Sunday in a cemetery

Those of you who know me well will realise that I have for some time had an interest in cemeteries. As well as being a former guide around Sheffield's General Cemetery I have dragged partners and friends around various Parisian cemeteries, standing silently before monuments to Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Abelard and Heloise, amongst others.

So those long-suffering people will not be surprised to know that I made my way last weekend to one of Budapest's most important cemeteries, the Kerepesi.

It's probably unfair to compare the monuments in Sheffield's General Cemetery with those in a capital city, but I was struck by the magnificence of several of the memorials in the Kerepesi. But this was probably not surprising, given the way people here celebrate many of their national heroes.




What was particularly interesting was the distribution of memorials. In a prominent place, one of the first things you see when entering are the graves of the party officials who died in 1956, and nearby is the Pantheon of the Working Class Movement, an enormous Soviet-style monument to leaders and martyrs who "lived for communism and the people. It features the characteristic socialist-realist style that was so popular, but which now looks vaguely sinister and caricaturised (if there is such a word).



Next to this is the admittedly simple grave of Janos Kadar, who led the country from 1956 until 1988. He created the slightly more liberal brand of communism that led to Hungary being the West's favourite communist country. As you can see from the photograph, he still has many admirers.




Further into the cemetery are two Art Nouveau funerary arcades, decorated with golden mosaics and containing a fine selection of memorial statues.



Nearby I found the memorial to Jozsef Antall who was the first leader after the 'Transition' of 1989, as it is called. The memorial symbolically shows half human-half horse figures trying to break clear of a sheet.



One of the largest monuments in the cemetery is to Lajos Kossuth, a key figure in Hungarian politics around the time of the 1848 revolution. Next to him, to show their importance to the state in a later period, is an arc of uniform black marble tombstones bearing a single star, marking important ministers of the Soviet-era.




My final visit was perhaps the most moving, to the area with memorials to those people who died opposing the Soviet occupation in 1956. This definitely had an air of being recently created or at least renovated.

So a trip around the Kerepesi provided me with a chance to learn a little more about recent Hungarian history and to reflect on the ebbs and flows of ideologies that the country has lived through in the last 200 years.

Reflections on faith

Ever since I whiled away my 20s working in the Sudan and the Gambia, I’ve been interested in Islam and its relationship to my own nominally Christian cultural background.

So a week in Syria was the first opportunity that I had for many years to reconnect with the Muslim world. Thanks to one of my colleagues I was able to spend quite a bit of my spare time with local people in a non-work setting, and was struck by how they were all interested in finding out what I and others in ‘the West’ thought about Islam. Perhaps reflecting the fact that most of the world’s media is concerned with the threat posed by fundamentalist Islam, they asked me this, while it would seem unlikely that we might ask them what they think about the threat posed by fundamentalist Christianity. But that’s another story.

So I talked about how we in Britain seem to be struggling with what Islam means, that the mass media tends to group all Muslims together under a heading of fanaticism, that the media went crazy when one of our archbishops suggested we might one day need to accept elements of Sharia, and that there is a perception that all Muslim women are oppressed. I could go on.

This last point was of particular interest to one woman I talked to. She was a friend of one of my Budapest colleagues, and was as confident and outspoken about her life as any of the women I know from home. She is not married, has a senior job in a large company in Syria, manages men without any problem, and was quite happy to be in a restaurant alone with me. She laughed at the idea that she was repressed and instead talked about how Islam gives her a society with a moral code that actually gives her freedom. When I asked her about veils and burkas she pointed out that these were only a feature in countries where they had always been a part of life, and that they were not necessarily part of Islam.

People were also interested in Britain’s part in the Iraq invasion, and showed a very clear appreciation of the distinction between Britain, its people and its government. They were quite aware that most British people had been against the war and that we had become involved because of Tony Blair’s self-serving sycophancy. I’m not sure that we have been quite so good at distinguishing between people, nations and ideologies.

Perhaps I return to Budapest knowing even less than I did before. But what I reflect on is that if, based on their faith, we want to make assumptions about what people from this region are like, we should perhaps rather say that they are invariably warm, friendly and hospitable.

Ironies, shame and anger

On Tuesday I spent most of the day at a food distribution depot outside Damascus. Most of the 160,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the Damascus area as ‘urban’ refugees, which in the jargon means they live in the community rather than in camps.

