Budapest – szerelem

Arriving in Budapest I made myself reflect on the question of how does it feel to be back here. The short reply was: I’m feel in at home, at my home city (or to be precise in one of them) – everything is familiar, I feel comfortable. I love this city. Yet, I’m not sure that I would want to be living here at the moment.

Thankfully, then I’m indeed not living here now, but on my way to the UK tomorrow – and then to live in Finland five weeks. I wonder if London will have the same effect on me as Budapest. I bet Helsinki will – but are there both the same closeness and distance?

After landing in my former home – the Raul Wallenberg Guesthouse of the Collegium Budapest, also the seminar we organised was making me feel at home. My academic families both from Jyväskylä and from Budapest were present. I was enjoying the debates. (My paper presentation was not very good, admittedly – I was having trouble making up the distance that I had created during the two weeks in Cortona. You know when sometimes you can’t really deal with seeing your own text. I have to improve my approach to my own work by the end of this week and the political theory workshops in Manchester where I’m facing the same task…) It had been really important for me to bring these two worlds together, and organise something international here in Hungary for the discourse/rhetoric/conceptual history people, who seem to feel quite isolated often. I’m so glad the Finnagora, the Colbud, the Jyväskylä and Budapest crowds all agreed and later enjoyed themselves. So lovely to see everyone – I wish I could have spent more time with each and every person. Not to mention my other friends in Hungary.

So I went to see my ‘Hungarian mother’ and my ‘brothers’ on Sunday. A lovely day in the countryside – the mother, though, is not doing that well, hard to convince her that she should keep strength and get better. I hope the pictures I showed from my trips, of my niece and the rest of my family, and of my graduation cheered her up. She’s telling me that she hopes she will see me still – I can’t bare the thought that she would not be there. On my way back to the city, the train was an hour delayed – on the trip of one hour – and I felt like in Britain.

Currently, I’m supposed to be in the library, digging on a specific topic that I need to present on at the end of this month. But I’ve been having a migraine and finding it difficult to leave. Besides, the whole morning I was doing administration for my course that starts next week in Helsinki. Now I simply climb up to the Collegium Budapest and later make it to the library. Tonight I will be meeting with a few friends and try to make it to the opening of an exhibition at the Finnagora, and again meet some more people…

The weirdest thing is that recently when leaving Budapest, I always knew when I would be coming back. This time I have no clue – and after all this is one of my home cities and home countries..!

Tomorrow it’ll be good old England. Another story to tell.

 

the journey – over half way through

And so I flew from Tampere (after a visit to a friend to have lunch) to the former US military airport of Frankfurt Hahn. It was lovely to have someone waiting for me when I arrived: Eva took me out to the apple-wine places of Frankfurt – or in fact Schönhausen – and finally to her home/parents near Aschaffenburg. Was lovely to meet some of the Berlin gang (who mainly are from around Frankfurt).

The next day I flew over to another US base: Bologna Forli – which serves more Rimini than Bologna. The weather there as in Germany was cold and rainy – quite a shock after Finland. Decided to head for Bologna, where the weather indeed was much better. I was worried as I didn’t have a booking, so I asked my dad to book one online since he happened to be online – we could figure it all out with few SMSs. Thanks dad! The hotel was in the historical centre so I found there without a map and could walk around the city for the evening and the morning I had to spend there.

The thing I was most impressed about in Bologna was a library-bookshop in the municipal building which was open until late. I went and browsed the guidebooks and found myself the perfect Italian language book. How to learn to speak in a few days without any need to consult other languages. Italian seemed so easy – on the basis of my Spanish and French I understood most of what was going on, at least half of the language, but felt at the same time handicapped to speak. Later I figured that yes indeed, I do understand half, but only the half of what’s going on. But if one compares this to Hungarian and its obscure words…

Sunday, then I was the time to make it to Cortona, which I did, arriving at the same time as some of the few people I knew I would know at the summer school. How lovely. Cortona is an old (dates to Etruscan time) town on a steep hill, which over-looks a largfe valley. As the whole of Tuscany, it seems, it is populated by tourists in August. Many of them were British, brought over to a Under Tuscan Sun classical music festival. The colleagues who had been in the previous summer schools told us, the newcomers, that the city was really different to what it used to be even three years ago.

