Well, the Serbian elections went off pretty much without a bang, despite me listening intently for the sound of gunshots or riots in the street as I sat watching the results unfurl on the television.
Nikolic, the Radical Party candidate, won resoundingly, although that doesn't necessarily mean that he will win on February 3rd, when the top two candidates have a run-off to see who will be President. Tadic, the second candidate and current President, is doing his best at the moment to present his opponent as an ultra nationalist crazy (well, its pretty much true) who will take Serbia back to the bad old days of war, sanctions and international pariah status.
While this may be fair enough, Tadic himself is insisting that Kosovo will not be allowed to separate from Serbia, and denying (despite much evidence to the contrary) that the EU he is so desperate to join will have any problem with this. We'll see. The President is largely a figurehead anyway, but in the unstable way of Balkans politics this could easily be changed if a strong enough President came into the position. Milosevic switched between Prime Minister and President a number of times during his career, just ensuring that whichever position he held at the time was the one with the power.
It won't do Serbia any good to have Radical Nikolic as President, if he wins on February 3. But then maybe it would certain NATO countries stand up and realise that imposing sanctions on a country so that people reach near starvation point, bombing them, and now preventing them from travelling abroad (Serbs face queues of 8 hours if they want a visa to go to Germany, and are often then refused it) does not a West-loving country make.
In between the times I've been watching Serbian news re the election I've been going to see Serbian language films. This unfortunately does not mean my Serbian has improved, just that I'm developing a lot of patience and becoming good at reading Balkan facial expressions. When I say Serbian films, I mean specifically one, which I went to see the other night with James and his friend Vladimir, a Serbian who grew up in Zimbabwe and is now doing his PhD at LSE, and thus made a very good interpretor for when I really just wanted to know what the hell was going on in the move.
It was called 'Belle Epoque, or the Last Waltz of Sarajevo' and I recommend it to everyone, and really hope that it gets release in the West. The movie was actually made in 1990, and was in post-production when the war began and thus ended up collecting dust in a basement somewhere where it thankfully survived the bombings. It has only just been released, and has had some showings at international festivals in Europe, but hopefully it will get beyond the arthouse circuit so people will actually see it.
The nexus around which the story turns is the assasination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, told through the eyes of a young aspiring filmmaker whose loyalties are torn between his mother, who has cuddled up to the Austro-Hungarian regime, and the girl he loves who is an underground revolutionary working for the terrorist group 'Mlada Bosna'. One thing I was interested to find out through the film was that Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Franz Ferdinand, actually worked for the Sarajevo based Mlada Bosna, a socialist-leaning group fighting for Bosnian independence, and not the Greater Serb nationalists the Black Hand. I don't know about anyone else, but I was always taught in school it was the Black Hand who killed F-F, not a socialist leaning Bosnian independence group. The lies they tell us! (This reminds me of a quote of Gloria Steinham's I heard yesterday - The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off. Not that Steinham is usually my favourite person to quote, but here I totally agree).
Anyway, the film was actually very moving, and did a good job of showing the tangled web of allegiances that was early twentieth century Sarajevo. The director made a somewhat heavy-handed statement at the beginning about how you need to understand the violent way in which Sarajevo began the twentieth century to udnerstand the violent way it ended it (I don't buy pointless attempts at historical symmetry) but apart from this the film was relatively free of reductionism or didacticism. If it comes out with English subtitles, I want someone to tell me, because if I could understand the dialogue it would mean even more...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Burek and Palachinke, or why going on a diet in Serbia is a lost cause
After six months of breaking every healthy eating rule in Russia (not hard in a country where there is no such thing as skim milk and fruit is what you get inside sour cherry cheesecake) James and I decided to kick the sugar habit and start our Serbian sojourn as paragons of nutrition. We live just five minute's walk from the best fresh produce market in Belgrade, and some of my best experiences in the city so far have been chatting to the vendors in my broken Serbian, trying to explain sweet potato (sladkii potato? potato with sugar? Ne, young girl, not possible!) or being dragged by one seller to his competitor's stall to get better avocados than the ones he was offering.
