Now You See It...

I Spy

2011-10-22T14:53:00.010+02:00

Coinciding with the October 23^rd commemoration of the 1956 uprising, and an exhibition by the CEU connected with the role of surveillance of citizens living in the communist bloc, this month’s Time Out magazine has an article with a photograph that immediately caught my attention. It is a slightly grainy black and white picture from the 80s of an old friend, Peter Doherty, in Vörösmarty tér. Blithely unaware of being the object of interest, he appears to be eating something, walking in the company of a friend in front of what was then the smartest department store in Budapest, the Luxus.

The photograph was taken by the communist authorities as part of their monitoring of foreigners living in the country. Like us, Peter arrived in the early 1980s and – there being fewer than a dozen British people resident in Hungary – we were all regarded as potential spies. Peter was here to take up an official post organised under the auspices of the British Council, to teach English at ELTE university. The other handful of our compatriots were all married to Hungarians, so they also had a reason to be resident here – though they and their spouses were regarded as odd in the extreme, since marrying someone from The West was the dream of hordes of Hungarians who regarded it is a passport (literally) to a quick exit and a better life.

Prior to Paul’s first visit to Budapest in 1978, he was sent a leaflet by the British Council in London: Advice to Travellers to Communist Countries. It warned in stark tones of the likelihood of being compromised by communist agents posing as landladies, interpreters ready to inform on shared conversations, and bedrooms concealing microphones in plant pots.

Politically, nothing at all had changed by the time we arrived to spend a year in Budapest in 1982. Though realising we would inevitably be far more suspicious than our countrymen (both of us being British, and having arranged our stay quite independent of any organisation), we had obviously been screened before our visas were granted and did not expect to be followed. However, occasional odd occurrences reminded us that this was a naïve illusion: letters, posted weeks apart all arrived on the same day; the phone call in the Academy library, answered by the librarian who looked around the room, and when her eyes settled on Paul merely uttered, “Yes,” and replaced the receiver; the unexpected and unexplained visit from the police from the office responsible for foreigners in Hungary. Although from a discreet distance, there was little doubt we were being monitored.

In light of the fact that Peter was obviously followed and photographed going about his everyday business (when he had a university teaching post recognised and supported by the authorities), I have every intention of visiting the office in possession of such files, in the event that our daily lives were also photographed and documented.

It is a fact that Paul’s landlady, though grasping and with an envious, unrealistic view of foreigners (see my previous blog entry) was no Mata Hari; the interpreter provided on Paul’s initial visit later became our closest friend, as he is to this day; the police visits probably did little to contradict the generally-held assumption that Paul was indeed an eccentric musician; and we never found any bugs in our pot plants….. but who knows?

The Other Man’s Grass

2011-10-08T16:38:00.016+02:00

Our very first step on Hungarian soil was in February of 1978. Not only was the country unimaginably and indescribably different from how it is today, it was also significantly different from how it would be a decade later in 1989, just before the final curtain fell on an era. It would be easier to list the few similarities present-day Hungary has retained over the last thirty or so years, than to try and enumerate the differences. However, certain attitudes and misconceptions in people’s minds have withstood the ravages of time far more enduringly than some of the bricks and mortar.

The official accommodation supplied to Paul when he arrived at the start of a two-month stay in Budapest in 1978, was with a woman who had been badgering the relevant authorities for some time, to send her a foreign student. With a mutual knowledge of just a smattering of German each, there could only be the most basic communication between landlady and tenant. However, it did not take Paul many days to discover that this middle-aged woman harboured a misconception shared by most of her countrymen, namely, that all foreigners (from western countries) are rich. As though to confirm her in this belief, friends of hers who had defected to West Germany a decade previously, arrived to stay at the Intercontinental Hotel during Paul’s stay, and even their dog had its own small room adjacent to its masters! (It later transpired they were both surgeons.)

This summer, three Hungarian friends returned to visit families from the respective countries in which they have now lived and worked for a few years. In each case they are either supporting their families in Hungary financially, or are expected to arrive with cash at the ready to top up paltry bank accounts. The one, from Canada, had brought photographs of her new homeland – it was the first time in three years since leaving, that she had been able to afford the flight home from the far west – bears and snow-topped mountains, but to no avail: she was presented with a catalogue of unpaid bills and repairs that were needed for the house, and asked what she could contribute towards them. There was no acknowledgement of the huge cost of her air-fare, the fact that she had had to borrow money to begin her new life before she had found work, the English course she is still attending (and paying for), or the obvious disparity between living expenses there and here. The unshakeable belief remains unaltered: all foreigners (including Hungarians working abroad) are rich.

In our case, the impossibility of explaining that we were students in England, and not surgeons in Germany, almost resulted in our arrest. We were presented by our landlady with a bill for food we had not eaten, phone calls we had not made, and sundry other services and expenses. Having spent the last of our money on a few simple presents for friends and family at home, we had literally no forints left. Since we were unable (as well as unwilling) to pay this fictitious bill, she first attempted to lock us in her flat, and when that failed, to wrest our passports out of our hands. When this failed, she made as though to ring the police, while we fled the building and made for the airport, hoping she would not follow us there and have us arrested before our plane departed.

The friend from Canada came to see us and expressed regret at having saved for three years to visit a family and some acquaintances who had little or no interest in her life in a far country, save its financial aspect. There are still situations where I avoid speaking English, knowing I am likely to be charged more if I am identified as a foreigner, though the days of meter-fixing taxis, which automatically charged double (or more) to foreigners, are largely a thing of the past.

Our friend gladly returned to Canada, just as we had escaped to London many years before; all of us had learnt that for those living here, the other man’s grass is always greener.

Travelling Time

2011-09-25T21:12:00.003+02:00

Summers are a time of comings and goings: I regularly find myself travelling to the newly-christened Liszt Ferenc airport (or Liszt ‘Ferihegy’) either in order to fly, or to meet and see off friends and relatives in the two terminals which bustle with crowds of noisy travellers, as in airports everywhere.

Whenever I am at the airport here, I remember our first visits in the late 70s, when Terminal One was the airport. There were then about as many flights a week as there are now in a day - maybe fewer. There was just one flight a day, for example, between London and Budapest, B.A. and Malév sharing the week between them, operating on alternate days. The overwhelming majority of flights were to cities within the communist bloc. I well recall my first ever foray to Budapest in February of 1978 on a Malév flight, where a piping hot Bakonyi szelet and unlimited wine were served to all passengers – a long way from the mini sandwich and cup of instant coffee I had on my last flight!

If in other countries at this time, there still clung some small vestige of the glamour which had once characterised flying – when travellers donned their finest and real meals were served on even short flights – then the emotions and atmosphere at Budapest’s Ferihegy could hardly have been more different. Fear and uncertainty crowded the cold echoing halls of the building. The tension was tangible, anxiety palpable in the nervous silence of the queues; no excited chatter nor laughs of anticipation at the imminent holiday! A painted line on the floor clearly delineated the point at which those travelling had to take their leave from friends and relatives, forbidden from approaching the check-in hall. A bevy of nervous faces craned anxiously to see the moment when their loved ones passed through the various checks and were ordered towards the departure gates. Not until a plane had taken off could one ever be certain one would be permitted to fly. For Hungarians, or foreigners resident in the country (like us), travel beyond its borders was a nerve-racking procedure.

Passports were not automatically available but had to be applied for – two types existed: for personal travel or for business. An application could be denied as easily as granted, with no explanation necessary. Personal travel abroad was allowed just every third year, as the forint could not be exchanged outside Hungary’s borders, and foreign currency was very limited. Thus, every three years one was able to buy currency legally for foreign travel – needless to say, a woefully inadequate amount. This had to be supplemented by hard currency bought on the thriving black market, but entailed personal risk in smuggling it out of the country. Then came the visa, with its maximum one-month limit which one exceeded at peril of being regarded as a potential dissident on one’s return.

Security checks consisted not of metal detectors and searches for arms or bombs, but detailed questioning about whether or not one was taking Hungarian forints out of the country, and showing receipts for legally acquired hard currency. Everyone feared the detailed examination of their luggage or person, with the attendant possibility that the hidden dollars or Swiss francs might be discovered! This would forfeit you the right to travel. Additionally, you risked losing a flight ticket that, in the 80s, cost at least £200 return (to London). With monthly salaries of just 3 or 4,000 forints it took a whole year to save such a vast sum! With foreign bank accounts deemed illegal, it was an additional risk to carry any documentation that could arouse the suspicions of a zealous border guard; in fact, an English friend of ours (resident in Hungary) was prevented from flying when her bank card was discovered among her belongings.

Finally came the passport checks, characterised by minutes of silent, unsmiling stares, alternately at you and then your likeness in your documents. It was difficult to maintain an indifferent air and then to walk, not too quickly, away from the watchful eyes of countless armed guards. A quiet sigh was all you might allow yourself, and possibly a quick wave to your relatives, before making your way as inconspicuously as possible towards the departure gate.

Window Dressing

2011-05-31T21:28:00.011+02:00

I make no apology for returning to a subject which is close to me – being as it is, the original reason for our coming to Hungary almost thirty years ago – and which illustrates well the scandalous mismanagement and stupidity of present-day “window dressing” in Hungary.

I am certain that even those with no interest whatsoever in classical music, have not failed to register the stream of reminders of Liszt’s birth 200 years ago, in 1811. Events both in Hungary and abroad have celebrated the anniversary. Yet the Music Academy in Liszt Ferenc tér was closed at the end of 2010 – just in time to coincide with this important year.

The building, though admittedly shabby, was not in danger of imminent collapse; renovation work had already been planned – and postponed – a number of times in recent years. Then, for a whole year after the series of concerts and events held to mark its closure, it remained open, and teaching continued unabated. Why then could it not have been kept open for another twelve months during this, the Liszt year? Having waited for more than five years for this huge project to begin, what difference would another few months have made?

But no. Last year, the whole institution was moved to a number of sites around the town – the main one being an office block on Ũllői út – a building devoid of sound-proofing, where singers compete to be heard above neighbouring trumpeters, while the bureaucratic wheels organising the renovation have ground rustily to a standstill. Meanwhile, unable now to hire out its concert hall (nagyterem), the Academy is losing millions of forints monthly, while millions more are being paid in rent for the totally unsuitable office space. And what of the Zeneakadémia itself, now ten months after its closure? Nothing at all. The building is home only to a few security guards – not a cobweb has been removed, no workman has set foot inside. Scholars, tourists and musicians arrive from abroad to visit in this anniversary year, but cannot enter the building.

However, priorities must be priorities: the airport has been renamed Liszt Ferenc, the cost of this change running into many millions. Maybe there is nothing to get excited about in a country where the government is seriously contemplating changing the name of the very country itself, which would cost countless billions (new bank notes, identity cards, driving licences – in essence, everything would have to be renamed). When both national and personal debt are at record levels, and when homelessness, unemployment and poverty are increasingly evident, this is window-dressing at its most worrying.

Then – and Now

2011-05-10T19:09:00.004+02:00

I usually pick up the Metro paper on the way to work in the morning, and last Friday’s edition had the front page headline: Bills consume an ever greater amount. The article went on to say that the relative proportion of the cost of paying for gas, electricity and water in relation to earnings, has been climbing for the past ten years. It is presently reckoned to be 25% of the total family income. Those who have retired are able to pay for only half the amount of gas from their pensions that they could in 2003.

Having both a parent and children living in England, I am easily able to make comparisons – not only of the actual costs of these, but also of the amounts relative to people’s incomes, both here and there. The uncomfortable reality is that prices of gas and electricity are now at least as high as in Britain, with fuel prices almost on a par – and here I am speaking of the actual price in £ or Huf, and not the percentage of earnings. Postal charges are in many cases more than in the UK, while BKV is not far behind. Thus it is, that although some Hungarians have seen an astronomical rise in their fortunes, with all the attendant conveniences and luxuries that were (twenty-five years ago) unavailable at any price, the majority are struggling to manage their basic monthly expenditures – never mind new clothes, cars or holidays.

When we arrived in Budapest in 1982, our monthly state wage – alongside everyone else's – was 3,000 forints. Our unlimited travel on BKV was exactly 110 fts. (this was a ‘bus’ pass – more expensive than the ‘tram’ pass, as petrol was more than electricity). Gas and electric bills together totalled about 200-300 forints, while water was free. Rent for a state-owned flat was also a few hundred forints. For a couple with a combined income of 6,000 forints, these outgoings were extremely modest, leaving several thousand forints for non-essential ‘luxuries’ like opera and cinema tickets (10 to 20 forints) LP records (70 forints), a meal out or a taxi ride home (7.50 forints a kilometre). Meanwhile, the staggering cost of even the most unglamorous car (a Skoda, Lada or Wartburg) required years of saving – plenty of time for that, as the waiting list even for a mud-brown Trabi was also several years! Colour televisions, hi-fis and other electrical gadgets were also prohibitively expensive – even when they were available. Foreign holidays were, for the most part, limited to East Germany, Poland or Bulgaria, whilst most people made the most of the Balaton. However, summer camps for children were affordable by all, and very heavily-subsidised holidays were available to everyone through their places of work, which owned holiday homes in resorts all over Hungary.

As I finished the article in the Metro, I wondered how many people are now in essentially the same position as in the 80s: unable to afford a car or a holiday, (though they are now quite probably in possession of a flat-screen TV). Yet in the ‘bad old days’ Hungarians lost not a moment’s sleep over the possibility of losing their jobs or their incomes, being turned out of their flats, or having their gas or electricity switched off due to being unable to afford the bills.

It would seem that those things which were considered absolute basics in the past, have become veritable luxuries of present-day living.

The Paper it’s Written on

2011-04-25T19:17:00.004+02:00

Not long ago, I attended a choral concert given in the Terézvárosi templom (church) by the conductor Richard Solyom and his excellent Gabrieli choir. I have been a regular concert-goer since my first days in Budapest, and can attest to the fact that although this performance was free, I have paid money for greatly inferior offerings in more impressive surroundings. I felt I could not leave the venue without expressing my appreciation and enjoyment of the evening, and so joined the queue of well-wishers at the end of the concert. When my turn arrived, I asked if the choir would be performing in the Spring Festival – a prestigious annual arts festival which has been running a number of years. His answer was astounding: “No. I can’t perform there because I don’t have a diploma in conducting,” he explained.

Last week, I went to a performance of Liszt’s Christus in MŨPA, where I bumped into an old acquaintance who is a senior member of staff at the Liszt Academy. She informed me that the young conductor at that evening’s performance was, in fact, undergoing an examination. This was a surprising piece of information: I have never been aware that a performing artist is examined at a public performance. Moreover, would the award (or not) of the piece of paper make any difference to his musical career? Well, he would certainly be permitted, henceforth, to perform at the Spring Festival, if nothing else! But would the award of a degree or certificate mean he was a better conductor – or the lack of such, that he was any worse?

This way of thinking is endemic in Hungary, where the country is currently struggling with reforming its education system. Where twenty or so years ago, The Economist carried an article praising the thoroughness and rigour of Hungarian schools, more recent international comparisons find them lagging ever further behind in tests increasingly based on the application of knowledge rather than the knowledge itself. Tinkering with reform, both those in charge of policy making and the teachers themselves, find they are straddling a growing precipice.

When we arrived in Hungary I was startled to find just how many people had quite how many degrees, never mind how many preceded their names with the title of Dr. But soon I found that gathering up certificates, diplomas and other sundry qualifications amounted to a national pastime. The chasm that so often existed between paper qualifications and the ability to do something in practice existed in most spheres of life. Half the population had (has) driving licences but cannot actually drive! Half the working population has papers attesting to the fact that they are disabled, but is hard at work renovating flats or moving furniture.

When I went to teach at ELTE’s Teacher Training College, I soon learnt that I was, in reality, the only person in the English Department who had ever stood up in front of a class of school children and taught them! My colleagues had studied the art of teaching from every book available on the subject, and passed every conceivable examination on the subject (and got their dr. titles for good measure) but had never actually taught! There was even a subject entitled Methodology, again, instructed by those who had never faced a class in their lives! I shudder to think how many people there are with degrees in English – some of whom I myself taught – whose degree certificates are, in reality, meaningless.

Needless to say, I would balk at the notion of consulting a medical doctor who did not possess the requisite degree and examination passes, but quite what relevance a scroll of paper has to conducting, even thirty years here have failed to prove to me. It is in this area that a diametric alteration in attitude is vital if reform – educational or other – is to have any real effect. As a male Hungarian friend and colleague told a group of students we were jointly teaching: Don’t anyone bring me a medical certificate for absence – I could produce one for you tomorrow stating I have an ectopic pregnancy. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

A Multitude of ‘Sins’

2011-04-13T21:35:00.005+02:00

Interestingly, the words for sin and crime in Hungarian are the same; but while the Church has managed over the centuries to confine itself to a mere seven sins and ten commandments, the Hungarian state is attempting to rack up as many laws as possible while it enjoys an unrivalled opportunity to do so. Or at least, so it would seem. Having recently commented (see below) on the absurdity – to me, at least – of making smoking at public transport stops fineable by up to 50,000 forints, I have just been made aware that actually lighting up on the transport itself, is punishable only to the tune of 6,000 forints. Thus, to smoke in an unventilated bar, restaurant or café is entirely legal; to smoke on a tram or bus will cost six thousand, while doing so out in the fresh air will cost more than eight times as much!

I say, ‘will cost’, but in practice the press reports that only one such fine has been officially levied for smoking within the stipulated seven by three metre area of a bus stop. A veritable army of police would be required to patrol the city to even attempt to enforce such a ruling. And for what possible result – to improve the overall air quality of the capital? Or is it to fill the coffers of the government? If so, it is totally superfluous: there already exists a battery of other fineable offences which – were the police sufficiently motivated to uphold them – could achieve that particular goal. For example, the simple wearing of seat belts in cars, and more importantly, the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving. Though outlawed, anyone standing long enough on a street corner to wait for the lights to change can hardly remain unaware of the high percentage of drivers using their phones. This includes bus drivers, weaving their way through rush-hour traffic, packed with passengers; taxi drivers dodging pedestrians and jumping the lights. As a friend of mine who lives on the colourful Almássy tér laughingly told me, “If they want to make money, they should just spend a day on my square – every law in existence is broken here on a daily basis and no-one does anything about it. They could make a fortune.”

The attitude in times past was not dissimilar from a certain point of view – many things were nem szabad (not allowed) – in fact, it was one of the first expressions I learnt, hearing it on the lips of everyone from mothers scolding their children, to over-zealous museum curators who would utter these words as soon as you got within sneezing distance of an exhibit; and bookshop keepers, when you attempted to creep over to the shelves and touch a volume. Fines, though, there were none. If you failed to pay your telephone bill on time the solution was simple – it was disconnected, and it would take months before you would be able to arrange its reconnection. When I ran across the (much less busy) road at Margit hid and was stopped by two policemen, they simply demanded my ID card and, reading I was a teacher, tutted at me like a cross aunty. In fact, the only effective method of curtailing the population’s indifference to the rules and regulations of the time was the tacitly accepted habit of the police to extract their own fines from motorists in order to supplement their incomes. Their alacrity then for standing long hours, flagging down motorists come rain, come shine, was indisputable. A dodgy rear light, a failure to observe a Stop sign obscured by a tree, or simply exciting the interest of a bored officer, would almost inevitably result in a ‘fine’ – the amount of which was determined by careful negotiation. Today’s ineffectual attempts (where written receipts must be issued) to enforce regulations would seem to indicate that this older method was, all in all, more efficient.

