Pre-travel joy

here i am.
tomorrow right now, i'll be in Asia.
probably asleep after a full travel day to Istanbul. i feel so fucking good because of that.

my world here in Hungary is full of people who love me. i keep receiving good travel wishes.
i've just came back from a very tasty goodbye dinner at Mazel Tov, and a very deep and tight hug.

life feels great.

Philosophers

i'm having the opportunity to meet a lot of different people.

today i was speacking with a friend at a Hungarian Easter Party organised by the ELTE Faculty of Humanities. he told me that during his experience as Erasmus student he met few people he could have a dialogue with. 

that assertion reminded me that i felt just like that and i posed him some other questions to know what he tought about that. 

in fact, his point of view was something sensibly different than mine on this matter.   he was complaining much more about the lack of culture, rather than the lack of real interaction. he actually believed that most of the people are, i quote, "empty" and the main cause he mentioned was the lack of reading,

i didn't felt he wanted himself to have a "real discussion" on that matter, so i dropped the conversation. i do not feel the need to give unrequested lessons to people. if somebody does not want to compare his point of view with mine in an honest dialogue, all that i could possibly say would be just a loss of my limited amount of time on this Earth. 

usually the main reason why someone exposes her/his ideas in a one-sided way is insecurity and fear. that must be respected.

altough, that has never stopped me from reflecting by myself and asking me questions on the issues that the others were unwillingly to reflect upon, if the issues caught my attention and curiosity. 

i do not believe that there is such a thing as an "empty person".

i do believe that people are much more than what they know, what they read and the studies they chose. 

the reason why i don't think that people are empty, is that everybody is a philosopher. 

Aristotle cleverly affirmed that everyone philosophizes: even the choice of not philosophizing at all is already philosophy. why? because we can't help the human pursuit of knowledge. 

when we see something we automatically look for an explanation and a category in which it may fall. and if we do not want to think about it, that is already an answer to the question "why?" or the question "what?". 

from my point of view, empty people are just superficial. and that may be perfectly fine. the important thing is not to bear the burden of explaining everything to myself, the important thing is to be happy. the art of living is more the art of knowing when to concentrate my energy on something, and when to let things happen. 

the grounds on which i disagree with my friend are also those concerning the standards of judgement on people. it would have been great to find someone to discuss upon this issue. 

it is very interesting and very subjective. 

what i do believe is that the beauty that i saw in humans does not come solely from the cultural knowledge, the culture is the consequence of something bigger: the way we live our feelings. i have always been more interested in what is common to all human beings rather than what makes us different. the type of feelings we choose to cultivate, and the moral answers we give to ourselves to keep living and not become crazy are more important to me than the kind and numer of books a person read. 

everybody heard sometime the sentence "she/he has a great mind but is an awful human being". 

that is my point. it's so nice to meet someone who can talk about science, general culture, movies, books, politics, current events, and whatever in a polish way. it is more important to see how she/he relates with others and her/himself, the elegance, respect and kindness she/he chose to develop. 

that's not written on books. 

what may be found on books are the answers that other people gave to themselves and shared to the world. which is beautiful, amazing, extraordinary. 

but the truth is that your personal, unique answers are not written in any book in the world. 

your job as a human person is to find them. sometimes to create them. that's exactly what scares us, and on the other hand that's something we cannot escape. i'm scared. that's why i respect people who are afraid to discuss their answers. i know how they feel. 

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” 
― Brown Taylor

#JeSuisAriadne

my life is so full of events and invitations here in Hungary that is difficul to keep track of everything and manage to do two of the things i really care to do: write my notebook and my blog. 

i've always liked to write. i write on diaries since i was seven. i started with, you know, those cute little pink diaries with daisies on the cover. 

i ended up writing a blog, but i don't feel that i can just turn my back to the white empty pages i write my notes on. i wrote three notebooks in Central America, i love those notebooks. i read them to remember not only the places, but most of all the person i was.  she endured so much to grow and make me the person that i am, and i think i owe her something. i owe her my forgiveness and memory. 

