Back to travel pics

Fewer musings on Vegas and coyotes, more travel pictures.

Thus, the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest, Hungary on the banks of the Danube.

I don't understand how something so gorgeous can exist.

SoCal Coyotes

There are always weird things you gotta get used to, living in a foreign country. The language/accents. The food. The weather, the measurements, the attitudes, the public transportation. The layout of cities that are about a thousand years older than your hometown. It's phenomenal, granted, but it's also... sometimes it's exhausting. Mostly it's just tiring, like when you take a puppy outside and they run themselves ragged.

What's weird, though, is lying down in your new bed with it's too-thin mattress and strange duvet at the end of each day and listening to the unfamiliar noises outside your window.

I don't think I will ever, ever miss the sounds that came from the Three Sisters. Just to be clear.

What I did miss, and what I will always miss no matter where I go, are the coyotes in San Diego. When we first moved into this house--I was thirteen or fourteen--I panicked and huddled under the blankets the first night I heard them, convinced there was a pack of screaming women out in the canyon across the street. And then I started wondering if I was going crazy and hearing things, because no one came to their rescue. And since I'd already half-decided I was losing my mind, I wondered if there was some kind of unearthly creature racing through the darkness and eating people.

(Try not to laugh too hard.)

I still imagine a pack of coyotes could give professional mourners a run for their money, but I've come to appreciate the idea that there's some wildlife outside our despicable cookie-cutter neighborhood. There's at least a single pack out there, maybe two packs, and there's got to be enough deer and bunnies running around to keep them alive. I like the idea that there's life out in the canyon, even when the dry brush is almost as tall as I am and twelve inches of rain every year is probably all we're ever going to get (and five of those inches happen all at once, in December).

Usually I'm in bed by the time the coyotes have caught something and start celebrating. Usually it's between midnight and three in the morning. Tonight, though, I came home from a friend's house and parked the car across the street from my parents' house. I gathered up all the nonsense I'd brought out to the car and crossed the street, hoping the front door was unlocked or I'd have to go digging around in my bag for my house keys. (It wasn't, and I did have to.)

In the middle of the street, I stop and lift my head. It's faint, but coyotes sing in the canyon to the south. I stand out there on the blacktop for a while and enjoy the music. Before tonight, I hadn't heard them since leaving for Edinburgh last summer.

After a short while I turn to cross the other half of the street and take a step, then realize I'm hearing coyotes in surround sound. They're singing to the north, too.

There's an odd moment of simmering panic as I picture myself surrounded without having realized it, but both packs (and the northern one didn't sound like more than two or three coyotes) are faint. They're not among the houses.

This would have been a much more interesting post if I'd spotted one or two or been attacked, but unfortunately that's the extent of my story. No sightings, no attacks, nothing interesting--just the first whisper of appreciation for home stemming from something outside the obvious bits. (Family, the weather, my massive pile of books.)

Las Vegas

I’ve got some friends who’re trying to get me to go holiday in Vegas this winter, but I’m not buying it. It’s kind of a cruise to get out there, even starting in Santa Barbara instead of San Diego (not that the drive is such a huge deal in itself—it’s a longer trip across the Atlantic, with less to look at, and I’ll always jump at that particular chance) and it’s in the middle of the desert (but the scenery is admittedly pretty satisfying to look at).

My biggest objections, though, are this: (#1) I’ve already been there, and (#2) everything that makes Vegas such a great getaway can be done almost anywhere else. Santa Barbara is for partying. We can catch shows in L.A. or San Diego. UCSB has pools and perfect weather to lounge in. Chumash has gambling.

Now, admittedly, Caesar’s Palace looks pretty cool. Luxor, too. I just returned from north Las Vegas yesterday and wish I’d had a chance to wander around those two resorts a bit just to look at the decorations. Maybe Excalibur, too, though I sort of remember it—my family stayed there for a few days back when I was closer to ten than twenty.

Vegas is an interesting city, though, and sort of reminds me of eastern Europe in a few respects. The parts that everybody sees (downtown Prague, Budapest, and even Athens’ plaka district) are gorgeous and glitzy and enchanting. The rest… not so much.

Vegas was hit very hard by the recession. It’s got the worst housing rates in the entire country—oops, the rental houses that were supposed to pay for university/retirement/whatever are underwater!—and unemployment is high. The population has dropped by more than 35% in the last decade as people scrabble to escape.

All that shows. It’s visible the moment we step off the strip. Neon lights dim, the dust that seemed like such a trifle at the poolside bar suddenly chokes, and everyone around us is sunburned and slouching under the weight of this month’s rent.

Money troubles look the same across the world, I guess.

Riverfront view

View of the riverfront and Hungarian Parliament from a bridge just under halfway across the Danube.

Buda, Pest, Bridges and Lions

This is a view of Budapest's castle from across the Danube the evening after I first arrived. I landed in the afternoon, found my hostel (which took a while--I got lost, and getting directions in Hungarian was a lot harder than I was expecting. It's impossible to pronounce anything properly!), and went for a walk down the river, across the bridge in the picture, and back down the other side of the river.

It's not the greatest picture I took, but one of the only ones of the whole front of the castle. The bridge, I figure, is an added bonus. There are lions standing guard at both ends.

It was quite dark by the time I got back to the hostel. A little nerve-wracking as I had some difficulty getting around a construction site without getting lost, but I worked it out, found the bridge, and got back to the hostel before my exhausted feet decided to mutiny.