lumière des étoiles

Onward
2004-07-26 8:09 p.m.

We rested today, finally, after trudging all over the country - beautiful cathedrals and basilicas, museums and ruins, sunflower fields and endless verdent landscapes blending together.

The backpacker's diet and excercise plan - walking 5-7 miles per day, at times with 15 pounds on your back, and eating what you can, when you can find it - has returned me to my typical, somewhat gaunt "on the road" frame. I know this because of the way my pants hung off me today and kept slipping down as I walked. This wasn't the plan - I had been afraid that eating would be scarce in Africa and didn't want all the work I'd been doing to keep my immune system healthy to be in vain. This time I guess it was smart to sacrifice some extra room in my pack for bags of vitamins.

We've been staying in a dormatory in Budapest, where during the school year, students of economics and agriculture normally live. The room is stripped bare, but we luckily have a fridge and so have been able to have yogurt and cold water to keep us going.

Yesterday brought us to Eger, a medieval town of castles, mosques, and minarets - historical remnants of the Turk and Hungarian wars over power and land. We spent our time there hiking up the castle walls and exploring long, dark and cold tunnels that ran beneath the grounds.

We spent hours just talking in a little cafe while a brass ensemble played Baroque music from a stage in the town square. I conquered my fear of falling to my death from high, narrow places by climbing to the top of a 40 m high minaret tower (used for calling to prayer five times a day when the city was controlled by Turks). After 97 steps, in a stairway as wide as my shoulders, I stood on a narrow, circular walkway looking out over all of Eger. I kept my back pressed against the wall and wondered how I'd be able to climb back down those skinny, angled stairs. That was actually easier, though, than forcing myself to stay up there, on the platform no wider than some of the novels I'm carrying in my pack, for 15 minutes. Oh, these Europeans and their non-safety regulated adrenaline rushes. I guess my real challenge will be bungee (is that how it's spelled?) jumping from Vic Falls bridge, if it looks safe. We'll see.

My Hungarian hasn't gotten much better, though today I have a few more words and phrases: Where is the bathroom?, Excuse me (sorry), and something else about "stupid American girls". This last one was screamed at me when I asked for a key to lock my things up in the Turkish healing baths of the Gellert Hotel.

Troubled and nearly in tears, I ran away in my bikini, past staring German and Spanish tourists. When I told Steve what happened, he mumbled something about old people here having trouble with the changeover from communism, adjusting to jobs in the service industry. He offered to teach me how to curse back and listened to me complain for a few minutes, no doubt darkening his day.

I had forgotten all about it hours later, though, sitting in a warm mineral bath, Steve studying the patterns in my eyes. "They're just brown", I said. "No, you have sunflower eyes - little flecks of gold, red, and purple," he said. Funny, how you travel, communicating without speech, living practically on top of one another, arguing about hogging maps and cameras - and then something like that; you remember and know all over again why you're so in love, so drawn to someone, so desparate for time with them.

Looking back now, I have no idea why I got so sensitive about the old locker room lady. I have started my anti-malarials, but we're on Malarone, supposedly the one that doesn't make you crazy. Still, last time, in Ghana, I can remember having a few crying-on-the-floor, inexplicably-paranoid moments. But maybe I was just tired, kind of like I am now.

I am off to check out the news in Jo'berg; maybe those Soweto riots have calmed, maybe the Pretora PD have gotten themselves together. And maybe I'll win a million dollars and not have to return home to go back to work.

We fly into Amsterdam tomorrow, and then from there we're on to S. Africa. I hope our temporary dorm flatmates, whom we've named Hans and Helga, since we think they're German and haven't bothered to ask their names, aren't still hogging the shower when we get back to our hostel later on tonight.

I am blissfully ignorant as to the happenings of the far Western World right now, refusing to pick up a newspaper in the last few days. I'll write all about the news in the S African plains, bush, and delta when and if I can.

xo,

PS we saw RICK STEVES, a guy who does PBS specials and writes euro-guidebooks for americans, filming today in a craft market. We walked all slow-like, speaking english really loudly, trying to look all pretty, just incase he wanted to interview us for whatever he was doing. I made eye contact but he just kind of cleared his throat and turned around. Poo. we thought maybe we'd get on the telly.

xoxoxoxo