The most recent addition to the list of unenforceable laws is the one making it illegal for people to go through dustbins – in the eighth district only! – fine: 50,000 forints.

Blowing in the Wind

2011-03-30T18:55:00.006+02:00

At the present time, when the world daily reviews the likelihood or otherwise of a nuclear meltdown in Japan, the magnitude of the disaster which is threatening is inevitably being compared to that of Chernobyl in April 1986.

Hungary in 1986 was still firmly under the thumb of Soviet Russia; little if anything could find its way into the public domain without the prior careful consideration of possible repercussions by those working for any branch of the media. Thus, when without warning the reactor at Chernobyl sent clouds of radioactive smoke across vast swathes of Europe, the Hungarian media remained stubbornly silent on the subject. It is difficult now to imagine living in a country – any country – where there is almost no way of finding out what is happening even as close by as Hungary is to the other side of the Austrian border. Yet with no internet, virtually no foreign newspapers, no satellite television and few telephones, it was a relatively easy matter for the communist authorities to keep the population in total ignorance of even such an international disaster as this.

We relied for news on the old, Russian radio we had in our rented flat. To our surprise, the BBC World Service was not jammed. Possibly, the tiny minority of people with sufficient knowledge of the language – and the patience to twiddle dials and strain their ears through the crackling – were regarded as too few in number to make the exercise worthwhile. In any event, with a little patience it was possible to tune in and hear news worthy of the name. Thus it was that we learned of the nuclear disaster, and heard the advice being offered as to how to safeguard one’s health. Budapest was significantly nearer to the site of the disaster than Britain, and we pondered on what we ourselves should be doing. A short visit to the embassy confirmed the guidelines we had heard on the radio: to avoid all leafy vegetables grown outdoors and not to stay out if it rained.

It was a full three days before any hint of the event was tentatively broadcast by the Hungarian radio or television. During this interval we informed all our friends, passing on the advice we had been given. The grapevine was indeed a speedy means of disseminating information at a time when none other existed. Once the news had been broken, a multitude of Chernobyl-related jokes swept Budapest: “What is Russian-Hungarian friendship like?” “It’s radiating.” Meanwhile, at Lehel piac (Lehel market) the lettuces were now labelled as ‘sure-fire safe’ (atombiztos) while the ‘atomic strength papika’ (atom erös) had had the ‘atomic’ crossed through.

No-one felt any confidence in what news, heavily censored, trickled down to us. In reality, we had little notion of what danger we might or might not be in, and our relative proximity to the origin of the trouble was a source of some anxiety to our relatives at a safer distance. One evening a good English friend of ours came to see us, and we inevitably discussed the situation. He too, bemoaned the paucity of information, and the fact that his parents were pressing him to go home, at least for a while. “We might be perfectly alright here,” he explained. “It all seems to depend on the direction the wind was blowing.” There was a short silence. We knew he did not want to leave the country and return to England, even for a few weeks. Then he leapt up saying, “I’ve got it! I know how we can find out if we’re affected!” We waited as he walked towards the light switch. “Let’s put out the lights and see if we glow in the dark!” Thankfully, we didn’t.

Laying Ghosts

2011-03-12T21:38:00.005+01:00

According to recent press reports, the lurking ghosts still haunting Budapest’s streets and squares are finally to be exorcised. I speak of the perhaps surprising number of places still bearing the names of communist heroes, most of which were gleefully obliterated the best part of twenty years ago, their accompanying statues evacuated to the Statue Park. The re-naming of the many roads and public spaces which somehow escaped the attention of the country’s newly-elected government in 1989 has once again become topical, while some discussion has ensued about the possibility of honouring Elvis Presley with a square bearing his name.

The speed with which the process of re-naming streets was executed in the year or two following the change of regime, was not matched by the country’s cartographers, nor by updates in telephone directories, leading to inevitable confusion. Many people were bemused to find that not only had their addresses changed overnight at the twist of a screwdriver, but to realise that they had had no inkling that their street name bore the name of a communist – far less, who he may have been, or what heroic deed had granted him the honour of representing their road.

Speaking not a word of Hungarian upon our arrival, we grappled with its tongue-twisting pronunciation. It was with true satisfaction that we mastered the art of rolling Népköztársaság útja or Felszabadulás tér off our tongues! But in speaking to older people, we found we had soon to learn a second set of names: those of pre-communist times, which they persisted in using (and which in the latter two examples were considerably easier – Andrássy út and Ferenciek tere). Thus, for this reason alone, we were well prepared for the change when it finally came.

As with most things that seem strange at first, it did not take many months following our initial arrival before we had ceased to register the slightest surprise at names of places or institutions bearing the names of Marx or Lenin, any more than the red stars that graced most public buildings. Every town and every village had a Lenin tér or a Marx utca, a Vöröshadsereg (Red Army) útja or a Május 1 (May 1^st) út. This reality was soon no stranger to us than the High Streets and London Roads of many an English town. However, it obviously managed to create unwarranted confusion in the minds of a group of young Americans who were travelling on the metro with us towards what is now Nyugati tér, but which was then Marx tér. Hearing English spoken immediately attracted our attention: it is impossible to convey to those living in present-day Hungary, the rarity of hearing a foreign tongue in the 1980s. Months could pass without coming across a foreign visitor – and even then, the few who came were almost inevitably from East Germany or Poland. But an American? We were agog. Then, quite suddenly, one of the small group leapt from his seat and, beckoning wildly to his friends, announced in urgent tones,

“Come on guys! This is our stop! St. Mark’s Square!”

Curiouser and Curiouser

2011-03-02T21:21:00.015+01:00

Were I ever to write another book about Hungary (which I do not intend to), I have toyed with the idea that it would open with a young girl falling down a rabbit burrow, only to find she has arrived in a world of unimaginable topsy-turviness – but then it occurs to me that someone has already used this particular idea. Did Lewis Carroll ever set foot on Hungarian soil? Perhaps only in his drug-assisted fantasies; he could certainly have derived much inspiration for the further adventures of his heroine had he done so.

All countries have their idiosyncrasies: Britain is the home to many thousands of these, conveniently labelled under the headings ‘tradition’ and ‘eccentricity’. However, Hungary’s latest entry for the title of the Curiousest of the Curious must surely be awarded first prize – having neither the excuse of tradition nor eccentricity to rescue it from ridicule. It is the bizarre – and to me, at least – quite incomprehensible law which now forbids smokers from indulging at bus or tram stops.

I have never smoked, and I have endured countless evenings, and days, cooped up in small offices, staffrooms, cafés, restaurants and friends’ flats, as the only prim and kill-joy non-smoker in a room where I was barely able to make out who else was there. My initial desire to do as when in Rome... – well, at least not to complain about it – and accept their perogative to smoke, very soon gave way to sitting by open windows, gasping for air, goldfish-like, when I was able. I began to leave parties earlier, and once my son’s band began doing gigs in bars, I often waited on the pavement or in the car rather than endure smoke suffocation for hours.

It was announced in the media this week that proposals are to be put forward to ban smoking in restaurants, cafés and so on, from July. This has been greeted with the same outcry from those whose livelihoods may be affected, as it was in other European countries which have already taken this step. However, an editorial in the Metro newspaper suggested that the government might as well ban its citizens from drinking alcohol, since the rationale must be that of preventing cigarette-related illnesses, and alcohol was surely equally culpable.

Aside from the obvious difficulties of policing the capital’s public transport stops – apparently, an exact 7-metre by 3-metre area has been stipulated as designating the territory of the ‘bus stop’ – one surely has to wonder who, and more interestingly what the thinking behind this is.

But the fault is obviously my own. When Alice states, But I don’t want to go among mad people, the Cheshire Cat informs her: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. You’re mad. You must be, or you wouldn't have come here.

Money Makes the World Go Round

2011-02-12T21:03:00.006+01:00

On my most recent trip to London, I found myself loitering outside a small newsagent’s: I wanted to buy a tube of Polo mints, but having just withdrawn some money from an ATM, found I had no small change, and would therefore have no alternative but to proffer a £20 note for this small item. I wondered if there was anything else I could buy to minimise the awkwardness I felt. My son wondered at my reluctance to enter the shop, so I explained, asking if he had some coins. He didn’t, but laughed at my Hungarian response to finding myself with only the large note with which to pay. “It’s a shop,” he stated matter-of-factly, “of course it’s not a problem.” Nevertheless, I found myself mumbling apologetically as I simultaneously handed over the tube of mints and the £20 note. Big smile, “No worries!” – the assistant handed me my change and we left the shop.

The largest denomination in Britain is the £50 note – roughly equivalent to 15,000 Hungarian forints. The largest note in circulation in Hungary is the 20,000 forint note – nearer £65 – and this in a country where the average net national monthly income is a mere six or seven times this figure!

Many people (myself included) can be heard cursing when the ATM spits these out, as they remember they have run out of bread, and realise that the only place willing to give change will be a large supermarket. This will either entail a detour and a long queue, or much grovelling at a smaller shop – with the distinct possibility of being told they cannot (will not) give change, leaving you to go elsewhere, or do without the bread.

In addition, Hungarians have a strange relationship with their banknotes: the smallest tear renders them unacceptable, irrespective of the neat repair done with Scotch tape, almost invisible to the naked eye. Having been declared ‘damaged’ you must either exchange the offending article at a bank, or attempt to palm it off – as though it were, in fact, counterfeit – and hope the cashier fails to register the blemish.

It has ever been thus: I clearly recall the consternation, both when the 500 forint note was introduced (when monthly salaries were 3,000) and then the 1,000 note in its turn. Before current bank accounts and plastic, all transactions were carried out in cash: even cars and properties were paid by people clutching attaché cases, or just carrier bags, containing their life’s savings, as they made such purchases. Yet herein lay the paradox: while the notes were an endless source of difficulty where shopping was concerned, they were hopelessly inadequate when such large transactions as a flat purchase were involved. Our first flat cost some 3.5 million forints at the time when the 1,000 forint note was the largest denomination available. The elderly couple from whom we were buying, called in their similarly elderly neighbours, and the five of us sat in a row along the sofa, counting out the notes into small piles of tens – all 3500 of them! Twice.

Publish and be Damned?

2011-01-15T19:57:00.001+01:00

Back in the bad, dark days of a single-party state, of censorship and the freedom only to express our views in the privacy of our own – or a friend’s – home, we were pitied by our English friends and regarded as quasi-lunatic by our Hungarian ones. Why would anyone volunteer to leave the ‘home of democracy’ to live in a country where the press was anything but free? A land where every piece of information had been sifted and shaded, paraphrased and polished? As a friend so aptly put it: in England you read the papers to know what is true; we read them to know what is not true!

Arriving with a miscellany of possessions in 1982, we sat in a sea of twenty-six large boxes, forbidden from opening them until the Hungarian customs officials had been to satisfy themselves that we had brought nothing illegal with us. The Hungarian embassy in London had been quite clear: no pornography, no political tracts, no photocopier. Our papers showed we had, nevertheless, brought an electric typewriter. Before they left, the officials required we provide them with a sample of the type so (were we to begin bashing out anti-communist propaganda) we could be identified.

Self-censorship was the order of the day – we were all well aware of approximately how far we might go, in what contexts we could speak freely, and those where some circumspection was to be advised. Yet the reality was that then, in the 80s, there was much satirical reference to that which could not be mentioned directly – as for example, in films like A Tanu, and in the lyrics of countless pop songs. No-one took these things entirely seriously (other than those whose job it was to do so).

One important difference now separates our present situation from the one of thirty years ago. At that time there was no choice: we were living in a communist regime, we had not been asked what we wanted, and what our neighbours to the west thought or said, was quite simply irrelevant. But today, as Hungary takes over the leadership of the E.U., some 53% of Hungary’s population have voted for a government that has brought in media laws that have been commented on at length, both by those in the E.U., and in the international press. This was a free and democratic choice. Whether the newly-appointed guardians of the spoken and printed word (I will refrain from using the word censors) will exercise the draconian powers they have been granted, remains to be seen.

But, as I write these words, I am aware they could, theoretically, be among my last. I did not think I would be in Hungary long enough to see history repeat itself.

Welcome Home

2010-12-30T22:19:00.007+01:00

In the final throes of the fiasco at Heathrow airport, and its inability to cope with a few centimetres of snow prior to Christmas, I awaited the safe return of my children from London.

Their flight had been delayed by an hour, that was all, but due to a high temperature I was unable to drive and fetch them, so I sat at home, waiting. I sent a text message to my daughter asking if they were on their way. “In a taxi like none other!” came the somewhat cryptic reply. I wondered: was a year out of Hungary really sufficient to dim her memory of the driving antics of Budapest taxi drivers? I was otherwise unable to find an explanation for the puzzling text message.When the three of them finally arrived, we were given a detailed narrative of their return journey from Ferihegy airport in a car belonging to the newly-appointed official airport taxi company, Főtaxi:

John had sat alongside the driver, the two girls in the back. It was dark and cold, and the silence in the taxi prompted John to encourage the driver to switch the radio on. He flicked from one station to the next, but the choice seemed to be politics or techno. A sideways glance at his passenger confirmed that this was not what he had been hoping for.

“Do you like singing?” ventured the chauffeur.

“Well….she does,” replied John, indicating his girlfriend in the back seat.

Needing no further encouragement, the driver pressed a button, at which a small screen popped up between him and John. Simultaneously, the two small screens in the back of the headrests lit up for the girls seated behind. Then, casually holding the steering wheel with one hand, he produced an IPod with his other, starting a rapid search through its library. Having found what he was looking for, he pressed PLAY and the music started – Maria Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You; strangely, however, her voice was noticeable only by its absence.

It was at this juncture that, alongside adjusting his Satnav with one hand and holding the steering wheel with his other, he produced a microphone from his lap and began to sing along to the lyrics, reading them from the small screen, all the while driving at speed towards the city. And then, moments later, he produced a second mic and handed it over to the girls behind him.

John suddenly became aware of flashing blue and red lights behind them – he waited for the inevitable: that their car would be overtaken by a police vehicle which had obviously observed the antics of a driver multi-tasking to an unprecedented degree, even for Hungary. But no. Their chauffeur had merely switched on the rear disco lights to add to their total Karaoke Taxi Experience.

(www.karaoketaxi.hu )

Christmas: Now....

2010-12-11T20:54:00.004+01:00

Andrássy út – a magical avenue of glittering trees, festooned with hundreds of thousands of lights; the ragged and hopeless huddled in every underpass around the city; the Christmas tram twinkling its way along the Pest river bank; Christmas stalls of colourful, handmade crafts; the scent of candles, the aroma of cinnamon, apples, oranges and mulled wine; Gerbeaud’s advent calendar windows opening to brass music; the reek of the poor and homeless attempting to warm themselves on public transport; designer shops, designer presents; Disney-on-Ice; domestic present-buying disagreements on engorged shopping-mall escalators; charity appeals; tinsel, light, silver and gold, garlands of pine; roasting chestnuts; McChristmas; poverty in the midst of plenty.

...and Then

2010-12-11T20:40:00.008+01:00

Wind-blown cables of multi-coloured light bulbs in dark streets; shadows on the ice; quiet; deep, deep snow, unimagined cold; the Danube, frozen; hour-long queues for the annual delivery of oranges and bananas; no foil to roast meat – all redirected for the wrapping of szalon cukor for Christmas trees; first attempts to wrap parcels for posting, devoid of sellotape – not permitted, only string (for Customs purposes); excitement at discovering tinned salmon, brightly coloured Chinese notebooks, Milka chocolate, East German Christmas imports; stalls of gaudy tree decorations: glitter-coated yellow and orange fir cones; home-baked gingerbread; gatherings of friends exchanging unexpected finds and homemade beigli; quiet; peace; plenty in the midst of poverty.

Logic

2010-11-22T19:24:00.015+01:00

A week ago I was standing, bemused and perplexed, in front of an array of DVDs in the impressive Alexandra bookshop on Andrássy út. My attempt to discover the obscure relationship between any titles on the same shelf was reminiscent of similarly fruitless efforts I have had in trying to establish the last in a number series of the type to be found in IQ tests. Having already excluded the more obvious – and perhaps unimaginative – ones, such as alphabetical, genre and language, I was forced to admit defeat and look for an assistant to enlighten me. The explanation that was offered, in a tone suggesting I would indeed fail to register a single point on the IQ scale, was that the films are ordered according to the year of their release….

Libraries, one would fondly imagine, are ruled over by a breed characterised by their preoccupation with order, already well up on the scale of Obsessive-Compulsive. Yet, my husband, faced also with a seemingly chaotic hotch-potch of titles on the Music Academy library shelves, was similarly forced to defer to the wisdom of the librarian. The solution to the riddle was that books are catalogued according to the date of their acquisition by the library.

On those occasions I have run the gauntlet of Magyar pride and suggested there is a singular lack of logical organisation in many aspects of life here, I have been assured that Hungarians are supremely logical. “Just look at all our great mathematicians,” I am told. “Don’t forget that we invented the Rubik cube.”

Many years ago we sent the beautifully produced and illustrated Gundel Cookery Book for friends in England. On visiting them in the summer I enquired as to whether they had tried any of the recipes contained therein. A curious smile passed between them, and they pointed out two examples of the difficulties they had encountered: the first, a recipe whose method ended with the words, “And finally add the mushrooms,” – these were nowhere to be found in the list of ingredients, and so they had not bought any before starting to cook; the second listed sour cream among its ingredients, but this subsequently failed to make any appearance in the Method!

I could list the flyers that have, over the years, been optimistically placed in our letter box: pizza delivery (with no telephone number); a new restaurant (with no address); advertisements for concerts (with no starting time) and exhibitions (with no dates); previews of events in the newspaper with no indication of either where or when they are to take place;interesting photographs with no captions….
Maybe I should console myself that the number sequences I have never been able to solve, and which stubbornly remain a random jumble, could also have been invented by a Hungarian!

By Any Other Name

2010-11-12T21:26:00.006+01:00

One of the very first differences one has to accustom oneself to in Hungary is the order of names: Hungarian surnames come first, followed by any given names. This is also applied to the unwitting foreigner who must adapt to local custom. (I once had to spend an additional afternoon at the local council offices having inadvertently used my customary signature on my ID card, and was ordered back to reverse the order of my names.)

This simple enough adaptation of what one is used to, can still give rise to confusion. There is a large preponderance of names that can be either given or surnames: László, Simon, András, Tamás or Lőrinc, to name but a few. When combined (as in Simon András), and out of context, such names leave one wondering how to address the person in question.

What additionally makes demands on a lazy memory is the common practice among professional women of maintaining the use of their maiden names after they marry. It is folly to assume that the wife of a male friend can be addressed using the man’s surname. If it is a second marriage, the children will in all likelihood have yet another name, making family relationships difficult to construct.

Yet other women – these days more usually older women, or those living in more rural communities – go to the opposite extreme, abandoning the names of their pre-married state to the extent that they become Mrs. Péter Barna (or Barna Péterné – where the suffix né means Mrs.) Faced with this, one has no inkling of the woman’s actual name. In addition, there exists still the not uncommon practice of the first son (and daughter) being given their parent’s name, meaning not only that Barna Péter’s wife could be Barna Péterné, but that his son. ifj. (junior) Barna Péter, would have a wife also named Barna Péterné! (See picture.)

