BudaLetters

Observances

2006-05-23T04:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-10T01:37:00.000-07:00

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

2006-03-28T00:56:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-15T08:32:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

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!

Fire on the Mountain

2006-02-22T12:15:00.000-08:00

Fire on the Mountain
February 22, 2006

It is almost easy to take for granted that we have a view. After all, every morning we wake up and look out over the Buda hills – or not, depending on the weather. But several Saturdays ago we had a spectacular reminder. It was about 10 am and we weredoing various household tasks, when I happened to look up and see a plume of black smoke rising from near the top of one of the hills. As background you should understand that the top portions of the hills are mostly forested and protected as park land. Housing developments – fairly fancy by Hungarian standards, creep up some of the valleys. I can tell you that the forested parts tend to be steep and rocky and that it must not be pleasant to have to drive up to the developments in the winter on the slippery, twisty roads. And besides – we have a beautiful view of the hills while those poor hillside residents can only look out at our panel flats spread out below.

The spectacle lasted for about half an hour, and we could hear sirens as fire equipment headed for the site. Black smoke gave way to leaping orange flames and then, as the firemen poured on water, white smoke. We never did find our what was burning, but suspect that it was a new house under construction.

Mickey’s choir gave another performance at the new National Palace of the Arts, we were able to get some excellent recordings using our new digital recorder that records directly to a removable 1 gig mini-disk. You can listen at:
http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/hungary/recordings/
In this concert, the Kállai Kettős was the only choral piece.
Cousin Terri was in town and so we took her along with Kati and Adam.

I have finished my second intensive Hungarian course. I passed the final exam with a score of 74%. There are so many things to learn, and I have that very common experience of focusing on a new point of grammar that I am learning and forgetting about parts of the language that I learned previously. Kati, who is learning English, and I have started a weekly study group – she talks to me in English and I talk to her in Hungarian. Fortunately, her English is much more advanced than my Hungarian, but at times both of us have to reach for our dictionaries and point the other to an entry.

We have drifted in and out of various kinds of winter, light snows, slush. We did have one snow of 3-4 inches which left the sidewalks slippery in the uncleared spots. (We found it interesting that the streets around our building were not iced over, while Kati's house, a few blocks over, was surrounded by icy sidewalks. A look up and down the street led me to conclude that the pipes carrying steam from the local steam plant ran right along our building, producing a milder microclimate.) I can’t report on the roads – we do see salt trucks and plows (which in British English are ploughs,) but I can tell you that mass transit worked just fine. Here is a picture of the flags of the European Union and Hungary flying in the snow. It was taken from the concert hall windows the night of Mickey’s performance.

Despite the icy weather, the other night, Lászlo and his wife came to dinner. Lászlo is the senior scholar with whom Eva is working on a research project. Lászlo, in his 70s, has tremors and was reluctant to come to dinner. The solution – finger food! But wait – exactly what constitutes finger food is a matter of culture. For example, one of the first things that came to mind was pizza – and we do a very nice home-made pizza. But in Hungary, pizza is eaten with a knife and fork! We confirmed this with Mickey, who considers it weird. We resolved to serve foods so exotic that we could assert their “finger foodness” without fear of contradiction. Fortunately, a new specialty food store just opened near us.

It is called “Culinaris” and features specialties such as, Indian curries and spices, Italian pastas and sauces, Mexican favorites like ancho chilies, refried beans and massa, the flour you need to make your own tacos. There we found Indonesian rice paper wrappers, and a trip to the internet provided us with recipes for roll-ups and dips to go with them. To this we continued the Indonesian theme with steamed rice balls, actually a spiced, ground turkey -- the original recipe called for pork, rolled in rice and steamed – also to be dipped in sauce. So, we set a table with no silverware and, in our opinion, had a nice dinner.

But I may give the wrong impression. Mostly we are satisfied with the “Hungarian” foods that are available in the piac (farmers’ market) and our local supermarket. Our tastes run a bit away from the traditional pork and more towards turkey – but that is still mainstream. If you think differently, try asking your butcher for a kilo of turkey necks and see how he reacts. Of course the same stand that sells turkey sells chicken and along with it, goose liver – we think that it is a good deal at about $13 a pound, but you can compare prices by looking in the meat cooler at your local market. Today I walked over to the piac in a light snow (what a great pleasure not to have to drive everywhere) and bought some juh turó, sheep cheese that we turn into the Hungarian spread called kőrözött.

Bread is a staple of the Hungarian diet, and we have been quite satisfied with the standard fare that runs about eighty cents for a one kilo loaf. For comparable quality you would pay at least six dollars in the U.S. Because it is sold in great quantity, bread is a factory item, not made on the premises of individual shops – but there still are differences from bakery to bakery. We have found one in the piac that we particularly like, it has a very nice crisp crust. The same bakery also has a nice rye with caraway seeds, not popular enough to be sold by every bakery. There is a great variety of white breads including házikenyér (home-style bread), fehérkenyér (white bread), Erzsébetkenyér (Elizabeth bread), and probably several more that I don’t remember just now. We like the félbarnakenyér (half-brown bread) and don’t have enough experience to tell the others apart.

Among our recent revels was helping Kati, Ádám, and Ádám’s girlfriend Réka celebrate Ádám’s eighteenth birthday. Dinner at the “Green Gate” a local restaurant and then back to Kati’s for pezsgő (Champagne) and dessert.

Mickey gave Ádám a set of weights – I don’t know how many pounds were involved, but it took both of us to carry the box over there. Eva and I gave him an American football – or will give it to him when it arrives in the mail. We never found a place to buy one in Budapest.

Our friend Betty organized another art exhibit for the Óbuda cultural center, so, of course we went to the opening. The artist works mostly in fired ceramics – we liked her work very much

and bought a small piece, although we won’t be able to pick it up until the exhibition closes.

Afterwards we went out to dinner with Kati at a Chinese restaurant that we found recommended on the web. We were moved to add our own review to the website
“If you are looking for a restaurant that is a step up from the Chinese gyors büfé, [in Hungarian this means a restaurant where the food is pre-cooked and served fast (gyors) from steam tables] this is it. Unfortunately it is only one step up. The menu is extensive but not particularly varied, and the preparation and presentation are quite ordinary. If you really like Chinese food you will do better buying the ingredients at Culinaris and cooking them yourself.”

I did note one curiosity on the menu – a pork dish called “Mao Zedong’s Favorite.” Perhaps not the political leaning actively espoused by Chinese restaurants in America. We didn’t try it, but judging from what we did have, it is probably not worth a long march to try it for yourself.

Snowing Lightly

2006-02-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

Snowing Lightly
February 6, 2006

It is snowing lightly in Budapest – in fact, light snow is all that we have seen this winter. There was some more serious snow while we were in Rome over Christmas, but since then the typical weather has been overcast, damp, and on some days windy. The temperature has hovered around freezing (saying so means I don’t have to commit to either Fahrenheit or Celsius). Ice forms at night and melts a bit during the day. Whoops, since it takes a while to write one of these, the temperature has taken a dive with overnight lows in the single Fahrenheit digits and the highs in the low 20s. Whoops again, it is back to below freezing at night and slightly above during the day.

I started my next Hungarian class. There was a placement session that seeded us into either advanced beginners or second level. Well, my vocabulary, at least the nouns part, is second level, but my grammar is barely advanced beginner. If you had seen what the spell-checker did to my last sentence you might express similar sentiments about my English. So for Hungarian, I am an advanced beginner.

So, how have we been amusing ourselves in all that light snow? We have done some art-related things. Eva (oh dear, with Hungarian lessons I now think her name is Éva) has documented them at:
http://showme.physics.drexel.edu/thury/Penalva/

On Friday, Eva’s birthday, we went swimming. Mickey had the day off because it was the end of his marking period and he came along. The temperature according to CNN was 15 below zero. That is Celsius, but converting to Fahrenheit still gives a chilly plus 5 degrees. But it was sunny and without much wind and we were determined to test ourselves against the outdoor fifty-meter pool. The walk through the unheated canvas corridor to the pool is not heartening, and it also requires strategizing. If you wrap your towel (in Eva’s case robe) around you for the walk, then at the end of the corridor you must either hang it on one of the hooks by the pool, in which case it will be at air temperature when you return, or you must stand in the cold and fold your towel and put it into your plastic bag which retains a bit of heat while hanging there. Then into the pool. It is best if you try not to notice that the metal hand rails by the steps have a thin coating of ice. First contact with the pool left me a bit dubious – would I adapt to the 26 degree water temperature (78 in your language) or would the chill of the air overcome me and send me scurrying for the indoors?

After half a lap things were fine. Mickey, always at home in the water, left his adolescent dignity behind and behaved like a baby porpoise with its mother, sometimes rushing ahead (free style) sometimes bobbing up and down behind, sometimes submerging to cruise the bottom. I ploughed ahead with my standard free style. And, if you wondered just how crazy we are, there were about six to ten other swimmers in the outdoor pool. This contrasts to three of four times that number on a more typical winter day. Our laps or blubs done, we went on to the warm pool – a great thing about swimming outdoors is that you are able to reap your heavenly reward immediately (or at least it would be hard to imagine a better heaven), while also avoiding the mess of dying. Up to our necks in warm water. An occasional plunge completely below the water to warm the cheeks, nose and forehead, and sometimes a bit of a positional shift to chase the elusive warmer spot. Our happiness is such that there is barely room to pity those of you who live in more deprived parts of the world. An interesting observation: the extreme cold means that the steam rising from the pool condenses and freezes as a white rime on the ivy that grows on the corner of the building.

On Saturday Mickey’s choir sang in Cegléd, a small town about an hour and a half’s drive southeast of Budapest. By the way, Cegléd is, like every other Hungarian word, pronounced exactly the way that it is spelled. For those of you muddling along in English, that is “Tzeglade.” We rented a car and drove out along the M5 expressway. In Hungary you pay your toll by buying a toll sticker – the cheapest is about $2 for four days driving. The roads are well marked and it was only after we got to Cegléd that we had to ask directions.

Like any self-respecting choir, they travel with their own orchestra. I did a quick count and came up with 41 violins, 11 cellos, 6 bases, 2 harps, 3 percussionists, 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, assorted flutists, oboists, bassoonists, and some others I missed and, of course two cimbaloms. Cimbaloms? Think of a topless piano played by striking the strings with soft hammers – a necessary instrument for Hungarian folk music. The concert setting was the sports center. Think high school gym, complete with basketball hoops folded up to the ceiling. Not great acoustics.

This was a major event, the musicians from the big city had come out to perform with the local school choruses. First the school choruses performed alone, then the orchestra played, and finally the school kids, orchestra, and choir all together. The finale was the Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union. One soloist had been selected to represent each grade and the school children who were not part of the choruses filed out of the stands to join in. It was a stirring finish. It also caused me some head scratching when I later tried to find the lyrics.

Officially the European anthem has no lyrics (it saves political hassling over translations) so in a sense, all lyrics to it are bootleg versions. I had the stray thought that the Europeans had made their anthem un-singable by having no lyrics, while in America we achieved the same end by our choice of tune. In neither case does it prevent people from trying. Back to the lyrics. The grade school soloists began and were (As you can tell if you follow the link to the music at http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/hungary/recordings/) clearly singing in Hungarian, then their classmates joined in in the same language and finally all of the singers participated. Mickey had told us that his choir was singing in German – not inappropriate since that is the language of the original – based on a poem by Schiller.

As a final note, the Ode to Joy is one of Mickey’s favorite works – one that he learned in the US but had never sung in German. We continue to be impressed with the quality of the repertoire that he has been taught by Dr. Roland at the Cathedral Choir School.

We arrived at Cegléd at about 2:45 because there was a rehearsal at 3 for the concert which started at 5. This meant that we had time to walk about the town. Eva noted that there was steam rising from hot-water baths right next to the hall where the choir would perform, and she asked hopefully whether we could pass the interim soaking there. She was told by a local that it seemed better advised to seek out the picturesque features of their community, and besides, they had nicer baths on the edge of town. We had no suits with us, so we set out to follow what sounded like a fine suggestion. As we wandered, it became clear that the town had some strong relationship with the Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth. There was a Kossuth high school, a Kossuth museum, and the small coffee shop that we stopped at had a hot special called a “Lajos sandwich.” As we neared the town square we found a plaque which explained that Kossuth had given a stirring speech here in 1848 when he was recruiting and fund raising for the revolution. (See a previous letter in which I discussed Kossuth.)

Translation: Kossuth Lajos's recruiting speech was given on this spot on September 24, 1848,
"I have come to you, brave Hungarian people, my betrayed homeland's hope, fortress, support."
At these words, (the song) "Kossuth Lajos sent a message…" rang out like the organ of a storm,
taking wing from here, from this square."

The plaque implies that this was the first place that the song “Kossuth Lajos azt üzente” was sung. We were a bit skeptical, wondering if this was perhaps the equivalent of “George Washington slept here” – with many more claims than could be documented. In the center of the square is a statue of Kossuth inspiring the Hungarians to rise up – you can see from the picture that Eva has joined with the rest of his magyar audience.

Just in case you have forgotten the ending … the Hungarians lost to the Austrians the next spring.

After the concert we took Mickey out for a “Lajos burger” and a beer and then drove back to Budapest. It was snowing lightly, Eva worried about how well the roads were salted and I worried about the inexperience of Hungarian drivers. But, since I grew up driving in snow, it was not all that difficult and we arrived home happy for our outing and with Ode to Joy still running through our heads.

Wherever I May Rome

2006-01-12T00:44:00.000-08:00

Wherever I May Rome …
December 24, 2005

One of the nice things about living in Europe is that all the rest of Europe is not far away. We wanted to revisit Rome and the Christmas break and the visit of Mickey’s friend Beka from Philadelphia gave us a good excuse.

In years past, our trips to Rome have been by train, first to Vienna and then by overnight sleeper to Rome, but competition among discount airlines has made flying a cheaper alternative. Our Wizzair flight was running about three hours late, which meant that we sat in the airport. It also meant that we arrived in Rome after public transport had shut down for the night. We took a cab and arrived about midnight. Tim, the extremely accommodating rental agent to the apartment we were staying in, met us with the keys and after a brief orientation from him, we collapsed into bed.

Eva had seen an article in The New York Times which said that renting an apartment in Rome rather than staying in a hotel room was THE thing to do. So with great courage she got on the Internet and did it! It turned out to be a wonderful experience. We got to live in a real neighborhood, shop at local places and cook at home, and to get a real feeling that, in a way, we lived in Rome. Our neighborhood was Trastevere – according to the guides an area which attracts artists, writers and cosmopolites. We were just two blocks from the west bank of the Tiber River (the name of the neighborhood actually means "across the Tiber"). In rough terms, we were south of the Vatican and west of the Forum. (For fans of Google Earth, set your pointer to 41.53.22.48 N and 12.28.18.48E If you zoom to an altitude of about 12,000ft you will see the Colisseum to the east and Saint Peter's north and slightly west)

It was a small three-story building with a restaurant on the first floor and four apartments on the second and third floors. Our apartment was a "split level": it had a small kitchen and a living room with fold-out beds below and a loft with a bedroom and bath above. The loft was nestled under a roof with exposed wooden beams. You could reach up and touch the tiles of the roof between the wooden supports. It was clean, cozy, attractive, and well equipped. The street was the via della Lungharetta – an impressive name for a street that is narrower in reality than on the map. No, not to scale, I mean that the street is narrower than the actual line on the map. But I exaggerate – the street is about 12 feet wide. It is open to traffic, but only if you know the right twists and turns. If you are not up to date on your Roman geography, I should tell you that its former name (meaning about 2,000 years ago) was the via Aurelia (named after the family of Marcus Aurelius – the Roman emperor who wrote his “Meditations” while he was in Pannonia, which is to say modern Hungary.)

