Observances

Observances
May 22, 2006

I last wrote about our May Day holiday, but since then we have observed two more holiday weekends.

On the second weekend in May we celebrated the Pompa Romana – the Roman Parade. We gathered at the amphitheater – that is the military amphitheater in Óbuda which was built by the Romans in about 100 CE, for entertainment. There were the legionnaires, gladiators, barbarians ( which is to say most of your ancestors), vestal virgins, actors, mimes, musicians, and, as always throughout history, politicians. This was a celebration to kick off the summer at the Aquincum Museum.

Just in case you have forgotten, we live in the former Roman province of Pannonia. In fact, the Danube marked the boundary between the “civilized” west and the barbarian east. Our apartment is within the ancient walls of the castrum – the camp of the second legion from about 47 to 500. You need to remember that at that time the Magyars (Hungarians) were off someplace in central Asia, so our celebration has, strictly speaking, nothing to do with Hungarians. On the other hand, Hungarians like the orderliness of the Roman empire, and so we celebrate it. There we were, sitting in a stadium that was nearly 2,000 years old, watching a pageant.

There was a reading of an edict from the governor concerning the maintenance of public order. The governor in question was Hadrian, who, after being governor of Pannonia, went on to become emperor of Rome. His villa, on Óbuda Sziget (Óbuda Island), is yet to be excavated. Then a reading of an edict against the writing of graffiti, interspersed with the texts of graffiti found in Aquincum. After brief performances by the groups listed above, we marched up the street to the southern entrance of the castrum (legionary camp). It was fun to see the surprised looks on the faces of the drivers who were caught up in our celebration. I mean, all of a sudden traffic comes to a halt and marching by in the other direction is a Roman legion (nobody expects the Roman legion) along with musicians, slightly fierce looking barbarians, and then a horde of ordinary people who seem to believe they have a reason for walking down the street

Festivities continued on Flórian Tér, part of which is the old southern gate of the legionary camp.

Speaking of the old legionary camp (we live within its boundaries) brings me out of chronological order to the fourth weekend. Saturday night we gave a dinner party for two Hungarian couples. Gyula Orbán, a director at the Bábszinház (puppet theater) and Thomas Ország-Land, a writer for the The Guardian/Observer News Service and The Times Literary Supplement. But that is not what this story is about. At about 12:30 on Sunday, after a well deserved sleep-in, we set off to reward ourselves with a long soak in the hot water of the Rudas baths. We had gotten about a block on our way to the bus stop when we came across two couples looking around at some of the Roman ruins and speaking English. It turns out that they were Australian tourists out for a walk and looking for a place to have lunch. So we temporarily took over their lives. We decided that the Zöld Kapú (Green Gate) was a great introduction to a typical Hungarian restaurant. Eva decided that we couldn’t give them good enough directions, so we walked them the four blocks across Flórian Tér. On the way we showed then the old military baths in the underpass and the remains of the southern gate (Ahaa! Now you see why this segment of my report is here!) We chattered about the past and present of the area and what it was like to live in Hungary. Yes, the Zöld Kapú was open, but it was booked solid! Fortunately as we filed out, Eva struck up a conservation with some patrons just going in (they had reservations) and they recommended a different restaurant a few blocks away. With a bit of back street navigating we dragged them off to the new place. Eva liked the look of the place, verified that they had space and an English menu, and we said our goodbyes. Several times since we have wondered just what they made of the experience -- was the meal ok? Did they feel kidnapped when they could have settled for McDonalds? I don’t suppose it matters – whatever happened they will have an adventure to tell about when they get back home. As for us, we caught the 86 bus to the baths and soaked with the added pleasure of having done a good deed – whether they wanted one or not.

-- Just a final note. When we came out of the baths at about 5:00, a light rain had started. The bus stop is on the edge of the Duna and there is no shelter for hundreds of yards in each direction. So we waited in the rain. We had no rain gear, but we did have our swim bags, so we took out our towels and draped them over our heads and shoulders. I stood there conflicted – I wanted the 86 bus to come, but nearly as much I was hoping that a tour bus would roll by. Think of the staring tourists getting a chance to see that “real” Hungarians did not have umbrellas, but, in their sadly primitive way, simply bundled up in old rags when it rained. Alas, the 86 bus came in about 8 minutes and we had to go home with my desire unsatisfied.

We spent the third weekend of May in Venice. This is one of Eva’s favorite cities, and one which seems to be growing on me. We went with our friend Kati – by air (a discount flight on Sky Europe) out on Friday and back on Monday. Eva found us an apartment in Venice, on a street improbably named “Back of the Monkey Street” (“Calle Drio La Scimia”) which was very close to the Rialto bridge. Our three day transit passes gave us bus transport to and from the airport and unlimited use of the vaporetti – the Venetian water buses that cruise up and down the Grand Canal. Eva had a great opportunity to practice the Italian that she has been studying, although she spent a restless first night as her mind rehearsed Italian verb forms. Well, if I am to judge, she has learned an amazing amount of Italian. The shopkeepers responded very positively to her attempts and, if not always grammatically correct, she was usually understood.

