Day 3 of Celldo”mo”lk
Well there was a little snafu. I had been told that breakfast was at 9 and that I should bring the coffee up to the ladies at 8:30. I was down in the breakfast area by 7, getting coffee for myself, reading a book, making small chat with folks who finally showed up, and then one of the folks said to me in hungarian something like hey arent you a bit late, and I said no, 8 30, and they said NEM, FEL NYOLC, ie, 7:30, and I said IGEN? (really), oh BOCSANAT (which is not O Shit, but rather,oh I am sorry, no matter what it looks like), and went off to get three cups of coffee, which in this case is three cups with about ¾ inch of expresso in the bottom of a small cup and a pitcher of warm milk on the side, all this on a tray, and I head from the breakfast room to the lobby, but Kati is already there, and I am sputtering an apology, but she gamely plops herself down lengthwise on a couch in order to receive her breakfast cofee in prone positon, which is the best we can do under the circumstances.
One of the two other ladies is also there, and she gets hers. So now I am stuck with an extra cup, and finally am able to offer it to yet another person, in this case the mother of one of the ladies who teaches English at the gimnazium with me, she herself is retired from the same school, she lived in what was the Sudetenland (German=speaking Czechoslovakia) and after the war her family had to move to Hungary, since her father was Hungarian (tho her mom was german), other relatives were shunted off to what became East Germany, and there was a big family division, with shades of Lives of Others, because one of the uncles became a supreme court judge in the DDR, so the family had to be eeeeeexxxxxtttttrrrrraaaaaa careful involving all things politics, and they wound up being somewhat permanently split from other relatives who made it to West Germany.
Then about five minutes later lady number 3 comes downstairs, indignant that she didn't get hers, and all I can say is, hey, it was here, you weren't, I did the best I could, etc etc. Nr. three is very interesting woman, Russian, came to Hungary in 1994 or so speaking no Hungarian at all, but with job at an agricultural firm which needed help for its employees who were undertaking large agro-inductrial projects in Russia. She now works for a language translation firm here in Tata, and I am trying to arrange a coffee meeting with her and me and Bertalan so that he can get some firsthand info about what her job is really like.
We do breakfast. Then we pay the hotel bills. It is cash, no credit card. The receipts are handwritten. There is one person doing this. So 15 people checking out takes about 1 hour, because one has to make change, one has to process travel discount coupons, one has to do whatever it is one does by hand because one is just are not set up to do anything electroncially.
We retrace our route to Cso”nge. drive past the Lutheran church again and the Weo”res Sa'ndor museum, and continue to the small community of Ostffyasszonyfa, which appears to mean Tree of the Lady of Ostffy. Two claims to fame. Peto”fi Sa'ndor slept here. Well more than slept, spent a summer here. And he wrote a letter, or it was found in his diary, or whatever, but apparently he said that it was a BOLDOG summer, and BOLDOG is the kind of word you use when you talk about the BVM, or the man who is BOLDOG, because he heeds not the council of the wicked but meditates instead upon the law of God.
So if Pet”ofi stayed here, it is like saying Goethe slept here, or Hemingway, or some other great literary icon, I mean everybody knows who Peto”fi is, like , he wrote the poem that became the national anthem, and so on and so forth. Ok, we get that. And then there is another claim to fame, which is the WWI POW camp. 150,000 Russians, Serbs, Croats, Italians, Bulgarians and Italians all housed here, with about 10,000 not surviving the war, dying at the camp, and so there is a war cemetery, with the nationalities buried in separate areas, all carefully planned in advance and now marked with crumbling limestone steles. It is rather well maintained, actually, has a new wrought iron fence and gate, the grass is mown, the trees are tall and elegant, and it would be peacful except for the auto ractrack about 3 miles away, from which one hears the roars of engines and he and bass boom of the loud speakers.
We spent a good 30 40 minutes at the cemetery, then the choir gathered at the center of the area and sang two or three songs and placed a wreath. Wreaths are DE RIGEUR in Magyar country, always of tightly woven evergreen branches, always with ribbons of green white red, and sometimes with little accents of other flowers, usually about 12-14 inches in diameter, and the ribbons usually have the name of the group who is leaving the wreath.
Of the 10,000 odd soldiers who died and were buried, a number were Orthodox (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian) and a few were Roman (the Italians, obviously, but probably some Romanians as well, maybe a few Poles). So the center of the cemetery has two large metal crosses side by side, one a latin cross (the T), one an orthodox cross (the T with an extra horizontal bar and the little bar at the bottom going diagonally down to the left). So I say to myself, hmmm, either there were no Jews in any of this, or they just dont count. I think I know which.