The next morning Eva and I were up to go shopping while the kids slept in. Following our local map of the narrow twisting streets, we managed to find a shop that sold bread, salami, prosciutto, and Romano cheese. We got some Italian coffee, nice and strong, and found a small open air market. Here, our Hungarian marketing skills stood us in good stead. We remembered from the last time that we were in Rome that, for items sold by weight, you specify the number of centigrams, so there are 1,000 to the kilo. This is different from Hungary where the normal unit is dekagrams, 100 to the kilo. The fruit was amazing – we bought clementines (they come all the way from Sicily and always include some leaves – an indicator of freshness) and a pear that looked (and tasted) like those Royal Riviera pears grown by Harry and David (Inc.) in Oregon that my folks used to send us at Christmas. We discovered a new vegetable, puntarelle, a kind of endive, and got some tomatoes and a pepper. Impressed with both Roman food and our own shopping skills, we headed home. Oh – “home” – this trip started to leave us hopelessly confused about the term. By the time we got to Naples (a report yet to come) we had a rented apartment in Rome, our own apartment in Budapest, and a house in Pennsylvania. So just where was home?

We put away the groceries and then after an early lunch, or late breakfast, and we are off sightseeing. First we make a visit to the Christmas fair on the Piazza Navona. We find some wonderful sugared almonds and share an indifferent pork sandwich, in spite of the display of the whole roast pig from which it is carved. It's fun to wander the booths. We learn that Italians seem to have Christmas witches who bring presents. There are many representations of them both riding on a broomstick and painted or embroidered onto stockings to be filled with goodies. We enjoy the spectacle of the fair – its merry-go-round and the crèche booths selling miniature worlds you can just as well put around your dollhouse or line up around the baby Jesus. We note that Hungarians have cut back on their Christmas fairs. In Budapest, these were opportunities to give consumers access to exotic goods not available throughout the year. We just watched a movie called Budapest Retro that actually stated this. Now that consumer goods of all kinds are available everywhere and at all times, Christmas fairs have declined. We hope Hungarians find a different spirit for them and come to enjoy events like this one.

Then on to the Pantheon, a building preserved from Roman imperial times (first and second centuries CE), now a church. An amazing relic although we paused to admire the missing bronze ceiling of the portico – melted down to make an elaborate canopy for the altar in Saint Peter's. What the vandals didn’t destroy of ancient Rome, the Popes did. The ceiling is the largest masonry dome in the world and at the top, in the center, is the oculus – a circular opening to the sky 27 feet in diameter.

Which reminds me of the old joke:
Q: What do they do in Rome when it rains?
A: Get wet.
Well, a nice tight marble floor doesn’t mind a bit of extra washing. The niches around the circumference which originally held Roman gods have been converted to Christian chapels, mostly ornate and tasteless. But in one of them, restoration work had uncovered a 12th century painting that we thought had much more charm than the later works.

Then on to the Ara Pacis – the altar of peace built in the reign of Augustus. Supposedly open but surrounded by a fence and a brand new building. The sign tells us that the building will open in 2005. The guard told us that it would be open the next day. Oops, don’t believe this. In fact, figuring our what is open and when became a major issue. It wasn’t that we hadn’t expected places to have Christmas closings – we just expected that there would be some better indications of what the closings were. For example we "visited" the Emperor Nero's amazing home, the Domus Aurea, if by that word you mean "walked along above without finding a sign that explained that it was closed." Those floods in mid-December, well, they seem to have contributed to the collapse, or the threatened collapse, of some of the last vestiges of the Roman Empire. We eventually got the news from the guards in broken Italian (ours not theirs) and found the story on the web, on our return.

Well, we never did get to see the Ara Pacis, but we did get to walk along the Tiber river (in the rain) and found that the flood walls had been decorated with amusing variations on the Capotiline Wolf. Later we learned this was part of an effort to bring Romans back to the river. We enjoyed this particulary as we consider ourselves to have a long-range relationship with that quintessential symbol of Rome, in all its various forms, so much so that two versions of it appear on the cover of Eva’s mythology book.

Learning

2005-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Learning
December 20, 2005

“Were you a Communist?”
“At first I was, but then some of my friends disappeared. One ended up dead and another in prison. I started to realize that the system was wrong.”

This is an excerpt from an interview (in 2002) with Péter Bacsó, the director of the movie “The Witness” from the DVD-version of a popular Hungarian film we watched recently. It is an amazing film, its black humor typical of Hungarian wit. Even more amazing is that it was made in 1969 while Hungary was still under Communist control. Through a strange accident, it was shown at Cannes and distributed in 39 countries. It tells the story of a simple man, a staunch believer in socialism, who is recruited to be a witness in a trumped-up treason trial. The movie represents his continuing struggle as a Communict-party member to support and respect the government he starts off believing in. In the course of the movie, he learns about all the maneuvers this government performs to intimidate its opponents. In his straightforward manner, he can ultimately do nothing but expose the truth.

George Bush should get a chance to watch "The Witness." It is true. No matter how many rousing speeches he makes about democracy, every time the US, and the Iraqis we support, make people’s friends and relatives disappear, America loses. In Hungary we can watch this movie with the knowledge that in 1956 (the movie is set in the early 50’s) the Hungarians rose up against those outside oppressors (and the “elected” government.) It took another 35 years of resistance, but eventually the invaders gave up. It is just a part of history. It took the Hungarians 200 years to get rid of the Turks and 150 to cast off the Austrians. That is the way that history works again and again. So if George is expecting something different he needs to spend more time with DVD-rents.hu.

After the displacement of the Soviet invaders in 1989, the Hungarians developed a great politeness and sensitivity about political views. Many people have pasts in which they “went along to get along” and it is polite to forget those times. (Yes George, this includes our “friends and supporters” among the Iraqis.) So it is only after knowing you for months that a Hungarian is likely to ask for an American’s opinion of George Bush. “He is very scary,” Eva said to Lászlo, when she was asked about our political views, adding that we were not the only Americans who felt this way. In our community of Swarthmore, lawns sprout "Peace is Patriotic" signs, though elsewhere in America, opposition to the war can get you branded a traitor. Hungarians know all about suppressing your political opponents. “Yes, I remember that your father was involved with the ‘Smallholders' Party.’” Lászlo replied, speaking volumes. It was the Smallholders' Party who actually held the majority in Russian-dominated Hungary in 1948 but were never permitted a place in the government. And so the circle is closed.

The other night Mickey and Ádám were using my computer for gaming and came across a file with the words of an old Hungarian song that I had downloaded.

Kossuth Lajos azt izente,               Lajos Kossuth sent this message,
Hogy kevés a regimentje,               That his regiments were wanting,
Ha még egyszer azt izeni,             If he sends that call again,
Mindnyájunknak el kell menni,               All of us must go,
Éljen a haza!                           Long live the homeland!

Ádám complained that the words weren’t quite the ones that he had learned in school and we had to tell him about the way that folk songs vary. Hungary recently abolished its draft and young men like Ádám are now subjected only to billboard-sized ads showing smiling young people flanking an olive-drab helicopter, trying to persuade them to serve in the armed forces. Mickey and Ádám liked the song so much that they spent some time singing it.

Lajos Kossuth was one of the leaders of the revolution of 1848 (against the Austrians) and was particularly effective in recruiting among the peasants and small farmers in the countryside, because the fight he was advocating spoke to the hearts of many Hungarians. The revolution was put down in 1849 and yet every Hungarian knows the refrain “All of us must go.” With the establishment of their own democracy, Hungarians debate what it means to be Hungarian, and patriotic. They have their own struggles in this respect – a sizeable minority population, and the inroads of an alien culture (ours!) that looks appealing but represents a very different perspective from their own.

The question for us Americans is, which side are we on? Are we the champions of democracy, or the purveyors of oppression? In 1848, in 1956, as today, there are no easy answers, and practicing surveillance of your own citizens will not inspire them to enthusiastic support. As a test you might like to compose an enduring patriotic ditty for our own country. I’ve made a start.

“George Bush told our sons and daughters,
That he needed cannon fodders,
If he sends that call again,
…”

Well, perhaps it is just that Hungarian is a better language for poetry. Of course it was all lost on the Austrian troops, almost none of whom knew any Hungarian. But they aren’t around here any more.

And so stands history. And the present too.

Culture

2005-12-16T03:26:00.000-08:00

Culture
December 16, 2005

One of Eva’s favorite musical groups (mine too) is Muzsikás. You could call it a folk music group since Hungarian traditional music is what they play. But their repertoire is painstakingly researched and they work at reconstructing music which may actually no longer be being played. In particular, they have worked to uncover the original folk tunes that inspired Hungarian composers such as Bartók. They have played concerts all over the world and have produced dozens of CDs. Last Tuesday Eva was showing her newly revised web site to Lászlo Halász with whom she is collaborating on a research project. He saw a reference to Muzsikás and asked if she wanted to meet a member of the group. It turns out that one of their violinists is a mathematician and statistician with whom Lászlo consults on his research. He was pleased to meet an American fan and told her that the band would be playing a children’s concert that evening. Eva went (Mickey and I were busy) and was taken back stage to meet the rest of the group. For those of our generation, Eva compared it to getting to meet the Grateful Dead.

She found out that they were also playing at the Millennium Center on Thursday night. So we went. As a guest artist they had Alexander Balanescu, an amazing violinist who opened with a very modern solo that left us amazed and shredded his violin bow so thoroughly that later he had to go offstage for a replacement. One of the high points was the performance of four of Bartok’s violin duets. At the end of each piece, the soloists segueed into the folk tune from which it was derived and were joined by the other three members of the group. An amazing lesson in musicology.

Back to the children’s concert. Why is an internationally recognized group playing simple dance tunes for a couple of hundred kids and their parents? Eva observed that such an event in the US would be served by a boom box rather that live music of any kind. Well, there are two answers; in the first place national culture is important – both to the performers and to their audience. The second answer is that this is a small country. Need an example? It turns out that one of the other members of the group is a dance teacher at Mickey’s school!

While we were at the Muzsikás concert we found out that it was part of an extensive series of events called the “intro festival.” With that information we went to a concert by Kampec Dolores (a group that has moved from rock towards jazz: their name means "end of pain") on Monday night and one by Anima Sound System (rock) on Thursday. Oh, on Wednesday we went to see a new play “My Mother’s Nose” by a famous Hungarian playwright and director.

You might wonder how someone with very limited Hungarian skills does attending a play in Hungarian. The answer is not too badly. In part it hast to do with mindset – I know that I won’t understand much of the dialog, but on the other hand, good acting is a universal language. The theater is in the BME university and is a theater in the round. Steeply tiered seats put the audience close to the action. The stage has a large turntable which was used to good effect to move the actors about the stage. The plot centered around a Romanian gang that buys/steals kidneys for transplant to wealthy invalids. Romanians make good stereotypical villains – they are the people in the impoverished country next door who are lazy and dishonest and who want to sneak into the country so they can get jobs. They have lots of hair and they wear black coats, strange hats, and talk a funny language.

You know, remarkably like Mexicans. Except that God blessed America by making Mexicans brown so that they are easier to recognize. (Brown skin also seems to make a better target for sky-marshals, but that is a digression.)

In the realm of art we went to the opening of an exhibit of modern art at the Óbuda Cultural center. It was organized by Betty, a friend of Kati’s. Very diverse and interesting. The opening speaker was long, and according to Eva, so boring that she had to content herself with the consolation that at least I didn’t have to listen to what was being said. Poor Betty – the exhibit had all sorts of political overtones – the Óbuda city government has been reluctant to give land for a modern art museum even though they would then get the paintings as a gift. The selection of the speaker pleased the artist/collector who wants to give the paintings but caused the politicians to stay away.

On Saturday we went on a bus trip to Bécs, Vienna to you, and Wein to the folks that live there. It was organized by an art group and the focus was on two museum exhibitions. One was on impressionism, drawn from the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the other on Goya, with materials from all over the world. We went with Kati and with Betty and her husband Otto and we dragged Mickey and Ádám for the culture. The impressionism exhibit was nice because it was much less overwhelming than the entire Musée d'Orsay. I particularly liked the combination of van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne. It suggests the struggle to change art – van Gogh went insane, Gauguin exiled himself, and Cezanne stuck it out in the face of much rejection. We were also pleased that The Angelus, by Millet was a part of the exhibition. Last year we saw a Dali exhibition in Philadelphia that noted that this painting was a recurring influence in Dali’s work.

The Goya was in some ways less interesting, to us at least. Goya was painter to the King of Spain and spent most of his time doing portraits of nobles. On the other hand, there was a large selection of his drawings, and, unlike the impressionist exhibition that was drawn from a single museum – this exhibition tapped a large number of collections. We always like to play “look who owns this.” We also enjoyed the portrait of the cats intent upon the fancy-dressed little boy's pet bird in this painitng:

The exhibits seen, we did some window shopping in Vienna, stopping at a coffee house for coffee and pastries and at a street stand for some holiday “punch” – spiced wine served hot. In Hungary we call it “forralt bor” (boiled wine).
I should say a bit more about the concerts by Kampec Dolores and Anima Sound System. Both are internationally known groups, but, as is typical of Hungary, both were playing in rather small venues. Kampec Dolores undertook to provide a musical background to the very famous short film The Andalusian Dog by Bunuel. I likened this to finding ways to “improve” the Mona Lisa, but the result was outstanding, making it hard to imagine watching the film without their music. As another example of what a small country this is, it turns out that we know two of the artists in Kampec Dolores. The connection is through Jutka, Zoltán’s lady friend, who is mother and mother-in-law to the lead singer and the lead guitarist respectively. They are off to tour Japan, but we will try to get together in January.

The Anima Sound System concert, exciting and quite Euro-Pop, was held on a converted barge moored in the Duna just beyond the Petőfi Bridge. There is a restaurant above and an attractive concert space below. The audience was several hundred people, a sell out, but the venue was not packed. Eva pointed out to me that I was probably the oldest person there (thanks) and I noted that my age was about six standard deviations from the mean in the room. Not only was one of the most popular rock groups in the country playing to a small audience, but along one side of the room was a bar that stayed open throughout the concert. If you think about American concerts where attendees are searched for alcoholic contraband before entering, you will recognize that this is a different society. Draft beer was served in plastic cups, but other drinks were served in bottles and glasses – no problem. The crowd was orderly and polite. The concert got out after midnight so we got to ride the “night bus” home. Different route than the day system, and buses only, no metro or trolleys, but it worked well for us. We also got to find out who rides the night bus? The answer is young people – it seems a lot more sensible than having them drive after drinking. So sensible in fact that you might want to ask just what public transportation is like in your town after midnight.

London II

2005-11-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

London II
November 30, 2005

I promised to finish up my report on our visit to London a month ago. Now that I am done for the moment with my intensive Hungarian studies, I can offer it to you.

We had failed to get to Westminster Abby the last two times we were in England and so we thought that it was about time. We planned a full tourist day. First a visit to a fancy French food store that Eva found in a guide book to get ingredients for a picnic. French bread, pate, an aged brie, and some fancy cookies. Then off to a walking tour which I had laid out starting at Trafalgar Square and ending with lunch in St. James park – a sort of 100 acre extension of the Queen’s front yard.

Trafalgar Square is in the center of London and features a statue of the great naval hero Lord Nelson, standing atop a tall column. We are reminded of a very long joke of the “shaggy dog” variety which we heard at a folk festival. The joke narrates a series of Nelson’s sea battles. Before the start of every engagement he calls for his red jacket so, if he should be wounded, the sailors will not see his blood and become disheartened. The joke ends with a battle in which Nelson faces overwhelming odds and instead of his red jacket, calls for his “brown trousers.”