What to say? Venice is always too much. We visited art museums which ranged from the Academy – starting with the tenth century, to the Palazzo Grassi which had an exhibit of late 20th century art. In-between are the churches decorated by Tintoretto, Titian, and other great Venetian painters. We also visited the Peggy Guggenheim museum which has an amazing collection of art from the first half of the twentieth century – some of which appears as illustrations in Eva’s Mythology book. The more I see the better I understand the development of Western art – the great curse of being an academic – you keep learning things!

Speaking of which, I have started my third course in Hungarian. Aaagh!

Someplace in the first weeks of May I missed Saint Flórian’s day. (the 4th of May in case you wanted to know) I found this out when, on the way to do some shopping, I passed the statue of St. Flórian in front of the local Catholic Church. Now, you may be thinking that there must be some saint or other celebrated on every damn day of the year – and you are right. But in Hungary one has to pay more attention to this because here birthdays are relatively small family affairs. Your friends and colleagues celebrate you on your “name day” the day on which the saint who bore your name is celebrated. Almost all Hungarian calendars thoughtfully include this information. If you think about it, it is rather nice. You don’t have to keep track of the birthdays of all of the people that you work with – if you know their name, you know when to wish them "Boldog Névnap." The small florist shop at our nearest train stop posts the name days for each week so that you can remember to pick up a small bouquet. All of this may explain why your friends named Flórian have been giving you the cold shoulder for the last several weeks. But why the big bouquets for St Flórian? Well, as you may remember, our apartment looks out over Flórian Square. Perhaps more to the point, Flórian is the patron saint of firefighters, so perhaps there is a reason that the ribbons on most of the wreaths indicated that they were placed by local politicians.

No, this is not Hungary’s answer to the rise in gas prices. It is just that they are making another period (18th or 19th century) movie in Fő Tér. This time it is a movie for television – much lower budget than the Spielberg movie from last fall. After celebrating the Roman empire, being part of something as recent as 200 years ago does not seem much of a stretch.

You may never have asked yourself: How many gypsies does it take to sell contraband cigarettes in the underpass to the trolley stop?
But if you have, the answer is three. Of course I know that in the U.S. there are smugglers who buy tobacco in low tax states and sell it in high tax ones, but I have never knowingly seen them. Here, a group of cigarette peddlers seems to have a regular afternoon enterprise to serve customers who transfer from the trolley stop to the HÉV (suburban railway.) One fellow stands at the entrance to the underpass – many customers recognize him, but he may also call out “ciggi, ciggi, ciggi.” If you are a customer, you pay him and he passes the appropriate nod to his associate who is inside the underpass who gives you your merchandise. Meanwhile, the third person, serving as lookout, simply keeps watch from the other side of the underpass. Since I am a nonsmoker, I can tell you no more about this.

The tag reads:

Man’s Wear
Right Classic Brand
Gentlemen Are Satis Factored For The Traditional Technology
The Modern Time Leisure Styles And
Natural Appeared and Modern Style And Men’ s
Handsome Activity

It must be true because it says so on the tag of the polo shirt that I just bought for $6.50. So far I am satis factored with the shirt. I would add some more satirical remarks about the Chinese mastery of English if I did not have the strong belief that my Hungarian sometimes comes out at least this bad. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Monte Python sketch on the Hungarian Phrase Book should look at it on
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/Scripts/TheHungarianPhrasebookSketch

That about takes care of May weekends. For the last weekend, Mickey will be focused on getting ready for his College Board exams at the start of June. As we were reviewing, I pointed out that that IQ was a measure of mental age divided by chronological age, so that a two year old who was as bright as a three year old had an IQ of 150. Similarly, I noted that for his father to have an IQ of 150 he would have to be as bright as the average 96 year old. “Well,” he said, “it is good to know that as you sink farther in senility you are still getting brighter and brighter.” I hadn’t quite thought about it that way, but I guess that I am raising my IQ even if it is not quite the way I had expected.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Busy, Busy, Busy
May 1, 2006

Holiday
We wish all of you a happy May Day holiday. Almost everything in Hungary (and much of Europe) is closed today including all of the big shopping centers. Fortunately, our corner store will be open just in case we should run out of bread or beer. Now if you associate May Day only with Soviet tanks parading through Red Square, you are wrong. This is the day that the free peoples of the world celebrate the workers in what is quintessentially an American holiday.
American? Well, as you were no doubt taught in school, May first commemorates the assembly of working people in Chicago in 1886 to protest working conditions and rally for an 8 hour work day. They were attacked by the Chicago police and several were killed

