SziaRobyn is still staying up — of course, for “Szia” is hello and goodbye. There might not be any posts for awhile here, but there will be another  szia-which-means- hello to Hungary soon. Not soon enough — but I can’t stay away for that long!

I’m back. Weird.

One of my colleagues at Pazmany, who had spent a year in the States, described the experience of returning to the home country after so long a sojourn as the definition of uncanny. Coming from the European bustle of Budapest to land back in my childhood hometown is precisely that. Reverse culture shock is always difficult, but I suppose it is not made any easier by the fact that instead of heading to the place where I live as a “grown-up,” I’m back in a place that was “home” the longest, but hasn’t been home for nearly a decade. Even just walking around town getting coffee, I felt overwhelmed, asking my mom if the buildings had always been so pastel and cookie-cutter perfect. Everything seemed both recognizable and strange.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown in Target — there was just too much stuff, too much English and brightness blasting from the advertisements.

That said, the re-entry into this universe isn’t all bad. Far from it. There is an undeniable comfort to the familiar. Take, for instance, my childhood best friend, who  casually gave me some samples of my favorite perfume that she’d been getting at the mall all year. A tiny gesture, but one that shows how long we have known each other, shows how we know each other as well as we know ourselves.

The year in Hungary was beautiful. But I always knew it had a deadline. Now, it’s back to real life: to deciding on 401k plans and applying for car loans and moving back into my Arlington apartment and setting up an office at my new community college. I miss so much about Budapest — from the wonderful friends I had to the way the city lights up at night to some of my favorite bars and cafes. I keep thinking I hear a word or two in Hungarian, and turn expectantly; I keep mistaking people for my Hungarian friends.

Change can hurt. But most things that are good for us do.

So, this is goodbye for this blog, for this particular account of life. Now, it’s on to the next one.

At 4:30 a.m., I will be on my way to Ferihegy. At 7 a.m., I will start the first of three flights. At 11 p.m., I will be in Pittsburgh International Airport.

Wow.

It is too soon, too close, too crazy inside me right now to fully accept that this beautiful, beautiful experience is ending. I can’t believe a year went by so fast. I can’t believe Budapest won’t be my city anymore.

The only thing I keep thinking is Hungarian formal version of goodbye — “viszontlátásra” — literally translates to something like “I’ll be seeing you.” And I will. This particular experience — the Fulbright year — might be over. But I know, for many reasons, I will never be able to get over Budapest.

Visiting these countries with my fellow Fulbright friend, Sarah, today, however, shows a place teeming with life. Yes, there are still remnants of the destruction that raged there. But as I walked down a Sarajevo street around 11 p.m., the idea of “siege” and “sniper” and all those other fearful words which I associate with that city’s names faded as I wove through the packed, cobblestone streets. Like the Italians, the Bosnians like an evening passagiata, a walk simply to see and be seen. Whole familys wandered the main squares, calling out to friends. Music spilled out of bars. People downed Sarajevo Pivo. In the span of one block, lights threw a Catholic church, a mosque, an Orthodox church and a synagogue into beautiful illumination. Far from just being a “war survivor”, the city, to me, seemed to thrive.

Sarajevo

Of course, I was a one-day visitor there (and elsewhere in my travels in the region), and I know my little taste of such places cannot begin to show all the pain of healing that such places must go through. I know, equally, that the great “cheap” prices an American traveler encounters there means the real residents are struggling economically. But I also want to change the minds that still see the Balkans as a land of crisis only. Part of me wants to tell everyone know to go there, right away. The other (selfish) part of me wants to keep it a secret, to keep everything as perfect as it was for our trip.

And again, coming back from a ten-day onslaught of un-understandable Croatian and Bosnian, arriving back in Ferihegy, where I knew what jo estet meant from passport control, where I knew exactly how to get back from the airport (a route I know better, I must admit, than the road to the airport back in D.C.) Ahh, good to be home, I thought, before the sinking realization that this “home” is only mine until 7 a.m. Tuesday morning.

So for now, I’m off to enjoy one bit more of this home — and I’ll just leave you with the images I know think about when I hear “Balkans”.

