End of the road

Three weeks with the Mutt and all went well with the exception of losing two hubcaps…after our madcap hubcap adventure in New Zealand last year, it seemed a fitting continuance of the travel spirits guiding my life…I noticed one was missing on one morning as I was getting into the car and then on our last day with the car, I noticed the second one on the driver’s side was missing…stolen? Fell off? Aliens?....who knows what powers dictate the hubcap world. I’ve never lost a hubcap in 58 years of driving at home, but the last two trips have added mystery and amusement to our journey. We finished our trip with a great family in Eger, Hungary…the kind of open minded, generous spirits that we meet through Servas connections. I had made contact with Boglarka through Emails and was told that they would be happy to host us. We coordinated tines for our arrival and I was told that the parents also spoke English in case “Bogi,” as the email was signed, was not hone when we arrived. After getting lost, as per usual, we finally found the house and I knocked on the door. A happy smile on a college-aged female’s face greeted me with the opening of the door and I asked “Bogi’s house? Yes, came the answer…we went in and the mother was bustling around in the kitchen preparing a lovely meal and I asked what time “Bogi” would arrive…I was then told with laughter that our “host” was actually this college student…we had a good laugh all around at the miscommunication.

Bogi is a serious-minded young lady working on her Master’s degree in English who laughs easily and was our guide as well as host in Eger. Alice, the mom, is a math teacher who has to be told to come home because she is so dedicated to her work that she loses track of the time and a cell call starting “MOM, when are you coming home comes when the clock passes 7 pm. Atilla, a proud name in Hungary, is a Lawyer and practices in Budapest an hour and a half away. He is a thoughtful man whose opinions are shaped by his basic humanity…They have an apartment there where he, Bogi, and the bright-eyed sister, Dora all live as they split their time between home and work.

Dora studies chemical engineering but whose happy spirit would seem more attuned to lesser academic endeavors. She’s one of those individuals who livens up the room when she enters….The girls both did an exchange to Texas last year and were just 30 minutes apart. They were really open and honest in their evaluations of the refugee situation, speaking of the fears and concerns that all in these four countries expressed, while empathizing with the human tragedy…there are no easy answers and they were very conflicted about being overwhelmed by huge numbers in their small country of 10 million people while agonizing over the plight of so many desperate people….We found this duality throughout our trip…There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the issue. There are not any easy answers. Bogi showed us around the sights and sounds of Eger and since Alice and Atilla had a previous engagement, Carol, Bogi and I had a lovely dinner in a traditional Hungarian restaurant before heading to Prague the following morning. It’s only fitting that we got lost once again after misunderstanding Atilla’s instructions and turning the wrong way on the freeway….the signs kept saying Slovakia and not Budapest, and the brain kept saying: “This isn’t right.” We finally got straightened out as we always do and dropped Bogi off at the Metro stop and made our way to Anna and Tibor’s house where we stayed three weeks earlier. The banter and frivolity of the evening was crushed the following morning when Anna and I were walking Zeus, the dog. He sprinted away from Anna, and she called and called him…we were walking parallel to the 4 lane road and then I heard that unmistakable “Thud” followed by painful yipping and sure enough he had been hit by a car…there were so few cars on the road on a Sunday morning it seemed so illogical that he would be hit…I comforted him while Anna ran back to the house to get Tibor and the car….they took him to the vet, but he had such spinal injuries that they had to put him down…A total downer for everybody involved, including the visitors. We got out of their hair as soon as possible so that they could deal with their own grief as a family without distractions. Turning in the rental car and making our way to our plush river boat where we will live for the next two weeks as we cruise to Amsterdam seemed a little other-worldly when we knew that our friends were hurting so badly.

With the end of the road behind us and the rivers ahead of us, it was time to shift gears and recalibrate. They had a free laundry and since we got on board early, we hustled down to get in before the rest of the passengers got there. That was a fabulous start for the 15 days…all clean clothes, and clothes that could be hung in a closet or put in a drawer…with a passenger list of 94 and a crew of 64 it’s a very different scene than the megaships where you have 3,000 of your nearest and dearest friends to be dealt with full time. So hello M.S. Maria Theresa, and good bye Mutt…., no more suitcases, no more schlepping them around, just clean sheets on a fabulous bed and a hot shower with heated floor in the bathroom…now that’s really over the top.

Old Lady's Summer

This is the time of year of the long shadows as they were once described to me. The sun sets low in the sky and the days grow shorter by the day. The weather have been especially kind to us on this trip as the rain has stayed away and the temperatures have been nippy but not restrictive of our activities. It is the time of the “old ladies summer,” as they are known here in Hungary. That time of the year where the old ladies go out and sit in the park and soak up the last rays of warmth and sunshine before the harsh onset of winter. We call it our “Indian summer,” but I like the analogy as described by our Hungarian hosts…but first we had to get here.

We left Krakow and started to leisurely wind our way back to Budapest for the river cruise. Krakow is in the south of Poland and so we continued heading that direction. We spent the night in Zakopane, a ski/winter resort area near the Slovakian border at the foot of the Tatra mountains. It’s a lovely village with chalets dotting the landscape and the ever present flower pots adorning the balconies. The houses are stained a clear varnish color rather than being painted and that gives them a warm appearance. The town itself is filled with the usual resort attractions of shops both kitschy and sublime…Carol found a shop what had a really nice, classy variety of what can be officially labeled as sweaters, but are certainly more dressy than that. It’s off season, the summer crush of Krakow visitors looking for their summer hiking on the myriad of trails and off road opportunities are fewer now, and the snow has not yet arrived, so we easily found a hotel for $12 per person through a local hotel booking agent. A three star hotel as it was designated, but with a surly receptionist who obviously didn’t want to be there. There weren’t any towels in the room and when we told her about it, she got on the phone and made a call to the booking agent that didn’t sound all that friendly. She passed the phone on to us and the agent told us that: “For that price, you don’t get towels…you have to pay an extra $3 per person…okay….then there was a $4 charge for parking and a $5 charge for breakfast…but in the end it was fine and the entire bill the following morning came to $32. I think they forgot to charge us for breakfast and with the sourness of our welcome, I didn’t feel any compunction to point out their error. With some extra zlotys in my pocket, I topped the car off with gas and still had coins which can’t be exchanged for another currency, so a rummaging through the mini—mart at the gas station produced a bag of chips, Lays, no less, a bag of pistachios, a chocolate bar, and a Twix candy with a few coins left over for the grandsons to add to their international coin collection….nothing like making your money work for you….LOL. About 30 minutes later we crossed the border into Slovakia….gone are the goon border guards, the sniffy dogs, the concrete barriers, no more passport stamps which show where you’ve been….the only things left are the old booths which look like bridge toll booths. You slow down because they are narrow but other than that you just zip through in the new European Union where border crossings are simply a blink of the eye…

We wove our way through some glorious fall foliage with leaves falling all around us. Some became hitch-hikers on the windshield wipers until they blew off to rest in a new location. The roads are good, traffic is light in the morning and the Mutt (our car license plate is “MUT 405”) chugged up the hills complaining but still did the job. It was a most picturesque drive and an easy one. We only drove a couple of hours and came to another resort town, Slovakian style, with a large lake where we drove to a water fall and generally just relaxed for the afternoon after a lunch which we had no idea what we were ordering, but we had confidence since we hadn’t had any bad meals anywhere on the trip. We stayed in a hotel near the lake and hit the road the following morning heading to Hungary where we were to stay with a Servas family in Eger, the main town in a spa valley which is also renowned for its wine. We stopped often in little villages which is what I had been craving after the large cities…these throw-back places are such a contradiction. The houses are a mixture of new construction painted brightly in oranges, yellows and reds, while next door is an old barn or house that has been around long before I came to this earth. Supermarkets have everything available to the modern shopper while two ladies stand talking outside in their long dresses, head scarves and shawls, and rubber boots. Tractors pulling a variety of items in a wagon slowly ply the winding, narrow streets while some impatient driver in a hot car follows looking for the very first opportunity to pass and zip on down the road.