There are several large fountains in the square and a serious wind is whipping the water some forty or fifty yards beyond their basins, we navigate around them not knowing that we are receiving a portent of the coming weather. Also in the square are statures of various other military heroes – generally on horseback, brandishing swords and bringing peace and freedom to distant lands – Afghanistan for example. (No, I wasn't thinking about the present, but about this poem by Kipling http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/kabulriver.html) Anyway, our favorite part of the square is the Fourth Plinth, the pillar reserved for a contemporary sculpture.
http://www.fourthplinth.co.uk/unveiling
The last time that we were there it was a head from a fallen statue topped by a book and a tree, the tree's roots overgrowing the whole. This was titled "Regardless of History," by Bill Woodrow. This time it is "Alison Lapper pregnant," a nude and very pregnant woman with no arms or legs. That is the way she was born; the artist Marc Quinn's comment notes her courage.

Out of the square and on with our walk. The plan is to walk up one side of St. James park, stop at the modern art museum shown on the map, gawk at Buckingham Palace, proceed back through the park finding a spot for lunch, and end up at Westminster Abbey. But even now the wind has no need of the fountains as it is bringing its own rain with it. We start up the side of the park, Eva has her raincoat and Mickey and I have waterproof jackets. We also have umbrellas, but watching other walkers struggle against the wind causes us to leave them in our backpacks. We look in vain for the art museum, or even a directional sign, but apparently it must be approached on a different street. By this time the rain has become sufficiently annoying that we cut into the park to look for temporary shelter. In so doing, we shortcut Buckingham Palace, but I can report that, to me, it is simply extensive rather than impressive. I also note that there is a pennant flying above the palace and remember, perhaps correctly, that this indicates that the Queen is in residence. An odd custom – but I suppose that it would save you from making the long walk up the front steps to ring the bell and ask. I pause for a moment to think that her majesty the Queen has never had the fun of hauling new furniture from Ikea home on the subway. Pity!

We find shelter under the side awning of a food vendor’s stall in the park – the rain abates and we walk on looking for a place to have lunch. We finally settle on a rain soaked park bench near the central lake. A great variety of birds climb in and out of the water; a few intrepid pedestrians, and some even more intrepid joggers, pass by, including one white haired and very fit fellow who easily passes most of the much younger contingent.. Sitting on our back packs, we make our sandwiches and enjoy our lunch, although not quite to the extent we had anticipated. Then it is on with our walk and we arrive at Westminster Abbey under threatening, but not rainy, skies.

About 1040 King Edward the Confessor took a small Benedictine Monastery and, in about 20 years, converted it into a large, well endowed, Benedictine Monastery. Edward died a few days after the dedication and it seemed appropriate to burry him in the new abbey (Hint: you just never know when you might be starting a tradition). As it turns out, William of Normandy took over the abbey (and the rest of England) shortly thereafter. It was 1066, to be exact. To add legitimacy to his rule, he held his coronation in the abbey – as the monarchs of England have done ever since.
By the way, I learned the interesting fact that before the Norman conquest, the kings of England were identified by their names with a nickname appended, for example Edward the Confessor, or Edward the Martyr. The Normans changed this to just using a name, and if necessary, a number. This makes a special kind of sense if you remember that Edward the Martyr got his name by being murdered by his half-brother at the age of ten and that Edward the Confessor’s father (the half-brother mentioned above) was called Ethelred the Unready. It is probably better not to leave the details of your name in the hands of posterity.
We go inside and sign up for the guided tour. A good choice both because someone else decides what you shouldn’t miss, and because you get into some parts that are closed to the general public. I was expecting a vast open space such as we had seen in St. Paul’s or in Exeter, but Westminster is so divided up into chapels and chock-full of monuments that you don’t really get a sense of its size. The vast number of altars and statuary set me back for a moment. This is after all, Church of England (Episcopal to us Americans and Reformatus to us Hungarians) – but it looked so -- papish. On reflection, I realized that until Henry VIII, it was a Catholic Church. One of the other reasons for the lack of great open spaces is that this was an abbey; the church was set up so that the monks could pray without disturbance from the laity. Of course you needed some small chapels to celebrate special masses for your patrons. Our guide explained that, for great events like coronations and royal weddings or funerals, rather amazing sets of bleachers have to be erected, often straddling architectural features like screens and climbing the walls to rather dizzying heights.
We weren’t allowed to take photographs in the Abbey, but they have wonderful ones on their website. Go to:
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/
and click on “Abbey Tour” in the left-hand column.

As we pass one set of monuments Mickey notes that it is dedicated to scientists – including Sir Isaac Newton. We come to the Poets Corner where the literary greats are immortalized. Mickey finds the slab set in the floor that memorializes Charles Dickens. He performs a little dance on it – a belated critical review of Great Expectations which he was required to read last year in school. I get to consider that the odd thing about fame is that it doesn’t matter if you were at all pious – or even Christian. I thought particularly of Oscar Wilde (memorialized in a window) – a convicted sodomite who, on a tour of the American West, greatly impressed the local miners with the extent and colorfulness of his blasphemy. Oh – on the other hand, it does seem to help a lot if you were male.

After the guided tour, we head for some of the less visited parts of the Abbey. The cloister with its garden which is said to be the oldest plot of land under continuous cultivation in England and the buildings which house the Abbey Choir School. (The choristers are currently on tour, reminding us of Mickey's tour-in-reverse, when the St. John's Cathedral Choir toured English cathedrals.)

Friday is a day for a family visit. Eva’s 95 year old godmother, Maria (which helps explain why Eva is named Eva Maria) lives in what are very like the English version of panel flats in the South-West part of London. Her 10th floor apartment looks out on green parkland with buildings only in the distance. Maria is an amazing individual. She has been a vegetarian for over seventy years, and, when she found the Quakers after emigrating to England, knew that this was the spiritual community that she wanted to be a part of. She had been reading Eva’s Mythology book and wanted to discuss the theories of Jung and the nature of tricksters.

Maria represents Eva’s last tie with her parents' generation. Eva was born after her parents emigrated to England, so none of the relatives in Hungary knew her. Maria had known Eva’s parents in Hungary and found out that they were in England through a mutual friend. Her friendship with Zoltán continued through correspondence until his death. Eva recalls the apartment block that Maria used to live in when she was a child. Maria remembers the nearby railroad line that woke her at all hours – Eva recalls what fun it was to visit Maria and her mother, a tiny woman whom she called “little Golf" (she couldn’t say "Wolf") and who allowed her to play in the kitchen, splashing with her toys in a great tub of water, to the horror of her own mother.

Maria serves us a delicious and extensive lunch. She has fortunately overcome the Hungarian prejudice that vegetables need at least an hour of cooking to approach doneness but retains the idea that guests should consume enough food for three meals. We chat on a variety of subjects – present and past. Sometimes in Hungarian (with Eva and Mickey) and sometimes in English. Eva has brought her computer and so we can show and tell with our snapshots. Maria has an interesting reaction to a picture of Mickey’s friend Beka. She is put off by the red streak that Beka has dyed into her hair. But this is not the case of an old lady decrying new fashion. Maria is wrestling with the Quaker principles of simplicity and honesty. Is streaking your hair expending too much effort on a triviality? Does it constitute presenting a false image of yourself to the world? Although Eva and Mickey and I agree that we like Beka's hair colors du jour, this leaves us all with something to think about – especially Mickey who is forging his own complex Episcopalian/Quaker/Buddhist philosophy.
That about wraps up London. I should perhaps mention a bit more of our more plebeian wanderings. On the evening of our return from Bath, we found an internet café near the car rental agency so that Mickey could get back in touch with the States. While he was there, Eva and I went in search of a pub. We settled on a restaurant up the street which looked quiet and whose five-seat bar was empty. Noting that the bartender had an accent, Eva inquired where he was from – we had previously ascertained that much of the staff at our hotel was Polish. It turns out that he was Hungarian! He and his girlfriend are working in London to save up enough to buy an apartment back in Budapest. He and Eva chatted for about an hour (the restaurant business had pretty much wound down for the night) giving Mickey ample time for his interneting. We had several dinners in one of our favorite London restaurants, Wagamama. I suppose you would call it an Asian fusion noodle house (www.wagamama.com). We find their selection broad and their cooking excellent, and, for London, their prices moderate.
We stayed in what has become our favorite London hotel – the Ridgemount on Gower Street. It is within walking distance of the British Museum and, being across the street from University College London, is near a good bookstore (one of our international vices). The hotel owners, the same family for forty years, are friendly and accommodating. The room includes an English breakfast – cereal, coffee or tea, toast, a fried egg accompanied with what the Brits call “bacon” but that seems like fried ham to us. The side dish for the eggs rotates between sausage, baked beans (Eva’s favorite), and fried tomato (Mickey’s least favorite).

Winter has Begun

2005-11-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Winter has Begun
November 27, 2005

Winter has begun its descent into Budapest. Monday morning I awoke to what looked like another foggy day. The Buda hills were obscured by clouds, and on closer inspection the street beneath our window was wet and the roofs of the buildings across the street had a mottled appearance. Closer inspection, helped by a bit of coffee, revealed that a light snow was falling. It was not sticking to the streets or even the grass, but I could see it on the cars below.

Those of you in the States were starting your Thanksgiving week, but here it was just a bit farther into November. The Hungarians, like almost every other nation, took the land from people who were here before they arrived, but here it happened so long ago ( about 900 CE) that there is no need to celebrate it. I should note that what I have read of Hungarian history portrays the indigenous people as reasonably content to have the Magyars come in and organize things. Well, what else would a national mythology say?

Thursday and Friday being normal work days, we had our Thanksgiving Day dinner on Saturday. But just like you, we did our shopping earlier in the week. Hungarian butcher shops are full of turkey. You can buy breasts, legs, and even necks. What is hard to buy is whole birds. This is especially true if you want a “baby” bird, which is to say one under 10 kilos (22 pounds.) So we ordered a bird and were happy to get one just over 8 kilos – the butcher kept it in his cooler until Friday since our refrigerator is not up to housing such a monster. By the way, the turkey comes with its neck still attached but if you want innards (for gravy), you buy them separately.

Our standard Thanksgiving fare includes mashed potatoes and red cabbage – easy to do in this culture. We also make pumpkin pie, about which more later. But cranberries are somewhat of a problem. I can illustrate this by noting that Hungarians use the same word, áfonya, for both blueberries and cranberries. Confusing? Not to them since both are rather rare, appearing mostly as juice or jam. If necessary, cranberries are described as piros (red) áfonya. We've looked for cranberry juice to use in our Cosmopolitan cocktails (something we learned only last summer) but so far have found only cranberry drink – part juice, but mostly sugar water. Fortunately in past years we discovered that the Chinese grocery in the basement of the vámházpiac often carries cranberries this time of year -- Ocean Spray brand in one pound bags. In a Chinese grocery? Yes, they carry all kinds of hard to find foods – Chinese spices, Indian and Thai curries, British tea (I got some Twinings green for Eva) and biscuits, butter flavored Pam spray (completely unknown here: why spray fat if you can apply it more generously?) which we use on our air popped popcorn ($4.50 a can), and much more for a small, oddly shaped, store. A place for the things emigrés can't do without, apparently. We run the berries through our food processor with an orange an some sugar, and we have our relish.

If you remember an earlier letter, you will know that Hungary abounds in winter squash, but is short on the kind we call pumpkins. No problem, their orange-fleshed baking squash is delicious, better than pumpkin we think, and easily available. The nice lady at the piac will saw a hunk of squash to whatever size you like. We have our Joy of Cooking with us, so we know just how to prepare the pumpkin from scratch. Into the oven and bake for about one hour and three quarters. Poor Mickey, we went out while the squash was baking and left him with instructions to take the “pumpkin” out when the timer went off. When he opened the oven, expecting to see an orange-shelled squash, he was distressed to discover one with grey skin, the natural color of the squash we bought, but not what he was expecting. The other hard-to-find ingredient for pumpkin pie is molasses. Fortunately, I stumbled across some in a market near where my Hungarian class meets. It is in their health foods section. Oh – it comes from England and so is labeled as “Black Treacle.” – but you knew that was what the Brits called molasses, didn't you?

On Thursday, while you folks were preparing for dinner, well, actually before you got up when you consider the time difference, we went for a swim. As with every morning of this week, we had snow flurries, but there were still between one and two dozen hearty swimmers in the outdoor 50 meter pool at the Dagály. The electronic sign informed us that the air temperature was -4 while the water was 27. This is actually a degree higher than what the water has been before. A nice difference since a degree centigrade is about two degrees Fahrenheit.

While I was swimming I worked out an easy way of converting Celsius to Fahrenheit and will now share it with you. This is one of the things that makes writing so much better than lecturing. When you share such valuable insights during a lecture, you have to watch your students as their eyes glaze over.

To convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, double the number. Thus 27 becomes 54. Next subtract 10% by simply shifting the decimal. This is a good place to simplify things by rounding. Thus 54 minus 5.4 is 54 minus 5 equals 49. Then add 32, the freezing point in Fahrenheit. So 49 plus 32 is 81, the water temperature on this snowy day. Similarly, the water temperature of -4 is doubled to -8 one is subtracted making -7, add 32 and you will find that the air temperature was a bracing 25 degrees. By the way, you can feel the snow falling on your back, and even see the flakes as they sink into the water and melt.

Eva did her standard 1,300 meters and I clocked about 2,200. Then out of the pool, quickly grab your towel, and walk the canvas-enclosed corridor (unheated) back to the building. Here I will share a rather intimate personal detail with you. Walking outside wearing only a wet swim suit, a cold towel and a forced smile, causes your bladder to shrink to the size of a hazelnut. Reaching the restrooms at the end if the corridor becomes a matter of some urgency and one must set a pace that balances speed with control.

But then there is the warm water! About 36 degrees! (conversion is left for you as homework) We sat submerged to our necks – occasionally submerging to warm cheeks, noses and scalps. It is hard to describe how wonderful it is to float in warm water while looking through the glass fence onto the snow-covered trees and the distant banks of the Duna. Let me just suggest that if you happen to subscribe to a religion in which you will spend a dry eternity wearing a long white robe and playing a harp, it might pay to shop around.

It was so nice that we extended our usual half-hour stay, and at the end I had to head directly to my Hungarian class while Eva returned home to continue Thanksgiving preparations.

Saturday, our Thanksgiving day, found us up and busy by 7:00 AM with the turkey to stuff and put in the oven – it fit without much room to spare, and lots of dinner preparations. Kati and Adam arrived at about 2:00 PM followed by Sanyi and Csilla along with Dani, Miki and Simi. We planned our dining area so that we can seat 12, so there was even a bit of space left over. For hors d'oeuvres, we had homemade kőrözött (a Hungarian cheese spread made with sheep cheese) and fish paste (Ikea) and cream cheese with crackers. The cream cheese was an exotic imported brand called Philadelphiai Krémsajt (yup, just what you think it is.) There were Kinder Eggs (chocolate with a neat toy inside – illegal in the US because we feel the small parts represent a danger) for the kids. Sanyi brought wine and Kati brought flowers.

