Hungarian Language?

One of the issues I did not fully explore in my previous posts was the Hungarian Language.

First the good thing is they use the same letters to spell words as we do.

Second the bad thing is that they use those letters in illegal combinations!

SZ, CZ, ZS, CS are not letters that should be permitted to be together.

And then GY is pronounced like D in due? Come on guys this is getting difficult.

And then O is not only O, it is also Ó, Ö, and Õ. OH ÓH ÖH my ÕH my!

So you read your little book, and find out that Hungarian is a "unique" language, not related at all to the Germanic languages that ruled it, or the Turkish that frequently invaded it, nor the neighboring Slavic languages. In fact in desperation the only language somewhat related that they can find is FINNISH! Which pretty much means that to try and learn it in a two week vacation you are FINISHED.

"The" in Hungarian is A or AZ. And they don't have an indefinite article, "a", but instead use the word ONE (EGY). "The house" is A HAZ, and "a house" is "one house" or EGY HAZ.

Much of their grammar is by changing the suffixes. In stead of using prepositions like IN THE HOUSE, AT THE HOUSE, BY THE HOUSE, they instead tack on suffixes to the word for house, HAZ. So in the house, is HAZBAN. Into the house, is HAZBA. Out of the house, is HAZBOL. On the house, is HAZON. Off the house, is HAZROL. By the house, is HAZNAL. And to the house, is HAZHOZ.

And it gets worse!

Well, I found that in many areas German worked as a second language, although not all that popular as the language of the former oppressors. And someone else said, well everyone speaks English...., the problem being that I did not have the fortune to meet said Mr. Everyone very often, more often I met Miss Nowayjose!

So although most menus had an English translation available, at times one just must use a Hungarian/English handbook, and remember that C is pronounced TS, and SZ is pronounced S, and oh yes, GY is D.....

Well, I don't have any pictures to show you linguistic challenges, but fortunately Monty Python, has illustrated the problem of Hungarian/English handbooks, especially if you make the mistake of buying a naughty one. Try this U-tube and you'll get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

Paprika?

It was the fall, and the harvests were being brought it.
Every market has fresh things, and farmer's markets are still held in most European towns at least once a week or more often.

Deanne will have to explain the many different kinds of Paprika the Hungarians use.

I will just explain how wonderful it tastes. Since we eat three times a day, obviously Austrian and Hungarian food was a daily delight.

I don't want to bore you with a catalogue of what we ate! But I do want to extract some essences from what we enjoyed.

1.) I don't know what they do that is different from what we do, but the Austrians make bread like no where else in the world. Their white bread isn't mushy. Their heavy bread isn't too heavy, their rye breads aren't bitter!

2.) We were warned by all the guide books (we had 5 for Hungary alone) that "vegetarians will have a hard time in Hungary" since they love meat so much. And it is true that on the table for lunch at my meetings they had Meat wrapped inside Meat!

However even at this meeting, vegetarian choices were available, and all the restaurants we went to either had some meatless choices, or they accommodated us cheerfully and very nicely with meatless dishes. This was a mushroom goulash.

This was a garden fresh crepe or some such wonderful concoction.

Now if they say vegans would have a hard time, I might agree, since dairy was used in many of their options. But we had wonderfully tasty vegetables, we had mushroom goulashes, we had mushrooms wrapped in a thin pancake and then deep fried making a fantastic entree. And every town had a market day with farmer fresh fruits and vegetables offered.

And even if you love meat, you would love the wonderful Vegetarium Etterum (Now this one Hungarian word that makes sense, an eatery! for restaurant) down in a basement location so wonderfully decorated, and with a fantastic menu.

3.) My personal delight was to eat Palatschinken again, those thin pancakes filled with sweet Quark (or Topfen) cheeses and raisins, some lemon juice, and covered with powdered sugar. But I also enjoyed a Kaiserschmieren, which is a fluffy sweet souffle at the Central Cafe in Vienna, Austria.

4.) And the grape juice! Fresh Traubensaft was available in Austria, especially now at harvest time.

In Hungary we had Apricot or Peach nectar often, but a special drink was Meggy which is a sour cherry nectar that seems a Hungarian specialty that Deanne much favored.

