We (that would be Shawn, Sara and myself) started today with the parade. Always a good start to a day, in my opinion. In the parade there were many different people of many different ethnicities in many different traditional costumes as below. There were marching bands. See Sara’s write up of the day to hear about our favorite marching band which we also ran across later in the evening enjoying the fireworks on the mall. You can also see them at the parade in this link. They were great!
The parade itself was interesting, but the spectators were very silent. It was kind of weird. After the parade, we walked back to St. Paul’s K Street, where we had parked and picked up our picnic lunch. We walked over to the Kennedy Center, where they have nice picnic tables that anyone can sit at, and had our 4th of July feast. You are looking at a BLT, beet and goat cheese salad, potato salad and a delicious broccoli walnut salad. Dessert was blueberry peach cobbler and whipped cream. Yummy! Sara and Shawn need to move to Portland so Sara and I can cook for each other. We wandered down through the Folklife Festival towards the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and arrived just at closing time. We wandered back toward the Washington Monument. I took this picture, because in DC, they cleverly use buses to block off roads during events. Then, when the event is over, they can just put the buses into circulation. Genius. We got to the Monument pretty early and just sat and chilled out for awhile. There were naps taken by some of us, and a lot of people watching happened. Sara and I went to find food at some point, but the lines were very, very long so we abstained. We took this picture of me in front of the monument. We heard an awful band play a concert. I noticed that certain “I’m a patriot sacrificing for my country” songs are a bit whiny. They seem like they are all proud, but underneath you can hear the whine. Eventually darkness fell and I got this picture of the monument. The fireworks started. We were dazzled. Then came the walk back to the car and the very tricky maneuver that bypassed the traffic and got us home in minutes instead of hours. It was a lovely fourth!
Today we bid goodbye to Kolosvar and began our journey to Okland. On the way, we stopped in Torda to see where the Edict of Torda was signed. We Unitarians are quite proud of the Edict of Torda.
We stopped in Marosvasarhely (you will note that the link uses the Romanian name, though references the Hungarian. Interestingly, 2002 was the first year in which Romanians outnumbered Hungarians in this city, though they were close in number in 1992.) In this city, we first visited the City Fortress, mentioned in the above link, then after lunch, the Palace of Culture. This, aside from being a lovely place where we heard a pianist practicing in the main hall (until his cell phone rang,) was also the site of our tour guide, Eva’s first date with her now-husband. It is also known for its Hall of Mirrors which is apparently very hard to portray on the Internet. The Hall of Mirrors does have mirrors on one side, but on the other is a series of stained glass windows that portray various fables from Hungarian history. If you click through the above link, you can see some of the stained glass, though alas, not the stars that I fell in love with. It was fun to go to the hall of mirrors, because we got to hear the recorded tour. It was a little hard to understand, but it was humorous to shuffle down the hall hearing about the various fables. This link also has some good pictures.
After the Palace of Culture we got back on the bus and arrived in Korond, which was a place to buy authentic Hungarian handcrafts. We bypassed the place we had stopped in 2005, with Eva remaking that they had started selling non-authentic items. In Korond (“I’ve been there!” Matt told me when I got home) we got to see a family of potters throw cups, as well as their workshop. I bought a few mugs with the traditional designs on them.
This is the gate leading into the courtyard. The gate is the traditional carved wooden gate. This one also sports a few decorated plates. Behind the gate is the shop and the workspace as well as, I think, the family home. Note the satellite dish next to the traditional gate. We journeyed on to Okland, arriving in the afternoon. Okland is a Unitarian village of about 400 people. When googling around for information about the village, I found this article which is great because these are the exact same people we stayed with. There is even a picture of Eva, our guide, and Levente, her husband, the minister.
I had been feeling a bit homesick all day, this being the first time I was not in the US on the 4th of July. I may have not been the only one. Eva cleverly planned an American-style celebration and we sang patriotic songs. At one point Levente came in waving the flag. I was most astounded that they would have a US flag. We had watermelon and spit the seeds and there were even sparklers. And marshmallows. It was a great end to the day.