As a result, we have done a great job of filling our new apartment with pomegranites and oranges from Turkey, fresh nuts, dried figs, and a huge mound of carrots and potatos we buy from a woman who brings them from her farm every day, having dug them up herself. Lack of healthy options is therefore not what is stopping me becoming a zen temple of healthy eating. The real problem, and one around which I can see no way, is our local 'pekara', or insidious purveyor of delicious, melt-in-you-mouth baked goods, smells from which waft in the apartment if I step out onto our balcony in the morning.
The pekara sells what I'm fast learning are the usual suspects of Serbian heart-attack-on-a-plate food. These include burek, something which can essentially be found all over the Mediterranean (in Greece its spanakopita, for everyone back home in Australia), but on which the Serbians have their own twist. Thick layers of buttery pastry encase a gooey mixture of goats cheese, vegetables and (if you want) meat. They cut it like a huge pie and give you an enermous wedge which, if you are a proper Balkanite, you are meant to eat with sour yoghurt as an accompaniment (this may sound strange, but in Russia I got into the habit of having deliciously tart sour cream or smetana as an accompaniment to everything, from soup to a bowl of porridge, and find I can't eat anything decadent without that wonderful sour taste any more). Along with this, they sell freshly baked 'kifla', crescent shaped serbian bread rolls, and the best croissant and pain au chocolat I've had outside Paris.
As if this temptation wasn't enough of a stress confronting me everyday when I walk out the door of our building, each time I go into the city centre I am faced with endless palachinke stalls - thats bliny, or crepes, or pancakes, depending on where you are from. Palachinke are most like the bliny we had in Russia than anything else I've had - huge, and typically filled with sour cream and vegetables, or jam, caramel, chocalate, whatever will give you a coronary basically. I had one on Sunday that was nutella, vanilla icecream and peanut caramel, nearly fainted half way through from the sugar rush and had to throw the rest dramatically away. Wasting sugary rich food is something I never do, so this is testament to the diabetes-in-solid-form nature of Serbian delicacies.
To be fair, Belgraders need something in their lives to cheer them up - they've had bombs, sanctions, and dictators in the last eight years, so I can't really begrudge them a (chocolate covered) pancake or five. It just doesn't really help my new year's resolution to be fabulously healthy. Funnily enough, Serbians all seem very svelte. I have no idea how the palachinke stalls stay in business because no one looks like they've been eating that many of them. Perhaps its some fabulous Balkans diet secret I can make money writing a book about and selling back home. Or perhaps they just have more self-discipline than a two week old puppy. Which is more than I can say for myself.
As a result, we have done a great job of filling our new apartment with pomegranites and oranges from Turkey, fresh nuts, dried figs, and a huge mound of carrots and potatos we buy from a woman who brings them from her farm every day, having dug them up herself. Lack of healthy options is therefore not what is stopping me becoming a zen temple of healthy eating. The real problem, and one around which I can see no way, is our local 'pekara', or insidious purveyor of delicious, melt-in-you-mouth baked goods, smells from which waft in the apartment if I step out onto our balcony in the morning.
The pekara sells what I'm fast learning are the usual suspects of Serbian heart-attack-on-a-plate food. These include burek, something which can essentially be found all over the Mediterranean (in Greece its spanakopita, for everyone back home in Australia), but on which the Serbians have their own twist. Thick layers of buttery pastry encase a gooey mixture of goats cheese, vegetables and (if you want) meat. They cut it like a huge pie and give you an enermous wedge which, if you are a proper Balkanite, you are meant to eat with sour yoghurt as an accompaniment (this may sound strange, but in Russia I got into the habit of having deliciously tart sour cream or smetana as an accompaniment to everything, from soup to a bowl of porridge, and find I can't eat anything decadent without that wonderful sour taste any more). Along with this, they sell freshly baked 'kifla', crescent shaped serbian bread rolls, and the best croissant and pain au chocolat I've had outside Paris.
As if this temptation wasn't enough of a stress confronting me everyday when I walk out the door of our building, each time I go into the city centre I am faced with endless palachinke stalls - thats bliny, or crepes, or pancakes, depending on where you are from. Palachinke are most like the bliny we had in Russia than anything else I've had - huge, and typically filled with sour cream and vegetables, or jam, caramel, chocalate, whatever will give you a coronary basically. I had one on Sunday that was nutella, vanilla icecream and peanut caramel, nearly fainted half way through from the sugar rush and had to throw the rest dramatically away. Wasting sugary rich food is something I never do, so this is testament to the diabetes-in-solid-form nature of Serbian delicacies.