actually, during this little time lapse between International Criminal Law and White Collar Crime courses, i wanted to write about my first Strauss "Ariadne auf Naxos" i attended last week in Budapest Opera house. 

it was a both funny and revealing experience, in fact. 

after dressing up properly, i realized i was late. i was supposed to show up half an hour before the beginning of the performance. 

i rushed out of my flat on my dècolletè heel shoes. i walked hurriedly towards Oktogon Square. 

once there, i didn't wanted to mistake the direction turning in Andrassy Utca, i didn't have time to repare it. i asked a guy standing by his metallic push scooter. 

me: "hi, is Opera House on the left?"

Ivan: " yes. are you going to Ariadne?"

me: "yes, how come that you know it?"

Ivan:" i'm going there too. i was waiting for a friend, but i must go too."

me: "i think we're a little late, then"

Ivan "let's go on my push scooter, you'll see we can still make the grade." 

next thing i know, we were the most elegantly dressed push scooter drivers on Andrassy. the poshy people chatting in front of the Opera stared speechless for a moment staring at a boy and a girl arriving at the Opera door on push scooter and parking it. 

we entered together in this red and golden palace. 

it was a magic place. i was glad to sit on the high dais. i've never been able to understand why they are considered the worst. i love to see everything from high above. maybe it's just a matter of acoustic. 

the lights went down, the performance begun. 

Ariadne is both a comedy of opera buffa and a serious opera. the main character is Ariadne, the sister of mythological Minotaur, who helped her lover Theseus to kill the magic creature and get out of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur lived with the help of a filament she held. 

let's just say that our Theseus wasn't a grateful or either faithful man at all. he eventually got tired of her and he abandoned Ariadne on the Island of Naxos.

she was stubborn, she loved her man deeply and wholly.  she was so heartbroken she got mad. 

Ariadne loved an illusion.

...how many times did it happen to me? wao, countless. 

and i'm not speacking of guys, i'm speacking of every time i wanted desperately something without seeing it for what it really was: loving an illusion, an inconsistent image i created. 

Ariadne was stubborn in her love. even if it was an illusion. 

she was proud too. she couldn't bear this offence to her feelings, not even willing to realise the inexistence of the object of her love since the beginning. 

it stroke me that i am like her. in the past i used to be like her even more. 

i loved deeply, stubbornly. 

the kind of love that human beings are supposed to give just to themselves, i used to give it to the world. 

Ariadne ended up wanting just one thing: to die. death was the only thing that could wash away the treason of her only love. 

and when she really wanted to die with all her heart, the god Bacchus showed up. 

she confused him with Ades the god of the afterlife, but Bacchus fell in love with her and did what she wanted: he brought her in paradise and let her pass away. in that very moment she rebirthed as a goddess, ready to love again, to pass the eternity with Bacchus.

let's replace for a moment physical death with a change in perspective. 

it's the very moment in which a stubborn, an therefore inconsolable, sufferer choose that just a change in the way she/he sees the world can make her/him live again.  maybe it was not a coincidence if i was named after her too. in fact my middle name is Arianna, the Italian version of the greek Ariàdne. 

the comedy character i enjoyed the most was Zerbinetta. she was a woman who lived freely her passions, who loved life. she tried to comfort Ariadne telling her own quite funny life stories. 

in the end, she was the one bringing the moral of the story after Ariadne started her new life with Bacchus:  every new lover looks like a god.  

The Hungarian way to welcome spring

i know... spring is definitely coming, but i can't help to tell something about winter Mohacs Carnival.

i do it now, because the purpose of this ancient Croatian community born festivity was to scare the winter out and eventually warmly welcome the spring. as far as i can see, they succeeded.

