Tour Guide #1
We went to the Great Synagogue on Monday morning and took the grand tour—the sanctuary, holocaust cemetery in the courtyard, the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park/ Tree of Life and the Jewish Museum. The main sanctuary is very large with a double balcony on two sides for the women and children. Like other German Reform synagogues it has a large organ. But it also features twin pulpits on either side about a third of the way down from the front. The synagogue was purposely build to resemble a Christian church. Apparently one rabbi would give his talks in Yiddish or German and the other in Hungarian. If you look closely in this website picture you can see the semi circular awning over the pulpits three columns down from the front on either side. http://z.about.com/d/honeymoons/1/0/y/b/1/03interior.jpg
The tree of life in the form of a weeping willow has the names of those who perished inscribed on the leaves. The Museum had information more or less arranged by Jewish Holidays. I saw a scroll that had colored lettering and asked what it was. I was told it was a scroll containing Haftorah sections from the book of prophets that is read after the Torah portion. The museum also had a section dedicated to the history of the holocaust. Many of the Synagogue’s sacred objects and museum pieces were hidden by two Catholic priests during the War.
Afterwards we decided to go to Spinoza’s for lunch but chanced to meet our Synagogue tour guide. She persuaded us to eat at the Carmel, a strictly Kosher restaurant next to Rumbach Street Synagogue. The food was good. Refreshed we took the metro up to Hosok tere (Hero’s Square) and the wooded Varosliget City park. Hosok tere has a huge monumental sculpture of the seven mounted Magyar chiefs who conquered what is now Hungary. Behind it is a pair of semi-circular colonnades each containing statues of seven heroes of Hungary and bas reliefs of famous battles.. This was constructed in the 1890s as part of the Millennium celebration of the Magyar state. Originally five of the statues were Habsburgs from Austria. But the area was damaged by bombing in World War II and when it was rebuilt the Habsburgs were replaced. We then walked through the park with the Vajadhunyad Castle and other replica buildings. Unfortunately the lagoon had been drained to permit some construction. I remember earlier trips to Budapest where we spent some quiet time along the shore of the lagoon watching the people, the ducks and a dog diving into the lagoon after sticks.
On Tuesday we returned to St. Stephen's Basilica and went inside. It was built rather late—starting in 1851 and completed in 1906. We walked through and saw the various mosaics, paintings, and sculptures. But we passed on seeing St. Stephen’s mummified right fist. [We had seen Charlemagne’s thigh bone in Aachen and that was enough]. The women then went shopping
The girls had their sightseeing bus tour of Pest on Wednesday morning but were free for the afternoon. So we had lunch and then walked across the chain bridge to the Buda side. We took the siklo (Buda Hill Funicular) to the Castle level. We walked around a bit and then went into the labyrinth under Castle Hill. Listed as one of the seven underground wonders of the world and part of the World Heritage site in Budapest, this is second only to the world’s oldest underground tourist trap, the Cave of Zeus on Crete. Nevertheless it was worth it. The labyrinth contained reproductions of cave drawing from Europe, a section devoted to shamans and magic deer, the inevitable section on the history of Hungary, and a section called “another world” filled with mysterious objects found unexpectedly when renovating the labyrinth in the 1990s. Don’t want to give away the surprise ending.
Academic Matters
I met with several sociologists at Corvinus on Thursday morning. I had discovered them in the process of looking for English language courses that sociology and social science students from MSU could take as part of an exchange program. The current exchange was through the faculty of business which did not have matching sociology or social science courses. The people I talked with were enthusiastic and proposed that we try a pilot program of exchanging one student each as early as winter/spring semester 2010. I told them that the departments would have to approve the courses as transferable, but I didn’t see any major problem with that. The University level agreements on tuition and other matters were beyond my ability to talk about. One of the faculty members will be in the US in mid June and offered to meet with people from MSU. I told them I wouldn’t be back by then but would email the MSU College of Social Science people, see if they were interested in the exchange and whether someone could meet in mid June. I did that and it looks like something may happen.
I had a few email exchanges with Julia, the graduate student who had invited us to her home for Sunday dinner a week earlier. She had turned in her dissertation which covered the history of US health care reform efforts during the twentieth century. She had received some early comments, one of which dealt with her interpretation of American’s being self reliant. We talked and she later emailed me the question and paragraph from the dissertation. I emailed back that I thought her examples were more about family values—Americans preferring nuclear family and independent households—than with self reliance. We exchanged emails over the next few days. She had a personal question about why evangelical Christians in Europe had supported national health insurance while in the US they seemed opposed. I pointed out the differences between mainline and traditional Protestant churches in the US both of which claim the term evangelical. I wrote that if one believed that salvation comes through grace and faith, then doing good work or deeds by helping others will not bring salvation. The Mainline Protestants were more likely to carry out good deeds and work for social justice than the more traditional churches.
Friday evening we went to another salon at Bruce’s. Laszlo the historian who had spoken to us at orientation back in February led the discussion. He was frustrated that Americans and Western Europeans have distorted the recent election results as an indication of Hungarian intolerance of or enthusiasm for racism and fascism. The cause was the rise of Jobbik the far right wing nationalist party that captured over 15% of the vote. [I pointed out that if we had the same party ballot system in the US, at least 15% would vote for the right wing “Tea Party” that had disrupted town hall meetings on health reform last summer.] One of the Hungarian professors said he had voted for Jobbik although he didn’t agree with everything they stood for. He claimed that many small rural communities had supported Jobbik because the villages had no real police to prevent or investigate “Gypsy” crime—which can range from petty theft on up. They relied on the Hungarian Guard Movement to protect them against Gypsy crime. The Guard was forced to dissolve, but had tried to reorganize under a different name. [Over one hundred years ago “Jewish” crime was similarly defined and politicized. The black uniforms and red insignia of the Guard resembled the uniforms worn by Hungarians who assisted the Nazi in World War II.]
But above all he was clearly a nationalist wanting to discuss the Treaty of Trianon that divided up Hungary after WWI and left sizeable Hungarian ethnic communities in newly created countries while Germany was left pretty much intact. Jobbik called for granting ethnic and/or linguistic Hungarians in neighboring countries dual citizenship. This is a classic case of nation not exactly corresponding with statehood boundaries. The dual citizenship could range from granting easier access into Hungary for education and jobs to voting rights on the party ballot for Parliament but not the local district Parliamentary elections. Fidesz, the right center party, also favors non-residential dual citizenship. Since it won over two-thirds of the seats in the April 2010 election, Fidesz can do just about anything it wants. In 2009 Slovakia passed a law requiring that Slovak must be used in all official contacts, including the police, fire brigade, postal services and local government, with fines up to 5,000 Euros after one warning. Both are members of the EU. Stay tuned…
On the Town
We were invited to Sunday dinner at Helga’s, one of the younger professors. She, her husband and children live in a large flat located on a side of Gellert Hill overlooking the Danube. Peter was there as well. We started with Hungarian meat pancakes (hortobágyi húsos palacsinta) which were delicious, followed by chicken paprika and a cherry tart. We were able to take a few of the pancakes and tart squares home with us.
We bought our fifth and last monthly BKV transit pass. It was a reminder that we have only a few weeks left. Tari can feel herself beginning to look forward to going home. Her biggest problem here has been the food. She never considered herself a picky eater but both here and in Japan she has not been able to get to like the local food. She does like Hungarian Gulyas soup, chicken paprikas, and of course the pastries. She is not a cook and spends as little time in the kitchen as possible. Good Hungarian cooking takes time. The meals we have had at the homes of local Hungarians were wonderful. Much of the Hungarian food in restaurants tends to be a bit on the heavy side. The beef in the food stores is not good.
On the bright side, we have been losing weight eating chicken, ground turkey and fish (salmon filets) at home. But that gets so tiresome. Since we have eaten out for the past week with Emily and Pam, Tari is even more intolerant of cooking at home. She is sooooo looking forward to getting home to her own kitchen and American grocery stores. Of course there is another week of eating out here with Harry's friends and she is learning what to stay away from in the restaurants.
All in all the past four months has been a good experience, but living in a foreign country for an extended period of time really is different from a vacation trip. At the beginning it's all a grand adventure but time wears you down with those things that you find difficult. For a vacation trip you go home before it gets hard. If people stay longer (like one or two years) they learn to cope better or can justify buying those items that make life easier.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Budapest in Bloom
On the Town
Spring has finally arrived, albeit several weeks late. The trees are green, the lilacs are out and the pitypang (dandelions) are already turning puffy white. Statues and sculptures that were either covered during the winter or stored somewhere have appeared in squares and along the Pest side of the Danube. Many of the pedestrian streets are now half as wide as they were in early March. The restaurants have put down platform with tables, chairs, sun umbrellas or awnings. People sit, eat and drink outside in the early evening. Coats are gone and the boots of Budapest have been transformed into sneakers and sandals. The homeless have moved up out of the metro entrance passageways onto the benches in front of the street planters and sleep in doorways of empty shops. The weather is sometimes on the rainy side—clouds, drizzle, and occasionally a half hour down pour.
On Friday I went with the Fulbrighters to Eger. Tari and I had been there a few weeks earlier as guests of Helga. But Tari had to go to the airport to meet our daughter and her girl friend who were coming for a short visit. The Fulbright tour took us to the Lyceum library with the tromp l’oeil ceiling of the Council of Trent. But then we visited a second room which also had a tromp l’oeil ceiling, but this one had the four faculties in the Lyceum—law, philosophy (including natural sciences, military and political geography), medicine and theology. We climbed the stairs to the Camera Obscura, which is like a periscope that can look down upon the town. We were taken to lunch at a restaurant in the nearby Valley of the Beautiful Women (literally Mrs. Pretty Valley). They served us the famous Bull’s Blood Egri Bikaver wine (a red blend of several varieties of grapes). Allegedly the Hungarians defending Eger during the 38 day seige in 1552 had to mix the available red wines When they drank, the wine spilled onto their beards and armor. The invading Turks thought that they were drinking bull’s blood which was giving them the strength to resist the siege. It was certainly a heavy, full bodied red and I thought a little “creamy.” We then returned to Eger and went through the castle tunnel system.
Academic matters
This was the last week of classes. On Monday I gave a guest presentation for Edina on the rise of medical science from 1400-1900. I covered the early anatomists Bartolomeo Eustachi and Gabriele Fallopio who were the first to discover body parts names after them (Fallopio is said to have invented the first condom). I also discussed the first blind experiment to test Mesmerizing conducted by Ben Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Guillotin. I ended up the presentation with Virchow, Pasteur and Koch.