To be fair, Belgraders need something in their lives to cheer them up - they've had bombs, sanctions, and dictators in the last eight years, so I can't really begrudge them a (chocolate covered) pancake or five. It just doesn't really help my new year's resolution to be fabulously healthy. Funnily enough, Serbians all seem very svelte. I have no idea how the palachinke stalls stay in business because no one looks like they've been eating that many of them. Perhaps its some fabulous Balkans diet secret I can make money writing a book about and selling back home. Or perhaps they just have more self-discipline than a two week old puppy. Which is more than I can say for myself.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Serbia as global East, or Why I don't always trust BBC News
As Edward Said famously pointed out, it has long been a tradition in the West to view the East as savage and wild. Serbia, as a global pariah, suffers from this more than most places despite it being on the very edge of what would be considered global East at all (indeed, many Serbians see themselves as one step away from EU membership, but I have a feeling they are going to be disappointed...). A very mild version of this notion of the Balkans as an untrapped wilderness came to light yesterday as we were sitting in sunlight infused cafe having a chat with Igor, a friend of James'. About a week ago the BBC was reporting wild storms lashing the Balkans, and causing havoc on the streets of its major cities. I expressed surprise that the weather had calmed down so quickly, as yesterday it could have almost been spring, and people were striding through the streets with sunglasses or shaking off their too-heavy coats. Igor snorted into his coffee. He shrugged his shoulders and said 'But of course - this is the East. Naturally our weather is more wild, our people more crazy and our politics more absurd.' He rolled his eyes and with that look dimissed any faith I had had in the BBC's neutral reporting skills, at least when it comes to Serbia.
I had already experienced a bit of Igor's frustration at world media myself, while living in Russia. The recent Russian election was a charade, and everyone I spoke to seemed fully aware of this. There was never any question that United Russia would not win by a landslide, and later reports of coerced voting in some regions came as no surprise to most people I knew in St Petersburg (that said, St Petersburgers I spoke to were very proud that their region returned the smalled vote for United Russia, despite Putin being a local - in fact I believe it was the only region in Russia where United Russia did not win the vote, an honour that went instead to the semi-liberal A Just Russia).
You would think the BBC would have enough material from this with which to demonise the Russian electoral process. However, their coverage of the election focussed so disproportionatly on Garry Kasparov and his doomed-from-the-start attempt to register his Other Russia party for the election. Kasparov is a very attractive figure for Western media, it seems, despite the fact that he is (quite transparently) a right-wing neo liberal whose policies reflect the interests and concerns of approximately 0.5% of the Russian population, at least those Russians I have spoken to. What is worse, Other Russia is a party made up not only of Kasparov's party The United Civil Front, but also Eduard Limonov's quasi-fascist National Bolshevik Party, a fact the BBC conveniently fails to mention in its coverage of Other Russia's protests.
None of this is to say, of course, that Kasparov and Other Russia were not completely right to protest their exclusion from the electoral process, and expecially their terrible treatment by the Russian police in the March of Discontent in November. What is irritiating is just that the BBC represent this strange collection of neo-liberals and quasi-fascists as Russia's only hope, and heorise them without interrogating what their ideas are.
As far as I know, Serbia has no equivalent to Other Russia, at least not one that is challenging the presidential election which will take place in seven days. It will be interesting to see how people respond to the outcome - I have seen an equal amount of graffiti supporting Tadic and Nikolic, and heaps along the lines of 'One Serbia. Kosovo leaves us never.' We'll see.
As well as deciphering election posters and graffiti, I've been checking out some of the more aesthetic attractions of the White City, including St Sava's cathedral, apparently the largest orthodox cathedral in the world. It is about a five minute walk from our apartment, and its dome dominates the whole area's skyline (infact, the whole city's). It is all very impressive from the outside, but on the inside its a shell, as they are still finishing the building over 100 years after it was started. Much more interesting is Maly St Sava's (maly=little) which is next to the cathedral and stands in as a surrogate church while building continues. It was finished in 1895 and is a gorgeous church which reminds me of a smaller version of St Basil's in Moscow - the walls are covered with psychadelic murals and the doorframe is worn where the congregation members kiss it on their way in. I wandered in while a service was in process - apparently acceptable in orthodox services, during which everyone stands up anyway and people wander around kissing icons while the priest sings - and let the music and incense wash over me as I checked out the images of St Sava, Serbia's most holy saint.
