Time here in Budapest is a passing afternoon. One of those lazy Sunday afternoons of breathing in goodness, warm sunshine, long uninterrupted thoughts both light and deep...the sun stretches on forever and when evening finally creeps behind you in cool shadows, you feel full and altogether right.
All of a sudden evening has tapped me on the shoulder and I am in the midst of midterms and renewing my tram pass and registering for Calvin classes again…and I am feeling a bit dazed and wondering just how my October afternoons slipped away so quickly. This month has been so good and full of trips and learning and it felt like it would just linger forever…but here we are. It’s almost November.
I can’t imagine life outside of Budapest very well anymore. I’ve become a part of its constant throbbing, whizzing, tapping rhythmic days…riding the trams and metros, greeting the deskies each morning with a Jo reggelt kivanok, cooking communal dinners of rice and veggies, swallowing bitter black espresso instead of sipping filtered “American” coffee each morning. I can’t believe that soon I’ll be talking about all these experiences in the past tense, missing all these distinct things as much as I now miss peanut butter and harvest time, thanksgiving, the morning news, and all of you.
For now, I’m just going to enjoy today. It is clear and bright outside and I plan to go for a run along the river.
Cheers to you and this day, wherever you are in the world.
10.29.2008
BRAIDS
The sign in the glass case read:
Texture and net made of hair of women who were killed in gas chambers.
I almost threw up.
What human did this? (Surely it could not have been a human...)
In front of us was the net and a blanket. To our right was a deep glass case that held two tons of human hair.
The guards shaved the corpses’ heads and sold their hair to textile factories for profit--over twelve million tons during the span of a few years. Mouth drops open in disgust: Some people in Germany and around Europe still own blankets, mattresses, and rugs made with this hair.
I looked to my right again.
Some of the hair was still in braids.
Texture and net made of hair of women who were killed in gas chambers.
I almost threw up.
What human did this? (Surely it could not have been a human...)
In front of us was the net and a blanket. To our right was a deep glass case that held two tons of human hair.
The guards shaved the corpses’ heads and sold their hair to textile factories for profit--over twelve million tons during the span of a few years. Mouth drops open in disgust: Some people in Germany and around Europe still own blankets, mattresses, and rugs made with this hair.
I looked to my right again.
Some of the hair was still in braids.
STORIES
We all know the story of Anne Frank. Most of us have heard the name of Corrie ten Boom. Elie Wiesel. Their stories have become the emblems of Holocaust suffering, death, and survival. The rest of the world has been forced to acknowledge the distinctly human face they've emblazoned on that distant and arbitrary number six million.
If there's one thought I've been pressed with the past few weeks of museum visits, Holocaust Lit class, trips to Krakow and Prague, it is this: stories are important.
There are those big ones of people like Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel that echo around the world and find their place on every bookshelf and in every high school classroom; but equally important are the stories and testimonies of ordinary individuals here and there and everywhere.
Sometimes I lament the lost art of oral storytelling so vibrant in other cultures around the world; I think one of the most sacred things in this depraved world is the gathering of friends and strangers to communally pray, lament, share stories, and listen. Stories root our identity; they cause us to recognize the human in ourselves and each other--and so fiercely combat fatal prejudice and indifference more than any army or legislation could.
I think of the million other stories of the Holocaust that have never been written down or heard or lamented, and I regard them as equally worthwhile and significant. I hope that we have our ears open and our hearts attuned to unheard stories around the world, in this decade and every other that has ever been or will be.
Elie Wiesel published his memoirs because he says, "to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all." Let us encourage each other to share stories and to listen well. It is one of the most distinctly human things we can do.
If there's one thought I've been pressed with the past few weeks of museum visits, Holocaust Lit class, trips to Krakow and Prague, it is this: stories are important.
There are those big ones of people like Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel that echo around the world and find their place on every bookshelf and in every high school classroom; but equally important are the stories and testimonies of ordinary individuals here and there and everywhere.
