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.