The dinner went well and seemed to be enjoyed by everyone. We had pezsgő – Hungarian Champagne along with apple juice and orange Fanta for the kids. The dessert was well accepted although it caused some discussion because Eva likes to put small pieces of crystallized ginger in the bottom of the pie shell. She added it to only one of the two pies, to protect any delicate tongues from burning ginger. Hungarians don’t cook with ginger, with the exception of gingerbread, for which they generally buy a pre-done spice mix, and so we had to get out the crystallized ginger (from the Chinese market) and some of our fresh ginger root (used in our stir-fries) and pass them around for show-and-tell. The adults hung around for conversation and coffee while Mickey and Adam got the kids going on computer games in the bedroom. Things wound down about 7:00. We sent Kati home with the remainder of the cranberry relish, finished the dishes, and collapsed after our altogether successful Thanksgiving celebration.

A Touch of Class

2005-11-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

A Touch of Class
November 23, 2005

Ok, sometimes I just want to write about random things, but that just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that a classy writer would do. So the trick is to invent some sort of nearly fictional connecting idea and then write as if I had a topic.

Our major furniture acquisitions ended some time ago – in fact, after more or less living home decorating for a month, we have sometimes felt at loose ends. Not every shopping trip has to have a furniture focus.

We did add some home-grown art work, photos that Eva classed-up in Photoshop and that we had printed very large and framed. In the living room we have a picture, done in four pieces, of the “gates” that the artist Christo installed in Central Park for a few weeks last January. Printing the photo at about 2 feet by 3 feet was an act of faith. After all, it was taken hand-held with our old 1.2 megapixel digital camera. Being a great believer in what I read, not to mention what I repeat to others, I have subscribed to the popular wisdom that 1.2 meg is enough picture for about 8 by 10 inches. My new conclusion is that a lot of the people who say and write such things have never actually printed really big blowups. Anyway, the result is classy and of very reasonable poster quality although not up to the work of Jeff Wall. (If you said, “who?”, let me remind you that the London trip WILL be on the exam.)

Our second acquisition was a new front door for our apartment. The old door was the communist original, and warped enough to leak light around the bottom corner. In this part of the world, you would be hard to find disagreement that getting rid of things communist is classy. We had priced doors for our house in the US; this one cost about two thirds as much (installed). The door has a steel frame and four turns of the lock throws bolts into all four sides of the frame. The frame itself is welded to anchors set into the concrete wall. This is pretty much a mid-range replacement door.

We are constantly pleased to see the Hungarian infrastructure being improved. The old much battered chain link fences along the HEV (commuter rail line) are being replaced by much nicer ones of concrete and steel. I’ve shown pictures or the repaving along St. Endre Street. The latest improvement is repainting the underpass that we use to get to Flórián ter. This underpass is about a block long and on one side lets you view the remains of the old Roman military baths. The new paint is a dark orange and covers the accumulated graffiti, although for how long, one must wonder.

Another touch of class in the underpass is the opening of a lángos shop. Now lángos is just fried bread dough (made with both flour and potatoes) so you might ask how classy that can be? Well, deep fried (probably in lard, but we are into don’t ask, don’t tell) it is the lunch of the gods, or at least of the Magyars, which is nearly the same. The basic price for a piece about 10 inches in diameter is 70 cents without toppings, but if you follow Mickey’s example by adding sour cream, cheese, and ham (the garlic is free) you can run the price up to a buck and a quarter. Oh, the fellow who runs the shop wears a chef’s jacket while he cooks. Well, if you don’t understand our enthusiasm, you probably just don’t understand class.

I don’t know if it counts at class, but the bar in the basement just across the street now has a sign. I think that it always did have a sign, but that you had to go down the stairs to see it. Now the door announces “Flórián Borozó” Which is to say the Florian wine bar. We have never been in it, but looking through the windows we can tell that they are very strict in interpreting the drinking age (remember that Mickey can get served anywhere) since the youngest customers seem to be about 45. Eva observed that their Sunday hours, 10 am to 1:30 pm, might be aimed at those coming home from church (Mickey would add, “or not.”) By the way, if that doesn’t sound exactly like what you would like in a bar, there are at least three more within 100 yards of our front door. There is the “Black Café” that you can walk to in the rain without getting wet, the Árkád Kávé Ház for which you have to cross the street, the new and classier Róma Café around the corner – Oh, there is also a bar whose name I don’t know just around the back, near Fő tér.

Also around the back is the Rózsahegyi (rose mountain) Cukrázda (coffee and pastries) in what I would guess is an early 19th century building. It is an excellent example of the European coffee house. Kati likes it and we three stopped in after the movies a couple of weeks ago. When you enter it seems a small place – a bar with no seats, two small tables, and a display case with pastries – unfortunately the selection was rather depleted when we got there. You place your order and make your way through a doorway to discover that the place is actually a series of connected rooms. Each room has between three and eight small tables with chairs. We selected a room where the chairs are upholstered arm chairs. The room had wood paneling on the walls and ceiling, a (nonfunctional) marble fireplace, and subdued lighting from wall-mounted lamps. As we sat, sipped our coffee, and ate our desserts, I felt that we had stepped out of time – I could imagine poets or playwrights sitting for hours at work on new creations. Eighteenth century, nineteenth century, twenty-first century, who could tell in this timeless ambience? I ordered some hot spiced wine while Eva and Kati chose Bailey's Irish Cream (two glasses ran the place out of stock) and we sat and talked. I don’t think that classy is quite the right word for being able to participate in such a simple yet enduringly civilized custom.

The classy new Volvo buses are gradually replacing the Ikarus city buses. The Volvo buses are built close to the ground and so are very easy to get on and off. Most impressive to me is the electronic display which shows the next five stops in order and updates after every stop. Like most Budapest buses, these are double length and articulated in the middle and, like the old buses they have four sets of doors so that getting passengers on and off takes less time.

Our last touch of class was to finally get a clothes rod and shelf for our closet, shelves for the bathroom, and, much to our enjoyment, a small work table for our kitchen. The kitchen is small and, especially when the two of us cook together, there is a lack of counter space. We knew that we wanted a rather tall table so that it could stand over the radiator. We ended up having it made. I finished it, a bit of an adventure in getting the right stain – I ended up mixing two colors to get it right. In case you wondered, polyurethane is called nitrolak, don’t bother trying your Hungarian-English dictionary.

Oh one more mention of class – I am taking a three week class in Hungarian – five afternoons a week. It is that class that has slowed writing about this class…

Is England Burning?

2005-11-05T00:05:00.000-08:00

Is England Burning?
November 5, 2005

As our plane climbed out of Luton Airport headed for Budapest, we could look down and see the bright flashes of explosions, sometimes as many as seventy five in view at one time. The red and white sparks of the aftermath were often visible as well. We could also see scattered fires throughout the countryside. We stared from our airplane window, fascinated, until the coast of England dropped behind us.

Had Hitler returned from his secret bunker seeking a last revenge? Had George Bush discovered new caches of weapons of mass destruction? No, it was just the British remembering November 5, 1605.
In case you've forgotten:

“Four hundred years ago, Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes and his gang of accomplices attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the King, James I, along with it. The group were executed for treason but they are remembered every year as children the length and breadth of the country make effigies of the infamous traitor to burn on large bonfires. This uniquely British commemoration also sees thousands of fireworks being blasted into the sky in imitation of the plot's explosive failure.“

Eva collected some information on Guy Fawkes, and you can read it by following this link:

http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/GuyFawkes/

We spent five days of the All Saints school break visiting London. Our primary motivation was to see Maria, Eva’s 95 year old godmother who lives in London, but we also took in the British Museum and the Tate Modern, and visited Stonehenge and Bath.

Our airline was WizzAir, one of the new European no-frills discount airlines. There is only one class, seats are not assigned -- pick one when you get on, all food and beverages onboard are sold. You fly out of Ferihegy I, the old Budapest airport, and into Luton, somewhat north of London. We found the service very efficient and, since both flights were very nearly full, others must feel the same.

The British Museum (free admission) is always a treat. We revisited our old friends, the Elgin Marbles, the heroic frieze removed by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in Athens. We also looked at some new materials from Africa, and some Egyptian pieces. There was a special exhibit on the Persian Empire (about 550 BCE to 350 BCE), quite amazing for both its extent and sophistication. This was interesting because it gave us a different perspective on the war between the Greeks and the Persians (remember the Battle of Marathon). Viewed from the perspective of the Persians, the Greeks were a backwater of disorganized settlements where people lived in wooden huts. Eva was particularly taken by a frieze of a procession in which Achaeans are pictured as rather short and dumpy, with features so undistinguished that they all look alike, a far cry from the robust athletes of classical beauty we see when the Greeks portray themselves. We left the museum laden with books on ancient mythology and history, along with a few hippopotamuses for Carl.

The Tate Modern is a new museum in London housed in what used to be a huge power plant on the banks of the Thames. They had a special exhibition on Henri Rousseau, the French painter from the late 19th century whose primitive style and jungle scenes were appreciated by modernists (Picasso owned three of his paintings.) and much derided by the establishment. The exhibit had a very well done pre-recorded guide and we learned a lot about a painter we had often seen. By the way, the guide was on a Toshiba palm top computer; the color screen allowed the display of related graphics, and there were many branching navigational features. It was by far the best recorded museum guide we have seen. Mickey, who got ahead of us, discovered how to exit the tour program and access the operating system. He played some of the built-in games while waiting for us to catch up. On the same day, we also saw an exhibition of very large contemporary photographs by Jeff Wall. The photographs are often staged, shot as multiple digital images over a period of months, and then assembled as seamless, back-lighted displays – he was inspired by the illuminated advertising you see in airports.
You can see the entire exhibit at the Tate-Modern site:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/

One of the great pleasures of seeing new things is making connections. We were delighted to see in the friezes from Persepolis the portrait of a tiger attacking a horse; this echoed Rousseau’s tiger and tapir. Similarly, the Persian rendering of trees and foliage showed detail in every leaf and would have fit well into the French artist’s meticulous work.

We have visited Stonehenge before, once for Eva and me and two times for Mickey. Every time we are there, it rains and this visit was no exception. Undaunted, we trudged happily around the big rough stones. We find the site bears revisiting – it takes a while to absorb the idea of a human-built monument that is 5,000 years old.

Visiting Bath was Eva’s idea and a great one. Her research on prices showed that renting a car for the day was the best deal and so I got to renew my rocky acquaintance with driving on he left. Now I spent nearly a year driving in the Virgin Islands where the cars are (normal American) left side steering wheel, but you keep left on the roads. The British cars, with the driver's side on the right, do not quite translate from that experience.
I continue to have trouble knowing where the left side of the car is. One of Eva’s navigational roles was to call out “scary” every time I drifted too far left in the lane (about every five minutes!) There is also the embarrassment of getting into the car, ready to drive, and discovering that you are sitting in the passenger’s seat – I usually caught myself in time and could pass my presence off with the gallant gesture of opening the door for Eva. Oh, and the stick shift is on the left of the driver. If you are accustomed to shifting with your right hand you can always turn on the windshield wipers at odd moments.

The Romans arrived in about 50 CE. The local residents considered the arrival an invasion, but there is some evidence (collected by those same people who gave you WMD) that the Romans called their arrival “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In any case, the locals had found a natural hot spring, and to a Roman that was a sign from God that you should build a bath. Speaking of gods, the local people considered the spring sacred to their goddess Sulis. After a bit of consultation with the locals about the nature of the goddess, the Romans discovered that they too had been worshipping this very deity, but under the name of Minerva.. Before you could say, “imperialism is good,” the Romans had built a temple for Minerva-Sulis with steam rooms, pools of varying temperatures, and altars where you could consult the priests and leave offerings. Things went on swimmingly for several hundred years until there was, from an archeological point of view, a series of lucky occurrences. Rome was attacked by barbarians; the legions went home, taking with them their pool maintenance engineers; the roofs of the structures collapsed, and the river Avon flooded and covered everything with lots of mud. The luck of this was that life on top of the mud left much of the Roman construction undiscovered until the nineteenth century.

On first sight I was hugely disappointed by the baths of Bath. You look down into a murky green pool surrounded by a raised arcade topped with a miscellany of badly executed statues of Roman statesmen and generals. This was the Victorians’ idea of adding class to the place and, to my mind, has not worn well. Clutching our audio guides, we followed the stairs down into the museum and were pleasantly surprised at the complexity of the structure, and the society we discovered lurking there.

In the first place, this had been a huge complex with very sophisticated engineering. The main pools were roofed over with curved roofs like modern stadiums. When the building collapsed, one of the brick arches supporting the roof fell as one piece. You can still see it intact today: the bricks that make up its supporting arch are hollow to reduce the weight of the structure.

There are a surprising number of rooms, all below current ground level. Hot pools, cold pools, circular pools, therapeutic pools, steam rooms, changing rooms. There is the sacred pool, where visitors threw offerings. After the roof fell, the Normans took over this pool and, rather than bother cleaning it out, put in a floor on top of the rubble and raised the water level. When archeologists got a chance to excavate, they found thousands of coins and votive pieces from Roman times, sometimes prayers or curses inscribed on lead strips, still at the bottom.

There are also parts of the main temple, a major altar, amazingly, a gilded bronze head of Minerva, found during construction of a sewer nearby. Also amazing – the system for draining the overflow from the pools to the river, the spring provides about a quarter of a million gallons of hot water a day, is still the one originally built by the Romans. It just needed to have accumulated trash cleaned out of it. You might wonder what parts of our municipal infrastructure will still function in the year 2190.

I might remind you that Roman baths are not really a special experience for us. We walk past the remains of the military baths of Aquincum nearly every day, and the civil baths are just a couple of miles up the road. In addition, we have visited the baths at Pompeii. More to the point, baths are not some odd custom of a long vanished civilization. They are a regular part of our lives. As the guide explained about the ancient Romans, sitting and chatting in the warm medicinal waters, we had a very different view than did most of the tour group.

This visit, with its opportunities to think about the role of religion in ancient empires became juxtaposed in my mind with current news about the court fight over teaching intelligent design as a science. As quoted in the NY Times, an intelligent design proponent “likened intelligent design to seeing a watch and implicitly knowing that it had a designer.” By the same token, you could look at an automobile and know that it had designers and probably not the same ones who designed the watch. This line of argument set me to thinking that explaining the world was very convenient for the Romans who had no end of specialized gods.

For example: Why does ice float? Most liquids get denser and thus sink when they solidify. Answer: Oh, that was one of Bacchus’ great ideas. He knew that parties would be more fun if you could hear the ice cubes clinking as they floated in people’s glasses.

On the other hand, the Persians were monotheists, worshipping Ahura Mazda. They got around the problem of dealing with other people’s deities with the concept of “helper gods.” Suppose you are Ahura Mazda and there is a big party in your honor in Babylon tonight -- you know, prayers, offerings, wine, dancing girls (or boys), but your calendar calls for you to be in Scythia tuning up a waterfall that seems to have gone out of adjustment. Do you skip the big party? No, you send one of your helper gods to fix the waterfall, I mean, how much divinity does an engineering adjustment like that take?

As is not uncommon, I have more things to describe than time to describe them. The rest of England will have to wait for a later time.

The wearing of swim caps is required

2005-10-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

The wearing of swim caps is required between October 1st and April 30
October 30, 2005

That is what the sign reads next to the outdoor fifty meter pool at the Dagály baths on Népfürdő street in Budapest. If you remember our latitude (and if you don’t I’ll talk about it later) you might guess that the pool is likely to be drained for the winter during that period. But this is Hungary and the Carpathian basin floats on geothermally heated water. So, drill a well a few thousand feet deep, and you get warm water year round.

Swim caps. You can buy the same racing caps of rubber or silicone that one finds in the States. And some women still like the old models with rubber ruffles or appliquéd flowers. But the preference of at least half the swimmers is for the cloth models. These are cut from the same fabric as swimsuits (and thus are slightly stretchy) and look a lot like the caps that water polo players wear except that they don’t come over your ears or have tie strings. Not necessary, since us Dagály swimmers are mostly not up to the rip-your-head-off sort of water sport.

