Notes from America
Some of these ideas are REALLY old, but they probably go better in the Random Thoughts series.
Americans are very serious about religion. More than anywhere else I have visited. This is a very subjective comment.
While in Austria I heard a commercial on the BBC radio that referenced how some event would affect political, economic, and security situations around the world, and then gave snippets of interviews that illustrated the points. The conclusion of the ad ran, "the vote that affects your world." It was referencing our presidential election!
Sando’s cat ate his computer mouse.
I ate horribly the other day (while travelling). It was so easy and so tasty, though - IHoP, Mac D, and a local gyro deli.
I overheard a worker at the airport talking about how much he likes to travel, but how he has never been on a plane.
The museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian is quite good. Many people had told me that it fell short of their expectations, but I think they have since added quite a bit. Give it another try.
Two brothers went out fishing in a rented boat. They were Samaritans. The world didn't view Samaritans highly back then. They had no luck all day until late in the afternoon, they struck on a spot where they pulled in a net full of fish. After sorting things out, they started to speculate on how they could find the spot again, another day. One said, "oh, I know," and took a piece of chalk from his cloak and made a big X on the bottom of the small boat. The other looked at his brother quizzically, and said, "You idiot...How do we know that we'll get the same boat tomorrow."
I believe in a fair world, at least that it would be a nice thing. I think I generally work to that end. But I realized some time ago, after a touching comment by one of my orphan boys, Evhen, about "it not being fair," that not everyone wants a fair world. It was on a trip back home that I realized, in order to make the world fair, some people would have to settle for less, when they knew they hadn't earned it or deserved it, and I think very few people are actually ok with that idea.
Confuscius said, "If there were an honorable way to get rich, I'd do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn't an honorable way, so I just do what I like."
Labels: old notes, random thoughts
Notes from Italy
A great Italian expression is: Non e’ la morta sua, which means "this is not its best death." I believe this originally refers to a poor food preparation, but can be used in many ways when something is not quite right.
I realized this summer that we keep garments in a suitcase and suits in a garment bag.
Coming in the train from Eastern Europe, I decided that there are 5 keys to understanding Eastern and Central Europe:
The political experiment that was the Austrian Empire
Where Hungary came from and how it fit into that Empire
The cultural richness of Bohemia (aka the Czech Republic)
The dissolution of the Polish kingdom
The defining physical and cultural aspects of the Carpathian Mountains (the heart of Europe)
and for further enlightenment, try reading something on: the Ottoman conquests, the Scandinavian dynasties, the Tatars, and the Black Sea.
Labels: old notes
Photos
So after 4 years, I have finally done it. More importantly, I will try to do it more often. If you care to look at the pictures that I have been saving along my journeys to add to my blogs, the link below will take you to an album, which has captions, but I have also annotated below to which blogs they refer. There are few photos where I couldn't find the appropriate blog, but I am almost sure that I wrote about the events; all the photos are in chronological order (except for a few at the end, where the blogs were not quite in chronological order). I decided this would be easier, but I did add photos to 5 blogs over the last 6 months.
Happy hunting!1 - My Week at Church Camp – July 11, 2005
2 - Court at Sea Camp – Sept. 8, 2005
3 - The Wedding – Oct. 31, 2005
4 - Time in the Countryside – Nov. 21, 2005
5 - Merry Christmas – Dec. 28, 2005, Holiday Season – Jan. 4, 2006 (and Sando’s post)
6 - Too Much Fun – April 10, 2006
7 - Up a Mountain – May 9, 2006
8 - MIA – Aug. 28, 2006
9 - The Travels of the Toothpick – Oct. 10, 2006
9 - Kaleb and Lena Brown’s wedding – Dec. 2, 2006
10- West vs East – Dec. 18, 2006 East extreme
11- Mike’s post and mine in February 06
12- Zagreb – March
13- Not all who wander are lost – June 2, 2007
One final note: if all this reminiscing moves your heart, remember there is a great way this holiday season that you can give back. For more information about supporting Partnership Grants,
click here and look half way down the post
Labels: old notes
Notes from Ukraine
Part V of the Notes Series
From Ukraine, January -June 2008, while I was at the orphanage:
During winter one day in winter, we were playing soccer on a wet but clear field, when just two days before we had been playing ice hockey on a frozen pond. Temperatures in winter aren't as relentless in the north as I had once imagined.