There are areas of public space where people have formed their own little private world of gardens…no bigger than the average back yard of an American home…well, the size of a back yard as I knew it growing up, anyway….but they are well manicured with flowers and vegetables. Each plot has a small shack where tools and a couple of chairs can be stored for use and enjoyment. Right next to one plot another sits, with no real border distinction, each seems to blend into the other, but each has its own little hut and the variety of crops is different depending on the family’s needs/desires. In other areas the plots are considerably larger measuring an acre or more. At one such place a man ran a rotor-tiller with a furrowing attachment which lifted and fluffed the soil and a very down-home woman walked behind with a bucket picking up the potatoes which had been unearthed. The earth looks very rich…The soil is dark and productive.…I always get the feeling that the people in these villages are a lot more in touch with nature and a simple life than we can imagine. After many navigational errors as we got close to the Hungarian border, we finally crossed back where we had started…The area is dotted with small villages which don’t show up on the maps and road numbers seem to change without any reason. You can be on E521 and the next thing you know it’s highway 23. We try to look at google maps in the morning before starting out to get an idea of where we turn and what the highway numbers are but this is of limited value. In the end, we’re on holiday and there is no reason to get upset because the journey takes an hour or two longer than originally planned…and besides it always leads to unexpected little treasures that would be missed, like Dedinky, which was anything but Dinky. We caught a glimpse of it through the canopy of trees, a lake and village below in a valley. It looked like a scene out of Switzerland where you are high in the mountains and a valley is laid out before you, except this was merely a glimpse, not a panorama, a bend in the road brought it into view for just a second. We found a spot where we could pull off the road, stopped for our photo op, then found a small road which seemed to be heading in the direction of the lake. Unmarked on maps it could have easily been passed by without any knowledge of the fact that such a little jewel lay waiting to be discovered. We stopped for some hot chocolate, walked around looking at how picturesque it was, took lots of photos and then headed on our way…the scenery was so beautiful, everything we had hoped for since we were missing our Autumn at home. A tunnel of yellow and gold trees formed an archway under which we passed, the forest floor was covered with fallen leaves looking like a carpet had been laid out, and the hillsides literally burst with color. Finally about five in the afternoon we crossed into Hungary and found our way with some local help to a lovely home and family where we are happily and very comfortably ensconced for two nights. Our road journey is coming to an end…Budapest lies just an hour or so down the road. A last night at Anna and Tibor’s house were we began will bring this portion of the journey to an end…then it’s lap of luxury time on the river cruise…..what a contrast that will be…I don’t think they will charge us for towels….LOL Life is good and we are living large in Central Europe.

The Yin and Yang of Poland

The Yin…..the entry of Poland into the European Union had an enormous effect in uplifting the country from its rural roots into the fast lane of economic develop. Poles that we talked to said that it changed everything. They were no longer a pull toy, they were part of something big and bold, Europe. Roads were built, Poles went all over the place freely, industry moved in and development was huge. All of this has made Poland a different Poland, a Poland looking west where they can see their future development continuing. The yang…The election of JPII, as he is called in Poland, to the papacy was a huge boon to the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. For an already deeply religious and most devout of all European countries to have a Polish Pope was the most amazing thing to Poles. It just ingrained the church into their DNA. The country became even more dedicated to the church.

The Poles are traditional Catholics and there is now a huge pushback against Francis whose attempt to modernize and liberalize the church is met with outright and public scorn…..show’s how much I know..I always thought there was a thing called “Papal infallibility.” But most Catholics here are totally opposed to the new agenda. The church’s influence comes early and constant…students spend twice as much of their academic time studying religion as they do learning about their own history and culture. Elections are even held on Sundays and people go to church first and then to the polls…nice segue for the church. The political ramifications of this were seen in the national election for prime minister held while we were in Krakow. The party that won was the party that espoused the heaviest dose of Catholicism. And with that result, Poland has made a sharp turn to the right with potentially massive implications for all of Europe…at least that’s what is all over the news, and even this morning there was a lead article in the Washington Post about that very same thing. The party that won the election, in what was considered a landslide, did all the usual promising of everything to everybody, but embraced the conservative agenda of the Polish church hierarchy. The new prime minister to be is a huge fan of Urban, the president of Hungary who is even further to the right and has made a big splash about the refugee situation. They talk about this group of nations that we just happened to visit as some kind of sub-section of the EU. They say that they think alike and it’s becoming more different from western Europe. It will be interesting to watch the various forces working within the country determining the direction the country will head. Poland has had the ebb and flow of history cross its path on so many occasions, reading a list of all the people they had wars with for a variety of reasons reads like a who’s who of Europe…Everybody wanting to go west went through Poland…everybody wanting to go East went through Poland. And they had their own forms of aggression to kick up the numbers as well.

And now for one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, Krakow…. Krakow is a lively gem with a market square to rival any that we’ve seen. There is a certain similarity to them in various cities of Europe, at least the ones that didn’t bombed into oblivion during WWII. Warsaw got leveled during the war, but they rebuilt their old town just as it had been before the war…brick by brick. Here in Krakow all around the very large square there are many outdoor eating establishments and with the Autumn nip in the air blankets and propane heaters create a relatively comfortable atmosphere for dining al fresco. Street performers do their thing from break dancers attracting large crowds to mimes standing mute in whatever costume they have decided to portray their “Performance Art.” The clop-clop-clop of horses hooves on the cobble stones announce the arrival of another white horse-drawn carriage to take the tourists around to areas where they have probably already trod, but they do seem very popular. Carol noticed that the horse shoes were like women’s high heels and raised an inch or so in the back…..must have something to do with the difficulty of treading on cobblestones. The tourist gift shops around the square range from the kitschy to the sublime, read expensive. One of our Uzbek “granddaughters,” Guli, came from Warsaw to see us and we had a nice two days with her. She studies at the university in Warsaw. Her mother had moved to Germany about 15 years ago and remarried. Guli had been terribly unhappy without her family. She has a little brother which she had not seen since he was born 10 years ago, but finally she was able to obtain the necessary documents and is now studying in Poland where she can visit her family on weekends after an 8-hour bus ride.

She had wanted to go see Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps. We weren’t really interested because we have seen Dachau in Germany, and how much of man’s inhumanity to man does one need to see? However, we were willing to take here there. Good news, bad news, there were not any tickets available for the days she was with us. It never occurred to me that it would “sell out,” and that they limited the number of visitors. So plan B was a visit to the large salt mine in the area. It was very interesting……1,000 feet deep with 178 miles, (that’s not a typo) of horizontal shafts some of which date back to the 13th century where the miners picked and shoveled this commodity worth the price of gems in the Middle Ages. We walked down 378 steps to a depth of 443 feet on our tour. We walked for several miles to visit many of the chambers which included high-arched full cathedral like ceilings where they actually do celebrate mass every Sunday. It’s hugely popular with over a million visitors each year. A touristy rip off folk show with mediocre food was a disappointment, especially after the wonderful dinner at the Mozart show in Prague. But Guli enjoyed it and that made it better to handle. We are staying with a Servas family now that Guli has returned to Warsaw. Like so many families in so many places, their apartment in a block of apartments is small but serviceable….Kitchen and bathrooms (one for a toilet only, and the other with a sink and tub) are extremely small but suffice to their needs. Getting here proved to be our usual adventure of trying to decipher directions and signs. It was complicated by the fact that we were told to arrive about 6 p.m. but they went off daylight savings time that day and so our late afternoon search was further complicated by darkness. A little guess work as to where to turn onto streets we weren’t sure were correct proved successful and my usual practice of finding gas station where there is usually somebody who knows where we are trying to get proved very rewarding as a lady said “Follow me, it’s not far.”…so off we went. We’ve been met with this kindness several times already….people going out of their way to be our personal GPS. Once we arrived at the block of flats came the next part of the adventure. The address of 24 Na Blomie 9/19 was very confusing since there were about a dozen buildings all marked with a “9.” However, once again the local population comes to the rescue and people found it for us with a little exploration. Eva and Andrew were gracious Servas hosts even in their very small flat which got smaller with two guests. But, like so many it is functional and does the job. The world doesn’t operate on granite counter-tops and Jacuzzi bathtubs.. They were/are university professors. Andrew now retired and our age, was a font of information. Eva, 15 years younger still lectures at the university. They are cultured, have traveled widely and are very interesting people with whom to converse. I can’t imagine that other Servas hosts would have been as knowledgeable about, and as open, Poland than these two..it was a very lucky find…lots of good conversation, lots of honest insight was gained. It was a pleasure to meet them as well as informative. Now, we are through with the big 4, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague and Krakow…time for us to slowly weave our way back to Budapest for one last night and then get on the river cruise…I think it’s time for some country and rural living for our last week.

