Another day, another language

That's the way it felt as our Central European jaunt wound up. We moved on from Poland to the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia the day after my last post - by bus and taxi! We arrived at the town on the Polish side of the Tatras just 15 minutes after the last bus to the Slovakian side. There was no train, so we had two choices: walk or taxi. It was only 20 km, the taxi fare was quite reasonable, so that's what we did.

Interesting trip, really. I don't know if the driver deliberately chose back roads or if there really are no main roads from Poland into Slovakia. But it felt like he was giving us a tour of some truly scenic countryside. He spoke no English and our Polish was limited to hello, yes, no, and thank you, but when I asked him if he spoke Russian (in Russian) he gave us to understand that thanks to Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II he didn't have to speak that @#%#@$% language any more and he wasn't going to, so there. And then he carried on a cheerful and friendly-sounding description of what we were seeing - in Polish.

When we got to our Slovakian town he asked for directions to our hotel in what I'm sure was Polish. But later when we tried out our extensive Polish vocabulary on the locals they either laughed or tried to teach us the proper Slovakian words. What a difference 20 km can make.

A couple of days later when we took the train from Slovakia to Eger in Hungary (home of Egri Bikaver and other fine wines) we had the same sort of experience. Cross the border and suddenly all the other people on the train are speaking Hungarian. And yet around the border they must be able to make themselves understood to their neighbours.

In Slovakia we didn't meet many people who spoke useful amounts of English. My smattering of German was quite essential at times - most tourists seem to come from Germany. We thought the scenery was lovely, but the area really wasn't ready for large-scale tourism yet.

Hungary is quite a different story. Even in Eger, which is quite a small town, many people spoke good English. The restaurants were excellent - and cheap: $Can 30 for a fine dinner for the two of us complete with wine. Clothing and shoes seemed to cost about half Canadian prices, two-thirds Turkish prices. Great scenery, lots of history - I think Hungary is my favourite place on this trip.

Budapest was more expensive but no less interesting and worth visiting. It's quite exciting watching the restoration work going on in the historic centre of the city. The country, like the rest of the former Communist-bloc countries, is still recovering from the dark years between 1945 and 1989. Hungary seems to have more to recover from; the memory of the 1956 revolution is still fresh in people's minds, just like the bullet holes in the walls across the street from the parliament buildings. In the areas that are being restored it feels like decades of pain and corruption are being washed from the walls along with the grime. And the result: Budapest is probably the most beautiful city we've seen in Europe so far. Well worth a visit.

And now we're home in Izmir. We arrived just as they started tearing up the street again to run natural gas lines into the buildings (just over a month ago they laid the pipes in the street). On of the good things about our area is that the bedrock is right below the surface so the buildings aren't bothered much by earthquakes. But that means that any excavation work involves jackhammers. And with the weather so hot just now (high 30's) they like to start as early as possible. A jackhammer under your bedroom window sure beats an alarm clock when it comes to getting your attention. And now the beautifully rebuilt steps into our courtyard from the street that seemed to get done last winter while we were away have turned into pieces of rubble again.

I guess life in Izmir has been like this for at least the last 4000 years. I wonder what sort of public works got done in Homer's time?

Ten days or so until we have to get packed and out of here. Some things I won't miss.