A compromise solution is also possible, where women take their husband’s names and tack their own on the end. In this way, our above-mentioned Mrs. Barna (née Andrea Nagy) will become Barna Péterné Nagy Andrea! And to this one can add a final obfuscation – that of titles, as in medical doctors and PhDs.! Dr. written with an upper case D denotes a physician, while the lower case d is indicative of an academic title. Thus, Dr. Barna Péter is (for non-Hungarians) Dr. Péter Barna (medical practitioner). The equivalent for a woman taking her husband’s name would be Dr. Barna Péterné – or where she determines to keep her own name also: Dr. Barna Péterné Nagy Andrea. But the real fun comes where both people have the title, and the woman decides on the Full Monty version of her married name! Here, you might really find yourself trying to disentangle how to address the person on your business card : Dr. Barna Péterné dr. Nagy Andrea.

Remember, remember...

2010-11-01T11:20:00.007+01:00

Standing on the corner of Dòzsa György ùt and Dembinszky utca in the prematurely dark evening yesterday, stood a witch, complete in full-length black gown and pointed hat. My fellow passengers on the 70 trolley bus stared openly as the figure was swallowed in the gloom. Of course: Hallowe’en – nothing surprising here to anyone from an Anglo-American background, but a novelty to Hungarians who have little or no idea of its origins – less even than those Americans and English who mark the day. An informal poll of friends and acquaintances showed total ignorance of the reasons for celebrating Hallowe’en among the Hungarians (other than those involved in English teaching), and only the very sketchiest of notions among the British and Americans.

Even more recent than the adoption of St. Valentine’s Day in Hungary, Hallowe’en is only just beginning to penetrate the consciousness of confused – and dismissive – Hungarians who view it as the latest in a series of American imports. I am old enough also to remember the time when Hallowe’en was no more than a date on the calendar in Britain – a day that fell in the period of build up to the far more exciting and important celebration of November 5th and Bonfire Night. In an age bereft of Risk Assessment forms and Health and Safety Regulations, we scoured the neighbourhood for logs and branches to add to our huge garden fire, begged for discarded clothes for our guy, and saved pocket money for fireworks. It is only in the last twenty years that Trick-or-Treating has crossed the Atlantic in (coincidental?) parallel with regulations that over the years have seen ever-increasing numbers of people attend organised Guy Fawkes events, rather than family parties, and where last year, in the interests of safety, there were even pre-recorded virtual bonfires on large screens!

These same days in Hungary have their own long culture: All Saints’ Day (November 1st, now a holiday) offers families time to tidy the graves of family members and cover them with flowers and candles. Whole families make their pilgrimages – some people travelling long distances, even as far as Transylvania to do so – the elderly and children alike. November 2nd is Hallotak napja, (The Day of the Dead or All Souls). It is neither ghoulish nor morbid, but gives people the opportunity to remember and pay their respects to deceased family members on the one day of the year set aside for this purpose. It is conceivable that over time, young Hungarians will dress up and go to Hallowe’en parties in preference to the quiet of the cemetery. However, for those Americans and British people new to Hungary for whom the onset of winter darkness and the close of October mean only witches’ costumes and spiders’ webs, the atmosphere and peace of a darkened graveyard, heavy with the odour of white chrysanthemums and bathed in a sea of yellow candlelight, should not be missed - and will long be remembered.

Price of Progress

2010-10-10T15:13:00.010+02:00

Over the course of the summer, following two weeks away, we returned to Hungary and a familiar paper in our letterbox from the Post Office, informing us that we should collect a registered letter. The envelope contained a threatening missive from Főgáz, the Hungarian Gas company, informing us that if we did not pay something in excess of 76,000 forints which we owed, we would be cut off. Having received a number of such letters over the years, we no longer felt any sense of panic – the specified time had already elapsed without incident, and anyway, we had the small yellow counterfoils to prove payment.

I decided, however, to ring Főgáz – more out of a sense of curiosity than anything else. The youthful male voice was friendly as he entered our identification number into the computer system. There followed an awkward silence. Then he muttered, “According to what I can see, you don’t have any outstanding payments…” I asked him then, to account for the threatening letter. He could not. I enquired whether such registered letters were sent on the off-chance that someone more easily intimidated, an elderly person or a foreigner with little time (and probably less patience in trying to find some logic in the system), would take the easy way and simply pay in the demanded sum. No answer was forthcoming.

The following month we received the customary bill from Főgáz. Though it contained the familiar yellow pay-in slip, it also made a very unfamiliar demand for precisely 000.000 forints. Another month passed, and we received an identical bill. We had opted to pay a fixed monthly amount, followed up by an annual meter reading, and the last two ‘free’ bills now totalled 35,000 forints we had not paid. More surprising still, was the subsequent arrival of the postman with 41,000 forints for us in cash – from Főgáz. Was it mere coincidence that the two ‘free’ bills, in addition to the cash payment totalled the mysterious 76,000 forints? The explanation presented itself that, following our annual meter reading it was established we had used less gas than the projected yearly total, and that we were in fact owed money – not that we owed anything. This remains conjecture though, since we have received no communication subsequent to the registered letter.

In the now barely-remembered days before computers, (but in reality, only about ten years ago) we were still visited every first week of the month by the two pensioners who supplemented their meagre allowance by going door to door to read the gas or electricity meter, and who collected from us all what was due for the month preceding. Armed with nothing more than a large, battered leather bag, they climbed the steps to flats around the whole city. For years, pensioners like these covered the same patch, familiar to us all when we bumped into them in the street, but (as they said) never threatened – though in winter they obviously carried large quantities of cash.

Like distant relatives they chatted about the weather, their families, our children, the likely amount of a winter bill and ways of economising; they gratefully accepted cold water on hot summer days and hot tea on bitter frosty evenings. They were genuinely upset at the death of our elderly neighbours whom they had known for years – and we regretted in equal measure their departure, when a more ‘efficient’ system came to replace them.

OFF Your Bike!

2010-09-18T22:06:00.009+02:00

September 16th-22nd marks European Mobility Week, and for its part Hungary has this weekend closed various roads and organised the so-called Critical Mass bike ride for the 22nd. The organisers state that The aim is to draw attention to the harmful effects of present modes of transport on human health.

Whilst not for a moment decrying or disputing the obvious benefits to both the environment and the cyclist’s health, I am far from convinced that the explosion in numbers of Magyars (and others) wheeling their way in amongst us more sedentary walkers and users of public transport, is a cause for unequivocal celebration. Safe from harm in their fluorescent helmets and resplendent in the latest cycling gear, their unvoiced superiority regales motorists and pedestrians alike, as they shoot up hills and over bridges past queues waiting at bus and tram stops. Yet, while their physical well-being may be improving, those of us negotiating life on the pavement are finding it increasingly fraught with the ever-present hazard of being hit by a bike. Since when have the pavements been declared open to cyclists? Without a bell, akin to adolescents on their skateboards, they silently weave in and out of unsuspecting pedestrians, quite unaware of the danger lurking just behind. However, unlike the teenage skateboarder who can hardly claim to be saving the planet, our errant cyclists, sure that they occupy the high moral ground, feel free to do as they please without fear of censure.

The humble pushbike was hardly if ever to be seen on Budapest streets twenty years ago – it was the transport of the country peasant who could not afford the several years’ salary to buy a Trabant (let alone a Lada), and in areas where buses were infrequent. Villages were full of men and women riding slowly along their streets (not pavements), to and from market – and in evenings, with neither lights nor helmet to protect them, men would wobble drunkenly home from the pubs along dimly-lit roads – a real hazard for motorists.

Today I stood at Jászai Mari tér waiting half an hour for a friend, and counted approximately 45 cyclists pass the sign requesting they dismount, thus enabling pedestrians to navigate the narrow walkway left on Margit hid to walk safely to the island. Of these, just two dismounted. Subsequently, we too took our chances along the same fenced pathway, the risk exacerbated by the fact not only that we had a three-year-old toddler with us, but that my friend is blind and also had a guide dog. Yet only with eyes in the back of our heads could we have negotiated the walk peacefully, as cyclists pedalled inches behind us, waiting an opportunity to overtake. Their selfish disregard for pedestrians can be witnessed everywhere in the city, in spite of the fact that there are increasing numbers of cycle paths provided for them – and which they would not for a moment contemplate sharing with pedestrians!
I agree that the time has indeed come to draw attention to the the harmful effects of present modes of transport on human health – the mode of transport being of the two-wheeled variety. Time they got OFF their bikes!

Time Travel

2010-09-11T09:52:00.008+02:00

Last weekend I stood on a somewhat wet and windy Andrássy út to hear a friend play the piano on one of several temporary podiums that had been erected along its length - the occasion being the celebrations of both the centenary of Mahler’s death concurrently with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Erkel. This was a somewhat unlikely tribute by a bevy of highly-talented pianists braving numbed fingers and the electronic amplification of their heroic renderings, to two composers who wrote little if anything for the instrument! This fact notwithstanding, the pianists fittingly selected to play Chopin (whose anniversary is also this year) and Liszt (whose will be next year). The broad avenue was closed to traffic, and all around me I was aware of the many foreign tongues expressing delight and admiration, hands clasping guide books and maps, and young employees of the Hop-on-hop-off bus distributing leaflets with great alacrity.

In recent years, tourism has increased notably, while the months now covered by the presence of foreign visitors in the capital, and the events organised to tempt them here, have grown significantly. The many arts festivals, food and wine festivals, popular and classical music events, to name just a few, have seen Budapest experience the phenomenon of tourism as never before.

How difficult it now is to recall the situation which prevailed when this part of Europe was effectively isolated and forgotten by those whose foreign holidays ended in Vienna. Not that travel to communist lands was outlawed or impossible – but the yards of red tape and a fear of the unknown were enough to keep all but the most intrepid at bay:
An artificially low exchange rate (in 1980) of just 62 forints to the pound, and a return flight of 200 pounds, did little to induce the potential traveller. In addition, one had to procure a 30-day visa from the Hungarian embassy (or endure a long wait and a lengthy procedure at Ferihegy airport on arrival).Then followed the uncomfortable scrutiny by passport control, questions by grim-faced customs officials, and the feeling of insecurity as to the legality of bringing certain items (like jeans) into the country. Within 48 hours one had to register at the local police station – another intimidating experience.

Tourism, both as a concept and as a reality, was non-existent. Aside from East Germans using the only possible method available to them to meet their relatives from the West at Lake Balaton, one could occasionally witness a dirty old coach bearing Russian plates and some party faithful making its was around Heroes’ Square, but that was all. Monuments and bridges lay in total darkness – no illuminations dazzled the eyes of the awestruck tourist on the river bank – there were very few days a year when the expense was deemed justified. The one airport terminal saw as many – or as few – flights in a week as now arrive in a single day. No tourist maps, tourist offices or information, and all else only in the vernacular. A real experience of travel and the unknown for those who were willing to take their chances!

It was thus a real pleasure to now find myself among the hordes of people who had chosen to visit this unquestionably beautiful city, which was for so long hidden in both metaphorical and actual darkness. It is possible that some native Hungarians feel there are now enough tourists – but my suspicion is that like me, they enjoy the feeling that Budapest is no longer ‘’off stage” and that their isolation has truly ended.

Baja Revisited

2010-08-16T20:14:00.002+02:00

It is now thirty summers since I first went from England to the southern Hungarian town of Baja to teach English, and this weekend I returned to meet my erstwhile students. Baja is little-known by visitors, lacking the more obvious sights or notable events which would make the journey to Hungary’s southern border unmissable. Yet its tranquil atmosphere, its imposing main square and its beautiful setting on the Sugovica river guarantee that I can easily be persuaded to re-visit it.

Back in 1980, a four-hour train journey in sweltering temperatures, ending with the expansive bridge over the Danube at its widest, was my usual way of reaching Baja. Then, just an old pedestrian bridge linked the sleepy town with the small island (Petöfi sziget) where I was both to hold the course, and to live for the weeks of my stay. The English lessons were arranged for employees of a furniture factory by its manager, a self-confessed Anglo maniac, in the factory’s modest holiday home at the far end of the island. In the breaks we sat out in the garden and waited for the manager’s young son, Gordi, to cycle along the sandy path, past the KISZ (Young Communists’ Association) building, and back to the bridge to fetch us lángos (deep fried flat bread). Little could we have foretold that thirty years later he (Gordon Bajnai!) would be running the country!

Afternoons were frequently spent swimming in the Sugovica which wends its way to the mighty Danube nearby. Apart from the enormous main square (Béke tér) the town’s main meeting places were the market, and the fish market which was located on the stone steps leading down to the water. Evenings saw us take our (wooden) seats at the small local cinema, or sit chatting around the fire, watching Baja’s speciality of fish soup bubbling golden orange in a cauldron in the garden; mosquitoes were an inescapable part of life there. With no motor traffic on the island its silence was interrupted only by the cooing of the wood pigeons or the splash of the water. More islands lay further downstream, and a ferryman sat by the shore in his old rowing boat, well beyond the crimson sunset and into dusk, waiting for passengers.

Life after 1989 saw some unexpected changes: a second building where we had held an English course was temporarily transformed into a brothel, while the Yugoslav war yielded undreamt-of opportunities for those seeking to make their fortunes from cross-border gun-running and other forms of smuggling, and the town’s cafés filled with dubious clientele from both sides of the border. Baja today is a hotchpotch of the old and the new. Inevitably, there have been many changes – for my part, the least welcome being the demolition of the old bridge to Petöfi sziget and the construction of one able to take motor vehicles; much building has also taken place on the island. The market continues to thrive, though the fish market has relinquished its small cove to the mooring of small motor boats; the cinema is closed, though none has been built to replace it. The buildings on the main square have been restored to their original splendour - churches and parks likewise. Meanwhile, the spectacularly ugly concrete department store stands still in all its communist glory – a true reminder of the horrors we all accepted stoically as a part of life at that time!

But wandering the quiet paths alongside the sandy shores of the Sugovica with its motionless fishermen, the sun’s setting reflected in the river’s small waves, the smell of soup wafting from the Halászcsárda (fish restaurant) and the willows hanging in the deep green water, I realise that even these changes have not spoilt this town. I will be back.

End of the Saga?

2010-08-05T17:08:00.009+02:00

Anyone who has followed this blog from its start, almost one year ago, will have noted the occasional entries connected with the fate of the Music Academy. It has, unwittingly, become a symbol of the ‘planning’ which characterises many aspects of life in the country.

The completed renovation of the nineteenth-century building in Liszt Ferenc tér, was originally planned to coincide with its centenary in 2007 – this did not come to pass, and the new deadline became 2011 – the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth. Work was set to commence in 2009, then this too was postponed. Finally, amid closing ceremonies and marathon concerts, a grand Farewell was taken last autumn….only for teaching to continue for the following academic year as though nothing had happened.

Now, apart from the ghostly strains of a piano being played in a far-flung practice room, and the odd thud of heavy boxes being moved along in its empty corridors, the Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia is deserted. The renovation work should soon begin, though as everyone is well aware, this senseless timing means that there is not even an outside chance that the building will be open for the important anniversary next year. That renovation is both necessary and long-overdue, is not in question. But having missed so many planned dates to start the work, would it not have been logical to delay this by a mere twelve months more in order to allow access to the building when, inevitably, musicians will flock to Hungary’s capital to celebrate Liszt’s birthday next year? It may be a little shabby, but the Zeneakadémia is hardly in danger of imminent collapse. Meanwhile, the unsolved problem of where the institution might move to during the renovation period seems to have been solved. An office block at 25, Űllöi út, between the Museum of Applied Arts and Kálvin tér, and which once housed the country’s Standards Office, will become the temporary home of the Academy.

The vexed question for those working and studying there – for there is no point here in enumerating the countless shortcomings of an office block for the teaching of music – is quite how temporary this sojourn is likely to be. The reason cited for every problem in Hungary is a lack of money – and there is no question that the renovation of the Academy will be a costly affair. However, as with many other large-scale projects in the country, the EU has provided funding. Yet only this week, the Wall Street Journal commented on the stance of Hungary’s present government towards the outside world, stating that: Mr. Orban, who took office in late May after a landslide election victory, has made it clear that he believes Hungary can survive without more IMF and EU aid. There remain, then, two critical questions: Is the Zeneakadémia already in possession of the money earmarked for its renovation? And, if they are, what will be the situation if – as seems to happen as a matter of course with such things – the designated sum is insufficient, and more money must be found?

Hungary is strewn with half-finished building and renovation projects which bear the stars of the EU flag, promising a secure source of capital that will see the job finished - the fourth metro line and Margit híd to mention just the two most obvious. If additional finance is required for these or other works (which will now need to be raised nationally), one need not speculate long on the relative priority that will be given to a music academy against a bridge or an underground line.
The 150th anniversary of the founding of the Zeneakadémia as a teaching institution, is in 2025….

Home from Home

2010-07-21T16:29:00.007+02:00

In common with many people at this time of year, we travelled away for a short holiday. Summer it may be, but summery it was not in Donegal, Ireland, our chosen destination. However, the unspoilt beauty of its green hills and mountains, the heartfelt warmth of its people, and a total dearth of tourists (there must be more sheep than people in this area) were magical. Just three other people combed the empty miles of sandy beaches which look out over the Atlantic, while country lanes were choked – not with traffic – but with wild flowers, where the only ‘noise’ was provided by the breeze, the sheep and the larks; a stark contrast indeed to the urban living of Budapest.

Our late-evening return flight from London was delayed, meaning we were sitting in the homeward-bound taxi at 2a.m. No gradual transition back to Hungarian reality for us: the outside thermometer showed an unequivocal 27c, even at this hour: as the pilot had said, “We are now descending into the furnace…,” while our driver careered from one lane to the other, simultaneously answering his hand-held mobile phone, and shooting through two red lights. To complete the Hungarian experience in style, he asked for 5,500 forints in place of the fixed price of 5,200 – a small increase, but nevertheless, a sharp reminder that one can never relax one’s guard. And then finally, the flat, which must have been ten degrees hotter than it was outside…

The following morning I found an email from a friend who, after many years, decided to return to his native America. In the decade I had known him in Budapest, the overriding tenor of his conversations was one of complaint and disbelief at many aspects of life which he found unacceptable and intolerable (too many to enumerate here). On countless occasions over the years he had emailed me, having decided to abandon Hungary, and suggested a farewell meeting – only to return again! Now, it seemed, he had finally carried out his long-stated intention; his message was brief: How are you? I am miserable in New Jersey…

This phenomenon is far from unique. An English musician friend who spent five years in Budapest, but then left entirely from choice, admitted he could not come and visit us, as he was not sure he would be able to leave the city once he again set foot in it… Meanwhile, ten years ago, I had an Irish colleague who, similarly, could find little to compensate for the many irritations she had with the practicalities of her everyday existence here. These, together with an untenable work situation, prompted her to leave after just four months, gleefully and without a second thought. Imagine then my surprise when some months later, I bumped into her in a Budapest café!
“What are you doing here?” I asked in astonishment.
“Well, you know, after I left I realised just how much I really liked this city…”

Our visit to Ireland was, in fact, to another musician friend who shared some of our Communist years here in the 80s. It was a topic of conversation among us even then, how one could miss a place with all the frustrations and shortcomings it undoubtedly had – especially at that time. His conclusion was that like drinking or coffee, life in Budapest was quite simply ‘habit-forming’ – something one cannot expunge from one’s soul.

Just two days ago, another American friend also returned home after the best part of twenty years in Hungary. These years caused a similar amount of agonising about her decision – which involved five years spent back in the USA, only for her to return to Hungary for a further ten years.

With her flat denuded of all her possessions, some shipped, others given away, she left for an early morning flight to New York, ready for her new life back home. From the taxi I received the shortest of text messages from her as she headed for the airport - :-((
Maybe there really is no escape…..