England
We went to England for the Easter weekend – a school holiday for Mickey. Our main reason was to visit Eva’s 95 year old godmother, Maria. As I have noted before, a most amazing woman. She complains that her short-term memory is weak, but still manages to carry on very interesting conversations which show that she is well informed on a wide variety of topics.
On Easter Sunday we went to services at Saint Paul’s. We went to the Matins service (a sung morning prayer service) and then the main Easter communion service (also sung.) Saint Paul’s combines a protestant plainness with the opulence you would expect of a church constructed as a rival to Saint Peter’s in Rome. The size alone is impressive, and, while the decorations of the ceiling and main altar are impressive, there is largely an absence of the “papish” fondness for statuary. We were disappointed by the Matins – the church seemed to swallow up the voices of the choir. For the later communion service, the choir was moved out of the stalls behind the pulpit to a position closer to the congregation. This was an improvement, but it still seemed to be to be a small choir (men and boys only) for such an important church. The attendance at the latter service was impressive and close to 2,000 people took communion – quite an exercise in logistics. We were pleased to see the diversity of people in attendance, especially young people.
London always offers the opportunity to visit the British Museum and so we did, twice. They were having a special exhibit of the drawings of Michelangelo – to get tickets (sold out for weeks, except that every day some new tickets are released) we showed up at nine o’clock on Easter Sunday morning – stood in line for tickets, went to church, and came back in the afternoon for the exhibit. It was an exciting show. The drawings were mostly made by Michelangelo as studies for his major works of sculpture and the painting of the Sistine Chapel. We got to see how he worked out his ideas by trying many variations – one sheet was devoted to about a dozen variations of the hand of God reaching out to Adam in the act of creation.
The Tate Modern, a museum of contemporary art, has become a favorite of ours. Not the least reason being that it is open until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. So far, we have not had a chance to see their permanent collection because they always seem to have such interesting special exhibits. We saw one exhibit of two artists (Albers and Moholy-Nagy), one Hungarian, who were originally Bauhaus teachers and later ended up in separate parts of the United States. It helped us understand the some of the origins of the debate about the difference between art and commerce that is still being played out today. The belief fostered by the Bauhaus was that art should be commercialized, making it universally available. This was amusingly counterpointed by an exhibit of a set of stacking tables designed by Albers to be mass-produced. Only one instance was made in Albers' lifetime, but the Tate Modern had it for sale in the gift shop, for 999 £, not including delivery. To the Bauhaus commerce was an abstract concept: to us it is a hustling reality.

As avid consumers of mass transit, we purchased “Oyster Cards” for our travels on the London transit system. These are electronic cards that you scan at the entrance and exit turnstiles of the underground, or as you enter a bus. Your fare is automatically deducted from the money that you put on the card. A great feature is what they call “fare capping,” the system automatically calculates the cheapest fare for your travels – for example, if you ride enough in one day so that buying a day pass would have been the best deal, then that is the amount you are charged. This is a significant improvement over buying individual tickets, although, to our Hungarian mindset, transit, like everything in London, is very expensive. Our five days of travel cost about $30 per person –the same as our monthly passes in Budapest. One last transit item – there is a heavily promoted express train that runs from Gatwick Airport into London – they will even sell you tickets on the airplane – about $40 for the trip. What they don’t tell you is that there is a local commuter train (two stops) that you can ride for less than $8.

Galleries, Hungary
We have been busy on the art gallery front here in Hungary as well. The National gallery had an exhibit of Hungarian painters – many trained in Munich and Paris, who were active in 1900-1910. Very interesting to see how modern ideas spread and were modified locally. Bright, unmixed colors, and the systematically distorted forms we associated with French painters like Cezanne. We have come to realize that the more art you see, the more interesting it is.
We took another art excursion to Kaposvár which, as you recall, is about a three hour drive south and east of Budapest. We rented a car for the day, drove down in the morning and were back by evening. This time we went to see an exhibit of Munkácsy. He was a late 19th century painter who, in his lifetime, was much admired throughout Europe and even in America. I would say that his style was realism, although it is clear that he was well aware of the French impressionists. The exhibit has been in several venues in Hungary and unfortunately many of his paintings which are in Hungarian museums did not travel to Kaposvár. Next week, we will make a trip to the National Museum in Budapest to see some of them.
In Kaposvár, the museum store seemed to me to be straight out of Communist times. There was a glass display case showing what they had, and then you went to a window and asked for the items by their display case number. None of this Capitalist browsing here! Eva defended the shop by pointing out that in Communist times they would have been out of most items, while here they seemed to have everything in stock. Oh, the poster for the show was for sale too – but not in the display – to get one you had to be smart enough to ask.
Since the exhibit was only about 65 paintings, we finished with time to spare. Lunch at a local pizza place, called the Beluga, set us back $10 – quite a contrast to a recent $45 pizza lunch in London. Then, being inveterate water people, we went to the Kaposvár fürdő (baths.) Clearly built during communist times, the baths were run-down and decorated with statuary that seemed to be nonfunctioning fragments surviving from old municipal fountains. It was more a nostalgia trip than an outstanding experience. Then to a coffee shop -- founded in 1826 – you may not want to try this in your home town. The drive home through countryside so beautiful that we would have enjoyed the trip just for the views. It is interesting to note that the first part of the journey back, Route 76 running north toward Lake Balaton, passes through a number of small “strip towns.” By this I mean that the town is spread along the highway and is only one street deep. Eva points out that this makes sense in a region where the farm fields are right behind the town, an arrangement common to Europe but odd to Americans.

