“Did you find something about our roots in Mongolia?” she asked me with a sly smile. Like a lot of people, she too believes that Hungarians are descendents of the Huns.

Magyarország – Hungary. A place of heritage. And a nice place to visit.

It can be very pittoresque:

…with beautiful little churches:

…and some massive cathedrals:

The capital Budapest is full of grandeur by day:

…but even more so by night:

Europe’s largest river, the Danube, flows through the heart of the country, bringing water, culture and commerce all the way from the Black Forest to the Black Sea:

The Hungarians enjoy food and drink, especially the three P’s: Pörkölt meat stew, Palascinta pan cakes and Pálinka fruit brandy. Awesome stuff!

The people are very friendly, and they seem to love beards and mustaches. You can find traces of this love virtually everywhere, even on graffiti:

And they adore their heroes:

In the Northeast of the city, there is a large square called Hősök Tere (Heroes’ Square):

There was a small gathering of people at the foot of the statues, so I went to check it out:

“I don’t speak English or German very well,” a blonde lady in a dark coat told me in flawless English, “only Hungarian and Hebrew. But I will try to explain.”

Apparently, I was witnessing a demonstration against the uprise of neo-fascism in Hungary. The radical right-wing political party Jobbik (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom = Movement For A Better Hungary) that maintained close ties to the infamous Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard) was threatening to become a major force on a national level, and there had been multiple occasions where members of the small Romani community in the countryside became victim of fascist aggression.

“A young man and his son were shot right outside of their home, and some people wanted to make it look like the Romani were shooting each other! But journalists have discovered the truth, and now we are here to take a stand against the radicals, but please look around” the lady pointed at the scattered group in the center of the Heroe’s Square: “only 40 or 50 people are here!”

Suddenly an old man with a wool hat and a thick red nose appeared and asked me in German: “Is this the pro-fascist rally? I support fascism!” He sounded like he hadn’t spoken our language in a long time, but it came out grammatically correct. I was perplexed. The lady in the coat got a hurt look on her face and decided to flee.

The man presented himself with a name as antiquated and as German as Franz Schulz and then started to go into a rant about the blessings of the rise of neo-fascism in Europe. “I am from the country of the last Nobel Prize – Hertha Müller, you know?” he said, “I am German like her or like you, and I am a proud nationalist! The Netherlands are going fascist, Hungary is going fascist, and soon the rest of Europe will be following along! You must know the Horst-Wessel-Lied (anthem of the NSDAP)?”

I told him that we “Germans” usually don’t appreciate that kind of talk very much.

“Yes, yes, you have done enough for the cause,” he said and smiled, “the Germans don’t have to be pioneers anymore, they have sacrificed so much already!”

It hurt.

Heinz Schmidt, or whatever his name was, kept going on with his tangled mass of words, while the statues around us and the pictures of the murdered Romani were in grave silence. Then he said something that caught my attention: “China,” he exclaimed triumphantly, “now THAT is a good country: strong leadership, with a good sense of order!”

Would he like China to become the ruler of his new fascist Europe?

He seemed to be contemplating the thought for a while, tilting his head to the side, then he smiled and said: “Yes, possibly!”

And he looked very happy about the consistency within his logical thought.

But did he really think the Chinese were going to let him sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied??

The pseudo-Fritz Meyer didn’t find time for an adequate answer to this dilemma, because another Hungarian lady had been overhearing the conversation and started to seriously cuss him out in what sounded like very blunt Hungarian. I could make out the word “Nazi” a couple of times, then the old man was gone and the lady smiled.

…

Time to take a breath.

…

There is a large synagogue in central Budapest, it’s called the Dohány Utcai Zsinagóga (Dohany Street Synagogue):

Behind a gate in the backyard, there is a memorial to remind us of what happened during the last period of fascist domination in Europe:

I found the engraved stone tablets in the yard very powerful, because they looked so fragile and so earnest at the same time:

Obviously, the place isn’t big enough to hold all the victims’ names on individual tablets, so there is a large one covering a whole wall:

Do the people who are waiting for the fascist rule to come over their country never open their eyes to see this?

Do they always stay within the confines of their fear?

Is Hungary really going to build her future on the hatred of minority groups such as the Romani (ca. 2% of the population) and the Jews (less than 1% of the population), and try to emulate some sort of “German” idea that seems to root in historical ties to the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy (1867 – 1918) and to Hungary’s own German minority (less than 1% of the population)?

Isn’t this a country that admires her heroes?

I am starting to ask myself where they are, the Hungarian heroes.

Then it dawns on me that I have seen them somewhere…

…on Heroes’ Square.

