There is Power in Our Union!

Happy May Day, everyone! The holiday to commemorate the successful fight for the 8 hour workday, and other benefits of the labor movement.

How did we celebrate May Day, you ask, in the formerly communist country where we currently spend our days?

Well, to start with, it was the first full day of Uncle Pat's visit to us here in Budapest, as he arrived last night. We'd only recently learned that May 1st is a national holiday here, and that many things would be closed. In addition, May Day falling on a Thursday this year, most Hungarians also got Friday off (although for this privilege they had to work last Saturday!)

Luckily, Hadley told us that one of the big celebrations of May Day in Budapest is a big festival in City Park (Varosliget). Hadley, Titus, Cassius and Tadeus, Uncle Pat, Jordan, Devin and I all headed off together to City Park.

City Park is a large (302 acres) park, and the festival seemed to spread over most of it. We didn't see everything, but we did see a classic car display, tons of kiddie rides, lots of deliciously unhealthy food (sausage, fried dough slathered with sour cream and cheese, breaded fried ham, hot dogs, french fries, ice cream, cotton candy . . . ), stages with music both comtemporary and traditional, what appeared to be a children's dance competition, face painting, pony rides, sales of crafts, textiles, shoes, souvenirs, marzipan dolls, you name it), tables for unions, political organizations, and political parties. It attracted constant streams of people from morning til evening, as far as we could tell. Devin and Cash rode some rides and bounced in the Moon Walk, we all ate ice cream and had a great time.

After a rejuvenating rest, we went to celebrate Mass in honor of St. Joseph the Worker, for another perspective on International Workers' Day. Fr. Terrence Curry SJ invited us to a thoughtful moving reflection on the importance of our work as an act of co-creation with God. As Mass was celebrated in a small group around a table, Devin got the most upclose view of the Mass being celebrated of her life, and she was . . . transfixed, I think is the best word. All the while, dinner was cooking over a fire not far away. We had a traditional Hungarian stew, blackened chicken, roasted eggplant and a few other delicacies. And of course, interesting conversations with the architecture students, American residents of Hungary, and members of the Board of the Szent Josef Studio Kollegium, the architecture studio Terry directs.

Unbeknownst to me, Terry is an expert woodworker, and took Pat and us down to see his amazingly well-equipped shop. One of the architecture students showed Pat and I the village center she has designed in consultation with a village in Transylvania.

Right wing politics

I mentioned the red and white striped flag here recently, and just thought I'd point you to this story about one of the many right-wing demonstrations that have made the news here recently.

http://www.politics.hu/20080414/schroder-at-antifascist-rally-in-budapest

Actually, this is about a counterprotest to the 1000-strong fascist rally over (get this) the alleged failure of a ticket broker to sell tickets to a Hungarica concert to a young woman (Hungarica is a rock group with strong ties to right-wing politics here).

There was another protest at the Budapest City Council over the planned removal of a statue of a bird. http://www.budapesttimes.hu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7203&Itemid=205

The Tural bird, which is a symbol dating back to Medieval times, has been associated with the Arrow Cross party (Hungary's allies to the Nazis) and is currently promoted by the far right wing here.

International Day at Superkids

Today was Devin’s first day back at Superkids after our trip, and it was INTERNATIONAL DAY (We’d made sure to be back for this). Parents and children are encouraged to come in their national dress (what would national dress be for Americans?), and everyone was asked to bring some typical food from their home country. Since there are kids from 24 nations at Superkids, we were really looking forward to this.

We were a little uncertain as to what WE should bring though. Most of the best things we cook are, well, originally from other countries, not the US. And we really haven’t been at our finest in terms of cooking since we got here (out of our own kitchen, without all our tools, missing some ingredients). And then there’s the issue of cooking something kids will like. We thought about brownies, but ended up making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The other parents were more clued in to the fact that the buffet was for parents primarily. The kids would have lunch right afterwards, so whether they ate or not was not important. There was sushi, samosa, butter chicken, pogatch (a hungarian biscuit with cheese baked on top), chocolate chip cookies and about a hundred other things, sweet and savory.

