One bad thing with traveling by yourself is that you get no photos of yourself. However, on typical vista points like this, it’s always easy to find someone to ask. Having an SLR camera, though, doesn’t really make this arrangement ideal. Most people tend to not know what to do with it, end up focusing on the sky or something – and voila. I have yet another dark photo completely out of focus. For this, Photoshop doesn’t even work.

Well, at least you can kind of guess that it’s me, there, in Zagreb.

Mr. P, checking out the view of the Lower Town and the twin spires of the Cathedral.

 

A Croatian pastry, that I can’t remember the name of, pretty much the same as a Finnish doughnut, covered in a cinnamon-cardamom-sugar mixture. Mr. P preferred the Hungarian pastries.

At the hostel where I was staying, I found tons of flyers from different museums and restaurants in Zagreb. The one thing that caught my attention was one with the picture of a key on display on. It was the flyer for the Museum of Broken Relationships. On the flyer, the following description is written:

The Museum of Broken Relationships grew from a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from failed loves, the Museum offers a chance to overcome an emotional collapse through creation: by contributing to the Museum’s collection.

Conceptualized in Croatia, the Museum has since toured internationally in over 25 cities so far amassing an amazing collection.

Turns out, it was a perfectly lovely little museum with different objects on display, with texts describing their significance for a broken relationship. Some texts were long, others were very short. And on the wall, the following quote was written:

I experience time as a terrible ache… But the good things of life when I have to leave them and think, with all the sensitivity my nerves can muster, that I will never see or have them again at least not as they are in that exact, precise moment, hurt me metaphysically…

F. Pessoa, “Book of Disquiet”

A really impressive collection of odd stuff.

Garterbelts – Spring-autumn 2003, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

I never put them on. The relationship might have lasted longer if I had.

A love letter in shattered glass – San Francisco, California, USA

The sign tells the story of the love letter that never got sent, because the writer’s e-mail asking for the guy’s address was answered with him breaking up. The writer couldn’t get rid of the letter, so in stead she glued it onto a mirror and shattered it. A cathartic ritual, and cool-looking too.

An ex-axe – 1995, Berlin, Germany

This is the axe by which the former owner hacked every single piece of furniture belonging to his/her ex into tiny little pieces, one piece of furniture for every day she was away on holiday with her new love. When she came back to Berlin and called to retrieve her furniture, he presented her with a pile of splinters.

An iron – Stavanger, Norway

This iron was used to iron my wedding suit. Now it is the only thing left.

And all the while I was at the museum, the rain was pouring outside. Heavy, thunderous. Museums can come in handy in many different ways.

A very different kind of museum, this Museum of Broken Relationships. I really liked it.

My only day in Zagreb (6/7) was spent doing some real efficient sight-seeing in the city center. Central Zagreb is divided into two parts: the Upper Town, older, with narrow cobble stone streets, located on the hillsides, and the Lower Town, with larger, 19th century buildings and parks. I started my morning with a walk through the Upper Town.

The Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is mainly a late 19th century Neo-Gothic structure, but with a history dating as far back as the 12th century.

At the Dolac Market, I bought nectarines and apricots, while the vegetable vendors tried to keep their parasols from turning inside out in the wind.

Walking along a random street, I suddenly heard hoof beats behind me. And there they were, a procession of four horses with riders dressed in old school military uniforms. They stopped by a restaurant and the barmaid ran out and gave them all drinks. So weird! Was this some kind of live role play thing?

Well, turns out, they were going to be part of some kind of guard’s inspection, a very dramatic show put up in front of the St Mark’s church for the tourists. Nice.

 

The Upper Town of Zagreb is really a nice, idyllic little piece of historic architecture. I really liked it.

I’ve had my first pang of homesickness tonight. After the hot and very much delayed, but still very agreeable train ride from Budapest, I bid farewell to Mollie, Kate, Alexander and Josefine on the Zagreb train station and ventured out into the Zagreb night. The directions to the hostel I had booked were a little bit unclear and standing there on a street corner, trying to piece together the directions with the city map and the address of the hostel, I realized that right here, right now, I would so much want a travel companion. It’s easy to make friends when you backpack, but train friends and hostel acquaintances are rarely the kinds of people who’ll share your lostness with you on your first night in a new city.

I remember arriving in Trinidad after that terrible, terrible bus ride through the Bolivian Amazon, digging out the bus from the mud, carrying little children through puddles as big as ponds. We arrived in Trinidad two whole days after we were supposed to, and were all completely covered in mud from head to toe. As were all our belongings. We were exhausted. The first hotels and hostels we tried denied us right at the door, looking horrified at our dirty faces. Finally we found a place without running water and a moldy smell in the rooms that took us in. We cleaned ourselves of from water buckets and then Natalia and I crawled onto the queen-sized bed in one of the non-air conditioned rooms and just collapsed.