I'll post again once we know the election results, or something else exciting happens. In the mean time, for anyone for whom my comments re Serbia are inspiring a burning desire to know more about the Balkans (!) the English language website of B92, a major TV network here, is the best source of news I've found. Today its front page is dominated by an image of St Savas from last night, which was the Julien calendar new year, and Tadic's recent pronouncements on Kosovo. I havn't read it thoroughly enough yet to know which side they take politically, but it may be worth checking out anyway. Ciao for now.
I had already experienced a bit of Igor's frustration at world media myself, while living in Russia. The recent Russian election was a charade, and everyone I spoke to seemed fully aware of this. There was never any question that United Russia would not win by a landslide, and later reports of coerced voting in some regions came as no surprise to most people I knew in St Petersburg (that said, St Petersburgers I spoke to were very proud that their region returned the smalled vote for United Russia, despite Putin being a local - in fact I believe it was the only region in Russia where United Russia did not win the vote, an honour that went instead to the semi-liberal A Just Russia).
You would think the BBC would have enough material from this with which to demonise the Russian electoral process. However, their coverage of the election focussed so disproportionatly on Garry Kasparov and his doomed-from-the-start attempt to register his Other Russia party for the election. Kasparov is a very attractive figure for Western media, it seems, despite the fact that he is (quite transparently) a right-wing neo liberal whose policies reflect the interests and concerns of approximately 0.5% of the Russian population, at least those Russians I have spoken to. What is worse, Other Russia is a party made up not only of Kasparov's party The United Civil Front, but also Eduard Limonov's quasi-fascist National Bolshevik Party, a fact the BBC conveniently fails to mention in its coverage of Other Russia's protests.
None of this is to say, of course, that Kasparov and Other Russia were not completely right to protest their exclusion from the electoral process, and expecially their terrible treatment by the Russian police in the March of Discontent in November. What is irritiating is just that the BBC represent this strange collection of neo-liberals and quasi-fascists as Russia's only hope, and heorise them without interrogating what their ideas are.
As far as I know, Serbia has no equivalent to Other Russia, at least not one that is challenging the presidential election which will take place in seven days. It will be interesting to see how people respond to the outcome - I have seen an equal amount of graffiti supporting Tadic and Nikolic, and heaps along the lines of 'One Serbia. Kosovo leaves us never.' We'll see.
As well as deciphering election posters and graffiti, I've been checking out some of the more aesthetic attractions of the White City, including St Sava's cathedral, apparently the largest orthodox cathedral in the world. It is about a five minute walk from our apartment, and its dome dominates the whole area's skyline (infact, the whole city's). It is all very impressive from the outside, but on the inside its a shell, as they are still finishing the building over 100 years after it was started. Much more interesting is Maly St Sava's (maly=little) which is next to the cathedral and stands in as a surrogate church while building continues. It was finished in 1895 and is a gorgeous church which reminds me of a smaller version of St Basil's in Moscow - the walls are covered with psychadelic murals and the doorframe is worn where the congregation members kiss it on their way in. I wandered in while a service was in process - apparently acceptable in orthodox services, during which everyone stands up anyway and people wander around kissing icons while the priest sings - and let the music and incense wash over me as I checked out the images of St Sava, Serbia's most holy saint.
I'll post again once we know the election results, or something else exciting happens. In the mean time, for anyone for whom my comments re Serbia are inspiring a burning desire to know more about the Balkans (!) the English language website of B92, a major TV network here, is the best source of news I've found. Today its front page is dominated by an image of St Savas from last night, which was the Julien calendar new year, and Tadic's recent pronouncements on Kosovo. I havn't read it thoroughly enough yet to know which side they take politically, but it may be worth checking out anyway. Ciao for now.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Srbija!
Much as I love the nomadic lifestyle, I was relieved on Tuesday to arrive home again, albeit a new home where James and I were, at least for the first night, sans apartment or mobile or any other signifiers of a life. My first view of Belgrade, the said new home, was not overly promising, as we arrived in the middle of a thick fog when no one could see more than half a metre in front of them, and the ground was covered in snow and treacherous ice (I saw at least four Belgraders come to grief on it, which only seemed to amuse them...) If I wanted to be poetic a could say the fog was a good metaphor for my own semi-blindness in a new country, but really it was just annoying as I was impatient to explore Belgrade having heard so much about it from James and Serbian friends.
