A Colorado Round Up

This summer I indulged in another extensive vacation from Europe and headed to my beloved home state for two and a half weeks. While the trips home never seem quite long enough, it did give me ample time to hit all of my favorite sites, starting with Rocky Mountain National Park. Here my parents and I are at Bear Lake in July.



Once Mike joined me in Colorado, my parents took us to a Rockies game on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon.

Nothing makes me appreciate how far I am away from Budapest, than eating a hot dog, belting out "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"and drinking majorly overpriced Bud Lights. It was a piece of Americana that I desperately craved.

While I was home, I also got to do something I'd been promising Mike I'd do for ages: take him to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. There is no doubt that this is the most gorgeous venue in the world, with it's natural stone set up and breathtaking view to the Denver sky line. Throughout high school and college I frequented the venue, and I even poured beers there for a month to make some extra cash one summer. You know it's a magical place if I worked there and still think it's amazing after seeing the behind-the-scenes happenings.

Instead of catching a concert, we attended "Film on the Rocks," which plays cult classic flicks on a giant screen. We were treated to the Beatles movie "Across the Universe," which was part cinema, part sing along. Here is a shot of the screen with Denver's lights ablaze.

Beahms in Budapest: Round II

Last month after the Nordic volcano eased its virulent spewing, the coast was clear for my parents to arrive. They were originally planning to start their trip one week earlier than they did, and our itinerary included a few stops in Croatia, but Mother Nature pushed our plans back. We still made the best of the slightly shortened time line and toured all around Hungary. It was my dad's first time in Magyar-land and my mom's second go-round.

First we toured around Budapest, and I showed my parents all my favorite restaurants and sites around the city, including a beautiful stroll through the Buda Hills. Normally I don't have time to take guests there, so I was really happy to prove to my parents that foliage and fresh air does in fact exist in this bustling capital. To head to lower ground, we had a death-defying experience on an antique chairlift, which you can read about here. Here is a photo of my parents at the highest lookout in the city:

Naturally, I would be remiss if I didn't encourage my parents to taste the local tipple, so we went to Doblo Wine Bar (our neighborhood haunt which I described here) and took a weekend excursion to Eger, home to Valley of Beautiful Women, where one can hop from cellar to cellar to drink incredibly cheap vintages, about 5o cents a glass.


However, on this particular day the legendary lovely ladies of the region were replaced by Jobbik supporters (Hungary's far-right, anarchist political party). Luckily we were there early enough in the day to avoid any major skinhead drama, and the only irritation stemming from the visit was from a Gypsy violinist who stood uncomfortably close to me and serenaded our table for at least 10 minutes despite all of our body language and uncomfortable glances (and the fact we hadn't tipped him) that encouraged him to move along. I did end up giving him a tip on my way out and he just scowled at me, so I guess he was a mercurial artist.


We got to celebrate my mom's birthday during her trip, so her request was to go to an artistic village just outside Budapest called Szentendre. Set along the Danube I liken it to the Estes Park of Hungary - very picturesque with art galleries and churches galore, although littered with tourist shops. It was only the second time I'd been there, so it was worth the trip. Here is a shot of my parents on Szentendre's walking trail that looks out to the Duna:

Now all of Mike's and my immediate family has made it across the pond, and it's our turn to head back to the US to visit them - a trip we'll undertake in August. I can't wait!

Checking out the Pécs

Last weekend my friend Zsofi and I ventured to Pécs, a town in Southern Hungary, which is unfortunately not pronounced like the muscle group, but like Paych. We went to see the Fringe Festival, which is a weekend long celebration of amateur artists with hundreds of free performances offered all over the city in every genre conceivable. Normally, the festival is in Budapest, but the Festival Center relocated it to Pécs because the city was chosen at Europe's Capital of Culture for 2010.