Driving
Speaking of driving – which we don’t do much of here, I have come up with the solution to “Price Shock at the Gas Pumps” which CNN tells us is a problem in the US. By the way, we understand George Bush is going to SOLVE this problem by sending everyone a $100 check (less than a tank-full for your Hummer).
Here in Hungary when you drive past a gas station you see that the advertised prices are about $1.25 for unleaded regular and $1.35 for premium. I can happily promise you that with my answer to the problem, you will immediately see gas stations with prices like $0.75, yes, that is 75 cents, for regular! And now for THE ANSWER

Price gasoline by the quart!

Yup, our Hungarian prices ( and European prices in general) are for one liter of gas. I can promise you that this solution is at least as honest an attack on the long term price of energy as anything proposed by American politicians.

Weather
The Duna (Danube) is back well within its banks, although still not down to normal – the bases of some of the trees closet to the river are still underwater. Much debris, sticks, leaves, logs, flows down the river indicating that areas not normally underwater are still being swept by the water.

Celebration
We went with Kati to Mickey’s last concert of the season at the Academy of Music.

These are the decorations over the doors of the main auditorium (Nagyterem) The astute will see that I have accidentally reversed them by putting the one labeled “bal” which is left, on the right, “jobb.”
It was a very enjoyable concert, featuring both the orchestra and the chorus. A recording is at
http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/hungary/recordings/DrottHome6.html
Afterwards we stopped at a nearby coffee shop for dessert and drinks, partially in celebration of Kati’s birthday. I had a caramelized pineapple that was outstanding. We sat at an outside table, the evening was a bit cool but gas heaters provided just enough warmth and the chance to watch the crowd passing on Liszt Ferenc Tér (Square) was great. We also got to teach Kati how to ride the night bus service – she doesn’t get much occasion to stay out late, but, having done it once before for a concert, we were old hands. There is a stop about a block from Kati’s apartment, we saw her to her door and then walked home.

Outing
The weather being nice for this holiday weekend we walked out to Margit Island, the park in the center of the Duna. It was wonderfully full of people, young couples with blankets on the grass, families, old people walking slowly. We shared the paths with bicyclists and those driving a variety of rented pedal cars – some drivers with considerably less control than others – the wise pedestrian keeps an eye out and moves quickly off the walkway. But the riders, mostly kids, are obviously having great fun and everyone seems good natured about their lack of control. In the middle of the island, there are 13th century ruins of a convent and a church, attractively restored in spots to suggest their original shapes. A new development since we were here with Zoltán in the 1990s. There is a petting zoo, also much improved, with farm animals and pony rides – a sign informed us that the birds had been vaccinated against bird flue and were in quarantine until the vaccine had time to work. Many of the trees, especially the Horse Chestnuts, are in bloom. The island has a great many statues of famous, and somewhat less so, Hungarians. We recognized some of the names, and Kati knew many more. Here is one that was unfamiliar to me:


I hypothesized, based on the look in his eyes, that he is the heroic Magyar who invented the double espresso.
He turned out to be Balint Balassi, a poet from the 16th century, who wrote, in a poem called "Soldiers' Song":
Soldiers, what finer worth
Is there upon this earth
Than the borderlands can show?
Where in the time of spring
The birds so sweetly sing
Setting our hearts aglow -
The fields have a fresh smell
Where the dew from heaven fell,
Delighting us through and through.
tr. Joseph Leftwich, Babelmatrix website
And so it goes

The Duna was a’ Rising

The Duna was a’ Rising.
April 7, 2006


It may be that the flooding in Southern Austria was sufficiently interesting to make your evening news – or not. Well, what runs through Northern Austria (the Danube River) runs through Hungary next. It is not that we have had much rain or melting snow – that is all upstream, but we have got some water. Budapest is pretty well prepared for high water, so mostly only things right next to the river were in danger. There seems to be well thought out plan for sandbagging. Even small details – for example the commuter railroad had to stop short of its two southern most stops, but within the day temporary sidewalks had been installed to make it easier to get to the new end of the line.

As you read the captions, you will see I have a lot of pictures of the flooded river road (Duna Rakpart) This actually makes pretty good sense in a flood plain. If built right, the road makes good sense – let it flood and then dry it out.
I have a bunch of pictures, but rather than overwhelm your email with them, you can follow this link:

http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/hungary/budaflood/flood1.html


Here are a couple of brief news stories:

Tuesday Flood Flash: Photographers in Highwater Heaven

• The water level of the Danube at Budapest was at 857 cm this morning, exactly between the big 2002 flood (848 cm) and the big big flood of 1876 (867 cm). Protection against the rising rivers costs the country Ft 200 million (€763,000) a day. More than 25,000 people are currently working on the dams along the Danube. Almost as many are standing around taking photographs.