Dubrovnik by night

Sunset in Dubrovnik

Waterfalls outside of Mostar (Bosnia & Hercegovina)

Mostar

Dubrovnik

Split

I was talking to my fellow Fulbrighter, Sarah, tonight, as we finished planning our Great Balkan Adventure (10 days through Bosnia and Croatia, for which we depart Tuesday morning!) and, as we hung up, she noted: “I can’t believe it’s all ending.” But it is –  she won’t return to Hungary after said G.B.A.; I will but just for about four days. Last Sunday night, over another around in Szimpla, Natalie noted it was our last night as “official” Fulbrighters, as the grant technically ends May 31. We were both shocked into a sad, nostalgic daze by this (which we dealt with the only way we could figure out: lots and lots of pálinka.)

Right now, I feel oddly similar to how I did last August, nervous and jumpy, not able to sleep and constantly feeling that nagging “did-I-forget-something?” feeling” The emotion made sense then: I was off to the most unknown of the unknown, a country and a language and a people I knew nothing about. Now, I’m off to what is very well known: I’ll be back to D.C. (more home than the parental home now), and, even more familiar, I’ll be back to the exact same apartment, with a good, old friend … even the old neighbors have promised a welcome-back beer. So, why do I seem so scared now?

Ring Road at dawn

Maybe it’s because I am leaving a lot, a dreamworld of sorts. The girl who spent her teen years drooling over National Geographic magazine and wishing for a passport will have been in ten countries and at least twice as many cities this year. Or maybe because I am still leaving a home, albeit one held for a short time.

Just last night, one of my favorite clubs, Gödör Klub, was having its regular Balkan Beats night. This is an awesome, awesome dance party, where bands from both Hungary and around Europe play a crazy, amped-up version of folk music. In short, it’s dance-tastic. (should you ever land here, you must check and see if its on) This month’s lineup was particularly good, with Hungarian band Romano Drom and the German DJ who founded this party. The floor was packed, the huge steps which lead into the club (in the site of an old bus station, so it’s sort of underground) were teeming with Budapestians and backpackers. After a sweaty dance session to Romano Drom’s set, we headed outside for some much-needed fresh air. As we sat in the grass nearby, I looked at the group we made: Natalie and I, the Americans; Patrick, our German friend; Nat’s Icelandic boyfriend, Baldur; and an assortment of two Swedes, a Dane, a Scot, a Brit and two Hungarians. We tipped back Dreher and fröccs, looking at the illuminated dome of Szent István cathedral. Tired, Natalie and I lay down and looked up at the few stars that we could see through the city lights. We watched the light go out on Szent István around 2 a.m. It seemed somehow fitting: a goodnight, a goodbye.

But then Patrick and Baldur pulled us back up to continue dancing. It also seemed somehow fitting: a reminder that there is no such thing as an end to an experience this lovely.

We danced until we were dripping. We walked home through a still-buzzing Király utca at nearly 4 a.m. We called it a beautiful night. We called Budapest in the early summer beautiful. We called life beautiful.

The House Dad Schandl Built!

I am not exaggerating when I say hand-built either: Veronika’s dad literally did just this, starting the plans back in 1969. First, as a “boat shed” (this was during Communism, and they could not get a permit for a house, but could get one for a boat shed. Party inspectors even came to check that the structure met acceptable boat-shed-ness, Veronika explained,) and then later added on to make a bigger house, it is quite impressive — a cute, snug whitewashed structure that seems to emit a feeling of summery relaxation.

The house is located in a smaller town on the lake, called Balatonmáriafürdő, one that is not super-heavy on the German pensioners that so love Lake Balaton. Veronika and I also were lucky to have a fabulous chauffeur and chef, in the forms of the Dávids (no, they’re not some Hungarian band or something — just two great guys, both named Dávid). The Hungarians, I soon discovered, would get along very well with my mom and dad, for they both take the same approach to spending a weekend at the lake: pack enough food for at least three weeks. (Seriously, Veronika had a whole duffel. And the feast one Dávid cooked us for lunch Saturday was similar in size to the meals of My Crazy Great Aunts, little Italian ladies famed for feeding).

