Temporary Westwards

Am sitting in Budapest now, will be here until early this afternoon, when I will be taking a train north through the Czech Republic.

My Eurail pass has expired, so I had to spend a bit of time yesterday finding the international train station office that sells them. I had hoped that being in Hungary would net me a cheaper ticket, but no; 100,000 Florint for a four country 10 day pass that starts today for my train through Czech lands.

I feel that funds are a little low, but I hope I can make it through Berlin at least for the five days that I am there until I come back east where its cheaper. On the 9th of November Berlin will be having a grand celebration for the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down. It should be fun, and I have five days booked in a hostel in the Freidrichshein area of town.

Romania... was definaetly different. I stayed mostly in the town of Sighisoara. Things were less clean and ordered, I saw many abandoned factories and power plants on the train ride in, which was rickety and slow. The old citadel where I was staying was under constant construction, every day; apparently they were hurrying to finish what they could until winter made things to hard to build.

They was an obvious poorer section of town, and that was the place where the Roma stayed. It is strange for an American to see such things, but prejudice against the Roma, or Gypsies, was widespread. It was easier to do since the Roma are of darker color, and for whatever reason I never saw any working anywhere, whether in the prevalent construction crews or in the small but growing service industry. I did see alot of them on the streets,begging alms from passerbys, I was swarmed more than once by ill clothed and dirty children.

I did sometimes ask about this to people I had met in bars, or at the hostel, and the universal attitude I received was one of slight hostility. They dont work or They are lazy were the most common complaints, others were more vehemant. I met one older woman who shrilled that they should all be shot.

As for myself, well, I dont know enough about how things work in Romania, but it was a bit disturbing to see such obvious racial tension. For the most part in America racial problems ended gradually over the last century, and I myself have never experianced such things.