Theatre of the Absurd

2010-06-29T12:52:00.003+02:00

It was with great joy that I happened to notice the forthcoming performance of a play (Macskajáték) last month, by one of my favourite Hungarian writers, Őrkény, to be staged in the Thália theatre.

Having waited a long time to see my other favourite of his plays (Tóthék), and being familiar with the phenomenon of performances being sold out the very day tickets become available – even in the days before the internet – I rushed home to book tickets online. I was in luck – some still remained and my card payment went through without a hitch. However, when I opened my email account there was no confirmation of the purchase and no tickets waiting to be printed. It was a Saturday evening, and I decided to wait until Monday in the event that the procedure was only slow and not faulty. By Tuesday – the first day I had time to make a personal visit to the theatre – I had still to receive any form of communication regarding my tickets.

I approached the box office in the beautiful foyer of the theatre and waited my turn. I then explained I had paid for two tickets but had not received the promised email nor the e-tickets.
“Are you sure you’ve checked your emails carefully?”
“Yes.”
“And your Spam box?”
“Yes.”
The woman then enlightened me that it was not the theatre itself which managed the internet ticket site, and therefore she could not help me. She suggested I go to my bank and ask for a print-out of a statement showing that payment had gone through, and then return to her with it. It was already past bank closing hours, and I had no intention of queuing for an hour after work on another day in order to acquire the document, and then return to queue again at the box office. I asked what the situation would be if I lived in another part of the country and could not come to the capital – after all, purchasing goods online is intended to facilitate matters, not involve hours of queuing and travelling. No answer.

In desperation, she pointed to a glass door opposite bearing the inscription Management, and told me to try there. The door was locked, though three young women were clearly visible on the other side, chatting. I knocked and was buzzed to enter. Here I explained the situation once again, and was again informed that it had nothing to do with the theatre. Their suggestion was that I contact the company managing online ticket sales, and they scribbled their telephone number on a scrap of paper.
“How about you ringing them now while I’m here?” I asked.
This brought a look of shock to their faces, but having no ready reason why they could not do so, the woman dialled without any acknowledgement of my request. She handed the receiver to me, whereupon I told the story for now the third time.

The new woman told me that the purchase could be seen – not only on her screen, but on the theatre’s network – whereupon I asked her to repeat this to her ‘colleague’ in the office where I stood. Szia Éva….persze, persze….(Hi Éva…of course, of course.)
“The email was sent to you,” she elucidated, unsmilingly, “But it has now been re-sent.” And with that she turned to one of the other women and resumed the conversation I had no doubt interrupted. Then, as I emerged from the glass doors, the woman in the box office called to me:
“Did you manage to get it sorted out?”
“Yes, thank you. They’re re-sending the email – but I never did get one.”
“Yes – several people have been in to complain about that…”

The evening itself provided a fitting postscript to the purchase of the tickets: swathes of elegantly dressed theatre-goers who had arrived in good time for the performance, were kept waiting in a tightly-packed crowd outside the theatre doors, unable to access the bar, toilets or their seats until three minutes before curtain up.
The play itself was wonderful – small wonder that such a master of the Absurd should have sprung from this country.

Ignorance is Bliss

2010-06-14T18:48:00.005+02:00

Returning home from work on one of the warmer afternoons last week, I saw a woman sweating her way towards me on the otherwise deserted path. She was still some distance off, but I could make out that she was carrying several bulging bags as well as the jacket she had divested, as she trudged heavily in my direction. When she came within a few metres of me, I realised she belonged to that category of people impossible to age: their youth prematurely truncated by an excess of food, drink and Life in Hungary; now careworn, obese and unkempt. Looking towards her again, my attention was caught by the English words emblazoned on her tightly stretched t-shirt. They read: Go on, admit it – you’ve got the hots for me. Little could have been more incongruous, and I felt certain she could have not the slightest inkling of the message she was broadcasting, on a garment she had most likely found in one of the numerous second-hand clothes shops that have sprung up in recent years.

Before 1989, anything which could be identified as having originated from kint, (abroad, and not socialist) was a status symbol, whether it was a pair of Levi jeans or merely a carrier bag bearing the name of a foreign shop. This was true to the extent that a friend persuaded me to part with two old Indian skirts in exchange for a fridge, and it also resulted in daily requests for me to sell a PVC shopping bag with the Cinzano label printed on it, when I made my shopping trips to the market on Garay tēr where we lived. Unconvincing imitations of foreign goods were also manufactured inside the country’s borders – unidentifiable from the genuine article to all but a small handful of people with a smattering of a foreign language – a real rarity – or those who had managed to travel abroad. Thus it was that one of the alcoholics who was as permanent a feature of the market as the flower-sellers, owned a sweatshirt purportedly from ‘Oxsford University.’

Yet this phenomenon was perpetuated into the 90s. Our elderly neighbours at that time had a son who had defected to America, and who every now and then would send a parcel for his elderly parents. Maybe he considered it of no consequence in a country where few knew English (including his parents) but the sweatshirt he sent his 70-year-old mother, and which she proudly wore for our weekly shopping trip to the local market, bore the sizeable inscription: Fuck You! It was as uncomfortable as it was unavoidable that I impart to her the meaning of the words on her new garment.

Today, it is more ambiguous as to the intention with which such clothes are worn. The attractive young woman selling hot dogs at the Palatinus swimming pool on the Margaret Island, may well have known the meaning on her t-shirt: Can you maintain me? Though whether the white-haired porter working at a small hospital for the elderly where I go regularly, knew the meaning of his, I doubt. As he wandered the corridors, pushing octo- and nonagenarians in their wheelchairs, and politely greeting their visiting relatives (for the most part, also elderly), he appeared sublimely ignorant of the message on display on the front of his t-shirt: Born 2 FXXK.
Ignorance is bliss….

Cock and Ball Story

2010-06-04T21:05:00.004+02:00

Living in distant – and not so distant – parts, is an education on a number of fronts. Certainly, living among the locals, shopping and cooking, brings one into direct contact with the culture in a way mere tourism, or even travelling, cannot.

In 1980, I was dispatched to the southern town of Baja (still a favourite) to undertake a few weeks’ teaching. The students were of lower intermediate level, and morning sessions frequently began with questions about the previous evening, and morning routines. On asking one of the weaker members of the group about that morning’s breakfast, I got the following response (in an accent as thick as any Hungarian stew): ‘I had some bread, some tea and some cold dog.’ I blinked; then I moved quickly on to the next student, silently telling myself different countries, different habits… However, having come full circle back to the first man, I asked him to repeat what he had said (in the vain hope that I had misheard). But no - he repeated it verbatim. Possibly some involuntary facial expression prompted him to elucidate, ‘Not hot dog – cold dog.’ Of course.

The apparent strangeness of other Hungarian delicacies proved not to be the result of linguistic misunderstanding. We failed dismally to meet the challenge of matching the enthusiasm of our friends for tripe, brains, bone marrow and jellied vegetables - never mind fighting over unidentifiable animal parts fished out of steaming tureens of soup – particularly chickens’ feet, claws and all.

Last weekend I had lunch at Gerbeaud’s Onyx restaurant – a firm favourite. Having been a not infrequent guest over the last year, the restaurant manager had come to notice that we were as comfortable to converse with him in Hungarian as English, and had apparently decided he would ask for some little assistance with the translation of the menu. He explained that although there had been no complaint as such, he had observed a degree of consternation on the faces of his guests, especially, he added, the Americans. He apologised for interrupting our meal but said he would much appreciate our help in finding a more appropriate description of the delicacy – a dish which took first prize at the national chefs’ Tradition and Evolution competition earlier this year. However, in view of the reactions he had observed on the faces of foreign diners, and their subsequent failure to order the dish, he was keen to amend its translation.
Bringing over the original Hungarian version of the menu, he pointed to the dish in question: Csirkemell és glazírozott comb hús, füstölt burgonya pürével, kakas herés rizottó ropogóssal és „uborkasalátával”. This had been perfectly accurately – if not entirely delicately – translated: Breast of chicken and glazed leg of the chicken with smoked potato purée, crispy risotto with ball of the cock* and cucumber salad.

I did not blink – far less blanch. This time I succeeded in maintaining the legendary British cucumber coolness combined with a very stiff upper lip. Lesson learnt.

(* in other words, Risotto with cockerel testicles)

( http://www.onyxrestaurant.hu/ )

Information Blackout…the saga continues

2010-05-28T21:08:00.004+02:00

In September of last year I wrote my first piece (Information Blackout) on the imminent closure of Budapest’s Zeneakadémia. It was announced that the long overdue renovations would begin in 2010. In fact, these renovations were originally intended to be completed for 2007 – the hundredth anniversary of the building’s opening in 1907, but the date came and went with no discernable result.
Plan B, was to have the building renewed from top to bottom in time for a grand re-opening in 2011, in time to mark the 200th birthday anniversary of Franz Liszt (born in 1811). With the projected 2-year period necessary for the work to be completed, the mooted 2009 closure was already behind schedule – though Liszt’s birthday being in October, some sought to console critics that October 22nd 2011 was suitable for such a ceremonious re-opening.
However, a new academic year began in 2009 with still no concrete date for work to begin, now making the dream of an October 2011 opening all but impossible. Voices were raised, suggesting the entire project now be delayed until after 2011, but in vain. A whole programme of Farewell Concerts was organised between the 3rd and 9th of November of last year, culminating in the non-stop playing of all Beethoven’s nine symphonies in the main concert hall of the Music Academy, conducted by Kocsis. Alongside the concerts were photo exhibitions, evening jazz concerts, tours of the building, a symposium, and Music History lectures open to the public. 2011, the concerts and conferences planned worldwide, with their focus on Liszt (and therefore Hungary and the Budapest Music Academy), had suddenly become an irrelevance.

But then the Music Academy did not close. Nor has it to the present day. Concerts which would have been held in its Grand Hall were rescheduled to the French Institute, but teaching and examining continued, undisturbed, in the Liszt Ferenc tér building as though nothing at all had happened. Moreover, no-one, neither teachers nor students were told when or where to the move would be. Rumours abounded, but were neither refuted nor confirmed by the institution. Rumours then began that March would be the month for the momentous relocation – yet this seemed a bizarre choice, in the middle of the year’s final term and just two months from the May examinations and end of teaching. Needless to say, this also failed to be realised.

It is now the end of May, 2010 – a full academic year from the announcement of the Academy’s imminent closure. The Farewell Concerts raise no more than an ironic smile on the lips of those who refer to them, while teachers, librarians, piano technicians and students have become bored with laying bets on the whens and wheres of their shared futures. The academic year is as good as over; teachers and students are beginning their summer holidays, and not one knows where they should go come September. And having now delayed the renovation for a whole year, would it not seem reasonable to delay one more year, leaving the building open for the anniversary events which will be taking place worldwide in 2011, and which will inevitably see many foreign musicians visiting Budapest?

The concept of shared communication and even a small degree of transparency being as alien as it was twenty years ago, not even the Academy’s web page refers to this most burning of all questions. The promising homepage headings such as The Renovation of the Music Academy – only available to those who read Hungarian (this section is curiously absent in the English version!) - will be disappointed if they expect any hint at all to be divulged as to where teaching will continue following the closure. Should you be curious about the future catering plans of the building, the acoustics, its toilets and cleaning regimens, detailed descriptions are provided.
After scouring the web site for some time I thought I had discovered the key: on the Academy’s final web page is a link to ‘Privy Councils Communications,’ promising Strategic Communications – herein must lie the answers I felt sure. But nothing relating to the Zeneakadémia can be seen; I therefore entered its name into the Search facility. This provided me with….a link back to the Academy’s homepage!
Possibly, I should have tried two of the other links proffered by the Privy Council, aptly named: Image Building, or even more appropriately, Crisis Communication.

(See: http://www.zeneakademia.hu/ )

Communication G_p

2010-05-22T12:15:00.005+02:00

There is no doubt that the overall foreign language-learning situation in Hungary has improved. Prior to 1989 it proved nigh on impossible to find a Magyar who could hold a coherent conversation in anything but their mother tongue. While the elderly had a smattering – or maybe more – of German, the younger generation, faced with compulsory lessons in the language of their occupiers, given by teachers who were burning the midnight oil to keep a few pages ahead of their students, were notable only for their failure to teach even a basic knowledge of the Russian language. Indeed, it was a source of great pride to the majority of Hungarians to boast of eight years and more of lessons, and profess their inability even to ask for a glass of water.

This linguistic isolation, compounded by the difficulty of travelling anywhere except East Germany and of course the Soviet Union, resulted in a conspicuous lack of impetus to begin language study. Here, I must admit that this was entirely to the advantage of anyone like me, bent on the unlikely task of mastering magyarul! The futility of trying to communicate in anything but the local tongue guaranteed rapid progress in this difficult language.

Yet even in those communist years, western products trickled in here and there, smuggled across the border, or available in the exclusive diplomatic or dollar shops – accessible only by the few. Such brands as Levis and Wrangler jeans – particularly useful as a form of currency in the Soveit Union – and JVC cassettes, which could be relied upon not to shred when over and over they played the western pop music not to be heard on the radio, and which had been recorded from a lucky friend’s LP. This, in direct contrast to the locally produced and notoriously unreilable Polimer cassettes. Yet, popular as they were, few people had even the vaguest notion of how these names should be pronounced; or more accurately, they knew exactly how they should be said: Layviss (Levis), Rangelair (Wrangler) and Gee-Vee-See (JVC) tapes on which they could play The Bitliss (Beatles) music they loved. They looked bemused if someone gave the correct version, and, having ascertained what the poor uninitiated person was trying to say, quickly corrected their erroneous pronunciation. Thus, along with mastering gy, ty, ggy, ő, ű and the rest, I perfected the local pronunciation of foreign names and products such as Verchestair (Worcester sauce – popular even then) and learnt to use the unlikely term ‘farmer’ for jeans that were neither Layviss nor Rangelair.

Being the lucky possessor of a UK passport, I was sometimes asked to purchase items not available on the open market, for friends or colleagues. A regular request was for audio cassettes – few western pop records could be bought, but anyone with relatives kint (literally ‘outside’, meaning anywhere abroad, usually in The West) would have received them as presents. I worked in a language school and reliable cassettes were invaluable, and so I made a forray into a dollar shop on behalf of the school and asked for six Gee-Vee-See cassettes. The shop assisstant looked at me disdainfully. Witheringly, she stated: “That’s not how you say it - it’s JVC,” and shook her head sadly at my ignorance. Then, she carefully wrapped the precious items in tissue paper, and giving a final sigh of admonishment, handed them over to me.

Rite of Passage

2010-05-08T13:27:00.005+02:00

Anyone who has been in Hungary in the last few weeks may have been aware of two unusual phenomena: first, that the towns were full of groups of people who looked as though were en route to a wedding or a birthday party – elegantly dressed, bearing bouquets of flowers and assorted teddy bears and balloons. Then second, this last week, that there was a palpable dearth of teenagers on morning rush-hour public transport, albeit for a few who looked as though they were left over from the previous week’s ‘wedding’: attired in suits and ties, almost exclusively in black and white, possibly smoking nervously, reading distractedly, or taking leave from a similarly agitated parent. These students on trams, or waiting for buses, exchange looks of unspoken understanding with others similarly clad whom they happen to see, on their way to a similar fate. Every year is it thus: the beginning of the Érettségi – the weeks of school-leaving examinations. While younger students have a few days’ holiday, those now leaving school take part in a tradition that has hardly changed over the decades and which all students have been anticipating for the last year.

One does not simply ‘leave school’ in Hungary! At the end of April or beginning of May there is a formal school leave-taking ceremony, the Ballagás, which is attended by both the families and friends of the student about to celebrate this rite of passage. Naturally, each school has its own particular traditions, but it is usually the responsibility of the students one class below, to organise the event. Classrooms and corridors are decorated with fresh flowers – the flower of choice being lilac. On the day in question, extended family and friends make their way to the school, where they then line both sides of every corridor in the building. The classes of those leaving then parade (ballagni) in single file between the onlookers, often singing their farewell to their alma mater. Each has their hand on the shoulder of the student in front, and as they pass their families they are handed flowers and assorted cuddly toys or balloons. It is a wonderfully colourful and celebratory leave-taking, from whence many make their way to restaurants or cafés or a family celebration at home.

Later in the evening students gather once again in order to serenade their teachers. They make their way to their homes and sing for them – often from outside their flats, out in the garden, whereupon the teacher will invite them in. Here, there follows eating, drinking and more celebration before they continue to the next teacher’s, on into the late evening.

The day over, the following days’ thoughts turn to final revision for the examinations ahead. And on Monday morning, conspicuous in dark suits and ties, staring blankly or engaged in frantic last-minute cramming, they are observed by sympathetic people on their way to work, reminiscing on their own Érettségi. It is an event which will be recalled and commemorated annually, then less frequently, but celebrated nonetheless, when classes gather for Érettségi reunions, even many decades later.

Mayday

2010-05-02T12:14:00.005+02:00

Country traditions of maypole dancing or choosing a May Queen from among a village’s most beautiful young girls, are complemented in Hungary by the tradition of making a May Tree. It is the pleasant task of any boy in love, secretly to tie coloured ribbons to a tree in the girl’s garden during the night before Mayday while she sleeps. She then has the equally pleasant task of speculating on the identity of her ‘anonymous’ admirer.

On my first Mayday, spent away from the city in Hajdúböszörmény, I witnessed the solution to the problem posed by the increasing urbanisation of even country people now living in blocks of flats. Though trees surrounded the block, a May Tree would obviously not indicate which particular girl had received such adulation. The young man in question made his way to a nearby copse, broke off a large branch and took it home. That night, he used the door key to the block (his married sister lived there) to let himself in, and propping the branch - resplendent in its myriad of coloured ribbons - outside the girl’s flat, he crept out, back into the night.

May the First

2010-05-02T11:50:00.005+02:00

As on every warm and sunny May 1st since coming to live here, I watched yesterday as families sauntered to the Varosliget alongside a man bearing a cloud of foil balloons filled with helium to sell in the park. Unawares, they passed by closeby to our resident homeless man, who in the warmer Spring weather has returned to living on the railway embankment (see Blog for Jan. 26th).

As on all such bank holidays now, the various political parties were also gathering, this time in the wake of the general election, to lick their wounds or celebrate their successes. May the first, Labour Day or International Workers’ Day, has traditionally celebrated the rights of working people and the right to form unions which represent those same people. In Hungary, as in other European countries, approximately ten percent of the workforce is unemployed while political loyalties further divide a society increasingly disparate in terms of wealth and living standards. Thus, the political rallies which now dominate every national holiday – be it October 23rd, March 15th or May 1st – fail in every way to achieve the sense of unity that bound a society (albeit on a certain level of hardship), which could celebrate one hundred percent employment. There was then undeniably also the element of ‘them’ and ‘us’ – the ‘them’ being Kádár and the other party officials standing on the tribune, the ‘us’, everyone else. But there was no-one eeking out an existence in the city’s underpasses, disused railway carriages or woods.

We then lived on Garay tér, a small market square just off Dózsa György út. Sleep became impossible after six o’clock in the morning, as groups of people from various factories and other places of work, gathered beneath our windows. Buses arrived from every part of the country carrying thousands of people who would represent their co-operative or union. By the start of the parade at 10 a.m. the whole road had become a swathe of marching bodies, a sea of people bearing flags, banners, balloons, salami sandwiches and bottles of beer: an ocean whose current was so strong, that when I ventured around the corner I was swept along, unwittingly, behind representatives of a shoe factory, and in the midst of the sailors’ union MAHART. Speakers which had been attached to lamposts in the preceding week bellowed out communist songs, rallying cries and thunderous applause. And thus it continued for hours, the never-ending swarm of humanity - uncountable numbers - moving as one before the tribune and the statue of Lenin, until they spread out into the park behind Hősök tere: to peruse the stalls (where such rarities as Matchbox cars and Smarties could be found), to picnic – or simply to stretch out on the grass and fall asleep in the sun.