Keszthely Castle

It was just a short, overnight jaunt, but it was a perfect escape from the city bustle (and yes, by “bustle,” I do mean my self-induced fatigue from too many late nights out. Hey, school’s out. Even the teacher needs a break). Although it was too cool for swimming, we took walks around the beautiful, blue lake, ate lots of ice cream, went to the nearby town of Keszthely to check out a great baroque palace (I cannot even describe the wonders of the library in there! Big, intricately carved wooden selves, twisty spiral steps, rows of fancy gold-leaf embossed books and even a hidden door in the bookshelves. I could live there. Happily) and played a monster-long game of badminton (is it shameful that I actually had a sore arm from badminton? Pathetic? Yes.) I even learned some new things, like how to play rummy (badly) and what a “siesta” meant back in the old days of the U.S.S.R. — not a “nap” in Spanish, but a Yugoslavian-made space heater, which comes with the warning to only be left on for 4 hours at a time, as it does its warming by sucking the oxygen out of the room (leading one Dávid to quip that it is called a siesta because it “…gives you a very long nap!”)

Veronika and David with the house diaries

But one of the most interesting things, for me, was looking through the house diaries Veronika’s family has kept up over the years. Her parents began keeping these notebooks, writing a paragraph or two at a time when planning the house, and everyone has added to them over the years. If you page through, you can see the progressions of family time common anywhere (babies to toddlers to awkward preteens to too-cool-for-you-teenagers to adults) and the wonders of 1980s fashion (oh, that was the decade! Long live neon colors!), but also a few things that remind you distinctly of the history that house weathered, like the first tickets from a family trip abroad near “the changes”, as the family could not get passports earlier.

Upon our arrival, Veronika asked me write a few sentences in the current book, the fifth one (so now some English mars the Hungarian tomes!). It might seem insignificant if you haven’t looked at the diaries or know Veronika and the stories she has of her family, but I felt really honored to do this. This is their family, their history — and Vera invited me to be a part of that. That’s big, to me. That’s what is important about living somewhere so new: the people you take with you, not the skills or C.V. building-lines of fractured phrases in a new language.

David, Veronika, David #2 & Lake Balaton

Plus, as my time here winds down, I begin thinking about how small a year really is. It is a blink, a moment, and I sometimes worry it will feel like it never happened, what with the way time moves faster the older you get. Indeed, life is already plodding ahead for me in America: arrangements are being made for moving back to Arlington, people are planning birthdays and concerts in D.C. this summer, my course schedule is set and my new books all ordered. It feels, sometimes, like I’ll just slip back into the U.S. and this wonderful, crazy, beautiful year here will feel like its being erased as I become bogged down in the minutiae of life back in my old city. But writing in the house diary, I felt like I was marking myself down more permanently, assuring that, whatever comes up next, I’ve made a set place for myself here in a city that feels so strangely like “home.”

And I still haven’t quiet recovered from the sentimental ball of goop I get at goodbyes.

One quality I sometimes worry about having as a teacher is that I like my students too much (which, of course, makes it harder to be hard on them when they do the occasional “oh-really?-the-essays-are-due-today?” kind of things). Maybe I’ve just been lucky to have really great groups everywhere I have taught in my short time thus far in this career, maybe it is part of the nature of teaching writing and literature, where emotions and personal experience tend to come out in the classwork more than, say, they might in algebra, but I have left every class I have taught so far with a feeling of sadness, like I’ve just made some wonderful new friends and now I won’t get to see them regularly anymore.

The experience is compounded at Pázmány firstly because of the distance between Hungary and home, as well as  the fact that the end of Pámány makes it all the clearer that this crazy, lovely, dream-world-like life the Fulbright year has been for me is winding down.  Yet, it also felt even more bittersweet because of how I saw some of my students grow so much — whether it was in their ability to speak more confidently in English, or the real “big success” for me — a student who is using the modern American women writers I taught this year for her thesis.