Soundtrack: Angry Samoans – “Lights Out”

First of all, you need to take a bunch of shots of yourself that somewhat all resemble this one:

(you can probably do without the weird beard and the humping monkey though!)

I always shoot at arm’s length and set my lens to its widest angle, so most shots look kinda similar:

Once we have a bunch of pictures, we can sort them on our hard drive and import the first shot into our favorite photo editing software. I recommend renaming it into something like “standard.jpg”:

(In order to process the pictures in the video, I think 1200 to 2000 horizontal pixels are okay – I used a 1600 pixel resolution.)

As always, I am not telling you to get a certain brand of software, as you can figure that out for yourself. There’s no need to spend ridiculous amounts of money though; the most basic versions of any popular photo/video editing suite will probably do just fine.

Back to our “standard.jpg” – we need to eliminate all the things that belong to the background. Then we can increase the clarity of the facial features:

When this is done, it is time to go ahead and process the following pictures individually, one at a time:

I found that the main focus of attention in the video would probably be the eyes, so I wanted them perfectly aligned – if the background was going to be bouncy and unsteady, at least the eyes should remain in the same spot.

Aligning the eyes in hundreds of photographs isn’t that easy though. After failed attempts using a video stabilizing software and stickers attached to the screen, I resorted to a method that yielded more reliable results. Too bad it was also the most tiring method. By far.

Here we go: First, we want to copy the new pictures into the shot that we named “standard.jpg”:

Then there are a few steps for each picture:

1) set the transparency of the top layer (in this case that would be the monkey picture) to roundabout 50%.

2) manually adjust the size of the top layer and drag it around until the areas around the eyes and the mouth of both the top layer and the bottom layer are perfectly matching.

3) set the transparency back to 100%.

4) cut the bottom layer (“standard.jpg”) and merge down the picture.

5) export a jpg and name it with a consecutive number.

Hint: make sure that the “snap to grid” checkbox in your photo editor is unchecked, otherwise moving the layers will be a hassle.

Then we unfortunately have to do this:

Wonder why the whole video took me more than three months to create, eh?

Okay, now that all pictures are lined up and in perfect shape, we can open our favorite video editing software:

This is the sweet part; although my computer was aching under the burden of almost 1400 pictures, I still had a lot of fun creating the actual movie.

Again, there are a few steps:

1) Make sure to decide from the start whether you want to ultimately export a 16:9 HD movie or a traditional 4:3 movie. I learned this the hard way by having to edit my video all over again after I found out that HD looked so much better!

2) Import the pictures into your movie. I used a feature called “slide show” and assigned 3 frames to each shot. This really depends on how fast you want your movie to go.

3) Find a musical score and make sure you obtain usage rights for it. In my case, the Kingpins were very kind and let me use their song for free, while I had to pay a bit of money in royalty fees to the legal owners of Zhu Fengbo’s song.

4) If you want to include other footage, now’s the time to go through your archives. I used a bunch of video shots that I had taken with a small digital camera while I was on the way.

5) You can also add captions if you like. I spend hours and hours coming up with place names and numbers for the kilometer counter.

6) Export the project into a mpg file  – make sure the video is of the best quality you can get! ;)

Hint: you need the best possible quality because the video sites are going to compress your material for you, and you want to give them the best possible original video to work with. (I exported an mpg-file that was 1280 by 720 pixels and had 996 mb. It was MPEG2 and had a framerate of 50.)

Almost done!

Now we can finally go ahead and upload the damn thing to a bunch of video sites on the Internet:

When this is over with, we can lean back in our chair, have a cool Dr. Pepper or some fruit juice, look at our work, and wait.

Wait for fame, wait for fortune.

Wait for something to happen.

Soundtrack: KC & The Sunshine Band – “That’s The Way I Like It”

There was a small island in the middle of the 漓 (li) river. I was going to walk south along the river for a couple of days, but I suddenly felt that I had to visit the island first:

There was only one house there and the owner had just come home in a fishing boat.

“You live in the middle of the river,” I pointed out to him, “does the water never rise and threaten your house?”

“Oh yes, it does rise every once in a while,” he said slowly and pointed to a line on the wall, “the river can get this high!”

He had to raise his hand way above his head to touch the line left by the water. The flood must have been terrible.

“But what do you do then?” I wanted to know, “what do you do when there is a flood?”

He smiled, took his arm down and shrugged. Then he told me the secret: “We move.”

“To the city?”

“To the second floor.”

Soundtrack: 2 Live Crew – “Shake A Lil’ Somethin’”

I’ve been getting a lot of questions on what kind of photography equipment I carried along the way, so here it is:

(Unfortunately, the camera that took this picture is not ON the picture.)