Swim caps serve a useful function of keeping hair out of the pool’s filter system – or at least that is what I grew up knowing. Further, we might suppose that there is a hygienic function of keeping products like hair spray and macassar oil out of the water. Oh ho! Unless you know why those doilies that your grandmother put on the backs of the upholstered chairs in her living room were called antimacassars you had to run for your dictionary. Interestingly, the Microsoft Word spell checker knows the word antimacassar, but not macassar. Of course, if that isn’t interesting you may have wandered into the wrong blog.

Swim caps, recovering from our digression, have been established to serve purposes of public hygiene. Hungarians know this, and some baths, like Széchényi, require hats in the swimming pools (not the warm water soaking pools) all year round.

Swim caps for only part of the year seems to defy understanding, unless you have gone to fifth grade. Which is to say Hungarian fifth grade. That's when everyone here reads the novel “The Pál Street Boys.” In that story, one member of the gang (and here gang is meant in the nice old-fashioned sense of club) is thrown into a lake by a rival gang, catches cold, and over several long chapters dies a tear-jerking death. We don’t know which came first. Did the book shape the national sense of public health or did it merely reflect established wisdom? In any case, it is firmly in the Hungarian character to believe that, if you go outside with uncovered wet hair at anytime other than high summer, you will immediately catch cold and die. To this Mickey would add, “or worse!”

Those of us with rather exposed scalps don’t mind the rule. My maternal grandfather, Grandpa Joy, who went bald in his 30s, liked to say, “Grass doesn’t grow on a busy street.” Of course, he was also heard to observe, “An empty barn doesn’t need a roof.” No matter, the point is that I find that a swim cap provides welcome warmth and do not chafe under the regulation.

They have put the inflatable dome over the 25 meter pool to provide a haven for the less hardy. But I like the fifty meter pool out doors, by the banks of the Danube, and so far, Eva, who generally dreads the cold more than I do, has been willing to brave the weather and join me, for the company and the view. At this point I should note that those who do the breast stroke (Eva) expose more body to the “fresh” air than do we (obviously more virtuous) free-stylers. I should note here that the majority of Hungarians at the pool swim breast stroke – I think that only those who go in for competitive swimming in Hungary learn free style. The outdoor pool has a large sign with a digital display presenting the time, the water temperature (26° C) and the air temperature. The latter has varied from 5 on some overcast windy days to nearly 30 last Wednesday. Alas, the sun shining on the thermometer enclosure produces deceptive results, so the real high temperature was closer to 22.

After we swim, we soak; they have completely redone the warm pools since we were here three years ago. There is new tile, and new tiled benches. Combined with the pool gutter system that consists of grates on the deck, this means that you can sit and lean your head back on the deck and still have your neck covered with warm (34-36 degree) water. The two warm pools are outdoors and cover an area about 30 x 60 yards. In each of the pools, a large glass canopy supported by a central pillar provides shelter if there happens to be rain or snow. The hearty types in whom the blood of the Magyars runs strong (and their Wisconsin-bred friends) have no desire for such softness. The main hot water inlet (there are small inlets scattered throughout the pool) is raised about six feet above the pool surface and has an outlet which spreads the incoming water flow into a fan shaped sheet. You take turns with the other bathers standing under the flow for a warm massage. The falling water has enough pressure that 4-5 minutes under it is enough for us.

The locker rooms have also been completely redone. Instead of the separate men’s and women’s changing rooms, there now is a single locker room. As you enter, there is a rack of blue plastic-coated coat hangers made of heavy wire. They are about three feet long and have hooks for various articles of clothing including your shoes. Take one. In front of you is a wall with doors set every few feet along it. These are the changing rooms, although room is too grand since each is about the size of a double closet. The wall does not come to the floor so you can squat down and scan, looking for an empty one. The design of the changing cabins is rather elegant. There are doors on the front and back and along one side is a bench, about four feet long. When the bench is folded down into sitting position it locks both of the doors. You change, putting your clothes on the hanger or into your swim bag. Of course, you keep out a plastic shopping bag that contains your towel and swim cap, and in our case goggles. You will carry this with you to the pool.

You open the changing room by lifting the bench and exit through the door opposite the one you came in through. You are now in the locker room. The lockers are cleverly designed in an interlocking L shape so there is one part with a rod that is tall enough for your hanging things, and a shelf at half that height ( the tall part of the locker below takes up the other half. Find an empty locker, put your things in it, and call the attendant. The attendant takes a small metal tag with a string on it from his/her (some are men, some are women) pocket, chalks the number stamped on the tag on a small square of blackboard inside the locker, and hands you the tag. He/she then locks the locker – one key fits all the lockers – and you are on your way. One important thing. The number on the tag is not the locker number! You have to remember the locker number on your own. When you return from your swim, you tell the attendant the number (or point and grunt if your Hungarian is not that good). The attendant opens the locker and verifies that your tag matches the number on the inside. You hand the attendant a tip, we go for 100 forints, about 50 cents, gather your clothes, and find an empty changing room. I have no trouble with Hungarian numbers, but while I shower after my swim, I rehearse my locker number so that it rolls off my tongue without pauses – or sometimes I get overwhelmed and just point.

For leisure reading I have been reading Passage to Juneau, by the travel writer Jonathan Raban. We have read and enjoyed many of his books over the years. In this one, he is sailing from Seattle to Alaska. As he sails, he reads the histories of the early explorers of the region. In 1792, Captain George Vancouver, in command of HMS Discovery, sailed into the Juan de Fuca Strait on an expedition of exploration and map making. Raban reports that Vancouver, in a significant feat of navigation, calculated his position as:
48° 13’ N, 235° 39’ E (124° 21’ W in modern terms)
I know that Budapest is at about 48° N§, and so I was intrigued to know more about that 48th parallel.

I turned to Google Earth. If you haven’t discovered it yet – have a look at
http://earth.google.com/
You download the software, start it up and you can get an aerial view of any spot on Earth.

I typed in Seattle, WA and with a little zooming out (double click, Right) I moved the mouse until it was at Captain Van’s position. Then I scrolled east trying to keep at about 48 North. Idaho, Montana, the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where Upper Michigan juts into Lake Superior (and where the average annual snowfall is about 250 inches!). I scanned on, just missing the northern tip of Maine and out over the Atlantic. Struggling against the curve of the earth to keep on track, I made landfall in France and proceeded across Europe. Tracking eastward at an eye altitude of about 800 miles I reached Hungary. I could see the great dark crescent of the Carpathian Mountains sweeping around Hungary like a question mark. You can see why this is called the Carpathian Basin. Imagine the rains and the melting snows running down the mountains, the rains collecting on the great plain in the center. Soaking in, soaking down to the deep aquifers, where heat from below the Earth’s crust warms it so that we can pump it up into our pools and baths and enjoy life … protected by our swim caps.

PS
By my reckoning we are actually at:
47° 32’ N, 19° 02’ E

Thousands More

2005-10-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

Thousands More
October 19, 2005

About a year ago I bought a very small, digital camera, about the size of two packs of gum. It was such a cheap close-out I couldn’t resist. I tried it a bit and set it aside – in the first place it ate batteries and in the second, if I wanted photos I used our full sized digital camera. Anyway, I brought it to Hungary and I have started to carry it almost all the time. I have rechargeable batteries and I use a strip of plastic to disconnect them when not using the camera. I am reminded of my very first camera – a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. Fixed focus, no exposure control, no flash, and, in the 1950’s, black and white film. Now that I usually have a camera with me, I get a lot more pictures, perhaps not great photography, but photography.

I am tempted here to digress to Vannevar Bush and his idea of “Memex” -- you wear a camera strapped to you forehead. Given the wonders of the web, you can do the digression yourself by following these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
As Mickey would say, “or not.”

It was a bright sunny afternoon and I had an hour or so to kill, so I walked half way across the Árpád Híd (bridge) to Margit Sziget, the island park in the middle of the Duna. It is a green, restful place, and on a weekday afternoon, nearly deserted. I visited the water garden with its waterfall and meandering streams, and stopped to look at the Palatinus baths. This was one of Zoltán’s favorites and Eva has written about being there with her father.

The pools are now closed and drained for the winter. The photo looks at the empty warm water pool – in the summer the sunken tile benches would be filled with loungers enjoying the sunshine. Now it is just a quiet sign of the coming of winter.

I walked to the western bank of the island – looking towards the Buda side.

The Árpád Híd is modern and functional – not nearly the prettiest of the seven bridges of Budapest. Remember that I am on an island in the middle of the river – you only get to see half the bridge.

There is always traffic on the river, but here the commercial traffic of barges and tour boats is mostly on the other side of the island, leaving this side for recreation.

On the walk back, the bridge crosses the southern tip of the of Óbuda island also known as the Ship-Factory Island. You get to look down on a small marina. If you look at the picture of the Árpád bridge above, you will see a clump of trees to the left of center of the bridge. Between that and the clump of trees further to the left is the small inlet that shelters the boats. I suppose that owning your own pleasure boat is still somewhat rare in Hungary and so this business must cater to a rather exclusive clientele. For as long as I can remember, this marina has had a huge yacht up on supports. It dwarfs anything in the water and seems to be simply deteriorating in place.

Whenever I pass the boat, I am unaccountably reminded of the opening lines of The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway,
"Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai,' the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude."

For you in America, it is getting on to Halloween. Six years ago the holiday was essentially invisible and three years ago there were only scattered signs. This year there are more, and some stores even stock a modest selection of Halloween decorations. For the first time I have seen the orange squash, which we call pumpkins, in the market. Not very many or very big, but there.

I was very surprised when we were in the piac (farmers' market) to actually see a carved squash. This is in the center section of the market where the smaller vendors have their stands, and as you see, is a green squash not an orange one. Actually the same vendor did have the orange variety, but the little girl and her mother (just leaving to the left) – I had to wait for them to leave before I could take the picture – were much more interested in picking out the right selection of gourds.

One of our trips took us over to the street where Zoltán first lived when he returned to Hungary in the 1990s. Eva had correctly remembered that there were some garages along the street with small businesses working out of them. We are still looking for a carpenter to build shelves in our closet. The last one must have though that “rich Americans” would pay any price. He wanted $75 to put two small shelves in the bathroom.

On the way we saw this VW. Less amazing here, but still worth a picture (if you happen to have a camera with you).

We walked on and, as Eva had hoped, found an asztalos (cabinet maker. ) His place was easily recognizable by the whine of the table saw and the piles of boards of various sizes in front of the garage. He will come and give us an estimate on Friday. Since we were nearly to where Eva’s father had lived, we walked another block. There have been many renovations in the block in the last ten years, but we think we guessed the building correctly.

At this point we made an interesting geographical discovery. We were only about two blocks from the Praktiker Store (think Home Depot). When we go by Trolley, the distance is farther but then we walk less. As we walked along Bécsi Út (Vienna Street) we chanced upon this monument

Always interested, we moved up close to read it.

1944 Telén
Több Százezer Üldözött
Magyar Zsidó
Polgártársunkat
E Helyről
A Volt Óbudai
Téglagyár Területéről
Inditottak Útnak a Náci
Koncentrációs Táborokba.
Emléküket Megőrizzük!

In the winter of 1944
Many ten-thousands of persecuted
Hungarian Jews
Our fellow citizens
Were forced to begin their journey to the
Nazi concentration camps
From this place in Obuda,
The location of the former brick factory.
We preserve their memory!

We stood there remembering.
We remembered reading The Smell of Humans by Ernő Szép. You can read Eva's translation of a poem by him at:
http://showme.physics.drexel.edu/thury/Quote4.html
(Your library can get his book for you in English.)
He was a Hungarian Jew, a fine writer, and this book recounts his experiences as a forced-laborer under the Nazis. He tells of being housed in a brick factory, and we wondered if this is that place.

Our mood somewhat sobered, we walk on to look for plants for our apartment.

A Last Thought: Just because there is no monument to the lynching of black people or the murder of native Americans next to your Home Depot, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Terri’s Name Day

2005-10-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

Terri’s Name Day
October 16, 2005

Saturday was cousin Terri’s name day, so we drove the 174 kilometers to Polgár to help her celebrate. Your name day is the commemoration day of the saint whose name you bear. In Hungary, this is the day you celebrate growing older rather than your birthday.

The drive from Budapest is all expressway, an improvement over three years ago. The road is a toll road and you pay by buying a windshield sticker. Your toll is assessed by the day, not by the mile. A four-day sticker (the minimum) costs about $6 and you buy them at service stations. Stickers are checked by the highway patrol and by electronic cameras, although, since the stickers are quite small, I wonder how accurate the cameras can be. The road is quite good, and on Saturday morning the traffic was light. I remember making this drive 10 years ago with Eva’s father Zoltán. Terry was the youngest of the cousins who visited their redoubtable grandmother in Debrecen, while Zoltán was the oldest. She describes him as lying like a god on grandmother's sofa, where she was not allowed, always elegantly dressed and perfectly behaved, while she, a dirty and noisy little girl, was usually banished from the parlor altogether. If Zoltán were alive today, he would be 84; Terri is 73. Even the best parts of the road, near Budapest, were not as good in that long-ago drive, and as you got into the countryside you were on two lane roads that went through the middle of every village along the way. It was picturesque going through those villages with storks's nests on the utility poles lining the main street. The storks would sit right there at home, sometimes a whole family peering down at you.

This time it was a pleasant experience to reach Polgár, which is just where the expressway currently ends, in a bit over two hours. I think that the speed limit is 130 (that is in kilometers per hour) but some cars went by at much higher speeds – I was content to drive at 130-140. One thing to note about the drive is that the slowest traffic may be going only about 80. This means that you come up on a slow moving vehicle much faster and much more often than I am used to from American driving. The traffic confirmed Mickey’s belief that Hungarians are lousy drivers. Well, they do tend to follow too close, but I think it was the guy who had missed his exit and was backing up down the highway that cemented it. Mickey believes that Hungarians are never so happy as when they are driving backwards.

We stopped as we came into town to buy flowers and found Terri and Pista’s house without much searching. But then Polgár is not all that big. As they welcomed us into the house and we paused to take off our shoes (typical in Hungary) and hang up our coats, I told Mickey to start counting seconds. “See how long it takes Terri to bring us food.” He got to three before Terri appeared from the kitchen with a plate of still warm pogácsa – that translates as biscuits but doesn’t do them justice. Any time you arrive at Terri’s, it's meal time. She explains this by saying that there was a generation of Hungarians that lived through the war and remember not having enough to eat for weeks, months, even years. She counts herself in this group that will always be wanting to feed everyone. She almost never sits down to eat anything herself: she is a tiny lady who comfortably wears Mickey's outgrown t-shirts from when he was eight.

This was actually lunch time, so, after a bit of conversation, we gathered around the table. We started with chicken noodle soup in the Hungarian style. Terri brought out four serving dishes; one with the thin egg noodles that had been cooked in broth, a plate of carrots, potatoes, and kohlrabi that had been cooked with the soup but removed when done, a plate of chicken, also from the soup and still on the bone, and finally a pot of broth to bring your bowl to the consistency that you like. There was hot pepper if you wanted to add tang to your soup, and the nearly mandatory bread.

Of course it was also nearly mandatory to sample cousin Pista’s palinka – a brandy made from fruit he grows, ferments and distills himself (perfectly legal here). I didn’t quite get which fruit this was, it could have been pear, apricot, or mixed fruit. The word fiery is so over-used that I am left without a suitable adjective. Eva’s translation described it as distilled to 51 proof, but my tasting led me to suspect that it was 51% which is to say 102 proof! Each year Pista’s palinka is a bit different, and this one was a bit strong for my taste.