It was a terrible experience to go through, but I went through it with Natalia, Cecilia and Jonna. They were there, to sing songs with and drink bad rum with and being denied entrance at hostel doors with and then, finally, to share a bed with.

And here I was, sweaty but otherwise clean, fed and rested in nighttime Zagreb, without any kind of person to share it with, and somehow this felt so much worse than that trip to Trinidad.

Meeting those two Austalian friends and that Danish couple made me realize that I’m really doing this by myself, and that that might not be all good.

I did find the hostel. It wasn’t even that complicated, after all. And when I logged onto Facebook, I had received a message from Kirke saying that she now has booked herself a ticket to Belgrade on the same day as Hanna. Which means that in only five days, I’ll spend four days with Hanna and Kirke in a borrowed apartment in Belgrade. That made me so happy – but at the same time it gave me a pang of melancholy. What am I doing here, by myself, when I should be somewhere else, with people I love?

In an attempt to suppress this feeling, I started listening to the season finale of the Swedish Radio morning show Morgonpasset. There are few things that feel more like home, than the voices of Hanna Hellquist, Martina Thun and Kodjo Akolor talking about a whole bunch of sillinesses. And, if I sleep on this, I’ll hopefully feel better in the morning.

I’m on the train from Budapest to Zagreb, sharing a coupe with Kate and Mollie from Australia and Josefine and Alexander from Denmark. It’s an old train, it stops a lot, and Josefine and Alexander, who have traveled by train in the Balkans before, tell us that the train won’t be on time. No way. It never is. We’ve been on the move for five hours, and we still haven’t crossed the Hungarian-Croatian border, so I guess they’re right. I don’t mind that much, though. The train is super hot, but as long as the train moves a little bit, the breeze that comes in through the open windows is soft and fragrant and just really nice. I’ve also booked a hostel in Zagreb, so I know exactly where to go once we arrive. No feeling lost at the train station in a strange city in the middle of the night.

There’s been a discussion going on in the coupe for the entire trip, about everything from our studies to the European Union and the water shortage in Australia. Outside the windows, the fields of sunflowers, corn and grains have gradually changed into deciduous forests. The air smells of sun dried earth and summer afternoon. I have a plastic bag full of the sweetest apricots I’ve ever tasted. I’m content. Life is good.

Our last morning in Budapest, we went to the great market hall to have breakfast again. This time, Mr. P wanted to try one of the incredible pastries that they had on display. He chose this one, because it so resembles the Swedish semla. Well, turns out, the taste didn’t resemble the semla at all. The bread part was kind of brioche like, the cream was very fluffy and kind of hard (probably with egg-whites in it) and there was vanilla cream in it. It was good, though. Kind of heavy, but good.

After that sturdy breakfast, we picked up our bags, took the metro to the other Budapest train station and got on the train bound for Ljubljana. Next stop: Zagreb.

I don’t remember why, maybe we were studying the Second World War, but when I was 14 or 15 we saw a movie called “Good night, Mr. Wallenberg” in school. It was about Raoul Wallenberg, played by Stellan Skarskård, and took place in Budapest during WWII. The real Wallenberg was the Swedish special envoy in Budapest in 1944 and rescued tens of thousands of lives by issuing protective passports and sheltering Jews in buildings that were designated as Swedish territory. In 1945, he was detained by Soviet authorities and was never seen again, believed to have died in a Russian prison in 1947.

All of that was shown in the movie. It is a really gripping fate. But what I remember most of the movie was what happened right in the beginning. Wallenberg is in the closed off ghetto with his leather briefcase, discretely trying to hand out protective passports, when a truck with a tank filled with milk is let in through the heavily guarded ghetto gate. People gather, starved and hollow eyed, and for some reason the soldiers shoot holes into the tank. Milk starts pouring out. Children run to the truck and start drinking the milk, pushing each other to get to the precious drops. And then the soldiers start shooting again. The tank gets hit, more milk starts pouring out, the children spread out, and then they start falling. One by one, they get hit by the bullets, until the only thing left by the milk truck is a pile of malnourished bodies. And the milk keeps on pouring out, hitting the dead children, mixing with the blood flowing on the cobble stones.

I couldn’t really take anything in after that. Of the movie, I mean. It is probably one of the most disturbing movie experiences I’ve ever had. The milk hitting those bodies. God, it makes me cry even now, just thinking about it.

Anyway. That is probably the first time I learned something about Budapest history. And he is still remembered there.