I expected Pécs to be pretty, but it was downright gorgeous, especially in its quaint downtown. This is partly due to the fact that it's the home of Zsolnay - a famous ceramics and tile manufacturer, so his creative roofs like the one pictured above decorated the city's skyline. However, a huge portion of the city, including its main square was under construction. To get anywhere, we had to loop around fenced-in construction zones and try to avoid the sound of jackhammers. Thus, we decided the city would be more appropriately titled the European Capital of Construction 2010.

Besides the gorgeous roofs, another facet of the city that I immediately loved was its rich religiosity that reflected many of Hungary's political stages. Within a five minute walk of each other, there was an impressive mosque, a stunning cathedral and a synagogue. Since there isn't much Muslim influence in Hungary since the Turks left, the mosque has been converted into a Cathedral church. I found this hybrid fascinating, because the interior was circular, rather than the long aisle to which I've become accustomed. Plus, they've adapted the murals to reflect the stations of the cross, but the style still looks influenced by the East.



However, this shifting denomination works the other way too. The main basilica, picture above, (which was also under construction) was used by the Turks as a mosque, so there was a Moorish influence to the Christian temple too, most evident in its crypt:

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good shot of the synagogue because of construction blockades, but here's a beautiful performing arts center where we saw a dance troupe. I will write more about the Fringe Festival itself in my creative writing blog: http://marisa-musings.blogspot.com/

A Family Affair

In mid-March, I was graced by the presence of my wonderful in-laws, Mark and Nancy, and by super-fun cousins, Laura and Brad. We did the standard Budapest and Zagreb tourist fare, and here are some photographic highlights of the trip. The photo above is of Nancy, Mike and me at a wine tasting at Doblo, where we sampled some (too much) of Hungary's fabulous vintages. For more on this, see my other blog.

Nancy admiring the fascinating meat selection and adorned piggies at the Central Market in Budapest. The creepiest thing we saw was a huge, flattened cow tongue - they are the size of a toilet-seat. Yuck.

In addition to riding funiculars (which I also wrote about in my other blog), I got to experience a new tourist attraction - Statue Park. In most formerly Communist countries, when the regime changed, citizens and the new government destroyed the Social Realism statues that decorated their cities. However, Budapest was not as hot-headed as its red counterparts, and they decided to save many of the statues, which were later installed at Statue Park, which is about a 20 minute drive outside the city center. The park wasn't as big as I had anticipated, but there were still some impressively large sculptures or the ideal Communist worker, such as the one below that is overtaking Brad, and many triumphant depictions of Lenin and Stalin. Above, you can see how well Laura would have blended in with the Commie youth movement.




This picture of me and my cousins was taken in Zagreb. Notice the glorious sunshine. After this picture was taken, we basked in the sun for at least 20 minutes.

Nancy and Mark in the "green horseshoe" of Zagreb, where there are multiple picturesque parks in a row.

A Venetian Moment

In one of the less-auspicious moments of the new year, I mistakenly deleted all the Italian footage off of my video camera. At the very least, I managed to re-shoot one video of the iconic gondolas while I was still in Venice. Please enjoy:

New Art in New Zagreb

 

First, let me draw your attention to the most beautiful feature of this photograph: the blue, clear skies. Yes, it's true: spring is near, and this Saturday in Zagreb the sun decided to make its debut after a very extended gray winter. After walking around downtown and absorbing some sun, Mike took me to the brand new Museum of Contemporary Art in New Zagreb. We live in Old Zagreb and typically spend most our time in the older side of the city, so seeing the new side was a nice change. You know you've been in Europe for too long when modern buildings and shopping malls are comforting...

Anyhow, like the modern art museums in Budapest and Vienna, the building itself was as minimalistic as possible and hung its art on unadorned white concrete walls. However, one aspect that was really interesting, both up close and from afar was the dark panels of windows on each level you can pictured. Inside each of those glass sections are panels of LED lights (it looks like a giant Lite Bright), which scroll words and photos incessantly.