Watching the World Go By

2010-04-24T20:17:00.013+02:00

I have to admit to being an inveterate observer – not just of people, but of my surroundings. I have long enjoyed simply to stroll the streets of the city, noting such changes as have occurred since my last amble in that vicinity, and this reason alone explains my propensity for walking rather than riding, and for public transport over driving. But given a sunny day and sufficient free time, my greatest self-indulgence is to settle myself at a table at a street café, and simply to observe the eccentricities of the characters who populate this city, and who guarantee I never experience a moment’s boredom within its confines...

Some years ago, having a coffee in Pasaréti tér, my attention was attracted by an elderly woman approaching from around the corner – I was able to hear her before I could see her: she kept up a steady monologue to her equally invisible companion about the exhorbitant rise in her medication and the scandal of government subsidies being reduced on medicines. As she rounded the tree, becoming visible, I saw that her escort was neither her friend nor husband, but a somewhat portly dachshund. They continued past my vantage point, only to return some ten minutes later with the requisite medicaments, and with the elegantly-attired lady continuing her diatribe, pausing only to wish some acquaintance, “Good morning,” before disappearing once more from view.

Last summer, I was sitting lazily outside the Europa café in the sun, when my attention was drawn to an elderly man in tracksuit and trainers nearby. He stopped adjacent to a nearby lamp-post a mere few metres from my table, and, holding on to it, began to perform his constitutional exercises - much like a ballerina at the barre in a slow motion version of a silent movie. Paying not the slightest notice either to us or passers-by, he continued thus for some twenty minutes before shuffling on along up Szent István Körút.

Rushing to work in the rain just a week ago, I noticed an elegantly-dressed man in a suit some distance ahead of me who kept bending over as though to adjust his shoelaces. I soon caught up with him, stooping again over his shoes and oblivious to my stares as I saw him carefully remove a snail in danger of pedestrians’ feet, and put it safely to one side on the grass verge….

An ex-colleague visited recently from Basel where she now lives – her most frequent complaint with the city being its perfect organisation and lack of the ‘character’ she came to love in Budapest. We decided to eat out on the terrace of Két Szerecsen, where we caught up with the eighteen months since our last meeting. While we waited for our wine, we noticed a man crossing the road towards us, carrying two buckets. He stopped just the other side of the wooden trellis separating us from the pavement, and started digging up the soil in the large, concrete box there, in perfect view of several diners and any passer-by. He methodically filled both buckets with fresh earth – perhaps put in readiness for flowers to be planted the following day – and then returned from whence he had come, no questions asked.

Yet the most incongruous spectacle I still remember with great fondness, happened one June about ten years ago. It was almost seven o’clock on a sunny summer’s morning as I drove around Hősök tere, taking my children to school. As we turned onto the grand avenue that is Andrássy út, its wonderful villas bathed in dappled sunlight, its footpaths lined with flowers, I had to slow down dramatically in order to confirm what I thought I had seen, but could not believe: walking alongside the neatly trimmed bushes that border the flower beds, was a man leading a large white goat on a lead, waiting patiently while it nibbled the fresh greenery available for its breakfast!

Signs and Portents

2010-04-17T18:28:00.003+02:00

I was 23 years old when, alighting from the dodgems in an English country fairground, I announced, ‘I want to learn to drive.’ Those brave individuals – including my husband and my brother – who volunteered to take me out to practise, were sorely tested. When asked how it had gone, my brother stated simply, ‘I didn’t know what fear was before this afternoon.’ This aside, I managed to pass my driving test first time, and to date have been the cause of only one accident with another vehicle. I have driven to a good number of other countries including twice from Budapest to England without any trouble at all. In fact, I enjoy driving.

However, I have to admit to having failed abysmally in trying to fathom the signs and regulations governing traffic in this country. Admittedly, I have no excuse, since the Hungarian equivalent of the Highway Code, KRESZ, is available on the internet; I am also not unaware that there is now a written exam in Britain which did not exist when I took my test. Yet the entire KRESZ document is comparable only to a legal contract: paragraphs and sub-sections, references back to previous (i) or (a) or (b) points, all swimming in a mass of dense text and convoluted sentence structures. Certainly not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted!

When my children were making their own intrepid attempts to commit these some five-hundred rules to memory (another sixty have just been added or modified), they also began to analyse and pass critical comment on my hitherto acceptable mode of conveying them about the city: ‘You don’t have to give way here – look, that street’s got the mackósajt sign!’ explained my son. This aforementioned mackósajt is the affectionate term for the upturned triangular Give Way sign familiar all over Europe, which indeed resembles the triangles of processed cheese (sajt) with the bear (mackó) on the label. What is not quite so well understood is that in order to determine that you have right of way, and that the drivers coming from your right have to stop, you are required to look along the road at rightangles to yours and try to spot the back of this sign! I have as yet not managed to achieve this at a speed which does not require me to slow down, especially in summer months when foliage may obscure the sign altogether – and I was taught to keep my eyes on the road (the one I am driving down!)

The truth is, that the most obvious difference when driving in Hungary – as in many areas of life – is that the regulations seem to provide more of a reference point than a series of unassailable rules; more of a general indicator of what the average driver is deviating from, than a rigid law. For example, probably around fifty percent of drivers do not wear seat belts, and most use their hand-held mobile phones as a matter of course. No sane pedestrian would expect a driver to stop for them – not even when that driver is a policeman – even allowing for any number of painted lines on the road or signs not obscured by greenery. So well trained is the average pedestrian, in fact, that when I recently stopped at a pedestrian crossing where the lights were out of order, and waved the man across, he steadfastly refused to move, angrily gesticulating at me to move on.

Thus, I continue to drive in the strange hybrid style born of a British training and a Hungarian penchant for jumping the lights – which must surely explain their time delay – and conclude that probably the best possible preparation for taking to Budapest’s roads would indeed be a few hours spent on the dodgems.

Easter in the Country

2010-04-04T20:51:00.007+02:00

Living in the city, it is doubtful whether even the Budapestiek will have experienced a ‘real’ Easter: a gentrified and somewhat anodyne version of events is practised by some in Budapest, but the colourful traditions of the festival can only be experienced outside the capital.
The giving of young rabbits to children alongside both chocolate and painted eggs is, of course, to be found in the cities – though the feasibility of keeping them in a country garden (as opposed to donating them to the zoo, where it is strenuously denied that they are used as fodder for the carnivores!) is obvious. For those who attend church, people in country towns and especially villages, may take their Easter fare to be blessed on Easter Sunday morning. The freshly-baked sweet bread (kalács) is carefully covered in white cloths and carried to the local church where, weather permitting, services are sometimes held outside. Easter lunches, frequently attended by the whole extended family, can be as important an event as Christmas.
But it is Easter Monday which is witness to the real disparity between town and country. This is the day for locsolás, for ‘watering’ the girls. In Budapest, this consists of fathers and sons visiting female relatives, or maybe limiting themselves to those in their own family flat. The boys should recite a short poem to the effect that they noticed a flower wilting, and ask the ‘flower’s’ permission to water her. The girl acquiesces and her hair is sprinkled with (usually cheap and overpoweringly fragrant) cologne. Bottles of this dubious eau-de-cologne can be seen on sale on every street corner in the days leading up to Easter. Hereupon, the girl gives the boy an Easter egg – traditionally a dyed red one, and maybe also some money.
My first experience of this day was in Hajdúböszörmény, close to Debrecen. The family we were staying with had no fewer than seven (now adult) sons and one daughter. By ten o’clock the seven elegantly-dressed boys accompanied by their sons, and with my husband Paul in tow, left for their annual walk around the town, pockets bulging with bottles of cologne, the young boys with small baskets in which to carry their booty. They always called on every single female relative, from their 90-year-old maiden aunt, to the youngest newborn baby in the family. Two of the men also carried soda syphons – the real tradition of locsolás consisting of drenching the village girls with buckets of water!
I was left at home with the seven boys’ mother, her daughter and granddaughter, to prepare both for the men’s return, and any others who might meanwhile call on us. A large bowl of dyed red eggs had been prepared the previous day, and plates of smoked ham, boiled eggs, and kalács stood in readiness, alongside bottles of wine and homemade pálinka. We had several visitors, some of whom recited long verses of which I understood not a word, but knew I must answer igen when the recitation stopped. In return for being saved from wilting, I then offered the egg, food and drink.
It was well after noon when the crowd of men and boys returned – in various stages of inebriation, from the mildly merry to the totteringly tipsy. But the worst casualty of all was Paul – being less experienced, and not wanting to offend any of his hosts, he had accepted the pálinka proffered in every home, and was literally carried through the garden gate and into the house where he slept until late into the evening. Whose fate was worse we discussed at length: Paul’s hangover lasted only another twenty-four hours; my hair, following sixteen 'waterings', and even in spite of washing it daily, still reeked of cheap perfume for more than a week.

April 4th

2010-03-27T11:27:00.004+01:00

Communist Hungary had a good number of high days and holidays, some celebrated, some less so. November 7th – the anniversary of the great October revolution in Russia (hence the discrepancy in the dates) – was a national holiday, but there was little outward sign of any associated festivities. It was possibly a reflection of the Hungarians’ view of the extent to which this day merited any sort of celebration whatsoever: when I enquired of some students how the day was usually marked, I was informed that probably more people got drunk than usual.

April 4th was a little more ambivalent. It marked the day of the liberation of Budapest (from the Nazis) by the Soviets in 1945. The day was unlikely to be greeted by enthusaistic flag-waving Hungarians, but had nevertheless to be marked in official circles to appease the country’s ‘liberators’. This national holiday was used for military parades on Dózsa György út which were boadcast on the news, but few went to watch who had not been instructed to do so. As on all such days, the flags came out: Hungarian tricolours and the red communist flag with hammer and sickle. Every house, every public building, every bridge, every tram and bus sported one of each, while huge banners fluttered over Népköztársaság útja (Andrássy út) and Dózsa György út, suspended from wires stretching across the entire width of the broad avenues.

Leaving the city behind, we spent one such April 4th with our friend Miklós and his brother, János, in the village of Polgár not far from Debrecen. János was the leader of the State Farm, and April 4th was the day on which two duties fell to him to perform: the first was the distribution of bonuses to Outstanding Workers; the second was to lay wreaths on the graves of the three Russian soldiers who lay buried in the small local cemetery. Through dark and rain we bumped along muddy unmade roads in János’s Lada, parking beside the low building which was to host the celebration. There we joined the already-assembled state farm workers, and took our places in the throng.
We all shuffled along the muddy track – János, and one or two other dignitaries at the front – we at the rear. At an appropriately solemn pace we marched raggedly through the muddy rivulets to the small wicket gate of the cemetery which was only large enough for the first few to enter. There, more speeches were given and the wreaths placed alongside gravestones bearing Russian inscriptions.

Back at the building, rows of wooden chairs stood in a hall with a small stage at one end. Once the room was full the speeches began: quotas fulfilled, ambitious five-year plans; then followed the traipsing onto the stage of those workers who had been singled out for a reward: a certificate and a small bag containing cash.
The event would have been reminiscent of a school speech day – apart from the beer and pálinka, the pogácsa and the cakes; and the fact that we were being surveyed from every wall by pictures of Lenin and socialist-realist farm workers smilingly reaping corn, with the red star hanging above us all.

What’s in a Name?

2010-03-18T17:57:00.006+01:00

In these days of increasing hysteria surrounding climate change, fanned by scientific fact and a not insignificant amount of hot air, it is maybe comforting to find that the peasant wisdom of folk lore continues to hold good.

If you had been under the (erroneous) impression that Spring begins on March 21st, think again – at least if you are living in Hungary. March 15th signals the onset of Spring, so long-awaited after the dark, dismal winter months. Allowing for slight hiccoughs (the sprinkling of soggy snow the morning of the 16th this year was an unpleasant surprise!) there is almost always a marked rise in temperatures around this date.

However, though it is difficult to outdo a revolution (March 15th), most weather forecasting is linked to Name Days in Hungary. I have not yet discovered another country where the saints days are celebrated in this way – all Hungarians have a name day, and it is often this – rather than a birthday, usually a family affair – which is celebrated by acquaintances and colleagues. All calendars list the names allotted to the days of the year, and some of the more prominent names (Mária, János etc.) have several. Many flower shops display name days in their windows, eager to remind you in case you had not consulted the calendar or listened to the radio that morning, (name days, including their origins, are given on the early morning radio programmes).

March 18th, 19th and 21st mark the days of the saints which bring us warmth in their sacks: Sándor, József, Benedek, zsákban hoznak be a meleget. A quick look at the web pages forecasting weather in the coming days confirm the rhyme. Similarly, though May can be gloriously warm, there remains the ever-present threat of the freezing saints, fagyos szentek: Pongrác, Szervác and Bonifác, on May 12th, 13th and 14th. If not actually freezing, these days are often marked by cooler and frequently rainy weather. If you are hoping for a white Christmas, the day to watch is Katalin nap on November 25th. As the saying goes, if this day is wet then Christmas will be frozen ( and vice-versa). Interestingly, June 8th, Medárd, is ascribed the same properties as St. Swithin’s (July 15th) in Britain – should it rain on this day then 40 more days of rain will follow, or conversely, if the day be fine, 40 days of drought will ensue. Many more folk weather predictions, particularly associated with farming and harvests,exist, though with a more urban lifestyle, are rapidly being forgotten.

Some years ago, when teaching at a university English department, in order to qualify for the small addition to my salary a pass would occasion, I was persuaded to sit for the advanced level state language exam in Hungarian. The examination date was set for May 16th, a warm day but with relentlessly heavy rain. On leaving the flat and locking the door, umbrella at hand, my elderly neighbour appeared, ready to go to market. “Awful weather!” I said. “Well,” she replied, “you know the saying: Májusi eső aranyat ér,” (May rain is worth gold). I did not know it, and found little consolation for my soggy departure in the fact that farmers would be happy.
On arriving at the exam centre I was presented with the first part of the test: a 50-question multiple-choice paper on grammar, vocabulary and miscellaneous other items. Question twenty-three had me chuckling silently to myself with what would have passed as exam-nerve hysteria; it said: Complete the saying: Májusi eső....

March 15th : A National Celebration

2010-03-11T16:57:00.004+01:00

March 15th, 1848, was the day when Hungary’s poet, Sándor Petöfi, stood on the steps of the National Museum and recited the poem which was to mobilise Hungarians into an (unsuccessful) attempt to overthrow the yoke of Austrian oppression, and win the nation independence and freedom. The anniversary of this event was marked under communism, just as it is remembered today – albeit that present-day celebrations have witnessed a shift in emphasis.

Prior to 1989, March 15th was not a national holiday - it was only a school holiday. The heightened feelings of nationalism around this time of the year (as opposed to allegiance to the Communist cause), and the very obvious parallel situation of the occupation of the country by the Soviets (like the Austrians before them), resulted in the decision to keep the day low-key. Banning any commemoration at all would have been likely to escalate existing tensions, and so it was decided to allow schools to celebrate the fight against Hungary’s 19th century oppressors, but to keep the adult population at work.

In the days leading up to the anniversary, children practised the Petöfi poem, folk dancing, and re-enactments of the events of that historic day, which they performed at school. Rosettes (kokárda) of the Hungarian colours were sold on every street corner, and hardly a lapel was to be seen without one – even we felt the urge to join the celebration. Yet again, in order to ensure that feelings of patriotism did not run out of control and spill over into anti-Soviet sentiment, certain modifications of perception were instilled both into the history teaching at school, and in official circles: the Soviets had conquered all oppressors (like the Austrians) and to this extent March 15th symbolised a celebration of the more general victory over oppression – not just the Hungarians’ particular attempt in this direction.Thus, to further reinforce the message, both Hungarian flags and the red flag bearing the hammer and sickle were hung side by side in every public place. Every bridge, every office building, every block of flats had one of each flag, and it was a fineable offence not to hang them out on appointed days. A decision to hang only the Hungarian one would have been foolhardy in the extreme. The statue of Petöfi on the Danube embankment had hundreds of small flags planted in the earth at its base: both Hungarian and red flags. Understandably, the Hungarians felt that their very national holiday had been hijacked by a state that had not even existed in 1848.

One of the very first groups of students I taught in 1982, was from the Karl Marx University of Economics (now Corvinus Egyetem). When I asked how they would be spending their free day, a girl in the group said that her parents would be locking her in the family flat: in the previous year, she (along with fellow students) had gone at night and removed the small red flags from around the Petöfi statue, leaving just the Hungarian tricolours – something which carried a not insignificant risk: plain-clothes policeman could be observed at such sites, loitering conscpicuously, cameras in hand.

Following a brief respite in the early 90s, March 15th was once again ‘hijacked.’ In the lead-up to the 2002 election, Viktor Orbán declared that all those who supported him should wear the kokárda which was traditionally only worn in the days surounding the March anniversary. Suddenly, the wearing of the Hungarian colours professed allegiance to a political party and was no longer the neutral symbol of pride in one’s home country; for those who were not Orbán supporters it became a no-win situation: they either abandoned their patriotism and desire to commemorate 1848, or by wearing their kokárda, declared their tantamount support for the FIDESZ party. What had always been a unifying celebration, had, overnight, become highly divisive.

Today, the recitation of the Petöfi poem on the steps of the National Musueum and the associated official celebrations, have become a backdrop to demonstrations – peaceful and otherwise – by a variety of political parties. Once again, March 15th has become politicised – no longer by the communists, but now by the self-professed exponents of democracy: the result, sadly, is an unsavoury exploitation of this national holiday.

Greasy Palms

2010-03-05T20:06:00.002+01:00

Corruption, like crime in general, exists on some level in every society. In certain geographical areas it is endemic: developing countries where basic necessities are unavailable and where the majority live in abject poverty.

Hungary is no exception. Whilst still communist, bribery was not only accepted but expected. It caused neither embarrassment nor sleepless nights – it was frequently the only way to circumvent absurd regulations that seemed to serve no other purpose than to provide petty bureaucrats with an opportunity to ‘earn’ some extra cash. Everyone was familiar with the going rates for anything from being caught by the police for speeding to the ‘fee’ expected from the obstetrician for the delivery of a baby, or from being supplied with the name of someone who could help you get a telephone to ‘helping’ your child get a place at university. Though resented to an undeniable extent, these bribes – more often referred to as ‘tips’ – were a part of everyday life. State wages were low, and people sought any method to supplement their incomes.

State-owned shops had little on offer, but even some of the available stock was hidden away in back store-rooms. Thus, if you were unable to find shoes in your size, and the assistant hinted that a suitable pair might be in stock, using the well-worn ‘code’ of I would be very grateful if you would have a look, indicated that your gratitude would subsequently manifest itself in a few hundred extra forints. The police were infamous: no proof was available (nor indeed necessary) to accuse any driver of an array of misdemeanours, each with its attached rate. Refusal to offer a tip was much more of an inconvenience than to offer a few banknotes and put it down to bad luck. A student of mine worked to pay for his studies in a gaming hall: one-armed bandits in a small, dark room in the eighth district. A policeman was a regular: he would lose 20,000 forints in a short session, and then replacing his cap, stand on the corner of the busy road, flag down some ‘speeding’ motorists and return with his pockets replenished. With a (very) few notable exceptions, everyone expected to have to give such tips, and few refused when offered: there was almost nothing that could not be ‘arranged’ for a fee, and if one person refused to accept the bribe, there would be half a dozen more waiting for such an opportunity.
Meanwhile, veritable armies of men and women claimed they were unable to work for health reasons, all claiming disability allowance while pursuing lucrative activities, unchecked, for decades.