The Terror Haza

On the beautiful classy Andressay Blvd. are most of the embassies, fine stores, governmental offices. It has a main road, bilateral pedestrian walks on each side, and then a service road on each side of that, so it is a large hansom road.

But #60 is a stone building that has a new addition on it, a wrap around border has been added on the top floor that says TERROR HAZA, or Terror House. The reason is that this building was the source of terror visited on the inhabitants of Hungary from 1940's to 1989. In fact it was not till 2001 that the last Hungarian political prisoner was released from the Russian Gulags to which thousands and thousands of Hungarians had been sent.

This building was first used by the ARROW CROSS party which was the pro-Hitler party in Hungary and in its basements they began to intimidate, beat up, and sometimes kill their enemies, mostly the Jews of Hungary. Until the Germans invaded Hungary with troops, their activities were partly restrained by the weak Hungarian government, but in 1944 when Hitler sent in the troops, the ARROW CROSS party became the real government, and the Germans donated Adolph Eichmann to them, and in the hopeless last days of Nazi power, with demonic determination the planned extermination of the Jew was feverishly prosecuted in Hungary.

The Arrow Cross was the symbol of Hungarian Nazism. It reminded me that the Nazi Swastika in German is called the HAKKEN KREUTZ or the Hacking Cross. How demonic that both organizations used a deformity of the Cross with a hacking or spearing twist for their twisted anti-Christian destruction and terror.

I was reminded that these systems appeal mostly to the underclasses, you could be a no-body but join the party and suddenly you could be the boss! You could humiliate and terrorize the "system" which in Europe is the system of classes, of aristocracy, of hereditary privilege, or talent.

If you had no heredity, and little talent, the "party"either Nazi or Communist, offered a way to put you at the head of the class, high on the feeding chain. I saw the same thing in South Africa where the most fanatical supporters of Apartheid were the lower class whites, who knew that in a competition with talented blacks their jobs would be lost to those of color with ability. They held onto their "racial superiority" as a mask for their inferiority.

There were 600,000 Jews in Hungary at the beginning of 1944. When the Red Army finally smashed the Germans in 1945, there were only 200,000 left. In less than a year the majority were sent to Auschwitz or simply murdered in Hungary.

However as the Communists powered by the Russian Army but followed by their bureaucrats who became "advisers" for Moscow trained Hungarians, they took over the ARROW CROSS headquarters at 60 Andressay Utca and made it their Secret Police (AVH) command post. So Nazi terror was simply replaced by Soviet Communist Terror, and Stalinist Communists who had survived the terror in Moscow, brought the terror to Hungary.

In this building, now a museum of the past, you can watch Communist era propaganda films. The great leader is met by adoring crowds, their speeches are loudly and enthusiastically applauded, little children bring them bouquets of flowers. And all of it supported by the secret police who for the crime of not applauding enthusiastically enough would grab you, and send you to a forced labor camp in Hungary or in Siberia with no trial, no redress. No wonder those people in the films are clapping so vigorously to the dictator's speeches!

Outside Budapest someone has built a park to take representative statues from the Communist reign in Hungary, and mounted them to help people remember the past so many are trying to forget and even I think pretend it didn't happen.

The statues are coarse and husky, and the liberators all carry machine guns!

As one of my books wrote, the Red Army came to liberate Hungary from the Germans, but they couldn't bring liberty, because none of them had any at home in Russia. They just brought another kind of oppression, a system sustainable only by violence and terror.

The happiest thing is that the huge statue of Stalin erected by his fawning underlings in Budapest around 1951, during the 1956 Hungarian revolt, was one of the first things to go in the few days that the Russians fell back before sending in their massive army to crush the revolution.

The rebellious mob of students and Hungarian soldiers going over to the side of revolt, pulled it down, a passing truck with a welder stopped and used their torch to cut him off at the legs, so all that is left of Stalin is his empty boots.

The Russians soon sent back 500,000 troops (we have 130,000 in Iraq) to control the 10,000,000 Hungarians. Their tanks smashed the hand built street barricades in Budapest, and their Secret Police identified and either killed or sent to the Gulag in Siberia at least 20,000 Hungarians.