You know you're in trouble when.....

You know you’re in trouble you go into the tourist office where they have all the maps and the internet maps and all the search engines and they are the experts and you ask them how to get out of Prague and onto the highway to go to another town and after fiddling with all of the above for 10 minutes they announce: “hmmm…..this can be very complicated.” Uh, yeah…that’s an understatement…if it’s difficult for you, what do you think it’s like for us…after a while she said: “Well, you need at least one hour to get out of the city…..but more on that later. Twenty-seven years ago we visited Prague on one of the Student trips that we led. To no surprise, it was lovely but seemed a dour place with few tourists, and those few that were here didn’t seem much different from the locals. No surprise since they were from other Soviet/Communist countries. No joy in the streets, just a very working class city with everybody going about their business. Now, it is just the opposite, a bustling, lively, vibrant city with tourists clogging the main street and tongues from many lands can be heard…mostly Japanese. For whatever reason, we’ve been told several times that this is a favorite time for them to visit…The place is alive with a vibrancy…Music can be heard almost in any area of the city as duets, trios, quartets, and quintets play classical, jazz, Dixieland and traditional Czech…they are hawking CD’s and we bought one for ourselves – a roma (gypsy) group that really rocked…there are concerts every night…choral, organ, orchestral, chamber and full, opera performances are all there for the locals and visitors. We arrived in Prague at 1:00 in the afternoon and actually made it to our hotel around 3:00. A combination of misdirected google map directions, Czech street signs, confusing highway signs, locals who were helpful but unknowing of our destination (“Follow the tram tracks,” they would say, but the tram tracks went in several directions and split off as well) and our lack of language skills all contributed to our confusion and delay. No matter, eventually we got there. We had chosen a hotel in an obscure area because our “granddaughter, Shah, had an apartment there and it made for easy connections. After settling in, we immediately headed downtown by Metro to find her place of work and emerged from the bowels of the Prague metro to a cacophony of music and marching demonstrators. Czech flags waved in the air in one area of Wenceslaus Square while a converging group of banner carriers came from down the street shouting slogans. I searched for young people in the crowd who looked like they might be English speakers: “Do you speak English?” I asked as I wove through the crowd….After a while, I was able to learn that there were counter demonstrations on the refugee situation…one group totally opposed to accepting them while an equally large group felt that there was a duty to help these people from war-torn Syria. Asking several times about the issue, I came to a consensus, in that there is no consensus..the people seemed to feel that the two sides were pretty much divided in overall support from the Czech people.

One problem is that there is such a well organized industry in forged documents…people from several nations who want to get to Europe pay large amounts of money so that they can have “Syrian” passports and documents. This problem is further complicated by the fact that many of the legitimate Syrians had to flee without their valid documents but are then viewed as suspicious. This was our first up close view of the problem which dominates Europe at the moment. It appears that public opinion is as complicated as the wretched condition of the refugees…there is now a growing backlash throughout Europe and there is no end in sight as the wave of people keeps washing onto the European mainland. Away from the square, life seemed pretty much business as usual, and business was booming. 25 years ago the only thing being sold was Czech crystal and that in the official government shop. Now, every other shop has “authentic Bohemian crystal” glistening in the windows at prices that match the glitter of the glass. The mood away from the square was festive with pedestrian streets brimming with what amounted to a huge fall craft fair….actual blacksmith forges worked banging, literally, out bells and door knockers. Carol collects bells from where ever we visit so this a welcome sight for her…beer, beer, and more beer was vended along with an array of different sausages, and full pigs were roasted in foil on a rotating spit over a bed of coals. “Chimney” cakes were spun on rotating spits. These doughy confections were a coil of pastry wrapped on a round rolling pin device then baked over open coals then dipped in sugar and cinnamon…yummy sweets for a snack indeed. We took Shax on a mini road trip to visit Ceske Krumlov, the second most visited city in the republic.

The place was filled with tourists, as Prague is, and we kept saying: “If it’s like this in mid October, what’s it like at the height of the tourist season. The city is a step back in architectural design…buildings dating from the Renaissance are the norm, not the exception. Situated on a bend of the Vlatava river (the Moldau, of Smetana fame) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOxIbhqZsKc It was easily defended with its natural moat…a huge castle dominates the high ground giving even more protection to the marauding bands of would-be conquerors. It was lovely and carried us back to a simpler time. Our musical interlude in Prague was an evening at the Mozart Café. I wanted to do something special for our last night in Prague and with Shax…it could have been a little hokey what with the 4 piece chamber group in period costumes and white wigs, but the music was excellent and the food was even better. I was surprised that it wasn’t better attended but the maite d’ told us there were 30 concerts that night in Prague…talk about a music city. We had a great evening, left totally stuffed and with Mozart and other composer’s music ringing in our ears….on to Poland.

The Giggle Girl

Shakhlo and Malika are their names, Shah and Mali is how we call them. They came to me as friends before our second trip to Uzbekistan in 2013 through the usual channels of mutual Uzbekistan facebook friends…I received a request from the two lyceum girls, 17 at the time, and asked my usual questions: How did you find me and why do you want to be friends with an old man half way across the world. They answered intelligently and with light heartedness and we became friends. Over the months of conversation they began to call us “Granny” and “Grandpa” and they became like true granddaughters to us. On our visit to Uzbekistan several months later we spent more time with them than with any other people in Tashkent. They even accompanied us to our 35th Anniversary dinner.

They were best friends, study partners and were always having fun together. When they would try to send me a voice message they giggled through most of it and I began to call them “The Giggle Girls.” With all the silliness of high school girls they were both serious students and were able to carry on intelligent conversations when they could stop giggling. After graduation, Mali was awarded a rare, full-ride scholarships to a university, one of only 4-5 given each year and Shah applied for, and was granted, admission to a University in Prague and a Czech visa, which is difficult to obtain in today’s world. Her father had business interests in Prague and had an apartment so this made it more practical for her to leave the nest. She was excited about fulfilling her dream and headed eagerly off to Prague and a new life experience. Then the heavy THUD of reality set in. There is nothing in the upbringing of Uzbek girls to prepare them for the sudden change from the sheltered nest in which they have been brought up, a comfortable nest where everything is laid out for them and they follow willingly, but blindly. Right up to the point where many parents choose their mates and that’s a done deal. Shah was suddenly away from her major support system, Mom. She was in a culture she knew nothing about, a language she didn’t understand, different religious focus, no friends, and in short she was totally lost. She would write to me and I could hear the tears dripping on the typewriter keys. Her sadness was that palpable. Confused, afraid of failure, and basically alone, she struggled badly…she was ready to pack it all in and head home. But she didn’t…she stuck it out. Cut to one year later and we arrive in Prague to find this same teary, confused young woman a dynamic force who has taken charge of her life and is living it with gusto, poise and energy. She passed all her courses the first year and headed into her second year. Dad had issues that needed addressing in Uzbekistan and he left Shah to continue on her own. She got a job, then got a better job in a Turkish Restaurant at Wenceslaus Square and is a barista. The restaurant is a blend of Turkish, Czech, Ukrainian and Uzbek workers. She is 5’3 and 100 pounds and bulls her way through the waiters who stand in her way when she is moving from point a to point b. No hesitation, no deference, no holding back from noon until closing time which is around midnight. She now lives by herself and totally supports herself through her job and still attends university classes.

I can’t tell you how impressed I was to see this giggle girl with such a determination that I never knew she had inside…looking back there were signs which I saw as an anomaly two years ago but were, in fact, the seeds of the strength she would need to survive in her present situation. I asked her if she liked living by herself and she just looked with a deadpan expression and said. “This is what I have to do. It’s not to like or dislike. It’s just my life.” No bitterness, no frustration, she just does what I need to do…What a tough little woman she has become.

I admire her so very much. She didn’t wilt under the pressure and stress. She didn’t fade into the quiet life of what is expected of so many Uzbek girls reaching womanhood. She reached deep inside and found the strength not only to survive, but to flourish. She’s still sweet Shax, she’s just a full-blown, fully functioning woman now and living her life on her terms. No Grandpa could hope for anything more for his granddaughter..

