BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA

Disclaimer: This post strictly and only reflects my feelings about Barranquilla. The emphasis is on feelings as opposed to even opinions or views. And these feelings came about only after a short three day visit skillfully guided by my stepdaughter who lives, works and teaches there for the past 15 months.

Colombia:

My wife and I spent eight days in Colombia – the first four and a half in Bogotá and the last three and a half in Barranquilla. Bogotá is an amazing city with 8 plus millions people and closely as many taxi cabs and buses. It is up in the mountains 2,600 m (8,660 ft) high surrounded by mountains.

When you arrive, after a short 4 and half our flight from Atlanta, you know you are on a different continent, indeed in a different world. It is a modern metropolis and, at the same time, it is a throwback village from the past with horse drown buggies, donkeys and stray dogs and cats at the most unexpected places.

The occasional llamas are only there to confuse you. We stayed at the most unique hostel in Candelaria, the old city.

Courtyard of our hostel

We took in the city on foot and by buses. We ate the traditional Colombian food (which is to be honest, is quite bland) and drank tons of Coca tea to fight the altitude.





 

We took day trips to the amazing mountains and visited an old colonial town with a salt mine and a fake new town with a nearby laguna.

Zapaquirá near the salt mine

Inside the church







Guatavistá fake town



The laguna





      



When the Colombian government decided to build a dam and flood a whole town they financed the rebuilding of a completely new settlement with buildings all painted white. And now every year the city buys paint for the residence and in turn they paint the town white anew. Had I been three months older I could have entered the park for free. As it is, I had to pay the exuberant 3 or 5 dollars, and fight the altitude.

We visited the Botero museum – where my ignorance shined again. I had no idea who Botero was, but I know now!

Mona Lisa



Botero museum

Barranquilla:

But really, this blog was supposed to be about Barranquilla. And since these are my feelings, which transcend my whole view of this wonderfully beautiful and interesting country, let’s start.

Admit it, you never heard of Barranquilla, or if you have then all you know is that Shakira is from there (that is if you have children who are up to date in these trivias). On the surface all you need to know is that Barranquilla is in Colombia.

The spelling:

You think you know how to spell Barranquilla, but this is an illusion. It is really spelled with five, no, wait, at least with six r’s, for if you hear a native pronouncing it, you might think that an angry bear is growling. Barrrrrrrrranquilla. Yeah, you got the feeling?

The weather:

Barranquilla is at the Caribbean. It is close to the equator. It is hot and humid. Look it up on your phone weather icon. No need to forecast. It is always the same. But that is only half of the story. Have you heard of the windy city? Chicago, you think. Think again. It is Barranquilla. But while in Chicago the wind is a curse, it is a blessing in Barranquilla. It makes the heat bearable not even needing air conditioning. It helps you to stay awake during the day and sleep at night.

Walking:

Like all good tourists you want to walk in the city, to take in the people, the atmosphere, the streets and the squares. You want to be like the locals. It is an adventure. The sidewalks as we know them don’t exist. Well, they do, they are just different. In front of each house or storefront they look and feel different. They are of different height, made out of different material, present different challenges. It is an athletic field. Your walk soon becomes an Olympic steeplechase event. Although the water may be missing 99% of the time, but when it comes, I heard, it is formidable. The sidewalks therefore are built quite high, often the difference between the street and the sidewalk is more than 2 feet, for there is no draining system to deal with the rain which when it comes it pours. So to protect the pedestrians the sidewalks are built high. But there are also other obstacles the clueless tourist must negotiate. Occasional sleeping homeless people, stray undernourished dogs, steps, holes in the pavement to mention a few. Yet none of these are life threatening. But crossing the street is.

Nice street, easy sidewalk

Yielding to pedestrians is something no resident of Barranquilla have heard of. In fact, they seem to speed up, rather than slow down at the sight of an unsuspecting pedestrian. So be ready to run, literally for your life! I do not mean to say they are mean or impolite. No, not at all, it is just how it is. Suck it up.