It took 34 more year before that Revolution against Communism finally won over the morally bankrupt and economic disaster of the experiment in scientific atheism.

The Communist art was all triumphal, and one famous statue shows a mythical "worker" running with the Russian Flag in his arms at joy over being "liberated" by the Red Army.

The Hungarians after a thousand year of being occupied by one power or the other, have a cynical sense of humor, and their interpretation of this statue was that this was a Russian Soldier who found a towel in a Hungarian house and was running away after stealing it!

Why was Buddah being a Pest?

The World Institute of Pain held its 4th annual convention in Budapest, Hungary September 25-28. I usually try to avoid pain, and would like to be better at treating my patients with pains, especially chronic ones. And I had never been to Hungary before. So I signed up.

Dr. Don Bassham agreed that as a Dentist avoiding pain this was a meeting we could share.

Sue Bassham said, Yippee!

We said good bye to Melissa Bassham and Sarah Bowen in Vienna, (Sarah, I have now decided, is my daughter-in-law-once-removed, since she is Alyssa Hoehn's sister), when they had to face the pain of going back to schools.

We missed their company very much, but the four of us bravely journeyed on past Neusiedler See where we looked at Eisenstadt and stopped at a Sunday morning flea market staffed by Schwartzenegger types and swarthy Swabians and very Indian looking Gypsies selling treasures and junk of all kinds. Don wanted to buy the Zither, and I was tempted at some silvery looking coins that I decided had to be fake knockoffs because the prices were so low!

In fact I did find a genuine Silver 1 oz coin with the fabled Chester A. Arthur, 21st president of the USA, on it.

Since Deanne, Jonathan, and Andrew have the honor of being blood relatives of said noble public servant and historical footnote, I bought this medallion for EURO 12, and felt myself lucky. Why a Bill Clinton would have cost twice as much I am sure. Deanne found some antique silver and pewter spoons she needed. Sue also scored some treasure. And Don was busy with some hard bargaining with some Roma (Gypsies).

We crossed the border into Hungary with minimal difficulties. And stopped at the Hungarian town of SOPRON, long of course an Austrian town, and still a shopping destination for Austrians for lower Hungarian prices. The town was very much the same style as an Austrian town with old medieval core and walled city with two churches inside. The difference is that Austria has been a democracy/free enterprise with socialism at the edges country for 50 years, and Hungary was gobbled up by the Russian Bear at the end of WW2, and didn't fully shake off this burden till 1989! So although they have been rushing to make up for lost time, and the country now functions as a democracy/free enterprise state with a little tiny bit of socialism on the edges, it has been slower to rebound because of the 44 years of Communist mismanagement and terror.

So the buildings are less likely to be recently painted, and for me it was very much like looking at Austria in the 1960's. To be honest the roads were all good, there is a gasoline filling station on every other corner, and the shops and markets are full and reasonably priced. Hungary is doing a great job of forgetting their recent history.

Budapest is an elegant city, nicely situated on both banks of the Danube. Buda sits on hills to the North bank of the river, it is older, has an Austrian/Hungarian era castle for the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire (Elizabeth or Sisi), and a fortress built by the Austrians to keep all Budapest within gun range in case they had any ideas to try to revolt again as they did in 1848 along with most of the rest of Europe. And for which much blood was shed in retribution that kept it Austrian until WW1.

Pest on the south bank is the real city, where the big business are, and most of the people. It has wide elegant avenues, the main ones tree lined, it has row after row of offices and apartments many in buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries, of course much rebuilt after the massive destruction at the end of WW2 when the Germans vowed to never leave, and the Russians vowed to never forget Stalingrad.

This means most of the city has been rebuilt, and not all of it, but you don't find the tanks on the street, and huge gaping buildings let untouched.

We parked the car and didn't see it again till Sabbath afternoon, and found an apartment I had found and negotiated on line. The original address we thought we were getting had a plumbing problem so were given an even larger and well located flat for 5 nights for EUR 575. It was very satisfactory and centrally located close to the rebuilt and beautiful Jewish Synagogue. Our neighbor's tag said Levine, and some men and boys were wearing skull caps for the Festival of Booths which was taking place at this time.

I love the little cars! Smart cars of all kinds, I wanted to bring one or two home just to play with them.

