dreams in catalunya

this is a bit dated, but philip just sent me this picture, taken the day i arrived back in budapest from my bike trip. i miss that bike.

in the present: monday night i stayed in narbonne with a french couchsurfer named valerie. that town felt great- i read by its tree-lined canal for a few hours while i waited for valerie to get off from work. she was very generous, driving me out to the beach for a walk and cooking me dinner.

on tuesday it was a bit dicey getting out of france. the train workers went on strike to protest job cuts, but the union agreed to provide a minimum of service to keep some things running. it was chaotic, but everyone was very helpful and i eventually got out into spain.

when i arrived in barcelona i dropped my bag off at a hostel called INOUT, which is actually a non-profit that employs disabled people, located up in the hills outside of town in a national park. then i went back to town to try to find tristan. this was kind of a nightmare, as his directions were things like "If you´re exiting the train station then you take a left" (who knows how many entrances there are to barcelona´s two train stations), "the main plaza...I don´t know if it´s the actual main plaza" and " then walk about 3 minuites" (what a way of describing distance). so i scoured that town for four hours without ever finding him. and he failed to find the hostel, staying somewhere in town that night.

i would have been madder at him if i weren´t enjoying my walk. the architecture and character of the neighborhoods i explored felt great, some of my favorite i´ve seen in europe.

wednesday i found tristan sitting at the base of the mirador de colum, a big statue of columbus at the end of la ramblas next to the harbor. we spent the day walking around the neighborhoods near la ramblas, watched portugal beat czech republic in the eurocup, played frisbee in plaça catalunya, and just generally had too much fun.

thursday was daydream festival, the event that brought us here to barcelona. i enjoyed some of the opening bands, like cuchillo, m83, low and ENEMC. but the headliner was radiohead. they played a two-hour set that really just defies description, so i won´t try.

at about 1 am we made our way to nightdream, an aftershow at razzmatazz club back in town. we had to kill a few hours until the trains started running again at 5, so we did it in style, rocking out with the beautiful spanish people to music that was far too loud. my ears are still ringing.

we´ve basically been recovering ever since. some walks in town, running errands, getting groceries, watching more eurocup games, tossing disc in parc de la ciutadella, recklessly gambling on our utter lack of poker skills- which feels fine as long as it´s just between eachother.

being here in the heart of the 1936-7 workers´ attempted revolution that i now know backwards and forwards, i was excited to see what the barcelona museums had to say about that bit of history. so i spent a few hours at the museu d´historia de catalunya, which had big exhibits on industrialization and the spanish civil war, periods that were raging with class conflict.

i was fairly impressed with the content- it was surprisingly class-conscious, but at the same time containing the standard demonization of anarchists, repetitively calling them terrorists while omitting the far more common state terrorism used against the workers, as well as the government's use of agents provocateurs using terrorist tactics to give the state the pretext to suppress worker organizations. but generally very detailed information- i learned a few things i missed last fall.

the movement is certainly still alive here. right near the university i found the fundació d´estudis llibertais i anarcho sindicalistes, proudly flying the black and red CNT/FAI banner. it contained a huge bookstore of radical material, the equivalent of lucy parsons in boston or left bank in seattle. the person at the desk spoke almost no english though (and my spanish is pathetic), and their english book section was about half of one shelf. the movement turned in on itself, down in a little national hole. shame. if (when) i come back i will work on this problem...

so this is it. this was the climax, partaking in the urban festival club bar culture, dipping toes in the waters of what appears to be the all-too-standard young traveler regimen.

so the romp is at an end. in a way it was a long indulgent vacation. at the same time much of it was uncomfortable, and frugality and austerity kept me from getting too soft. some of the time i was moving fast, hardly getting to know a place before i dashed off to another, just a manic tourist frolic. at other times i balanced this with longer stays- wandering the same neighborhood or wwoofing or slowly hiking through foothills. parts of it were frustrating because i missed so many things, wasted time on things i later regretted, pursued a dead-end toward russia, and so on. but if i think of it all as scouting, just impulsively exploring, then i can accept my myriad mistakes and confustions and distresses as learning the hard way. if its scouting, it all makes sense. as scouting, i forgive myself for being shortsighted and ignorant of so much. traveling in the future i will be that much more competent and capable.