See ya and Ahoy

One of my biggest objections to so many American travelers is when I listen to tourists enter a shop and immediately say things like: “How much does this cost,” or variations on questions that they might have…there is no attempt to acknowledge the fact that they are in a foreign country and that not everybody may speak English….I learned many decades ago that a simple “hello,” or “Thank you,” in the local language goes a long way…I will follow that up with: “Do you speak English,” and depending upon the answer I will proceed in the manner necessitated by that answer. So, In Budapest, to say Hello in Hungarian is pronounced: “see ya,” and it was strange to walk into a shop or a hotel and say a goodbye in English that was a Hello in Hungarian…the “Thank you” was a 5-6 syllable word (I never could count them) and I finally gave up trying and just smiled and nodded. Here in Slovakia to say “hello” is “Ahoy,” although I’m sure it isn’t spelled that way, and I have to resist adding “Matey,” to the Ahoy. Thank you in Slovak sounds very much like Requiem only with a “D” instead of the “R.”…again, I’m always pleased with the smiles I get when I use the local language for such simple gestures of courtesy. We got our rental car and headed out of Budapest on our way to our next stop, Bratislava. The road was excellent which was a good thing since we’re going to have several days of rain and I didn’t want/need to be fighting the prospect of poor roads along the way. I was once more quickly acquainted with European driving habits which seems to pour out of Germany into neighboring countries….simply stated it’s, pedal to the metal. The freeway speed limit is 120 kph, which translates to 75 MPH. However the only vehicles doing that or under are the long string of long haul trucks which from their license plates come from points south, Turkey, Rumania and Bulgaria since we were headed north. If you dare be in the fast lane and another car is coming, find a place to hide because they will come screaming up behind you at full tilt with lights flashing, stating simply; “Get the hell out of my way.” I was cursed very harshly even though the windows were rolled up when I refused to budge before I had passed a line of trucks where there wasn’t any room to get out of harm’s way. Just a good primer to things to come and to be aware of. I will try the back roads ,which is my first choice anyway, as often as possible, but for the heavy rain, I merely was going from point A to point B. Bratislava is much more compact than Budapest at just under half a million it’s only 1/3 the size and hence things are much more concentrated…the old city is small but very much what I have appreciated about the maintenance of historical centers of Europe. It has come into its own now that it has broken away from what was Czechoslovakia and formed its own independent nation. The Czech Republic is the other half of what once was.

Finding the hotel was a fun proposition…one way streets, road projects, and very heavy traffic resulted in the fact that we could see the hotel, but how do we get there, sort of thing…..eventually, we hit upon it quite by accident…going around and around, clockwise then counter clockwise, followed by north/south and then east/west, we finally looked up and there it was right in front of us…traffic is a real pain…from our hotel window on the 5th floor, we can see fully gridlocked traffic heading up the main thoroughfare at all times of the day…we’re scouting out our escape route for Saturday when we head to Prague. My disappointment in not seeing Swan Lake in Budapest was alleviated by the opportunity to see Turandot here in Bratislava. However, the experience was quite different…instead of the old style opera house with the boxes lining the three sides as is traditional, this was a modern performing arts center. Very classy, but definitely not old school. The red velvet seats shone brightly against the white interior walls and the seats were just the orchestra seats and one sloping balcony instead of the steep jump from one level to another of the traditional houses. However, the performance was first rate and was an interesting mix of old and new…set designs were very modernistic while costuming was traditional Chinese. All in all it was a great musical experience.

Fall color is just beginning to hit and the changes are subtle so far. I don’t expect a New England type of experience, but I do love Autumn and am hopeful that in the coming weeks it will treat us to an array of color which will be a unique experience. One surprise, and I must admit to disappointment, was the amount of graffiti displayed on any blank wall around the city…It looked like the New York subway trains in a stationary condition. I guess I’m just not in touch with how much this “art” form has taken over many parts of the world. I just thought it was a blight on our land…I don’t mind true art displayed in creative ways, but much of this was just “tagging,” and it did take away some of my enjoyment of the visual aspects, particularly in the old city…Maybe I’m just too old to “get” it.

Meals continue to be a delight as they are everywhere we travel, but old world European dishes are hearty and delicious. Goulash soup is still a favorite and we have it whenever possible and never cease to be amazed at how different it can be…Slovakian Goulash is not as spicy as Hungarian, but certainly delicious. At one dinner we talked with a young Slovakian man at the next table and as he got up to leave, he said simply: “Go, Bernie Saunders.” Certainly surprising but it also served as a reminder of how much more aware of our politics people around the world are compared to American’s knowledge of other places and peoples. But that’s another stoy.

Are you Buda or Pest?

Personally, I’m Pest…..which will be no surprise to people. Particularly my mother, on several levels. Budapest is actually the consolidation of two separate cities with very different class structures in their origins. After getting overrun by the marauding hordes which was inconvenient, to say the least, to the aristocracy, they moved their capital some 40 miles away to the hill section of the Danube where they could more easily protect their way of life as they knew it. This became Buda, while the “barbarians,” trades people, and merchants occupied the low, flat ground on the other side of the river known as Pest. Over the centuries the two began to merge and overlap yet even today the difference is distinct…the Royal Palace, castle and fine buildings of Buda are architecturally ornate and show the refined way of life that was common to that class of society. Pest, on the other hand, is down home. As the merchant class developed a more affluent level of life, Pest developed its own sophistication and wide avenues and luxury homes and town houses became abundant on the flat lands and not just a feature of the hill people.

It’s incredibly easy to get around Budapest. The city has a well developed transportation system that includes an underground subway, extensive bus system and modern trams any of which can zip you around anywhere in the city and its environs. It’s truly impressive to see such public transportation. It’s the second oldest underground, electrified system In Europe predated only by the London tube. It has a daily ridership of one and a half million riders, not bad for a population of 1.7 mill. Men in suits, women dressed to the nines, young lovers snuggling in the corner, the lady with the pug dog with the pink collar and the body blanket keeping it warm and a myriad of other personality and economic types are all to be seen daily on the system. The conviviality of Budapest life continues to be evident…lively conversations are heard any time two people are together, walking, in a restaurant, or just sitting together, there doesn’t seem to be dead air….it appears to be joyous and full of laughter and joy. The highlight of our visit was our stay with our Servas hosts, Anna, Tibor, 15 year old Andres and the 12 your old pistol named Masha who has her dad wrapped around her little finger. Tibor is a retired policeman and keeps the house running smoothly…fixing the meals, running the kids to school and the house work. Anna works for the US Embassy and does translating as a private contractor because, as she noted, if you want to have a decent life, you have to have two jobs. Andres is quiet but forceful…the kids go to an American private school which sounded very much like a Montessori type educationl system….expensive, Anna said, but the best head start for her kids….Andres objected strongly to changing schools since he had just made friends, not easy for him, and the hook was that he said: “If you make me go to this school, I’ll run away.” It was later decided that he would go to this school if they let him have a dog.They now have a dog named Zeus. Masha is a whirlwind and reminded us of Alex, our 9 year old grandson…sweet, sneaky, manipulative, loving and with a mind and will of her own which she is not hesitant to display even when strangers are in the home. Home is a two story flat which is so tiny and cramped…the downstairs is a 30x20 room which includes the kitchen, dining room, living room and two half baths. The kitchen is so small that I can almost touch the walls by spreading my arms. The upstairs is two bedrooms, the two kids share, and a small bathroom….They do not feel deprived or prevented from enjoying a better standard of living…they just accept that this is what they can do and they get on with it….the house is full of laughter and warmth. Affection is displayed both in the giving and receiving and it is a happy family. We slept on the floor on an air mattress which went flat in the middle of the night…that’s a requirement of air mattresses, I think. In the morning, they get up at 6:00 to be out the door at 7:00 and so they just quietly step over the guests on the floor and have some breakfast before starting their busy schedule. Two visitors got up close and personal with the transportation system as we went from our Servas hosts to town. They told us that the bus would take us downtown from the ‘burbs where we were staying. That was really helpful since reading the bus route in Hungarian was impossible for us…. but we happily climbed aboard and then rode and rode and rode until everybody finally got off the bus. The last lady to get off was a woman of roundish 60+ based on her well-lined face. With a babushka type head scarf, calf-length flowered dress, brown, heavy stockings and shoes that were simple but sturdy she didn’t say anything, she just looked at us until she had our attention and then just nodded to the doorway of the bus and then walked off and away, carrying her cloth bag carrying, who knows what, and her plastic bag with groceries sticking out in the other hand. She sort of swayed a little back and forth as she went. She looked very old school to me…not rural old school, but citified. I wondered what her life had been like living through such dynamic events and changes in her lifetime. We got off the bus confused. We didn’t know where we were, but we knew it wasn’t downtown. We’d seen that and this was definitely not it. …our confused looks brought a sympathetic individual who explained in English to return the way we came and transfer at the metro station and pointed us to the bus stop that would take us there…so we became two of the 1.5 mill that day. We roamed around town visiting the National Museum where we were told it was too far for us to walk and noted down all the bus lines lines and metro stops …..we just walked anyway. I had taken note of the usual locater points of reference, color of buildings etc., so we would sail on home with ease where we could catch the bus back to the house. We had this one down pat now. We got on the metro, got off the metro at the right spot and spotted our bus about to take off. I didn’t see my reference store sign, but I saw the correct name in the window of the bus and told Carol it was the right one and we hopped on board happily smiling that we didn’t have to wait in the cold and drizzle for the next bus in 30 minutes…A few stops down the line, Carol mentioned that she had seen a distinctive building twice now…I, knowing that wasn’t possible, authoritatively told her it couldn’t be….a few more stops along the way I finally caught a name I could understand on the speaker and told Carol. “We’re going the wrong way. Off we jump and waited in the drizzle for the next bus except we were further away than when we started. Carol, to her credit, didn’t rag on me, make me feel guilty….she just let it pass….until, a few minutes later she quietly said: “That’s the 3rd time I’ve seen that building.” As you can see we’re living large in Central Europe…Life is good.

