my next words. This glorious, eternal, transient now and I smile. I breath in the cool wind over water, smell the octane, sip water and melt.

Denmark looks like a giant IKEA store. Really, it’s fucking IKEA-Legoland here.

Notes from A Nyborg Garden: Sandbox, how many dreams? How much imagination? How much creativity was launched out of that old sand-box in Shavano Park? Staurt’s son is more lucky than he knows to have one.

The family ties here in Denmark are strong. Life centers around friends and family, but it’s not communal. It’s no where near as individualistic and lonely as the American life is, as well.

Stuart says, “we’ve become consumers instead of citizens.” He’s right. Modernity is ripping apart our common Enlightenment values.

I thought before I arrived that it would be strange seeing my best friend as a father. But he’s a natural. Kind. Patient. Firm. Loving. He’s found (and made) his peace with the world. His kids don’t annoy me like other people’s children do. I can’t help but to love them, mostly because they are him. Camilla and Stuart have settled into that deep happiness of young parents. A common purpose and lots of love will do that. He’s tending his garden, unaware I’m writing about him. I can’t help but to find his contentment and happiness infectious.

Half a world away and a lifetime ago, it seems, I made plans to be here for his daughter’s Christening. I’m the Godfather. I’m filled with a sense of well-being today, both looking forward to tomorrow and the day, which will soon come, when I turn my head firmly homeward. It’s almost been a year.

And I sit in his garden. Don would have been proud of me, I worked a full day with my hands. My hands scribble in my travel journal, finches chirp, a dove coos while bees gather pollen from the rasberry bush behind me. Can I spray paint this scene across my memories, this post-modern pastoral?

In the moments between moments, I wait, frustrated, impatient for the next look, the next place, the next destination. But I’ve come half a world to sit in this garden and I’m not interested in my next ride, my next stop, my next fix. This is life, the everlasting moment . . .

When it’s good, it’s just good.

So, I’m sitting in a cafe, having a coffee, reading Magris’ book Danube. I usually start books at the beginning but I decided yesterday to read his thoughts on Budapest. Mind you, Magris’ travel book really isn’t a travel book in the conventional English or American sense. It’s very Mitteleuropa. He’s a scholar of German literature, who taught in Trieste, which, although it is in Italy, is a Central European town. It’s much more a survey of the intellectual life of the Danube, and at times although a bit dense, it is excellent and thought provoking reading.

Yesterday I read a passage about Budapest and the author Gyorgy Konrad. I was very fascinated by Magris’ retelling of Konrad’s life and works so I googled him while sitting in this cafe today. And then I noticed an older gentleman having a glass of wine, scribbling away in a smallish Moleskine journal just like mine.

“No fucking way,” I thought to myself. “It can’t be.”

But it was. Sitting before me was the man himself, Gyorgy Konrad.

“Working on my next novel,” he said, when I asked what he was writing.

“And you, young man, I see are a writer,” he asked.

“Nothing special, sir,” I said. “Just thoughts about a very long journey I have undertaken.”

For the next two hours I sat in rapt attention to the tales of a dissident who participated in the Hungarian Uprising of 1958.

Seldom is serendipity so kind.

From the travel journal:

Some Euros seem to have this conceit stuck in their head that Hungary is the gateway to the East, although admittedly not as bad as the ‘Wogs begin at Calais’ sort. I imagine if I was heading south from Denmark, through Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia into Hungary I might agree. But I’m not. I’m heading north, towards the North European plain and this city is nothing like an Asian or Eastern city. Budapest has much more in common with Trieste, Vienna and Prague than it does with Bucharest, Sophia, Moscow or Athens for that matter. This Mitteleuropa is terra incognita for me.

Met Joao, a young man from Portugal studying in Bucharest with the Erasmus program, on the Bucharest-Budapest train. He talked about the girls in Romania, the nightlife and economics. Needless to say, we had lots in common, economics, that is. He was a nice kid, handsome in the bug-eyed, Latin kind of way.