tomorrow i fly back to the states, to return to alaska for another summer of commercial fishing. i am actually thrilled to go back, having gone through a few cycles of travel burn-out now. i am tired of being homeless, living out of my pack. i miss the comforts of family and home. so this ending feels right.

this is the last post, unless i feel i have anything insightful to write about re-integration into US society, the infamous reverse culture shock. kop kum kop, kop jai, shishi, bayarla, kosonom, merci, gracias, thank you for keeping me company.

if we build it, they will come

my first week here i spent most of my time working on a future hedge: building fences, backfilling the trench that the fence sits in, adding compost, planting saplings and transplanting other hedge bushes. i also did plenty of dishes, as i couldn't stand watching karina both cook and clean up.

my evenings i've spent mostly writing and reading- outside in the garden if its nice, or holed up under a skylight in steve's antique shop. they have a huge book collection, and used to run a book exchange until too many unfair trades made them quit. they have great taste in literature (lots of my favorites in there anyway) and some of my happiest moments have been getting to know those shelves and reading as much of it as possible before i leave.

i've also tagged along on some outings- to the bar with steve, and to the kids' school for a buffet and dance performance. it seems odd that there is an international community here- from all over europe but especially britain, and even a woman from vancouver canada.

using french has been lovely (the first time in the last four months of travels that i had a hope of understanding locals in their own terms). this is the first immersion i've had in french since sénégal (fall 05), and it's rusty of course. my vocabulary is pitiful, but my comfort and ability to improvise came right back. i used french a lot in the first two weeks before i came to chateau lassalle, but here i am in a bubble of english (actually, british, which sometimes i can't understand at all). so, time out in the community is nice, even if it's just to flex the ol' linguistic muscles.

this second week i enjoyed the work much more. replacing huge oak rafters in the barn, chiseling away at ancient masonry, busting down walls with a sledge, painting shutters, and cutting up old moldy floorboards for firewood.

this is all part of the master plan. i will explain as best as i can.

there is one barn right next to the house, which currently holds the brocante (antique shop), library, storage spaces, and a big room that serves as an art gallery, studio and gathering space for social gatherings. steve and karina host cultural events here, art shows and entertainment and the like- in fact last saturday night they had an event, displaying posters from the summer 1968 near-revolution that rocked france (as well as many other parts of the world). these propaganda posters are beauties, giving me the itch to get back to printing t-shirts.





also, they are experimenting with a sunday restaurant, and even as i write this there are a couple dozen people out in the garden being served lunch.

but with this second barn on other side of their house that they have recently acquired, they want to reorganize their project. they want a physical separation between their private family space and their public project, so they are going to move all the public things to the second barn. it is also big enough to house a real restaurant and kitchen, and a half-dozen art studios and apartments. eventually lassalle could become a full-blown cultural center and the heart of an artsy little community.

now this is rural france, and there isn't really the right type or size of communty here to fully support a project like this. yet. things are building momentum slowly, more people are getting involved over time, locals are being slowly drawn in, and physical construction is coming right along.

as steve put it, quoting the classic film directly: "if we build it, they will come". it's actually quite inspirational, and i wish i could be a bigger part of it. perhaps i'll come back some day.

so now my two weeks here are coming to an end. tomorrow i'm headed off to barcelona for the final chapter.

may 14 - tristan!

on the 13th i caught a train to vienna, then an overnight to strasbourg, then to marseilles, then to nice, where i met tristan at the airport. i was thrilled to see him, having looked forward to this chapter of the travels for a long time.

we didn't mess around in nice, in my mind just another patong (trendy, packed with tourists, utterly unaffordable) - yech. we hurried on to hendaye, a port town in the southwest corner of france, right on the border with spain. basque country. hendaye is the beginning of the GR-10, an 866km trail that stretches from one end of the pyranees to the other, winding back and forth across the french-spanish border. we arrived in town late, and ended up sleeping in some woods that were probably part of someone's yard (we had to climb a barbed wire fence to get in).

after that first night camping was a lot easier. we headed up into the hills, hiking east for four days before turning back toward hendaye. each day we tried to pass through one village, to fill up our water bottles and buy bread and other groceries. this was tricky sometimes because we were definitely in siesta country, and just about everything closed at about 12:30, opening again a couple hours later, if at all. so some nights we had awkward meals.