The Magic is still there

I suppose that all of us could say that at age 19 we had no idea how our lives would take shape, but I think more so for me for as an aimless, physically and mentally lazy person I could never have imagined the incredible life which was in store for me. It began as a simple act of defiance, not unusual for me, even then, when I declared that I was going to hitchhike my way around Europe in 1961. I was so naïve, so uninitiated to the world, that each day was magic…there wasn’t a day that didn’t have something special to it in one form or another. Time warp 55 years into the future and that same magic continues to define my life. As I travel I still shake my head in wonderment at the way it has unfolded and I never can understand how such an ordinary person has had such an extraordinary life….one that continually teaches me as much about myself as the cultures I discover. Today, our first full day in Budapest was a perpetuation of that discovery and that fascination. We arrived at our hotel which is a typical old style hotel much as I used in the “old days.” It was a nondescript building with a small sign over the door which read: Hotel Metro. Pressing the button alerted the reception desk to buzz us in where we followed the sign to the “lift,” and ascended to the 3rd floor, which is actually the 4th floor, to the reception. The lift was just big enough for two people wearing backpacks and pulling suitcases to enter with a little basic organization of space. It’s a 3 star establishment and has all the requirements: free wi-fi, a halfway decent bed, and lots of hot water all for $50 a night. The shower is big enough to allow a person to actually turn around, but no hanky-panky in the shower, two will never fit. After a surprisingly restful 1st night we headed out to discover this exotic city which has fascinated me ever since seeing on TV the Russian tanks roll through the streets in 1956. Even for a sleepy and drizzly Sunday morning, the streets seemed unusually quiet and deserted. Further exploration led us to the discovery that it was Budapest Marathon day. We happened to be in front of the Budapest State Opera house and as the first runners began to run by, a band struck up the John Phillips Sousa March: “Washington Post,” followed by some Scott Joplin Ragtime. This was followed by a full chorus on the steps singing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and served as our introduction to the Cultural aspect of one of Europe’s most sophisticated and artistic cities…Who knew?...not me, anyway. We did a hop-on-hop off tour and learned facts to back up the previous statement…over 400 book publishers in the city, over 60 independent theatre groups and literally hundreds of musical societies. Even decades of Soviet domination could not dampen the cultural side of the city. As the capital of an “independent” country within the Soviet bloc, Budapest was not subjected to the sterile buildings of that system as TashKent and Almaty were as “Soviet Republics.” Rather it retains the old world style as one of the bright lights of the Austrian-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire. Hence it is full of glittering, albeit fading, rooftops and domes while the buildings have a uniqueness, and not conforming to any individual style. Carol thought they looked more like Tallin and Riga in the Baltics.

First thoughts: PASTRIES: Oh my do they love their sweets…strudels, traditional chocolates of amazing variety and dozens of things like square doughnuts and a wide variety of “chimney cakes, “ and all kinds of pastries, of which I have no clue, but all look really good. They are sold in fancy, upscale shops, little mom-and-pops, and on the street after dark from little food carts which have disappeared in the morning.

ALCOHOL If I thought that pastries shops were ubiquitous pubs and clubs abound in the city and beer is on tap in almost any place that sells some food. The hop-on-hop off bus even provides a free beer at one of their stops. As the original developer of the Tokay grape used in the wine of the same name, this means that there are a lot of homeless people who sleep on the street with their wine bottle clutched in their hand. However, I wouldn’t say that it looked any different, or worse than walking down Market Street in my favorite city anywhere, San Francisco.

SMOKING I was truly amazed at the number of smokers there are from a wide, cross-section of the population. Young adults in a surprisingly large numbers can be seen smoking their curiously thin cigarettes. Male/female sophisticates and homeless, it all seemed the same. I was most surprised at the young smokers because in other cultures I have seen, smoking was more of a generational thing with more smokers who were older than otherwise. Many young choir-boy look-alikes and their sweet angelic counterpoints have the cigarette between their fingers. CULTURAL BIAS I always say that I check my stereotypes and preconceived ideas at the door but one area I can’t in is the overall friendliness of the people…I tend to judge the world on an Uzbekistan standard and nothing I have seen since can match the outward warmth and friendliness of the people. I know this is, in part, because they are just opening up to the world, but it goes beyond that. They are just a wonderfully warm people. Here in Budapest, you’re just another in the long line of tourists who have come here for hundreds of years….This is not to say that they are not friendly. We’ve not been met with any “coldness,” but you’ll be misguided if you come here and expect a warm greeting. It’s all business here in the big city. I think this comes in part from the overall sophistication of the people. They’ve seen it all. BRAND NEW WORLD It’s a whole different emphasis from what I’ve known before here in Europe. Here there are Bulgarian and Turkish institutes and the country aligns more with the other “Central” European nations: Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic than they do with the traditional powers of Western Europe. GAIETY IN THE AIR This seems to be a place where people like to have a good time and there is a liveliness to the place…lots of clubs and watering holes. I think the Hungarians are a very convivial people when you get to know them. They like to have fun. No dour pall over the place…this is definitely not Scotland. So, here we are living large in Budapest and feeling full of adventurous spirit about what lies ahead…let it roll. Life is good. Sign of the day: “ALCOHOL, because no great story ever began with someone eating a salad.” Welcome to Budapest.

Fernweg

“Fernweh is the opposite of homesickness. It is the longing for travel, or getting out there beyond the horizon, what you might call… awaysickness.” This is my permanent disability which needs to be continually nourished and fulfilled. As soon as we return from one trip, I’m asking Carol: “Where are we going next.” I’m not totally comfortable, about my life until I have another trip in the offing…it may be a year away, but I have to take my Fernweh medicine, which is knowing that there is another trip on the horizon. When we returned from India In March, we decided that our next trip would be to “Central” Europe…what we used to Call “Eastern Europe,” until the Soviet bloc imploded and Ukraine and Belarus became the Eastern portion of what is considered Europe and the ex- Soviet satellite countries then became Central Europe. We’ve wanted to do a river cruise for some time…tired of the mega-ship experience of being with 5,000 of your nearest and dearest friends hurried along on to shore excursions with a cattle prod, a leisurely putt-putt down a European river with no more than 100-150 people seemed ideal. I wanted to take advantage of my travel agent perks and get the large discount offered to Travel Agents at the end of the season. We don’t usually do two big trips the same year, but since I’m such an old fart and not sure how much longer I will have my TA card, and my Fernweg couldn’t wait 18 months we opted to double down and go this year. Trying to decide on going to head out in October and November, our thoughts ran as such: “We can be in the rain in Budapest, Prague, or Krakow, or we can be in the rain in Battle Ground, Washington….hmmmm….let me consider that…not much of a brain twister, actually. So the trip was planned….a 15 day river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam preceded by a three week rental car zip from Budapest to Bratislava, where our dear friend Maruska is from, then on to Prague where we have a dear “granddaughter” from Tashkent studying, and on to Poland, (where we have another granddaughter studying In Warsaw) to see the world heritage city, Krakow which has always on my list and then back to Budapest with a lot of national parks and nature in between the cities…. The caveat on this trip is that since we initially planned to do this trip, the refugee crisis which is engulfing Europe has now put a totally new perspective to the journey…the four countries we had decided to visit have formed an “anti-quota” bloc and that means that we are going to be dropping right into the middle of the crisis on an up close and personal level…not just headlines, photos, and sound bites….Hungary has implemented a new law which makes it a crime to transport any refugee, so I have no idea of what kind of emotional roller coaster we will be on in this trip….certainly changes it from a walk in the park smelling the flowers to a realization of the fragility of life. But I’m assuming that the spirits which guide my life have some lessons which I need to learn and I am ready for whatever lies ahead of me, literally and figuratively, on this road of life. So, let the medicine kick in….just a simple 10 hour flight to Amsterdam from Portland, funny how that seems like such an easy flight these days, and my condition will immediately improve…an extra skip to my step, a heightened awareness of my surroundings, a general improvement in attitude…all miracle remedies for my malady. Time to live large. Life is good