Wednesday was the last class for the English language medical students. Only four showed up. Nevertheless I gave my presentation on doctor patient relationships including some US case law concerning obligations to patients and ethical issues. The students were allowed to have two absences, so most of them had an absence to use up and took it. Several may have had a major exam on Thursday. For the class I helped teach, they are to write a short 2500 word paper in English on what they learned in our class. About half agreed to turn in the paper by May 17th and the other half at the end of June. Since they will submit their papers as email attachments I told Peter I would be happy to read them even after I returned to the US.
I spent the rest of the time plugging away at my writing assignments for articles, presentations and the case studies on social science research ethics.
Tour Guide #1
Our daughter and her girl friend are the first of three sets of visitors we expect over the next five weeks. We took them to some places that were not on the schedule of their river cruise tour. After Tari picked them up at the airport on Friday morning and dropped their bags at the apartment, she took the girls up to Nyugati pu, the western railroad station which was built by Eiffel. The did a brief tour of the large Westend mall. They later walked along Vaci Utca, the main tourist drag. That kept them awake sufficiently to begin to acclimate to European time. After Harry’s return from Eger, we all went out to dinner at the Central Kavehaz for Hungarian food.
On Saturday we walked to the central market hall which was also built by Eiffel. We crossed over to the Buda side and went into the Gellert Spa. It features two thermal baths one for men, one for women and a swimming pool in between. We then went across the street and up the hill to the Cave Church, originally home to Saint Istvan, a hermit monk who cured the sick with thermal waters that sprung in front of the cave. A grotto chapel was carved out starting in 1926 and is now taken care of by the Hungarian Paulite order of monks. We took a tram to Moscova Ter in search of a nearby street fair. We found it but it was mainly for small children. Later that afternoon we went by St. Stephen’s church but it was closed for a wedding. When the newly weds emerged, the groom was in a dark uniform with a white cap. Six soldiers held their swords aloft for the couple to pass under as they walked down the church steps. That night we attended a concert at St. Michael's Church on Vaci Utca. A small string orchestra played the greatest classical hits—Pachelbel,Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Mozart. The acoustics were great and the solo violinist for Vivaldi’s Winter from the Four Seasons, Gabora Gyula, was spectacular.
On Sunday we had breakfast at Spinoza’s. Afterwards we went across the street and through the Gozsdu Bazaar which is open Sunday mornings during the summer and features a variety of people selling all sorts of arts and crafts as well as old books and touristy nicknacks. The three women bought a number of things. We then spent the afternoon at Aquincum, the remains of the Roman town dating back to the first century. The new museum had some recent findings from digs where the new M-0 ring highway will go. The main part of the site consists of the remains of stone walls showing the various buildings in the town. Interestingly, the Roman bath was set up exactly like the Gellert Spa (or maybe it should be the other way around—the more things change the more they remain the same). The Roman bath had heated changing rooms and thermal baths for men on one side and women on the other with a pool in the middle. We also looked at the remains of stellae/ tombstones and other statuary. On our way back we stopped at a pancake dessert house at Batthyány tér that one of the Fulbrighters had recommended. It was a nice sweet pickup after two hours at Aquincum.
More on Tour Guide #1 next week!
Spring has finally arrived, albeit several weeks late. The trees are green, the lilacs are out and the pitypang (dandelions) are already turning puffy white. Statues and sculptures that were either covered during the winter or stored somewhere have appeared in squares and along the Pest side of the Danube. Many of the pedestrian streets are now half as wide as they were in early March. The restaurants have put down platform with tables, chairs, sun umbrellas or awnings. People sit, eat and drink outside in the early evening. Coats are gone and the boots of Budapest have been transformed into sneakers and sandals. The homeless have moved up out of the metro entrance passageways onto the benches in front of the street planters and sleep in doorways of empty shops. The weather is sometimes on the rainy side—clouds, drizzle, and occasionally a half hour down pour.
On Friday I went with the Fulbrighters to Eger. Tari and I had been there a few weeks earlier as guests of Helga. But Tari had to go to the airport to meet our daughter and her girl friend who were coming for a short visit. The Fulbright tour took us to the Lyceum library with the tromp l’oeil ceiling of the Council of Trent. But then we visited a second room which also had a tromp l’oeil ceiling, but this one had the four faculties in the Lyceum—law, philosophy (including natural sciences, military and political geography), medicine and theology. We climbed the stairs to the Camera Obscura, which is like a periscope that can look down upon the town. We were taken to lunch at a restaurant in the nearby Valley of the Beautiful Women (literally Mrs. Pretty Valley). They served us the famous Bull’s Blood Egri Bikaver wine (a red blend of several varieties of grapes). Allegedly the Hungarians defending Eger during the 38 day seige in 1552 had to mix the available red wines When they drank, the wine spilled onto their beards and armor. The invading Turks thought that they were drinking bull’s blood which was giving them the strength to resist the siege. It was certainly a heavy, full bodied red and I thought a little “creamy.” We then returned to Eger and went through the castle tunnel system.
Academic matters
This was the last week of classes. On Monday I gave a guest presentation for Edina on the rise of medical science from 1400-1900. I covered the early anatomists Bartolomeo Eustachi and Gabriele Fallopio who were the first to discover body parts names after them (Fallopio is said to have invented the first condom). I also discussed the first blind experiment to test Mesmerizing conducted by Ben Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Guillotin. I ended up the presentation with Virchow, Pasteur and Koch.
Wednesday was the last class for the English language medical students. Only four showed up. Nevertheless I gave my presentation on doctor patient relationships including some US case law concerning obligations to patients and ethical issues. The students were allowed to have two absences, so most of them had an absence to use up and took it. Several may have had a major exam on Thursday. For the class I helped teach, they are to write a short 2500 word paper in English on what they learned in our class. About half agreed to turn in the paper by May 17th and the other half at the end of June. Since they will submit their papers as email attachments I told Peter I would be happy to read them even after I returned to the US.
I spent the rest of the time plugging away at my writing assignments for articles, presentations and the case studies on social science research ethics.
Tour Guide #1
Our daughter and her girl friend are the first of three sets of visitors we expect over the next five weeks. We took them to some places that were not on the schedule of their river cruise tour. After Tari picked them up at the airport on Friday morning and dropped their bags at the apartment, she took the girls up to Nyugati pu, the western railroad station which was built by Eiffel. The did a brief tour of the large Westend mall. They later walked along Vaci Utca, the main tourist drag. That kept them awake sufficiently to begin to acclimate to European time. After Harry’s return from Eger, we all went out to dinner at the Central Kavehaz for Hungarian food.
On Saturday we walked to the central market hall which was also built by Eiffel. We crossed over to the Buda side and went into the Gellert Spa. It features two thermal baths one for men, one for women and a swimming pool in between. We then went across the street and up the hill to the Cave Church, originally home to Saint Istvan, a hermit monk who cured the sick with thermal waters that sprung in front of the cave. A grotto chapel was carved out starting in 1926 and is now taken care of by the Hungarian Paulite order of monks. We took a tram to Moscova Ter in search of a nearby street fair. We found it but it was mainly for small children. Later that afternoon we went by St. Stephen’s church but it was closed for a wedding. When the newly weds emerged, the groom was in a dark uniform with a white cap. Six soldiers held their swords aloft for the couple to pass under as they walked down the church steps. That night we attended a concert at St. Michael's Church on Vaci Utca. A small string orchestra played the greatest classical hits—Pachelbel,Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Mozart. The acoustics were great and the solo violinist for Vivaldi’s Winter from the Four Seasons, Gabora Gyula, was spectacular.
On Sunday we had breakfast at Spinoza’s. Afterwards we went across the street and through the Gozsdu Bazaar which is open Sunday mornings during the summer and features a variety of people selling all sorts of arts and crafts as well as old books and touristy nicknacks. The three women bought a number of things. We then spent the afternoon at Aquincum, the remains of the Roman town dating back to the first century. The new museum had some recent findings from digs where the new M-0 ring highway will go. The main part of the site consists of the remains of stone walls showing the various buildings in the town. Interestingly, the Roman bath was set up exactly like the Gellert Spa (or maybe it should be the other way around—the more things change the more they remain the same). The Roman bath had heated changing rooms and thermal baths for men on one side and women on the other with a pool in the middle. We also looked at the remains of stellae/ tombstones and other statuary. On our way back we stopped at a pancake dessert house at Batthyány tér that one of the Fulbrighters had recommended. It was a nice sweet pickup after two hours at Aquincum.
More on Tour Guide #1 next week!
Monday, May 3, 2010
A Hungarian Movie and Sunday Dinner
On Sunday we went for our bagel and lox fix at Spinoza’s. When we walked in we noticed that the back room was quite full of people. At one point a young child came out and started looking at the old victrola record player in the corner behind my chair. The father talked to her in English. We got to chatting and discovered that the brunch was for Democrats Abroad in Hungary. I told him I was here on a Fulbright and giving a talk on US Health Care Reform. He checked with the president and I was allowed to announce my talk on Monday on the Obama plan at the Fulbright Office.
Academic Matters
On Monday I presented at Edina’s class on cultural anthropology and health. She had suddenly taken ill and had gone home. I was shown to the classroom and prepared for the presentation. I was warned that the students were from all over the world. Their expectations of class ranged from a very orderly outlined lecture in which they would never ask a question to wanting to give their uninformed opinions on anything but the presentation topic. I was the true substitute teacher—the students didn’t pay much attention, and those in the back talked almost the whole time. I only spoke for about an hour for a class that was supposed to go for an hour and a half.
Later on Monday I gave the Clinton / Obama Health Care Reform presentation at the Fulbright office. Only a few people showed up, but one was a young woman named Julia. She had just finished her dissertation in history on Health Care in the US. She was a bit disappointed that she did not know I was here so she could have gotten some last minute advice for her dissertation. When she learned I was from MSU she said her father had been their in the late 1980s and she had spent a year at East Lansing High. Small world department, our daughter had been at ELHS the same time. So I sent her to talk with Tari before the talk. They got as far as perhaps getting together on the weekend but then I started the presentation. During the presentation I could see her nodding her head and talking notes. Afterwards I gave her my card in case she wanted to keep in touch.