Thursday:

The Danube peaked at 861 cm in Budapest at midnight last night. The water is expected to recede a few centimeters by tomorrow, but it will probably be weeks before it is back to normal. The situation is still critical at Szentendre and emergency teams are continuously working on the dams.

• Meanwhile, vendors are selling pretzels for Ft 400 and beer for Ft 800 to disaster tourists gawping at the carnage along the shores of the Danube. [Editor’s Note: (me) These prices correspond to about $2 and $4 which may not seem like disaster prices to you but are about three times normal for here.] People are now taking photographs of people eating popcorn, drinking beer and taking photographs.

Friday:

Disaster Tourism No Joke as Sign Erected to Mark Way
we were only joshing about the disaster tourism! So what if there are a couple of opportunists peddling popcorn and beer for extortionate sums? But with an estimated week left until the Danube returns to its normal level, and a new wave of rain and melting snow reportedly on its way, there is plenty of murky water left to see. To help rubberneckers find their way, a sign has appeared at Battyhány tér in Hungarian and English.
No one knows who is responsible for the makeshift board, but it suggests a route from Jászai Mari tér to Március 15 tér, via Margit híd and Lánchíd. It also recommends that photographers make suitably dramatic faces (drámai arcot) as they take their snaps. The English-speaker of unidentified origin interviewed by Index speculated that the Danube would have to rise another meter for the story to be big enough for the BBC. The cheek of it! This is a serious flood with serious disaster tourists.

Our Holiday

Our Holiday
March 19, 2006

As the last BudaLetter indicated, Wednesday March 15 was a national holiday. And while we do wear our red, white, and green ribbons, we do not dress up in green just to get a two day head start on St Patrick’s Day.

This is the celebration of the start of the 1848 revolution against the Austrians, so if you have ever though that the term “Austro-Hungarian Empire” seemed like a nice cozy partnership, think again. The festivities opened on the steps of the National Museum, where it all began in 1848.



There was a military chorus, a military band, actors costumed as the revolutionary leaders, folk dancers, school children, a rock guitarist who must have been somebody, and the inevitable politicians.



It was nicely done, with the entertainments moving right along. The political speeches, the president of Hungary, and, I think, the Mayor of Budapest were mercifully brief. A Hungarian friend later asked me how I could listen to the speeches given my limited grasp of Hungarian. I explained that I knew “polgár” – “citizens” and “szabadság” – “freedom” and everything else was just the universally meaningless political fluff. By the way, given the nature of the modern world, you won’t be surprised by this picture of the police watching from the top of the museum.





For me, the best part was the actors repeating the original stirring historical speeches (or at least the best parts of them). There were big TV screens set up at the sides so we got a close-up view. Here Lajos Kossuth is holding forth.




You will recall his name and likeness from previous Buda Letters. What I didn’t know before I did some advance reading for the event was what happened after the revolution failed --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary#The_1848_Revolution_.281848_-_1849.29


Oh, yes, after 25 months, the Hapsburg Emperor of Austria hired Russian mercenary troops from the Czar and put an end to the revolt. Most of the leaders were executed but
after the revolution failed --

Kossuth fled to America. In fact, there is a Kossuth County in northern Iowa that is named after him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kossuth_County,_Iowa


The crowd was a mixture of people of all ages – babies, generally bundled up until they were nearly spherical, according to the accepted Hungarian standard. There were children on bicycles, school children clutching hand-made flags, obviously school art projects (observation: it is a lot easier to make a flag that consists only of one red stripe, one white one, and then one green one) young couples, elderly ladies with canes leaning on the arms of their only slightly less elderly daughters. There were balloon vendors, hawkers of ribbons and small flags, and of course a fellow selling forralt bor (hot spiced wine – just the thing that you need for listening to politicians). I noted that he seemed to sample some of his own product after every customer and Eva remarked that it was a commendable concern for quality control. Upon tasting it, we decided against the latter hypothesis – it was watery, not very spicy, and barely warm rather than hot.



In 1848, after the speeches at the museum, the crowd marched to the river bank to deliver their demands to the Austrian consul. The program said that we would march too, but mostly the crowd just drifted off and as things wound down we joined them for the six block walk.

The afternoon festivities take place at two adjacent squares just north of the Elizabeth Bridge. 15th of March Square and Petőfi Square. The name of the first square is obvious, while the second is named after the young revolutionary poet who inspired the crowds with his list of 12 demands for Hungarian freedom directed at the government in Vienna and his poem “National Song.” If you read the Buda Letter of March 15, the flyer reproduced in it featured the instantly recognizable statue of Petőfi that stands in the square.

There was a large platform set up in front of the Petőfi statue for speeches and entertainment, and towards the back were booths selling food and crafts. Eva and Mickey paused to look at a stall selling painted tin soldiers and my attention was attracted to the edge of the crowd where a troupe of performers were getting into costume.








Later we got to see them perform. The horses pranced, raced in a circle, did fancy steps and at one point the rider “lost control” of his mount. A small boy was chosen from the crowd and got to ride in front of one of the horsemen.




I was particularly charmed by the idea that this particular show could well date back, unchanged, to medieval times.