Oh, time for the second course. I don’t remember now just what it was because I had already had my fill of the wonderful soup (and had been working on the palinka).

More conversation and then Terri was off to the kitchen for some dinner preparations. I tagged along to get a lesson in making kifli gombóc – perhaps we could call them bread dumplings. For the sake of disseminating knowledge, I’ll repeat the lesson for you.

The first thing that you notice about Terri’s kitchen is that it is cluttered. I used to think that this was because she never cleaned, but I start now to see it is because she always cooks. Leftovers from lunch need to be put away, there are bones for István’s dog that need to go into a container to go home with him when he comes for dinner, an apple cake that needs to be cut into squares in case we need something to eat in mid afternoon, and so on. But now to the dumplings.

You start with 1 kiló (2.2 pounds) of rétes list – I guess that you would call it coarse flour, it is in all Hungarian food markets but if it has an equivalent in America I have no idea what it is called. Terri produces a new bag of flour and it goes into a plastic bowl. Next three eggs. Terri expertly cracks each into the well she has made in the center of the flour and cleans the last remaining drops from the inside of the shell with a swoop of her index finger. Oh, among the other things on the kitchen table, there is a small bowl with some egg whites that seem to be left from some earlier recipe that needed only the yellows. They get added too. If I was told how many egg whites it was, I didn’t get it. Terri and I communicate only in Hungarian and gesture. Stir in the eggs, then start to add water. I watch the skill with which Terri stirs the nearly full bowl. She starts with very gentle strokes, folding the flour in from the edge to the center – too much vigor at this stage would spatter the kitchen with flour. As the mixture becomes more moist, she can stir harder and adds a scraping motion to get the unblended flour from the bottom of the bowl. I notice that, when adding water, Terri does not wait for what she has added to be completely stirred in before adding more. Clearly, long experience makes getting the right consistency a nearly automatic process.

Now you add about 5 cups of kifli cubes. If you think of crescent rolls with a texture like French bread you have an approximate idea. The cubes are ½ square and have been toasted, probably with some oil mixed in. I don’t know if this was done in the oven, on top of the stove, or some combination of both. Finally, some fried bacon that has been pureed in its own grease – about three table spoons I would guess.

Next an unaccountable pause while Terri digs in a cupboard for a cookbook so old and tattered that it barely hangs together. She looks up the cooking time – boil for five minutes. At the moment I rationalize this by thinking that this may be something that she does not cook very often, but later I realize that it was solely for my benefit. Terri has no need for clocks or even minutes when she cooks. Some hidden part of her mind knows how long dumplings boil and tracks their progress even while she puts away food, washes dishes, and chats with me.

The water in the pot on the stove has come to a boil, salt has been added, and Terri shows me how to drop the dough into the water by well-rounded tablespoons. Five minutes later, who knows if it was five minutes, Terri lifts the lid, fishes a dumpling onto the inverted lid with a spoon and cuts it in half. Is it good? I stare at it with all the concentration of a pagan priest inspecting the entrails of some oracular beast. Terri pronounces it not yet ready, so it goes back into the pot. As we proceed, I learn to look for well defined internal air bubbles and to distinguish the gloss of uncooked dough from the shine of water that came out of the pot with the test dumpling. As the finished dumplings are fished into a large pan with a slotted spoon, I am given a plate and a sample of our product. Excellent! – I don’t refuse the suggestion that I try another.

Now that I have served the early stage of apprenticeship I am given charge of dropping the batches of dumplings into the pot. Terri is clearly amused by the idea of a man cooking in her kitchen and while my attention is focused on getting dumplings of exactly the right size, she takes a photograph to memorialize the occasion. In a surprisingly short time the bowl of dough has been reduced to its last scrapings – Terri wastes none of it. She appears from the pantry with a large pan of turkey and sauce that will be served over our dumplings after it has warmed in the oven. Our kitchen work over, we rejoin the others in the living room.

The afternoon is devoted to conversation as various relatives drop in with nameday greetings. Mostly I sit and listen – I do have some understanding and at one point, when someone asks Éva whether I speak any Hungarian, I reply that I only know a very little of it. They are amused. There is a lot of family talk. Pista informs us that gasoline is cheaper in the Ukraine, not that far away, but that you wouldn’t like what it does to your engine. We hear about Tamás, who graduated from law school and spent nearly a year looking for a job. He now works in Budapest, but the older people remember when being admitted to a program of study at the university meant that there was a job for you when you graduated. Capitalism brings a different set of problems. Mickey has been sitting through the conversation, understanding it but without great interest. He takes the digital camera and produces a postmodern study of my right foot.

István and Piroska arrive and with them cousin Stella who is two years younger than Mickey. Mickey and Stella have known each other for years. Teenagers have universal commonalities. He asks to look at her cell phone, and she evinces some consternation when he proceeds to read her cache of incoming text messages. Her mother asks to see the messages Mickey has been reading and is told, That's my cell phone. It's private." Stella reciprocates by taking custody of Mickey's phone, although he claims that all of his undeleted messages are from his mother – things like “do you want us to bring you some lángos (fried bread dough) when we come back from the market.” At last she grins – she has found one that she considers embarrassing, something about "I want all the details." She considers herself even. The ice broken, Mickey and Stella wander off to talk.

After dinner Mickey goes off to spend the night at István and Piroska’s while we sit with Terri and watch an old black and white Hungarian movie on television. It is a comedy which involves two con men trying to rob an old lady, and failing miserably. Then time for bed and a good night’s sleep.

Well, I wanted to write about Sunday, breakfast with homemade preserves (Terri’s are amazing) two kinds of ham and Teri’s home made horseradish sauce (from her garden) that Mickey pronounced so good that he started to imagine an advertising campaign to go commercial with it – “Momma Terri’s Torma” (torma is Hungarian for horseradish). I wanted to tell you the story that Terri told when she served us honey with breakfast. She explained that she always liked to serve honey in a small jar because then the handle of the spoon doesn’t get sticky. When Stella was little, she remarked that her other grandmother was rich because she had a big jar of honey.

If I had time to write about Sunday, I’d tell of our visit to the fürdő at Tizaujvaros, the town just down the road. Four indoor pools at temperatures which vary from 34 to 40 degrees centigrade. One of the pools lets you duck under a plastic curtain to its outdoor section (still warm water) which is a circular river with benches all the way around. Were I describing the fürdő, I’d mention the yellowish color of the water, and its resinous, sulfurous smell. When we first experienced this water, which seems to be prevalent in baths throughout eastern part of the country, it was shocking, but to Hungarians it is evocative of the water of the "blonde Tisza," their second-largest river, and a dominant presence in these parts. Starting with Sándor Petőfi, if not before, they wax as poetic about this blonde river of theirs as they do about the blue Danube. So the yellow water in the baths recalls the great eastern river; we have come to find it special and enjoyable. But there is no time to write about these things, so this part of the story will go untold.

Worth a Thousand Words

2005-10-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Worth a Thousand Words
October 15, 2005

Often I write letters on topics that just don’t call for illustration, but looking back at the blog version of these letters reminds me that pictures are nice too. Here is an assortment of photos taken in the last week or so.

I can’t ever walk past a road construction site without thinking of this verse from a folk song:

Oh Mary this London's a wonderful sight
with the people here working by day and by night.
They don't sow potatoes nor barley nor wheat
But there's gangs of men digging for gold in the street.
At least when I asked them that's what I was told
So I just took a hand at this digging for gold
But for all that I found there I might as well be
Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.

Unlike America, where blacktop paving is delivered like a load of sand or gravel, all of the asphalt that I have seen in Hungary is brought to the site in pour-able form. The most modern delivery trucks are vertical tanks, - obviously heated. The asphalt is poured into wheelbarrows, dumped, and then floated. The initial consistency is thinner than concrete and the resulting pavement is smoother and glossier than with American asphalt.

What is this picture about? Those of us who are old hands at living in panel flats know that between the panels are joints that are filled with foam insulation and then caulked. The old Communist foam absorbs moisture and deteriorates. In this picture workmen, called alpinists, are replacing the foam and caulking. The long strips hanging down are the new foam. The alpinists are sitting on boards about 20 inches square and suspended by rope, one main line, one safety line.

Speaking of panel flats, here is our apartment. We are on the eighth floor so it we are the third set of windows down - the tenth floor is the top. Find the air conditioning unSpeaking of panel flats, here is our apartment. We are on the eighth floor so it we are the third set of windows down ¬ the tenth floor is the top. Find the air conditioning unit just below a ninth floor window (it belongs to our upstairs neighbors.) Our living room is the set of windows just below the unit. The next set of windows to the left is Mickey’s bedroom, and the windows to the left of those, in the brown area, represent our balcony with our bedroom behind it. The bedroom has windows and a mostly glass door that look onto the balcony. By the way, Sanyi’s apartment is two floors below us and to the left - his windows are obscured by the tree.

Oh, that is just a left-over Roman Temple. You have to walk around a lot of that sort of thing here. As you come up from the underpass on the way to the shopping center, you pass this site. The shopping center is out of the picture to the right. The low white arches seen between the two leftmost pillars represent the shelter for the trolley stop. The Romans liked to have temples convenient to their town gates, this is near what was the south gate of the legionary camp. They found it handy to have a place to pray for a safe trip. The trolley is dependable enough that this place gets little custom these days.

Here we have a jump in time and space. We are in front of the State Opera House on the Pest side of the river. The statues on the top of this late nineteenth century building are of famous Hungarian composers. It is hard to tell in this picture, but the flags over the door are of Hungary (red, white, green) and the European Union (blue with a circle of white stars.) Almost every public building flies both flags.

Just waiting for the Trolley. No special reason for the picture. This stop, like most on major roads, is in the center of the street, reached by underpasses. The trolleys have their own lanes separate from the cars and trucks, although sometimes an ambulance or police car will use the trolley tracks as an emergency lane.

Fő Ter. We were walking home from some errand or other.

Columbus Discovers (Yawn)

2005-10-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

Columbus Discovers (Yawn)
October 13, 2005

You folks in the US were celebrating Columbus discovering America, while here in Europe it was business as usual. Columbus Day matters only to those of us who do business with you Americans. Don’t expect it to be a story in the papers or on the TV.

This is not the only difference in our media versus yours.

I mentioned before that we get CNN in English, but the show is from England, and so the content is quite different. I gave the example of the German elections, which ended in an essential tie between the two major parties at about 33% of the vote each – they are still trying to organize a new government (think parliamentary style.) Of course we still get lots of news from Iraq since the Brits are heavily involved. CNN broadcasts both American and UK correspondents for these stories. When hurricane Rita hit, we got the live American feed – people with microphones standing in the dark in driving rain.

We get BBC news, but find it largely unwatchable. In the first place, they seem to spend a lot of broadcast time showing a text screen with brief teasers for news that will be broadcast at some later time. Or for past news for this date. They are heavily business and economics oriented and they provide inordinate amounts of sports coverage – football (which unfortunately means soccer over here) and cricket. Both CNN and BBC repeat a great many of their stories over and over for days – reminding us why we don’t watch TV news at home.

In America, my custom is to listen to the NPR morning news while I make the coffee and then to bring in the newspapers which we read over breakfast. With the six-hour difference between us and Eastern Time, when I get up in Budapest at 6 am, the internet feed of NPR is the midnight show. On the other hand, we brought our laptops and a wireless router, so we simply bring the "papers" into the living room on the laptops and read the online version of the New York Times – just like at home, except that we don’t have to share sections of the paper.

Somehow, reading the paper online is less captivating than seeing it on a printed page. Perhaps browsing is harder, or it may just be that, at this distance, a lot of the stories are just less interesting. Again, the time difference means that we are mostly reading yesterday’s news. We have noticed that when we get up late, on Saturdays for example, the headlines change significantly at about 9am which is 3am New York time. We also like the feature which shows the most emailed stories since it sometimes shows us something that we have missed, again, since we are well ahead of the day’s American readers, this mostly directs us to yesterday’s news.

Last spring in the US, we discovered the Netflicks movie rental service. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a DVD rent-by-mail plan. You order movies on their website, they send you three and when you mail one back, they mail another to you. We particularly like their broad selection and the fact that there are no late fees. Besides, just avoiding Blockbuster gives us a perverse pleasure. Anyway, there is an equivalent service here in Hungary, www.dvdrent.hu. The major difference is that your DVD movies are delivered by courier. Very Hungarian: labor is cheap and apartment mailboxes not very secure, so this works best. You tell the website what day you want the movies to arrive and they send your cell phone a text message confirming the delivery day. You have to be home to get the delivery. The selection of available films is more limited, but this just gives us a chance to make new discoveries.

We have been steering clear of the American "blockbusters" dubbed into Hungarian that are so popular here. We are catching up on some Hungarian films we never saw before, like Hídember ("Bridge Man"), about Count István Széchenyi, the visionary 19th century Hungarian who championed building the Chain Bridge over the Danube, connecting Buda and Pest. He fought to modernize Hungary, bringing it out of the feudal era. This film dates from 2002: it could never have been made under the Communists who would not allow the representation of a noble as a hero.

We have also seen Adieu, plancher des vaches! a wonderful French film by Iosseliani, a Russian-born director previously unknown to us, and a politically incorrect but hilarious Communist-era Hungarian movie called "Healthy Erotica" (Egészséges Erotika). Large parts of this film were apparently filmed with the actors moving backwards and then flipped, so in the movie, they move forwards with a peculiar comic gait.

Another recent discovery is The Straight Story, an American release by David Lynch that we seemed to have missed the first time around. I think we were on our last trip to Budapest when it came out. Our friend Kati pronounced this an "atypical" American movie because it was so peaceful and meditative. She said she and her son kept expecting the main character (an old man who travels 300 miles via a John Deere riding lawnmower to visit his ailing brother) to be robbed, or murdered. They were surprised that the ending was so reserved and there was no overdone "happy end," a phrase that is used in its original English here, and usually spoken with the irony it deserves.

By the time they reach DVDs, most “foreign” films have been dubbed into Hungarian. If you see them in the theaters they are more likely to be subtitled. But on DVD you can often get the original language track and Hungarian or English subtitles, and even some Hungarian films have English subtitles available.

Instant update! Eva just discovered that as an alternative to having your films delivered by courier you can opt to pick them up at the Fotex photo store in the shopping center across the street (you know, the one above the Roman baths), and we can pick them up any time, so it seems more convenient than waiting for a delivery.

If you expect to use the newspaper to guide your shopping, try someplace else. A quarter page ad would be large for a Hungarian newspaper. Since there are virtually no Sunday editions, there are no advertising sections. Hungarian stores are not that big on special sales and the multinational chains advertise with flyers. These are not mailed, but hand delivered. Outside the front door of most apartment buildings is a wall rack for advertising. If you want one, look through and take what you want.

If you are in a major city like Philadelphia you are familiar with the Metro newspaper – a free daily aimed at commuters. Budapest has its Metro edition too, but if you want to get a free one you had better get to the transit stop very early. The alternative is to buy one from a bum. They collect the papers early and stand in traffic at intersections selling them to passing motorists. I don’t know what the price is and I’m not even sure if this is a rip-off or a service. Maybe it is not up to me to decide.

How Much?

2005-10-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

How Much?
October 3, 2005

With the Hungarian forint hovering near 200 to the dollar, price conversions are easy: Remove two zeros and divide by two. Thus a 1,000 forint note is close to $5. Wait, Hungarians use a comma for a decimal point and a decimal point for a comma. Thus you could see this amount written 1.000,00. Why they sometimes show the places after the decimal is something I don’t understand, since we haven’t seen fractional forints (called fillér) since about 1993. In fact, Hungarians themselves seem to be getting more likely to round a couple of forints up or down. But when I said "hovering" I wasn’t quite accurate. Rather, the forint moves in value pretty consistently with the Euro and, thanks to the German elections, the Euro has been down against the dollar giving us a better exchange rate.