There was a belief, a hope, that with the collapse of the communist system, these ingrained habits would fade – indeed, that with higher wages they would become an anachronistic curiosity, at least on this everyday level. Yet the truth is that little has changed. In 2000, Britain’s The Independent published an article entitled: Bribe menu shows Hungary has best police force money can buy”! Whilst public intolerance of bribery is promulgated in official circles, it continues unabated. Whether the small-time acceptance (expectance) of 25,000 forints to see you through your driving test, or the odd million for planning permission in green-belt zones, the situation remains, in essence, unaltered. According to Transparency International, Hungary fell eight positions from last year to 47th on Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index. In fact, Hungary has now slipped lower than both the Czech Republic and Slovenia – countries which twenty years ago lagged far behind Hungary in terms of development, but which have now surpassed the Hungarians. Is the correlation between their economic success and decreasing corruption pure coincidence, one wonders?

In view of April’s forthcoming election, the perceived lack of transparency in Hungary's party and campaign financing begs the question as to what has been achieved in the twenty years since The Change. More worrying is the conclusion: If no effective action is taken against corruption, Hungary may easily slide down the ladder in the next few years.
We will all just have to wait and see.

Recycling – Communist Style

2010-02-27T11:52:00.007+01:00

It would no doubt elicit raised eyebrows and scepticism were it to be suggested that the communist years witnessed even a passing nod at ‘green’ policies or practices. The two-stroke cars, buses and lorries belched noxious clouds of sooty fumes that choked the city, blackening the façades of architectural treasures, and necessitating frequent hair and curtain washing. During weeks spent in the countryside I noticed that the water in which I washed my hair remained transparent: in Budapest it was black, while factories billowed varicoloured gases over the concrete tower blocks.

Yet – albeit it for reasons of shortage or economic necessity – recycling was at a more advanced (or more retarded) stage than that back in Britain. Little was thrown away: everything could be mended for a few forints. In Blaha Lujza tér, the Corvin Áruház ( still grimly hanging on to life, but surely to be demolished soon, as the building nextdoor already has been) boasted a stocking-mending service. A middle-aged woman sat on the first floor at a small table, peering closely at one of the multitude of pairs of laddered tights their owners had left with her, and which they would soon come and collect, perfectly repaired.
Close to Gerlóczy utca was an umbrella repair shop. Following an age when an umbrella was not a throw-away item, but whose polished wooden handle and strong spokes were covered with good quality material, it was not uncommon to have them re-covered at a modest cost. Every kind of electrical appliance which in more affluent countries would be thrown away and replaced, could be repaired. And where the requisite spare part was unavailable – either because it simply could not be procured, or because the gadget itself was from abroad – repairmen would simply adapt an existing part, or fashion the necessary component from whatever they had in their workshops.

Meanwhile, a deposit was payable on all glass containers from fruit juice (no Tetrapak!) and wine bottles to jam jars, bottled fruit bottles and even medicine bottles. There was little by way of frozen food, thus vast quantities of fruit and vegetables were bottled, increasing the weight of the average shopping bag at least threefold. Cough mixture and antibiotics all came in small glass bottles – all with a deposit to pay, and all returnable. Of course, this also meant carrying these heavy glass containers back from whence they had come – and many was the occasion when the supermarket hatch for taking returns was closed, or they had no more crates to store the bottles, or today was a ‘beer’ day and not a ‘wine’ day, or…..in which eventuality one had to return home again with the empties as one’s shopping bags were already full!

But maybe the most extraordinary recycling is witnessed still today in Budapest streets when it is time for lomtalanitás. It is then that the city’s streets fill with every imaginable and unidentifiable kind of bric-a-brac: untidy, sprawling heaps of tangled wires and splintered furniture, headless dolls and handle-less saucepans; singed mattresses and collapsed ironing-boards, rusted heaters and torn school textbooks. This is the annual opportunity for Budapest residents to clear out dusty cellars of those items the weekly refuse collectors cannot take. The dates are posted in advance, giving serious ’collectors’ warning of the impending rota around the city’s districts.

After our move in 1990, we were forced to part with our first automatic washing machine, a Russian Vjatka. Though only three years old, and with the motor working perfectly, the plastic door had split and was leaking ever-increasing quantities of soapy water. In spite of all attempts, it could not be effectively repaired, and with the change of regime, the factory had ceased to function and spare parts were unavailable. Thus, we manhandled the solidly-made machine onto the street corner in readiness for the lomtalanitás. Before we had even manoeuvered it into position, a gypsy family appeared and sat the youngest of their brood of children on top. The child seemed undaunted by his responsibility of preventing any other person from laying claim to the Vjatka, and untroubled by the fact that his family then quickly disappeared around the corner in search of other treasures.
It was several hours later and growing dusk when they finally returned with a small handcart – possibly procured from a neighbouring pile – and then, placing both child and washing machine ontop, they made for home.

Say it with Flowers

2010-02-14T15:38:00.009+01:00

St.Valentine’s Day has been celebrated in Britain for centuries. February 14th is associated with romantic love, and since the late 18th century cards have been sent – often anonymously - by those unable to express their love and admiration personally to the object of their desires. In the 19th century cards were made with ribbon and lace, tiny mirrors, feathers and even hair, with verses declaring true love and often ending with the question, Will you marry me or no?
Whether anonymous or not, the sending of Valentine’s cards in Britain is still limited to lovers – the English language lacks any differentiation between the love of a friend or family member, and that reserved for those with whom we are ‘in love.’ In Hungarian there is no such ambiguity, szeretet expressing the former, szerelem the latter.

Before 1989, February 14th in Hungary was the name day for those called Bálint (in other words, Valentin), but the whole concept of Valentine’s Day as an occasion for sending cards, buying flowers or other gifts was quite unknown. However, as we stumbled into a post-communist world, increasingly bombarded with advertising and coming evermore under the influence of the media, I noticed the first flower shop window sporting red hearts and the words: Február 14 - Valentin Nap. Also having noticed this same phenomenon, my cleaner asked if I had any inklings as to what Valentin nap might be. Clearly, it was an attempt to boost flower sales in the dreary cold and wintry gloom in the ‘dead’ period between Christmas and International Women’s Day at the beginning of March.
Lacking all knowledge of the origins of this custom, and led firstly by florists, Valentin Nap quickly became an occasion for giving flowers and sending cards to everyone you ‘love’ (szeretet) – obviously opening a far wider market than just those in love (szerelem).

The custom of giving flowers in Hungary is deeply embedded: no self-respecting guest would appear for lunch or dinner without at least a modest bouquet of flowers or a beautifully wrapped plant. Flowers are given on every imaginable occasion, to both men and women, and even to children (more especially girls) for birthdays and name days.
Flowers can be bought on every street corner in premises varying from the most elegant and sophisticated florist’s to market stalls where the blooms stand in plastic buckets. Those working in flower shops take genuine pride in their ability to produce stunning arrangements, and to fashion bows and wrapping with true dexterity while one watches. Having discovered a particular favourite shop, I frequently leave the choice of flowers and complementary greenery to the florist: I simply state for whom the bouquet is intended (daughter’s birthday, 85-year-old friend’s name-day – male – and so on), and an approximate price, sure that the completed creation will perfectly befit the occasion.

Yet, in spite of all admiration for their adroit and creative work, I find it difficult to forgive the annual exploitation of the beautiful old St. Valentine’s Day tradition.

Communications / II

2010-02-08T19:38:00.009+01:00

It took more than a year to organise the permits to come and live in Hungary in 1982. The preparations also entailed a visit to the Hungarian Embassy in London where we were given a talk about what we could not take with us when we left: the list included all forms of pornography or a photocopier (strictly banned and not to be found anywhere in the country) – furthermore, we were told that if we brought a typewriter, we would have to provide a sample page of typing from which our machine could, if necessary, be identified.

Communications of every kind were severely curtailed in Hungary at that time. The rarity of telephone ownership and their technical shortcomings were further complicated by the fact that everyone was well aware that calls could be – and were – monitored. Certain topics were never alluded to on the telephone, but only in personal meetings. Letters could be opened – the clearest indication to us that ours were being read was that weeks passed when we did not receive a single communication from home, following which we would find half a dozen envelopes in our post box, bearing postmarks as much as three weeks apart; some letters never arrived. That parcels were always opened was not even secret – wrapping paper was torn, contents arrived damaged or even missing, and a fee was payable for the ‘privilege’.

Meanwhile, the media was, inevitably, strictly censored – not that our Hungarian was halfway to tackling the complexities of a broadsheet in the language – no tabloid press existed. A friend consoled us when we expressed some frustration at our inability to read the papers with the words, “In England people read the press to know what to believe; here we read the papers to know what not to believe!”

Watching television left us none the wiser. There were no broadcasts on Mondays, the official explanation being either that people should use their time for more uplifting pursuits, the more plausible one, that it was an energy-saving measure. The Evening Exercises programme (Esti Torna) was enthusiastically promoted – as were all forms of sport and keep fit – and many people made sufficient space in their overcrowded concrete flats to participate in the gymnastics every evening. Meanwhile, the news was dominated by pictures of combine harvesters bringing in the wheat, and smiling factory workers showing off the products that would more than fulfil targets in the Five Year Plan.
Access to foreign media proved equally limited. Foreign newspapers were occasionally available in dollar shops, though they were expensive and usually out of date. I experimented once with newspaper booths, but was only offered the Daily Star, the organ of the British Communist Party – I had heard of this, but never seen it. The only reliable source was the British Embassy library where we would go when we had time, but where papers were also days old. Hungarians who were not diplomats could not enter dollar shops, and most were wary of entering the embassy since it was an open secret that such visits were monitored by the porter at the entrance to whom you had to show your ID card.

In the obvious absence of the internet, the situation resulted in almost total ignorance of what was, in reality, happening in the world beyond Hungary’s borders. Interestingly, the Hungarian use of the word ‘outside’ (kint) to mean outside the country, in other words, abroad, persists to this day, but then had the added overtone of ‘on the other side.’

We were fortunate enough to be able to locate the BBC World Service on an old Russian radio we found in our first flat. It was somewhat of a surprise that it had not been jammed, but so few Hungarians knew English that possibly it was not deemed a threat. It was over its crackly reception that we heard that Chernobyl had exploded in 1986, while Hungarians went about their daily business in blissful ignorance.
None of our few English compatriots had a telephone, so we were unable to pass the news on to them – a telegram could have been a risky strategy. Thus it was that we sat with our musician friend Laurence that evening, ruminating on the severity of the fallout, the extent to which Hungary could have been affected, and the likelihood of our being subjected to radiation. His solution to the absence of information on the subject from local sources was as practical as it was simple: Let’s put out the lights and see if we glow in the dark! he suggested. Thankfully, we did not.

Communications / I

2010-02-02T17:55:00.003+01:00

Possibly the comment most frequently made when talking about the nigh twenty-eight years I have spent in Hungary is, You must have seen a lot of changes in that time! It would obviously be impossible to enumerate the differences, but I have mused upon what single factor has, in fact, changed most dramatically, and it would undoubtedly have to be that of communication. This aspect of life has altered everywhere since the advent of the mobile telephone and the internet, but here in Hungary these dramatic developments, occurring within a much eclipsed time span, have completely transformed society.

Before 1989, approximately one tenth of people in Budapest had a telephone, whilst in villages the doctor was likely to be the only such person – a single public kiosk having to suffice for the remaining inhabitants. To this must be added the fact that phones were notoriously unreliable: a deafening silence often replaced the comforting purr of a working line; numbers remained engaged for days at a time; rain frequently rendered phone lines unusable, or resulted in crossed lines (I succeeded in speaking to someone in Pakistan when trying to reach a friend in Buda!), or so many callers were apparently sharing the same line, each demanding the others hang up, that it was impossible to have a coherent conversation.
And this was in the happy event that you had your own apparatus at home - even a party-line was heaven-sent! (Before coming to Hungary this term was something I had only come across in black and white Ealing Studio films my parents watched!)

Street phones came in two varieties, red and yellow. Yellow appliances were for domestic calls at 2 forints a time; their red counterparts were for calls abroad. Here, the range of possibilities preventing the successful procedure of ringing someone, was vastly increased. Though vandalism did not at that time exist per se, frustrations with the shortcomings of phones were often turned into destructive revenge on the receivers themselves which hung limply, their disembowelled wires hanging from cracked ear pieces. Then came the list of technical problems: the phone was dead, there was no line; it was impossible to insert one’s 2-forint coin in the slot; the coin kept dropping through; the coin was retained but the buzzing line continued; you dialled, but even your most frantic shouts could not be heard…

In these circumstances it was usually quicker (and considerably less wearing on one’s nerves) to visit the person you wished to talk to. This resulted in impromptu gatherings in people’s homes all over the city on any night of the week. The only way of talking to someone who did not have a telephone, was to visit them. This was as accepted as it was unexceptional – there was quite simply no alternative. The result was that one’s friendships and relationships were close and extensive, as one inevitably met the children, parents, families and friends of existing friends and colleagues. This provided new contacts and a growing network of friends: one could almost say it was a living counterpart to the virtual world represented by today’s Facebook.

The red and yellow shiny plastic apparatuses are long gone, having been replaced with the shocking pink T-com models. But almost as quickly as these were installed, and colourful phone cards sold in place of using coins, so mobile phones rendered public phone boxes passé in their turn. (I cannot remember when I last observed someone using a public telephone.) In fact, many Hungarians went from having no phone at all to having a mobile, leaving out the stage of an (unreliable) mainline telephone altogether.

Today, the brave new world of emails and text messages, Facebook and twittering, have obviated a trek though wind and rain to the other side of town to see a friend, bottle of wine in hand, possibly to meet an unknown group of people, play with a friend’s children and share in a very real evening of food and un-virtual chat. Regret at its passing may be regarded as nostalgia pure and simple; but in the era that sought to make communication as difficult as possible, it thrived as it has not done since. Yet another paradox.

A Man’s Home is his Castle

2010-01-26T18:14:00.006+01:00

Disused tram rails run parallel to our street, whilst just behind them rises a railway embankment full of bushes, trees and magpies. In summer months both the railway and trains are invisible behind the dense green of branches, and the embankment is a jungle of plants and cats. In winter, however, the bare bushes reveal all that lies hidden in warmer months.

Just before Christmas it became evident that there was a makeshift dwelling, no longer camouflaged by greenery, at the base of the embankment where it meets the overgrown tram lines. A single line of footprints in the deep snow across the tram tracks confirmed that someone was living beneath the blue and grey plastic, draped carefully over the bare branches of bushes. On that day a blizzard obscured the collection of wood and sheeting, as temperatures sank well below zero. By afternoon, small red flames flickered on the now dark embankment, and from our vantage point at our kitchen window we began to speculate on the occupier’s prospects of surviving a night in the open in such conditions.

Remembering the name of the Menhely Alapitvány shelter I had seen on stickers on public transport, we looked for their web page and telephone number. As we began to describe the location of the hovel they informed us that the man was already known to them, but he had told them he did not want to go to a shelter. I had heard such stories before: people afraid of being robbed of their meagre possessions in the company of others in similarly desperate circumstances.

Feeling we could hardly leave an hour or two hence for the party we were invited to, and stand at the bus stop a mere two or three metres from this miserable sight, we decided to verify the information. Filling a plastic bag with half a loaf of bread, some ham and a container with hot soup, Paul added his own footprints to those over the tracks in the deepening snow. The man was crouching in his makeshift home and attempting to warm himself by the fire; the howling wind whipped up clouds of snow, threatening to blow away his roofing. He was sober and friendly, if somewhat surprised by his unexpected visitor. He welcomed the food and said he did not want to freeze to death, but he could not afford to go to a shelter. The factor of payment had not occurred to us, and thus Paul left him, promising to ring them again and ascertain the situation. A further phonecall confirmed that he would not have to pay, and that someone would come and offer him a warm bed for the night. Another foray out through the bitter cold and relentless wind brought the hopeful news to the hopeless man.

As we stood at the bus stop an hour later, watching the dancing yellow-orange light on the white embankment, we wondered if he really would be rescued from this coldest of nights.
On returning, some time after midnight, the fire was black and spent; but there was now a third set of deep footprints leading over the tram lines across to the hut: they had kept their word.

http://www.menhely.hu/
(061) 338-4186

The Show Must Go On

2010-01-20T20:20:00.003+01:00

I had noticed the many posters for the Jacko Tribute Concert from bus and tram as I travelled around the city, but had decided that the film This Is It was unlikely to be surpassed by anyone attempting to imitate the inimitable.

The pre-show write-up informed the would-be audience that: The show revives on the stage the legendary Bad Tour….It features Jackson’s four dancers…his two vocalists and four musicians. The similarity between them is breathtaking,” (Expatloop website). In stark contrast, the post-show review (the Hungarian Index website) spoke of a ‘lynch mob atmosphere’ with descriptions of a performance which could only have been tolerated by indulgent parents and benign friends and relatives at a school performance. Far from the audience asking themselves, “Is it absolutely sure that he is not Michael?” (Expatloop) they were (according to Index) whistling in derision, and shouting to have their ticket costs (13,000-20,000 forints) refunded. In fact, the audience had already turned their backs on the dancer on stage (not the one advertised to take MJ’s role) and were watching the far superior moves of an American member of the audience, who had spontaneously decided to give his own unscheduled performance – and who incidentally also looked much more similar to Michael Jackson. Then came an unscheduled interval of fifteen minutes – just enough for security guards to remove the self-styled star of an alternative show that was magnetising the outraged audience.
All in all, this was an amateurish, embarrassing travesty, which once again leaves one wondering why. If – as the organisers claim – the cast was unable to obtain the necessary visas in time for the performance, why not reschedule? Did they really imagine their audience would be fooled by this poor imitation? The days when any ‘western’ performer, no matter how feeble, was welcomed unreservedly for having ventured to this forgotten part of the world, have long (long) gone! As the seething audience left the scene, lawyers were observed handing out their business cards and offering to help them sue the promoters for misrepresentation….

Though I was not present at this concert, it reminded me of a similar experience a few years ago – though one which had a more fortuitous outcome.
In the summer of 2004, I agreed (albeit reluctantly) to accompany a friend who was keen to attend the Liza Minnelli Concert, scheduled to take place in the Kisstadion. On the appointed summer’s evening we set off on the bus, arriving at the small road which leads to the open-air stadium. We were running a bit late and hoped that security checks at the gates would not mean we missed the beginning of the concert – the posters had not made it clear if there was a suppporting band. However, as we started our walk we were astounded to see only one or two other people heading in the same direction. We were equally puzzled that it was practically silent.
At the gates the security personnel took no more than a cursory look at our tickets and waved us in – to a practically empty stadium! We checked our tickets to see if we had misread the time and were in fact early, but no. After some fifteen minutes somewhere towards the top of the enclosure, and seeing few if any people arrive to fill the seats below, we moved to the sector nearest the stage. There we waited….and waited….and waited: well over an hour, during which time the only communication was the puzzled looks of one member of the audience to the next – all fifty or sixty of us - in a stadium whose capacity is fourteen thousand! Finally there came the band’s intro to the glare of lights, and then quite unannounced, on to the stage came…..Bonnie Tyler! A true professional, she could have been singing to a packed stadium – there was not the slightest hint that this was not a scheduled concert to a full house.