All the children had made flags from their home countries in class this week, and they paraded out into the garden waving them. Hungary and Germany seemed to be the largest national groups, with kids from Malaysia, India, Israel, Palestine, Ireland, South Africa, Canada . . . . Devin’s class sang a song about knowing the names of all the continents, and then their favorite song about a froggie.

Mindennap 56!

OK, here's your first lesson in Hungarian -- Mindennap means Every Day (As in, our store is open every day!)

This graffiti means, Every Day is 1956 -- the year of the bloody revolution against Soviet rule in the streets of Budapest. Hungarians were demanding socialism with a more human face and the right to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact -- and the Soviets came in with tanks and crushed them. Although the Hungarians "lost", they made it plain that the Soviets ruled only by brute force and not by consent. You might say it took a bit of a shine off socialism as it actually existed in Europe. So a call for revolution every day!

It's interesting how much use is made, in contemporary Hungarian politics, of historical events. (It's hard to imagine NY anarchists referring in their graffiti to an event in the 50s). We observed a right-wing rally in Budapest, and people were carrying one or more of three flags -- a red and white striped flag known as the Arpad. Arpad, who one could call the founder of the Kingdom of Hungary, lived in from about 895 – c. 907. They carried the current Hungarian flag, and what I THINK was a pre-communist one that includes a royal crest.

(I'm not currently in Hungary, but in Berlin, but I finally finished this short post).

A quick note from the road . . .

I'm writing from Dresden, where Jordan has somehow managed to find us a hostel room in the hip part of town. We had lunch in a restaurant with ayurveda in its name.

Our four days in Prague were fun. It was great to hang out with Nancy Kates. We especially enjoyed seeing the Jewish cemetery, the Infant of Prague, the many beautiful Art Nouveau buildings, and the one really warm spring day when we could sit on the grass. It was odd to see large groups of young tourists marching through the streets singing what I think were Italian soccer songs -- something we do not see in budapest! We went on possibly the worst walking tour ever, allegedly about communism and its fall in Czechoslovakia. The guide was clearly old enough to remember communism (and probably its introduction), but otherwise ill-suited to his task. More on this some other time.

Dresden has some incredible buildings, and of course one is always aware here of the many beautiful buildings that did not survive the Allied bombing in February of 1945. A large church here, which was badly damaged in the bombing, has just three years ago been restored.

For those of you starving for Devin news: Devin has learned to snap her fingers, a major accomplishment of which she is quite proud. She has apparently been working on this for quite some time, as she recalls being in the Ducks, her previous class, when she started to try. She saw a manual typewriter for the first time in a restaurant in Prague, and wants me to get her one "when I'm bigger". I guess I better locate it before they all fall apart!

Off to Prague, Dresden, Berlin ...

So, tomorrow morning early we head off for a flight to Prague, where we're meeting Margaret's college friend, Nancy Kates, who has been touring Europe with her synagogue. We'll be spending four days there with Nancy and then we'll be taking a train to Dresden, spending that day and some of the next exploring there, and then we'll hop back on the train and head to Berlin where we're staying with my cousins for about 6 days. Then we fly back to Budapest, where we'll be for a little over two weeks before we head to Ireland for the final 2-week leg of the trip.

We'll probably not be able to blog much while we're on the road, but we'll leave you with a few very recent pictorial highlights.

This is Devin with her new best friend from school, Mallika. They are about a week a part in age.


Yesterday, Margaret and I went out for lunch with Fr. Terrence Curry, a Jesuit who runs a fascinating nonprofit architectural design center here (more on this later), and he adopted us for the rest of the day, showing us local architecture, a traditional wine bar, and bringing us to his friends' house (they work for the American Embassy here) for a lovely dinner, high up in the hills of Buda. A truly memorable day. Fr. Terry, who was introduced to us by our good friend Mary Dailey, bought Devin some flowers before we crossed the appropriately named Margaret hid (bridge). Here's Margaret, Terry and Devin at a lookout point in the middle of the bridge over the Danube.


OK, Vizonlatasra! (See you soon!)

Spring Has Sprung

The weather.com reports keep predicting rain for Budapest, but the past three days have been gloriously warm and sunny. The rainy, cold days were getting us a bit down, so it's been wonderful to quickly transition from hats, coasts, gloves and scarves to short sleeves and light jackets. Flowers and trees are blooming everywhere. The photos above and below are from Karolyi Kert, a lovely central square park in the heart of old Pest.