Sometimes I lament the lost art of oral storytelling so vibrant in other cultures around the world; I think one of the most sacred things in this depraved world is the gathering of friends and strangers to communally pray, lament, share stories, and listen. Stories root our identity; they cause us to recognize the human in ourselves and each other--and so fiercely combat fatal prejudice and indifference more than any army or legislation could.
I think of the million other stories of the Holocaust that have never been written down or heard or lamented, and I regard them as equally worthwhile and significant. I hope that we have our ears open and our hearts attuned to unheard stories around the world, in this decade and every other that has ever been or will be.
Elie Wiesel published his memoirs because he says, "to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all." Let us encourage each other to share stories and to listen well. It is one of the most distinctly human things we can do.
10.14.2008
DREGS
We were sitting on bean bags in the Teahaz loft.
We’d skimmed over a menu of a hundred or more varieties of tea, smelling herbs and spices wafting from the canisters downstairs, waiting for our hot drinks to brew strong and full, enjoying our first uncluttered moment since our trip to Poland. (sigh) We had our own absentminded wanderings through the back of our minds for a bit.
And then we talked.
We talked and talked and shared and ruminated and wondered and proposed and, in the end, I suppose it didn’t amount to much more than the musings of a bunch of college students over steamy tea in a sidestreet nook, all our heavy thoughts floating easily, freely out the open window with the scent of orange and spice…Nothing revolutionary came out of it, and we have no notes or tangible record to mark the two hours we spent there, not even a few dregs. But we shared and that is important.
We remembered and shared and hmmmed and, after all, isn’t most of history the result of recording and passing on and communally remembering? The entire Bible is a volume of divine testimony about the world and all the musings between God and man and man to fellow man.
We spoke into being those doubts that have jolted and roused and disturbed human minds since the spark of creation and wondered aloud many “Why…”s and “Dear God…”s. We shared a lot of disbelief and wrestled over what to believe…about God and humanity, about the Holocaust specifically, global suffering more generally, life and death most abstractly.
It is all these jumbled musings that I am slowly and deliberately disentangling this past week. Be patient with me; the result is sure to be a molten mix of disordered thoughts, but I will be as true as possible to what I heard and saw.
We’d skimmed over a menu of a hundred or more varieties of tea, smelling herbs and spices wafting from the canisters downstairs, waiting for our hot drinks to brew strong and full, enjoying our first uncluttered moment since our trip to Poland. (sigh) We had our own absentminded wanderings through the back of our minds for a bit.
And then we talked.
We talked and talked and shared and ruminated and wondered and proposed and, in the end, I suppose it didn’t amount to much more than the musings of a bunch of college students over steamy tea in a sidestreet nook, all our heavy thoughts floating easily, freely out the open window with the scent of orange and spice…Nothing revolutionary came out of it, and we have no notes or tangible record to mark the two hours we spent there, not even a few dregs. But we shared and that is important.
We remembered and shared and hmmmed and, after all, isn’t most of history the result of recording and passing on and communally remembering? The entire Bible is a volume of divine testimony about the world and all the musings between God and man and man to fellow man.
We spoke into being those doubts that have jolted and roused and disturbed human minds since the spark of creation and wondered aloud many “Why…”s and “Dear God…”s. We shared a lot of disbelief and wrestled over what to believe…about God and humanity, about the Holocaust specifically, global suffering more generally, life and death most abstractly.
It is all these jumbled musings that I am slowly and deliberately disentangling this past week. Be patient with me; the result is sure to be a molten mix of disordered thoughts, but I will be as true as possible to what I heard and saw.
FAIR FALL
After weeks of wondering if we’d hit the soggy winter blues for good, Fall snuck back into Budapest. We were afraid he had missed us.
The sprightly air crackled with fallen leaves in mellow mustard colors; everything had that quality of being new and bright and alive, even though I knew soon all the trees would be barren and the houses and streets and grass dormant with snow and winter.
Fall is optimistic like that.
With glad hearts, we welcomed that familiar friend back to the city, and for the past few weeks, we’ve romped around Budapest in golden autumn bliss.