Not many pictures today, as the majority of the day was spent traveling to Silver Spring to visit my Aunt Merle, who lives in a retirement community there. I had left my Zipcar card at home (drat) and so could not reserve one to drive and see her, so I depended on the Metro to get me there. It did, much to my amazement, though it was a bit more than a 90 minute journey each way. This is the road leading to the retirement community. While there, I neglected to take a picture with Aunt Merle. (double drat) One of the houses on the way back. I liked the decorative wood in this carport.
Sara lives in this tall building. The one in the middle of the picture, not the one closest to me. By the time I got home, it had started to rain, a bit. In the afternoon, I hung around and helped (a little) while Sara prepared for our 4th of July picnic.
In the evening Sara, Shawn and I went to the very fancy and delicious Restaurant Eve, where Sara’s sister works. I had a delightful dinner including a poached duck egg with prosciutto and croutons as well as bouillabaisse for my entree. My dessert was quite fabulous, being a house made “Butterfinger” which was about 400 times more delicious than any Butterfinger I’ve eaten (and about twenty times more expensive.)
If you squint you can see Sara and I in the restaurant. We opted for the stealthy, no flash picture.
Our day began with breakfast at the High School, and then we met the Bishop and got a tour of the school, as well as the Unitarian Church. Because Unitarianism came out of the Protestant reform movement, the churches, especially in this part of the world, tend to be very white and bright with little ornamentation. What they do have is beautiful, solid color embroidery decorating everything. Apparently, if you are familiar with the styles, you can identify the embroidery by region. The church in Kolosvar had red embroidery, the church in Okland used blue.
We also saw the stone where Francis David stood and preached a sermon that converted the entire town to Unitarianism. (There has since been some backsliding.) We also toured St. Michael’s church which is the large Catholic church in the main square.
Then: swimming. I was thrilled as it was very hot and sticky and I like nothing more than to be in the water on such a day. We took the bus to the pool which was huge–they had one big pool and two or three smaller ones. There was topless sunbathing (which everyone handled most maturely) but the thing that was the most interesting to me was that the pools had no filter. They were very large cement rectangles with no outlet for all the detritus that comes along with public pools. So while swimming I brushed against all sorts of things.
Post swimming we broke up into smaller groups. Dana and I found a post office, which was thrilling as I had been trying to mail my postcards for days, and then wandered down to look at the Orthodox church, where these two women were chatting. I wonder how old they are? They could, conceivably, be in their early 60s as old people there tend to look older than their age would suggest.
On this day, Sara, was kind enough to drive me to Leesburg to visit my childhood friend. That’s us there, myself, Becky and her son, Thompson. As you may guess from the picture, Thompson is about to have a new brother. It was a lovely visit, I hadn’t seen Becky since her wedding in 2000. I also really like this picture. Double thanks, Sara. Becky gave us directions to lunch which we found quite easily once I realized that we weren’t lost at all, I was just reading the Mapquest directions incorrectly. I liked that the Hunter’s Head advertised Beef Liver & Onions right on their sign. As if that is something people often look for in a restaurant.
After lunch (I had Colcannon) we stopped to take a picture of this lovely church.
We drove to Oatlands, but were not super inclined to take the tour. We wandered the grounds but were not allowed past this point without tickets. So this is my picture of the house. You can see the actual house on the link.
Returning home, I got to go to Costco with Sara and Shawn. It was pretty interesting. They introduced me to the “spot the diplomat corps car” game, and the parking lot was one you had to pay to park, unless you got your parking stub validated. I’ve never seen that in conjunction with a Costco. Costco itself is always a bit overwhelming to me–all that large quantity of food–so that was a tourist attraction in and of itself.
What took the cake (took the chocolate slab?) was the large, solid chocolates molded in the form of the Pentagon. They had them in the shape of the US Capitol and the White House, which I get, but would you want a solid chocolate form of the Pentagon? That place where wars are planned and executed? It’s a little odd.
After Costco, the three of us attended Away We Go. Our ticket seller was perhaps part snail; he was the slowest clerk I’ve encountered in a long time.