we passed through the villages of biriatou, ibardin, and sare, making it almost to ainhoa on our last day, and making a detour on the way back to go to la rhun. being on the border, some of these towns had both french and spanish names (hendaye = hendaya, sare = sara, la rhun = larrun). and some street names had basque translations included. hearing basque was wild, it sounds like nothing else i've ever heard.

we really didn't walk all that far. the steepness of the terrain, the weight of our packs, and various aches and pains kept us down to an average of maybe 5 hours of hiking per day. we stretched a lot, did yoga and chi gong, took naps, took breaks to read in condusive spots, and short side-trips without our packs. each night i made a campfire, even when all the wood was soaked, so that we could roast our fresh vegetables and saugages. and we talked. especially in those first couple days, i was extremely stimulated by tristan's presence- not surprising given my last couple weeks of lone austerity. i felt like a whole new person, just bubbling with social energy.

but yes, although we could see the real dramatic snowcapped pyranees in the distance, we barely scratched the surface of their rhelm. distance covered was not the goal, although if i ever return i believe that it will be.

the basque countryside is a strange society. there is very little industry besides tourism, and the lack of jobs leaves the region almost devoid of young people, who must just all be living in cities. almost all the tourists we saw were middle-aged and older french people. almost everyone on the mountain trails were older couples, locals on day-hikes. we saw a few people with big packs like us, but i think that they were all french too. the droves of internationals supposedly come in august, which probably both increases services for backpackers - food and lodging - and also increases local vigilance - chasing campers off of private land.

the people that do live in the area we hiked through seemed to be pretty well-off. people on pensions or government money or something. all the houses were picture-perfect whitewashed with tile roofs and big yards and gardens. certainly weren't any slums, or the rural trailerpark strip-towns characteristic of the states' rural regions.

the return hike was nice because we knew all the best camping spots and necessary timing between towns. we could take our time and relax, as on the way out we'd wasted so much time wandering around lost. the GR-10 is well marked in most places, but not everywhere.

we got back to hendaye on friday. tristan caught a train back to nice on saturday. he'll be at his tama do training in the hills near there for the next two weeks, and i will spend this chunk of timing wwoofing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms - the french website is http://www.wwoof.fr/). i spent the weekend walking around hendaye, reading and worrying about connecting with my wwoof hosts. i camped in the hills just outside of town, in a lovely thick patch of trees covered in ivy. it's been raining pretty much constantly, but i managed to catch a couple hours of sun on sunday afternoon, spreading out all my gear and finally getting dry.

sunday night i caught a train to dax, then a bus to mont de marsan, where i was picked up by steve. steve and karina are a british couple, around 40 years old, who have been living here for the last 10 years with their three kids - jack, 12; finley, 10; and ella, 4. they live in a massive old house, called chateau lassalle, which is just outside of a little village called aignan. they don't know how old the house is exactly, but its been here since the 1400s at least. there are also two barns, a guesthouse, yards and fields, gardens, and a pond on the property.

i think it was all in disrepair when they bought it, and they've been fixing it up slowly ever since. steve is a handyman extraordinaire. i know that he's done lots of landscaping, put new tile floors into the entire house, built a traditional slate roof, and built a very nice garden. who knows what else, a place this massive and old and complicated must absorb thousands of hours of labor.

steve has a law degree, used to teach literature, and has always run an antique trade. karina is a journalist who runs and writes for a magazine. she researches wealthy philanthropists and their organizations and publishes their financial dealings, and the resulting transparency helps keep them honest and helps charities and other groups seeking funds. they both appear to be tireless champions of parenting, carefully and creatively chosen careers, and domestic projects.

most importantly they are extremey generous. they feel that 30 hours of work a week is a fair exchange for room and board, which is perfectly acceptable to me. with my first shower and laundry in several weeks, and a comfy bed in an old (dry!) camper, i am very happy. it still feels like vacation, even though i just spent the last two days shovelling muddy clay in the rain, which is just as fun as it sounds. the food and wine and company and environment are excellent, and i feel right at home.

a returned bike

after i wrote last i headed back into bukk nemzeti park for two more nights of camping, spending my days riding up and down those hills. i ended up coming across, besides those wild boar (i am told that there are lots), big black and yellow poisonous geckos, one deer critter with big curved horns, and millions of birds. there are almost one thousand species of birds in bukk alone, and day and night i was immersed in unfamiliar songs and chatter. most were little but there were a few hawks and today i saw a stork.