Some of this was really positive, such as the swimming pool on the top of the hill. It was a 20-minute walk from the old monastery we stayed in to climb up the hill for a swim and we did it some of the times – the times when we had already done the reading, usually in the hammocks put up between the trees in the garden of the hotel. The views we saw from the lecture room were only comparable to one experience I had in the past – those from the Villa Lante, the Finnish Cultural Institute on the Giannicopolo Hill in Rome. Simply breathtaking.

Solidarity was a theme we explored from many different directions. One to mention here was the book by a British-born historian Tony Judt: Postwar. In the league of books on Europe, it is unique, phenomenal in terms of language, readability and the balance between the East and West. What was fascinating was to hear people from the East and West of Europe – plus some north Americans and an Argentinian discuss about the European welfare state and englargement processes. And later in the evening over a glass of wine or the dinner about their own work – or life in general.
But all good things were to come to an end. On Saturday, a couple of us stayed overnight at a friend and collegue of us in Florence. It was my first time, but I thought the couple of hours in the city were enough for the attempt to digest the rich and busy city. The next day two of us headed off to Bologna – which I find more normal as it was not flocked by neither tourists nor students – nor indeed locals as everyone still seemed to be on holiday. The hotel we found was great, beautiful and affordable – would recommend Il Guercino to anyone!

Yesterday, Monday, I sent off Postwar – the two-kilo book to Finland, and headed in the afternoon for Venice for the evening. I didn’t see much, but enough to enjoy it and want to go back one day. I suppose one’s reaction to Venice largely depends on the preconceptions. I had heard a lot of negative things about it, but finally: I was clever enough to travel on the public transport in the canals, sit around on some non-commercial surroundings and go and have a meal with wine and water for under 9 euros in a place which was filling with locals and others coming to see football.

I had to give up football and the beautiful Venice and catch my train instead. I had booked a 3-bed compartment since I thought the ticket was so decent price – and was lucky to have it all for myself. I got off the train on the Hungarian border and took a local train to Pécs. In total under 14 hours. I met a friend of mine at the train station – it’s all as when we met last in the end of April. She’s now planning her teaching, I’m checking my mails and reading for the weekend’s seminar in Budapest – then we will catch up and have some food, szalon barna (local dark beer, and my favourite in Hungary) and perhaps see a film. Until next time (which is hopefully sooner than my previous post – sorry about the silence)!

 

chaotic departures

I find it quite ironic that when i’m leaving Varkaus, the lovely Savo region, I leave my calendar, with the details of my complicated one-month trip ‘to Europe’ and my passport with it. Luckily (after calling all the places that I visited on the 1.5hour car journey to Mikkeli, including police stations), it was found in Varkaus and I should receive it by mail tomorrow. The flight is the following day!

I’m currently printing some of the reading for the trip. I guess I need to read most of it in electronic format since it would be a pretty heavy and expensive folder otherwise (though my thanks go to my uncle for providing the printing facilities)!

I’m quite excited about the trip – though also exhausted beforehand. Imagine all the rambling and the carrying of things. I try to keep it down to minimum, but inevitably it always feels too much to carry. Besides, not all the arrangements have been done yet. I had postponed booking my flights from Budapest to the UK – and now when I did it yesterday, I had to stay until Tuesday 5 September. The next conference is in Manchester on the 6th already… I return to Finland on the Saturday the 9th as my teaching in Helsinki starts on the Monday. So little time for the UK, sorry, for those of you over there who might be reading this blog.

Soon, I’m off to Helsinki to have a lunch with my brother, go to the University Library, and meet later, for instance with my Spanish comrade Carlos (who apparently has had great times in Finland for the last six months or so – should be inspiring to hear what he thinks!).

Personally I’ve been mostly culture-schocked, which is weird when one is supposed to be in one’s own/home/native country. First night it was the habit of having dinner at 5pm. Now I got an invitation for a birthday dinner at 6pm – and I was no longer schocked but resigned about these local customs. Yesterday was a schock, though: I can’t believe even the briefing meetings at the Job Centre start minutes before the the hour, not five minutes late as I’m accustomed to ‘in Europe’! My mother lectured that keeping in time is the most important thing in Finland. Being fifteen minutes late anywhere is a major display of disinterest. And yet, although I fought really hard to be on time this morning – Mr. Murphy was with me. I was precisely those fifteen minutes late for my appointment.

Do wish me luck for my journey!