I think Wednesday (when the above photos were taken) may have been our most perfect day here so far. We took Devin to her Superkids pre-school in the Buda hills (Margaret and I switch off picking her up and dropping her off), where she is very happily settled (her newest best friend there is Malika, who is from India), so much so that she gets a little weepy at the idea of us taking off on our journey to Prague on Sunday. Luckily school will be closed all next week, so Dev will just miss a few days the following week and we'll be back in time for International Day at the school, where parents bring in a dish from their native countries. I asked Devin what we should bring and she said, "Maybe broccoli raab?" Ah yes, that traditional American dish -- well, I guess it's as traditionally American as anything else we make at home. (If you folks have any ideas of what would be sufficiently representative of the good, old U. S. of A, let us know!)

After dropping Devin off, we took the second part of a self-guided walking tour with the help of a terrific book called "Visible Cities: Budapest." Our neighbor and landlady, Hadley, is the photo editor at the company that produces these books (she hooked us up with Berlin and Prague guides, too). First we went to the Hungarian National Museum -- about five blocks from where we live -- which is devoted to the country's very complicated, and often tortured history (between the Ottomans, the Habsburg', the Nazi's and the Russians, they've served many masters) back to the 1300s.

And after that we finished one walking tour on Raday Utca, a lovely, mostly pedestrianized street of restaurants and cafes, where we had some stupendous french fries. The self-guided tour led us through old Pest (old meaning the 13th Century!) where the book led us into alleyways and courtyards we otherwise would never know existed. Here's a photo of a preserved old Pest Wall (city walls were big back then -- though they didn't always protect against marauding Mongols and Ottomans) in the courtyard.


On our walk the day before (the last cold, rainy day), we were led inside some gorgeous buildings around the museum, including this beautiful library with an enclosed courtyard cafe. This seems to be common in many buildings, turing the ubiquitous building courtyards in public buildings into some kind of cafe or public space.

As we were nearing the time to pick up Devin, we got a phone call from a friend of a Peace Studies colleague of Margaret's. Margaret had e-mailed him -- he's an organizer here and he invited us to come to a short movie that evening at Central European University (this has become a little bit of a home base for us -- it was founded by billionaire George Soros, who is Hungarian by the way, and it's an English-speaking institution) about the plight of the Roma (gypsy) population in Mitrovica, Serbia. We decided we'd give it a try, even though it probably wasn't our first choice of a first film to take Devin to. So, I picked up Devin and met Margaret and a playground near the university.

Here's a couple of pics from the playground ...

Devin was a real sport through the 30 minute film, "taking notes," and only getting a little fidgety towards the end. It was nice to see an interesting film and talk to interesting people who spoke our language.

After that, we went to a restaurant that a Manhattan College alum (she's Hungarian) took us to a couple of weeks ago. The food there is delicious and inexpensive and there was just a good vibe there night -- the four women next to us were visiting from Frankfurt and were in a festive mood. Here's a pic Devin took of me (she's getting really good at this!) at the restaurant ...


The highlight for me of the day was the walk after dinner to the trolley along Andrassy Ut, Pest's loveliest boulevard -- it's where the famed opera house is. They have ballet class at Devin's school on Wednesdays. Devin didn't want to go the first couple of times (it's optional) but she really wanted to go that day (a sign that she's very happy there now it seems). So, all along Andrassy, Devin showed us her ballet moves, and here's a little video sampling of that ...



After this, we ran into the Manhattan College alum in front of the opera house just as we were remembering meeting her there a couple of weeks ago. And then we had an nice conversation with some Australian tourists in front of Burger King (yes, they're everywhere!). A pleasant end to a wonderful day.

Another beautiful day today -- someone is practicing the sax across the street as I write this -- and we're meeting another friend of a friend for lunch, a Jesuit priest who teaches architecture here.

House of Terror

This building was the HQ of the Arrow Cross Party (Hungary's Nazi Party). When they came to power in 1944 they used the basement for interrogations and executions.