Dharamsala

Greetings from Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, well, not really. I’ve always read that it was his home, but actually it’s up the hill about 2,000 feet and six miles away in a burg known as McLeod Ganj, named after the Lt. Governor of the Punjab In colonial times. Dharamsala is certainly a lot more poetic than McLeod Ganj. So we are in the Ganj and it is a very interesting mix of local Himachalis, Tibetans and western counter culture types. The Dalai Lama is not in residence at the moment, he’s off doing his thing but we saw where he lived from outside the gate and his main temple adjacent to The “Palace” is anything but. A large complex fenced off with barb wire where there are paths to walk in the woods for solitude. What a sad world that the Dalai Lama has to have barb wire around his complex. The streets are filled with saffron yellow and maroon robes of monks of all ages. Many have old, grizzled faces and I wonder if they came with the Dalai Lama when he fled to India. It was 65 years ago and they’re fading fast nowadays. So much has been written about the episode in history. Were these old men, those men? They walk with canes and hobble their way around the temple, and sit on the benches in the temple complex and enjoy the sunshine while they talk and count their prayer beads. At the opposite end are young boys in monk’s robes as well. We’ve seen several places where parents have their boys live a monk’s life for one year to understand the philosophy and practice of Buddhism. It gives it all a sort of continuity-of-life feel. On our second visit to the complex, the female equivalent of the old monks more or less adopted me and made sure I was doing things correctly…walking in the right direction, stopping and praying at the entryway, and working the prayer wheels in the proper direction. She had a sweet smile but a very firm hand on the situation. She was about 4 feet and something tall, but not much more than that. Her old Tibetan dress of gray with the multi-colored apron went just above her ankles and she wore white running shoes with a design on them that would make an American female teenager proud. It was a wonderful combination for my mind to wrap around. I sneaked a photo of her because I didn’t know if she would let me…not really fair of me, but I really wanted to remember that face. People have been very open with being photographed, so I didn’t feel that I was violating anyone’s privacy.

The narrow streets look like they are just wide enough for one car to safely pass and avoid pedestrians, but, of course, it’s two way and traffic does it’s “Indian thing,” of honking excessively and waiting for somebody to finally give in and back up to move over and allow them to pass while pedestrians get in doorways, lift the legs on the benches they sit on or find refuge in a car which has conveniently been parked there and the owner has pulled an Elvis and left the building. Eventually, it does get solved, but it’s a noisy process and when it happens right in front of where you’re standing or sitting, it can be intense. The beginning of the big mountains looms behind us and a very smoky/smoggy valley lies in front of us as we sit on a ridge on one of the foothills. That was a surprise. We expected some great vistas and clean air, but not down below it’s not. Lots of people burn firewood for all kinds of reasons and the smoke in the air shows that. The mountains themselves are the beginnings of the majestic Himalayas and they are a pretty good introduction to what lies behind them. For me, they have a kind of spiritual hold. I felt it when we were in Tibet and I feel it here as well…Can’t explain it, but they just seem to “call” me. Carol felt this same way about Ayer’s Rock in Australia, but I haven’t experienced it like I do here. Just seeing them is mystical to me. Upon our arrival, we were met by someone who was sent by the company who booked our trip to show us around. I hadn’t expected this and so I was a little uncertain. I asked him what his services cost and he laughed and said that it was all taken care of and he just wanted to make sure we were settled. He suggested that we take a rest for a while and then he would take us around. We met him later, and guess what? It so happens that he is the uncle of the booking agent in Delhi and his daughter has a shop. He minded the store while she took us to the temple and afterwards back to the shop for some chai. There were still several things that we hadn’t purchased yet…Carol always gets a bell, etc and so she told us that since we had booked with the family she was giving us her “special” price that nobody else gets. Maybe true, maybe not, I have no clue. But it’s just another example of how the whole networking works, somebody knows somebody who has what you want/need or think you do. In the end it just made sense to get all the things that we were looking to get from her. Sometimes in India you just have to accept that things have a life of their own and why fight it. The only negative aspect was that there was talk about showing us things on the second day and after purchases were made, that subject was conveniently dropped. Again, it’s just India. The country runs like this, it seems, everybody has to get that edge. You don’t sit back in Indian life and succeed. You hustle your buns off to make it work because if you don’t somebody else will and you lose. . I don’t remember that cultural persona from my trip before. I guess because I was just totally independent and so was oblivious to the whole system. It doesn’t look like it’s just started recently. “It’s India” as we’ve been told several times. Nobody I talked with disputes that assessment, both domestic and foreign opinions seem to mesh on this issue. The ones I’ve talked with fully acknowledge that you have to do this to survive. You will be buried if you don’t and this attitude just becomes a definite part of the entire Indian persona, as I see it. On one afternoon, we sat on a bench just to watch people pass by. An old woman came along and sat a few feet away in the sun and I greeted her with a Tibeten greeting, and she responded the same with her hands cupped as well as she smiled a smile that was wide but missing a lot of teeth. She had four in front on top and maybe the same on the bottom, but the rest looked empty. She wore a maroon dress with a yellow blouse-type and a grey sweater on over that. She looked like a lady who needed to be able to stay warm. Her face had that that same weathered, time-warm look but her eyes were bright and expressive as was her smile. I asked to take her photo and she smiled broadly as I snapped the picture. She had her hair pulled back in a short knot in the back with purple and green thread woven and tied. She, too, looked like one of the originals. The life she must have lived. I am constantly reminded in my travels that I have met some really extraordinary people in my life who led amazing lives.

One disappointment has been that we have not connected with Servas hosts and have not really had the opportunity to sit with people and have an evening of conversation. Our one potential host had a family crisis and had to cancel and that was it. On our last day in Dharamsala there was a little 3-4 year old Tibetan child with the world’s greatest smile. I snapped his joyful face and as I started to walk past the vehicle I was near, a voice asked: “Aren’t you going to take my photo?” It came from a man with a nice smile and kind face. He had been sitting in his delivery van watching me. I stopped and we joked about both being old and gray and we just chatted. After a bit he said he would like to invite us to dinner the next day. Unfortunately we were leaving so that was out. We went along our way winding through old streets and up and down and worked our way back towards the hotel when there was the same delivery van and we both laughed that we had found our ways to the exact same spot at the same time for the second time. He really wanted to have us to his house and so it was arranged that he would pick us up and take us to his home. We actually ate at a little restaurant before going to his house for tea and conversation so we finally got to be in an Indian home. It was a really nice evening and, in the end, he told us that any of our friends who want to come to Dharamsala they will be welcome to stay at his home. They have a whole story above their living quarters that used to be the kids rooms.