  

Given its vivid - often crazy - exhibitions (which really favored nudity to clothing), the sparse space was welcome. There were three huge levels of every medium of art: paintings, photographs, video installations, sculptures, found art, etc., primarily from Croatian artists. This piece I am standing by was a recreation of tiny, squared living spaces like bathrooms, living rooms, etc.,  repeated and scattered around a chess board. I learned of its metaphor while I was at the museum, but now it's escaping me... I believe it was a commentary on the modern game of life and the transitory idea of what home is - some existential thinking like that...  Since I wanted to engage in this higher thinking, I bought the audio guide so I could learn more about each piece, but it was clear the curators can't always explain the work, so they would revert to giving biographical information on each artist instead. Thus, this is why I can't remember most artists' motivations. However, this is probably a better way to view the work - interpreting it as I please.

  

This was my favorite piece, called "Four Seasons - Grave of an Unknown Computer." I enjoyed the beautiful composition and tongue-in-cheek title which I thought was a witty commentary on our modern relationship with technology.

  

Now this piece on the other hand, was Mike's least favorite piece of artwork presented at the Museum. As to the symbolism, your guess is as good as ours. 

  

Perhaps the highlight of the huge museum was how you got to exit it: through a steep, curly slide fixated in the center of the museum. You could either take the plunge from the second story or the third, and being the daredevils we are, we chose the highest peak. Here I am, about to make my exit.

 

Support a new wave of social entrepreneurs | Exchange | Ode Magazine

Support a new wave of social entrepreneurs | Exchange | Ode Magazine

Secondary Blog

I made a quick plug for my new blog in an earlier post, but I wanted to officially announce that I have launched a new blog. As a New Year's resolution for 2010, I have avowed to invest time in creative writing, so I am using the new blog as a platform for that. The three tenets for my new blog for the next year are:

• As a practice in creative non-fiction, I will write at least 50 vignettes on my "2010 adventures." I reserve the right to be indulgent in what I consider an adventure.

•  I will continue to update my current blog (http://marisabeahm.blogspot.com) in the same frequency/fashion as I have for the last few years.

• I will post at least one new poem a month.

If you can handle reading even more of my writing, here is the link:

http://marisa-musings.blogspot.com/

Snowshoeing in the Roosevelt National Forest

As a change of scenery and to do a rare US-based entry, I wanted to post about my family's snowshoeing trip. In mid-January, my Idaho-living sister joined me in Colorado to visit my parents, and we all went snowshoeing in Northern Colorado. I admittedly like the idea of snow sports more than I actually like participating in them, but after I warmed up and escaped some harsh winds, it was lovely to romp through the snow. A downfall of living in Budapest is the lack of fresh air and sunshine, so this pristine change of scenery was so appreciated. And of course, the best part was having my family together.

 

  

 

Venice, at last ...

The meaning of my blog title is twofold. First, it is an apology to my steady readers for taking so long to blog about my January trip. Once I came back from the Italian excursion, I had house guests, then headed to the States, from where, as time has proven, I rarely blog. But, now I'm back in Hungary and ready to be a regular blogger once again.

On a literal level, the title of this blog expresses my excessive happiness that I finally made it to Venice, the city that's been my most pined-for European destination for as long as I can remember. Mike and I went at the very end of December and met up with his close college buddy, Ryan, and his friend Brad.

With its labyrinthine streets, countless bridges and serpentine canals that embrace the entire city, Venice was just as charmingly romantic as I envisioned. The majority of our time was spent wandering through the claustrophobic streets, avoiding the myriad crystal and tie shops, and relishing in the luxury of getting lost amid crumbling walls and rising waters. Although we didn't ride a gondola, we saw many gorgeous churches (including the San Marco bascilica, with its overwhelming amount of byzantine, gilded murals) and the Peggy Guggenheim museum, which of course I could not skip! The museum is in a palace right on the Grand Canal, and although its collection included gawk-worthy paintings by Pollock and Picasso, the views from its terrace rivaled any art inside.