Then, those darned kids went and made me cry. In a good way. Two of my favorites (not that teachers have favorites … ) are in a great theater company at Pázmány, called The Brown Cow company. They perform plays in English, and compete (and usually win) against other Hungarian university companies. This year, the group selected A.R: Gurney’s play The Dining Room, which they performed for the campus community Tuesday evening.  And they pulled it off magnificently. When my student, Anita, made the touching final speech, I was crying, the other teachers were crying … I think even a few of the boys looked misty. I was so proud of the whole group, but what really, really touched me was an editorial move Anita made. Gurney’s play — like many of his — focuses on how lives intersect and intertwine, and, as such, The Dining Room uses short vignettes about a wide array of characters to show American culture as it progress. In one scene, Anita plays a harried housewife, desperate to finish her graduate degree, but being hounded by an annoying husband. When she finally gets the husband out of the room, the wife sits down at her typewriter and tries to keep banging out her term paper. I was pleasantly surprised when, from the loudspeakers, there came a familiar passage: the first lines of The Feminine Mystique, a text I had assigned way back in October to introduce the first women’s writers class to the concept of feminism (a concept which has not exactly taken in Hungary). 

After the play, Anita told me she choose that passage to use as the sort of background for the scene because she thought it best expressed what the character would have felt. I did, too.

To see something you’ve taught actually not just be memorized, but be used by a student to better understand and engage with their own world — well, what better end to a year could a teacher ask for? And, is it any wonder I needed a tear or two?

This is not uncommon for me and my many-times-moved self: I did the same thing at the close of college, before I left D.C. to come here, and even before leaving my stint at The Beaver County Times (and trust me, if you can find yourself getting nostalgic and saying “oh, gee, my last Ambridge Council meeting!  Better enjoy the near-fistfight between Mayor Buzzy and whomever comes in to complain about hookers on Merchant Street while I can!” you can count yourself certifiably over-emotional)

But Budapest is so truly wonderful a place to live — and this year has been such a crazily cool experience — that even chores can spark some nostalgia. Yup, today while doing that task known as “running errands” , I realized how much I will miss going grocery shopping in Budapest. Now, I have to say, while I occasionally missed things (or, more often, people) from the States, I never sat back and reminisced about all the great times I had at the Wilson Blvd. Safeway or fighting off G.W. undergrads for a sale on 2-buck Chuck win at the local Trader Joe’s. But grocery shopping, for me, means going to the Central Market.

My Family Loves the Central Market!

The Central Market is always well-marked in tour books for Budapest — and now that it is tourist time, they are all there, taking pictures of those of us “regular” shoppers who just need our produce. But it attracts the visitors for good reason: it is big, gorgeous building, with high, vauled ceilings that cover row upon row of delicious fresh produce, meat, cheese and, on the second floor, every type of Hungarian kitsch your could ask for (who needs a peasant woman-shaped wine opener? There are plenty There is even both a langos stand and a retes stand — fried dough + pastries under one roof? What else can a girl need for true happiness?

The market also offers a chance to feel like you really get to care about what you put into your body. In America, we tend to be really bad at that — home of fast-food, home of pre-prepared. But when you get to walk from stall to stall, looking for whose asparagus looks the freshest, or feel like you have a relationship with the butcher (or, in my personal case, the all-women manned butcher stall to which I always return) who sells you one fresh chicken breast at a time (not a giant bag os salt-injected, pre-frozen stuff), that feels like a different variety of good food. And, it generally also tastes great.  You see a bunch of just-in-season veggies — right now, it is asparagus — that looks great, and even if it would not make your normal shopping list while at one of the mega-stores, you buy it.

Sure, one can find this experience in the states — certainly, in hip-to-be-healthy big cities like the Washington area. But you can only afford to do that, in most cases, if you’re of the more moneyed type (there is a reason, after all, we all call Whole Foods by its alternate name, Whole Paycheck). Today, at the market, I walked out with a giant bag of fresh veggies, some cheese, this awesome whole-grain bread from one of my newest favorite vendors and some fresh chicken — and I spent maybe the equivalent of $10. Plus, the Central Market is one of the few places in Budapest’s center city where everyone humors my bad Hungarian. I think this might have a great deal to do with the fact that most vendors don’t speak much English.

And, unfortunately, even if I could drop money weekly for the Whole Foods or fancy-pants Arlington farmers’ markets back home, I don’t think those vendors will let me practice my budding magyarul skills.

So, if you’re coming this way, definitely go — and understand why running errands will be one of the things I miss most from my beautiful Budapest year.