Public transportation:

Going out on a limb, I am considering taking a cab ride part of public transportation. Partly because it is cheap, especially by American standards, partly because at least half of the cars on the streets are yellow cabs. Most are so small that I needed a shoehorn to get in and even pushing the front seat all the way back I bruised my knees raw. So cabs, they are in abundance and easy to be had. Most are safe. Well, the driving attitude is something special. For some unknown reason most cabs we took - and we took a few - had empty gas tanks. At night they routinely ran red lights with cops in tow, just another rule to be ignored. One driver kept the non existing speed limit and drove no faster than 30 km/h - perhaps expecting to run out of gas any minute. One more thing, you better negotiate the price before you get in, meters are the invention of the future.

Try to focus on the window treatments

Then the buses. They are the salt or rather the pepper of life. Music and window treatment is part of the offering.

Bus stops, if they ever existed, are relics of the past, disappearing in oblivion in today's exciting city life. You can flag a bus down anywhere to get on, or you can make it stop at your convenience wherever you want to. Figuring out where they go is another matter; you better speak Spanish and understand the local dialect. Then you have a 50-50 chance of getting on the right bus. You pay but don't get a ticket. Yet, you are keenly aware of the fact that they actually know what they are doing. Then there are the vendors. They ride for free and try to sell anything you can thing of. You accept their goods - they had them out to everyone. Then they go around and if you don't want them you simple give them back. Some buses are so small that I could not stand up straight. And the knee problem persisted here too, no way I could sit down.

Vendor climbing over the bar without paying



In Barranquilla there is a pier, quite possible the worlds longest and definitely the most interesting one. We took a train all the way to the end.

The pier runs between the river and the sea. It is not wide, maybe a couple meters on both sides of the track that runs in the middle. Cars and motorcycles drive on the tracks as well, but this goes without saying.

A touch crowded

That the tracks and the trains are old and in need of repair is an understatement. Safety may not be a concept that enters in the mind of the companies that run this adventure. But that should not deter anyone from taking the ride that sometimes is crowded. They employ regular plastic chairs as additional seating between the benches. Colombians like closeness, personal space is another unknown concept invented by gringos. Colombians are the strongest people on Earth, they can pick up the train when needed and turn them around for there is only one track going back and forth.

And when it derails, because it does as surely as the sun goes down, they pick the train up, fix the tracks and then put the train back on it. Night repair is not a problem as of late since the driver has a mobile phone to provide adequate light in the pitch dark night.

 No headlights on the train, for it is not supposed to run at night, but one cannot help the delays when the train jumps the tracks.

At the end of the pier there are huts and yes, people live there.

And crabs as well.

Family ride

Food:

I mentioned before the sad affair of small but identical menus of most restaurants in Bogota. The sea meant a definite improvement in Barranquilla where fried fish and grilled too was delicious.

Hot spices though are unknown to the cuisine I experienced. I may challenge you all to find jalapenos in regular Colombian stores! But the atmosphere more than compensates for the food. Don't forget to take earplugs with you for the music will shake you to the bones! And the people are wonderfully friendly and welcoming. Vendors frequent the restaurants as well often selling their goods from baskets carried on their heads.

Try this

And the country, at least in Barranquilla, dances all the time!

And we came up we a theory why the music is so - at least for me -

unbearably loud.



Shaving the ice

 






The restaurant owners hearing is getting worse and worse and in turn they turn the music up louder and louder. We frequented the restaurants on the beach, on the bank of the river, and in the city. The people, the pretty and the ugly (if there is such a thing), the young and the old (if there is such a thing) danced and drank. We shook hands with the legendary Gabriel García Márquez at his favorite restaurant. We ate the the Crapes and Waffles chain where food was surprisingly good served by mostly single mothers. It is a place you would never pick to go and once there you are happy and look around with wide eyes. And you eat from the street vendors who shave the ice with funny machines and put syrup on it to give you a refreshing drink. A country that has many wonders and I am sure we have only scraped the surface.