Luckily, by yesterday the fog had lifted and we had a beautiful day wandering around and exploring before we moved into our new apartment in the evening. Belgrade is both as run down and derelict as I expected, and as vibrant and festive feeling as I had been led to believe by friends who had been here. The best way I could think of to describe Belgrade (having just come from St Petersburg) was the Dublin of the Balkans - not as pretty as the other showcase cities of Eastern Europe, but much friendlier, cheaper, and more quirky. The main legacy of centuries of Turkish rule is a plethora of great cafes, a relief after the hell of drinking coffee in Rossija. Everyone here seems to spend their time, as far as I can tell, sitting in cafes chatting and waiting for the bars to open so they can go, drink rakija and dance the night away. As a result of this, the city has the vaguely romantic yet decaying look about it, as no one seems to want to take the time to clean it up. That said, the few really tourist-tastic sites in Belgrade live up to their hype - we spent the afternoon yesterday wandering around Kalemegdan, the most ancient site in the city. This is where the Romans built a fort in the first century AD, which was later turned into a medieval stronghold and has been crumbling and being rebuilt ever since. One of the great benefits of the aforementioned aversion Belgraders seem to have to beautifying their city is that, with sites like Kalemegdan, what you see is what you get - no one rebuilt it in faux-gothic style in the early twentieth century or anything. You really are wandering over an ancient fort and the effect is magical, something heightened by the position of the site which is on a promontary overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the two great Serbian waterways. I wanted to add a picture we took while tripping through the ruins yesterday but unfortunately my camera isn't hooking up to my computer properly at the moment, so here is one not taken by me to give you a feel for the place...
The big news in Belgrade at the moment is the Presidential election, due to take place in ten days. Having just come from a Russia gripped with election fever, I felt a distinct sense of deja vu when I was confronted by the election posters advertising Boris Tadic (incumbent President and quasi-liberal) and Tomislav Nikolic (the candidate for the Serbia Radical Party, which is led by Vojislav Šešelj - Šešelj cannot run for president as he is currently on trial for war crimes in the Hague...) Unlike the Russian election, the result of this one is not a foregone conclusion - though Tadic is likely to win, Nikolic has a lot of support. Flicking through the Serbian television news last night I saw campaign speeches on ten of the fifteen channels, and many people interviewed on the news were voicing their support for the Radicals. Time will tell what the result will be...and what the affect of that result will be on the negotiations regarding Kosovo.
Luckily, by yesterday the fog had lifted and we had a beautiful day wandering around and exploring before we moved into our new apartment in the evening. Belgrade is both as run down and derelict as I expected, and as vibrant and festive feeling as I had been led to believe by friends who had been here. The best way I could think of to describe Belgrade (having just come from St Petersburg) was the Dublin of the Balkans - not as pretty as the other showcase cities of Eastern Europe, but much friendlier, cheaper, and more quirky. The main legacy of centuries of Turkish rule is a plethora of great cafes, a relief after the hell of drinking coffee in Rossija. Everyone here seems to spend their time, as far as I can tell, sitting in cafes chatting and waiting for the bars to open so they can go, drink rakija and dance the night away. As a result of this, the city has the vaguely romantic yet decaying look about it, as no one seems to want to take the time to clean it up. That said, the few really tourist-tastic sites in Belgrade live up to their hype - we spent the afternoon yesterday wandering around Kalemegdan, the most ancient site in the city. This is where the Romans built a fort in the first century AD, which was later turned into a medieval stronghold and has been crumbling and being rebuilt ever since. One of the great benefits of the aforementioned aversion Belgraders seem to have to beautifying their city is that, with sites like Kalemegdan, what you see is what you get - no one rebuilt it in faux-gothic style in the early twentieth century or anything. You really are wandering over an ancient fort and the effect is magical, something heightened by the position of the site which is on a promontary overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the two great Serbian waterways. I wanted to add a picture we took while tripping through the ruins yesterday but unfortunately my camera isn't hooking up to my computer properly at the moment, so here is one not taken by me to give you a feel for the place...