I won’t claim it was perfect — my family is as dysfunctional as the next, and I highly recommend against ever trying to share a bathroom with my older sister — but it was certainly special. Namely, what made me excited was getting to see my mother enjoy her first trip abroad.

My mom is, in a word, awesome. It sounds Hallmark-card cheesy, but she is my best friend: caring, loving and 100°% supportive of me, even in situations where many parents might put pressure on one (such as one’s Georgetown freshman child, who is currently sinking the family and herself into debt, calling to say she is dropping out of the business school to pursue the ever-financially unwise field of English literature. Most ’rents would at least flinch. My mom? I want you to be happy. Simple as that).

The Best Mom Ever at the Prettiest Bridge Ever

But my mom and I are also extremely different in many ways, not the least of which is how we have approached our lives as women. Mom, despite coming of age in the hip-to-be-feminist 1960s, could be textbook Traditional Wife and Mother: married high school sweetheart, stayed at home for 12 years raising 3 kids, takes care of house and constantly self-sacrifices, and lives in the same zip code where she grew up.  Whereas Mom was all settled down with Dad by the age of 15, my life has been a bit more…well, un-settled (I suppose that is what you call more than 15 moves in less than ten years). As such, while for me, my greatest ambition in high school was to get a passport and stamps in it, mom’s was the white wedding she got as soon as she graduated college.  So, international jet-setting was sort of out of the question for her. At 57, then, this was her first trip outside the U.S., Niagra Falls notwithstanding.

Baby Sis (not Big Brother) and the famous Trabi

And for me, being able to show her Europe for the first time was wonderful. Seeing the sights I have already become accustomed to — St. Stephen’s cathedral, the Chain Bridge at night, Castle Hill and the Central market — through her eyes made me love them all the more.  her excitement made mine increase tenfold. It also felt like I was able to “explain” myself to my family better. They know, and I know, that I am the black sheep. I always have been, from my decision to spend a high school summer taking extra school for fun to the fact that I am the only one who has not (and will not) settle in Pittsburgh, I stick out; I remain the geeky-bookish-city type in a family of suburban non-nerds.  By taking them through Budapest, showing off the new home in my ever-unstable existence, I feel like I was able to let them in, a little, on what makes me tick.

And, if they left with nothing else, I at least can say with certainty that they, too, are lovers of langós and pálinka.  What else would do for my “cultural ambassador” mission?

(Why yes, I do recognize the shamelessly cheesy They Might Be Giants reference.  But you know you think the same thing when you hear İstanbul. Don’t hide it!).

Blue Mosque

To end the Spring Break touring, Carolyn and I hopped an overnight bus to İstanbul. And it was amazing from the first second. I mean that quite literally: we stepped off of the bus, stiff legged and sleepy, at 5:30 a.m., to be surrounded by the call to prayer — beautiful, echoing strains of Arabic –  coming from mosques all around us.

Good morning, İstanbul!

[NOTE:  Bulgaria is not yet on the Euro. Turkey is not even in the EU. However, should you be an American, on a bus to Turkey from Bulgaria, have 15 Euro with you. Why? Because you have to buy a visa, and pay in Euro. Why? I have no clue. Yet, I assure you, it is better than nearly being stranded on the Turkish-Bulgarian border whilst your friend finagles a border guard into selling you some Euro for some Bulgaria leva. Trust me. You don't want to be stranded on the Turkish-Bulgarian border]

From the towering minarets to the men selling little round loaves of bread from tall stacks on their heads to the sparkly, turquoise Bosphorus to the huge billboards advertising fashionable versions of the traditional Muslim head scarves, İstanbul made me feel like I wished I had more eyes, as if my own two were insufficient to take in all the beauty around me.