160,000 people arriving in a country with a population of 20 million has a pretty major impact, but to its credit the Syrian government has welcomed them and worked hard to help them find some sort of temporary home here. The Syrian people have also been incredibly accommodating to an influx that has had a profound inflationary impact on the country’s economy, as many of the incoming Iraqis were relatively well-off and so pushed prices for food and accommodation up. To date there has been little friction between the communities, surprising to me coming from a country where immigration and associated tensions are a significant political and civil issue in many areas.

Partly as a response to this strain on resources and also as an acknowledgement that as the refugees are not allowed to (legally) work and so would soon start to run out of money, they are entitled to a regular food allowance, a package of rice, beans, tinned goods and other staples. This is done in a very sophisticated way, with a text message going out to people saying their allotment is ready, so that they then make their way to one of the distribution points around the city, where a fleet of contracted small pick-up trucks is ready to take them and their food to where they live.

It’s a very slick operation, as the refugees show their registration cards, receive bar code slips and then queue to pick up their allowance.

One of the local members of staff was showing me around the depot and we paused at the point where people were queuing for the trucks. I was able to watch them and to reflect on what I had learnt previously, that many had been professionals in Iraq, such as lawyers, teachers, nurses, dentists and doctors, In fact, pretty much like me and most of the people I know back home. In the chaos that has followed the invasion they packed their bags and left, often leaving their papers and qualification documents behind them in the haste to find safety. Just ordinary people, living out their hopes and fears but unfortunately being ruled by a ‘mean son of a bitch’ who wasn’t the US’ and UK’s son of a bitch.

Anyway, a well-dressed middle-aged man peeled away from the queue to come over and ask my guide about some recent changes in the food allowance. She explained why it had happened, so he thanked her and clasped my hand between both of his, a sign of respect, and said, “Shukran, shukran”, thank you, thank you.

As he walked away the irony of the moment overwhelmed me, that an Iraqi refugee was thanking me, a Brit, for helping him get through. The disgrace of what our government, and Blair in particular, did and for which they resolutely fail to apologise, just came home to me in that brief moment of humanity.

The blogger goes east

When I was about 9 years old my mum took me and my friend Richard to a cinema in Torquay to see “Lawrence of Arabia”. I was captivated by the epic story, the cinematography and the romance of the desert, and after that always wanted to know more about that part of the world.



The film ends with Lawrence arriving in Damascus with the Arab army, riding a camel. Sadly a Turkish Airlines Airbus 321 from Istanbul was somewhat less dashing but I nevertheless felt the excitement of arriving somewhere I’ve always wanted to see.

On my first evening my usual need to find out where I am exactly led me to walking into the centre of the city. As the Lonely Planet guide says, there are two parts to Damascus, the Old Town and the rest of it. Visitors are inevitably drawn to the Old Town, a three-quarter of a mile long oval surrounded in parts by a Roman city wall and containing a dense tangle of streets, markets, mosques, houses, churches and alleyways.



Perhaps the main attraction of the city is the Umayyad Mosque, one of the holiest sites in the Muslim world. Dating from 705 it is a truly magnificent building, a large open courtyard paved with polished marble, walls decorated with beautiful mosaics, and around the perimeter rooms containing various shrines. As a 'seeker' I felt slightly nervous about entering on my own, but one of the people on the gate recognised me as a foreigner and said, "Welcome, welcome", which made me feel much better.



I walked around very aware of an atmosphere of great excitement and deep respect of the people visiting it. The most appropriate thing to do seemed to be to find a quiet corner and to sit and reflect on the surroundings.



Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, but the Umayyad contains a shrine very important to Shia Muslims, and so there were large numbers of pilgrims, mainly Iranians, made very visible by the black-clad women. In Britain we seem to hear a lot about Iraq and the conflict between Sunnis and Shias so it was gratifying to see that the visiting pilgrims moved around the city easily.

In fact, one area on the outskirts of Damascus is a mainly Shia area as it has the Saida Zainab shrine, another important place for Shia pilgrims. I was taken there one day and went in with my driver, and was completely overwhelmed by the intense beauty of its interior, with its mosaic walls and a shining metallic ceiling, that gave it the feeling of being some sort of celestial body.



All around me excited people struggled to get to the centre of the shrine and kiss and touch it. My driver took some photographs of the place and me, and conscious that people take on a very serious look when they were photographed in such places I tried to pull myself together and look suitably composed (although I'm not sure that I succeeded).



