Disencumbering the self

A couple of days ago I had the distinct pleasure of going out for the evening...by myself. For those of you who aren't parents, this probably sounds like a really stupid thing to be excited about. But for the parents here, you probably can hear the swell of celebratory music, and imagine the fireworks. This is more significant than usual because I'm currently single-parenting, and don't yet have an established social network on which to rely for babysitters and such. So the trumpets and fireworks were definitely there.

It was especially fun because I went out to see the Pet Shop Boys perform at the SZIN festival in Szeged -- an annual music festival that's pretty awesome. I'm definitely out of touch with concerts, but I haven't ever been to anything in the states that's quite like it. I was expecting something like Bumbershoot (which admittedly I haven't attended in a long time), and in some respects it was similar, but it had a very different feel -- perhaps in part due to the much more casual attitude about alcohol -- but I think mainly in that the stages were closer together, so you never really get away from the walls of music.

The boys and I had gone there during the day and enjoyed the free stuff at community booths, the early concerts, the spontaneous games, and the karaoke. There was a lot to see, and it was early enough that it wasn't too crowded. As we headed out (around 7:30pm) there was a huge crowd of people coming in.

When I returned it was dark, and starting to cool down a bit from the steamy day. It was still plenty warm enough that I got an ice cream and didn't want anything to do with a sweatshirt. I went and stood around with other fans, slowly worming my way a little closer to the stage. It was interesting, though -- unlike other concerts that I've been to (a long time ago) where I was in general admission and on the floor in front of the concert, nobody touched me. We all stood around politely keeping our personal space intact. Even after the concert started we all expressed our appreciation politely, the only impingement being the ubiquitous cell phones that are held up in one's field of view. (This is another new thing for me since I've been in a general admission crowd, and that tells you how long it's been, doesn't it?)

Anyway, one of the best things about the evening was that I didn't bring anything much with me to the concert. As a parent, my normal load consists of a purse that contains essential items like money, wallet, ID, cell phone, and keys. It also contains hand sanitiser, hand wipes, pocket knife, snacks, bandaids, usually at least one water bottle, and anything that my children have recently handed me to hold. If we're going out for a longer time (like we had done that day) then I probably also have a backpack with more water bottles and more food, perhaps sunscreen, and possibly toys that were considered "essential" by my children when we left, and then handed to me to hold about 10 minutes later as they found something more interesting. If we're going somewhere expected to be visually interesting, then I probably have my camera, too.

So most of the time my encumberance is significant. If I were a character in a game I'd definitely have some penalties to my actions. But that evening when I left the apartment all I took was my ID, a small amount of cash, and my keys. No purse. Not even my water bottle (which I regretted a bit, but not enough to change my mind.) It was liberating. One moves around so differently. There is a freedom there that I don't experience very often as an adult.

Even before I had kids I would still have a purse. In college I didn't go anywhere without a backpack. You know what you can't do with a purse or a backpack? You can't run very effectively. You can't do any physical play. Even if it has a shoulder strap, it bounces around. I think this is part of why our bodies stiffen up as we get older. Sure, we age and our bodies aren't as naturally bouncy as they used to be, but we also stop playing, and I think part of the reason is because we encumber ourselves more. The more our encumbrance, the less likely we are to move spontaneously. And then if we're lugging around a bunch of important things - like wallet, cell phone, and camera - we can't just put that bag down and play because we're afraid it might get stolen.

I guess I have as an aspirational goal to minimise my encumbrance. There's not a lot I can do about some of it right now, because I'd rather prevent sunburn, dehydration, and meltdowns. I do want to capture some of the moments (especially right now, when my children are young and we're having an adventure together), but I guess I'll keep this aspirational goal in mind as they grow older, and not forget to leave things behind when I can.

Back from the black hole

OK, so here and I promised I was going to write regularly...and then I sort of fell off the map. Well, of course I didn't really -- I just got a little busy with four intensive weeks of Hungarian language classes. It was seriously intense. But it was also extremely awesome.

Looking through our door

Yesterday was the last day, and I'm really amazed at how far I've come in four weeks. I'm sad not to be cramming Hungarian for 6+ hours a day, but I'm also happy for a little break. So now I can get you a little more about Szeged, and a little bit more about our lives here.

The view to the left from
our door

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are living in a historic building. It's called the Ungár-Mayer house, and it was designed by local architect Ede Magyar and built in 1910-1911. It's a beautiful example of Art Nouveau style. If you're interested, here's a little more about it (and some of the other Art Nouveau buildings in Szeged and a few other cities.)

Szeged is positioned next to the Tisza river, and it's experienced a lot of floods. The most recent big one was the "great flood" of 1879, when the city was under water for four months. (The slope from the river to the city was going the wrong way, so the water couldn't drain back into the river when the water went down. They fixed that since then.) The city was so damaged that about 95% of the buildings had to be demolished, so this made space for a lot of new construction -- much of it in various Art Nouveau styles. We're lucky that the great flood wasn't in the 1970's, right?

Ronan looking at the Belvarosi bridge
and the Tisza river

Another interesting thing about the reconstruction is that the city was built with a ring road system, very similar to Paris' ring roads. I felt clever this week because I figured out that "körút" (which is one of the types of road here, like "avenue" or "street") means that it's one of the ring roads -- since "körül" means "around." Of course I could be wrong about this - I haven't asked anyone about it yet. I'll let you know!

Karasz street, walking east towards
Szechenyi square

So back to where we live: our apartment building is on a pedestrian street right in the centre of Szeged - this is pretty awesome, and I still feel so incredibly lucky that they found us this apartment. One of the obvious advantages to this location is the proximity to lots of things - the university, plenty of different kinds of shops, parks, squares, historic things, concerts, festivals, ice cream stores (lots of these -- yay! Actually no -- it's gelato, not ice cream), bakeries... It's pretty neat. We're walking distance to pretty much everything, and easy public transportation distance to everything else. I've never lived anywhere like this. The closest I've ever come is the first year we lived in Eugene - we lived walking distance to most things we needed, and biking distance to most other things. But we weren't in the middle of town, and of course Eugene isn't a town like Szeged. Well, in some ways it is -- they're both college towns, and they're both by rivers. But towns and cities in Europe have a very different architecture and feel from towns and cities in the USA. But anyway, I've never lived in a city where I'm right in the centre of what's going on, so I'm enjoying this novel experience.

Kossuth Lajos statue, just down Karasz street from us