Today was a very long day of travel across the Hungarian plain. We said goodbye to our host families in the morning, and climbed on the bus. The bus turned out to not really have air conditioning, and it was a very hot and long day.
Our first stop was at the Hortobagyi Pasztormuzeum. This is a small museum, but one of my favorites on the trip. Until the communist era, the area around the museum was a great range where different kinds of animals were raised by herdsmen. They have traditional costumes on display–including the very cool coats they used to wear. I am having trouble finding a picture of the coats, but have discovered what we had for lunch. It was delicious, and one of my favorite meals of the trip. I also learned at this museum, that there was a hierarchy of herdsmen depending on what kind of animal you took care of. I believe geese were at the low end of the scale and I think horses were at the top. Traditionally, the herdsmen were also great horsemen and they are famous for riding around and cracking their whips to get things moving. Ted, one of the youth really liked the whips and bought one, though everyone else who tried, seemed to be better at cracking the whip then he was.
We drove though the plain, crossing over into Romania. Our destination was Kolishvar, which is the Hungarian name for the city that is now known as Cluj-Napoca. On the way, we passed the gypsy houses with the fancy tin roofs. They are huge houses, four and five stories tall, with the most elaborate roofs. This group of Gypsies are known for their metal work and so they build their houses big, so as to maximize the roof area. The houses themselves are most often shells, with no windows, unfinished walls, open rooms. The family usually lives in a smaller house in the back.
Eventually we got to Kolishvar. Because I was traveling with ethic Hungarians, I will be using the Hungarian names for things. In Romania most cities/villages/towns have two, or sometimes three names. (Hungarian, Romanian and sometimes Saxon) Kolishvar was a major city in the Hungarian Kingdom, and today is the fourth largest city in Romania.
We were staying at Janos Zsigmond Unitarius Kollegium (which we called the Unitarian High School) in the dorms where the students live during the year. All of the girls on the trip were able to stay in one room. That is eight girls in one room, with room for four more. I could not imagine living an entire school year in one room with 11 roommates. Our rooms were on the top floor and they had skylights. At this point in the evening, we are all taking pictures of the Kolishvar skyline and each other.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard in a movie. At times, I had trouble catching my breath. Maya Rudolph was fantastic and John Krasinski’s character Burt Farlander reminded me of of a certain other resident at The Orange Door.
Man, keeping today to five photos is brutal. Brutal! But I did it.
Today was the switchover day; I moved from Jenna’s place to Sara and Shawn’s place. (You might know them from their very cool blog Pike Schemes) Before I left Jenna’s place, I wandered down to the C & O Canal. That canal is pretty small. I’ve always felt that the canal got the short shift in transportation history. It seemed like by the time they got them built, we had moved on to a better method of transport.
At any rate, walking down to the canal gave me more chances to take pictures of Georgetown houses. I loved this group of houses, because each house had different ornamentation. Each of these doors was very different from its neighbor.
Gaslights! These were an unexpected find.
Today was the day of our personal tour of the Library of Congress. This was incredible, and something I will never forget. Sara had an “in” with Tori, who has worked at the Library of Congress for 31 years. She took us all over the Library, places that normal tourists aren’t allowed to go. I was thrilled to see things I’d heard about when I was growing up. I love libraries, and getting to go behind the scenes at the A-1 library in the US was indescribable.
The dome in the main reading room.
Tori explains something to Sara and Shawn. She was incredibly enthusiastic about her building. She showed us where her first desk in her first job was, and told us how, during the great renovation, the librarians would wait until the construction workers left for the day, and then at 3:01 they would run down to see what had been uncovered. Most of the library, when she first started working there, was horrible 60s drop ceilings and linoleum floors.
At some point in my past, I watched a filmstrip or an educational film about the Library of Congress. I can clearly recall seeing footage of their “modern” book moving system. It isn’t so modern any more, but I was thrilled to see it in person, then to get to go downstairs and see it from below. Other things we saw: the stacks, the old card catalogs and all four galleries, even the ones that aren’t open to the public.