Then off to Sa'rva'r, home of one of the princely families, like the Esyterhazys, only not quite as well known, not having sponsored painters and composers. Anyhow there is a castle there, which we do visit, but not until we make a side trip to the Catholic church (a rather dreary baroque edifice that I am sure has redeeming features, but am hard pressed to specify any of them) and then another to the Lutheran church. It is much smaller, is in great need of repair, and then I discover later that they have a partnership with a congregation in Bedford MA, and the yanks come over every year or so and do construction work to help restore the building which is of course very historical and all that. Some redeeming features of the church: on public display on the altar is a 1526 copy of the first translation of the bible into hungarian, the book should be put into a rare book collection somewhere I am sure it must be quite valuable but no we just leave it there the angels guard it and keep it safe and we just hand it around and let people hold it and turn the pages with their oily hand and no we have no idea that this is an inappropriate way to treat a book I mean it is a book isnt it and arent people suppose to read books and how can you do that if you dont hold them.
Other redeeming feature is the organ, which Eva played and said it was a real treat because it is the only one if its kind in Hungary and the action on the keyboard was very fast. So then the pastor asks if anyone who is Evangelisch would like to stay in the church for a brief celebration of the Eucharist, and I figure what the hell, this will be my first church service in Hungarian, I will probably know sorta kinda where we are, and I sorta kinda do, I mean by now I know the words for God and Son (but not yet holy ghost, but 2 of three I hear and then I know the next phrase has to be the HG), and I know the order of the service (hey, Luther didnt get rid of the mass, just the pope), and it all goes pretty well, I just dont kneel and do bread on the tongue like the Magyars, instead I do stand up put it in my hand like the irredeemable non-theistic Anglican that I am, ditto for the wine, but it is all fine.
After the church thingy we go to the picnic area next to the castle (all of these places being less than 3 city blocks distant from each other) and now we have day 3 of salt and more salt and even more salt, and no I really dont want any palinka thank you, does anybody have some extra water, because it is 86 87 or so and the sun is really bright, but there are a couple of cucumbers and a tomato or two, and I dine on sunflower seeds and raisins, which I think do not have much salt in them.
The castle has an eclectic and genuinely fascinating museum. There are frescoes on some of the walls, probably done around 1775 or so, not great art, but interesting art. There are cases with mannequins dressed in Hussar uniforms, then others from WWI, then photographs of Hungarian cavalry in WWII (oh my god, all these horses in WWII, what did they do when they saw Russian tanks?), but this castle was a center for Hungarian equestrian arts, the Magyars have horseriding in their cultural blood, every town fair features demonstrations of Magyar warrior archery, swordsmanship, and, if room allows, horsemanship, including demonstation of horse archery.
My guide on the tour is one of our group-- Pe'ter, an engaging twenty-something trained as biologist, who is enthused by the castle, and we walk together, him explaning things to me is halting but sufficient English, taking good care to make sure that I understand. At one point we come to a big document that starts out WIR FRANZ JOSEF VON GOTTES GNADEN KAISER and then goes on for about 5 lines to describe all of his titles after Kaiser, to include duke and count and landholder and so on, and it turns out that FJ by this document is elevating the head honcho of family of the castle (family ame is Nehazany, or something close to that) to the rank of Prince of the Empire. Peter has asked me to explain the document, so I take time to figure out what it is, and tell him, and then he says good, he was just checking, because underneath the document off to the side is a note in hungarian explaining what the thing his, he was just making sure I really DID know my German. Thanks Peter you are a real guy!
We finish the castle, go back to the cars, load up and head for home. On the way, about 30 miles down the road, we make a brief stop by a stream, walk 300 yards to the access point next to the swimhole, and Peter holds forth for a good 20 minutes on the ecological and biological significance of this stream, all the while we are being devoured by mosquitoes, at least we are in the shade, but it is definitely hot, and we are all tired.
Finally we are on the main highway, it is aother 40 minutes or so till we reach Tata. I am now riding in another car, my original driver headed on to Vienna where he works, the rest of us got distributed to other cars. I am with Tibor #1 and Tibor #2, and their spouses, whose names I never quite got,but we are going along, and the ladies are making conversation with me, and I am trying as best I can to explain in Hungarian where I come from what I do what my family is what church I go to and so on. Try explaining anglicanism to a Magyar catholic sometime.
Then then one of the women starts to sing the chorus to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I join in and then I am able to explain that there is more to the song than just the chorus, there are verses one two and three, each of which is followed by the chorus, and yes, they do get that, and then I mention that it is July 4, the freedomday of america, and they ask what people do on freedomday, and I say they have music and fireworks (which comes out something like MUSICA ET BOOM BOOM) , and I try to explain that it is not music and then fireworks, but music combined with fireworks, so I sing a little bit of the 1812 overture and do booom booom with my hands to indicate that the fireworks are along with the music, and next thing you know we are all singing the marseillesaise, followed by Old Man River, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, and then that awful schlocky new catholic/fundamentlist hym How GreatThouArt, but I sing along, cheerfully, and then we ae doing a couple of Taize chants and then we are back home.
Farewells, exchanges of emails and phone numbers, and then I get a lift off to my place and I am home. There is nothing in the fridge except beer. Oh. and a piece of very stale cheese. But I am tired and it is dinner enough.