Needless to say, on leaving the stadium there were mutterings all around of threatened legal action, especially in view of the fact that there were no posters indicating that Liza Minnelli was not performing. That news had been announced on the radio only, and not all had heard it. Neither had the security guards thought to mention the fact…
But not all were disappointed: during Bonnie Tyler’s show, I observed a steady trickle of unlikely-looking pop fans entering the stadium and taking their seats alongside us all. The security guards had either decided to entice anyone and everyone in the vicinity to swell the pitiful audience, or they had abandoned their posts, leaving the gates open to all-comers. Among them, an elderly couple, the man in slippers, shuffled in; two homeless men I had seen outside on the street; and finally, a Romanian man I had recently come across near Keleti station trying to sell binoculars to passers-by from a large sports bag he was carrying. He made himself comfortable, and then, unzipping his bulging bag, took out one of the many pairs of binoculars and settled back to enjoy his unexpected free evening’s concert.

Taking Stock

2010-01-14T19:08:00.003+01:00

The advent of a new year is for many characterised by a certain degree of stock-taking: an appraisal of the year passed, its achievements and disappointments, together with some resolutions and plans for the year to come. In Hungary, quite another kind of stock-taking may have started to penetrate the consciousness of those seeking to take advantage of the winter sales (which this year began well in advance of Christmas), or those simply needing to buy some trivial item as holidays peter out and we limp back to work.
For foreigners still grappling with the language, the word ZÁRVA will most likely have been one of the first they mastered. Back in the 80s this item of vocabulary was acquired simultaneously with the word nincs – covering all possibilities from We have none, There are none, or There is nothing – the message’s unequivocally negative meaning accompanied by an expressionless stare to reinforce it.

To anyone out shopping in the last week, I am sure these invaluable expressions will now have been supplemented by a new one: Leltár miatt zárva. The last word, at least, will already be familiar. The sign so optimistically placed in the unquestioning expectance of your total understanding, means: Closed for Stocktaking. The number of days given over to this activity in Hungary (regularly four or five whole working days) is an indication of its importance relative to that of selling that stock, and thereby doing something to mitigate the effects of the difficult financial climate!

In the struggling Aréna Pláza shopping mall, a huge branch of Marks and Spencer’s stood with its metal shutters down last weekend, the self-important sign signalling that – unlike neighbouring premises – this was shut for a good reason, and not because they are going out of business.

Foreigners may be forgiven for having thus far been unaware of this mysterious activity. Such stocktaking as is required in western Europe is now for the most part done electronically. My own parents, who ran a small shop in England when I was growing up (before computers or bar codes), completed their annual stock take on paper, between closing the shop doors on a Saturday afternoon and re-opening on Monday morning – as I am sure all shopkeepers did. The concept of inconveniencing one’s customers whilst concurrently losing takings, would have been unthinkable.
Alas, not so in Hungary. That this was common practice under communism is hardly surprising – shops existed as much (or more) to provide employment as to sell things. But that was twenty years ago….

Equally frustrating, though with just an outside chance of genuineness, is the sign you may see at any time of year: Műszaki okok miatt zárva. (You will now be familiar with the final two words.) The sign means, Closed for Technical Reasons. You may indulge your imagination here as to precisely what these ‘technical reasons’ might be – especially when neighbouring premises seem to have electricity, and there is neither fire nor flood in the vicinity.

My favourite sign, though, was that which I saw some years ago on the closed door of a small shop in Zsámbék at approximately 11 a.m. one morning. Utterly refreshing in its honesty, it could only make me laugh. It stated quite simply: Gone for Breakfast. If I’m not back by noon, then for lunch, too !

Smile…. and you smile alone

2010-01-08T09:42:00.002+01:00

It hardly seems worthwhile stating to anyone who has spent more than a day in Budapest, that Hungarians don’t smile very much.

They quite likely feel they have very little to smile about. It is January: I find it quite difficult myself to overcome the combined gloom occasioned by the weather, the knowledge that the festivities are over and only work beckons, and the fact that the new year always heralds significant price rises. It is a Hungarian ‘tradition’ that no sooner has the last trumpet blown to sound out the end of the year, than BKV, ELMŰ and FőGáz extinguish any lingering vestiges of joyfulness that may remain from Christmas, announcing increases that would make residents of other countries pale.

Any tentative suggestions on the part of non-Hungarians that they could make some effort to be more amenable, friendly even, in their dealings not only with foreigners, but with one another, are usually greeted with disdain: It’s alright for you English and Americans telling us to smile – if we lived as you do, we’d have something to smile about. You don’t know how difficult our lives are.
I am forced to agree that the lot of the average Hungarian is indeed more difficult than that of his counterpart in England (I cannot speak for America). However, the idea that money would enable them to smile is no more than a fantasy. Working in an environment where I come into daily contact with people they deem to have it all (the nouveaux riches Hungarians), I see no discernible difference. In spite of owning almost everything money can buy, they do not smile either; they feel as dissatisfied with their lives as any other magyar: if only they lived in a richer / better organised / more (insert your own adjectives……..) country, they would have something to smile about!

Each week I visit a friend of 87 years of age in hospital, who has been bed-ridden for almost three years. The nurses, both underpaid and overworked as everywhere in Hungary, vary in temperament from the surly to the saintly. I have observed the all-too-palpable effects of their behaviour on the patients in their care. In circumstances where such elderly people are able to do little for themselves, the slightest sign of warmth or empathy, and an ability to make light of this most difficult situation, are felt with exaggerated keenness.
The nurse who puts a smile on the faces of those in her wards, lost her son just before Christmas one year ago in tragic circumstances. Yet in the midst of this terrible period in her life she continued to bustle about the wards, smiling, joking with the senile 99-year old in the same room, and trying to lift the atmosphere of gloom which only too quickly descends in her absence. Not only does it make their days more bearable, it lifts her own and her colleagues’ mood too. The day’s work can be done in resentful bad temper or with some good humour: neither will affect the wage at the month’s close, but both affect dramatically the quality of life for both the patients and the nurses themselves.

To anyone who has had even a passing contact with Africans, it is no news that in circumstances which are below the very poorest in Hungary, they smile constantly. The correlation between one’s bank account and the look on one’s face is tenuous at most.

So, as Hungarians pose the riddle : Why will the new year be an average year? To which the answer is: Because it will be worse than last year and better than next, I wonder whether we must rationalise their sullenness, using the now-fashionable excuse – it’s all in the genes….?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T15:08:00.005+01:00

As trumpets blare in the street to the accompaniment of the odd (illegal) firecracker, and an increasing number of (now legal) fireworks, we begin another new Year’s Eve in Budapest.
Janus-like, it is traditional at this time to look both forwards to the coming year, and back at that which lies behind. Here I am forced to admit that while I love the period one used to call Christmastide, I dislike what I find a rather forced sort of celebration and jollity which marks the end of the year. Unfortunately, the problems one had on December 31st will still greet one on the dawn of January 1st, and likewise, the successes and achievements of the old year are not negated by the new. Yet I aquiesce and stay up, sharing in some champagne and enjoying the fireworks I can see from the window.
The fireworks are new: prior to 1989 they were illegal and thus even our November 5th celebrations in Budakeszi at our friend Caroline’s, were marked with sparklers saved from the previous year’s Christmas. Firecrackers became popular – smuggled in from who knows where – in the early 1990s, thrown indiscriminately in the path of pedestrians, or up onto balconies, causing alarm more than actual injury (though this was also not unknown). As a result, they were eventually banned, though this offers no guarantee against your having one casually thrown in your direction as you walk the streets.
In other respects Szilveszter (the saint’s name for the 31st December) has not changed significantly: masks are worn and trumpets are blown – though the Russian champagne we used to buy was (as I remember) better than anything now available, and at a fraction of the price.
I remember just one New Year which was extraordinary – that of 1989-1990. In the quiet days between the celebrations of Christmas and New Year, I ventured out to our local market, Lehel piac, to replenish our supplies. Those who have recently come to Hungary will picture a colourful building with clean aisles and neat shops. Prior to its renovation, this market was reckoned to be the cheapest, in one of the poorer districts, and was a higgledy-piggledy array of stalls where in winter we slid through the mud, slush and trampled vegetables of its largely outdoor premises.
As I alighted from the trolley bus, I first thought the market was closed: there was little sign of movement and a muffled quietness suggested the atmosphere of a late Saturday afternoon when the stallholders would be packing to leave. I proceded into the market itself and found the stall keepers standing in small groups, talking. Behind them stood the grey wooden structures that usually groaned under their burdens of winter vegetables, quite empty. To some westerners who believed that people in communist countries did not have sufficient to eat, it would occasion little surprise that there was nothing in the market, but this was in fact quite the opposite of reality. I had never seen a sight to match this – not a single cabbage nor onion remained. I asked the man nearest me if the market were closed. No, he replied, but people had been panic buying since they had opened at 6a.m. and now nothing remained.
The same was true throughout the city: rumour had it that the Forint was about to collapse and that the only possible course of action was to invest one’s savings in buying goods which could possibly be re-sold later. Shops soon sold out of everything from saucepans to electrical appliances, and when this domestic supply was exhausted, a veritable convoy of well over 100,000 cars and vans headed for Austria – families subsequently returning with two and three fridge-freezers, or whatever they thought they could re-sell when cash would be needed.

2010 will bring elections and unknown changes in their wake. Hopefully, the new year also will bring good in equal measure to unavoidable difficulties.
A Happy New Year to my blog’s readers – I will continue to offer what I hope will be interesting perspectives on life here in Budapest.

Cultural Mismatch / postscript III

2009-12-24T08:30:00.001+01:00

BKV have ‘gone festive’ this year with their new no.2 Christmas tram – brightening the darkness in spectacular fashion!
Boldog, békés Karácsonyt kivánok mindenkinek!

Cultural Mismatch / postscript II

2009-12-24T08:25:00.002+01:00

Last weekend my wanderings in search of Christmas presents led me from the plenty of Vörösmarty tér to the less salubrious underpass at Blaha Lujza tér. The former’s festive atmosphere, however, was somewhat undermined by the perfectly audible and highly un-Christmas-like playing of pan pipes to electronic backing, by a south-American dressed in a feather head-dress, just a few metres away from the square. The strains of something resembling Flight of the Condor mixed uneasily with the aroma of mulled wine and the nativity scene.
My meanderings finally led me to Blaha Lujza tér. I think this square has now superseded Moszkva tér as the seediest among those in the centre of the city, full of the homeless, alcoholics, and a disturbing number of people who could be mentally unstable or drug addicts – or both.Yet here, surrounded by men huddled in blankets sitting under graffiti-scrawled walls, and cutting through the stench of urine and pálinka, came the wonderful strains of carols being played by the Salvation Army brass band! Every other allusion to the Season was absent, but here its spirit was alive and well!

Cultural Mismatch / postscript

2009-12-17T19:13:00.005+01:00

The truly English Christmas, as most people know, is heavily based on that of Victorian England and a dash of Hollywood: a mixture of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Irving Berlin’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. It is characterised by sparkling decorations, piles of attractively-wrapped presents, carol singers collecting money for charity, mulled wine, brass bands playing in frosty squares, the hustle and bustle of excited preparations, and most of all, an atmosphere of jollity, laughter, light-heartedness, warmth and giving. The troubles of everyday life are left behind for the duration of the festivities – no room here for long faces or misery, whatever one’s individual circumstances.

I have had to conclude, based on three decades of experience, that Hungarians don’t ‘do’ jolly….Above, is the advertisement to be seen all around Budapest for three classic films, now available on DVD – presumably being advertised at the present time as potential Christmas presents. (The titles are: Shadows on the Snow; Long Twilight; The Next Day). Were such films to exist, it is inconceivable that anyone would deem the Festive Season appropriate to sell them. No-one would dream of bestowing such a gift for Christmas, even on their worst enemy! I can only reiterate:
A Merry Christmas to one and all!

Information Blackout: Update

2009-12-15T20:41:00.008+01:00

In September, the beginning of term for students everywhere (including the Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia), I wrote about this venerable institution. The Liszt Academy will be closed for an estimated two years, while it is totally renovated.

I promised to update readers as to where the present occupants of the building would be moving to: everyone from piano technicians and symphony orchestras who play and rehearse there, to the student instrumentalists and their teachers, as well as the Academy’s important library.

The Dean of the Academy informed those students who ventured to ask at the Opening Ceremony in September, just where they would be having their lessons from January, that they would be informed “at the appropriate time.”

The Liszt Ferenc Zenemüvészeti Egyetem will close its doors in three days, on 18th December.
There is still no news…..but rumour still has it that they will be occupying the Post Office on Petöfi Sándor utca (pictured above).

We will just have to wait and see…..

Cultural Mismatch

2009-12-13T21:18:00.003+01:00

In spite of the many obvious differences between Hungary and England, there are of course, many similarities. Both being nominally Christian countries, we share the main festivals of Easter and Christmas.

Christmas is marked in both countries by the excesses of present- buying and an over-indulgence of both food and drink; also the coming-together of family members, which results in varying amounts of tension and stress alongside the joy and warmth. Yet here the similarities seem to end.

In the run-up to Christmas, Hungarians – along with a number of other European nations – celebrate the coming of St. Nicholas on December 6th. Children put polished shoes in window sills, hoping for chocolate, and not the birch twigs which denote a naughty child! In England, however, having long ago abandoned the celebration of saints’ days, St. Nick has been shunted on to Christmas Eve, and December 6th has no significance at all. Similarly, as in much of Europe, presents in Hungary are given and received in the darkness and candlelight on the evening of the 24th December, as opposed to the morning of the 25th as in England.

English shops are already selling crackers and Christmas cards from September, while in Hungary there is barely a sign of the coming festivities until the beginning of December; London’s lights are switched on in Oxford Street at the beginning of November, but the Hungarians are then still visiting the graveyards (November 2nd, All Souls) where their relatives lie, covering their tombs with white chrysanthemums and lighting candles.

All over Britain, artificial trees can already be glimpsed in the sitting rooms of houses from any time late in November, gathering dust, their novelty waning as the weeks pass. In Hungary, several varieties of pine tree can be found in open-air markets around the city, at busy squares and traffic intersections, from the second week of December, and artificial trees are only now being bought by a minority of people. The truly magical atmosphere of Andrássy út, with its hundreds of thousands of tiny white lights in the branches of every tree lining the entire length of the avenue, illuminated from the beginning of December, also contrasts sharply with that of London and its more gaudy decorations.

In Communist times an attempt was made to rid the country of such an obviously Christian festival, and in the 50s the government declared the days to be The Celebration of the Pine Tree - proponents of today’s political correctness might take some inspiration here…. But like all such contrived nonsense, people celebrated as they always had: churchgoers attending midnight mass, others lighting candles and preparing for the family meal on the 24th. The 25th and 26th are, likewise, bank holidays – no rushing to Boxing Day sales, only family visits and more feasting.

One of the year’s busiest shopping days in Britain is the the 24th, Christmas Eve, while in Hungary the morning sees the final, frantic preparations towards the meal and present-giving that takes place after dark, in the afternoon. The tree – which has been kept cold on the balcony or propped up somewhere outside – is brought in and decorated (young children are taken to the cinema by grandparents so that the sight of the decorated tree – traditionally brought by the baby Jesus – is as exciting for children as the presents themselves).
By four o’clock public transport has stopped and the city is quiet and peaceful as on no other day of the year. Homes sparkle and shine, the food is almost ready, relatives have arrived dressed in their finest, and after a candle-lit dinner of fish (or more recently, turkey) the gifts are opened.
Merry Christmas to all the readers of this blog – however you celebrate it!

Twenty Years On / Part Two

2009-12-11T19:44:00.011+01:00

Twenty years is a long time – particularly if viewed as half the number of years that Communism dominated the lives of people in this part of the world. Many of the ills bemoaned by those living here - from pollution and poor customer service, to reliance on the state to solve one’s problems, and a poor work ethic - are all ascribed to the evils of the system that cast its shadow on every aspect of people’s lives for four decades.
I may not live to see the close of four decades of freedom, but at this halfway stage I can stand and look back at what has been achieved and what is still left to be done: I try to gauge what has been gained and what has been lost.

Leaving Britain in 1982 and heading for a new life in a totalitarian state was greeted with disbelief by family and friends. At the height of the Cold War, they could neither imagine nor believe that anything on the ‘wrong side’ of the iron curtain could be better than what we were voluntarily leaving behind us.
Similar perplexity was expressed by Hungarians we came to know in Budapest – surely everything must be better in our home country; was there some ulterior motive for our decision to abandon the Motherland?
Try as we might, our explanations on both fronts proved largely fruitless. Our letters from home were opened, Paul’s presence and activities in the Music Academy were monitored, and we overheard British Embassy staff voicing doubts as to our real purpose for coming to the country. It seemed that neither Hungarians nor the British accepted that we might have anything other than suspicious reasons for staying. Quite simply, neither side saw anything but hardship and deprivation in communist Hungary.

It would be foolish to assert there was nothing amiss; great swathes of writing attest to the ills of the system as it was. Many foreigners are at a loss to understand why anyone should feel an ounce of nostalgia for those years of communist dictatorship, and comparatively scant sources exist to counterbalance a decidedly lopsided picture.
We found in Hungary a cohesive society where everyone was ‘poor’ (by today’s reckoning) but no-one was destitute. We could all pay our bills without the slightest worry (including the phone bill, if we had one!) Food was plentiful and cheap – if variety was lacking, we nevertheless ate well and without a thought for the cost. Everyone had employment – yes, of course maintained artificially, but it guaranteed an income, an absence of homelessness and a feeling of belonging to the society in which we all lived. The three basics of existence (a roof over one’s head, warmth and food) were supplied at little or no cost.
The education system extolled excellence in the form of both grammar schools and vocational training, alongside specialist tuition for anyone with talent in any field from sport to music. The health service had no waiting lists of any sort, and medicines were available at nominal cost. Family life – in the absence of more colourful distractions – remained strong, and friendships thrived in a world where no email or text messaging existed, and where with a dearth of telephones, personal meetings were the usual form of communication. Nursery education from 6 months of age was free, and 3 years’ maternity leave with your job back, was also guaranteed.
There was virtually no crime: life was peaceful, and in a society where work was not taken over-seriously, we had a great deal of leisure – the word stress (stressz) then being blissfully non-existent in the language!

And if we could not (easily) buy the latest hi-fi or car, books cost pennies, a ticket to the opera or the cinema was a mere 10 forints, and a restaurant meal with a taxi home was within everyone’s means.
The feeling of ‘us’ (ordinary people) and ‘them’ (the Communist Party / Russians) bound even strangers together: all of us living in a system which - through helping one another - could be circumvented or overcome. Those one helped today, could help in turn tomorrow. The result was akin to the camaraderie one reads of in the war.

The abolition of the border opened the proverbial Pandora’s box. The ills we had sought to describe in a vain attempt to rationalise leaving England, such as unemployment, vandalism, a society where the only value put on anything is monetary, homelessness, job insecurity, a fragmenting society where each looked out only for himself (these were the Thatcher years), were suddenly made real.
Unfortunately, the dreams Hungarians had cherished: that the country would become the financial equivalent of Austria, have not come to pass. They have acquired the dark side of western living, without the compensations.