You haven’t noticed that the Germans had elections? Our TV news has had many stories on it because we get the British version of CNN. It makes even the New York Times seem a bit provincial. But I’ll return to that in another letter.

The problem with shopping is not knowing what the price of things is, but what to expect it to be. In the past we have felt that high tech items, like printers or stereo systems could run as much as double the US price. Our observation this time is that the price differential is mostly under 20% so that, when you add shipping costs, it hardly pays to bring anything with you.

The most obvious difference in prices is that food is cheap. To figure out how cheap, you have to remember that things sold by weight are priced by the kilogram (2.2 pounds) and the standard volume measure is a liter (a bit over a quart.) So quick – if the tomatoes are priced at 338 forints a kilo, how much is that a pound? And how much should you ask for when you order in dekas, units of 10 decagrams? (Hint: you want about 40 if you want a pound but can ask for half a kilo if you want to make it easier to say.)

We were at the piac on Saturday morning and bought a whole chicken so that we could try out our new oven rotisserie. So, if a whole chicken comes with its head and feet still on, and you ask the butcher to cut off the head and feet for you, does he weigh it before or after the decapitation? The answer is after – he just adds the head and feet to the bins where he sells them separately. Unlike America, here a whole chicken comes with the innards still attached inside – the inedible ones have been removed, but there is no separate wax paper bag. We were going to make gravy, so we were happy to have them.

We had a further illustration that Hungarians believe that foreigners can’t possibly understand Hungarian when the fellow who was selling us vegetables prominently held up seven fingers to illustrate his statement that our purchase came to 700 forints. This was after Eva had ordered in Hungarian and even discussed what kind of grapes he was selling. But we had been speaking to each other in English, and Eva had asked for seedless grapes, a rarity here. We settled for seeded grapes and paid our 700 forints, for them and the eight lemons and two hot peppers needed for "poulet yassa" (described as "Afrikai csirke"), another chicken recipe Mickey and Eva are going to make from the Hungarian handicraft magazine, Praktika.

Ok, but what price would you expect to pay for a potato ricer? Should the price be more or less if the label on it says that you can also use it to mash chestnuts? The answer is that it will cost about 1.300 forints from the pot and pan guy in the piac. We don’t know if this was a good deal, or if we should have shopped around.

The top, here, as everywhere, seems outrageous to us. Mickey, having a look at one of the Hungarian decorating magazines that delight Eva, was shocked to manipulate the exchange rate and calculate that a desk chair he was looking at, a rather ugly one, he reported, cost 4,000.00. Yes, that's dollars. Eva remarked that there is a part of Hungarian society that glories in being "nouveau riche," and added that she was happy that Ikea had put the armchair she liked on sale for 6.990,00. That's forints and translates to 35.00. Dollars.

The price of a monthly bus pass is $31, and, while this seems expensive to Hungarians, a dollar a day seems like a real deal to us, as a month's worth of Septa's much more limited services back home costs about $230.00. Just today we went across town to have some pictures printed in large size to frame and hang in the living room. A trolley ride and a walk there and a bus and a trolley back (looking at the bus routes as we walked along the street, we discovered a route that we hadn't noticed on the map). As we have come to expect, transit runs at very frequent intervals. Our longest wait was about 8 minutes for the newly-discovered bus.

A couple of weeks ago we were in the Auchan supermarket (a French based firm) and Eva noted a man whose shopping cart was filled with interesting ingredients – suggesting that he was a good cook, also had about ten bottles of a wine that was one of the store’s featured specials. On the basis of this, we bought a bottle for ourselves. I can now confidently tell you that the wine compares favorably to any California wine in its price range, even though we found that it had rather a “kool-aid” undertone. The next time you are at your favorite wine boutique, ask to be shown the section of wines priced at about 80 cents a bottle. There is a good chance that the proprietor will suggest that you patronize a different store – one next door to the Salvation Army Rescue Mission. I’m not about to advocate going this low on the Hungarian wine scale, but $4 or $5 can get you a pretty nice wine.

I could go on. Even at home, the process of learning to be a consumer is ongoing, but it often means learning about "upscale" new products or emerging technologies. Here calculating the cost of daily life is just a part of the fun of being somewhere else. You get to pay attention to things which have long since disappeared from your consciousness of the home environment.

The German Army Marched

2005-09-27T00:59:00.000-07:00

The German Army Marched
September 27, 2005

The German army marched into Fő tér this morning. The Germans wore grey. They were greeted by a small crowd of "Parisians" who, although not wearing blue, were dressed appropriately for the event -- clothing from the 1940s.

Stephen Spielberg has come to town to make a movie and the classic buildings of the Óbuda town square make a wonderful movie set.
We were told in advance of the event and on Sunday afternoon we discovered that some of the small streets next to the square had new names – instead of being in the third district of Budapest, different corners of a single building are now labeled as being in the third, seventh and twentieth arrondissements of Paris. The signs advertising Dreher beer in front of the Fekete Macska (Black Cat) restaurant were now covered with new French ones turning the establishment into a hairdresser’s. On Monday, an assortment of classic cars was parked in the square while filming was apparently going on inside of the Sipós Fish Restaurant.

To us there is a wonderful charm in living next door to a part of town that could easily pass for a bit of history. In fact, Fő tér has been in other films, passing as a part of the 19th century. At least one local resident, though, was not impressed. Eva overheard a woman muttering as she came out of the Óbuda town hall adjacent to the filming, “Are those people still here? Why don't they go away?” It was not quite clear whether she meant the film crew had worn out their welcome in only two days, or if she was referring to the German army, who wore out their welcome quite some time ago.

You can watch a video of the “Germans” marching at:
http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/buda/germansmarch.avi
If you listen you will hear the officer calling out the cadence; “bal -- bal -- bal, jobb, bal”
Which is the traditional “left – left – left, right, left” in Hungarian. Perhaps this is not completely authentic in representing the Germans marching in the real Paris.

This morning, we walked through the tér on our way to register at the police station. This was what we did when we first lived in Hungary in 1999-2000 and we knew that it was still required from information we received while obtaining our visa. But the police officer on duty at the door of the station was puzzled – he had never heard of this practice. After a phone call, he led us to a bulletin board and showed us a notice announcing that, as of 2002, the police had no responsibility for registering foreigners. Apparently transatlantic communication is a bit slow because you can still go to the website of the Hungarian Embassy in Washington and read:
“foreigners whose continuous stay in Hungary exceeds 30 days and do not lodge in hotels, motels, or other public lodging facilities are required to register their address with the local police” (http://www.huembwas.org/Consular/ReqComVisaApp.htm).
Thus we were rewarded for our careful research by having the morning given back to us, though we had planned to donate it to bureaucracy. We used our new-found time for browsing in a furniture store, a leisurely walk to the farmers' market, buying a bunch of zinnias ($1) and two strings of hot peppers to dry for winter cooking.

My Hungarian is coming back but I am still long on nouns and numbers and short on verbs. There is also a confluence of problems – Hungarians are not used to listening to Hungarian uttered by non-native speakers and my pronunciation (not to mention grammar) can be a challenge to the most careful listener. The other day I was buying things at the pickle vendor and wanted some grated squash. No, the squash aren’t pickled but that is where you buy them. I asked for squash and she began weighing out pickles. Now the Hungarian words are tök and uborka, no easier to confuse than squash and pickles in English, but I think that she heard my abominable Hungarian when I said “good day” and just decided to turn off listening and get whatever I seemed to be pointing at.

We now have the appliances necessary to call our apartment furnished. A refrigerator, stove, and washing machine. The refrigerator is very large by Hungarian standards (which means that it is less than half the size of our one at home. We probably wouldn’t have gone for such a large one, but this is a used machine bought from our friend Kati. She is redoing her kitchen and wanted a more “normal” sized “hűtő.” It was a win-win transaction.

In previous letters I have mentioned the contortions required to light a typical stove here. You turn the gas on, hold in the knob, light a match, and use it to light the burner, being sure to keep the knob in until the sensor recognizes that the flame is lit. Then you blow out and dispose of the match. This procedure calls for contortions that make you wish for three or four hands, and to make matters worse, you sometimes don’t hold the knob in long enough and end up having to repeat the process. Oh, and then sometimes you accidentally extinguish the flame while adjusting the heat and have to perform the process again while shuffling a hot pot. In buying a new stove we discovered that a range of options was now available to replace the traditional match-lit gas stove. You could have fully automatic ignition, or a much-touted model which sent out a spark while you switched the gas on. We pondered some about the Hungarian caution about gas seepage. Was it justified or not? Was it based on a well-founded concern about the quality of gas service that was based, perhaps, on knowledge of the sloppy practices of the state-run gas company? Or was it one of the irrational fears we have identified among Hungarians, like the firmly held belief that going around with your hair wet will cause a cold, or the conviction that all adults have athlete's foot and so they should not be allowed in children's pools where they will infect the innocent little ones? Unsure of how much caution we should throw to the winds, we settled on a range with what I would call semi-electronic ignition – you push in the gas knob with one hand and press the ignition button with the other. Delete the contortions involving a match. How easy it is to achieve happiness! While purchasing this marvelous contraption, we indulged what Hungarians believe is our American capacity for excess by splurging and getting an oven with a built-in rotisserie – I'll report more when we have actually used it.

Finally there is our washing machine, a front loading Whirlpool that can wash 5 kilos of laundry at a time. This is still less than half the size of an American machine but it is a great step in both automation and effectiveness from our previous Hungarian washing machines. As with almost all washing machines here (and I believe that here means most of Europe) there is only a cold water connection – the machine heats the water to the temperature that you select. One important feature that you look for in a washing machine here is the speed of the spin cycle. Ours can go up to 800 revolutions per minute while others advertise 1,000 RPM. Spin is important because, of course, clothes dryers are rare. We hang out laundry on the balcony. It probably won’t affect how you think about your next washing machine purchase, but, from my observations of this machine, I have concluded that spin speed is not a complete indicator of how much water the machine will extract. In the first place, I suspect that the step between 800 and 1000 RPM is not a 20% change in effectiveness but probably less that 5%. I also noticed that our new machine stops during the spin cycle, revolves slowly for a minute to redistribute the laundry for better extraction, and then shifts back to high speed. Being trained as an engineer is wonderful! I can get as much pleasure from watching the window of the washing machine as I can from the window of the TV set...

My description of appliances requires one last word about instructions – or more particularly, the language(s) in which they are written. Our washing machine came with directions in about 18 different languages, one of them English (British English that is, -- instead of telling you to plug in the machine, it instructs you to connect it to the “mains.”) On the other hand, the range came with instructions only in Hungarian. One of our worst experiences has been with the answering machine that came with extensive German instructions and a much briefer set in Hungarian which proved to be incorrect. To set the time and date and record a greeting, Eva spent several hours working through the German instructions and resorting to extensive trial and error – she claims that German is not really one of her languages. She now believes there is no way to alter the fact that, when you play back a message, the machine announces the day and time it arrived in German!

Well, I have rambled from the initial story, but such meandering is part of our lives here – and perhaps of life everywhere, if you only pause to look at it.

Fall – Rite II

2005-09-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

Fall – Rite II
September 26, 2005

Monday (the 19th) was the first rainy day since we arrived and Tuesday was more of the same. At breakfast on Tuesday we watched the clouds slide down the Buda hills and by ten o’clock the city was engulfed in a damp mist with occasional rain. The temperature was in the teens (that is Celsius, 60s for Fahrenheit people.)

As I looked across Flórián ter at the ring of ten story apartment houses, each much like ours, I thought of all of the people who, much like me, were performing the fall ritual pulling on their sweaters (in my case sweat shirt) because the heat is not yet on. Not that it was very uncomfortable, just a reminder that it seems to be a tradition here to turn on the heat just a bit late. Going back over my old letters, I see that last time (in a different apartment house) the heat came on on September 26. We will see.

We are settling in and have mostly completed the furnishing of our apartment. We are getting used to shopping and have started the switch to adding many more Hungarian dishes to our meal plans. In part we are inspired by what is in the markets, and there is always that odd feature of apartment living – you can smell in the corridors what your neighbors are cooking for dinner. More to the dinner planning point – Eva can identify what it is, “Oh, someone is making stuffed cabbage.” And, of course, the markets smell. Now in America, if the market smells, it is almost always a bad thing, but here the produce sections smell – like produce. It is as if they were selling fresh fruits and vegetables rather than ones pre-dipped in plastic.

I actually started thinking about the freshness of vegetables in the piac (farmers market) just a few blocks from us. I noticed that the greens attached to the parsely roots were starting to wilt. My first reaction was to think that they were too old, but on second thought I realized that in America we would simply remove the greens – they would wilt but you wouldn’t see them. I formulated a fundamental principle: “You can’t fool vegetables – as soon as you pick them they start to die.” In America we are accustomed to performing a kind of mortuary science involving dipping in wax, refrigeration, picking before ripeness, and storage in controlled atmospheres. But, on a cellular level, the vegetables still know. Here in Hungary more of the answer is to get the food to the store and sell it.

To us, Hungary seems more prosperous than ever. One of the small signs is to look at how people are dressed at the trolley stop. Five years ago you were likely to see the same coat or sweater (in different colors, with different buttons) on five or six people. People wore whatever was shipped cheaply in bulk from China. Now there is much more diversity and also greater style. We are not just talking about young people here – greater style cuts across the population.

There are still some things that are probably invisible to Hungarians but make things look run-down to us One of them is the low level of maintenance of public grassy areas. Driving to Ikea the other week, I noted that the median strip had not been mowed for at least a month. The same is unevenly true throughout the city with weeds reaching nearly a foot high in some places. In contrast, Ikea maintains a perfectly manicured lawn in front of the store – we sometimes see shoppers stopped to picnic on it. I think that this is mainly a matter of sensibility, although there may be some jurisdictional confusion. After the "change of regime" in 1989, public areas throughout the country were untended as the government agencies responsible for them were dissolved. Things look much better now, but the tending of public space still seems erratic, and the grass between the sidewalk and the street represents a prime area of uncertainty.

And then there are the little pleasures. As we sit at our dinner table we look out at the Buda hills and the sunset. I’ve attached a panorama taken from our balcony. In fact this is the view that we wanted when we were apartment hunting. Not bad for city living.

In my letter about the wine festival I forgot to give you a link to a very short movie of folk dancing. Here it is: (2.1meg)
http://drott.cis.drexel.edu/buda/folk dance.avi

A Rite of Fall

2005-09-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

A Rite of Fall
September 10, 2005

It is the second weekend in September and time for Budapest’s wine festival (Bor Fesztival) This event celebrates Hungary’s considerable wine industry with a huge wine tasting celebration. It takes place at the Buda Var, the great 19th century palace set on a hill high above the Duna (Danube) river. When we were here three years ago, we went at the recommendation of our friend Kati. We need no encouragement to go this year.

We meet Kati at the bus stop and are soon at Clark Adam tér (which is to say, Adam Clark square) named after the British engineer who designed the beautiful Chain Bridge whose western end touches the square. The span is a suspension bridge whose “chains” are made with links of dog-bone shaped steel, each about six feet long and joined at their ends with massive pins. The “square” is actually a large circle with floral plantings at its center. Beyond the tér, Castle Hill rises steeply and the road crossing the bridge dives into a tunnel; a funicular railroad provides transportation straight up the incline. The funicular consists of two cars joined by a cable, the weight of the descending car helps pull the other one to the top.

