In Eastern Europe, bikers sacrifice social status but gain historical inspiration<\/p>\n
The two Slovakian policemen stamped through our crowd and confronted us in angry words we didn’t understand. \u00a0Once they established our native language, they adeptly switched to English. \u00a0“Do you have a permit for this spectacle?” the larger of the officers spat down at us. \u00a0Despite the tension of the situation, I couldn’t help being impressed with his vocabulary.We were, in fact, playing music on the streets without a permit. \u00a0Ever since Istanbul, we had been playing on the streets for money.\u00a0 At the beginning of the trip, we never anticipated living off our music. \u00a0However, even small European towns have old pedestrian zones. \u00a0These gentrified, tourist-filled areas prove lucrative as music venues. \u00a0From Turkey onward, we bought food using only money garnered from street performances.<\/p>\n
Aside from breathing life into our ever-dwindling savings accounts, street performing provided a way to meet people in Europe, where strangers don’t often interact with each other. \u00a0As we play, some passersby linger for a bit, but others sit down on the sidewalk next to us and remain for our entire performance. \u00a0In this way, we met many people and even had an accidental home stay in Serbia.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, while street performing\u00a0we\u00a0sometimes found ourselves at odds not only with police, but with apartment dwellers, shopkeepers, and other street musicians.\u00a0 In uber-regulated Western Europe, we found ourselves pandering to paperwork.\u00a0 I once spent an entire afternoon in the ultra-organized city of Vienna, running from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, trying to determine where we could purchase a permit to play on the street.<\/p>\n
Though we ate well with our earnings, we strictly budgeted our purchases and eschewed luxuries.\u00a0 As we slid across Hungary<\/span>, we ate veggies and enjoyed the sunshine. \u00a0The vast plains raced horizon-ward with wheat and corn. \u00a0 We often glimpsed pheasants running through the fields. \u00a0As the evenings came sooner and sooner, I slowly realized I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Montana for the hunting season. \u00a0Drew and I ground our teeth as bouquets of plump pheasant exploded from the roadside. \u00a0Though the birds stayed out of range for rocks, we stumbled upon an excellent if somewhat unorthodox way of adding fowl to our diet.<\/p>\n One day, we found a completely intact hen in the road. \u00a0Drew and I stopped. \u00a0It looked perfectly fine. \u00a0A quick prod beneath its feathers revealed it was still warm. \u00a0It had been freshly hit!<\/p>\n Drew and I exchanged glances, and a certain song by the Ringling 5 started resounding in my head. \u00a0If it’s good enough for Shields Valley ranchers, it’s good enough for me, I reasoned. \u00a0Drew and I cleaned the pheasant in the bushes and stored it for dinner.<\/p>\n Our bike mates looked skeptical as we chopped the bird into our communal pot. \u00a0However, as the savory aroma of roasting pheasant engulfed our campsite, their taste buds brought them back to sensibility.<\/p>\n Eating roadkill wasn’t the only sign that our social status had declined. \u00a0My beard-faithful crumb-catcher and bug filter that it is-no longer associated me with piousness, as it did in India, but with disregard for hygiene and fashion. \u00a0Bathing in rivers and eating in parks didn’t win us any status points, either.<\/p>\n However, we still found ourselves at the receiving end of much kindness. \u00a0An Austrian woman let us camp on her farm. \u00a0A portrait painter in Bratislava insisted on drawing us for free. Edmund Pongratz was not only part of the revolution-he helped lead it.\u00a0 In 1956, Hungarians started a rebellion that expelled Soviet forces\u00a0from Hungary<\/span> in a matter of days.\u00a0 “They wanted to make us Russian,” Edmund told me when I asked why he had fought the Soviets and their supporters.\u00a0 “We wanted to be free,” he said, before demonstrating how he threw Molatav cocktails at Soviet tanks.<\/p>\n In the end, the Hungarian revolution was not successful.\u00a0 The Russians had reinforcements.\u00a0 They returned in force days after they had been expelled and subjected Hungary<\/span> to an even harsher form of dictatorial governance.\u00a0 Edmund’s museum didn’t focus on the aftermath of the revolution, however.\u00a0 Instead, it focuses on the spirit of independence and heroism demonstrated by the rebels.\u00a0 That is undoubtedly the most important part of their story.<\/p>\n Edmund proved that he can focus on the most important things in other areas, too.\u00a0 “Some people might look at you and say ‘Who are those monks with big beards?’\u00a0 But I look at you and know you’re good guys.”\u00a0 We left with a bag full of sweets and confidence that not everyone will judge us based on our beards.<\/p>\n Later, as the Slovakian policemen chased us out of our venue, we felt unsettled.\u00a0 The distaste of clashing with authority figures disinclined us from further playing.\u00a0 However, I thought of the Hungarian revolutionaries.\u00a0 They stood up to things much worse than harsh language.\u00a0 Not playing meant a lower food budget and less opportunity to meet people.\u00a0 We obtained the permit we didn’t know we had to have and played again on the streets of Bratislava.\u00a0 The policemen returned, but this time we responded to their gruff language with the permit.\u00a0 I hope I never have to face down a hostile tank.\u00a0 In the meantime, however, there are many small ways in which we all can immolate the valor of the Hungarian revolutionaries like Edmund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Eastern Europe, bikers sacrifice social status but gain historical inspiration The two Slovakian policemen stamped through our crowd and confronted us in angry words we didn’t understand. \u00a0Once they established our native language, they adeptly switched to English. \u00a0“Do you have a permit for this spectacle?” the larger of the officers spat down at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-here-you-will-find-the-posts-that-jim-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAn ancient little man flagged me down in Hungary<\/span>. \u00a0He grilled Peter and I about our trip outside his yard.\u00a0 His lawn, across which artillery pieces lay strewn, resembled a museum.\u00a0\u00a0He\u00a0ordered us to wait five minutes and retreated into his house.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0inquisitive\u00a0