Then it was time for the program, some speeches, dancing and singing




And then a recitation of Petőfi’s poem. As historical background, one of the demands of the original marchers in 1848 was the publication of “National Song” something that the printers of Budapest were reluctant to do for fear of Austrian reprisals. But faced with a mob, the poem was printed and distributed. As a part of this celebration, costumed actors appeared on a balcony and threw copies – facsimiles of the original printing, down to the gathered crowd so that we could join in with the reading from the stage.




So, why would anyone care about a poem? Here is the first stanza:

Rise up, Magyar, the country calls!
It's 'now or never' what fate befalls...
Shall we live as slaves or free men?
That's the question - choose your 'Amen'!
God of Hungarians,
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

The last four lines form the end of every stanza. As an aside, I think that translations of Hungarian poetry into English poetry are generally not too successful. Hungarian is much better for rhyming and the English result always seems a bit forced.

Oh, it turns out that George Bush joined us in celebrating the March 15 holiday. Well, he didn’t actually join us, but he did attend a commemoration held in the U.S. Unfortunately he got a bit confused and ended up getting some bad press here in Hungary. The report does not indicate whether his celebration included forralt bor


From
http://www.pestiside.hu/


March 16, 2006


Outrage as Bush Flubs Details of Unique Hungarian Holiday


They say it's the thought that counts, but apparently sometimes it doesn't count for much! Over at index.hu they're having some fun with the apparent failure of U.S. President George W. Bush to distinguish between Hungary's 1848 revolution, and the one in 1956. Bush made the boo-boo at a ceremony in Washington yesterday, thanking the organizers of a March 15 celebration for being able to attend the "50th anniversary" of the Hungarian revolution - by which he meant the failed uprising against the Soviets in '56 - even though M15 marks the failed uprising against the Austrians back in '48.
One theory is that POTUS made the mistake because back in October, he talked with Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány about possibly attending the 50th anniversary of the '56 rebellion, and got the two dates confused. (Another is that he is, well, a fucking idiot.) Either way, Bush's gaffe was picked up by the Associated Press and other news agencies, which went on to write that March 15th revolution was the first important revolution in Central Europe against the Soviets. He did not, however, confuse "Budapest" with "Bucharest," so we can probably expect the brouhaha to last only a few days, or a decade or two at most.

RETRACTION: No Buda Letter

RETRACTION: No Buda Letter
March 15, 2006

Early editions of today’s Buda Letter incorrectly reported that the entire staff of Buda Letters participated in the National Day celebration. The report should have noted that one senior editor did not attend the ceremony at the National Museum. Further, we now believe that she did not even pin on her cockade.

The editors deeply regret this error and apologize to our readers.

No Buda Letter

No Buda Letter
March 15, 2006

There will be no Buda Letter today since, along with other schools and businesses, we are closed for the National Holiday.

The entire editorial staff of Buda Letters have pinned on their cockades (red, white and green ribbons) and will gather in front of the National Museum for the march to March 15th Square.

Goat Cheese

Goat Cheese
March 9, 2006

On Saturday morning I had just finished buying goat cheese at the cheese stand in the piac when the elderly man in line behind me said (in Hungarian):
“It is good that you are learning to speak Hungarian.”
Or he might have said;
“It would be good if you learned to speak Hungarian.”
My Hungarian is not good enough to differentiate between the two.
In any case, he was right and I gave him a “thank you” and “good bye.”

Saturday morning is a busy time for shopping. Most stores will close for the weekend about 1 pm and many of the stands in the piac won’t open again until Tuesday. So, while Eva was at her Italian class, I was getting fresh food for the weekend. The goat cheese was for a quiche that we were making. Now quiche is not traditional fare here, but the latest issue of the magazine Praktika has a recipe for this French dish, so we decided to make it. The filling is a layer of sliced tomatoes (warning! Do not try this with the tasteless pink things that are in American markets at this time of year) a layer of sliced goat cheese and another layer of sliced tomatoes. The result is so nice that we will make it for company next weekend. Between having a pretty good knowledge of cooking and some knowledge of Hungarian (and there are pictures) I can mostly follow recipes in Hungarian but this time I had to ask Eva for help. Chopped garlic is listed in the ingredients but I couldn’t figure out when to add it. After several readings, Eva confirmed that the recipe doesn’t tell you! I settled for browning it with the onions. Proofreading of recipes seems to still be a bit primitive here. Our all time favorite example was the recipe illustrated with a picture of the chef carefully adding honey to the bowl even though there was no honey in the recipe!

If you have followed my adventures with food in Hungary, you will know that I have somewhat of a fixation with peanut butter. Back in 1999, the only peanut butter to be found was the American brand ShopRite and it was hard to find. I figured that, since peanut butter is right up there with ambrosia as a food of the gods, it was not going to take very long before Hungarians discovered and embraced it. Wrong – they don’t seem to care! Peanut butter is just as hard to find, although there are now German, Dutch, and Slovakian brands available. And so, the other morning at breakfast, Mickey had to settle for goose liver paté on his toast. It comes in small tins (about $1.25 each) and is available in every market so we generally keep it in the pantry. Add some mustard and some thinly sliced onion and it is ready. He did not complain.