After my successful moderation of a session for the returning Hungarian Fulbrighters, I was asked to chair a session for the current US Fulbright students who would be making their presentations. I chaired the first session and then sat in on the second. The students ranged from senior undergraduates to doctoral students doing their dissertation research. Several had run into what they considered to be unexpected difficulties accessing documents or data. Of course students everywhere run into these difficulties as well, but these students persevered. One was passed along a chain of potential data sources and finally ended up pretty much where he started with little to show for it. Another realized that she was not going to get access to information on Hungarians in Slovakia without several letters of support and introduction which were not going to come. The two math student gave presentations that non math people could understand. One did a math lesson on finding prime numbers from a “Hungarian” perspective. Essentially he asked a set of questions about how to approach the problem and develop a strategy for a proof rather than trying to logically deduce the proof. In essence he showed me how to “think” like a mathematician. The math grad student explained how computers could check and correct data streams sent in binary for typos and entry errors.
Two other students had developed a short survey on faculty and student reaction to the Bologna Process for harmonizing higher education in Europe by 2010. Bologna called for a three year bachelor’s degree followed by a two year master’s degree and then a standardized three year doctoral degree. Prior to Bologna education was a mix of three to five year bachelor that in Hungary often included a double undergraduate major befoe moving on to a master’s program. The two students had the right idea but their questions were naively worded and not synchronized with their answer foils which ran strongly agree to strongly disagree. Unfortunately many people think that all surveys can be constructed like psychology personality tests. But questions about frequency or awareness or satisfaction should have answer foils ranging from never to always, not at all aware to fully aware or completely dissatisfied to completely satisfied.
I then gave my presentation to the Semmelweis English language medical students. They have organized an international student club that put out a glossy magazine complete with pictures. They also told me they had a Facebook page featuring interviews with various faculty members. I asked if they wanted to interview me although I was only going to be there for the semester which was almost over. They said yes and sent me the ten item survey that had been approved by the dean. Here is the Facebook page. You may have to scroll down to get to me.
http://isas.hu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2290&Itemid=314
On the town
On Thursday I worked on my last lectures—one for the medical students and the other for Edina on the growth of medical science 1400-1900. I had made good progress by early afternoon and decided to take a break. We figured out how to get to Amadeus hotel and restaurant where we had stayed the very first time we were in Budapest in 1999. Tari remembered it had great goulash soup. We took the metro and a bus. We sat outside in the shade, had soft drinks and sweets and thoroughly enjoyed the spring weather. We plan to come here for dinner with our friends and family who will be visiting us in May.
On Friday afternoon we went grocery shopping. What was an adventure in January and February has now become more of a chore. We had to go to three different neighborhood stores to get the items we wanted, and even then several were not available anywhere. If we were staying here longer, we’d have to make a list of which stores at which locations carried which items. The only good thing is that I keep on finding crunch peanut butter in unexpected places, so I no longer face a shortage.
A Hungarian Movie
We then went to a small gathering organized by Bruce, one of the Fulbright professors. He teaches and has been inviting some of his students to get together on Friday evenings for discussions. This Friday he was showing the film A Tanú or The Witness. Made in 1969, it was suppressed for over ten years and but was well received when shown at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. Set in 1949 shortly after the Communist takeover of Hungary, a simple dike watchman on the Danube is arrested for slaughtering a pig in his basement. But the watchman, whose name is Pelikán like the bird, had helped the anti Nazi underground during the war and now has friends in high places. They get him out of jail, give him jobs that he admittedly is ideologically unprepared for, cover up his naïve mistakes that expose the duplicity of the system, and get him out of jail yet again. He is eventually asked to be a witness at a show trial for the man he helped hide during the war.
One of Bruce’s guest was a woman who had lived through it all. She gave us some insight into how life really was during that period and a few explanations that we might not have understood. One of Pelikán’s sponsors is Comrade Virág. She explained that virág means flowers or blooms and Bloom was a typical Hungarian Jewish name. One of Virág’s fellow comrades was formerly a Nazi, and they both have to work with the army general Bástya (bastion or castle). An American student asked how come no one could really stand up to the system. The older woman pointed to the scenes where Pelikán is put in charge of research to grow oranges in Hungary which doesn’t have the climate for it. Unfortunately the one successful orange is eaten by Pelikán’s son before it can be presented at the ceremony. Virag then pulls a lemon from his pocket to replace the orange. In those days a lemon was an orange and no one dared question it. She then recalled the first time she had seen an orange and that she was much older before she actually ate one. She suggested that people are unaware of how bad things are when everyone is in the same boat. It is only when looking back from better times that people realize what they lived through.
She went on to mention Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, although the Hungarian purges were not as extensive as the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. I described the McCarthy witch hunts and the blacklisting of Hollywood writers and directors as an American example from the same period. I also mentioned the Rosenberg trials. The older woman then explained how a street in Budapest was named for the Rosenbergs during the Communist era but now it had been changed back to its original name
On Saturday we cleaned up the flat. Our daughter and her girl friend will be here next week. They will stay with us over the weekend and then go on a river cruise up the Danube to Vienna and on to Prague.
Sunday dinner
We were invited to have Sunday dinner with Julia and her family in Buda. We took a tram to the end of the line and were then picked up and driven to her home. She, her husband and two children lived in the bottom floor. We think, her parents lived on the floor above them and possibly her grandparents above them. Her father, who had been at MSU during the late 1980s, stopped by to say hello. But unfortunately we didn’t know anyone in common since I was in social science and he was in the agriculture and natural resources school doing research.
Julia prepared a meal of chicken noodle soup, chicken paprikas and cheese filled strudel. All were Hungarian specialties which take a long time to prepare. She hardly ever cooks them and when she does, she uses an English cookbook of traditional Hungarian recipes (available for tourists on Vaci utca). Once the children were finished eating we had a nice long conversation. We exchanged family histories, which included her family hiding Jews in their large cellar during the war and working with Raoul Wallenberg. We got home late Sunday afternoon and didn’t really need another meal.
Academic Matters
On Monday I presented at Edina’s class on cultural anthropology and health. She had suddenly taken ill and had gone home. I was shown to the classroom and prepared for the presentation. I was warned that the students were from all over the world. Their expectations of class ranged from a very orderly outlined lecture in which they would never ask a question to wanting to give their uninformed opinions on anything but the presentation topic. I was the true substitute teacher—the students didn’t pay much attention, and those in the back talked almost the whole time. I only spoke for about an hour for a class that was supposed to go for an hour and a half.
Later on Monday I gave the Clinton / Obama Health Care Reform presentation at the Fulbright office. Only a few people showed up, but one was a young woman named Julia. She had just finished her dissertation in history on Health Care in the US. She was a bit disappointed that she did not know I was here so she could have gotten some last minute advice for her dissertation. When she learned I was from MSU she said her father had been their in the late 1980s and she had spent a year at East Lansing High. Small world department, our daughter had been at ELHS the same time. So I sent her to talk with Tari before the talk. They got as far as perhaps getting together on the weekend but then I started the presentation. During the presentation I could see her nodding her head and talking notes. Afterwards I gave her my card in case she wanted to keep in touch.
After my successful moderation of a session for the returning Hungarian Fulbrighters, I was asked to chair a session for the current US Fulbright students who would be making their presentations. I chaired the first session and then sat in on the second. The students ranged from senior undergraduates to doctoral students doing their dissertation research. Several had run into what they considered to be unexpected difficulties accessing documents or data. Of course students everywhere run into these difficulties as well, but these students persevered. One was passed along a chain of potential data sources and finally ended up pretty much where he started with little to show for it. Another realized that she was not going to get access to information on Hungarians in Slovakia without several letters of support and introduction which were not going to come. The two math student gave presentations that non math people could understand. One did a math lesson on finding prime numbers from a “Hungarian” perspective. Essentially he asked a set of questions about how to approach the problem and develop a strategy for a proof rather than trying to logically deduce the proof. In essence he showed me how to “think” like a mathematician. The math grad student explained how computers could check and correct data streams sent in binary for typos and entry errors.
Two other students had developed a short survey on faculty and student reaction to the Bologna Process for harmonizing higher education in Europe by 2010. Bologna called for a three year bachelor’s degree followed by a two year master’s degree and then a standardized three year doctoral degree. Prior to Bologna education was a mix of three to five year bachelor that in Hungary often included a double undergraduate major befoe moving on to a master’s program. The two students had the right idea but their questions were naively worded and not synchronized with their answer foils which ran strongly agree to strongly disagree. Unfortunately many people think that all surveys can be constructed like psychology personality tests. But questions about frequency or awareness or satisfaction should have answer foils ranging from never to always, not at all aware to fully aware or completely dissatisfied to completely satisfied.
I then gave my presentation to the Semmelweis English language medical students. They have organized an international student club that put out a glossy magazine complete with pictures. They also told me they had a Facebook page featuring interviews with various faculty members. I asked if they wanted to interview me although I was only going to be there for the semester which was almost over. They said yes and sent me the ten item survey that had been approved by the dean. Here is the Facebook page. You may have to scroll down to get to me.
http://isas.hu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2290&Itemid=314
On the town
On Thursday I worked on my last lectures—one for the medical students and the other for Edina on the growth of medical science 1400-1900. I had made good progress by early afternoon and decided to take a break. We figured out how to get to Amadeus hotel and restaurant where we had stayed the very first time we were in Budapest in 1999. Tari remembered it had great goulash soup. We took the metro and a bus. We sat outside in the shade, had soft drinks and sweets and thoroughly enjoyed the spring weather. We plan to come here for dinner with our friends and family who will be visiting us in May.
On Friday afternoon we went grocery shopping. What was an adventure in January and February has now become more of a chore. We had to go to three different neighborhood stores to get the items we wanted, and even then several were not available anywhere. If we were staying here longer, we’d have to make a list of which stores at which locations carried which items. The only good thing is that I keep on finding crunch peanut butter in unexpected places, so I no longer face a shortage.
A Hungarian Movie
We then went to a small gathering organized by Bruce, one of the Fulbright professors. He teaches and has been inviting some of his students to get together on Friday evenings for discussions. This Friday he was showing the film A Tanú or The Witness. Made in 1969, it was suppressed for over ten years and but was well received when shown at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. Set in 1949 shortly after the Communist takeover of Hungary, a simple dike watchman on the Danube is arrested for slaughtering a pig in his basement. But the watchman, whose name is Pelikán like the bird, had helped the anti Nazi underground during the war and now has friends in high places. They get him out of jail, give him jobs that he admittedly is ideologically unprepared for, cover up his naïve mistakes that expose the duplicity of the system, and get him out of jail yet again. He is eventually asked to be a witness at a show trial for the man he helped hide during the war.
