seven months
twenty days and
nine hours later
It Hits.
'this is not budapest,
barátam.'
and the existence of my secret solitude
,centered, friend
is out of the bag.
at that time, the
streets opened up like
they paint communism to have done
open like daylight, like
space streaming down
upon us, faces upturned like
we were awaiting only
This. Moment.
opened like
stepping into suburbs
opened like
in the lost interior of the City Park
Városliget
opened like
the plane ride out
the plane ride in
the minds of the people who ran
who fell
who dreamt it all up:
Open.
sixteen fortnights later
the shock,
an opening in
my day.
Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Hungary is Not a happy place.
Source: GfK, Growth from Knowledge. GFK NOP is a top-ten market research power, uniting some of the most renowned US and European research firms into a single global organization.
FIGURE 1: TOP 10 'HAPPY' COUNTRIES
Country Percentage claiming to be 'very happy'
Australia 46
USA 40
Egypt 36
India 34
UK 32
Canada 32
Mexico 31
Sweden 30
Brazil 29
Saudi Arabia 28
FIGURE 2: TOP 10 'UNHAPPY' COUNTRIES
Country Percentage claiming to be
'very unhappy' or 'disappointed'
Hungary 35
Russia 30
Turkey 28
South Africa 25
Poland 24
Philippines 23
Japan 21
Taiwan 19
France 18
Hong Kong 17
FIGURE 1: TOP 10 'HAPPY' COUNTRIES
Country Percentage claiming to be 'very happy'
Australia 46
USA 40
Egypt 36
India 34
UK 32
Canada 32
Mexico 31
Sweden 30
Brazil 29
Saudi Arabia 28
FIGURE 2: TOP 10 'UNHAPPY' COUNTRIES
Country Percentage claiming to be
'very unhappy' or 'disappointed'
Hungary 35
Russia 30
Turkey 28
South Africa 25
Poland 24
Philippines 23
Japan 21
Taiwan 19
France 18
Hong Kong 17
Friday, November 11, 2005
train north from budapest
the mist envelops these lands, lingers by the Duna, seeps into the terra. there is no escape, there is only the peace it emits. there-- it was a castle on a hill. Visegradi? the train verges away from the river. in these small stopping places i long to find a spot. reclusive. like my bike-riding into the countryside at home-- these country spaces feel familiar. longed for.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Inács
will these train rides never end. friday evening through a dark night-- the mist from the morning has long since lifted, fallen, lifted, returned. another small hungarian village my feet will never again feel... we came today to study the Roma, our closest exhibition, though, was a family of eleven on the outskirts of town-- children running all over, chickens, donkeys chased by brooms, and radio wars.
we are standing on the dike, peach orchards to our backs. the river, last year, flooded the fields up to here, and this was very hard for the people. there, too, is a one-room house-- kitchen being the room. it is 'subsidized' housing, but the Roma family currently living there does not pay, he told us. the window on the second floor attic is gone. there are no amenities. they have built a hut outside, for bathroom purposes. the village too provided the blue pump.
but this village is unique in the area-- only about 20% of its inhabitants are Roma. they no longer speak Romani. the surrounding cities are around 50%.
'we do not segregate classrooms,' says the principal. 'others do-- not here. we believe in equal treatment.' students are bussed in from the surrounding villages-- though there their minority population is significantly higher, the ration of Roma students reflects only this city's statistics. somewhere in the kilometers between, children are lost.
we are greeted by the major-- elected rep-- and the chief administrative officer-- appointed. the mayor, Palo, an incredible activist, personable Roma. the administrative officer, a businesslike woman, forced to make tough decisions of a small, poor, aging community.
there is no business here. i ask, 'was the employment better under communism?' they laugh-- of course one-hundred percent employment is much better than the pitifully low numbers today. yes, but today there are three minority representative groups-- the Roma, the Slovaks, the Germans. and the Hungarian government who sends them just below what they need to break even. and the EU, who bestows endless amounts of hope for grants, programs, and development in the form of endless paperwork and logistics-- to a community that very nearly lost is post office this year.
yes, the communist farm produced food, livestock, machinery knowledge. then, the Gypsy ghetto made troughs. today machines cannot fit on the parceled-out strips of land privately owned. there is no opportunity for mass farming. today, the minority government donates euro 15,000 to the orchard, the profits of which go straight back to the poorest families.