When the Communists took power, 60 Andrassy became the HQ of the AVH, the secret police. It continued to be used as a place for interrogations and executions until 1956, when it became some sort of club for Young Communists.

It is now The House of Terror, a museum that explores the ways in which dictatorial governments use terror as a means of control, and commemorates the victims of that terror.

It is a very contemporary museum, in that it uses the design of the building, the atmosphere, the music, historical artifacts, documentary films and more to tell its stories. There's an interesting film (not documentary) in which individuals, one after another, walk into a room, hurriedly change their clothes for other clothes on a nearby coatrack, and leave, watching to see if they've been seen. This was part of small exhibit about people who quickly switched loyalties from the Arrow Cross and the Nazis to the Communists when it was clear that was where the power now lay.

One entire room dealt with the Soviet gulags, work camps where a large number of Hungarians were sent for long periods of time to do hard labor under harsh conditions with little food, as part of the Soviet push to industrialize the nation. Some died, and others were under strict orders not to talk about their experiences when they returned.

It's a disturbing but fascinating museum.

More Food ...

This photo from a few days ago is of two 'szendvics' (sandwiches), standard Hungarian fare at a chain here that, in its color scheme, looks like Subway, but serves these tiny artistic creations of meat, fish (even caviar), egg and cheese spreads of various that are like a buck apiece.

Devin's Music Video Debut!

Here's Devin performing two versions (one a little crazy, apparently inspired by some of her new, silly friends at school) of 'You Are My Sunshine,' performed on the rubber, roll-up keyboard her Uncle Lloyd gave her just before her birthday before we left for Budapest.
(Just click on the triangular play button at left.)

Trans-Atlantic Park Alienation

For our Bronx friends, here's something I posted to the Norwood News blog about the park around the block from our flat here in Budapest. (For those of you new to blogs and Web sites, everything underlined on this blog is a link to another Web site. Just click on it.)

Music and Art -- Hungarian Style

We visited Vorosmarty Square on Easter Sunday, a week ago. It's a lovely outdoor market in snazzy downtown Pest with wooden stalls that sell Hungarian food and quality crafts. Very little schlock to be found, though you have to watch the prices -- I somehow spent about $10 for a very little bit of dried apricots and pineapple. And our Hungarian lunch there of sausage and stew was tasty but quite pricey and not hot enough.

We ended up there on the right day, though (we keep having some pretty good luck this way). It was a little cold, but sunny and as part of Budapest Spring Festival which has been all week there was a live folk (as in Hungarian folk) music performance and traditional crafts for kids.

In a Bronxites Abroad! video debut, here are the folk music performers. You can really hear the roots of the hora and other Jewish music in their songs. Devin LOVED the music. After a few songs we turned to leave, but she wanted to stay, so we stayed. I shot this little bit of video on my point-and-shoot camera and learned it's really easy to upload to the blog. Haven't experimented much with our new video camera but I imagine there's more of this sort of thing coming your way :-) Just click on the sideway triangle play button on the screen itself or right below it to play it.

Devin made a traditional doll from cloth with the help of an extremely helpful festival staffer ...



In the shed where the kids were working on the crafts was this beautiful display of hand-painted Easter eggs and a traditional groom's outfit from Transylvania (a part of Romania where many ethnic Hungarians live as it was once part of Hungary).


The woman who painted the eggs above was just outside painting a giant one ...


... and the organizers of this event obviously have a lot on the ball, because they also provided another giant blank egg for festival goers young and old to paint on ...

Eating in Budapest

Requiem for a Restaurant: We went to Zsoka Mama, a lovely little family restaurant for the second time tonight. We wanted to say goodbye. It's closing on Saturday. Here's Jordan's first meal there -- chicken stew or chicken paprika. Our friends Keith and Susan will recognize it as being identical to a meal we had at a European restaurant in Brooklyn shortly before we left.

It's a little hard to believe it's our 4th Friday night in Budapest. We went to Zhoka Mama for dinner. We really like the place, but we learned the last time we were there that they close for good tomorrow night.