As the week progressed I spent several evenings in the Old Town, and never failed to be impressed by the calm magic of the place. The fulfilment of long-held dreams can be disappointing, but this was not the case; Damascus was certainly a wonderful experience.

All along the watchtowers

Today, March 15, was a national holiday here in Hungary. Called Revolution Day, it commemorates the day when the Hungarian people rose up against their Austrian rulers in 1848. The uprising was brutally suppressed, but the memory lives on as a key moment in Hungarian history, hence the holiday.

However, the celebration of Hungarian nationalism has been hijacked rather by far right groups in the country, who like to hold marches and demonstrations in the city, which, of course, attract far left groups who disagree with their views, and often, apparently, violence ensues. So my local colleagues had advised me to either stay in my apartment or to leave the city, as the Parliament buildings right next to where I live are one of the centres for disturbances.



As it was a dry and sunny, albeit cold and windy, day I decided to go out on my bike again, and caught an early morning train to the not picturesquely named town of Szob, which is on the north bank of the river right up against the Slovakian border. I set off following the road which runs along the Hungarian side of the river that marks the border, unfortunately going into the teeth of the cold, strong north easterly wind. So the first part of the journey was pretty hard going, especially as the gear indexing on my bike seemed to have slipped and the chain kept slipping. Fortunately, after about 15 miles the road turned sharply to the east and I suddenly found I had something of a tail wind.

As I had progressed slowly along this road I realised that there was another feature of the Hungarian landscape that seemed unusual to my eyes, the watchtowers. Along one stretch of the road, which ran parallel and about a quarter of a mile from the river border, was a long line of watchtowers in the middle of fields, looking as if they ought to be electricity pylons.



They looked rather sad, with peeling paint, broken windows and flapping doors, but made me think about what they represented from the recent past, where ordinary people were unable to travel from one country to another, even though, as here, the border was no more than a small river.

Eventually I reached a village where I needed to turn off. I was grateful for the GPS in my mobile phone, as the turning had no signpost and the road I needed would be crossing about 15 miles of empty countryside, and I really wanted to make sure that I took the right turning.

This whole part of Hungary seemed extremely empty and quiet, and the first part of the road took me through what looked like a very traditional village, long lines of single-storey buildings, many of which had gardens in which dogs and chickens ran around, almost like smallholdings. A weatherbeaten old lady with the usual scarf around her head stopped and looked at me as if I was a visiting alien.

Anyway, I pushed on along what the cycling guidebook had said was a paved road, but which turned out to be a formerly paved road, and I negotiated several miles of tarmac, concrete, potholes and enormous puddles. However, I was pushing up along a wooded valley and the wind had disappeared so that in the sun it was warm and pleasant. After a while I stopped for my sandwiches at the side of a clearing, where some deer stood and watched me suspiciously while a buzzard screeched as it circled overhead. It felt very remote.

It felt even more remote when I realised that I had a puncture. Swearing extensively, I realised that I did not have any puncture adhesive but fortunately had a spare inner tube so put that in, pumped the tyre up and set off.

I pushed on up through the valley, feeling slightly anxious when the first snow appeared on the road, and the quality of the surface deteriorated considerably. However, to my surprise as I climbed up through the ever thicker snow the tarmac reappeared and by the time I climbed to the top of the pass it was a good quality road, if under several inches of snow. I stopped to admire the great view over the valley from which I had just emerged.



There followed several miles of steady descent, which was wonderful, and I eventually emerged from my wilderness road just where the guidebook said I would. I had planned to cycle on down to the river to catch a train back, but realised that with the puncture and the poor quality road I had taken a lot more time than I thought and that I could in fact catch a train from an intermediate station right where I had emerged. So I cycled up to Nagyoroszi station and tried to work out whether or not a train would be calling soon. The station itself was shut and was in a somewhat decrepit state which made me wonder whether any trains ever called there, but suddenly an old chap appeared and started talking to me.

Initially I understood absolutely nothing and trotted out my usual "I don't understand Hungarian" line, but then realised he was telling me the time of the next train, which was in about 30 minutes, so we stood in the sun and out of the wind to wait. My lack of Hungarian did not deter him from talking, and I suddenly remembered that I had my Hungarian phrasebook with me, so I pulled it out and we managed to have an amusing if limited conversation: today is a holiday, the wind is cold, I live in Budapest, I am English, it is cold in England, I cannot give him 300 forints and my postillion has been struck by lightning. I wanted to ask him if he had seen the Monty Python Hungarian phrasebook sketch, but somehow he didn't seem like part of the YouTube generation.