Budapest photos can be found here.

Don’t have much to write the last few days. Haven’t been in the best of moods. I miss the East. I miss Istanbul most of all. My muse.

Budapest is an architect’s city. Walk one block and you are assaulted by five different schools of art: the Parisian belle epoque, High Austrian fin de siecle, Art Deco, some Gothic, a little neo-Renaissance, Baroque and Hungary’s very own Sezessionistil–facades full of allegorical friezes, arcades of caryatids and Zsolnay tiles, which is a kind of Magyar faience. It is quite lovely.

Claudio Magris, in his book Danube, writes of “the kitsch of Budapest.” (An odd, dense travel book, in that it is really more a long mediation and survey of Central European lit-crit than anything else.) From where I sit he is correct, in an architectural sense. One building has the sleek lines of the Floretine Renaissance another is a glassy, modern shopping arcade. Across the street is a rounded Art Deco building graced with a series of twelve caryatids, half are Atlases, holding so many globes above their heads. There is a belle epoque apartment house not 50 meters away that wouldn’t be out of place in Paris or Vienna. A statue sits in the middle of the square dedicated to I know not whom: I can’t tease out any meaning from the inscription. Magris says Budapest is the “imitation of an imitation” meaning it imitates Vienna, which imitates Paris. He’s right. It may be a place of architectural kitsch, but it works. Normally, as I wrote about a mosque in Turkey, a blend of styles doesn’t work, but somehow Budapest charms. I wish I had more time here.

Castle Hill is a Prague-esque tumbledown of architectural styles too. It’s gorgeous, rising up over the bend of the Danube, on the Buda side of Buda-Pest. (My hotel is on the Pest side, as is my train station.) The views north and south down the river are impressive. More so than in Prague, but I imagine that is a function of the size of the Danube here. It’s wider than the Vltava River in Prague. But what Budapest lacks that Prague has is a compact city-center full of cafes, life, culture. Budapest has all that. It is an artists city, as well as an opera and theatre fan’s town. But it’s spread out, if not quite sprawling.

The Hungarians are much more European than the Romanians. There is also a lot more obesity here, in men and women, than I’ve seen since Thailand. Must be that sausage and beer diet. It’s the only thing on the menus. I miss the salads of the Levant. Atilla the Hun is huge here. The Hungarians claim descent from the Huns. Of course, there is a 400 year gap in the historical record, from the time the Huns arrived in the area to that of the Magyars arrival on the Great Plain. No matter. We all create our own histories in this post-modern age, don’t we?

“Are you hungry,” asked the waitress.

“Yes, I am hungry in Hungary, no less,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes. As if she hasn’t heard that one a thousand times? I couldn’t resist. Puerile, I know. But still, how many times does one get to say something so patently stupid, but enjoyable?I’d heard about the beauty of Hungarian women. But I’m not constantly rubber-necking like I was in Bucharest. Probably a good thing. I pay more attention to the art and architecture that way. Budapest isn’t nearly as ‘poor’ as Bucharest, but it wears its poverty differently. The gap between those who have and those who do not is wide. If you are well dressed then you are reasonably fit. If you aren’t then you are heavy, pot-bellied. And probably drinking a beer. There are a lot more street people here than I’ve seen since India. Turkey just didn’t have them. Of course, there were gypsies in Bucharest, but not so many.

The energy here is very European, industrious, even if the Magyars are Catholic by tradition. The sexes mix. Nice change from the East, if you ask me. The cafes aren’t full of underemployed men sipping tea. Laughter, feminine and masculine fill them. Ladies join their boyfriends for a beer. As it should be.

It’s the first place I arrived with a huge backpack strapped on where I wasn’t immediately stared at. No one paid me any notice. I found this anonymity disconcerting. I could hide here and never be noticed. Is that element of serendipity gone? I hope not.