2012. FROM FINLAND TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE – ARE FINNISH AND RUSSIAN SAUNAS DIFFERENT?

 
 

THE CRAZY FINNS!



Helsinki

It is official the Finns are crazy! Of course if they are crazy then Joanna and I are even crazier! Wait, Joanna is a Finn, so it means I am the one who is crazier than the Finns. It is a heavy duty statement so I better have a logical explanation. Hear me out.

We left Cincinnati in search of a bearable climate in which we could spend our vacation. Gone were the 100 degree (36+ C) days with 90%+ humidity. We arrived to paradise; 72 (20 C) degree and sunshine with a mild breeze. So what did we do? We went down to a basement, women and men together, took off our clothes (that was the good part) and went, literally butt naked, into a small room, where the temperature was deliberately kept at 75 C (167 F) and sat on a bench, like birds on a wire, only arm's length away from some hot stones. And if this had not been enough, one of the crazy Finns started pouring water periodically on the stones, making the air hotter and harder to breath. Meanwhile another one was telling us a joke that went like this: "Do you know how a crazy Brit defined the sauna experience?" Of course I had no clue and I was literally dying to find out, so he went on. "It is like a real serious car accident. The only difference is that you come out of it unhurt!" He chuckled, apparently he found his own joke real funny, while I was thinking; "really, I would get out of here alive?" And then, I was let out of the oven, only to find out that now I had to go swimming in a shallow pool filled with nearly freezing water! The weird part is that I actually loved it!

I also have to mention the strange paraphernalia I found in the sauna room. In other parts of the world people use place mats under their plates when sitting down to eat. The Finns invented what I call butt mats. It is supposed to have the shape of your butt, and you place it on the seat, not on the table, before you sit down on the bench in the sauna chamber. The mats I saw were big enough for nice Texas size butts. The holes on the mats were placed on the wrong place; suggesting that the designer was anatomically challenged. See picture below.

I tried of voiced my opinions about the sauna culture to one of our friends in Helsinki who is a member of the Finnish Sauna Society.  I just wanted to find out why a whole nation is torturing itself almost on a daily basis. Here is what she said: “Just imagine, you can go swimming in an ice hole” – I tried to imagine that and the horror probably distorted my otherwise fine features. But she went on: “Your system is actually exposed to the worse possible conditions, extreme heat followed by extreme cold. Your blood is boiling like sparkling wine!” That was as good of a reason to subject your body to torture as I could possibly have hoped for.

I do love sauna, unfortunately we only were able to enjoy (torture ourselves) twice during our short visit to Finland.

I had the pleasure to be invited to Joanna’s niece’s wedding. It was the second wedding I saw in Finland, and again I was not disappointed. The bride and his three best men were donning kilts, just to be different.  And they were! The groom was wearing a beautiful dress designed by her sister. The minister was leading the wedding ceremony with speeches in Swedish and English. One of those ordinary, run of the mill weddings!

 

Then we walked from the church to a small house where a delicious buffet waited for us, or rather where we waited for the buffet to open. Food should not have been served for another couple of hours according to plan, but apparently others must have been hungry as well, for we got to eat an hour ahead of schedule. And it was worth the waiting! According to customs, there were speeches by just about everybody. Swedish, Finnish, English and Spanish were the languages of choice of the speakers. So the first weekend flew by rather quickly.

This being my fourth or fifth visit to Finland we ventured out to the country side to see Joanna’s childhood friend who keeps Icelandic horses. 