The game of guessing what is going to be hard or easy to find in the stores is an ongoing one. We did notice that you can buy washed pig intestines at the butcher shop to use when you make your own sausage – the price is about 13 cents a meter – you will have to convert to yards when you comparison shop at your local store. Mostly this guessing game it is not much of a problem and sometimes I even learn something. For example, when cooking, Hungarians (and I think, Europeans in general) don’t use measuring cups – they weigh all their ingredients. After a long time of doing the mental gymnastics to convert 20 deka grams of flour (200 grams) to good old cups, we broke down and bought a scale. Boy, are cups stupid! Put the mixing bowl on the scale, press “tare” to zero the scale, pour in the flour directly from the bag to 200 grams, press tare again and carve in pieces of butter until you have 100 grams, press tare and add 50 grams of walnuts. Done! But I have learned my lesson from peanut butter – I’m not expecting all of you to run out and buy scales just because it is such a smart thing to do.

So far, we have been stymied on one item in the hard-easy department – curtain rods. Oh, we have curtain rods – and curtains hanging from them. Replacement rods in a wide variety of styles are readily available. But what we want are draw-type rods, the kind where you pull a cord at one side to open or close the drapes. No such thing, not in local stores, not in Ikea, not in the two German home supply stores. Well, everyone needs to chase an impossible dream…




On Sunday it snowed most of the day. Eva and I went to church in the morning – about half the walk is through the underpass so the snow is no problem. The church is Calvinist, called Reformatus here, so simple in its decoration that there isn’t even a cross inside. The church was at almost completely full, so you know that the snow was no big deal.

In the afternoon I went out to take pictures. I wanted to see Heroes Square (Hősök Tere), the entrance to the main city park, in the snow. I had to wait about 9 minutes for the trolley so I took some photos. Here we are looking down on Szent Lélek ter That is a high school on the left ;and the Zichy Mansion right and center rear.






When I got to Heroes' Square, I was surprised to find two snowplows at work along with a crew of shovelers clearing out where the plows couldn’t reach. I guess that the city gives it high priority as a major site – although two plows seemed like overkill to me.






Fortunately for my purposes the cleaning did not extend to the statues and so I got to record a dauntless snow-covered Prince Árpád leading the six other Magyar Chieftains into the wintery Carpathian Basin (now Hungary) in the year 896. Actually no one knows if the Magyars arrived in summer or winter. In fact, the date 896 was invented in 1893 by the Budapest City Council. They wanted to celebrate the Millennium of the Hungarian Nation and figured that they needed three years to get ready.





I said a final good bye to Árpád. That is Kond on his right, or perhaps it is somebody else – these people are mostly mythical in any case, and turned to head for my bus.













The constant plowing of the square left it easy walking, but I discovered that the other result was a river of slush on all four sides. I was wearing my GoreTex hiking boots and so was prepared. Sunday afternoon is a slow period for public transportation but I had to wait only 15 seconds for the bus and then 30 seconds for the connecting trolley to get me back to Szent Lélek ter. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the statues in Fő ter their umbrellas now rendered functional by the snow.





One last benefit of the snow. The next day was bright and clear, producing a spectacular view to accompany our morning coffee:






And a beautiful sunset in the evening:

Euro Sale

Euro Sale
March 4, 2006

One of our local big box stores sent out a flyer recently advertising a wide assortment of cheap gadgets and utensils for the price of 250 forints each. It looks like your typical 99 cent sale in the U.S., but I was puzzled because 250 forints works out to about $1.17 – it seemed odd to me. But wait! This is Europe and the store in question is the French chain Auchen (pronounced “ocean” locally.) So what do we know about money in Europe? They use Euros (although not yet in Hungary.) Sure enough, 250 forints converts nicely to 99 Euro cents -- elementary my dear Watson!

Speaking of great ideas in marketing, the other day Eva and I were out when we got a call from Mickey. He was home from school with a friend and wanted us to bring them some pizza. Perhaps you remember that earlier I have commented that Pizza making is a rather hit-or-miss art in Hungary, so we were pleased to remember that on our travels we had passed a Pizza Hut. I can now report that if you want to order pizza for take-out at the Pizza Hut across from the Déli Pályaudvar (Southern Railway Station) you cannot do it inside the store. You stand outside and order through a window. If it happens to be drizzling, as it was that day, you stand in the rain. To make the marketing effort even better, the step up to the window is about thirteen inches high and surfaced with tile – a sign informs you that the step is slippery, and it is. Well, they are kind enough to let you wait inside after you have placed your order, and the pizza was pronounced very good, which was the main goal. But just imagine what Pizza Hut’s lawyers would say about such a set-up at an American store?

And why were out? Eva has discovered a Hungarian science fiction magazine called “Galaktika.” It has been publishing since 1972 and features both original stories and translations of ones published in other languages. It presents an interesting way of looking at popular culture and so she has set out to amass a collection of back issues. This is relatively easy in Budapest because there is a lively market in used and antiquarian books.