Why do little kids love to jump out when they are playing "hide and go seek". It is like they can't contain the excitement of being passed by while you are seeking, so they exclaim where they are and go running off in glee.
There was a young lady that came to the orphanage one day. Nestor, a small and sickly boy of 7, came into the kitchen to tell me that a pretty girl had arrived and I "must go kiss her" with such an air of wise experience that it made me and the cook laugh.
I wanted to plant a tree for Earth Day in April, but I never got around to organizing it. Well it just so happened that we are trying to re forest a bit of the park that the orphanage is in, and one of the teachers came that day and took a few boys to relocate about 30 young trees from the forest to our land. I only realized it as they were finishing re-planting. They didn't seem to really get my excitement.
We had cooking class on Saturday afternoons. One particularly nice day in spring, after going for a walk in the wildflower fields and picking some mint, we made ice cream with the cows fresh milk and the mint. You have to put it in a jar surrounded by ice in another jar. Then you make a circle and roll and roll it back and forth.
One of the boys, the smallest I might add, is nicknamed "Godzilla." I didn't think I understood correctly when I first heard the other boys call him that. He may be the smallest and can also be the cutest, but don't feel bad for him, Godzilla isn't an irony. He definitely marches to the beat of his own drum.
While at the orphanage, I travelled rather regularly by horse and carriage, even down to the village store.
The boys developed a very great trust in me. It awes and humbles me sometimes when I think of something that evidences it. For instance, some of them would only trust me to cut their hair and this before they ever saw me cut someone's hair. I gave them a few haircuts; maybe they liked it because I would do what they asked, even bowl-cuts and mullets!
I think the church in its social wisdom created Lent to guard the people from themselves. Lent starts in early spring. Although somethings have started to bloom, this is actually the leanest time. You have eaten all your winter stores, canned goods and potatoes, and almost nothing is ready to be eaten, but it is so tempting as it starts to green. Even cows and pigs are at their leanest, and can be pregnant. I think all the restrictions on meat is to keep us away from our temptation of slaughtering these animals before they reproduce.
They light small thin candles during their church services and they last just the length of the service (a bit over an hour). When they get very low, the ember of the wick seems to retreat into itself in the semi-darkness of the little cup that holds it. No smoke or flame is visible. Then when you think it is out, it seems to exhale a small stream of smoke that wafts away as it snuffs out. It is so beautiful.
I love the sound of fresh snow as it crunches under foot.
Godzilla to the left, mullet to the right, we're making ice cream!
Labels: old notes
Notes from a Rainy Spring
So trying to catch up on all my 'house keeping' tasks the last two weeks, I have let my blogging flood slow to a trickle, but I have compiled the rest of my old notes, so I will do my best to free up the flood gates. Here is one that was penned in entirety somewhere back around May...
Here at the orphanage, I have continued my work with youth that I started many years ago. I have been working on elements of the Youth Development project for over 10 years. At first, I felt a bit phony putting “specialist” on my business cards (it was the best translation for project coordinator), but now I feel comfortable speaking as a peer with teachers who have been teaching for many times 10 years. And yet we all continue to learn. As I mentioned, Ukraine has been very good for my piano playing. It has also taught me a few other things.