Why two cameras?

First of all, I wanted to use DSLR cameras, because I felt that they offered a maximum amount of control over the resulting pictures. There are three reasons why I chose to carry two cameras instead of just one:

1) I needed a wide lens and a long lens.

This is a typical wide-angle shot…

…while this one was taken with the telephoto lens:

In my opinion, from a usability and picture quality standpoint, a good lens can either be long (tele) or short (wide-angle), so if you want to shoot in both ranges, you are going to need at least two lenses. I chose 16-35mm and 70-200mm, giving up the thirty-five milimeters in between.

2) I wanted to avoid having to swap lenses on the road, because it steals time and can hurt your equipment. Digital camera bodies are especially sensitive to dust.

3) I felt that I needed a backup body in case something went wrong.

So what about the brandname?

It doesn’t really matter. There are some major camera manufacturers who offer a variety of good bodies and lenses. Professional photographers have been shooting amazing pictures using their products, so anyone who tells you to “only get brand x” because “brand y is crap” is basically an idiot.

You might have noticed that I like to tape up my cameras anyway, mainly because I want to give them a more rugged look, and also because I don’t want the brand to be too easily recognizable:

There is one simple rule when it comes to photo equipment though: always make sure to get good lenses!

DSLR bodies have a tendency to decrease in value, while lens prices usually don’t fluctuate too much. Additionally, your lens is probably going to stay with you much longer than the camera body ever will.

(If you don’t want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on your camera, get a cheap body and a good fixed focal length. This is an excellent way to get into photography.)

There are three things to keep in mind though:

1) In order to be able to shoot real wide-angle pictures, you are going to need a full-frame body, which is relatively expensive.

2) You have to feel comfortable with the camera body you use, so go out and try a couple before you buy one.

3) When it comes to lenses, the prices usually correlate with the aperture: the smaller the number, the brighter the lens – the more you are going to pay!

What else do I need to spend money on?

You definitely need good filters. Basically, you always want to keep a UV-filter on each and every one of your lenses for protection. Sometimes you might want to use a polarizer in order to enhance the contrast in certain scenarios:

So is there any way I can save money?

You don’t have to spend much on batteries. Get generic ones, they do the job just fine. I personally don’t like costly battery-grips either, they’re just heavy.

Also, you can save money on memory cards by getting a number of smaller ones instead of a few large ones. Should you lose a card or break it, then only a limited number of pictures will be lost.

I always get the cheapest tripod I can find. Expensive tripods offer better stability and handling, but they are usually heavier than the ones I like to buy. I have been getting some good pictures with a tripod for less than 15 bucks!

What about compact cameras?

I usually just try to make sure that the compact camera I am using is able to record decent video. I would probably not spend a lot of money on this kind of camera, because prices are always dropping anyway. One thing you need to make sure though is the white balance: most compact cameras take good pictures in bright daylight, but show their weaknesses in low-light indoor situations.

How do you carry your camera equipment?

I have always been a fan of holsters, even though I admit that they do look kinda geeky:

I like holster bags mainly because they offer protection and flexibility at the same time.

The downside is the weight: I think the larger one of my cameras weighs about 3,5kg, and the smaller one is just a bit lighter. This was never much of a problem because I was carrying the 20+ kg backpack anyway, which kind of levelled the weight out, but it was so tiring…

Later, when I got the caboose, I felt relieved of all that stupid heaviness:

With the cameras secured in their holsters for easy access, I figured that walking couldn’t get any better than this!

…

Oh, I almost forgot: I always shoot in RAW and try to archive my pictures in as many ways as I can. There is a lot of good software that allows you to manage your RAW-files, do adjustments and expose pictures with different settings:

Even though free software can probably do the job, I would suggest spending a bit of money on this. Good routines will make your life so much easier!

…

When all of the above is taken care of and nothing goes wrong, I think taking pictures can be a lot of fun.

One last thing that is important though: you have to appreciate a good camera…

…because it will allow you to see the world through different eyes.

Soundtrack: Public Enemy – “They Call Me Flavor”

If he could only grow a beard!

But, oh well… a baby Jesus always seemed more charming than an old dude with a bunch of reindeers anyway.

Or who do you want to get your presents from?

Merry Christmas!

“I have always loved this book,” the sender had told me, “but I am nearing the end of my life and would love to find a good home for it.”

She had thought of me because I shared the same route with the dudes in the book.

I didn’t know what to say. It was too overwhelming.

…

But I accepted. When I found out we both shared a love for photography, I asked her to put a picture of herself inside the book. I promised to later add my own photograph as well.

