I think that I wrote a few days ago about the fog that has been hanging its thin, gray curtain over Hungary for the last week or more. It seems to have lifted today, but this past weekend, while driving through the small southern villages, the fog seemed to take me to an entirely different century.
As if caught in a dream when you realize you might be dreaming but can’t quite wake yourself up. I suppose it’s a feeling more than any visual image. But that’s how the fog has affected me the last ten days or so. The mornings arrived and in the distance there seemed to be some sense of light, but only as if on the water and a storm was approaching. And at night, the moon barely made an appearance. When it did, it was only as a hint of itself barely dazzling a strip of light on wanting rooftops.
This week is Thanksgiving, but also, here, it’s not. So unlike my parents who are anxiously preparing to fly down to Dataw Island for family Thanksgiving, I’ll be here just a little bit homesick. I have a lot of pictures to sort through from the last week and weekend, and also a lot of stories to recount of more exciting activities. But something about that old woman in the fog was, I don’t know, familiar. Perhaps it was the stupid, American image I had of Hungary before I came here. Before I learned that it wasn’t all old women on worn-torn dirt roads, inched by hunches, surrounded by fog. But then this weekend it was exactly that. And I had to post this before I could get on with the rest.