The big news in Belgrade at the moment is the Presidential election, due to take place in ten days. Having just come from a Russia gripped with election fever, I felt a distinct sense of deja vu when I was confronted by the election posters advertising Boris Tadic (incumbent President and quasi-liberal) and Tomislav Nikolic (the candidate for the Serbia Radical Party, which is led by Vojislav Šešelj - Šešelj cannot run for president as he is currently on trial for war crimes in the Hague...) Unlike the Russian election, the result of this one is not a foregone conclusion - though Tadic is likely to win, Nikolic has a lot of support. Flicking through the Serbian television news last night I saw campaign speeches on ten of the fifteen channels, and many people interviewed on the news were voicing their support for the Radicals. Time will tell what the result will be...and what the affect of that result will be on the negotiations regarding Kosovo.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Black Ice in Budapest
Once again, apparently through sheer luck, James and I have managed to fall spectacularly on our feet in a strange city, at least in terms of where we ended up staying in Budapest. Our apartment, booked online the night before we left Berlin (not a procedure I recommend) is huge, beautiful, and right in the interesting part of town, conveniently next to a little bohemian bar which sells decent red wine for one euro a glass. Sweet.
We are staying on the Pest side of the city, near Andrassy Utca, named after the famous nineteenth century Hungarian statesman who stood up for Hungary against the occupying Austrians (while simultaneously making his money working for the regime - some things never change). My Hungarian history is not the greatest, but I was fascinated (and disturbed) to discover that we are staying near the section of the city that was cordoned off in 1944 and turned into the Budapest ghetto. Many people (myself included) forget that the slaughter of Jews in WWII was perpetrated not only by the Nazis, but also by native fascist organisations such as the Hungarian Arrow Cross who took power, with support from Germany, for a brief time in 1944. A perfect example of such selective remembering is, of course, France and the often willful forgetting of Vichy crimes. Anyway, rant aside, it is very eerie to wander in the shadow of the ghetto, which was basically destroyed when the Soviets took Budapest in 1945, but which is all too easy to imagine in the snow covered, gloomily misty Pest of today. I found an interesting eyewitness account of the ghetto online which I recommend - if you can get past the Zionism which sneaks in in the end...
Memories of the ghetto aside, in contemporary Hungary the longest shadow is cast by the communist past and specifically, 1956, when 20,000 people died in a failed attempt to shake off Russian domination. As we wandered through Parliament square James was able to point out to me the exact spots where protestors hoisted flags or ran at police lines, as pieced together from photos and accounts he had read. Oh, the joys of dating a bigger nerd than myself! Most interesting is the current use of 1956 in Hungarian political memory - as demonstrated by the protests in 2006 on the anniversary of the rebellion against the current government. Scarily, just as in Russia, the Hungarian right-wingers Fidesz who led the 2006 protests seem to be gaining more support each year, though hopefully it will prove to be a short lived popularity. I read a fascinating interview with the Hungarian Secretary of State Gabor Szetey recently, about his recent experience coming out as gay in a very religiously conservative country. Knowing the severely homophobic attitudes of most of my Russian students as well as the violence that has been experienced by gay pride protesters in Poland and Serbia in recent years I was surprised at the seeming tolerance in Hungary this seemed to suggest (sadly I can't imagine this happening in Russia). But then, of course, the current Hungarian government likes to paint itself as just like the rest of Europe, and play down the extremist elements in its political culture. Whether or not the fact that Szetey, a self-styled 'European' politican, is able to come out means that gay Hungarians as a whole experience tolerance is debatable, but I do not by any means pretend to be an expert when it comes to Hunargarian politics. Comparisons between the situation in Hungary and other, non-EU Eastern European countries as regards sexism and homophobia are interesting however, and perhaps something I will look into more and report back on...
On a less serious and more touristy note, we visited the old Castle and Royal Palace precinct this afternoon, the beauty of which was topped off by the dusting of snow that made all the neo-gothic buildings look like something sold in the many confectionary shops dotted around Budapest. Unfortunately, the snow also meant the steps up and down the hilly Old Town were mined with treacherous patches of black ice, so I spent the whole time clutching railings or walking along cobbled streets pressed up against aged walls so I had something to fall back on should I slip. The view from the top was worth it though - the mist rising from the Danube and half obscring the Parliament building gave it all a 1940s Dracula film feeling that will be my most enduring memory of Budapest...