One of Bruce’s guest was a woman who had lived through it all. She gave us some insight into how life really was during that period and a few explanations that we might not have understood. One of Pelikán’s sponsors is Comrade Virág. She explained that virág means flowers or blooms and Bloom was a typical Hungarian Jewish name. One of Virág’s fellow comrades was formerly a Nazi, and they both have to work with the army general Bástya (bastion or castle). An American student asked how come no one could really stand up to the system. The older woman pointed to the scenes where Pelikán is put in charge of research to grow oranges in Hungary which doesn’t have the climate for it. Unfortunately the one successful orange is eaten by Pelikán’s son before it can be presented at the ceremony. Virag then pulls a lemon from his pocket to replace the orange. In those days a lemon was an orange and no one dared question it. She then recalled the first time she had seen an orange and that she was much older before she actually ate one. She suggested that people are unaware of how bad things are when everyone is in the same boat. It is only when looking back from better times that people realize what they lived through.
She went on to mention Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, although the Hungarian purges were not as extensive as the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. I described the McCarthy witch hunts and the blacklisting of Hollywood writers and directors as an American example from the same period. I also mentioned the Rosenberg trials. The older woman then explained how a street in Budapest was named for the Rosenbergs during the Communist era but now it had been changed back to its original name
On Saturday we cleaned up the flat. Our daughter and her girl friend will be here next week. They will stay with us over the weekend and then go on a river cruise up the Danube to Vienna and on to Prague.
Sunday dinner
We were invited to have Sunday dinner with Julia and her family in Buda. We took a tram to the end of the line and were then picked up and driven to her home. She, her husband and two children lived in the bottom floor. We think, her parents lived on the floor above them and possibly her grandparents above them. Her father, who had been at MSU during the late 1980s, stopped by to say hello. But unfortunately we didn’t know anyone in common since I was in social science and he was in the agriculture and natural resources school doing research.
Julia prepared a meal of chicken noodle soup, chicken paprikas and cheese filled strudel. All were Hungarian specialties which take a long time to prepare. She hardly ever cooks them and when she does, she uses an English cookbook of traditional Hungarian recipes (available for tourists on Vaci utca). Once the children were finished eating we had a nice long conversation. We exchanged family histories, which included her family hiding Jews in their large cellar during the war and working with Raoul Wallenberg. We got home late Sunday afternoon and didn’t really need another meal.
Friday, April 30, 2010
April colds travel and work
I came down with a major cold—sore throat, post nasal drip and a cough. I also had quite a bit of work to do. Back in early February I had promised to give four lectures to students of Helga and Edina in the Faculty of Health Sciences. I was about to work on them when Peter reminded me that I had agreed to write up my US Health Care Reform presentations into an article which he would then comment on and translate into Hungarian. It would be submitted to a Hungarian journal and was due Apr 26. So in the spirit of publish and perish, I mustered my strength and typed away despite the cold. I lucked out when Peter told me that classes were called off on Wednesday. Apparently the sports hygiene faculty is part of the Medical complex and Wednesday was declared a sports day for everyone including the medical students.
On Thursday Tari and I took the train to Veszprem, a town near Lake Balaton. It has an American Corners which was hosting an America Week. This was started three years ago by philosophy professor Scott Campbell, a Fulbrighter from Nazareth College, Rochester NY. It brings together Hungarian and American lecturers, professors, officials and professionals to talk on various topics. I was asked to talk about US Health Care Reform. Since Scott Campbell was talking on American Pragmatism, I entitled my talk Obama’s Pragmatic Strategy. We were not sure where to get off the train as it made several short stops about the time we expected to arrive at Veszprem. The station signs are usually high above the main station doors and hard to see if one is in a back car or facing the wrong direction.
We were met at the train station by a Dean and taken to the campus of Pannon University. Since it was drizzling we sat and talked in his office instead of sight seeing in the town. Tom Burns showed up followed by a younger Pannon faculty member who then walked us through the town to lunch. Huba and Annamaria were meeting us for lunch, but they drove from Budapest and ran into some heavy traffic due to the rain. Eventually we all assembled and had a nice lunch.
The presentations went very well. Someone put the conference on utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzXAxbVe348. It covers the whole week and I appear in it along with my title slide. Don’t know what was said since it was all in Hungarian. The Americans in the audience really liked what I had to say. They thought it explained quite a lot of what had happened and what was in the legislation.
I spent Friday working on the paper for Peter. We went out to dinner and happened to sit next to a woman from Germany. She had met with some people at Corvinus University, but was stranded because of the volcano. She said she would probably take a ten hour train ride on Saturday. We later learned that the contingent from Nazareth College at America Week in Veszprem was also stranded for several days.
Early Saturday morning I put the final touches on the first draft of my paper and emailed it to Peter. We then got on a train to visit Helga in Eger. Unfortunately we didn't realize that we had to switch trains. When I had looked up the train schedule, unlike airplane schedules, I saw no indication that I would need to transfer trains. The train stopped very briefly and as it pulled away I asked about Eger. Several people told us we should have gotten off and they were very helpful in explaining the situation to both us and the conductor. We had to ride an extra half hour to the next station, buy a ticket to return to where we should have transferred and get on the train to Eger. We arrived two hours late. In addition neither Tari nor I had Helga’s cell phone number. She had emailed it to me but I forgot my cell phone. Cell phones are not my thing.
All that said, we had a very nice relaxing weekend in Eger. We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant Helga recommended. She then took us on a tour of the famous Castle which held out against a Turkish siege in 1552. I had just about finished reading the historical novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Egri csillagok) which is about the siege. I was told this was mandatory reading for all students in Hungary. The equivalent in the US would be if everyone in junior high had to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
We saw just about everything at the Castle except the underground tunnels. We walked back to our hotel and promptly fell asleep. When we awoke it was well after 8pm. We were not hungry for a complete dinner and found the only short order place in the area was the local McDonalds.
On Sunday Helga took us to the Baroque library in Eger's Lyceum which had a very old library with very old books. The ceiling had a magnificent trompe l'oeil painting of Council of Trent and its four major decisions in each corner. In one corner scholarship is encouraged but a lightning bolt is setting censored books on fire. (cant quite see it in this picture) http://www.pbase.com/richardmartin/image/123133258 . We stopped for some ice cream at her favorite place. We were then met by her husband and children. We walked through the large city park with many tables selling a variety of things. The train ride home was direct to Budapest Keleti pu and uneventful.
Monday I answered a few outstanding questions that Peter had and then began putting together the lecture for Hegla’s class. I had two lectures on Tuesday. The first was in the morning for Helga’s class on health law and ethics. The second was for Laszlo at Corvinus and was on Clinton and Obama. I spoke in a room in the new building’s library. The room, which probably holds at least 50 people, was overflowing. It had been advertised on the Corvinus website. A few had called Laszlo and asked if I was able to come because of the Iceland volcano. In my talk I mentioned that the pharmaceutical industy got a twelve year patent protection for biologics and bio-similar drugs. In the question and answer time I learned that these types of drugs are allowed in the EU but not in the US. The reform billcreates a pathway for biologics and bio-similar drugs to enter the US market.
On Wednesday gave a lecture to the English language medical students on US state experiments in health care—Hawaii’s employer mandate from the 1970’s, Oregon’s rationing system for people on Medicaid based on budget and importance of procedure, Tennessee’s good intentions at expanding coverage through TENNCARE that was spoiled by overzealous attempts to contain costs and finally Massachusetts’s 2006 individual mandate..
On Thursday I moderated the second half of a Fulbright session for Hungarians who had returned from Fulbrights in the US. The first presenter in my portion of the meeting was stranded in Paris because of the Iceland volcano. I had to call time on two of the presenters who had run well over the 20 minute allotment. Afterwards several people told me I had done the right thing. The presentations ranged from music to history to philosophy. I learned something about the role of Princeton Theological Seminar in promoting Presbyterianism in Hungary. I knew Harvard was more Unitarian and Yale Congregationalist New Light, but didn’t know how Princeton fit in.
By this time Tari came down with a sore throat and a cough. We were concerned that she might have strep. I asked around and was told to go to a clinic near Moscova Ter. On Wednesday Tari went to the NAWA book club lunch meeting. But when the book club chair was stranded in Malta because of the volcano, they called it off. Tari didn’t know and went to the restaurant. Fortunately one of the other women stopped by and they had lunch. At the regular Friday NAWA meeting someone recommended a clinic up in Buda that had American trained doctors. Tari called and got an appointment for that same afternoon. The doctor was very nice, gave her a test and told her she didn’t have strep. It cost a ton of money but then we learned we were paying “expat” prices. Tari got a receipt and we can get reimbursed from our US health insurance when we return.
On Friday morning I presented on three topics over three hours to a masters degree class at Corvinus. The students seemed very interested and I thought it went very well Afterwards Norbert and I had a nice lunch at a restaurant that specialized in a large variety of wines.
That night we saw The Magic Flute sung in Hungarian. It was not at the state opera house. The singers were very good and the Queen of the Night easily hit every note in her famous aria. The costumes were modern day. The Queen of the Night wore a black dress with a gold cape like coat (I would have preferred silver for the moon) and in the seduction scene her three attendants are in their Victoria’s Secret lingerie. The three boys are in soccer uniforms and kick a ball back and forth with Tomino. The stage sets had their pluses and minuses. The first act settings were primarily Tomino’s and Pamina’s bedrooms, his with a large toy castle, hers with a large doll house. But the room was cleverly turned on its side or upside down for other first act scenes. Clever but we didn’t quite get it. In the second act the trial by fire was represented by Pamina and Tomino stepping over theatre seats that glowed red, but we did not see anything the reminded us of the trial by water.
Tari rested on Saturday and I plugged away at preparing the extra lectures. She was feeling better that night and so we really treated ourselves. We went to the Argentine steak house and had tenderloin and baked potatoes. After months of not having a real steak it was fantastic. The prices and quality were similar to a Ruth Chris steak house in the US.
