Life’s Precious Mistakes

July 1, 2009 | Location: Canada | 3 Comments 

We had made the mistake of expecting things to work, and that’s all China needs to throw you a curveball. We assumed we’d find a working ATM in the city of Hangzhou, and China responded with a city-wide bank network outage. Ask for predictability, and China gives you a cigarette-stained Buddha grin, then hands you adventure instead. Helene and I appraised our situation: Chinese yuans for $8 USD, a train ticket home, and ten kilometers of sweaty, polluted streets between us and the train station. In other words, a fortune.

I’m thinking back to our day of adventure in Hangzhou six years ago today in a way of making sense of my time in Edmonton. China goes around throwing wrenches in cakes with the subtlety of a cartoon spy, but Edmonton, it turns out, is no stranger to mischief.

When I came to Edmonton fifteen months ago, I also made a mistake.

I expected a great job in a great company, and I got that. But I was foolish and thought that’s what I needed to be happy. My mistake was to trust that my career ambitions would dull my wanderlust, at least for a few years.

Six years ago in Hangzhou, Helene and I took a cab to the train station, then set about exploring the station’s surroundings. What followed constitutes one of my fondest memories of China. We had lunch in a restaurant inside the station, with a side-order of construction workers who sat and stared at us as long as one noodle remained unslurped. Then, we sat in a nearby park, causing drivers to nearly rear-end each other from the shock of seeing white faces for the first time. A couple of kids whistled at us, and when we whistled back, they chuckled like they would if a cow mooed back.

For the same reason, I don’t think of Edmonton with regret. I came here expecting a job, and I found friends and a sense of community on top of it. I’m going to miss the farmer’s market so much, I wish I could send it Christmas cards. I can’t say I fell in love with Edmonton, but I think we respect each other. We even look away with a smile when the other is looking. I like the blue of Edmonton’s sky, a startling sight even three years after Shanghai’s yellow haze. I like how so many Edmontonians are proud to be from around here, but a bit embarrassed at the same time. I love how multicultural the city really is, behind its facade of whiteness and pick-up trucks.

For these reasons, I’m not ashamed to call Edmonton a mistake, because I don’t mean it in a bad way. I see my time in Edmonton as straying from the path, and finding a shiny dollar in the grass. You walk in the field for a while, and remember that not everything is about a destination; but seeing the path from afar fills your heart with a longing for home.

Helene and I made it in time for our train back to Shanghai, on that day in Hangzhou. And we’re about to get back home again, come this September. Home is where the heart is: and my heart is somewhere out there, wandering the world at large.

Drenched in Elegance

June 23, 2009 | Location: Austria | Leave a Comment 

The Café Nautilus, set within the crown of the Naturhistorisches Museum, exemplifies the impossible beauty of Vienna. The Museum’s dome looms above, its Art Nouveau style drawing my eye, smothering my gaze with overwhelming beauty. When my Appelstrudel arrives, it too exhibits a singular elegance: the gentle dusting of sugar, the delicacy of its flakes, the joyous taste of fresh apple.

This ancient sense of style extends even to the Viennese. As I haul my backpack through central Vienna, grimy from the road and my hair unkempt, I feel like a traveler from some rural country, painfully aware of my own lack of sophistication. The Viennese, men and women alike, are beautiful and stylish. Handsomeness is so common that I meet women who would be considered stunning in Canada; here, they move with the muted confidence of the merely pretty, supermodels in plainclothes. Indeed, as the Viennese age, they do not seem to lose their beauty, as much as draw it within themselves, transmuting it into a proud elegance.

Vienna’s wealth is all the more stunning when one considers that Austria and Hungary were, for 51 years, one country. World War One split them apart; then, as the USSR rose across Europe, the Iron Curtain was drawn across the Austrian-Hungarian border. To visit Budapest and Vienna today is to witness the separate destinies of European nations on both sides of the Soviet border. Whereas Budapest’s immense beauty persevered despite a Soviet predilection for functional ugliness, Vienna thrived as the prize jewel of Central Europe. The contrast is stark, almost painful.

Vienna’s Eastern European roots can be felt all the way to the dinner plate. The quintessential Viennese dish, the Weiner Schnitzel, seems a far cry from the refinement of Austria’s neighbors to the West. The deep-fried veal cutlet dish might have originated in Milan, but it has more in common with other Eastern European dishes than with Italy’s haute cuisine. But to discount the Weiner Schnitzel as unrefined would be a misrepresentation of Vienna’s culinary grace: the meal, in Austrian hands, transcends its simple nature to once again capture Vienna’s refinement.