When we left for Poland, I made a teary parting with Fall for a while, making him promise to wait for me in Hungary; imagine my surprise when I discovered Fall had grabbed my hand and tagged along to Slovakia! He was in all the trees on every hillside and in the river below the castle and in my lungs and all around. Nimble Fall swiftly snuck ahead to Krakow, and where I had expected only shades of slate grey and bitter cold, he grinned at me in shafts of light and radiant sky.
We promenaded through every street and alley, listening to cobblestones whisper of horses’ hooves and tanks and hob-nailed boots and all its varied history. Along the way, we gathered lore and legend to spice the whole affair, and bit our lips at the host of secret stories we drug back as captives to Budapest.
The sprightly air crackled with fallen leaves in mellow mustard colors; everything had that quality of being new and bright and alive, even though I knew soon all the trees would be barren and the houses and streets and grass dormant with snow and winter.
Fall is optimistic like that.
With glad hearts, we welcomed that familiar friend back to the city, and for the past few weeks, we’ve romped around Budapest in golden autumn bliss.
When we left for Poland, I made a teary parting with Fall for a while, making him promise to wait for me in Hungary; imagine my surprise when I discovered Fall had grabbed my hand and tagged along to Slovakia! He was in all the trees on every hillside and in the river below the castle and in my lungs and all around. Nimble Fall swiftly snuck ahead to Krakow, and where I had expected only shades of slate grey and bitter cold, he grinned at me in shafts of light and radiant sky.
We promenaded through every street and alley, listening to cobblestones whisper of horses’ hooves and tanks and hob-nailed boots and all its varied history. Along the way, we gathered lore and legend to spice the whole affair, and bit our lips at the host of secret stories we drug back as captives to Budapest.
10.01.2008
HERE and THERE
After another day of driving under drizzly grey skies through soggy Romanian hills, we slunk back into Budapest. It was a worthwhile trip—but our eyes were swimming with steeples from all the church visits and mostly we just felt cold and exhausted.
We’ve just had time to settle back into our routine in Budapest—classes early in the week, exploring in the afternoons, dinner at Professor Smidt’s on Wednesday, a night out on the weekend—and now we jet off for another adventure. Tomorrow morning at 6:30, we pile in a bus headed for Krakow, Poland. I don’t know if I’m prepared for this trip yet. But then again, I don’t know if anything can prepare a person for a walk through Auschwitz or Birkenau. Maybe the only thing I can do is listen and weep a little…and be sure not to forget. I’m sure I will have plenty to share when we get back.
This past weekend, I went to my first real football game—a European soccer match between two Budapest teams. The intensity and uniformity of the home crowd was overwhelmingly awesome--but also quite chilling. It seems that the people of Europe are practiced in mass movements—fascist, nationalist, communist, revolutionary; the slurred screaming from the red-and-black clad mob surpassed the zealous fanaticism of the student section at any Iowa Hawkeye home football game (and that’s hard to beat). I promise a more detailed description and a video link when I get back from Poland.
Until then...thanks for your continual prayers for me.
Peace be with you.
We’ve just had time to settle back into our routine in Budapest—classes early in the week, exploring in the afternoons, dinner at Professor Smidt’s on Wednesday, a night out on the weekend—and now we jet off for another adventure. Tomorrow morning at 6:30, we pile in a bus headed for Krakow, Poland. I don’t know if I’m prepared for this trip yet. But then again, I don’t know if anything can prepare a person for a walk through Auschwitz or Birkenau. Maybe the only thing I can do is listen and weep a little…and be sure not to forget. I’m sure I will have plenty to share when we get back.
This past weekend, I went to my first real football game—a European soccer match between two Budapest teams. The intensity and uniformity of the home crowd was overwhelmingly awesome--but also quite chilling. It seems that the people of Europe are practiced in mass movements—fascist, nationalist, communist, revolutionary; the slurred screaming from the red-and-black clad mob surpassed the zealous fanaticism of the student section at any Iowa Hawkeye home football game (and that’s hard to beat). I promise a more detailed description and a video link when I get back from Poland.
Until then...thanks for your continual prayers for me.
Peace be with you.
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