on thursday i met up with a couchsurfer in miskolc, hungary's third largest city. viktor is writing his dissertation on the environmental and political history of the sajo river, which flows through the region and was affected by the heavy industry of the state-socialist era. he also writes articles of political analysis for european newspapers. i aspire to take on similar roles in the near future, and found our meeting to be inspirational. it was great getting to know him.

viktor is a bicyclist and knows the roads in his region, so on friday he led me most of the way up to aggteleki park, through a labyrinth of tiny villages that i could not have found by myself. it was an exhausting day, but just as it was getting too dark i made it to my destination, the town of segliget.

i stayed in segliget (pop. approx 1,000) for two nights with another couchsurfer, a british guy named simon. he runs a guest house in addition to his job editing for a cycling magazine, which he can do from his home. foreigners are rare in rural hungary, but he's made it his home for the last few years, and speaks magyar well by now. with him translating i was better able to experience the local culture, hanging out at the fast food place and bar, playing pool and drinking beer and a crazy slovakian liquor called bekarofka, which tastes like cinnamon and herbs.

saturday i had a lovely lazy day, laying around napping and reading, preparing myself for this last bit. sunday and monday were a long slog, 150 and 105 km respectively, just a sprint back to budapest. it got pretty tedious, the endless hills and windy roads i took to avoid the big highways. i was tired, and losing motivation, sick of being dirty and sore and wet and homeless and worried about flat tires (i got four total - with the weight of my pack strapped to the back it didn't take much of a bump). despite all that, my camp last night made me feel sad to end my trip. i slept in a meadow between two little villages, surrounded by rolling forested hills and the endless birds. once the moon set the stars were brilliant. i am going to miss this.

so, now i am back in budapest at philip's apartment. that old white peugot got me through 650 km of magyar countryside. i was so sad to return it today- i'll be lucky if i can find its equal back in the states. now i am headed to nice, france, to meet my dear friend tristan who arrives in two days. i have a train ticket to vienna austria for tomorrow. from there, my fate is in the hands of the european train network.

topheavy in bukk

first- before i flew back to the states i played in the hungarian ultimate frisbee national championships. it was one of the most thrilling days of my life, i still get the giggles thinking about it. i played for a team called halodigaze, who i had practiced with the week before.

the tournament was in a town called markaz, about an hour and a half drive from budapest. it is wine country, and some of the people organizing the event ran a winery (the prizes at the end were therefore all wine-based). it was a cold and rainy day, but at least no wind, which really screws things up. there were seven teams and two fields, and each team played 4 or 5 games to determine the standings.

we lost our first two games, to the two best teams there - the two that ended up playing for first. it was a tough way to start, but after that our team clicked. everything started working perfectly, and i finally relaxed and was able to play my best. we won our other three games, taking third place. again, one of the most thrilling days of my life.

i am trying to find pictures online, and will inform if i do.

so. now that i am back from the states, i am doing just what i planned. i bought a bike in budapest, along with a lock, helmet, pump and tire repair kit, all for about 220 dollars (if i return it all in good shape, i'll get about 170 back- this is far cheaper than renting). i didn't get paniers, but there is a rack on the back that is good for strapping down my bag. unfortunately this makes me quite topheavy, which took a while to get used to. also, it takes at least 10 minutes to get it all strapped on correctly. i have to take it off and wear it when i lock up my bike and leave it behind, so i am loath to stop in civilization, it's all just a pain in the ass.

on friday i rode about 85 km, from budapest to just past the town of gyöngyös. that night i nested in a patch of bushes between a dirt road and a vineyard. wrapped in a cacoon of garbage bags and nearly all my clothes, i was almost warm enough to sleep. almost. not a great night.