'are there plans for attracting businesses?' she hesitates-- we could offer tax breaks, she offers. 'land is cheap. there are many open homes that could be converted into offices...' and trails off. 'perhaps the highway will help.' the highway to Miskolc was completed last year-- it lies some 40 kilometers away, and i'm not sure there are plans to connect it here.
there really are no easy answers here. social politics has turned to the brevity of the free market and locals make do with what they have. unfortunately, the tools they have are not much. do cities start like nation-states? natural resources the first to go, unskilled exploitation, stagnation, attempting to educate, skill, move up... there is a gap but the question is when, how to jump it.
we are standing on the dike, peach orchards to our backs. the river, last year, flooded the fields up to here, and this was very hard for the people. there, too, is a one-room house-- kitchen being the room. it is 'subsidized' housing, but the Roma family currently living there does not pay, he told us. the window on the second floor attic is gone. there are no amenities. they have built a hut outside, for bathroom purposes. the village too provided the blue pump.
but this village is unique in the area-- only about 20% of its inhabitants are Roma. they no longer speak Romani. the surrounding cities are around 50%.
'we do not segregate classrooms,' says the principal. 'others do-- not here. we believe in equal treatment.' students are bussed in from the surrounding villages-- though there their minority population is significantly higher, the ration of Roma students reflects only this city's statistics. somewhere in the kilometers between, children are lost.
we are greeted by the major-- elected rep-- and the chief administrative officer-- appointed. the mayor, Palo, an incredible activist, personable Roma. the administrative officer, a businesslike woman, forced to make tough decisions of a small, poor, aging community.
there is no business here. i ask, 'was the employment better under communism?' they laugh-- of course one-hundred percent employment is much better than the pitifully low numbers today. yes, but today there are three minority representative groups-- the Roma, the Slovaks, the Germans. and the Hungarian government who sends them just below what they need to break even. and the EU, who bestows endless amounts of hope for grants, programs, and development in the form of endless paperwork and logistics-- to a community that very nearly lost is post office this year.
yes, the communist farm produced food, livestock, machinery knowledge. then, the Gypsy ghetto made troughs. today machines cannot fit on the parceled-out strips of land privately owned. there is no opportunity for mass farming. today, the minority government donates euro 15,000 to the orchard, the profits of which go straight back to the poorest families.
'are there plans for attracting businesses?' she hesitates-- we could offer tax breaks, she offers. 'land is cheap. there are many open homes that could be converted into offices...' and trails off. 'perhaps the highway will help.' the highway to Miskolc was completed last year-- it lies some 40 kilometers away, and i'm not sure there are plans to connect it here.
there really are no easy answers here. social politics has turned to the brevity of the free market and locals make do with what they have. unfortunately, the tools they have are not much. do cities start like nation-states? natural resources the first to go, unskilled exploitation, stagnation, attempting to educate, skill, move up... there is a gap but the question is when, how to jump it.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Szentendre
what is this communism? vague etchings of... housing projects lining the slovakian landscape. memorials defaced, replaced in hero's square. red posters, soviet occupation. stories of underground intellects, freedom-fighters. state-sponsored news, iron curtain to journalists. but what of these fabricated, abbreviated memories? what is this thing called communism? or 'post' communism?
this young-- in so many senses young: with a shallow history, young and hungry, believing-- american woman travels with the rest of them-- walking the same streets, sitting at the same cafes, frequenting the same museums. as such a normal member of... history? culture? what is it in their faces that i cannot read... what is it those non-physical remnants of this thing. called. communism.
i read marx and i went to live in hungary.
this young-- in so many senses young: with a shallow history, young and hungry, believing-- american woman travels with the rest of them-- walking the same streets, sitting at the same cafes, frequenting the same museums. as such a normal member of... history? culture? what is it in their faces that i cannot read... what is it those non-physical remnants of this thing. called. communism.