That way, if eventually the day came to pass it on to the next friend, her memory would still be inside the book, along with my own.

I haven’t started reading from it yet. I am looking for a suitable place to put it first:

“Pekin to Paris. An Account of Prince Borghese’s Journey across two Continents in a Motor-Car. By Luigi Barzini.”

Books used to really have titles in the old days, I thought.

But would it feel comfortable around my other books?

I was unsure, most of them suddenly seemed so…

…ordinary.

…

When I found the picture she had put in the book, a black and white shot from 1946…

…my mind went blank for a second.

There was something in my eye.

Tears? I blamed them on

the surgery.

Then I had to smile.

…

Thank you my friend, I thought.

Don’t you worry, your book

is with me now.

And I will keep it well.

…

Soundtrack: Georges Moustaki  – “J’ai Vu Des Rois Serviles”

I keep getting e-mails from friendly people all over the world, calling me “brave” and “inspiring” and what not. They don’t know that I am, in fact, the biggest sissy of them all.

I am always afraid of something. Of the cold. Of the heat. Of pain. Of blood. Of people. Of making the wrong choices.

When my doctor told me I’d best undergo surgery on my nose, in order to get better sleep at night, I was terrified.

I wanted to do it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run.

But sometimes you can’t run:

Now that the surgery is done, I feel a bit better.

I didn’t die after all, and I feel proud every time I need to gob blood and it comes out just as red and shiny as a ruby.

Still, there are the doubts and the fears…

But then something happened last night: For the first time ever, I didn’t allow myself to get completely beaten up by my thoughts. Instead, I closed my eyes and started wandering through the memories of my most happy walking days: questions unasked will remain questions unanswered.

I could almost smell the peach blossoms, they were so real.

Ah, I thought, so this is something that this whole walking thing was finally good for then, eh?

I felt that there was a little bluebird somewhere inside me, singing its song.

And nobody could take it from me.

Soundtrack: B Real, Busta Rhymes, Coolio, LL Cool J & Method Man – “Hit ‘Em High (The Monstars’ Anthem)”

In the fall of 2006, we’re a random group of photographers asked to take pictures in a metropolitan area south of Beijing. Near an artificial lake, I suddenly notice this child rushing by. I see her from the corner of my eye, I turn, she has her arms open wide, there she goes, flying across the bridge…

October 25th 2006, Langfang.

…what was that expression on her face?

I am vexed for a second, then it dawns on me: she had the friendly features of a person with down-syndrome.

She is still running, her arms open wide, my lens is following her, I press the shutter. Click.

There she goes.

Flying.

Soundtrack: La Fouine – “Banlieue Sale”

[PS: I have updated the MISC!-posts for extra pictures and additional content.]

Dante and Sartre have written about hell, and maybe you know that I have been there before as well (Christoph in hell?), but this “health club” is far worse.

The whole place is designed to be 100% appealing, and the people who go there are trying to design themselves into being 100% appealing as well.

The advertising posters, the relaxing music, and the friendliness of the clerks have enslaved them all, driving them into thinking that what they really need is some obscure sort of well-being, and that maybe a tattoo on the right ankle might make a personality appear a bit more interesting.

I carry a book and bury my head in it between workouts whenever I go to the “health club”.

The place is located on the 5th floor of an office building. Just like everyone else, I am paying a shitload of money for my workout, so damned right I always take the elevator to where the stepping-machines are. Fuck the stairs, I didn’t pay for them!

Today I got out of there and entered the elevator with some dude around fifty. His eyes were red as if blood-shot, probably from doing an excessive workout or from having an excessive sauna. Excess was always the key. The elevator doors closed, and both of us were just standing there, trying not to exist.

Then I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I turned around.

“What a sad place,” I told him.

“What?”

“A sad place,” I repeated, “that health club.”

“Oh…” A surprised look appeared on his face, and I felt the sudden need to explain.

“So vain and… soulless,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, just gave me a very irritated look from his red eyes, looking up and down my body, and it almost seemed like he was going to edge away from me a little.

There was a moment of silence.

The elevator had reached the ground floor.

Then the doors opened.

Soundtrack: Abd Al-Malik – “12 Septembre 2001″

March 6th 2006, Guangzhou.

Banana Piece

[PS: I have recently added more than 20 languages to the Help page. The Plan and About Me are both new, and I thoroughly updated the Extras page. The Archive should be fully functioning as well. The video has more than 600.000 hits both on Youtube and on Vimeo, and I am very happy about it!]

[PPS: I added a new item to the Contact page where people can now connect and become friends with T h e L o n g e s t W a y.]