Vinod, the husband is a noodle distributor and travels the district supplying noodles to the restaurants. He drives these roads all the time. Amazing. Rashmi, his wife is an art teacher and has lots of mixed-media work in her home. Very nice pieces. She and Carol talked art and Vinod and I talked about Indian culture all by artificial light since the power was out. But no difference, they had a calmness about them and soft dispositions and we just had a nice evening. Exactly what I needed. Of the three Himachal cities/towns we visited, I liked Dharamsala the best. They were all interesting and different; however, Shimla is just too huge for those little hills and Manali exists strictly as a tourism spot. It runs like a resort town. But Dharamsala has a feel of its own. It has its own draw in the Buddhist community and they don’t have to manufacture thrills and spills to entice people to visit. It feels natural, not artificial. We’ve enjoyed our time in the mountains. It was a good way to end our trip At this time on all our trips at this time I’m in the going home mode and there’s always a semblance of marking time before wheels up. But there are so many things I will miss about India. It seems that the entire gamut of the Indian population passes before your very eyes every day. My head is just continually on the move with all the amazing faces and human conditions you see in one walk down the street. This is true for any city we’ve been in. I had Carol read this before sending as I always do and simply asked her: “Does this sound too negative?” She said no, just realistic. I don’t want to give any impression that this has been a trip filled with negativity. It’s been an amazing journey and one that we have enjoyed immensely. We would even consider returning to see parts we didn’t see on this trip. However, it isn’t an easy trip to do independently as we like to travel. That modus operandi has its own rewards, of course, but it also forces us to deal with Indian society on a much more up close and personal standpoint. That has its rewards and inherent difficulties but is how we like to do things. New Zealand was so easy….quite the contrast. Headline of the day: “Carol and Jim are on their way home.” Final final letter will be sent after things sort out in my head after 30 hours in transit.

Manali

Manali Another road trip took us from Shimla to Manali, where we are nestled at the foot of the mountains. The 10 hour journey turned out to be seven and a half so that was a blessing. I don’t think my butt will ever be the same again after all these long bumpy rides. Carol just tells me to put some more beef to the butt; however, that’s not my idea of solving the problem. We did the Shimla shuffle for the first three hours, knowing that whenever we turned left, we would immediately be turning back right and vice versa. Passing one of the numerous trucks on semi-blind corners simply meant that there would be another one just around the next corner. I have no clue what all the trucks are doing up here in these areas, but we passed (in both directions) literally hundreds of them. Luckily, they are slow moving and can be passed without too much difficulty particularly on the uphill sections. Since we go up, then down, then back up again, it is a continual struggle to make decent time with all the traffic on the curvy roads, and they are curvy. Very few stretches where there is more than 100 feet before making a left or right hand bend. There are literally hundreds of little hamlets/towns along the way which also slow down the progress….on the upside, there isn’t any speed limit in these towns, on the downside, they don’t really need one because your progress is severely impacted by trucks stopping in the middle of the narrow main (only) street to take on cargo or discharge the same, buses making stops to pick up anybody who even twitches as a sign they want a ride, cars making u-turns in the middle of the street which require several back and forths, which stops traffic in both directions, all kinds of four-footed animals sitting, sleeping, meandering on/down the street – cows, dogs, donkeys, oxen, monkeys, goats all stake their place and maintain it. They all have amazing street sense because cars/trucks/buses whiz by them without even deserving a heads-up to see what’s going on. Slow downs occur as road work is a constantly continuing process in Northern India. The harsh winters and rough wear from the thousands of trucks that pass each day take their toll. But road work here means several day workers, men and women, doing hand work. It’s very labor intensive and usually without machinery. A pile of sand, gravel and cement will be mixed by hand on the side of the road where women with padding on their heads will lower their baskets to be filled. With help, the baskets will be hoisted upon their heads and they will carry the “load” to the actual place where the patchwork is being completed. They will dump the basket onto the ground where men will use hand tools to scoop, pour, and slap the mortar onto the surface to harden and seal. We saw this several times so that we knew it wasn’t an anomaly. As we got away from the constant switch-backs of Shimla area, we flattened out and followed a river into the mountains. This was a vast improvement since we made better time and the scenery was what we came to see. Waterfalls cascading down, a river wild enough to have rafting, albeit a tame one, I think, and the Himalayas poking their heads over the foothills to show us where we are headed and what we have to look forward to seeing. We’re in Buddhist territory now. Prayer flags drape from bridges, fly from one window to another and billow from long poles. They parade the blue and white, red, green, yellow in that order. They represent the five pure lights: Blue for sky and space, white for air and wind, red for fire, green for water and yellow for earth. Called blessings on the wind, the wind tatters and shreds them, but the shredding is not considered destructive; rather it fits in with the Buddhist concept of impermanence. The shredded strands of the flags scatter and blow the blessings across the earth.

Of course it’s still India so Hinduism prevails and several temples reflect the long history of that religion in the area. Temples date from the 15th century and are revered as being indicative of the power of the gods. Anook told us that one temple was to a god who was “Very powerful.” Of course, I guess if you’re a god, that goes without saying. So here we are in Manali where we are freezing our buns off…I know, I know, my butt is getting a lot pf press here and it’s not a pleasant thought. But, it’s still cold up here and they had snow forecast for the day before we arrived. The rooms are not heated and so we’ve had to ask for a space heater in both Shimla and Manali and an extra blanket as well. The space heater does help, but mostly it just takes the nippiness out of the air. We do have hot water which is a plus since Carol had to heat water in the electric water heater used to heat water for tea/coffee. There are buckets in the bathrooms used for cleaning, I guess, but she filled it up with hot water and was able to wash her hair. I did manage a time when the water was hot and reveled in the cascading shower of water which warmed me thoroughly so I could tough out the rest of the evening. Manali is one of the main centers for Vacationing Indians to escape the heat of the summer. So much so that they are building a four lane “express” route from Delhi to here to cut down on the 10 hour drive. Right now it is still early in the season so the number of pasty-faced westerners visiting are minimal and the hotel we are staying in feels a little like the hotel from “The Shining.” A large expanse of emptiness without heat. Even the dining room waiter walks around with a heavy jacket and hat, and they all stay in the kitchen where the stove keeps it warm. The front desk area is empty and we walk down the wide staircase to the clomp, clomp, clomp of our footsteps echoing from the high ceilings. I half expect Jack Nicholson to appear saying: “Here’s Johnny.” The town feels very much like the frontier it has been historically. Lots of narrow one-way streets that naturally are two-way with Indian traffic being what it is. Here there are hundreds of tourist shops selling the pashmina scarves and shawls and trinkets and baubles that tourist seem to crave. Unlike Shimla which had a paucity of such shops, they are in full bloom here. Anoop was going to take us to a ski area to see the full snow and mountains, but a huge boulder came sliding down the mountainside and totally blocked the road. We waited for a while and soon a big bucketed machine came lumbering up the road heading for the blockage followed by a truck load of day workers ready to do battle with the natural elements. However, Anoop didn’t have much confidence that things would become passable, so he went to “Plan B.” - a different route to a different area. To reach it, however, we had to cross a rickety bridge that was truly one way and from where we stopped to await our turn, we could see the bridge bounce from the weight of the car. One car at a time – that’s the rule. When one car reaches the other side the next car can start. Well, if you believe that’s how it happened, then you haven’t read any previous letters because Indians don’t wait. Period ! At one point there were three cars on it and it looked very dodgy. Since Anoop wasn’t the only one to come up with this plan, cars from several directions all converged in typical Indian style at the single archway which provided entry to the bridge. There must have been 30 vehicles all trying to outdo each other for an extra inch of advantage. A car next to us was filled with university students and as I shook my head at the ludicrousness of the situation, he rolled his window down and said with a laugh: “This is India.” And indeed it is.