It was impossible to understand what we were seeing without knowing Budapest's history, so after our meetings in the evenings I would walk the streets with Deanne and Don and Sue after supper, and then read books filling in the many gaps in my knowledge. Here is what I grasped--

Hungary has always been in the midst of troubles. They are between the East and the West so have had Mongol and Muslin invasions against the official Christian, Roman Catholic, position of the kings and governors who had a plan of some kind or other.

During WW1 they were under Austria so on the loosing side of WW1. Austria lost Hungary, but Hungary lost 2/3ds of its previous territories to adjacent states, every one wanted a slice. So many ethnic Hungarians found themselves to this day in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Kosovo, Slovenia, etc.

In WW2 their rightist anti-Semitic government of course again chose or had to accept the loosing side in that world war. And in the last months of the war the Nazi's held onto Budapest with fanatic furor, with permission to surrender
forbidden by Hitler. This only ensured that the Russian Bear wold have to smash more buildings to force out the German army. This they willingly did, leaving total devastation.

But the Red Army did not chase out the Germans to help Hungary, they were helping themselves and their fictional economy with stuff. The sack of anything of Hungarian worth and treasure began with the first troops who stole and claimed anything of value they found, until 1989. During these years the Communist reign of terror, impossible economic theories, and anti-clericism ruled. And on the beautiful Boulevard to the left, Andressay Blvd, the building at #60 was the seat of terror.

Austria Austria Über Alles!

Continuing a 43 year old love affair with Austria, we recovered from our travels by renting by Internet an apartment for 4 nights in a little village on the Danube river above Vienna. Rossatz is on a bend of the Danube across from Durnstein and Krems and just 30 km downstream from Melk. It is a wine growing, apricot growing, pear growing region, and we stay in the 2nd stock (3ed floor) of a building started in the Middle Ages and more recently remodeled for 6 beds, kitchen, etc for EURO 110 a night. Yvette Lorenz was most accommodating. Take a look at http://www.ferienwohnungen-wachau.at/artemisia/ Apartment Artemesia in Rossatz a small village.







We bought fresh bread in the little market 2 doors away. We walked (you could bike) on paths through the vineyards, orchards, fields down to the Danube (Donau) river and rang a bell to call a small passenger ferry (12 people max?) who will carry you over for a few EUROs to the ancient village of DURNSTEIN and its famous castle ruins that detained Richard the Lionhearted from getting home while Robin Hood and Maid Marian fought wicked Prince John? Is it only my generation who learned all about this on TV in our youth?

The Danube itself is constantly traveled by large boats cruising up or down with a few hundred passengers each. An American anxious to talk in Durnstein told us that he had started his cruise in Amsterdam and was going to Istanbul? 24 days? I think I would have been afflicted with a severe case of cabin fever by that time, but the boats stop daily and perhaps several times a day to let you explore the beauties along the way. More common would be to ride from Passau to Vienna, with stops for a few day cruise.

We climbed to the castle ruins, found a Konditori for the most perfect hot chocolate mit SCHLAG (whipped cream) and EIN STUCK KUCHEN of some kind.

Next day we went to KREMS by our rented car. (The Opel ZAFIRA seats up to 7 without luggage, and got the six of us with luggage by cramming a bit for the two trips we made with luggage. Since we stayed in one place for 4 days and another for 2 in Austria, we didn't have to travel with luggage much till there were just the four of us.) Having a car let us go to supermarkets for food and keep the restaurant bills down, and let us visit out of the way villages. You can travel by public transportation anywhere in Austria and in Hungary. But it takes time and language skills, so for a group that can share a car it is good.

Then to MELK and Sarah and I toured the fabulous Monkery (Stift Melk = A wealthy monastery with extensive land holdings) while the others enjoyed Austrian/Greek Pizzas and Gelato.

For Supper we went to another rival STIFT called Gottweig that sits on a hill closer to Rossatz and has a very nice restaurant with a superb view of KREMS, the Danube, the whole WACHAU valley. The only thing we failed to find was a monk tired of his vows for Melissa to bring home with her.

Friday to Vienna where we had rented by Internet again an apartment for 2 nights. Big city prices made this EURO 150/night for two nights for six. But in hotels we could easily have paid EURO 100-200 for two, so it still was a bargain.