Again, nothing special, Icelandic horses are common in just about any part of the world! Or not.  They have this very special additional gait that is called tölt. Iceland forbids importing other horses in order to preserve the purity of this special  breed.  She is in the process of restoring her beautiful farm house. It was amazing to see how well the old farm house accommodated a modern kitchen and bathroom, yet still preserved many of the rustic elements that make a farm house so charming. And what wonderful mushroom pie and lemon tart were served at the old kitchen table! We enjoyed the good food, watched the peaceful countryside and listened to the silence that was only disturbed by a mild wind and the occasional sound made by the happy horses gracing around. We then decided to visit some other friends at the nearby town, about 30 kilometers away. We could not turn down a dinner invitation especially when they told us that the sauna had already been turned on just for us. We did not mind to stay for the night in Lovisa. 

We got an excellent tip how to get there quickly; instead of taking the main road which looked like a 40 minute drive, we took a short cut. Or at least that was what we thought! I started to become suspicious as soon as the asphalt disappeared from the road and we were driving on a narrow dirt pass in between the trees. And the road constantly split and we never knew which direction to take. I owe a big thank to iPhone and its GPS, that guided us through the dense woods of Finland. About two hours later we were literally out of the woods and arrived to sauna heaven! Nothing like Finnish food and sauna after a long and treacherous drive.

Next day we drove back to Helsinki and had the good fortune of seeing a special exhibition of Joanna’s favorite Finnish painter, Helene Schjerfbeck.  It was a real treat, especially in light of some strange events that occurred just a week before our trip. A good friend of ours visited us at our house and gave Joanna a book. James used to be an exchange student in Sweden years ago and he still speaks excellent Swedish. He went to the public library a few days earlier where they were selling some books that the library deemed unnecessary. Knowing Joanna’s mother tongue being Swedish, a book caught his eye; the works of Schjerfbeck written in three languages. He picked it up for practically nothing and gave it to Joanna. The book was not unknown to Joanna, because it was co-authored by her ex sister-in-law. She always wanted to have it, so now she was pleased to receive it as a gift. She was surprised to see it in James’s hands, but she was even more surprised when she opened it and found the following inscription: “To Jim for his magical work” signed by Joanna’s ex-husband! Apparently he gave it to a friend as a present.  I guess some people don’t appreciate gifts! At least the rascal donated it to the library, but they did not want it either! So now we have the book and we got to see the exhibition as well.

So after all these boring days we decided to spice up our trip by going to St. Petersburg, Russia. 

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE! Will follow.

 

2013

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. Mainly because I know few people who actual keep them. And I am sure if I had one I would not be able to keep it.  It would be like trying to lose weight ending up putting on 10 pounds by the end of February and then feeling bad not only because of weight gain but also because not sticking to the decision to do something about it.

I never really thought about the New Year as something significant or real life changing. Not even when we entered the new millennium. I must be old. I found myself thinking about 2013 last night. My father was born in 1923. It is amazing, not only was that 90 years ago but it was barely the beginning of the 20^th century. That is the century that really defined me. Born in the middle of it may have made me a relic from the past. Despite my best efforts I know my daughter has no idea about most of the things that took place in the nineteen hundreds. Yet, even though I belong to the past, I live with modern technology that seems to affect my everyday life. I work on my computer all day, go home and get on Facebook, use my IPhone, watch HD TV and lately started reading eBooks. I no longer send Christmas cards! I don’t even remember when the last time was when I wrote a letter. It is all email – I am still in the email phase and have not hit the stage when Facebook messages take over emails. I still call people rather than text. Better yet, I prefer to have face to face conversation. And I am still only using two, max. three fingers when typing.

Years had no meanings to me in the past. Even when I stated to be keenly aware of the fact that I have spent more than what I still have in front of me. Material things never meant too much to me, it was always about personal connections and adventures. You don’t really go to the the mountains in order to conquer and say I was way up there. Rather you go to enjoy the journey and remember the little turns and be happy that you saw the top even if you have never reached it. Of course you should climb up but your reason should be to get a better view from the top not to be able to brag about it while forgetting to look around.

I was always a very impatient man often discarding ideas even before listening to them or never giving a person a chance because of some small annoying details about them. Either I slowed down or became a bit less judgmental now I find myself a touch more tolerant and open. I am sure there is room for improvement but maybe by the time I reach my father’s age I will be a little wiser.