I have learned the word for father, priest, pope in Italian and Ukrainian. The word in Italian for Pope means father (but with the accent on a different syllable), the Ukrainians use the same word from Italian. They also use the familiar form of you when speaking to God – a form that many do not use as adults when they speak to their parents; I find this somewhat peculiar; most of them, that I have brought it up with, have never noticed it at all. They also regularly refer to Mary as the “Birther of God”; I know we say Mother of God; it almost sounds like without her there would be no God.
I have learned what pig slop is. They really do eat about anything, but it is cooked into a stew for them!
I have come to understand that orienteering is a dying art, surely to go the way of beekeeping and flag signaling. But, as in “Johnny Get Your Gun,” you never know when you might need something like Morse Code. Will there be anyone left to understand you?
I have learned that if you run fast enough, when there is no wind, a kite will fly.
I know now that raising kids is a lot like playing chess. I had to calm myself down a bit yesterday, by reassuring myself that I am bigger and smarter than them, but it is much better if I use the smarter part.
It is amazing to me, how hard it is to tell genius and idiocy apart. The super intelligent seem to be the most likely to play dumb or bored.
It is also amazing to see how kids learn. I guess previously I never had long enough contact with students on one particular subject. I have seen some of the boys make real progress in their studies. One boy of 14, Bohdan, who came in December, and didn’t know the alphabet or multiplication tables when he arrived, now can say simple sentences in English. A volunteer's progress during training with the language must be quite a remarkable process to watch. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing known of learning disabilities here, and I think a few of the boys may have them. Their teachers just think that they aren’t able.
I have also learned many new words. I, now, know how to say: to fib, to annoy, jealousy, broom, mop, dustpan, to sweep, barn, respect each other, kneel – command form (a punishment when they don’t behave during prayer), to goof off (I know several ways to say this), to bug someone (surprisingly, they also use a verb form of the noun “bug”, but they use a word that specifically refers to mosquitoes).
A request: Does anyone have old tapes of educational TV, like Sesame Street? We could take them off your hands? What ages is Sesame Street rated for?
After the rain passed, Bohdan and two other boys pasteuring the village cows.
Labels: old notes
Notes about Hungary
So in the middle of all my Central Europe adventures, the office calls and says they have a problem in Eastern Europe on our Budapest to Krakow trip. Actually, it doesn't really work that way, you just get an email that says your schedule has been changed, but knowing someone else had dropped work and who they usually 'gonna call', I was expecting it. And my manager did say at the end of the season that my willingness didn't go unnoticed, which was very appreciated.
So off I went to Hungary, via a short trip to Ukraine (more on that tomorrow). I really liked it. I had been in Budapest just one day two years before, and I hadn't gotten a very good feel, as is usually difficult in a big city, even if it is the capital. This time I stayed in a small town north of Budapest called Szentendre. It is the last stop on the commuter rail, but well worth the trip even if you just go for a day. It is an artsy community with great restaurants, shops and galleries along the river front (Danube still - it goes through 9 countries and 4 capitals). The trip we do is pretty amazing too. It is nine days, and you bike north out of Hungary, and all the way through Slovakia into Poland. I was just doing van support for this trip because we move so much and it is logistically challenging, but because there were only 7 people on the trip (and two leaders that I really like), I got a lot of free time. I would start at 7 and usually be done by 11 but paid for the day, so it was more like a paid vacation for me - I got to hike, bike and explore (especially castles); it was great.
Hungarians are NOT Huns. They are a people that came out of Asia late in the nomadic period of great migrations, and they do have a language that's closest cousin is Finnish, but that is still quite distant, and it is very unusual. But, they looked to me a lot like Americans, and they often have no accent when they speak English, which anyone under 30 seems to. The word Hun (which is not what they call themselves; they say they are Magyars, and the country name is a deviation on this word), comes from the word "On-Ogour, which in Bulgar Turkic meant '(the) Ten Arrows'" referring to the ten tribes that they were organized into under this Bulgar alliance (I believe). They were a very powerful nation until they lost 2/3's of their land after WWI. They even have a huge Cathedral city, that rivals Romes's as they are mostly Catholic and their king was recognized by the Pope all the way back in 1000.