The other problem was that other cars appeared at the other side also wanting to cross to our side. Well, this isn’t going to work. Cars on both sides each wanting the same, yet opposite, thing. I was reminded of our sign in New Zealand, “Merge like a Zip.” Yeah, right. A car on our side stalled and that gave the cars on the opposite side the opportunity to bolt into the breach and head across. Except that the cars on our side were so packed that there was nowhere for them to clear the bridge, so they just sat there which only complicated the situation because this meant that more and more cars in both directions came trying to cross. The car in front of the entry way couldn’t back up because the cars behind him wouldn’t back up and so it was a total stalemate. Anoop finally gave up and we went to “Plan C” which was to totally abandon the snow for the day and walk the small streets above Manali where a sub-culture of rastas and other counter-culture types have taken up residence. Lily white women in traditional Indian clothes is a sight that was difficult to wrap my brain around. Plan D is to try to reach a high valley tomorrow by jeep. We’ll see……… The morning was another beautiful day, we’ve been blessed with really incredible weather on our entire trip. We headed up to the high valley but had to stop at the police barrier. We were headed into restricted territory and so the driver and Anook got out and talked to the police who were not happy. Shades of Ranthambhore where we had the “Misprint,” we were in the throes of Indian bureaucracy once again. Permission had to be granted from some higher authority and since today was Sunday, the big Army authority was having his rest day and they didn’t want to disturb him. If you ever want to attack India, do it on a Sunday, they seem paralyzed. Calls were made and at one point, our guide/driver, Anook and the police were all talking on their cell phones while standing next to each other talking to who knows whom. Carol remarked: “What did they do before Cell phones?” The thought sends chills over me…a person could freeze to death on the side of the road before anything got done, especially on Sunday, they wouldn’t even find you until Monday. There was further discussion as to whether I had the proper visitors pass to ride in the front seat. Excuse me?....anyway, after about 40 minutes of back and forth about who knows what, we were issued a little yellow circular piece of paper and off we went. We climbed pretty nearly straight up the mountain going from one switchback quickly to the next…37 in all. I know this, because they were all labeled: “Curve #1,” “Curve #2.”, etc. We got to the point where the snow on the sides of the narrow road was higher than the vehicle, and the driver told me to keep my elbow inside the small jeep because the walls of the snow bank were that close to the car. We went as far as we could and then ditched the car and walked about 3 miles on the snow-covered road to reach better vistas…in the end, we bailed. We had walked for over an hour and still had to retrace our steps, so we begged off the last viewpoint. Our guide said we were at 14,000 feet, but it didn’t feel like Potosi or Lhasa. We didn’t make it to the big mountains or the valley, but it was still a fun, beautiful day in the snow.

Tomorrow to Dharamsala and the residence of the Dalai Lama.. This has been the #1 priority for me on this trip and we saved it for the very end. Today was his birthday, so it’s a double celebration of the man I respect more than any other living human. Headline of the day: “Man jailed for taking 7 year old daughter to school….tied to his motorcycle.” I laughed when I saw this but the story is poignant. He is a security guard who makes $115 a month and spends half of that to keep his five children in Private schools because he knows they are better than the government schools. The family lives in a one room house and his wife has health problems,. After his night in jail, he said: “I should have done it differently, but my daughter wouldn’t go to school to take her exam. I don’t want her to wind up like me. I want her to have a better life and I know her education can do that.” 

Shimla

The British oasis in the foothills of the Himalayas turns out to be a pretty cool place, and the weather is as well. Although India has been running about 10 degrees cooler than normal, it nevertheless provided the opportunity for tee shirts and light pants. Coming to Shimla I knew I’d need to buy a jacket/sweatshirt of some flavor and I was right. We had timed our trip to go to the south before it boiled and then head to the hills at the end of the trip when it had a chance to warm up. But, it’s still chilly. It snowed yesterday in Manali, our next destination. Our room was more than chilly and with the hot water running lukewarm, we asked for and got a heater for the room and an extra blanket while we went out on a search for something warm for Jim to wear before he froze his skinny buns off. No problem, easy find here. What was surprising was that although this is a tourist town as such, it doesn’t have the usual tourist traps, not 50 stores selling the same cheap baubles, bangles and beads. Rather it provides for the locals. Nary a “Shimla, heart of the Himalayas,” type tee or sweatshirt. Just stuff that the locals wear. The vertical nature of the town, if you can call a place with a population of 142,000 a town, provides streets which gradually climb, then an intersecting street which switchbacks the other direction to reach the upper reaches of the town. It just doesn’t feel like a “city.” There are stairs which go straight up or down depending on your direction for a more direct route and they intersect with smaller alleys with more shops for locals. The place is urban sprawl in spades as the twon winds for miles outside the core area.

The streets are alive with people, but at a leisurely pace. No frantic tuk-tuks, taxis blowing horns, or people in a hurry to get somewhere….this is the first place that goes against what I said in the last letter…this could not be Indore or Mumbai or any other city we’ve been in. This is Shimla.

There is a gleaming church tower on an upper level of town and so this afternoon we went out to find what looked very much like an Anglican Church, and upon weaving our way there, in fact it was. Except that it is a very flat plateau that the Brits either found like this and built their enclave there or blasted the top of the mountain flat to put their church, fancy hotels, town halls, dramatic theatres (founded in 1836) and other necessities of British life. They always took their life with them, it’s just that the locals looked different from Cornwall. On top of this plateau thousands of Shimlites (?) gather to put their children on ponies and walk around the large plaza the size of a football field, school boys and girls all in their spiffy uniforms of blazers, white shirts, ties, and pants ( girls have the option of pants or skirts), all looking very proper English public school types.. People laze on the many benches made available for the Ladies of the Raj who would stroll the area to meet those of the same class and status. It’s a historical town with Kipling living here for years and using Shimla as a model in his stories. Once they connected a rail line it became a hot spot for wealthy Brits. Elizabethan style buildings and a Jolly old England type of architecture dot the hills. The town just took off and hasn’t stopped. The locals are an interesting mix, descendants of the community that grew to service the needs of the Brits from lowlands and a Tibetan population that has settled across Northern India as they fled the Chinese takeover of Tibet with the Dalai Lama in 1959 and those who followed. The Tibetans are easily distinguished from the Indians. They have that ruddy wind-swept feature to their faces that living in that harsh environment has developed. Anoop took us to an area 15 miles from Shimla for a closer look at the Himalayas. It was an hour drive over a road that was, at best one lane each direction around hairpin turns where buses, trucks, cars and the ever present Honda Hero motorcycle plied their way across the mountain. There is a tremendous amount of building going on along the way and with the going ever so slow as it is, Carol remarked “What a nightmare it’s going to be when all this brings more people onto this road.” It isn’t a pleasant thought. A truck broke down along the way which meant that the traffic was single file and that means that whoever gets first to that spot, all others following will continue in a long line with nobody saying: “Okay, it’s your turn.” In fact that would be disaster, because then the opposite line would flow unceasingly. After about 20-30 minutes of not moving, they got the truck moving and traffic now flowed, albeit at its regular snail pace. Along the way out Carol had the cliff side and thought it best not to look down because that might be a cause for some real angst. Steel barriers on the side of the road, a rarity, and only occasionally does one find an old oil drum filled with rock to provide a semblance of safety, although from the crushed hulks of cars pulled up from below, they obviously wouldn’t stop a car from going airborne over the edge with only the trees to pinball off of from one to another on the way to the bottom which was about 500 feet in a near vertical drop. In fact this morning a car went over the edge and five people died. (We didn’t see it. We just read it in the paper.) On the other side of the road, the hillside, ladies with paint brushes whitewashed the protruding rocks which jutted out closer to the road so that the driver at night time could at least see what he/she was about to hit and day workers dig ditches for new lines of water or electricity, all by hand of course.

Down below there were little enclaves with about 10 houses all neatly arranged in a little cluster with neat lawns and pristine houses. I like to use the word pristine here because nowhere else in India could I use that word with the trash piles, huge garbage pits and litter strewn everywhere and anywhere. So, pristine, it is. There were also some huge developments which will make the already horrendous traffic a problem of apocalyptic proportions… So Shimla is our introduction to the “hill stations.” Tomorrow we we’re off to Manali, (not to be confused with Manila), it’s 150 miles away and is a 10 hour journey…sounds like more stalled trucks in the road ahead.   Upon reaching our destination we took a horseback ride over the top of the hill to see the grand mountains to our north. This is what we came to see and it was as much a delight from this side as it was from the other side on our trip to Nepal and Tibet. What glorious sights they are. A long ribbon of white jutting into the sky with peaks that from this distance one can only imagine their height. Let it be said that they are high regardless. After an hour’s ride it was time for some chi (sweetened tea with milk) the Indian standard and we headed back on the slow, tortuous road back to Shimla. Although there are the usual piles of trash in any washed out area or stream bed which is always very discouraging because it could be “Pristine,” but isn’t, one thing they have done in the entire state of Himachal is to ban plastic bags. When purchasing something, you receive a paper bag or a cloth one which is durable and can be reused. People take their bags with them to save on the litter. Headline of the day: “Foul stench from broken Mumbai sewer line to last four more days.”. Oh joy, that’ll be fun.