2013 will be a smooth continuation of the previous 56 years of my life. January 1 will mean nothing. Except that I have posted this the previous day. If you read this have a Happy New Year with health and more tolerance and peace.

HOW I GOT AMNESTY, DISCOVERING THE GREAT SOUTH WEST - AND WHAT AIDS IS

Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Mexican Border Crossing

My Uncle's House, Santa Fe, NM

In 1981, after I made my decision not to return to Hungary I flew to Santa Fe from San Francisco. I stayed at my uncle’s house and started working at a silk screen printing shop. I worked under different names; changing my identity frequently. My employer was not afraid to employ an undocumented alien; however, years later, when I needed to have a witness to testify that I was here illegally, he totally chickened out. Some of you may remember that the amnesty of the 1980s legalizing all aliens who entered the US illegally before December 31, 1981. Of course, catch 22 applied, you had to be able to prove that you were illegal, and that you entered before said date. I was on the deportation list for nine more years, just because I could not prove I was illegal. Mind you, there was plenty of proof of me being here, I just could not prove that I broke the law!

Unlce's Back Yard

At the T-shirt printing factory I was only trusted to do inventory, count out orders and do heat transfers on baseball hats. The prints usually said clever things like: “Where the hell is Roswell, NM”, “High on Santa Fe”. They were all designed by Steve, who worked there 4-6 hours a day. Jerry ran the shop and his wife helped out occasionally. Once, when we did our inventory, we counted “Beefy Hanes” T-shirt, and the count was over one thousand. She confided in me that she did not know how to write a number greater than a thousand, but she begged me not to tell the owner! As if he did not know! I learnt about the assassination of Anwar Sadat while working in that shop in 115 degree heat. It was a bad day.

New Mexico

I biked to work every day on my cousin’s bike, which was a bit small for me, especially when I had to go uphill at 4 pm in the pouring rain, day after day. It rained every day in August between 4 and 4:30 pm. By the end of the summer I had enough money to buy my first car, a boat on four wheels, a 1973 Buick Le Sable. In September I started college in Santa Fe, just to get some courses under my belt before I could go to the University of NM to get my MBA the following year.

I moved to Albuquerque in January 1982, took a couple of undergraduate classes for one semester because my GMAT score was not high enough to start the MBA program. After completing Calculus and Micro Economics classes that were actually graduate level courses, I was able to transfer to the MBA program. I also took German. Who knows why I was so dumb to pick German instead of Spanish? My classmates have difficulties pronouncing the letter “ü”, which of course for me was a natural sound. But what was even more interesting, that they not only did not know how to say it, they actually did not even hear that it was different from „u”.  One of our exercises was to read and translate a short text in class. I finished my portion and noticed that all eyes were fixated on me; my classmates were staring at me like I came directly from the Moon. Then the coin had dropped! I translated German to Hungarian! Causing even more surprise was when that the professor smiled and said: “That was correct”. Tuned out she was from Austria and she understood some Hungarian!

International Students
with Ioanna, Claudia, me and Gyuri
in New Mexico

I stayed in the undergraduate dorm for the first semester; my roommate was Tim, a tall good looking black dude. Tim had a beautiful and smart black girlfriend but I think that his main purpose in life was to sleep with as many white girls as he could manage. But when I wanted to go out dancing (not sleeping) with a black girl, he told me he was OK by this, but the “brothers” may not like it. So I gave up and let Monika, an aggressive German girl, hang out with me for a while. This did not last long, I was dumped summarily.

Before she dumped me she at least introduced me to Ioanna from Romania and I started hanging out at the international center of which Ioanna was the director. I met Shiao Hong at the center.  We had a huge cultural gap or rather abyss between us so our relationship did not last more than four months.