As I walk away from the Naturhistorisches Museum to the impossibly opulent Imperial Palace, I wonder who paid the price required to build such beauty. As the sad rule often goes, the stronger the empire, the more beautiful its architecture: if so, the Austro-Hungarian Empire must have been very powerful indeed. Washed of its imperialistic past, all that remains of Vienna’s empire is its overwhelming beauty.

Much like the peasant roots I taste wrapped through the elegance of its cuisine, I suspect a simpler humanity glows underneath the veneer. My travels are often illuminated by the human connections I establish on the road, but lack of time and an intimidating grandeur are keeping me at bay. I feel like a ghost walking down the aisles of Vienna’s central cemetery: marveling at the beauty, yearning for human warmth.

It may only be skin-deep, but for now, this facade will have to suffice. I walk the streets of Vienna, subdued by its exuberance, charmed by an ancient seat of empire, and resolving to come back and find out what heart flushes this face with such impossible elegance.

Gabi and Feri

June 10, 2009 | Location: Hungary | 2 Comments 

I photograph the plate of salami, lard and ham, then study the camera’s LCD. Sensing my dissatisfaction, Feri places a tomato and paprika in the shot. “Try this,” he says, a professional photographer helping a pupil. He’s right: now the composition just pops. I set the camera aside, satisfied, and set to eat my first Hungarian breakfast.

Feri (short for Ferenc) is Dorian’s uncle. He and his wife Gabi live in Budakeszi, a quiet, verdant town outside Budapest, whose baroque houses and lush surrounding hills put North American suburbia to shame. It is Dorian who insisted I stay with his aunt and uncle, and the second I tasted Gabi’s home cooking I knew I was indebted to my friend.

Gabi doesn’t speak French nor English, and yet we understood each other very well. As is always the case in the absence of a common language, an abundance of smiles and a whole lot of nodding sufficed. Feri, for his part, has no difficulty communicating in English, and he regaled us with tales of Hungary before and after the Iron Curtain, and about his two loves: aviation and photography.

Together, Gabi and Feri treated us to four days of Hungarian gastronomy, interspersed with day trips around Budapest, Szentendre and Esztergom. Feri set a delightful and relentless pace, getting us up early, and bringing us home only when it was time to eat or sleep. I doubt that we would have experienced half  of the scenes, and a fourth of the food, if it had not been for Gabi and Feri’s enthusiasm at sharing their country and its cuisine.

There is an elegance and simplicity to Hungarian dishes that make them much more suited for the home kitchen than the restaurant. When I first tried the Hungarian bean soup (csülkös bableves), it triggered in me deep memories of home cooking in Canada: potatoes, carrots, a meat broth and some lard, ingredients at home both in the heart of Hungary and on the French Canadian family table. I thought of the Eastern Europeans who had immigrated to Canada with my ancestors, and whose ingredients and recipes they had shared. In this dish laid a connection between Hungary’s history and my own.

One ingredient reminded me of our differences: the ubiquitous paprika, which turned out to be more complex than I have expressed in my previous post on the topic. Whereas “paprika” in North America designates the red, sweet pepper powder, in Hungary the word merely means “pepper”, and encompasses anything from spicy chili and bell pepper (which the Hungarians call “California pepper”), to various pastes and powders derived from them. In its fresh form, it is consumed alongside meals, in small pieces. As a paste, it flavors soups, giving gulyás (goulash) the scarlet hue that had impressed me so much the first day. In powder form, it sits alongside salt and pepper, enhancing dishes to one’s individual taste. In all these forms, paprika can be sweet or slightly spicy, giving Hungarian cuisine a flair uncommon to other East European cuisines.

Over our Hungarian breakfast, Feri and I talked about food and industrialization. Feri lamented the gradual incursion of what he calls “plastic” (processed) food into the Hungarian diet, a reality that seemed impossibly distant given the quality of the produce on the table before us: honey from a local beekeeper, cherries from Gabi’s sister’s garden, apricot marmalade made by Feri’s mother, homemade bread. What would be considered the strict domain of the food-obsessed locavore in North America is, at least in Gabi and Feri’s house, a traditional way of life.