What is Hungarian food like? If you've been reading our blog, you can see that we've been eating Middle Eastern food, tacos and even once (gasp!) Burger King. We have also, however, sampled Hungarian food. What I would say so far based on my limited experience:

1. Hungarians really like soup. Goulash is a soup (or a stew). There are lots of other really good soups. Lots of places have a lunch special which is soup, a main course and a sweet of some kind. We've had a lot of soup here. Strangely, or perhaps not, you can't buy, it seems, canned soup in the supermarket. All I see are packaged powdered soups (like Knorr's). The other day I saw outside a butcher's shop that they had MARHA LEVES HUS for sale (BEEF SOUP MEAT). I thought that meant they had some homemade soup for sale -- but when I went in and asked for it in my best Hungarian, I was offered a hunk of raw beef with which I could make soup. I couldn't explain the misunderstanding; I hope the butcher didn't think I didn't approve of his product.

2. Sometimes what looks like soup might not be soup but Fozelek. When I was spending the day at Devin's Hungarian school, the kids were eating and I said to the teacher, "Devin really likes the soup." She looked at me funny and my first thought was, once again I've managed to screw up a simple sentence. Then she said, oh, that's not soup, its Fozelek. F is basically a pureed vegetable, just slightly less liquid than a pureed soup. One friend derides it as baby food, but adults eat it.

3.Hungarian food has a reputation for being spicy, but so far I find SOME Hungarian food is mildly spicy, some is quite bland. We've had some kind of spicy soup (red with noodles and potatoes in it), but there are also some dishes that are quite bland -- this casserole of cabbage, potatoes, a little ground beef, cheese and yogurt sauce (nice, filling, but not spicy). We have a friend here, a long term resident who says she doesn't like Hungarian food, and that Hungarians always say to her, "Oh, too spicy for you, eh?" It's hard to imagine that anyone finds Hungarian food in general too spicy.

4. There is SO MUCH Middle Eastern food here! There are felafel-gyro-shwarma places on every commercial block here. And although we randomly enter them, I don't think we've found a bad one yet. I think Kebabs are honorarily Hungarian food.

5. Dessert is a specialty here. Nice cake. Enough said.

6. Ice cream too. We hear that as the weather gets warmer, there will be more ice cream. Another reason we're eagerly awaiting spring weather.

A Day at the Zoo

Devin, right outside our flat overlooking the courtyard.

We went to the Zoo today, which is only 10 minutes by bus from where we live (except that we took the wrong bus on the way there, so it was a little longer). It's a wonderful zoo -- the buildings for the animals are really, lovely especially the monkey house, where you can walk in among little exotic monkeys as they climb trees, etc. Light pours in from the large windows and the glass sections of the ceiling -- sort of like a mini Conservatory at the Botanical Garden in the Bronx. The Budapest Zoo is apparently the third largest in all of Europe.

As you can see, Devin got her face painted (a butterfly), and there were tons of other activities for kids today, sponsored by Duracell.

Other highlights were the giraffes, and the hippos which we literally came face to face with as they stuck their wide open mouths almost through the gates.

Devin also met a big bunny today, significant because she's always been afraid of masks and people in big costumes. She even shook the bunny's hand!

And here's a shot Margaret took of an alligator carved beautifully in wood, in the terrific little playground they have for the kids at the zoo.

Buildings, Buildings, Buildings ...

As I may have mentioned before, the architecture and streetscapes here in Budapest are fascinating. I don't know a lot about the styles yet, except that much of it is 'Historicist' architecture meaning that the designs of many bldgs. reflected earlier periods than the time they were created.

These photos are in no particular order, just buildings and images, and contrasts that caught my eye. I'm taken with seeing some ornate building, next to a non-descript one, or a spotless one next to a filthy one, etc. ...

Two very different buildings joined at the hip near Vaci ut ...
Pest's beautiful outdoor shopping area.

I thought this was a residential building at first, but then I realized it was a parking garage.

The old reflected, literally, in the new. This is around the block from our flat.
Lots of new construction going on around us.

I turned a corner and was sort of mesemerized by these incredible buidlings near the Astoria Metro stop that seemed oddly thrown together like someone had randomly thrown the buildings of Pest up in the air and came down in this unlikely combination.

Even some of the McDonalds' here are in classy, historic buildings.