Meanwhile I worked for my uncle’s fast food joint, Hardees; flipping burgers. I got in a huge argument with the manager after he put me to work at the cash register one day. We came up about a dollar short and he wanted me to pay. He said it was only he and I who handled the money, so it must have been me who messed up. I told him I was willing to take a test to see which one of us can count faster and more accurately but I was not willing to pay. He only responded by blowing smoke, showing me who the boss was, even though I knew that the real boss was my uncle, the owner. I quit as soon as I could and started working for the university cafeteria, La Posada or La Poisonada, as it was called. There I got free food and worked with students washing dishes. Cool job and it paid $3.50, a whole quarter more than Hardee’s minimum wage.

I moved to the dorms for graduate students and got a Korean roommate.  His first words out of his mouth when he found out I was from Hungary were: “I hate communists”. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He kept asking me to bring my ex Taiwanese girlfriend to our room, which of course I did not even consider. Later he got kicked out from school because of harassing girls.

I met Claudia from Germany and soon I moved in to her house which she shared with two other German girls. Maybe it was not that stupid to take German, after all.

Claudia at the Grand Canyon

In the summer my brother Gyuri and Juli, his wife, visited us. Claudia and I went down to the Mexican border because they were coming from Cuba via Mexico. So Claudia and I were on the famous border crossing between Juarez and El Paso. I had no legal papers; Claudia had no reentry visa if she were to leave the US. A border patrol came over to us and asked if we wanted to sit down on the bench after watching us hovering around for over an hour waiting for Gyuri and Juli. “But it is on the other side of the border” I said. He said that he would be there, not to worry, we could come back. So we went, sat there for another hour, but my brother did not show. We decided to walk back to El Norte but we could not find our friendly border patrol. Instead we found a not so friendly one. We kept explaining what happened, to no avail. Finally he got sick of us and looked at Claudia’s blond hair and blue eyes and decided that we were not Mexicans trying to sneak across and let us go. And lo and behold, our friendly border guard appeared from out of nowhere; smiling. I asked him where he was, and he said: “I was watching you guys, would have come if there had been a problem”. What problem I thought, but minutes before I was sweating bullets.

My brother Gyuri

My brother was waiting on the US side of the border! Apparently they caught a cab in Juarez that took them across the border without ever stopping. They came from Cuba with a Hungarian passport, but nobody bothered to check them out! Border patrol was at its best even then!

Mesa Verde, Pink Desert, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Diego, Yosemite, San Francisco – and what is AIDS?

Claudia and I at Mesa Verde

Juli at Grand Canyon

It was really exciting to have my family visiting and traveling around the US. Of course we had a minor problem when it came to communication. Funny enough, the same problem still exist when my wife and I visit Hungary. The three Hungarians kept talking and discussing matters in Hungarian, making decisions without letting Claudia know what we had decided. My brother did not really speak English and while Juli’s English was perfect; she often shied away from talking. I kept trying to translate but often failed.  During this trip, the only real long one I took with my brother and his wife, we saw the most beautiful scenery imaginable! I think we all will remember it for the rest of our lives.

White Sands and I



Painted Desert but no Snakes or Scorpions

Leaving El Paso towards Santa Fe we stopped at the White Desert, which never ceases to amaze me with its snow white dunes of sands. We stopped at Santa Fe, Gyuri and Juli slept at my uncle’s house, Claudia and I were put up by Miklos, my uncle’s friend, in two separate rooms. After all, we were not married!  Soon, we packed my Buick, bought new tires, and filled the trunk with engine oil, of which it needed almost as much as it needed gas. We drove to Mesa Verde; one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen. To be honest I am not sure what route we actually took afterwards, but I think we went by Arch Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon. And lately Juli just reminded me about the Painted Desert, where huge signs warned us about scorpions and other insects. Claudia and I walked deep in the desert bare feet, for we did not want sand in our shoes. Scorpions be aware, here we come! We were young and fearless or just plain dumb, but we had dumb luck, and found no angry poisonous insects.