We visited some highlights for Sarah and Melissa who had to leave next morning, went to Church with a little company meeting in the recreation room of a retirement home, but the church was young adult mostly, guitars, and great sermon if you knew German.

I visited the SCHOTTENTOR church and museum and investigated a little more about how the Irish Christians influenced Christianity after the fall of Rome as a political power in Europe. Since the Irish (Scotia in Latin SCHOTTEN in German) were Celtic Christians before becoming Roman Catholics later on, I was hoping to find evidence of their practices regarding Sabbath keeping, married clergy, and absence of Mariolotry in their early beliefs. I did learn a little history but would have to become a Latin scholar to really get into these questions, hard to do on a 1 hour visit!

Did I mention breads? Did I mention cheeses, cow, sheep, goat milk, hard ones, soft ones? Did I mention fresh unfermented innocent wine (TRAUBENSAFT) from the varietal grapes? Is there a better breakfast in the world than a Kaiser Role (SEMMELN) with butter and cheese and jam? Their rye breads are not sour, their whole grain breads are not doughy, their white breads are substantial and satisfying. And all of it absolutely non fattening. As long as you climb enough steps to mountain top castles day after day, that is.

Hungry for Hungary?

Travel like a broad liberal education is one of the few investments you make that really leaves you richer, not poorer. With nearly 13 years spent in mission service, Deanne and I are not wealthy, and do not have adequate savings for retirement, so I should be working a lot while productive and saving a lot for the decline.

I see too many patients, however, who did this, working for retirement, and then after a short time of retirement either loosing interest in their non-work, or loosing health. So since I see no way of being wealthy and retired, I sort-of-have-a-plan to keep working as long as able, but enjoying life as I work.

I have done a few things like cut out a few appointments from my schedule so I don't feel as rushed day after day always running late and harried.

And I want to enjoy the ride which for me includes vacations and travel when I can enjoy it. Last years 60th birthday celebration with my children and friends in Austria's Salzkammergut was a wonderful beginning. It is still sweet to memory, every minute of it, thank you children and Basshams, thank you.

It was a little harder this year to get Deanne to see the wisdom of this plan, since she will no doubt outlive me and a cash cushion is more important to her than to me, and besides she has a hundred thousand dollars worth of house repairs and renovations on a list someplace for our present 1974 home.

But when I worked it out for our frequent flyer miles (we paid college tuition on Visa) combined it with a medical meeting I needed, and just generally was impossible, she agreed, when we talked Sue and Don into this she was fully happy about it. We got FF tickets leaving Sunday September 18 on British Airways (ALW-SEA-PHOENIX-LONHeathrow-VIE) and we returned Wednesday October 3 (VIE-LON-SEA-ALW). Although the medical meetings were in Budapest, the cheaper tickets were for Vienna which is only a 2 hour drive away, and I wanted to enjoy Austria again, as well as investigate Budapest in Hungary.

Back Home I can now offer you 3 conclusions. In case you don't want to spend the time to read all the details of what a great trip we had!)

1.) Late September/early October is a wonderful time to visit Central/Eastern Europe. A little less expensive tickets, less tourism in the places you visit, and perfectly wonderful weather. Clear, sun most days, a day of light rain. Comfort in a shirt most days. Add a T-shirt others. Sweater or light jacket for evenings. Rooms available everyplace we went.

2.) Hungary is a very nice place to visit. Great food. Reasonable prices for lodging (with our bottom sucking dollar this becomes more important) and good infrastructure. Wonderful food, especially at harvest time.

3.) Don't travel through London Heathrow if you can help it. The security screeners there in Terminal 4 make it so hard to move around that they incense most all of the travelers. They appear lazy (standing around in groups doing nothing, out of 6 lines and 3 groups of employees one line was working for hundreds and hundreds of passengers), inefficient (8 of them cluster around a picture for 10 minutes arguing over what they see), and appear to have not the slightest interest in the needs or inconvenience to the travelers (It's SECURITY ma'm!).

I have vowed to not travel through there ever again if I can help it. The British gentleman in front of me mutters, "If we were dogs, the SPCA would be all over these blighters!"