Since we went in the winter, we were able to avoid droves of other tourists, but we were subject to flooding on a daily basis. Each morning, we awoke to a siren that signaled the flooding was about to begin. From about 6am to 11am, there was at least a foot of standing water outside our rental apartment that slowly drained back to the sea. Fortunately for my party-loving travel mates, sleeping in and avoiding the water was no challenge at all.

Since we were there to ring in the New Year, we weren't about to miss seeing the main celebrations at San Marco Square, despite the fact that it was underwater on New Year's Eve.

I decided to splurge on rubber boots to keep my feet dry, but the boys decided to go the more frugal route and wrap their feet in well-layered trash bags, leading to the Smurf effect you see pictured. They managed to stay dry for at least a portion of the time we spent in the square, but at the stroke of midnight, we fled the waters and headed to the bar where we had already become "regulars" with the Albanian bartenders. For a more detailed description of our New Year's Eve, visit my new creative writing blog:
http://marisa-musings.blogspot.com/


On the last night of our trip, Mike and I stayed at a gorgeous hotel called Molino Stucky, which is on Giudecca, an lilliputian island across from San Marco. To get to the landmark hotel, we took a chartered boat which Mike adored (his new life goal is to become a boat captain and a gondolier). The stunning,  brick hotel (pictured next to me) is in a refurbished, 19th-century flour mill, which was once run by Stucky, a notoriously tyrannical boss who was murdered by one of his employees in the hotel. Fortunately, I saw no signs of Stucky's ghost, just lovely artwork and beautiful view of the Venetian sky line.

While my dreams of more Italian travel are certainly not extinguished, I am so thankful I finally set foot on the soaked streets of Venice.

An Austro-Hungarian Christmas

For the first time in our lives, both Michael and I did not spend Christmas with our families and instead enjoyed a newlywed Yule Tide in Hungary. In order to keep some things normal, we bought a real Christmas tree from one of the corner tree lots that were set up around the city. Since we don't have any ornaments with us, we went the old-fashioned route and strung popcorn (a very labor-intensive process that confused some of our Hungarian friends) and designed our own ornaments and tree-toppers. I am quite proud of the fleet of dachshund ornaments I fashioned out of red construction paper.


Two days before Christmas, we headed to Vienna to visit the Christmas markets and enjoy the lights.


Instead of going to the big, commercialized market like we did last year, we tried to visit the smaller ones. These were all charming with wooden stall after wooden stall of handicrafts and food, but there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of vendors who sold Nepalese or Hindu type goods. So rather than the expected smell of mulled wine and bratwurst wafting through the air, we caught wiffs of patchouli oil and incense, which did make me slightly nostalgic for Boulder.


The best part of our one-night stay (besides eating delicious schnitzel and visiting two microbreweries) was ogling the Christmas lights. The city center of Vienna simply dazzled - lights were strung everywhere, and some buildings were shrouded in so many lights, they looked like wrapped presents.

My favorite lights were hung from large circles, so they streamed down like octopus tentacles.


Back in Budapest n Christmas Eve, we watched our favorite holiday movies, baked a lot of sweets and allowed each other to open one present, just like at home. On actual Christmas day, we didn't want to cook a big meal for just the two of us, so we went to the Marriott Hotel to feast on their delicious buffet, which was every bit as good as their Thanksgiving display. Maybe we'll make that a tradition ... That day I also went to mass at Budapest's most famous church, St. Stephen's Basilica. Although I couldn't understand the mass because it was given in Latin and Hungarian, it was such a beautiful experience to sit in this immense cathedral among strangers full of Christmas joy and wonder how many people had also been to mass in the same spot and stared at the same stunning frescoes over the last few centuries.





On Christmas night, our good friends filled our apartment, drank my mulled wine (even though I accidentally added peppercorn instead of cloves into it) and were holly and jolly into the wee hours of the night.