i read marx and i went to live in hungary.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Duna
strongest current i've ever seen. it flows from north to south-- hungarians learned the geography of their city against its flow: south on top, north on bottom. the river makes the city, a center of their mentalities-- separating the old city from the new, the hills from the plain, Buda and Pes(h)t. six bridges (hit) that span this fast moving water, the Duna, such a simple, fitting name for this female force.
my favorite, Erzsebet or Sisi bridge, connects the two parts at the foot of the Gellert Hill. coming upon it, you encounter the Gellert Hotel on the Buda side, the city's oldest and only remaining hotel from before WWII. its baths are some of the most beautiful in the city. Erzsebet was Franz Joseph's wife, together rulers in the late 1800s of the Hapsburg Empire. although born in munich and ruler of austria, budapest held a special place in her heart. their princess di, hungarians developed a speical love for her.
the Duna: runs from Vienna to here. at night it frightens me to cross, i think of how fast moving it is, how if i was pushed in i'd drown. anyone would drown. like swollen waters of the mississippi after a flood... so wide. i think about during and after the second world war, when all of the bridges had been destroyed by retreating nazis. must have been a local economy to get people across, though i cannot conceive of how anyone would cross without a motor.
there are sculptures on the Pest side, right before the Parliament. bronze-cast shoes. a monument to the hungarian jews who perished? sad, faded bronze, empty shoes. conveys an emptiness, a haunting trgedy of some collective past memory.
Hungary, Magyarorszag, the Hungarians attest, has the most looted history in the world. the mongols (tartars), austrians, turks, hapsburgs, fascists, nazis, and soviets all had their own part in stripping the people of their autonomy. perhaps their biggest blow to their physical empire, though, and one they still do not forget, is the treaty of trianon that was signed in 1920, reducing the land mass of hungary by two-thirds. later hungary would lose significant proportions of its population during the holocaust, including estimates of two-thirds to three-fourths of its jewish population (600,000-700,000 people), and perhaps a large part of the perhaps 200,000 roma who were killed.
the Hungarian Empire used to occupy a land size stretching into Romania, Austria, encompassing Bratislava and Vienna-- borh of which are still regerred to by their Hungarian names-- Poszony and Becs.
the Duna has seen all of this.
my favorite, Erzsebet or Sisi bridge, connects the two parts at the foot of the Gellert Hill. coming upon it, you encounter the Gellert Hotel on the Buda side, the city's oldest and only remaining hotel from before WWII. its baths are some of the most beautiful in the city. Erzsebet was Franz Joseph's wife, together rulers in the late 1800s of the Hapsburg Empire. although born in munich and ruler of austria, budapest held a special place in her heart. their princess di, hungarians developed a speical love for her.
the Duna: runs from Vienna to here. at night it frightens me to cross, i think of how fast moving it is, how if i was pushed in i'd drown. anyone would drown. like swollen waters of the mississippi after a flood... so wide. i think about during and after the second world war, when all of the bridges had been destroyed by retreating nazis. must have been a local economy to get people across, though i cannot conceive of how anyone would cross without a motor.
there are sculptures on the Pest side, right before the Parliament. bronze-cast shoes. a monument to the hungarian jews who perished? sad, faded bronze, empty shoes. conveys an emptiness, a haunting trgedy of some collective past memory.
Hungary, Magyarorszag, the Hungarians attest, has the most looted history in the world. the mongols (tartars), austrians, turks, hapsburgs, fascists, nazis, and soviets all had their own part in stripping the people of their autonomy. perhaps their biggest blow to their physical empire, though, and one they still do not forget, is the treaty of trianon that was signed in 1920, reducing the land mass of hungary by two-thirds. later hungary would lose significant proportions of its population during the holocaust, including estimates of two-thirds to three-fourths of its jewish population (600,000-700,000 people), and perhaps a large part of the perhaps 200,000 roma who were killed.
the Hungarian Empire used to occupy a land size stretching into Romania, Austria, encompassing Bratislava and Vienna-- borh of which are still regerred to by their Hungarian names-- Poszony and Becs.
the Duna has seen all of this.
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