It was the first time in a while where I was in a country where I spoke NOTHING. I traveled there with a friend from Ukraine, who knew a few words. Yes is 'egan' which sounds a bit like our again, and they normally say it again, and again, and again in short succession when one yes would suffice.
I saw a kid commuting home from the train station by unicycle.
I had the spy feeling again here, as I switched currency and phone chips again, and left my friend to try to follow my (company) notes as inconspicously as possible, so as to get to our house in Szentendre.
Let me say again, that I loved doing the van support. On one of my bike rides in Slovakia, I saw two deer, and just before that I saw a WOLF! It was pretty far in the countryside and at first I thought it was a dog. He was a small timber wolf, I think, but I biked right up to him standing in the road and he kind of circled out of my way and then took off.
Finally, I have been trying to pick up some French (mostly last year) and some German and Czech, and I must say it is pretty nice right now, not to be working on any of that (though Spanish is more useful everywhere in this country; I could have used it several times in the last 3 weeks). Though one day, a French family in a small, out-of-the-way World Heritage town in Slovakia, saw me working on the van (which in Europe all have French plates) and started asking me questions. After we established that they didn't speak any Italian or English, I was able to (feebly) answer their questions. It was empowering.
Parliament in Budapest
Labels: old notes
Notes from Austria
So as well as living in Czech all summer, the trip that I was working on would actually spend more time (4 of 6 days) in Austria. These two nations as neighbors, along with Bavaria, share a lot of history, but are also profoundly different. In my introduction on trip, I would normally compare them, which I think is more interesting, than contrast them, which is so easy.
As I became familiar with the Austrian part of the trip, I realized how useful a little German would be. I met Anita one day, a restaurant owner with just a bit of English where we have lunch before cycling into the hills to stop at her mother's farmhouse (not small establishments in Austria) to a treat of local cake and cider. When I first introduced myself, an unsettled look crossed her face, which is sometimes common when you familiarize with a new area; the sub-contractors are surprised to see you and think that a group might be arriving unexpectedly. But later I learned what her look really meant was "I can't say ALL that I want to." She likes to talk. Her mother is more reserved and speaks no English, but we had a very nice conversation all the same, when I visited her home.
Often in Europe, when you order salad, it is just lettuce. Many times you want more; not so in Austria. For the first time, I ordered a salad, wanting just lettuce and got a whole lot of corn, beans and a mess of other things.
I went to a Freemason museum in one of the hotels where we stay. It was quite interesting and in removed, rural Austria. It had a bag from a club in Deerfield Beach, FL, and a map of clubs that had once been in towns in Ukraine near to where I had lived, though the old map was not quite correct in that region.
The trips in Austria attract slightly different folks than in Tuscany. The hills are smaller, as are the age of kids on the family trips.
The music on the radio is phenomenally better though.
The drivers are faster than the Italians, much to my surprise. Why is the sticker symbol for Austria - A, when the sticker for Germany is D. Austria in Austrian German is Osterich, with the two dots over the O.
The weather sure does change quickly. Reminds me of Florida.
During the season, some guests of mine from Tuscany last year came on a trip with other leaders in Czech/Austria. I met them for dessert one night, to their surprise. I keep notes on all my guests to jog my memory, but I would have remembered these two anyway. He is a big financier in Chicago with a very dry way about him. They were very surprised, and he told me that he actually googled something I said when he got home because he felt that I knew too much about Tuscany to be truthful. Google told him the truth: I never lie.
Guest can also often pick me out as an Eagle Scout. Another time, I was ironing my shirt for dinner in the hallway (In this particular hotel, which has been owned for several generations by the same family, who make schnapps for us as we are eating dinner; there is a demonstration and then we try it; their license goes back to Maria Theresa, empress of Austrio-Hungary; anyway, their irons and boards are in a recess in the hall), a guest came up to me and asked if I had a screwdriver. I was in shorts and my undershirt, and she needed a phillips, but she didn't want me to have to go for it (we have tool boxes in the support van). So effectively she was asking, 'do you have phillips in your pocket?' And I did! With my pocketknife, I was able to get her table fan working again in between my ironing.