On Thursday Tari and I took the train to Veszprem, a town near Lake Balaton. It has an American Corners which was hosting an America Week. This was started three years ago by philosophy professor Scott Campbell, a Fulbrighter from Nazareth College, Rochester NY. It brings together Hungarian and American lecturers, professors, officials and professionals to talk on various topics. I was asked to talk about US Health Care Reform. Since Scott Campbell was talking on American Pragmatism, I entitled my talk Obama’s Pragmatic Strategy. We were not sure where to get off the train as it made several short stops about the time we expected to arrive at Veszprem. The station signs are usually high above the main station doors and hard to see if one is in a back car or facing the wrong direction.
We were met at the train station by a Dean and taken to the campus of Pannon University. Since it was drizzling we sat and talked in his office instead of sight seeing in the town. Tom Burns showed up followed by a younger Pannon faculty member who then walked us through the town to lunch. Huba and Annamaria were meeting us for lunch, but they drove from Budapest and ran into some heavy traffic due to the rain. Eventually we all assembled and had a nice lunch.
The presentations went very well. Someone put the conference on utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzXAxbVe348. It covers the whole week and I appear in it along with my title slide. Don’t know what was said since it was all in Hungarian. The Americans in the audience really liked what I had to say. They thought it explained quite a lot of what had happened and what was in the legislation.
I spent Friday working on the paper for Peter. We went out to dinner and happened to sit next to a woman from Germany. She had met with some people at Corvinus University, but was stranded because of the volcano. She said she would probably take a ten hour train ride on Saturday. We later learned that the contingent from Nazareth College at America Week in Veszprem was also stranded for several days.
Early Saturday morning I put the final touches on the first draft of my paper and emailed it to Peter. We then got on a train to visit Helga in Eger. Unfortunately we didn't realize that we had to switch trains. When I had looked up the train schedule, unlike airplane schedules, I saw no indication that I would need to transfer trains. The train stopped very briefly and as it pulled away I asked about Eger. Several people told us we should have gotten off and they were very helpful in explaining the situation to both us and the conductor. We had to ride an extra half hour to the next station, buy a ticket to return to where we should have transferred and get on the train to Eger. We arrived two hours late. In addition neither Tari nor I had Helga’s cell phone number. She had emailed it to me but I forgot my cell phone. Cell phones are not my thing.
All that said, we had a very nice relaxing weekend in Eger. We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant Helga recommended. She then took us on a tour of the famous Castle which held out against a Turkish siege in 1552. I had just about finished reading the historical novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Egri csillagok) which is about the siege. I was told this was mandatory reading for all students in Hungary. The equivalent in the US would be if everyone in junior high had to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
We saw just about everything at the Castle except the underground tunnels. We walked back to our hotel and promptly fell asleep. When we awoke it was well after 8pm. We were not hungry for a complete dinner and found the only short order place in the area was the local McDonalds.
On Sunday Helga took us to the Baroque library in Eger's Lyceum which had a very old library with very old books. The ceiling had a magnificent trompe l'oeil painting of Council of Trent and its four major decisions in each corner. In one corner scholarship is encouraged but a lightning bolt is setting censored books on fire. (cant quite see it in this picture) http://www.pbase.com/richardmartin/image/123133258 . We stopped for some ice cream at her favorite place. We were then met by her husband and children. We walked through the large city park with many tables selling a variety of things. The train ride home was direct to Budapest Keleti pu and uneventful.
Monday I answered a few outstanding questions that Peter had and then began putting together the lecture for Hegla’s class. I had two lectures on Tuesday. The first was in the morning for Helga’s class on health law and ethics. The second was for Laszlo at Corvinus and was on Clinton and Obama. I spoke in a room in the new building’s library. The room, which probably holds at least 50 people, was overflowing. It had been advertised on the Corvinus website. A few had called Laszlo and asked if I was able to come because of the Iceland volcano. In my talk I mentioned that the pharmaceutical industy got a twelve year patent protection for biologics and bio-similar drugs. In the question and answer time I learned that these types of drugs are allowed in the EU but not in the US. The reform billcreates a pathway for biologics and bio-similar drugs to enter the US market.
On Wednesday gave a lecture to the English language medical students on US state experiments in health care—Hawaii’s employer mandate from the 1970’s, Oregon’s rationing system for people on Medicaid based on budget and importance of procedure, Tennessee’s good intentions at expanding coverage through TENNCARE that was spoiled by overzealous attempts to contain costs and finally Massachusetts’s 2006 individual mandate..
On Thursday I moderated the second half of a Fulbright session for Hungarians who had returned from Fulbrights in the US. The first presenter in my portion of the meeting was stranded in Paris because of the Iceland volcano. I had to call time on two of the presenters who had run well over the 20 minute allotment. Afterwards several people told me I had done the right thing. The presentations ranged from music to history to philosophy. I learned something about the role of Princeton Theological Seminar in promoting Presbyterianism in Hungary. I knew Harvard was more Unitarian and Yale Congregationalist New Light, but didn’t know how Princeton fit in.
By this time Tari came down with a sore throat and a cough. We were concerned that she might have strep. I asked around and was told to go to a clinic near Moscova Ter. On Wednesday Tari went to the NAWA book club lunch meeting. But when the book club chair was stranded in Malta because of the volcano, they called it off. Tari didn’t know and went to the restaurant. Fortunately one of the other women stopped by and they had lunch. At the regular Friday NAWA meeting someone recommended a clinic up in Buda that had American trained doctors. Tari called and got an appointment for that same afternoon. The doctor was very nice, gave her a test and told her she didn’t have strep. It cost a ton of money but then we learned we were paying “expat” prices. Tari got a receipt and we can get reimbursed from our US health insurance when we return.
On Friday morning I presented on three topics over three hours to a masters degree class at Corvinus. The students seemed very interested and I thought it went very well Afterwards Norbert and I had a nice lunch at a restaurant that specialized in a large variety of wines.
That night we saw The Magic Flute sung in Hungarian. It was not at the state opera house. The singers were very good and the Queen of the Night easily hit every note in her famous aria. The costumes were modern day. The Queen of the Night wore a black dress with a gold cape like coat (I would have preferred silver for the moon) and in the seduction scene her three attendants are in their Victoria’s Secret lingerie. The three boys are in soccer uniforms and kick a ball back and forth with Tomino. The stage sets had their pluses and minuses. The first act settings were primarily Tomino’s and Pamina’s bedrooms, his with a large toy castle, hers with a large doll house. But the room was cleverly turned on its side or upside down for other first act scenes. Clever but we didn’t quite get it. In the second act the trial by fire was represented by Pamina and Tomino stepping over theatre seats that glowed red, but we did not see anything the reminded us of the trial by water.
Tari rested on Saturday and I plugged away at preparing the extra lectures. She was feeling better that night and so we really treated ourselves. We went to the Argentine steak house and had tenderloin and baked potatoes. After months of not having a real steak it was fantastic. The prices and quality were similar to a Ruth Chris steak house in the US.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
April Cold
I came down with a heavy cold this past week. I had a very sore throat on Sunday which gradually progressed up to the back and roof of my mouth during the week. It was aggravated by a post nasal drip. We ran out of aspirin and had to buy some. While Americans may overpay for prescription drugs the cost of an over the counter drug like aspirin was over $4 for 20 big old fashioned round tablets sold only in an apothecary. We did pick up some antibacterial mouth wash at what would be a drug store in US but here sells everything but the drugs. Tari put in the ear plugs for a few nights and we both survived the week.
On Tuesday I met with Zita Paprika and Gitta at Corvinus to talk about a possible exchange program with MSU College of Social Science and Department of Sociology. They had sent me a copy of their latest catalogue to look up courses that might be a good match for exchange students. I didn’t find much for sociology in their catalogue but went on line and found a degree program in English for Sociology. That had quite a few courses with similar titles and even texts that we might use in our Sociology courses.
But when I met Zita and Gitta, I discovered that the program and those courses were offered by a different faculty. Zita was in the faculty of business and directed its international program. Not that some things couldn’t be worked out but it clearly was not her first choice. So we went over other courses her faculty offered. The best matches were in economics and political science. One or two psych courses were possibilities as were two of the sociology courses in her catalogue. I said I would go back and see about matching the courses to the MSU course descriptions, and would report back to the MSU people on our discussion.
Finding the MSU course description was a minor problem since the MSU website had been totally revamped from scratch and opened April 2. In my opinion whenever programmers redo something from scratch the new version is twice as bad as they say it is going to be good, and inevitably has to be revised.
The new home page has big rotating pictures (including our final four basketball appearance), seven dropdown tabs: About, Admission, Academics, Research, Global, Engagement, and Athletics. Below the rotating pictures were three panels containing a video promotional, three news headlines and one or two upcoming events. While I could navigate to the course descriptions without too much difficulty under the academics tab, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the faculty pages I use for class records, grading etc. The faculty page contained all sorts of links to human resources. It is as if the faculty never has to use the website for class related tasks. After several emails a few people told me how to get where I wanted to go, but it took a minimum of four clicks. So I simply created icons on my desktop that allows me a one click access to where I want to be and I no longer have the MSU website as my home page. [by the next Tuesday, mirabile dictu they have added “logins” for instructor menu and the ANGEL site that has all our course syllabi, assignments etc under the smaller faculty tab on the front page!] But despite my cold and frustration, I managed to find corresponding course titles and descriptions and send off my report.
On Wednesday I managed to give my class presentation on Clinton to Obama health care reform in a very hoarse voice. The students were understanding and the one or two Americans asked about how they or ex-pats would be treated if and when they returned to US. Very good questions and my only response was that it would hopefully be covered in the rules and to contact the US embassy.
I stayed home the rest of the week working on an article on the Obama Health Reforms that Peter will translate into Hungarian and publish at the end of April. Tari meanwhile had to go clothes shopping. Between her continued efforts to eat less and walk more she has dropped a size or two and desperately needed new pants and tops. After checking out a few of the higher end stores at one of the malls on a peanut butter run, she found a reasonably priced clothing store and bought several tops and a pair of pants. She has said several thank yous to whatever impulse led her to buy 3 paris of pants in the US hat were almost too small. They have become a mainstay of her wardrobe.
On Thursday night we treated Kristin and her husband to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She had helped us get through those first few weeks—dealing with the condo manager, getting us cell phones, finding all the heating, water and electric meters in the flat, giving us additional book on Hungary, Budapest, and Hungarian, and explaining how the washing machine worked. The food was great and we had a very nice conversation with them. None of us wanted to leave.