Monument Valley

We saw the Hoover Dam and took a peak at Glenn Canyon before we drove into Las Vegas. We snuck into our hotel room, because I did not know then, what I know now, that in the US you do not pay after the number of people in the room, but rather you just pay for the room. We had little money, we stayed at decent hotels but all four of us shared one room. Except for when we found a motel outside of Bryce Canyon, where to our big surprise we had two adjacent rooms for the price of one. They must have given that to us because we did not really sneak around and they saw that we were two couples wanting to share one room. Honesty pays!

Gyuri and I in the Great South West

From Las Vegas we drove to San Diego where Gyuri and Juli walked across the border to Tijuana. It was an easy walk and I watched them disappear in the crowd of Mexican migrant workers. I wished I could cross with them but I had to wait almost another decade before I could do that. It was sad to see them go but I had to continue my journey.

Claudia and I went to Santa Barbara to see my cousin Kim and my friends Tim and Pam. I did not have Pam’s address but I drove around and found the house where Karcsi and I stayed a couple of years earlier. Some of the original people still lived in the house and they were able to help me find Pam.  We then took Highway One up to San Francisco. Or at least that was the plan but the road was closed. California had more rain and snow that year than in any other time in a hundred years. The road was closed because of mud slides, so we took a detour, but still did not miss the Seventeen Mile road and Carmel. 

In San Francisco I stayed with my Aunt Julie’s brother who had a house on the corner of the steepest street! It was scary to drive my Buick around, because every time I needed to come down on a steep street the nose of my car proved to be too long, I could not see a thing!

Mirror Lake

The first time when I stayed in San Francisco with Julie’s other brother; I was preoccupied by my decision to stay in the US. Yet I remember a couple of details. I learnt the expression holy cow (shit) from Carl after we found out that Karcsi’s ride to the airport broke down in traffic and he had to get up and take him. But one of the most indelible memories of mine is when Carl took us to his friend’s bar. It was a large bar; several hundreds of people were dancing to loud music. And they were all black; Carl, Karcsi and I were the only white people there. I remember finding it extremely exciting and interesting. I had to scramble through all the sweaty dancing people to the bathroom that was at the other corner of the room. Coming from Hungary I did not have any notions about racial tension between blacks and whites, yet I felt all eyes were looking at me as I walked across the room. But nobody said a word and of course there was no reason to say anything. But it was a strange feeling to be so alone, so much in the minority.

Hiking in Yosemite

With Claudia we went to Chinatown where she got tricked by a Chinese restaurant owner. He was about eighty years old and told all the girls that they have to give him a kiss in order to get served. When they did, he turned his head really quickly so he got a peck on the mouth. But the food was good and the Chinese kite flying competition was interesting. We listened to a free classical music concert in the park. During the concert the conductor had a heart attack. But it so happened that there was somebody in the audience who apparently was a famous conductor and he finished conducting the piece. Only in America!

Pride Parade San Francisco, 1983

We went to the gay parade, the first of many I saw. It was one of the most fun parades I have ever seen. But I had no clue why everybody was asking for aid. What kind of aid do these people want from me? I guess I was pretty ignorant or was it still not much talked about in the news? In any case, I learnt about AIDS during the 1983 Pride Parade in San Francisco. I wish we never had to leave San Francisco. We drove to Yosemite Park which was practically closed because of the amount of snow still on the ground in June. Camp sites were closed officially, which meant we could stay for free! The waterfalls had more water than at any other time and Mirror Lake was still there and had tons of water in it. We hiked up to the top of Yosemite Fall without carrying food or water. Then we crashed for a whole day having too sore muscles to go on. We stayed a whole week and hiked all over, walking up and down, under and over waterfalls, in and out of the mist.

On the way back to Albuquerque I figured out that I didn’t need to put on a sweater when I run my air-conditioning, I just needed to adjust the temperature! Still when I got out of the car in Needles Arizona, I felt like somebody hit me on the head, so heavy and hot the air was. I got back to Albuquerque and Claudia went back to Germany.