One last story, in Ybbs an der Donau (German for 'on the Danube'), a charming town with a charming little bicycle museum that credits bike riding to liberating women of corsets and such in the 20's (apparently Susan B. Anthony said so), there was a speed sign that flashes your speed when you are going over the clearly stated number signed above it. You've all seen these speed announcements. But this one is a bit different than all the others I had seen there and in America, as I was going under the stated limit, it flashed a green "Danke"!
Labels: old notes
Notes on Czech
I spent all summer between Cesky Krumlov, a world heritage site with the biggest castle complex in Czech, and Cesky Budejovice, the town whose German name is Budweis, and so the original home of a Budweiser. It was all very stunning.
In Czech there is no way to say Bohemia. The reason being that the Bohemii were a tribe of Celts, that were later overrun by a Slavic nation led by Czesko. The surrounding people knew the land as Bohemia, but the Czechs didn't. So the two words became interchangeable, but not in the Czech language. The term Bohemian or Bohemian lifestyle comes from the French actually. They saw Romani people (or gypsies) living in and around Paris in a free and nomadic way, and thought they were the people from the land of Bohemia. Later artists and poets adopted this term along with the lifestyle. (Seems like many strange fads came from the Slavs via French popularity. Neckties were part of Croatian military uniforms until the French adopted them as fashionable).
How do ATM's NEVER mess up? How have we created a machine that efficient and precise. At least, I have never had one mess up or even heard of it messing up. I've heard of them out of order, but never giving the wrong amount. Have any of you? This thought came to my mind when once in Czech, I took out the maximum amount option and it gave me just one bill! Come on, what I am supposed to do with a bill like that?
The very first day that I arrived in Czech, I spent about an hour and a half wandering around Cesky Budejovice, waiting for my train to Cesky Krumlov. I had a coffee, saw the square and market, and bought some groceries. I had never been to where I would be sleeping that night (and most of the rest of the summer), and I had just gotten off a night train, and yet after that time I really felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the place. I felt its heartbeat. Is that skill or naivety?
Being back in Czech after many years and a few weeks in Tuscany and Denmark, and after walking around Cesky Budejovice, I was struck again by how charming it was, but I kept hearing "Back in the USSR" playing in my head.
Getting there had been stressful, I may have paid a bribe, but I did then end up with my own train cabin, a good night rest, and a cheaper price then when I had gone to Tuscany from Vienna.
When I walked up to the counter in Cesky Budejovice to by my ticket to the small village just outside of Cesky Krumlov. I used my knowledge of Slavic languages, and a bit of Russian to guess at how to pronounce the town and ask for the ticket. I met a look of confusion from the woman, but I am not sure if it was because she was surprised that she understood me, or she was surprised at where I was going.
Later in the season, I came back from being in Hungary (stay tuned for that blog), and I was sent to pick up a van from the repair shop. I brought another van with a small problem in. The man asked me a detail about the problem, which I didn't know because I had only just driven the van in, and knew nothing more, as I said, just coming from Hungary the day before. He asked where his normal contact was, and I said that he had just gone to Croatia for a month. I felt a bit like a spy then. I also felt that way on this return as I was swapping one currency out of my wallet into my collection of 4 others, and hunting around for the right sim card to power my cell phone on the appropriate network. I have 7 (1 british, 2 Italian, 1 czech, 2 ukrainian, and 1 swiss).
Finally, I often saw huge billboards on the blank side of the communist apartment blocks. They really are a great use of space but very conspicuous. I wondered if the communist leaders are rolling in their graves to see how great their housing blocks work for capitalism.
Labels: old notes