On Friday Fulbright took us to Pecs, one of three or four European Cultural Capitals for 2010. Pecs is a university town with the famous Zsolnay Ceramics and porcelain factory. We met with several of the Fulbrighters who were teaching or working in Pecs. One gave us a tour of the high school where he taught English as a second language and American literature studies. We also had tours of the Zsolnay museum and the Csontvary Museum, the latter containing the works of a rather eccentric 20th century painter. On Friday night we selected tickets to a Varadi Roma Concert. Unfortunately as I have discovered, almost all concerts these days are amplified as if they were blasting into an open field at Woodstock. But this was in a packed small room that couldn’t have seated more that 250 people. The music was good but our ears were ringing. On Saturday afternoon we had free time. We had lunch with Tom, Carol and Lori at a nice restaurant and then Tom took us on a tour of the countryside. We visited an old castle monastery north of Pecs, got lost looking for a second historical ruin and then couldn’t find the monument marking some major battle against the Turks. Afterwards we had a nice snack at Tom and Carol’s apartment before taking the train back to Budapest.
On Tuesday I met with Zita Paprika and Gitta at Corvinus to talk about a possible exchange program with MSU College of Social Science and Department of Sociology. They had sent me a copy of their latest catalogue to look up courses that might be a good match for exchange students. I didn’t find much for sociology in their catalogue but went on line and found a degree program in English for Sociology. That had quite a few courses with similar titles and even texts that we might use in our Sociology courses.
But when I met Zita and Gitta, I discovered that the program and those courses were offered by a different faculty. Zita was in the faculty of business and directed its international program. Not that some things couldn’t be worked out but it clearly was not her first choice. So we went over other courses her faculty offered. The best matches were in economics and political science. One or two psych courses were possibilities as were two of the sociology courses in her catalogue. I said I would go back and see about matching the courses to the MSU course descriptions, and would report back to the MSU people on our discussion.
Finding the MSU course description was a minor problem since the MSU website had been totally revamped from scratch and opened April 2. In my opinion whenever programmers redo something from scratch the new version is twice as bad as they say it is going to be good, and inevitably has to be revised.
The new home page has big rotating pictures (including our final four basketball appearance), seven dropdown tabs: About, Admission, Academics, Research, Global, Engagement, and Athletics. Below the rotating pictures were three panels containing a video promotional, three news headlines and one or two upcoming events. While I could navigate to the course descriptions without too much difficulty under the academics tab, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the faculty pages I use for class records, grading etc. The faculty page contained all sorts of links to human resources. It is as if the faculty never has to use the website for class related tasks. After several emails a few people told me how to get where I wanted to go, but it took a minimum of four clicks. So I simply created icons on my desktop that allows me a one click access to where I want to be and I no longer have the MSU website as my home page. [by the next Tuesday, mirabile dictu they have added “logins” for instructor menu and the ANGEL site that has all our course syllabi, assignments etc under the smaller faculty tab on the front page!] But despite my cold and frustration, I managed to find corresponding course titles and descriptions and send off my report.
On Wednesday I managed to give my class presentation on Clinton to Obama health care reform in a very hoarse voice. The students were understanding and the one or two Americans asked about how they or ex-pats would be treated if and when they returned to US. Very good questions and my only response was that it would hopefully be covered in the rules and to contact the US embassy.
I stayed home the rest of the week working on an article on the Obama Health Reforms that Peter will translate into Hungarian and publish at the end of April. Tari meanwhile had to go clothes shopping. Between her continued efforts to eat less and walk more she has dropped a size or two and desperately needed new pants and tops. After checking out a few of the higher end stores at one of the malls on a peanut butter run, she found a reasonably priced clothing store and bought several tops and a pair of pants. She has said several thank yous to whatever impulse led her to buy 3 paris of pants in the US hat were almost too small. They have become a mainstay of her wardrobe.
On Thursday night we treated Kristin and her husband to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She had helped us get through those first few weeks—dealing with the condo manager, getting us cell phones, finding all the heating, water and electric meters in the flat, giving us additional book on Hungary, Budapest, and Hungarian, and explaining how the washing machine worked. The food was great and we had a very nice conversation with them. None of us wanted to leave.
On Friday Fulbright took us to Pecs, one of three or four European Cultural Capitals for 2010. Pecs is a university town with the famous Zsolnay Ceramics and porcelain factory. We met with several of the Fulbrighters who were teaching or working in Pecs. One gave us a tour of the high school where he taught English as a second language and American literature studies. We also had tours of the Zsolnay museum and the Csontvary Museum, the latter containing the works of a rather eccentric 20th century painter. On Friday night we selected tickets to a Varadi Roma Concert. Unfortunately as I have discovered, almost all concerts these days are amplified as if they were blasting into an open field at Woodstock. But this was in a packed small room that couldn’t have seated more that 250 people. The music was good but our ears were ringing. On Saturday afternoon we had free time. We had lunch with Tom, Carol and Lori at a nice restaurant and then Tom took us on a tour of the countryside. We visited an old castle monastery north of Pecs, got lost looking for a second historical ruin and then couldn’t find the monument marking some major battle against the Turks. Afterwards we had a nice snack at Tom and Carol’s apartment before taking the train back to Budapest.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Cluj
We returned to Budapest on Saturday. Tari did several loads of laundry so we would have enough to last us for the next week in Cluj, Romania. On Sunday we went to Deak ter Erzsébet tér and took pictures of the art work representing inventions for women—a large washing machine you could stand in, a vacuum cleaner, an electric iron, a giant lipstick and eyelash mascara applicator with a woman’s pant suit in between, a giant leg with a nylon stocking and a bra.
We got up bright and early Monday morning to catch the train at Keleti pu for Cluj. It is about a seven hour train ride, but it was cheaper than flying and we arrived about the same time we would have if we had flown. We were in first class which had electric outlets so I could plug in my computer and work for quite a while.
We were met by Eugen and Melita his graduate student at the train station. I had met Eugen on my first trip to Cluj in 1999. MSU and Roger Hamlin had sent me there for a month as part of an exchange program with Babes Bolyai University on the topic of civil society. I was sent back two years later for another month and Eugen and I worked on a paper we later presented at APHA in Chicago. I was in Cluj a third time for a week on my own in 2003.
Eugen was going to arrange a conference presentation for me on Health Care Reform: Clinton to Obama. I thought it was going to be on Tuesday but he said it had to be moved to Thursday to accommodate some people who had classes on Tuesday. I had been revising my presentation almost daily as events over the past two week culminated in the passage of the Senate’s health care bill by the House, Obama signing it, and then the passage of the side car fix it bill in the House, then by the Senate. I expected Obama to sign it on Monday but he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. He did sign on it Wednesday so with that last revision, my presentation was complete.
On Monday night we went to the Cluj Jewish Community Seder. We arrive about 7:40 around sunset, but learned the actual service had begun around 7. It looked like they had gone straight through the service, for as we entered they were singing the traditional songs accompanied by a piano and violin. A woman with a trained voice sang Next Year in Jerusalem. So we sat down and after a few minutes began to eat. The food was very good—the matzo balls were really light. We guess about 100 people were there and two tables seemed to have the cantor and choir for they occasionally broke into song and at the end led a chain dance around the room. We sat at what was the head table with the congregation religious leader who was a professor of physical chemistry and his wife, the retired head of the Judaic studies and his wife, and the president of the community group.
On Tuesday we walked around the downtown area. It had changed quite a bit over the ten years. Two way streets were now one way—a sure sign of urban maturity; and a boulevard now has traffic in only one diretion, and thre traffic lanes on the other side were made into a pedestrian walkway. Several of the older hotels and restaurants were closed, and a few rather upscale restaurants had opened. The streets and sidewalks were in good condition. Our hotel, which was an old one had been refurbished.
That evening we had dinner with Shari a Fulbrighter from Rutgers teaching in Social Work. She was in the same department as Eugen but she didn’t know him. She had become very ill during the Fulbright orientation in Bucharest in February and had to be hospitalized. She was grateful for the visits from both the Romanian Fulbright office and someone from the US embassy in Bucharest. She was able to return to Cluj but had taken things easy the past several weeks. She had earned her bachelors and PhD degree from MSU and we quickly found many people in common, including one of her professors who had been a neighbor of ours in East Lansing. He retired and she had been unable to get in touch with him. We had visited him on the West Coast a few years ago and I later sent them both emails to put them back in touch.
We had lunch with the Brubecks on Wednesday. We got more details on their activities in Cluj and the complications of trying to arrange charity concerts in May despite the Cluj airport being closed for a week.
That afternoon we attended a social work class involving dealing with teen pregnancy and smoking. One of the student had planned a set of exercises, role playing etc. It was interesting. Someone sat near us and gave us a rough translation of the main points during the role playing.
My presentation was on Thursday afternoon. Before it began I was interviewed by two local TV stations and a newspaper reported. They wanted to know what could be learned for Romania from the US experience. I said that it was more a matter of political will and politics than rational economic decision making. A large majority was needed and Obama had just enough votes to carry in the Senate. Building a large majority in a Parliamentary system such as Romania might prove to be difficult. The Conservatives would not want anything changed and the liberals would want more than they could possibly get. Obama had spent the previous year making deals with the pharmaceutical companies, American Medical Association, the hospitals, unions etc. I also said that Romania was coming from a different situation than the US. Most Romanian physicians were either hospital employees or got paid by the one single insurance company, compared to US physicians who at one point were more like small businesses and were paid differing amounts by various insurance plans. Many US hospitals had been developed by religious groups so there were Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish hospitals. These had their own financial resources, and the hospitals also were paid by several different insurance plans. Finally physicians and hospital staff in Central and Eastern Europe were often given extra money under the table by patients and their families. When the move towards market insurance and deductibles was put in place a few years earlier, people rebelled. Why pay above the table for something that might be less than what you would get under the “old” system of paying under the table.
