You were the Chosen One!

Ok, here we go.

A couple of weeks ago, I headed off to Eastern Europe to have a look. Here is a little rundown of some interesting things that happened while I was there.

In Budapest, which, for those not in the know, is in Hungary, I started out rather disappointed. It was basically a pretty dirty city. Even the monuments and all that had turned black from all the dirt. I eventually did find a couple of nice things though. There was this church, Saint-Stephen's Basilica, I think, which had been rebuilt and renovated recently. Everything in the church was pretty new, with almost zero deterioration, not the usual in a huge church. The marble columns were polished, the floor tiles even and unworn, the seats clean and without splinters, the gold plating still gleaming. To some extent, I suppose it was close to what a pilgrim eight hundred years ago might have seen when he headed to a great basilica. Except that the statues weren't particularly garishly painted. Although they were painted. Which brings me to the thought that struck me when I was walking through it.

The church was somewhat Byzantine in nature. The Oriental influences were obvious in the intricate mosaics, the sharper features of the statues, the explosions of colour everywhere, in contrast to the austerity and stern majesty of Western churches. Even then, I could see the Gothic influences as well. There were the requisite flying buttresses, the traditional layout. I also saw other things such as the cross layout of the interior, the fact that the entrance faced West, the positioning of the spires atop the roof to give the impression of looking into the heavens. The point is that in the course of this quarter, I actually have become a little more educated. The texts that I have read, and the lectures I have listened to in the past weeks have given some little insight and knowledge into how things work.

When I watched Kingdom of Heaven last week, two things struck me. The first was that the writing and directing were really bad. Cutting from scene to scene was jarring, Orlando Bloom was poorly cast, there was too much pandering to the themes of tolerance and inclusion, too many references to the Lord of the Rings. The second was that the entire movie was disgustingly relevant to my recent readings. Noblemen going to the Holy Land to regain Jerusalem, but also grabbing some land for those who had none, a great cross leading the armies of the Christians, the offense taken when someone breaches the strict feudal hierarchy, the absolute faith in God intervening on one's side to ensure victory in battle.

As Don Randel once said, the Core in Chicago has made me a more interesting person at a cocktail party or to sit beside in an airplane.

Other vaguely interesting things include a rather swish train, a totally freaky and scary soviet-looking Romanian border guard, a crappy train compartment going from Bucharest to Vienna with a Romanian, a Slovakian, an American and a Singaporean in it.

Oh oh, on the way to Romania, we were in the train, and going through customs. I think the border guard had never seen a Singaporean artist before, and I'm pretty sure he was calling his friends over to take a look, because we kept getting interrupted. On the way out of Romania, I was travelling alone, and when we were at the Romanian border, one of the border guards asked me where my brother was. Note that this was not one of the guards we had seen on the way in. So somehow, the two Singaporeans had become a story circulating among the guards at the Romanian border. Vaguely cool in a disturbing sort of way.

On a related note, there really weren't too many Chinese in Romania. We got stared at a lot.

I must say that Romanian food isn't very good. As far as I can tell, it's basically grilled meat smothered in some sort of thin tomato-based sauce. Many many repeats later, I did get to eat a bear. Kind of gamey, not my kind of thing. The wine is quite bad too. Oh well, it wasn't meant to be a culinary treat anyway.

Bran Castle, also known in Romanian tourist circles as Dracula's castle, was rather disappointing. I thought it would at least be forbidding and atmospheric. No such luck. It's just a dinky country castle with small rooms and crude furniture. Dracula never even set foot in it. Neither the real nor the fictional one. They didn't even sell fake vampire teeth in the ridiculous Dracula Bazaar outside the castle. I missed going to the church where Vlad Tepes' bones are interred though. Only realised that it was in Bucharest about an hour before my train. Too bad. I would have liked to dance on Dracula's grave.

Romania has no tourist development. It is quite disgusting how it's so hard to do anything. I mean, even the simplest things can be fucked up. I wanted to go to the top of the mountain next to Brasov, to get a panoramic view of the place. So I had to trek halfway up the mountain in order to get to the base of the cable car station. Why on earth is the cable car to take people up the mountain halfway up? It should be near the base! Bloody morons. Then when I got to the top, the viewing areas were blocked by trees. So I trekked halfway up the mountain to take the cable car up, and when I get to the top, I have to peek through branches to see anything? Who thought up and executed this brilliant idea? Morons. The thing is, it was quite nice up there. If they made the slightest effort, it would be a rather pleasant experience. Instead, the only place I could get a clear view of the quite pretty city was the cable car platform. So I had maybe 30 seconds to snag a pic and admire it. Ridiculous.

The only touristy thing I really saw in Bucharest was the huge number of pimps. Everywhere I walked, I was accosted by men offering me 'beautiful girl'. A little ridiculous. How many prostitutes are there in that city? I believe that it is set up such that there is a network of girls, and the pimps are freelance, who can call into the network for a commission. It's the only viable business structure that is apparent to me. These people cannot possibly have exclusive rights.

A fat man told me that he spoke very good French, so when he goes to Paris on holiday in a few weeks, 'he is very pretty.' (in French) A little disturbing. But I did realise the mistake, and I could read the inscription inside L'Arc de Triomphe, as well as most of the subtitles in the cinemas. I am getting a little of the language. Wish it didn't take so long though.

Which reminds me. I finally watched Star Wars last night. I liked it. Some of the dialogue is truly dire, but otherwise it was pretty well-made. Fantastic, gorgeous landscapes, perfect special effects, Yoda kicking ass, tremendously cool Obi-Wan Kenobi. What more can you ask from a Star Wars movie? Some weak attempts at settling outstanding issues towards the end though. And Jar-Jar Binks gets zero dialogue, and 2 seconds of screen time! So I suppose the good balances out the bad. I'll remember it as a cool action movie that has tremendous significance in the movie world for the setup of the world of Star Wars. There was even one good bit of dialogue at the end from Obi-Wan Kenobi after the fight with Anakin Darth Vader. Of course, Anakin had to spoil it with a pathetic comeback. And the fully upgraded Darth Vader managed to make himself look very dumb in his only scenes.

Ok, class is over. I'm off.