We choose to walk the zigzag pathways to the top of the hill, pausing on a bridge over the funicular tracks to take this photo.

You can see Clark Adam ter to the left and the chain bridge in the background.

At the top of the hill you pay the $20 admission fee which covers the entertainment, a commemorative wine glass and coupons good for one glass of wine. There are hundreds of booths representing different vineyards – at least double the number we saw three years ago. At each booth there are from five to twenty wines available for sampling, with prices ranging from about $1.25 to $2.50 a glass. (In our opinion, price does not seem particularly related to quality.) Our custom is to share a single glass, more tasting with less excess buzz. In general, the booths are grouped by region, but Eva and I are still learning the details of our Hungarian geography so that this is not as meaningful as it might be to Hungarians. Unlike three years ago, there are booths representing regions like “Chile” “Africa” and “France.”

We are normally drinkers of dry white wines, in part because many reds we buy in America give us headaches, but in Hungary, under Kati’s direction, we try a wide range of reds. There are also food stands – we try a sampling of cheeses and a traditional Hungarian bread that reminds us of pizza (cheese and sausage, but no tomato sauce) baked in a wood fired clay oven.

The entertainment is provided by traditional dancers from all over Hungary. We particularly like the groups that are mostly young people. Two of the dance performances include dramatized wedding ceremonies. Since we attended a village wedding the last time we were in Hungary, we are in a much better position to recognize different traditional activities – the use of rhymed couplets by the master of ceremonies who carries a staff with multicolor, trailing ribbons, the bride and groom saying goodbye to their own families, the “kidnapping” of the bride and the substitution of a false (male) bride, the change of clothes marking the change of the bride’s status, and more. The dances are very colorful, with authentic traditional musical accompaniment.

The bride and groom (center) greet their new in-laws.

By 7:30, our heads are full of the whirling of colored costumes, flourishes of the violin and the dulcimer-like cimbalom, and especially the wine from all over Hungary. We are almost ready to descend to the bus station and wend our way home to Mickey. We pause for one last sample of wine – pezsgo, the Hungarian version of champagne (Hungarians might argue that champagne is the French imitation of pezsgo). Departing from our sharing practices, Eva and I have the very dry, while Kati samples the sweet. We are all pleased with our choice. The crowds have thickened and we need to push our way through masses of attendees, some of whom have clearly done much more wine sampling than we have. As we leave, we see lines of people waiting to get in (the festival goes on until 11 pm) – this is clearly an EVENT.

Reunion

2005-09-06T05:09:00.000-07:00

Reunion

Tuesday September 6, 2005

This was a big day for us, as we were reunited with the boxes we shipped air freight from America.

To begin at the beginning, air freight comes in to Budapest at Ferihegy I, known to us as the old airport, although a recent news story suggests that it will soon be used for some passenger (perhaps charter) flights. Since the airport is some miles outside the city, and we sent too many boxes to carry home on the bus, renting a car is a sensible alternative. We already knew of a rental company we had liked in the past, so Eva reserves a Citroen station wagon. Pick it up Monday at four, return it Tuesday by four. We want to get an early start on Tuesday because we knew from past experience that dealing with paperwork, especially customs, is likely to consume the entire day.

Thus we end up with a car for the remainder of Monday: this represents an unexpected chance for a foray to Ikea. Between our visit the previous week and reading the catalog before we left home, we pretty much know what we want. If we wanted it and it was heavy, now is our chance! A dining room table, four chairs, TV table, 3 dressers, 3 wardrobes (2.35 meters high, which is to say the boxes are over 7 feet long,) two table tops and two sets of legs for our desks, plus the miscellaneous small items we couldn’t live without. Three full flatbed Ikea carts (some of the furniture items came in several boxes each) and an amazing packing job later we are ready to head home. One slight problem, there is barely room for the driver. No problem, drive off without Eva. She volunteers to take the subway and commuter train home and ends up back in time for most of the unloading. We unload with Sanyi’s help: it all fits in the lift, though the apartment takes on the appearance of a warehouse.

Tuesday, bright and early we are off to claim our boxes. To say that the streets of Budapest are not well marked is to praise them far too highly. Street signs are mounted on the walls of the corner buildings some place between ten and twenty feet high. If there is no corner building, there is no street sign. It also seems that if the building is modern, it tends not to have signs – well, after all, everyone has lived here their entire lives, so who needs signs? We find the air freight office next to the airport after asking directions only once.

Our first amazement is that there is only one person in line in front of us. We remember long, slow moving lines from our earlier trips. Of course, as before, everyone else doing business there is a professional shipper – everyone knows everyone else. The woman behind the counter, recognizing Eva’s name, even asks if her directions to the office were adequate. We get our shipping papers and cross the parking lot. We dodge big trucks, since this is an air freight facility. Up the stairs of a modern building to the customs office. No line. The customs officer determines that we should have had one more copy of a shipping document, but no problem, he goes off and makes a copy himself. (This may not amaze you, but our belief is that in 1999 making us go back to the shipping office for the copy would have been seen as a positive civic virtue.) After a few moments' consideration he decides that our boxes don’t need to be inspected and stamps the release papers. (In 1999, customs opened every one of our 32 boxes and actually looked at the contents. “Why do you have these ‘diver suits’ (wet suits)?” “We dive in them.” "Oh." We were charged a fee for this service.)

Back across the parking lot to the freight office. Again, no one in line in front of us. A bit of time while the clerk calculates our fees and gives us a bill. Back across the lot to pay, again only one person ahead of us, although he is doing a lot of business which requires him to leave for about five minutes in the middle of the transaction. Back to the freight office with the receipt, we get our shipping papers and then around the corner to hand them in at the warehouse entrance. I bring the car around and very soon a fork lift operator sets down a pallet with our boxes just behind the car. Elapsed time under one hour; we had planned on spending the entire day. We begin to suspect that Hungary is getting serious about doing international business. Load and back to Budapest, getting lost only a couple of times.

Compared with the Ikea load, six boxes of clothes and one of books is an easy haul up to our apartment. With over five hours left on our car, we decide to shop for rugs at the bigger Ikea outside of town. We get a little lost on the way. Time to get to the other Ikea 1 ½ hours – time to get home ½ hour. You can understand that getting there was definitely not half the fun. A new rug, bedding, and some other "essentials" and we are back home to our now fully furnished apartment – if things still packed flat in boxes count as furniture.

The last step is to fill the car with gas and return it. The sign at the gas station advertises $2.85 a gallon. Whoops! That sign says 285 forints and the unit of measure is a liter (the metrically challenged can think quart.) Eva thoughtfully converts the price to about $6.00 per gallon U.S. We pay $20 for a quarter of a tank, return the car, and now take mass transit home. The subway train pulls in as we are coming down the stairs, but as good Hungarians we don’t bother to run for it. Sure enough, two minutes later the next train arrives. One stop, then up the stairs to the trolley (tram to you Anglophones and villamos to us.) There is a trolley at the stop and we do run for it, but, alas, it leaves and we wait impatiently for the next one, two minutes behind.

Unfurnished Flat

2005-09-02T04:55:00.000-07:00

Unfurnished Flat

September 1-2, 2005

One of the things about an unfurnished apartment (but since Hungarians learn British English they are flats to Anglophones here) is that it doesn’t have any furniture. We had anticipated this and using a Hungarian Ikea catalog, the Hungarian Ikea website, and our American catalog and local Ikea store, we had picked out two beds, a large bookcase, and a sofa. Our friend Kati had purchased them in Budapest and arranged for delivery and assembly. We also had four Ikea stools stored since we were last in Hungary. On the other hand, this still leaves you somewhat short of furniture such as a refrigerator, washing machine (no coin laundries in this part of the world), table, and any place to hang or store any clothing. Yes, we do have one closet, but it lacks a rod. We also had a range that was on its last legs.

For household goods (left the last time we were here) we had one towel, five plastic bowls, one glass bowl, 6 glasses, 4 wine glasses, 2 bread boxes (we can’t figure out why either), a cutting board and a couple of knives. But at least we could start the day, since we had our coffee maker and cups and had brought 2 pounds of Starbucks French Roast. Eva’s cousin Sanyi had bought us bread, butter and milk, and leant us a cooler with some blue-ice to keep things in. Oh, we did also have sheets and blankets so we did get to bed all right. Time to begin our first day in Budapest with some shopping.

Luckily, we know our way around and have some sources of advice on where to shop. Unluckily, our continent-hopping has left us at an intellectual level that would make toads blush. Measure, measure, measure and off we go.

First we order a phone. The former (Communist) government phone monopoly, MATAV, has been privatized and is now a part of T-Mobile (DeutscheTelecom) They were pleased to take our order for phone and internet service and to tell us that they will be out within the month to hook it up! (For the record, the average wait under Communism was two years, so I suppose we should be impressed by the improvement.)

Next a quick stop to look at appliances.

An interview with the principal at Mickey’s new school.

A trip to IKEA. Things have sufficiently run together in my mind that I no longer remember what we hauled home on this particular trip. Of course, this was all being done on mass transit, a system that is so good that those of you in benighted America would find it hard to comprehend. I’ll provide you with an extended rant at some later date.

Since we were short on the ability to cook, we had dinner at IKEA. I had the venison ragout which automatically comes with an airline-sized bottle of liqueur ( 80 proof.) You might look for it in your Ikea. Of course in Hungary almost every store or office has a “Büfé” and almost every one sells alcohol. In Ikea you could get beer or wine to go with your meal.

And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

On the Road

2005-08-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

On the Road

August 29-30

Three people, one starting point, one destination – three routes.

Mickey, on frequent flier miles, left early, (Phila-Frankfurt-Budapest) both to be over jet lag for the start of school and because he had an interview with the Hungarian school principal. As it turned out, it was more of an entrance exam than an interview. And just in case you haven’t thought of it, no matter how much math you know you are not going to do very well if the questions are in Hungarian using technical terms that you haven’t learned (can you say “least common denominator” in Magyar?) Actually the literature exam went better since it was mostly oral – the teacher, who will be Mickey’s new homeroom teacher, asked about Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which Mickey read for school last year. Mickey was able to give a good answer based on a paper he wrote identifying religious symbolism in the story. Anyway, he was accepted and now has a completely new school to get used to.

Carl, also doing frequent flyer, went Newark-Detroit-Amsterdam-Prague-Budapest. Well, in fact it was Newark-Detroit-Shannon (Ireland)-Amsterdam-Budapest with the Shannon stop to get aid for a sick passenger. No, we were not using the Dr. Mengela Travel Agency, it was just the combination of what airlines the frequent flyer covered and the very important fact that we wanted the cat to travel in cabin (it seems that about half the airlines do not allow this.) He was met at the airport by Sanyi and Mickey who had been waiting for hours because of the 1 ½ hour delay in Ireland. He was not met by any of his three bags. Oh, by the way, he started out with two bags but ended up overweight at the airport. And, because of the peculiarities of pricing, which the USAir agent completely failed to explain, it turns out to be much cheaper to pay for a third bag rather than an overweight one. Luckily he had a small duffel in his luggage and moved some of the heaviest stuff to that.

Eva came last, flying on the cheapest ticket deal we could find (from a travel agent who, it turns out had not actually got around to booking the tickets.) Her route of Phila-London-Budapest was largely uneventful. Warned by a cellphone text-message from Carl, she also changed to a three bag arrangement at the airport. Her 5 hour London layover gave her just enough time to take the “tube” into town for a quick look around.

So, by about 8 p.m. Central European Time on Tuesday (6 hours ahead of Eastern U.S. time) we were finally a family of four again in our Budapest apartment.

Family of four? Yes, Llyann enjoyed the trip as much as a cat is likely to enjoy that sort of thing. In fact, except for complaints at take-off, she was quite good. I was extremely lucky to have the row of four center seats all to myself for the trans-Atlantic leg and was able to stretch out on the seats. I tucked the cat in her carrier so that I was curled around it and covered us up with a blanket. This seemed to be all that Llyann needed and she didn’t make a peep all night.

Well, we are now in Hungary, at least two of us seriously jet lagged (do cats get jet lag – I doubt it, but it is, perhaps, a fundable research project…)

We’re going to Budapest and we’re going to take

2005-08-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

We’re going to Budapest and we’re going to take

Saturday August 20

Do you remember the old party game about going on a trip? You sit around in a circle and each person in turn starts by saying “I’m going on a trip and I’m going to take ..” after which the first person names an item to take. The next player starts the recitation from the beginning, mentions the first player’s item, and then adds one of their own. And so around the circle. Each player must correctly recite the entire previous list and then add an item of their own. If a player misses, they are out of the game.

We are in our own harried version of this game with just nine days before we leave for Budapest for a ten month stay. It is not just what to take … it is also store, ship, buy, contact, tell, and on and on. There are no winners in this version of the game, everyone loses their mind.

The cat (yes, she is going with us) has had her exam and shots. Our old friend Steve did it because we wanted a USDA certified veterinarian (hard to find) do to the forms. Because of new Airline rules on pet travel, the cat has a newly implanted electronic ID chip. (Don’t be jealous -- Congress is working on a law so that you will get one too.) Thus the cat’s name is now 462A51796C, formerly known as Llyann.

We have had to get our prescription plan to fill ten months of prescriptions (you don’t want to know.) Get our medical and dental exams up to date. Get the necessary health records to enroll Mickey in Hungarian school, collect the vitamins and non-prescription meds that we are not sure we will be able to buy there. Even some things that we can get there we will take – contact lens solution, for which we pay under $4 a bottle here, went for about $18 a bottle in Budapest when we were there three years ago.

Mickey left early, last week – both to get over jet lag and to have an interview with the school principal. We have pretty closed down the kitchen and eating from the freezer.

If you are going to stay in Hungary for more than 90 days you need a visa. It takes about a month of sending documents to the Hungarian embassy in Washington. For example, it wasn’t just enough to send an official letter that we would be on sabbatical leave from Drexel and so still drawing a part of our salary – there needed to be a letter stating exactly how much that was. Well, at least establishing that we had a place to live was easier, although we had to have our Budapest lawyer fax the “right” ownership papers for our apartment -- we had the “wrong” ones. It took so long that Mickey went without and, since you cannot get a Hungarian visa in Hungary, in a few weeks we will make a trip to Bratislava to pick his up. (not all that far from Budapest if you know your geography (which I didn’t until last week.)

Shades of 9-11, you can no longer just take your air freight down to the British Air depot and send it. Although when we went in 2002 you could still do this. To send your extra boxes, you take them to a cargo company, about 20 minutes away and spend an hour or two filling out forms. In fact, I filled out the forms in advance, so the time was spent watching them look at the forms. Then the boxes will be trucked to Canada, X-rayed, and finally air-freighted to Budapest. A way of doing business that I have come to call Islamic Modern.

Everything is done a little different that before. You can no longer pay the phone company to hold your number until you come back, they have a six month limit. So you buy four months of voice mailbox, then have the number held for 6 months, then pay a reinstatement fee.

On the other hand, the internet has done wonderful things for international long distance calling. If you, and the person you want to talk to both have internet connected computers, then you can talk to each other for free on Skype (www.Skype.com) For about 2.5 cents per minute you can use you computer (having a headset with earphone and microphone is nice) to call a landline phone almost anywhere in the world. The final touch is that for about $35 a year you can have a phone number that will connect to your internet connected computer almost anywhere you are. We are hoping to have a local
Philadelphia number that folks can call and we can pick up in Hungary. (but remember, we are six hours later!)

It shouldn’t surprise you – we ran out of time before we ran out of things to do. In actual fact, I am finishing this up on September 7, and, since we don’t yet have an internet connection (or a land line phone) I don’t know when this will get posted.

The next report will be from Budapest.