The presentation itself went about an hour with a translation after each slide. At first no one asked questions but then some did and the session went on for another twenty minutes or so. Shari was there as was Paul, another Fulbrighter whom I had met on his first Fulbright in 1999. He asked me what I thought would happen in the November elections. I said for the democrats, they would have trouble selling umbrellas on a rainy day. They just never seemed able to get their point across in a way that both captured the media attention and explained what their positions were. But the phasing in of the Health Care reforms over the year—things starting April 1st July 1st and October 1st would give them three built in opportunities to get the word out to different constituencies that would gain benefits. For the republicans, they might be able to take advantage of the confusion and hostility related to such a large change, but for the first time their slogan of Repeal and Restart was not on a par with Contract for America that they used in 1994 after defeating Clinton. While the right wing tea party could keep up the emotional fervor they could also split the party in the forthcoming primaries and possibly in November as well. I thought that was an even handed assessment without a true prediction.
The train ride back was uneventful. It was strange to realize that our home was now the flat, and it was good to get back to familiar surroundings. Having been in Germany and Romania, we were, however, afraid that we had lost what little Hungarian we had picked up.
We got up bright and early Monday morning to catch the train at Keleti pu for Cluj. It is about a seven hour train ride, but it was cheaper than flying and we arrived about the same time we would have if we had flown. We were in first class which had electric outlets so I could plug in my computer and work for quite a while.
We were met by Eugen and Melita his graduate student at the train station. I had met Eugen on my first trip to Cluj in 1999. MSU and Roger Hamlin had sent me there for a month as part of an exchange program with Babes Bolyai University on the topic of civil society. I was sent back two years later for another month and Eugen and I worked on a paper we later presented at APHA in Chicago. I was in Cluj a third time for a week on my own in 2003.
Eugen was going to arrange a conference presentation for me on Health Care Reform: Clinton to Obama. I thought it was going to be on Tuesday but he said it had to be moved to Thursday to accommodate some people who had classes on Tuesday. I had been revising my presentation almost daily as events over the past two week culminated in the passage of the Senate’s health care bill by the House, Obama signing it, and then the passage of the side car fix it bill in the House, then by the Senate. I expected Obama to sign it on Monday but he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. He did sign on it Wednesday so with that last revision, my presentation was complete.
On Monday night we went to the Cluj Jewish Community Seder. We arrive about 7:40 around sunset, but learned the actual service had begun around 7. It looked like they had gone straight through the service, for as we entered they were singing the traditional songs accompanied by a piano and violin. A woman with a trained voice sang Next Year in Jerusalem. So we sat down and after a few minutes began to eat. The food was very good—the matzo balls were really light. We guess about 100 people were there and two tables seemed to have the cantor and choir for they occasionally broke into song and at the end led a chain dance around the room. We sat at what was the head table with the congregation religious leader who was a professor of physical chemistry and his wife, the retired head of the Judaic studies and his wife, and the president of the community group.
On Tuesday we walked around the downtown area. It had changed quite a bit over the ten years. Two way streets were now one way—a sure sign of urban maturity; and a boulevard now has traffic in only one diretion, and thre traffic lanes on the other side were made into a pedestrian walkway. Several of the older hotels and restaurants were closed, and a few rather upscale restaurants had opened. The streets and sidewalks were in good condition. Our hotel, which was an old one had been refurbished.
That evening we had dinner with Shari a Fulbrighter from Rutgers teaching in Social Work. She was in the same department as Eugen but she didn’t know him. She had become very ill during the Fulbright orientation in Bucharest in February and had to be hospitalized. She was grateful for the visits from both the Romanian Fulbright office and someone from the US embassy in Bucharest. She was able to return to Cluj but had taken things easy the past several weeks. She had earned her bachelors and PhD degree from MSU and we quickly found many people in common, including one of her professors who had been a neighbor of ours in East Lansing. He retired and she had been unable to get in touch with him. We had visited him on the West Coast a few years ago and I later sent them both emails to put them back in touch.
We had lunch with the Brubecks on Wednesday. We got more details on their activities in Cluj and the complications of trying to arrange charity concerts in May despite the Cluj airport being closed for a week.
That afternoon we attended a social work class involving dealing with teen pregnancy and smoking. One of the student had planned a set of exercises, role playing etc. It was interesting. Someone sat near us and gave us a rough translation of the main points during the role playing.
My presentation was on Thursday afternoon. Before it began I was interviewed by two local TV stations and a newspaper reported. They wanted to know what could be learned for Romania from the US experience. I said that it was more a matter of political will and politics than rational economic decision making. A large majority was needed and Obama had just enough votes to carry in the Senate. Building a large majority in a Parliamentary system such as Romania might prove to be difficult. The Conservatives would not want anything changed and the liberals would want more than they could possibly get. Obama had spent the previous year making deals with the pharmaceutical companies, American Medical Association, the hospitals, unions etc. I also said that Romania was coming from a different situation than the US. Most Romanian physicians were either hospital employees or got paid by the one single insurance company, compared to US physicians who at one point were more like small businesses and were paid differing amounts by various insurance plans. Many US hospitals had been developed by religious groups so there were Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish hospitals. These had their own financial resources, and the hospitals also were paid by several different insurance plans. Finally physicians and hospital staff in Central and Eastern Europe were often given extra money under the table by patients and their families. When the move towards market insurance and deductibles was put in place a few years earlier, people rebelled. Why pay above the table for something that might be less than what you would get under the “old” system of paying under the table.
The presentation itself went about an hour with a translation after each slide. At first no one asked questions but then some did and the session went on for another twenty minutes or so. Shari was there as was Paul, another Fulbrighter whom I had met on his first Fulbright in 1999. He asked me what I thought would happen in the November elections. I said for the democrats, they would have trouble selling umbrellas on a rainy day. They just never seemed able to get their point across in a way that both captured the media attention and explained what their positions were. But the phasing in of the Health Care reforms over the year—things starting April 1st July 1st and October 1st would give them three built in opportunities to get the word out to different constituencies that would gain benefits. For the republicans, they might be able to take advantage of the confusion and hostility related to such a large change, but for the first time their slogan of Repeal and Restart was not on a par with Contract for America that they used in 1994 after defeating Clinton. While the right wing tea party could keep up the emotional fervor they could also split the party in the forthcoming primaries and possibly in November as well. I thought that was an even handed assessment without a true prediction.
The train ride back was uneventful. It was strange to realize that our home was now the flat, and it was good to get back to familiar surroundings. Having been in Germany and Romania, we were, however, afraid that we had lost what little Hungarian we had picked up.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Berlin
We flew to Berlin on Saturday. We took the Blue Metro to the last stop and got on the airport bus so the trip was covered by our monthly pass. The only trouble was that our flight to Munich was delayed an hour and a half, which meant we would miss our connection from Munich to Berlin. Lufthansa gave no explanation at all, which was duly noted on the satisfaction survey we were given at the end of the flight. We were booked on the next flight to Berlin and had some time to spend in Munich. While at the airport we found a store that sold stuffed animals, including lambs. Our grandson is really into lambs like other kids are into blankets or teddy bears. Tari was looking around and found a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We bought it and plan to add “Wolfie” to our grandson’s flock.
We were a bit anxious about the delays since we desperately needed to exchange dollars for Euros in order to pay for the registration in cash. We had ‘gambled’ correctly that the Euro would fall. But the currency exchanges closed at 8pm on Saturday and would not open again until Monday morning. We got to Berlin, hopped on the TXL bus that wound its way through the city, but terminated at Alexanderplatz, where our hotel was. We got off and finally found the Park Inn hotel entrance. We went to the concierge who directed us to the currency exchange in the train station. We found it at 7:35 but it looked closed. We paced back and forth wondering what to do when suddenly someone else opened the door. We dashed in and got our dollars changed. We then went back to the hotel and up to the restaurant where Fulbright was sponsoring a dinner for early arrivals. It was almost 8pm and we asked if the Fulbright dinner was still on. Since it was a giant buffet they said no problem. So we found a table with the requisite green paper napkins, parked our luggage and took turns going to the buffet. After eating we finally checked in.
The Fulbright Seminar in Berlin brings together the American Fulbrighters in Germany and other European countries along with those German students selected to study in US academic year 2010-11. The number attending the seminar, including spouses and significant others was over 500. Our name tags had our name and Hungary, while the American Fulbrighters in Germany had the name of their German university or location. The German students going to the US in the fall had their names, their German University and then in very small letters, their US destination school.
Tari found one couple who had Romania on their nametags. We found out they were in Cluj where we were going next week. So we sat with Darius and Catherine Brubeck for dinner. He was teaching jazz music (being the son of Dave Brubeck), but we talked about a lot of things ranging from health care reform which was being voted on that day to grandchildren. On Tuesday night Darius played at a Fulbright music gala that included performances by several other Fulbright musicians and singers.
Tari and I “networked” with some students. One was going to visit Budapest next week and we talked about what she should see. She then added she was going to Poland; Tari mentioned that one of the Fulbrighters in Hungary was going to Poland. On our way out we met Lori and brought her back to the student’s table to introduce them.
German shops are closed from late Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. But for some reason, this Sunday was one of the handful of exceptions during the year. As a result the stores were open. We went to the Galeria department store across from the hotel. On the fifth floor in house wares we found an oven thermometer which we purchased on the spot. We can take it back to Budapest and then perhaps mark up the oven knob for major temperature settings.
The opening session was entitled “When will my money be safe?” The first speaker was a managing partner in a Frankfurt investing firm. As with most economists, he started with what I thought was an untenable assumption: that all market bubbles were not over until the downside bottomed out at the point where the bubble first started expanding. He was some sort of free market economist who firmly believed that the market was a zero sum game. That is, all market losses should be accounted for and the lost value transferred to someone else; in the current downturn he argued that the value transferred from the West to China. He was convinced that a second mortgage collapse in the US was imminent because too many middle class had taken out loans on second or even third homes about three years earlier (but of course no one I knew did that). Finally turning to the hot topic of the day, he thought that the EU should not try to bail out Greece, or possibly Ireland, Portugal and Spain (facetiously known as the PIGS), after all would the US bail out California or Illinois?
Some of the other seminar panels were better than expected. A set of project reports mostly by research students were well chosen and were more interesting than their narrow titles suggested. In another session seven Fulbrighters discussed their experiences and the challenges they faced. None of them, however, was a visiting lecturer like me and so I thought a perspective was missing. The Fulbright Alumni Association encouraged everyone to keep in touch when they returned. Perhaps the most interesting session featured a visiting political science professor who wrote a book on the Berlin wall and a German who was the former coordinator of German American relations and a former politician. His historical and political insights were fantastic. He said that Germany in particular believed that social democracy required keeping the lower classes involved politically and this meant providing social support and welfare programs as compared to the US where the lower classes were not encouraged to participate politically. In answer to a question he pointed out that denial and conspiracy theories are an indication of an anti-democratic mentality whether it was of the holocaust, the moon landing, 9-11 or Darwinian evolution.