Inside the Harem

We walked into mosques, such as the famous Blue Mosque, which were covered with the most intricate tilework, shining with deep, rich colors and swirls of Arabic lettering in gold. We stared in awe at the cavernous Hagia Sophia, where the sun streaming through the windows onto the ancient tile was enough to make you forget what year it was. We took boats across the Bosphorus, watching the blue water stream by the steep shores where sun-bleached houses seemed to sprout out of one another. We ate fresh fish, flash-grilled along the shoreline. We pondered whether it really would have been that bad to be a courtesan when we saw the harem at the Topkapı Palace. We smoked too much nargileh, or flavored tobacco in a water pipe,  for two girls who do not smoke at all.  We emptied our pockets on the wide array of glittery goodness at the Grand Bazaar, even managing a hand at bargaining while sipping apple tea, and bought our weight in Turkish Delight (that stuff they sell in most US stores and call Turkish Delight? Not even close!) at the Spice Bazaar.  We drank numerous cups of the dark, sludgy, delicious Turkish coffee.

Beyoğlu at Sunset

But I think the aspect I loved about  İstanbul most was not a view or a dish or a museum, but an attitude, how it seemed to literally teem with life. Like walking into Times Square on a warm spring evening, going to the neighborhood called Beyoğlu (a steeper-than-steeply hilly ‘hood, directly across the Bosphorus from all the “big” tourist sites) meant walking into a crowd.  Sometimes, I hate crowds — like August in Washington, when the number of belt-pack-wearing Midwestern tourists (who always refuse to stand on the right side of the Metro escalator, so those of us D.C.-ians in a rush can pass on the left!) is enough to make me want to strangle them with their recently purchased “You Don’t Know Me: FBI Witness Protection Program” (why, oh why, do those keep selling?!?) or “God Bless America” T-shirts.  But at other times, when you find a city just hitting its evening, work’s-done-fun-get-together time stride, the crowd can be electric and energizing. It pulses; it makes you want to get out and join it. It makes you want to be part of the action. İstanbul’s got that kind of vibe. The streets are so crowded around 7 p.m. that you almost feel pushed by the swell of people behind you — and yet, it seems to be exactly the kind of push you want, to start your own fun night. 

Beyoğlu from the Bosphorus

We also arrived in the city exactly one day after President Obama’s historic visit there. As any American who does not live under a rock knows, Obama had to play his campaign very far away from any suggestion he could be Muslim, thanks to a right-wing whackjob’s email campaign saying he did practice Islam — and the more depressing fact that we “land of the free”, protectors of the individual’s right to worship as one chooses Americans are still scared of anyone who is not Christian. But when he came to Turkey — a secular city with ambitions to enter the EU — that move  “Oh, you’re AMERICAN!” Turkish people kept saying. “Your president, he was here!” or “We love him!” or even “We love Americans.”

Wha-wha-what?!?!?! It is still a bit jarring, for someone who last lived abroad under the Bush era, the era of hiding one’s US passport cover, to hear one’s own country praised as such. Certainly, I am sure that as I type this, some right-y blogger or other such cynic would use these words to prove Obama’s “otherness,” his lack of “proper patriotism” for cavorting with the Turkish people. But, Fulbrighter that I am, I believe goodwill and good grace could have real consequences. No, a president making a press-fueled pit stop in a country is not the same as sound foreign policy. Yet, if said pit stop shows another country that, yes, the US recognizes their concerns and wants to work with them, and makes it so the average guy selling you your doner kebab wants to maintain happy relations, it seems to me it is only all the more likely that should the two countries find themselves in more dire straits, that goodwill will be much more appreciated.

Carolyn in Beyoğlu

Oh, and if you go ever go to Turkey, please follow this advice: bring a blonde. Preferably, a 6-foot tall one, like Carolyn. Now, I have seen the Italians react to blonde hair — a light-brown haired lass like myself even got a fair share of “bella bionda!” from passing motorinis there. But those famous lovers of the ladies the Italian Stallions have nothing on the Turkish male’s admiration of the fair-tressed among us. Everywhere we went, Carolyn was greeted with marriage proposals, queries about whether or not she was an angel, and down and out stares and double takes enough to make her poor, besotted suitors trip over their own feet.

I found this hilarious. Carolyn, perhaps not as much.

Of course, I did get my own shout or two, and even a very sweet proposal from a young student who timidly approached out table after a nice raki (Turkish anise flavored liquor) our last evening to tell me I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Now, as card-carrying feminist and a level-headed girl who firmly believes in the Don’t Let Dudes Dictate Your Self Worth school of thought, I wish I could say I found this a shallow, useless interruption.

But I kind of liked it.

I blame the raki.