Now that I was in Budapest, it felt like a very nice thing, seeing his name in places. His bust at the Great Synagogue. Or here, a plaque at the head of the street named after him. And that there still was someone who had left a wreath for him there. The world needs good people. He was one of them.

Pretty house, isn’t it? And exactly the same colors as that beautiful wall at the Ducor Hotel in Monrovia. I like it!

I thought this was hilarious when I saw it. Probably just proves that a day of walking in sunshine and 35 degree heat can make you just a teensy bit soft in the head. (Bajsa means ‘to poop’ in Swedish. When I was 14, all the girly girls would exchange all their s’s with z’s and mix lOwEr AnD uPpEr CaSe LeTtErZ on their internet community profiles. Utca just means street in Hungarian. Poop street. Girly 14-year-old giggles.)

 

I think this might be the opera. Or the ballet. I’m not sure. I was too tired after all the eating and walking and bathing to look it up. So, look! Another pretty Budapest house!

 

In Budapest, they have these bath houses. Budapest is situated on thermally active ground, and the thermally heated water has made the city a perfect place for the construction of many different kinds of bath houses. Lavish, luxurious, frequented by tourists from all over the world.

The thing was, I was in the middle of my period. Sorry if this is becoming too private, but that’s just how it was. I was bloated, bleeding and with strange-smelling sweat, walking around in Budapest, not feeling quite sure about if I really should go to one of the bath houses. Having my period doesn’t make me feel like being seen in a bikini, or being around people really, and all this hassle with blood and tampons and stuff. Nah, maybe it would be better if I just skipped the baths, this time.

However, it just so happens that while I was walking there in the afternoon heat, I was also listening to programs from the Swedish Radio – like I usually do. And on this particular afternoon, my mp3-player started playing the Sommar i P1 program by Liv Strömquist. (For the very few of you who aren’t Swedish, Sommar i P1 is a summer program, called ‘summer talks’, hosted by a different person every day. The person is a prominent Swede of some kind, a politician, author, actor, scientist, and she/he can talk about whatever she/he feels like talking about, combined with the music of her/his choice. Usually people talk about themselves, experiences they’ve had, life lessons, and being offered to host this program is a real honor. It is probably the most listened to program on the Swedish Radio, a real summer tradition, running every summer for more than half a century. And Liv Strömquist is a super cool feminist, she draws political comics and used to be on a program on the Swedish Radio doing political satire.)

Fittingly, Liv Strömquist’s summer talk was about menstruation: cultural history, significance in different cultures, biology, affect on body and mind, personal stories. How it through centuries in our western culture has been seen as something unclean and shameful – which by extension also means that all women roughly between the ages of 12 and 50 experience something that they are forced to hide for 2-7 days Every Single Month. Yet another way to subjugate women, and the unclean female body.

There was a lot more to Liv’s awesome menstruation summer talk, but I feel that that’s enough to explain my sudden resolve to go to a bath house despite having my period. Maybe not a very brave and progressive feminist act in itself, I still felt that why should I let something as stupid as a little blood and centuries of oppressive ideas about the female body prevent me from experiencing one of the main tourist activities in Budapest? There is no shame in being bloated. So I loaded up on tampons, walked to the Széchenyi bath house and had a lovely afternoon, letting my weary sightseers body be soaked in the strange smelling waters of a Budapest hamam.

(And for your information, in case you were thinking “that must be unsanitary!”, all the 1990’s commercials with strange blue liquids and women in white skirts did tell the truth – tampons really do have an amazing ability to soak up liquids!)

It was nice. The facilities were beautiful. The inside pools with thermal water, surrounded by marble columns and with glass domes in the ceiling, were incredibly fancy. But I wasn’t that impressed. The thermal baths on Iceland were both warmer and stronger smelling, in a way more majestic landscape. And going to a crowded bath house by yourself was actually kind of lonely. Still, I’m happy I went. After all, they did have a decent sauna – and I’m Finnish! I don’t say that lightly. During non of my visits to the sauna did I have to share the top bench with anyone. People simply couldn’t handle the heat.

In the middle of the Danube, in the middle of Budapest, an island has been left green, trees and walking trails. A park. Nice, with shadow and people strolling around.

There was this big, amazing fountain at the southern tip of the island. It shot water into the air, in spirals and showers, ever-changing.

 

But the best thing was the shallow and narrow pool encircling the big fountain, meant for people to wet their feet. The water was freezing – and so extremely nice for my tired and worn feet. Such a sympathetic thing to do, when constructing this boasty fountain. To think of the tired tourists in need of a foot rest.

 

 

I met a hedgehog. And then he met a bunch of kids. After the first bout of shyness, he couldn’t get away fast enough.