Tomorrow we leave for Belgrade, exciting but scary at the same because it is going to be our new home. Budapest has been beautiful and magical, although I'm disappointed I never made it to a thermal bath (all the more reason to come back,
well, that and the 1 euro wine...)
Goodbye Russia and Hello Belgrade (by way of Budapest)
The first post on this blog was meant to have been written about six months ago, when I first stepped fresh faced off the plane into the maelstrom of life in Russia. However, as I did not have a reliable source of internet access the whole period I was living in St Petes, it has had to begin now, as James and I are on our way to spend (at least a few) months living in Serbia. I am hoping to reflect on things we did and saw in Russia while reporting on what we find in former-Yugo states, so hopefully I can still say a few mildly interesting things about our time living in St Petersburg in 2007.
In the meantime, we have been on holiday for three weeks in Western Europe, and only arrived back in the East - namely, Hungary - today. It feels strangely comforting to be back in a city bedecked in the legacy of forty five years of Soviet rule, even if there are markedly fewer hammer-and-sickle monuments left here than in Russia (and rather more EU flags). I will miss the lovely safe feeling you get from being in country, like England or Germany, where it takes you less than three hours to buy a train ticket and you don't have to duck around the corner every time you see a policeman for fear of being scammed or conned out of your migration papers. That said, when I saw the dour expressions on Budapest's marvellously morose residents today I breathed it in as the ex-Soviet charm I'd been missing, and it almost felt like home.
Budapest is actually an amazingly picturesque city, which looks like a cross between the set of a Dracula movie and a James Bond film. We are staying on the Pest side (where the action is, James, says, although it seems very gentrified today) just around the corner from Franz Liszt square, which I can imagine would be very pretty in summer with lot of terrace cafes and the like, but today looked very static and frosty, albeit in an attractice snow-tipped way. We walked around looking at the monuments to the failed attempts of 1848 and 1956 to gain independence from the Austrians and the Soviets respectively (the Hungarians haven't had an overly lucky history...) and although it was freezing the breathtaking splendour of the neo-gothic buildings and towering memorials to Kossuth or Kun made it worth the frostbite. Tomorrow I plan to spend half the day in a cafe named after Lukacs and the other half in a thermal bath, which sounds like the perfect way to ease into the end of my holiday. Once we get to Serbia I should have something more substantial to say; in the mean time here are some pics of Budapest on a wintry day for everyone back in Australia to contrast with our sunburnt backyards...
In the meantime, we have been on holiday for three weeks in Western Europe, and only arrived back in the East - namely, Hungary - today. It feels strangely comforting to be back in a city bedecked in the legacy of forty five years of Soviet rule, even if there are markedly fewer hammer-and-sickle monuments left here than in Russia (and rather more EU flags). I will miss the lovely safe feeling you get from being in country, like England or Germany, where it takes you less than three hours to buy a train ticket and you don't have to duck around the corner every time you see a policeman for fear of being scammed or conned out of your migration papers. That said, when I saw the dour expressions on Budapest's marvellously morose residents today I breathed it in as the ex-Soviet charm I'd been missing, and it almost felt like home.
Budapest is actually an amazingly picturesque city, which looks like a cross between the set of a Dracula movie and a James Bond film. We are staying on the Pest side (where the action is, James, says, although it seems very gentrified today) just around the corner from Franz Liszt square, which I can imagine would be very pretty in summer with lot of terrace cafes and the like, but today looked very static and frosty, albeit in an attractice snow-tipped way. We walked around looking at the monuments to the failed attempts of 1848 and 1956 to gain independence from the Austrians and the Soviets respectively (the Hungarians haven't had an overly lucky history...) and although it was freezing the breathtaking splendour of the neo-gothic buildings and towering memorials to Kossuth or Kun made it worth the frostbite. Tomorrow I plan to spend half the day in a cafe named after Lukacs and the other half in a thermal bath, which sounds like the perfect way to ease into the end of my holiday. Once we get to Serbia I should have something more substantial to say; in the mean time here are some pics of Budapest on a wintry day for everyone back in Australia to contrast with our sunburnt backyards...
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