Then, bang on time, the train appeared. It was a little three-car unit, with something rather like an observation area at the back, a bench seat with a large window looking backwards at the receding track. So I sat there feeling comfortably warm and satisfied.





The ticket collector came along and, of course, spoke no English, but I managed to understand and explain what I wanted to do. The biggest sticking point was that she wanted to know my age, as I think over-60s get cheap tickets. Fortunately, once I twigged this I enjoyed our laughter about the mutual incomprehension sufficiently to avoid getting miffed about being seen as a potential over 60. Not that I have anything against over-60s, it's just that I still can't quite believe I look a day over 40.

The train rattled on down through a winding hillside and lovely wild countryside until we reached the large town of Vac, where we changed onto a fast electric train that took us into Budapest.



I groaned when I realised that my back tyre was almost flat again, but at least I was able to get home safely without encountering any crazy political activities.

On teeth

We had been called to board our flight on time and everything for the first part of my long weekend back home seemed to be going well. However, after we had all stuffed our bags in the overhead lockers, put our arm rests down and fastened our seat belts nothing happened.

After a few minutes they announced that there was 'an air traffic control restriction' and that we would have to wait for a new minutes. So I pulled out my book and started to read.

However, the lady sitting right behind me decided to have a loud conversation with the person sitting across the aisle, revealing to us all that she had been in Budapest to have 13 crowns fitted. More details followed about the cost (£3000) and the procedures and problems she had had. This was not detail I particularly wanted, but found that I could not concentrate on my book while the story unfolded.

In fact, dental tourism seems to be a significant part of the Budapest winter economy. The week before last I met a friend of a friend who had come for a few days to have some dental treatment. Entire hotels seem to be filled with Western Europeans coming to have their teeth fixed at budget prices, a result of the combination of high quality dental practice and low salaries in the medical sector. Googling "dental tourism Hungary" gives over 50,000 hits, and quite a few websites whose name revolves around a combination of dental, tourism and Hungary.

Maybe I'm getting old, but it all sounds just a little bit wacky to me.

Going out and bumping into someone I know!!!!

Gestalt psychology is concerned with how we perceive the world around us. Its principles suggest that we tend to interpret what we see around us in the light of what we are familiar with, and that anything that does not fit into that pattern sticks out. Hence we notice differences rather than similarities.

So as I walk around Budapest what I notice are the differences, and one of those differences is in the types of shops that are around. There are probably three types of shop that, to my eyes at least, seem to be much more common here than in Britain: the chemists, the hairdressers and bookshops.

Why is that? Why more chemists? Are people more interested in their health, do pharmacists have a different role to play in healthcare delivery, do people tend towards hypochondria? Why more hairdressers? Does Hungarian hair grow more quickly? I have no idea, but I feel on firmer ground about the prevalence of bookshops.

People just love books (and that's what the Rough Guide also tells me). As I reported some weeks ago I have already (inadvertently) been to a book reading, but a couple of nights ago I made a conscious decision to go to another one. This was going to be in English at a second-hand bookshop called Treehugger Dan's, a place that seems to play a significant role in English-language life in the city, being just that little bit more alternative.

Getting there was interesting in its own right. As I walked along a pedestrianised street I saw that there was a fashion show being held in a designer shop along the way. The models were walking inside the shop along a catwalk the length of the pavement window, with the invited fashionistas sitting watching them. Meanwhile, outside in the street the uninvited plebeian fashionistas sat on a street bench looking in. I grabbed a quick picture on my mobile phone to capture the magic of the moment.



So I made it to the book reading and sat down. Suddenly, somebody said, "Hello Bryan, what are you doing here?", and it turned out to be one of my colleagues. That was enough of a surprise but then she said that her husband was the author that the evening was being held around. We listened to him being interviewed and to reading some extracts from the book, and then afterwards I joined my colleague and we talked about why I had come. And, of course, I asked her husband to sign a copy of his book!

The evening that had started with me expecting to spend another interesting but solo few hours had ended up with me enjoying the company of some interesting people, one of whom I actually knew. For the first time here in Budapest I had gone out and bumped into someone I knew. It felt like a significant evening and I walked home with an extra degree of positivity.