(but man, plastic bags. greatest invention ever. i am utterly dependent on them, and keep a big stash on me at all times. so here's to plastic bags, my best friend out here).

on saturday i rode the rest of the way to eger, about 45 km. i stayed in a little hostel that was run by a family. the son, bolasz, spoke some english, but not his parents. bolasz took me down the family's cellar where he had me taste his father's wine. the earth under eger is just full of cellars, running right into each other (our was separated from the neighbor's by an iron gate). the heart of wine country, most of the town's business is wine. there is a little valley outside town called szépasszony-völgy (valley of the nice lady) that is just ringed with cellars buried into the hillsides. from the openings of each people sell their wine, give out tastes for free and glasses for less than a dollar. this was may-day weekend, a big four day holiday for the country. all the tourists there appeared to be magyar.

i slept for 14 hours that night. for good reasons. sunday i took off for bukk national park, riding up and up until i ran out of daylight and had to find a spot to sleep. i was nice and warm with my sleeping bag i bought from bolasz' mother, which is purple and white and covered in flowers ("just like a man!" announces bolasz).

monday i spent hiking, exploring the confusing network of paths winding through the park. i climbed to some hilltops for the views, found a sweet little spring, and generally just soaked up these beautiful forested hills. things were peachy until a massive thunderstorm broke over my head. i took shelter in a little wooden observation tower, across a meadow from some type of corn-dispensing container, for luring critters of some kind. i thought it would be deer, but last night a pack of wild pigs or boar romped around it. grunts and oinks and squeels and bubbling splashing as they churned the whole area up into a muddy sloppy pond. i slept up in the tower.

today i came back down to eger, about 20 km, to resupply. i am subsisting on bread, cheese, jam, peanut butter (trying to make this precious little jar from santa barbara last as long as possible), carrots, bananas and yogurt. the limiting factor is water, as its so heavy to carry. i wish i knew where all the springs were in this region.

interlude

my granpa ron passed away on the 19th of april. i flew to santa barbara california for a week to be with my family.

i wouldn't write about it here - this is such a light-hearted project. in fact, it's hard to start writing about anything again. it doesn't feel right to embark on frivolous travels and write silly stories after something like this.

i just wanted to explain my silence of the last two weeks. more will come soon.

prague spring and

we flew from ulaan bator to prague instead of budapest because the connection in russia would have left us in moscow airport for 23 hours, as opposed to 4 for prague. we chose wisely. obviously with no visas they keep you penned in, with upper-class consumer goods duty free (but not 500% markup-free) shops and restaurants. the real problem was that a half liter of water would have cost us almost $10. and we were thirsty. and there were no drinking fountains. the exchange rate with russian rubles is intolerable steep. good thing those bureaucrats gave us such a headache, otherwise we'd have gone in and i'd have gone broke.

after three weeks of grey windy death-dry winter in mongolia and china (i know i shouldn't complain about a winter so short, but) the spring in prague felt just like heaven. i was giddy. there were little buds everywhere, tiny white flowers all over bushes, trees just barely getting their leaves out. the city is small, and it is surrounded on most sides by big hills, each of which are covered in parks. i love that they've kept them as they are, prevented the private development that must want that prime territory. we got on top of eight of them in our four days in the city. there are mossy broken stone staircases winding up through neighborhoods that lead up into the parks, and redundant layers of paths crisscrossing all through them. they were full of people walking their dogs. and the spring smells- again, just giddy.

we heard that prague has quite a nightlife, but i was sleeping from about 10 pm til 7 am each night, so i have no idea. we did visit some local bars and restaurants, which were very nice. eastern european beer is the best. and czech food isn't too bad either - we had some amazing garlic soup. i keep thinking about it. the standard local fare seemed to be pizza, which was unexpected. we did plenty of cooking at our hostel's kitchen.

one day i walked southwest from our hostel, and within a half our was in meadows that bordered on farmland. prague is tiny. we walked all over it in just four days. a perfect city for walking.

last friday we caught a bus for budapest. it took about 9 hours, through southeastern czech republic, the western edge of slovakia, then continuing on southeast in hungary. we passed mostly agriculture and forests, mixed together with little towns. we showed up, figured out the subway, and made it to philip's apartment in District VI, on the pest side of the danube. philip and rachael came back on saturday, after spending a week in the netherlands where philip had to do some work in person.

we've spent the last few days wandering around, getting to know the city. we visited kerepesi cemetery, which i loved for its ancient crumbling overgrown headstones back in the woods, and for its weird russian section. the majority of the graves were for russian soldiers who were killed while helping the nazis off in world war II. but then there is a section for those who died in 1956, suppressing the hungarian uprising. it seemed strange to us that, now that the USSR has fallen, the hungarians don't tear down these monuments to their own suppression by stalinism.