As I write this part of the report the sun is shining in my eyes. Since it is 4:20 in the afternoon this shows great progress from the dark days of December and January when it was dark at this time.

Eva has tried to set up an almost weekly excursion with Kati to some museum. This week it was the Kiscelli Museum which is right here in Óbuda. The museum is actually within walking distance of our home, but we opted to take the trolley. The Museum sits on a hill and the last block of the street leading up to it is so steep that the sidewalk has steps all along the way. Here is a picture taken from the front

One of the great things about going to a museum with Kati is the she has Masters in Museum Studies and so is a wonderful source of information. This museum is attached to an old church (still being restored) that was the burial place of the Zichy family – Hungarian nobility.

Their principal residence is just a block away from us in off of Fő ter. As the family prospered they built another mansion directly adjoining the church – this is the building that is now the museum.

That is the museum in the background. The plaque on the wall commemorates the freedom fighters who lost their lives here fighting against the Russians in the 1956 revolution. The iron dragon in the foreground is from the Margaret Bridge (Margit Hid.) My guess is that it was rescued from the bottom of the Danube after the bridge was destroyed by the retreating Germans in WWII. The figures on the re-built bridge are cast concrete.

As we entered the court yard we passed by a statue that is a favorite of Kati’s.

She told us that the museum was an odd mixture of old artifacts and art – some of it quite new. We paid our admission fee of $4 and an additional $2.50 for permission to take photographs, and followed Kati down one of the halls. The first stop was an old apothecary shop from about 1820.

Somewhat interesting – the guide/guard gave us a long description of the shop of which I got some directly and the rest from a running synopsis by Eva. As I understand it, this shop was not carted off to the museum until about 1950. Thus the guide was able to point out some objects like the wooden containers on the top shelf that date to the beginnings of the shop, while the china containers on the second shelf from the bottom were custom made by a well known factory in Vienna and have the crest of the pharmacy on them. There are later glass bottles – the earlier ones rather elegant and the more modern ones utilitarian. If the snakes in the picture seem odd to you then the modern signs on pharmacies would as well. Here is one I took in Kaposvár – the snake and cup motif is a common element identifying pharmacies. Well, in America we use the caduceus with its pair of snakes as a symbol of the healing arts so it all depends on what you are used to.





The museum also featured a number of period rooms – often with artifacts from famous people. For example, we saw the tea pot that belonged to Adam Clark, the British engineer who built the famous chain bridge (about 1848.) We were shocked to read that the pot was made of lead and we hoped that Mr. Clark spent most of his time in Hungary drinking wine. We have a thing about tile stoves, we have a small German one in Swarthmore and we remember a story that Zoltán told about living in an apartment on Castle Hill and having people come in and haul the stove there off to a museum – here are some of the ones that we saw.



More exciting to us than the rooms was the twentieth century art. I have long held the opinion that Hungarian artists of the early twentieth century were producing works as good as anything done in Western Europe. In fact, many of them studied and worked in Germany and France. Here are two pictures by Josef Ripple-Rónai, who
I would rank with van Gogh or Gauguin. (my photography does not do them justice)

A still life by Imre Szobotka in 1913

A Last Supper painted by Károly Kernstok in 1921


Even more amazing to me were modern paintings done in Communist times. I guess that I had assumed Socialist Realism was the only acceptable form in these years, and as Eva pointed out, “You don’t know what happened to the guys that painted these.” But it was great to have the opportunity to see them.

Gyula Konkoly in 1968

Sándor Altorjai in 1976

The 4:00 museum closing time came far too soon for us really do justice to the art – we will have to go back for another look.

And to close – some miscellaneous reports:

We are always amused when we see fractured uses of English. This one was on the back of a camouflage jacket worn by a young man on the trolley:
Canadian Mountain Patrol
Hunting
Fishing
Lumberjacking
As an old lumberjacker, I can tell you that jacking lumber is a lot harder work than this guy thinks.


So what are those round objects up there in that tree? Left-over Christmas decorations? Animal nests? We have seen them at various times in Hungary – mostly in the winter when the absence of leaves makes them much easier to spot. They appear to be some sort of growth rather than a construction. We asked what they were an were told that they are fagyöngyök, which translates as “tree beads.” We finally got close enough to find out – they are mistletoe! Hungarians were surprised to hear that anyone would think standing under it was a special occasion for kissing.
I discovered that I had been holding two different and conflicting views of mistletoe. On the one hand, growing up in Wisconsin I never saw any wild mistletoe and so I assumed that, like Spanish moss, it must grow in more tropical regions. But wait! Chapter 16 of My Favorite Mythology Book tells the Norse story of the death of Baldr. He was “accidentally” pierced by a dart made of mistletoe while the Norse gods were having a party. Unless the gods happened to be vacationing in Miami Beach, this argues strongly for mistletoe being a plant of northern climates. Well, of course it is – I’ve seen it!