I found Berlin frustrating in one respect. I cannot find things on the street that I see on the maps. The U and S Bahn (metros) are well marked on the map, but we had difficulty finding out where we were once we got to street level, as streets go off in at least five directions. We have been in cities lacking strict grid patterns like Paris or Vienna, but those have a ring and spoke pattern that is easy enough to follow. Many cities grew up around a castle with several defensive walls, but I was told that Berlin was a merger of two cities that expanded into each other and then grew out to absorb other nearby towns. Travel by conference or city buses were along broad avenues that gently twisted and turned through the city, giving a false impression of straight direction, but again once off the bus it took a few minutes to figure out which of several streets we wanted to go down. Several times we were intently studying our maps when we heard a bell because we were in the middle of the bicycle lane and had to move out of the way.
After several meals in the Park Inn restaurant/buffet, I jokingly said to Tari, “Let’s eat at a real German restaurant." So she went though a handout Berlin guide and found a small list of regional restaurants, one was on Grosse Hamburger only a few blocks from Alexanderplatz. But of course we walked several block out of our way before we figured out how to get there. Another night I wanted wiener schnitzel and found an Austrian restaurant on Bergmann Str. But what seemed like a few short blocks from the U-Bahn station turned out to be several very long ones. When we got to the restaurant we found the first opening for two would be in an hour and a half. We retraced our steps and found another Austrian restaurant. The food at both restaurants we ate at was very good.
During free time on Tuesday Tari and I walked down Unter den Linden (although it was too early for the trees to have leaves.) to the Brandenburg gate. We went over to the holocaust memorial, an interesting array of stone slabs of different heights on a somewhat rolling surface. You could walk down and be overwhelmed as if lost in a maze except for the precise grid pattern that allowed you to get out straight ahead or to either side. We continued on to Checkpoint Charlie, a shack in the middle of the street, a symbolic memento of the cold war. Several of the senior people attending the Seminar had been to Berlin while the wall was up and more had travelled to Berlin when the wall came down in 1989. I suspect the city had an enthralling tension that appealed to them that I didn’t feel. It turns out that several years after the wall was torn down, people wanted to know where it had been, so a double row of bricks now marks its former encirclement of West Berlin. Nevertheless a few days later in Potsdamer Platz I swuccumbed. I paid 2,50 Euro to have the last page of my passport stamped with the official 1960’s border crossing visas and Tari took a picture of me in front of one of the wall segments.
On Thursday we went with fellow Hungarian Fulbrighters the Kellems to Schloss Charlotte, and saw the private rooms. On Friday Tari and I spent almost five hours in the Pergamon Museum looking at the Greek edifices and sculptures and the Gates of Ishtar along with other Mesopotamian statues and artifacts.
The Fulbright Seminar ended on Thursday and I thought I would save a few Euros by moving to a slightly cheaper hotel for the extra two nights. But I hadn’t noticed that the breakfast was not included and that brought it back up to the price at the Park Inn. The Fulbright must have gotten a fantastic rate at the Park Inn for taking several hundred rooms. Our new lodgings were more minimalist than hotels we have stayed at in Japan—no dressers or closets, or bars of soap (only small containers of body shampoo wash), and only one wall plug in the whole room.
We were a bit anxious about the delays since we desperately needed to exchange dollars for Euros in order to pay for the registration in cash. We had ‘gambled’ correctly that the Euro would fall. But the currency exchanges closed at 8pm on Saturday and would not open again until Monday morning. We got to Berlin, hopped on the TXL bus that wound its way through the city, but terminated at Alexanderplatz, where our hotel was. We got off and finally found the Park Inn hotel entrance. We went to the concierge who directed us to the currency exchange in the train station. We found it at 7:35 but it looked closed. We paced back and forth wondering what to do when suddenly someone else opened the door. We dashed in and got our dollars changed. We then went back to the hotel and up to the restaurant where Fulbright was sponsoring a dinner for early arrivals. It was almost 8pm and we asked if the Fulbright dinner was still on. Since it was a giant buffet they said no problem. So we found a table with the requisite green paper napkins, parked our luggage and took turns going to the buffet. After eating we finally checked in.
The Fulbright Seminar in Berlin brings together the American Fulbrighters in Germany and other European countries along with those German students selected to study in US academic year 2010-11. The number attending the seminar, including spouses and significant others was over 500. Our name tags had our name and Hungary, while the American Fulbrighters in Germany had the name of their German university or location. The German students going to the US in the fall had their names, their German University and then in very small letters, their US destination school.
Tari found one couple who had Romania on their nametags. We found out they were in Cluj where we were going next week. So we sat with Darius and Catherine Brubeck for dinner. He was teaching jazz music (being the son of Dave Brubeck), but we talked about a lot of things ranging from health care reform which was being voted on that day to grandchildren. On Tuesday night Darius played at a Fulbright music gala that included performances by several other Fulbright musicians and singers.
Tari and I “networked” with some students. One was going to visit Budapest next week and we talked about what she should see. She then added she was going to Poland; Tari mentioned that one of the Fulbrighters in Hungary was going to Poland. On our way out we met Lori and brought her back to the student’s table to introduce them.
German shops are closed from late Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. But for some reason, this Sunday was one of the handful of exceptions during the year. As a result the stores were open. We went to the Galeria department store across from the hotel. On the fifth floor in house wares we found an oven thermometer which we purchased on the spot. We can take it back to Budapest and then perhaps mark up the oven knob for major temperature settings.
The opening session was entitled “When will my money be safe?” The first speaker was a managing partner in a Frankfurt investing firm. As with most economists, he started with what I thought was an untenable assumption: that all market bubbles were not over until the downside bottomed out at the point where the bubble first started expanding. He was some sort of free market economist who firmly believed that the market was a zero sum game. That is, all market losses should be accounted for and the lost value transferred to someone else; in the current downturn he argued that the value transferred from the West to China. He was convinced that a second mortgage collapse in the US was imminent because too many middle class had taken out loans on second or even third homes about three years earlier (but of course no one I knew did that). Finally turning to the hot topic of the day, he thought that the EU should not try to bail out Greece, or possibly Ireland, Portugal and Spain (facetiously known as the PIGS), after all would the US bail out California or Illinois?
Some of the other seminar panels were better than expected. A set of project reports mostly by research students were well chosen and were more interesting than their narrow titles suggested. In another session seven Fulbrighters discussed their experiences and the challenges they faced. None of them, however, was a visiting lecturer like me and so I thought a perspective was missing. The Fulbright Alumni Association encouraged everyone to keep in touch when they returned. Perhaps the most interesting session featured a visiting political science professor who wrote a book on the Berlin wall and a German who was the former coordinator of German American relations and a former politician. His historical and political insights were fantastic. He said that Germany in particular believed that social democracy required keeping the lower classes involved politically and this meant providing social support and welfare programs as compared to the US where the lower classes were not encouraged to participate politically. In answer to a question he pointed out that denial and conspiracy theories are an indication of an anti-democratic mentality whether it was of the holocaust, the moon landing, 9-11 or Darwinian evolution.
I found Berlin frustrating in one respect. I cannot find things on the street that I see on the maps. The U and S Bahn (metros) are well marked on the map, but we had difficulty finding out where we were once we got to street level, as streets go off in at least five directions. We have been in cities lacking strict grid patterns like Paris or Vienna, but those have a ring and spoke pattern that is easy enough to follow. Many cities grew up around a castle with several defensive walls, but I was told that Berlin was a merger of two cities that expanded into each other and then grew out to absorb other nearby towns. Travel by conference or city buses were along broad avenues that gently twisted and turned through the city, giving a false impression of straight direction, but again once off the bus it took a few minutes to figure out which of several streets we wanted to go down. Several times we were intently studying our maps when we heard a bell because we were in the middle of the bicycle lane and had to move out of the way.
After several meals in the Park Inn restaurant/buffet, I jokingly said to Tari, “Let’s eat at a real German restaurant." So she went though a handout Berlin guide and found a small list of regional restaurants, one was on Grosse Hamburger only a few blocks from Alexanderplatz. But of course we walked several block out of our way before we figured out how to get there. Another night I wanted wiener schnitzel and found an Austrian restaurant on Bergmann Str. But what seemed like a few short blocks from the U-Bahn station turned out to be several very long ones. When we got to the restaurant we found the first opening for two would be in an hour and a half. We retraced our steps and found another Austrian restaurant. The food at both restaurants we ate at was very good.
During free time on Tuesday Tari and I walked down Unter den Linden (although it was too early for the trees to have leaves.) to the Brandenburg gate. We went over to the holocaust memorial, an interesting array of stone slabs of different heights on a somewhat rolling surface. You could walk down and be overwhelmed as if lost in a maze except for the precise grid pattern that allowed you to get out straight ahead or to either side. We continued on to Checkpoint Charlie, a shack in the middle of the street, a symbolic memento of the cold war. Several of the senior people attending the Seminar had been to Berlin while the wall was up and more had travelled to Berlin when the wall came down in 1989. I suspect the city had an enthralling tension that appealed to them that I didn’t feel. It turns out that several years after the wall was torn down, people wanted to know where it had been, so a double row of bricks now marks its former encirclement of West Berlin. Nevertheless a few days later in Potsdamer Platz I swuccumbed. I paid 2,50 Euro to have the last page of my passport stamped with the official 1960’s border crossing visas and Tari took a picture of me in front of one of the wall segments.
On Thursday we went with fellow Hungarian Fulbrighters the Kellems to Schloss Charlotte, and saw the private rooms. On Friday Tari and I spent almost five hours in the Pergamon Museum looking at the Greek edifices and sculptures and the Gates of Ishtar along with other Mesopotamian statues and artifacts.
The Fulbright Seminar ended on Thursday and I thought I would save a few Euros by moving to a slightly cheaper hotel for the extra two nights. But I hadn’t noticed that the breakfast was not included and that brought it back up to the price at the Park Inn. The Fulbright must have gotten a fantastic rate at the Park Inn for taking several hundred rooms. Our new lodgings were more minimalist than hotels we have stayed at in Japan—no dressers or closets, or bars of soap (only small containers of body shampoo wash), and only one wall plug in the whole room.
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