1956 is the most fascinating thing about this city to me. there are bullet-holes everywhere. for about 10 days hungary had a government in which stalinist leaders were replaced with democratically-elected ones, workers' councils were rebuilt and re-empowered, power was decentralized to these councils, and the entire military (eventually) sided with the uprising. this is everything a trotskyist advocates and works for in a stalinist deformed workers' state. unfortunately, all trotskyists and other left-commies had long been purged, so there was a disturbing lack of leadership. also, the red army rolled in and crushed the puny hungarian army, purged the army leadership of sympathizers, executed a bunch of politicians, re-instituted mandatory indoctrination for rank and file soldiers, suppressed the new councils and unions, etc. hence, 10 days.

we wanted to take a walking tour of the history of communism in the city, but it was going to cost about $50 per person. so, eli and i spent a couple days doing research, and gave the tour ourselves. we took philip and rachael up to the castle district in buda where students at the technical university had helped organize, agitate for and instigate the uprising, alongside the working class at every step (one good thing about stalinism that allowed this- the middle class monopoly on higher ed was replaced by a reactionary system of giving the education to working class and peasant kids instead).

then we walked down to Bem Ter in buda, where a crowd of between 10 and 100 thousand people rallied on 23 october 1956, the first big show of force by the people. then we walked across the Margit bridge, following the path of the workers and students as they headed into pest. they split up to head to the parliament building where they joined with others, forming a crowd of 200 thousand; to the world's biggest statue of stalin, which they tore down; to the radio building, which they tried to take over to broadcast their demands; to various military barracks, where they convinced soldiers to join them; and to communist party offices, the homes of politicians, and every other strategic point in the city. the soviet soldiers stationed here sympathized (they were of the same class, and were equally abused under stalinism) and showed very little resistance. USSR leaders could only get their soldiers to fight the hungarians when they brought in fresh ones who were told they were off to fight nazis or capitalist troops at the suez canal.

well i could go on and on (and on and on) about this, but the important thing is this: the students and workers explicitly stated that they did not want a capitalist counterrevolution. they understood how much worse that would be than stalinism. they fought for exactly what i would have fought for in their situation: a more free, democratic version of what they already had. this is exactly what modern trotskyists fight for, and it's inspirational to see how far these folks got in '56, despite the forces stacked against them.

on the 50th anniversary, just a year and a half ago, this city erupted. riot cops had to bust skulls left and right to get everyone to lie back down again. the heritage of '56 is alive and kicking. i've certainly never been in a place so rich with progressive revolutionary history, and, just under the surface, contemporary energy...

today eli and i went to the national museum, which had decent exhibits on the last 900 years or so. its funny to see their history of the mongolian invasion, after seeing it from the other side in mongolia's national museum in UB. they glossed over the communist period, so we really didn't learn much. there was crap propaganda, trying to talk up the economic development during their capitalist periods while ignoring the development under stalin (which dwarfs the economic progress of any other period). they also didn't give much attention to '56, treating it like a anti-communist insurrection (which is ironically the same thing the USSR insisted that it was- an attempted counterrevolution. this is significant, that these two types of ruling classes would propagandize against '56 in the same way. both clearly feel threatened by it.)

we also visited the radio station today, where the first major battle of '56 was fought, and where the first budapest resident was killed (by the hated AVH - hungarian secret police - who were holding the station. they all got killed by the way).

just a few other little things:

standard fare here is turkish food. been eating gyros and falafel every day.

also, i've attended the practices of three different budapest ultimate frisbee teams in the last 4 days. this is my first real foray into strategy, set plays, reading the field and knowing how to move properly. i am exhausted and sore, both physically and mentally.

also, eli tricked me into eating a piece of cheese with ketchup on it. i thought it was sriracha hot sauce. it wasn't. it was gross. to get him back i emptied the sri from his bottle and replaced it with ketchup. bizarrely, he hasn't even noticed. i almost died watching him eat a sandwich covered in it last night. he is all hell of dense. damn revenge is sweet. this is even funnier because i'm writing about it, but he won't read this for a long time, if ever. don't tell him or anything, i want to see the expression on his face when he figures it out.