In-between meals and conversation, Feri drove us through kilometers of countryside as he endeavored to show us the beauty of Hungarian villages, or bring us to an open-air jazz concert in the center of the medieval town of Esztergom. When night would fall, he would entice us to take one more picture while the light was good. Gabi joined in the fun, even patiently explaining to us the history of Esztergom’s Basilica, built in the 19th Century on the grounds where Saint Stephen was crowned King of Hungary on Christmas Day 1000. The wonders we experienced are too many to do them justice, but include a sunset over the Danube in Szentendre; a traditional meal across the Slovakian border in the company of Gabi, Feri, their daughter and her friend (both named Ági), and Gabi’s childhood friend Erica; and a memorable visit to Újpesti Piac, arguably the best farmer’s market in Budapest.

Alas, Saturday finally came, and it was time for Philippe and me to take the train to Vienna on our way back home. My heart sank when I had to bid farewell my newfound friends, who a mere 3 days earlier were still strangers. My bag was also heavy: witnessing my passion for Hungarian food, Gabi insisted I bring home no less than four variants of paprika, as well as a pot of apricot marmalade bought at Újpesti Piac.

As Feri drives us to the railway station, he doesn’t stop pointing out monuments and historical buildings of interest, our guide to the end. I had seen these buildings a few days earlier, as my brother and I walked the streets alone. But here in the car, I realize how much knowing Feri has illuminated Budapest for me.

Feri points to an ancient opera house, and tells me another story. And Budapest just pops.

Hungary & Austria: Due Thanks

June 10, 2009 | Location: Canada | Leave a Comment 

I’m still furiously tagging and uploading my travel pictures, after which I will post about my experiences in Hungary and Vienna last week. In the meantime, though, I want to give a quick shout-out to the people who helped make my experience an unforgottable one:

Thanks to Andras and Bogi, who hosted us for 3 days in Budapest. They were both obviously very experimented at hosting, and were immensely generous with their home and their time. Our evening chats were a wonderful complement to the day’s explorations. I found Andras through CouchSurfing, which I cannot recommend enough.

Feri and Gabi welcomed us into their home in Budakeszi for 3 days of delicious Hungarian home cooking, and relentless explorations of Budapest, Szentendre and Esztergom. I have rarely encountered people so generous and friendly, to the point that I felt bad for receiving so much from them. Their daughther and her friend (both called Agi) also joined us for a very pleasant dinner across the border to Slovakia. Thanks immensely to my friend Dorian, who set the whole thing up for us.

The Believe it or Not Hostel is where we stayed in Vienna, and it was one of the nicest, cleanest and most well-located hostels I’ve stayed in. Jonathan, the staffer on duty, is a great guy and a fellow geek. Check them out if you want a quiet place to stay in Vienna.

Last but not least, thanks to my brother Philippe, who agreed to this last-minute trip, and proved an enthusiastic, patient co-traveller. Here’s to our next trips!

Paprika is the New Red

June 3, 2009 | Location: Hungary | Leave a Comment 

I like to say that Scotland’s moisture-drenched moss gave me green. Yesterday, Hungary gave me red.

It happened over a bowl of goulash, the Hungarian national dish. I had known about goulash and its main ingredient, paprika. I might have tried it once or twice in a bastardized Canadian form. But as my first bowl of Hungarian goulash (“gulyás” in Hongarian) sat on the bistro table before me, I felt almost intimidated by its redness.

It’s no wonder the Canadian version of goulash didn’t stack up. Goulash is one of those dishes that blends love of country and of family. Ask any Hungarian where to find the best goulash, and they will tell you without hesitation: Mom.

That’s exactly what my Hungarian host Andras told me when I asked him about goulash. He was even kind enough to suggest bringing some from his mother, though I’m sorry to say the opportunity hasn’t arisen yet. In other words, goulash seems to be to Hungarians what sauce a spaggat (the thick, hearty French Canadian version of Italian spaghetti sauce) is to French Canadians: it’s an ubiquitous yet mercurial dish with a very loose basic definition, and which, it seems, requires motherhood to execute to perfection.

Loosely speaking, goulash is a paprika-based stew, with potatoes and whatever meat is at hand, as well as a heavy dose of paprika. It is thought to have been invented by animal herders, whose simple means gave birth, like in so many parts of the world, to their country’s defining dish.

What sat in front of me was a mere restaurant offering, almost an insult to the deep family roots of Hungarian cuisine. Nevertheless, I raised my spoon to my lips, and tried paprika again for the first time.

I immediately realized I knew this taste. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to isolate it like I did now. I could taste its sweetness, the essence of roasted pepper.

It tasted like a family home I had never visited before.