Mohacs is a town located in the southern part of Hungary, a few kilometres away from Croatia boundaries. Mohacs is a quiet harbour centre on the Danube bank, that wakes up for Busojaras Day in the end of February, when over 4000 visitors pour out in its streets and squares to see the Busos cross the Danube and parade in Mohacs avenues.

well, first things first.
who are the Busos? they are local men masked with sheep fur coats all over their body and frightening or otherwise extremely funny wooden masks, all with the same fashion traits, shaped by a long tradition of winter-frighteners.
it must be said that Busos take pretty much advantage by their anonimity. they use to strongly hug girls while passing the streets or pressing them to their chest to dance an imaginary music. i speack for personal experience, i came back to Budapest with all my girls telling me that i ended up having a wooden wig on my bun after a dozen of those hugs.

the local girls are masked in a more classy way, with masks that recall very much the Venetian ones. they just wear the local women custom with heavy wool stockings and red skirts on their body.

the core of the celebration is the bonfire in Szecheny Square in the late afternoon. a big bonfire indeed. nobody seem to care too much for safety even tough the crowd stands practically one metre away from a huge fire, and pieces of hot ash fall on their heads brought by the wind.
the Busos dance around the fire to ultimately scare away the winter.
i found myself dancing with dozens of people in circle around the bonfire, singing Hungarian songs i didn't even know, hugged by unknown people, laughing with little happy kids.

folk musicians came from Balcan countries and from all over Hungary to play their cheerful instrumental music practically all day long in Mohacs squares to amuse people. folk dancers danced almost 2 hours on a stage in the main square before the bonfire, with their colorful dresses flying in the air whith their pirouettes.

i saw some of the Great Beauty in all this.

Memento Park

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Hidden Memento

Memento Park is a stock place.

as you come over you realize that this place put 10 kilometres away from Budapest city centre in a quite ugly suburb and surrounded by a brick wall has one purpose: hide away what it contains.

It's home to soviet propaganda statues and anchors, dedicated to Lenin, Marx, Bela Kun and other "heroic" workers that in other former socialists countries were indeed destroyed.
some of these statues are gigantic. it's an impressive place to visit.

the real socialism style is obsolete. the subjects were musculous men with rather frightening serious expressions on their faces made by steel or stone, matron-like women with strong arms and abundant hips, portraits of real people curiously different from those "types" above mentioned.  the real people statues were mostly of men. i don't recall any portrait of a real existing woman.

i loved the dynamic postures of several statues.
i was almost expecting some steel giant to move for real.

my love for Imre Varga style is official. i've already passed almost an hour in the park of the Great Synagogue admiring his art piece "Tree of Life" in January. now i was enchanted by how he managed to make a propaganda statue of Bela Kun speacking to Hungarians interestingly beautiful.
he makes the steel move lightly, as if it's painted in the air, but with all the strenght of a statue. Imre Varga plays with light. the statues seem to move altogether in the direction indicated by Bela Kun from his 'pulpito'.

i was accompanied by a talented photographer. half of the fun was thinking about realizing something original.

those statues means bloodsheds and sufferings to Hungarians. you won't find any watchmen in the museum park telling you not to jump on the statues. you won't find any written panel forbidding to take photos or touch the art pieces. nobody really cares about their destiny.
the only trace of a Stalin representation are the boots belonging to a former statue of the dictator that was destroyed during the revolution of 1956.
on the way out, there is also the chance to enter in a "sovietic car" one of those cars where nobody fits in. i can't remember the name of the model, i will ask my Czech photographer.

there was a superb light. a softly March twilight behind the enormous forgotten statues.

Freedom cockades

the past Sunday here in Hungary it was an especially important national celebration.
each March 15th Hungarian people remember the sacrifice of their patriots to free the nation from Austrian imperialists and gain independence.

Budapest commemorates this day with parades, a public flag-raising,  a chief of State's speech, and a  big crowd in cockades in Kossuth Lajos ter in front of the Parliament, and free entries to some museums and to the Parliament itself.

it's still an experience to see how much respect is payed to those ones who dared to dream a better future for the humanity.
the people were singing Sandor Petofi "National Song":

“On your feet, Magyar, the homeland calls!
The time is here, now or never!
Shall we be slaves or free?
This is the question, choose your answer!
By the God of the Hungarians
We vow,
We vow, that we will be slaves
No longer!”