Have I mentioned that this was the coolest day ever? If you want more pictures, you can see Sara’s post about the day. She didn’t limit herself to five pictures, and she is a good photographer.
After the Library of Congress, we took the secret tunnel into the Capitol Visitors Center where we wandered around looking at the exhibits. Then dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill.
The Open Air Museum! I loved this place. I could have spent three days here. What is an open air museum? We wondered that too. Eventually the appropriate translation was made. “Sort of like Colonial Williamsburg” was the consensus. Indeed. This museum recreated several regions of Hungary. And by “Hungary” they mean “the vast Hungarian Empire which we would like to have back, but which has been carved into many pieces leaving us with little of our original land.” Long memories, there. Not that I blame them.
So you can wander through all different kinds of villages in the style of, oh say, “Upper Market Town,” “Great Plains,” “Southern Transdaunbia,” etc. In each village is a church and few houses and barns, etc. They have people demonstrating how to make traditional food and do other traditional things. You can ride in a horse and buggy, which I loved, let me tell you. Each area tells you a little about the kind of family which might live in a particular style house and what might be going on. I looked in on one house of a grape grower and they were preparing for a baby christening, and had all the christening finery out on display.
They also have traditional Hungarian livestock. Above is a picture of the Hungarian Grey Cow. “White” one of us would usually correct upon seeing it. “No, Grey” we were told. Okay, they are sort of grey.
I include this picture not only so you can see the Hungarian Grey Cow yourself, but also because of Dana’s great picture of it. Later, after this day was over, on a day with a very long bus ride, Dana and I were looking at the pictures we had taken to pass the time. Not having laptops along with us, we were viewing our pictures on our cameras, which doesn’t necessarily make for the best viewing, the screens being so small and all. As we scrolled though her pictures of the Open Air Museum I wondered aloud if she had gotten a photo of the Grey Cow. “I did!” she said proudly. But when she scrolled to it, we both broke out into laughter because her picture of the gray cow only included the feet. How she managed to take that picture and not notice she was missing three-quarters of the cow I’m not sure, but it inspired much mirth on a very long, hot bus ride.
Also on our list of things to do today. A visit to Visegrad Fortress (which hadn’t changed much since I saw it in 2005. Click on that Visegrad link. It’s pretty cool.) A visit to Szentendre, where I bought a lovely painting of Fishermen’s Bastion, a boat ride down the Danube River to Budapest and a delicious dinner at a Greek restaurant where Barnabas and his mother noticed a famous TV actress sitting behind us.
WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
I first encountered this poem in yet another English anthology textbook. As a teenager, I responded to the “things aren’t always what they seem” aspect. As an adult, I still like that, and I also enjoy the first two lines of the last stanza, which succinctly encompass the passing of years in the workaday world.
Memorizing this wasn’t too hard, the difficult part was figuring out where to put the inflections when reciting it. The first line of the third stanza in particular caused me great pains. Delivering that line without sounding overly theatrical took a lot of experimentation. So this month, I discover that this project doesn’t just involve me putting words in my head in a certain order, but also figuring out the best way to get them out of my mouth.
Those of a certain age, or who spend the time Googling “Richard Cory” know that Simon and Garfunkel have a song by the same name. I had assumed, because Simon and Garfunkel are incredible nerds*, that the song was this poem set to music. In fact, I stayed away from the song because I didn’t want how they sang the song influence how I said the poem. Listening to the song just now, I learn that the song is actually quite different, though clearly inspired by, the poem. It is from the perspective of one of Richard Cory’s factory workers. You can have a listen yourself.
*Seriously, incredible nerds. I mean, they have a song titled, “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright.” How nerdy is that? Who writes a song to an architect except a tremendous nerd? And the chorus? “Architects may come and Architects may go/and never change your point of view/When I run dry/I stop awhile and think of you.” Nerd-y! There’s even a flute solo, which as Will Farrell pointed out in Anchorman, is perhaps the nerdiest instrument.
And even, “You Can Call Me Al” with Chevy Chase? Great song, great funny video, incredibly nerdy. I like Simon and Garfunkel, don’t get me wrong, but they are uber-nerds.