I remember in about 1990 – when political jokes were still a part of everyday life – being asked this one: How is Hungary both a communist and a capitalist country? The answer: we have communist wages - and capitalist prices….

Twenty Years On / Part One

2009-12-05T10:14:00.004+01:00

I had seen the huge celebrations in Germany: Angela Merkel standing alongside French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: foam dominoes falling, fireworks showering the cheering crowds, and concerts marked the occasion. Gordon Brown commented on “the unbreakable spirit” of those Germans who had dreamt so long of freedom, and said, “Two Germanys were one, and now two Europes are one.”
In the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the twentieth anniversary of The Baltic Way was celebrated – when in 1989, more than a million people joined hands across the three countries forming an unbroken chain, and which led to the restoration of independence of these countries.
As I watched the giant screen in Prague, counting down the years to that of the momentous happenings of 1989 on the news , I wondered if I had missed something here in Budapest.

Commemoration there was – but celebration…? The opening of the Hungarian border with Austria which took place on August 19th, 1989, and which heralded subsequent events in other Soviet bloc countries, was marked by a visit from Angela Merkel to the spot where it took place. Having grown up in East Germany she must have felt particularly that, ‘What Hungarians did here was very brave.’
October 23rd, the anniversary of the 1956 revolution against the Soviets which was brutally crushed, was also used to commemorate the declaration of the Republic of Hungary declared on that same day, twenty years ago.
But there were no street parties, no laser shows and fireworks, no joyous celebration of the long-won freedom Hungarians had craved, and which marked the anniversary in neighbouring countries.

Hungarians are not famous for their upbeat optimism, and it has certainly been in short supply in the last years. Paradoxically, when I first visited the country in 1978, and when we subsequently came to live here in 1982, it was precisely their jovial good humour and ability to laugh in the face of some of the absurdities associated with living in a planned economy, that struck me about Hungarians. They would not, probably, have described themselves as happy; they felt only too keenly the ‘punishment’ of being on the wrong side of the curtain, and longed for the freedom to travel and to have access to the perceived streets of gold they envisaged on the other side of the border. Yet for the most part they accepted the status quo and learnt how to make the best of the situation in which they found themselves, even taking pride in the imaginative ways they found of circumventing rules and regulations to get what they wanted. This in sharp contrast to the oppressive atmosphere we experienced at the same time in the GDR and Czechoslovakia.

I doubt many newcomers to this country would come to the same conclusion now in 2009, some twenty years on. Illusions of dramatically improved living standards and well-being have quickly been replaced by envy of the minority who have – by fair means or foul – achieved monetary success. Disappointment and sourness, feelings of betrayal and having been cheated, can be observed on many a face around the capital. The right to vote in a democratic election offers little solace to those unable to pay their utility bills, far less a foreign holiday.
It is hardly any surprise then, that this twentieth anniversary should have been so muted. While it is unarguable that many improvements have been made to buildings and roads, and that life is easier on many levels from dealing with bureaucracy to shopping, the mood is gloomy. Polls show that the majority of Hungarians feel they have not benefitted from the new system, and that the changes have been bad for the country as a whole.

I suspect that those who could have organised more extravagant events to mark the 1989 anniversary, thought better of it.

BKV

2009-11-28T16:42:00.011+01:00

Budapest’s public transport company (BKV) certainly attracts its fair share of criticism. I would venture to say that the majority of this comes from the indigenous population rather than from visitors or foreigners living in the city, though tourists who have run foul of ticket inspectors for whatever reason, have their own stories to tell.

Having shared my life almost exactly between England and Budapest, I feel able and justified to express my own opinion:
It is certainly true that public transport is no longer cheap – I compare it with my first years here when a tram or metro ticket was 1 forint, a bus ticket 1.50 forints (that is, one forint 50 fillér – there were 100 fillér to the forint - the extra to cover the cost of petrol) and a monthly pass 110 forints – this at a time when the state wage was 3,000 HUF. The current price of a monthly pass at 9,400 forints is therefore proportionately higher when taken as a percentage of the current average wage of approximately 130,000 forints.
This may account for a strongly held grudge among many people, that somehow public transport should be free – I have been witness to a number of incidents where strong resentment was voiced at the cost of the pass, and where the traveller stated he had no intention whatsoever of purchasing a ticket, far less of paying the fine he had incurred.
Clearly, this is nonsense. I have yet to hear of such a place where public transport is provided free. The possibilities for avoiding paying for a ticket obviously vary from one place to another. In London there is no easy way of avoiding paying (considerably more) for your tube or bus through the city. The tubes are, for the most part, shabby, claustrophobic and overcrowded, and frequently the seats are covered with empty drink cans and newspapers. At weekends engineering work can add substantially to one’s journey time entailing long waits and diversions.

Public transport in Budapest is presently free for pensioners, including those from other E.U. countries. Having bought a weekly pass for two visitors from England this summer, I was stopped by an inspector – not (as I expected) to check the validity of our tickets, but to ask the age of my companions, explaining that if they were 65 years old we should return to the ticket office and ask for a refund!
Last weekend, by contrast, we were with a friend who lost her ticket, and we had a fairly unpleasant – and totally fruitless – altercation with the inspectors. My annoyance at their refusal to give her the benefit of the doubt, is occasioned by the fact that I see on a daily basis, people who are regular fare-dodgers escaping the 6,000 Forint fine she was forced to pay. Trams and buses are crowded with people who do not buy tickets, but if they are fast enough to run off, big enough to be intimidating, or unwilling to be drawn into any sort of discussion with the inspectors, they are simply permitted to alight at the next stop – where quite obviously they wait for the next tram to continue their journeys. Those – like our friend – who come into none of the aforementioned categories is thus coerced into paying the fine and thereby subsidising those who refuse to pay – along with those of us who buy the ever more expensive monthly pass.

Away from cost, I have to admit to still enjoying the sheer variety of ways I can reach any destination in the city. And I have yet to hear anything but admiration and envy from English visitors who marvel at the frequency at which trams and buses arrive.
I also continue to enjoy my travels on the lesser-used trams – as the number 17 – where we are frequently greeted by the driver with, “A very good morning to you!” as he climbs into his cab at the front. Or the occasional eccentrics – often trolley-bus drivers – who regale their passengers with a running commentary on the weather or the state of the roads.
The strangest journey I had on a trolley-bus was one evening when, after stopping to allow me on, I not only found I was the only passenger, but that the driver drove past every successive stop ignoring the waiting passengers there! I pressed the button to get off just before the terminus – I wondered if he would stop; he did, but the ride remains a mystery.

Maybe the most unusual journey I did was from the Farkasréti cemetery down to Moszkva tér. The tram was covered in garlands of flowers, festooned over the front window and along both sides of the entire length of the vehicle. When we reached Moszkva tér, people were waiting with more flowers in their arms to bestow on the driver. The reason: he was retiring after some thirty years of completing that same run, and both flower sellers outside the cemetery at one end, and his regular passengers at the other, wanted to show their appreciation.

BOOK LAUNCH

2009-11-22T14:09:00.012+01:00

The launch of my two books Now You See It, Now You Don’t (Hungary 1982-1989) and House of Cards (1989-1996) took place at Treehugger Dan’s Bookshop in Lázár utca on Friday evening, 20th November.
Following the usual doubts one might have when planning such an event – that no-one will turn up on a cold, foggy November night at the end of a week’s work - the new worry became whether there would be enough room for everyone! In the event more than one hundred people came, the last was almost stranded in the street unable to force her way in, and the wine was sold out by the end of the evening!
The guests were introduced by Miklós Molnár, the publisher of the book, who kept up a humorous dialogue with the audience throughout the evening. A wonderfully erudite talk was given by Péter Pásztor – a former colleague of mine from the days when we both taught in the English department at Pázmány Péter University, and who works as a translator of literature, art history and other books. He also translated my first book into Hungarian. Following this, Caroline Bodóczky talked of her own arrival in Hungary 1966, and related other anecdotes similar to those she had found interesting or amusing in the book. Caroline was the first British person I met in 1983, almost 18 months after we had arrived in Budapest – communications at that time being limited to telegrams and personal meetings, which slowed everything down!
It was a great evening, and particularly heartening to see so many old, and not-so-old, friends who had come to support the event, as well as others whom I did not know.

Thanks also to Dan for helping make the evening a success. Books are available in both of his shops – the one in Lázár utca, and that in Csengery utca.
Thank you to everyone who came!

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T / HOUSE OF CARDS

2009-11-01T18:20:00.021+01:00

Book Launch

The title of my blog is taken from that of my first book about Hungary, published in 1998.
When we arrived to live in Budapest in 1982, there were fewer than a dozen British people then resident in the country – all of them married to Hungarians. We knew none of them, and in fact met the first (who herself had arrived in the 1960s!) about eighteen months after we had arrived.
As we approached the end of the Communist period, I felt that someone should describe a life that was unimaginable and incomprehensible to all those who had not shared the experience. I turned to the dozen compatriots whose arrival in the country had preceded our own, but none, it seemed, was planning such a venture.
Interestingly, there are a number of books about the war years and about 1956, and indeed, learned and scholarly books detailing the history and politics of the era, yet none answered the question we were so often asked: But what’s it like – living in a Communist country?

Now You See It, Now You Don’t was my attempt to rectify this: to describe a way of life which outlawed the use of photocopiers, where no English language newspaper could be had except in an embassy (or occasionally a dollar shop), where only around 10% of people had a telephone, and where there was virtually no contact with the outside world, except via letters that took weeks to get to their destination – if they did at all. There were, of course no computers, no internet, no satellite television – in fact, no television broadcasts at all on Mondays! No tabloid press, no pulp fiction, and the most modern western-made film (which was literally shown for years), was Hair! A country where everyone earned 3,000 forints a month, where a tram ride was 1 forint, a bread roll 30 fillér (100 to the forint), and where a ticket to the opera was 20 forints! No income-tax, road tax or insurance existed; there were no bank accounts, and even buying a flat was done in cash!

There is hardly an item in a present-day supermarket that was available in the 1980s. Occasionally I look around me as I stand in Kaiser’s or Tesco’s and realise that this is indeed the case. Such ordinary items as bananas or oranges were available only at Christmas, and if you were prepared to queue for a good long time. Broccoli, leeks and zucchini were unknown; disposable nappies were unheard of, and such everyday necessities as toilet paper or washing powder were sometimes absent from shops for days or weeks. In fact, there was never any guarantee of finding anything that had not been grown, in season, in this country.

Such information is not the stuff of history books, but (hopefully) gives a much more vivid insight into what it meant to wake up every morning and go to work in a world which has now almost completely disappeared. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that no-one (other than English teachers) could speak two words of the language, meaning we were forced to learn theirs! There was absolutely no way round this!

House of Cards is the sequel which I wrote about five years later. I had not intended to write another volume, but felt compelled to do so as I observed the reality of the dual effects of democracy and capitalism both on Hungary, and its people. For the seven years of living here before the change, we witnessed the almost obsessive desire of Hungarians to travel out of the country, (in extreme instances, to defect) and ideally, to belong to The West. They would accept no criticism of the system we had left behind, whether its unemployment (non-existent in a Communist state), homelessness or poverty.
Now we watched as these same phenomena arrived over the border. Confident predictions that Hungary would soon enjoy a standard of living akin to that in Austria, began to fade.
Marriages crumbled as loans were secured for houses which lay half-finished for years, their owners’ extravagant plans exceding their means. Subways filled with the homeless, and the threat of unemployment undermined people’s previous security; utility bills and public transport costs increased by leaps and bounds, and some began to question if this was really the Promised Land they had so long awaited.....

These two books are now published in one volume.
I look forward to seeing everyone who might be interested in reading them -

Friday, November 20th, at 7.30 p.m.
Treehugger Dan’s Bookstore,
16 Lázár utca, Budapest
(behind the Opera House)
www.treehugger.hu

The Post Office: Part Three / The Postman

2009-10-31T12:35:00.004+01:00

The postman in Hungary occupies the equivalent position in the social fabric, to the milkman in Britain. And maybe like the milkman, whose role and importance have faded with the dawn of Tetrapak and Tesco’s, he has been superseded by email and a banking system.

In humorous exchanges, the postman has been credited with a motley band of children who somehow do not seem to have inherited the genes of their parents: those who have red hair (when all their family are dark), or who are any kind of family misfit!

This aside, the Hungarian postman of yore adopted a number of roles: the first was as deliverer not only of letters, but bringer of monies. With no banking system before 1989, it fell to him to deliver pension money on the 2nd of each month. The elderly would loiter on the walkways above courtyards, leaning on railings awaiting his arrival; we also waited for sundry payments for translations completed or recordings done. When the cash was handed over, it was customary to share a small amount of one’s earnings with the postie – always a good investment, in view of the fact that the postman had powers far in excess of those the job would normally incorporate.

As the only person guaranteed to make a daily visit to every building, he was uniquely placed to observe any irregularities in the lives of its occupants. For example, when flats were still state-owned and rented by their tenants, conditions for their ‘inheritance’ when the occupier died, were complex. Grandparents made sure their grandchildren were registered as living with them, because in the event that they had failed to do this, the grandchild had no hope of inheriting the right to rent the flat when he would later need to do so. The ‘flat problem’ in communist Hungary, ecplised every other social problem. Those without this possibility could be condemned to fifteen years on a waiting list before being granted their first state flat.
Most children – naturally enough – lived with their parents. Visits to grandparents were made with varying degrees of regularity to reinforce the pretence, but the truth could not be hidden from the postman. He would know perfectly well the reality, that no child was living with them, since he chatted to all those to whom he took their pensions. It was probably unlikely he would betray anyone to the authorities, but it did no harm to give him the odd ‘tip’ for money or a parcel brought upstairs to your flat door, just in case….

Our own case was similar when we moved to a flat with a telephone. Applications for telephones also incurred waiting lists of twelve to fifteen years. Moreover, they ‘belonged’ to the tenants of the flat, and could be taken with their owners to any new flat they moved to.

Luckily, the previous owners of our flat did not need to take their phone with them, since their new home already had one – a very rare circumstance. Yet the only way we could prevent this most precious of commodities being confiscated from us and given to the lucky person at the head of the waiting list, was to maintain the pretence that the old owners were still resident in the flat. To this end, we had nothing more to do than take the monthly pay-in slips to the Post Office, and pay the bills.
Of course, the postman knew very well the true situation. The old owners had lived there some thirty years, and the postman had obviously had this same round for a similar length of time. Thus, when we moved in, he came up the sixty-odd stairs to introduce himself to us. Having satisfied himself as to what manner of residents we were, he dropped in a casual question regarding the phone. We explained that the old owners were not taking it with them; we would continue to pay the bills. A knowing look passed between us: an unspoken conspiracy.

He arrived some weeks later with a parcel of books for Paul. There was nothing to be paid for this service if the books were posted from within Hungary, and yet I felt I would enquire.
‘No. Nothing to pay,‘ he said, ‘but they are very heavy.’
His meaning was not lost on me. I went to find my purse….

Power

2009-10-27T21:05:00.004+01:00

As I look out of the window, the evening is very dark. It is true that the clocks went back a few days ago, exacerbating the feelings of gloom – an event which thirty years ago, took place on the last weekend of September, and not October as it does now. But this is not the reason for the uncustomary blackness. It is that, yet again, the street lights are out along the entire length of the road on which we live. The traffic lights flash amber – giving, perhaps, a shred of hope for the poor souls left to attempt to traverse the road on the zebra. However, all else is blackness.

These occurrences in Budapest are far from rare. What is more, their duration can be days or weeks – especially in the case of traffic lights. I spent five consecutive mornings offering up prayers and sacrifices to the deities as I attempted to manoeuvre my way round a Hősök tere devoid of traffic lights. And when I still used to cross Moszkva tér by public transport I was frankly amazed at the number of instances of traffic-light failure at what must be one of the busiest and most complex road and transport intersections in the city.

In our modern homes full of electrical gadgetry, the frequent short power cuts - which would earlier have passed by unnoticed - are now witnessed by the flickering of time displays on DVD players, cookers and electric clock radios. Even stranger is the phenomenon totally unknown to me before coming to live in Hungary, of clocks gaining time!

One event, however, stands out from the rest. In 1985, Paul and I went to a performance of Puccini’s Tosca in the Erkel Szinház. Somewhere into the second act, the whole theatre was plunged into total darkness. A few gasps in the audience, and some subdued mutterings on stage were accompanied by the valiant resilience of the undaunted orchestral players, who devoid of both light and a conductor, continued to play. Rather as in Haydn’s Farewell Symphony (where the players depart the stage one by one, until only two violinists remain) the musicians ceased their unequal struggle, raggedly, in the middle of bars, until even the lead violinist was forced to surrender. Silence ensued. Footsteps then echoed off stage, and a man appeared holding a torch in front of his face – somewhat akin to a Hallowe’en Trick or Treater. He assured us that within fifteen minutes there would again be light, and so there was. Act II was resumed from the beginning, and Tosca was none the worse for its unscheduled interruption.
Maybe the urgency accorded to the resumption of an operatic performance outweighs the safety of motorists and pedestrians of the city’s unlit and un-traffic-lighted streets.….

October 23rd

2009-10-24T16:33:00.004+02:00

I am not a political animal. I have just returned from a week in England where almost every news channel was anticipating, and then dissecting the BBC programme Question Time, whose panel included the BNP leader, Nick Griffin. His appearance on the programme was marked by demonstrations and controversy in all sections of society, due to his alleged policies on immigration.

I arrived home to Budapest yesterday, wondering if I would also be greeted by the news of riots and demonstrations here - now almost de rigeur on the day which marks the beginning of the 1956 revolution against the Soviets. But no. It would appear that Hungarians have perhaps lost their appetite for cat-and-mouse games with the police, and blowing tear-gas filled noses. I was out three years ago with the sole intention of taking photos of whatever I saw, and found myself in the midst of all the well-known consequences and troubles of that day.

Having seen the transition to democracy, I am still puzzled by one simple fact of political life here: can anyone explain the actual policies of the various parties? Anyone over the age of being able to cross the road unaided, knows that politicians lie. Could anyone feel anything but bemusement at the Hungarian horror at the fact that a prime minister was found to have lied? Is an honest politician not the very definition of an oxymoron? The eleventh commandment (Thou shalt not be found out) had unfortunately not been followed. And yet we still need to be informed about what the parties say they will do – even if in reality they seldom do it!

In the UK each party publishes its manifesto, setting out in detail, point by point, its policies on every aspect of life: Education, the Health Service, Immigration, Tax and so on. At least you know in theory, what you are voting for. I am at a total loss to explain to any foreign visitor what the various parties in Hungary claim, never mind what they might actually do if they were elected. The vociferous flag-waving, the passionate loyalties which even split families in the last election, seem difficult to understand, when no-one is clear about anything other than their hatred of the opposition.

When I first arrived here, my closest friend told me, ‘You can’t live in this part of the world and not be interested in politics.’ I knew what he said was true. And yet I still feel unable to understand much beyond the playground squabbles.
Maybe the absence of demonstrators yesterday, is in some small measure indicative of the fact that others are also finding difficulty in unravelling who, or what, they should support, in the absence of anything but empty rhetoric without policies…

European Chinese? (Part One)

2009-10-06T20:23:00.012+02:00

When we knew we would be coming to live in Hungary, back in 1982, I began to contemplate the necessity of learning to speak the language. A Hungarian emigré we had encountered at a party had told us quite flatly that this would be impossible. He was the first - though not the last - to describe his mother tongue as European Chinese. What made the venture unavoidable was the fact that very few Hungarians had even a smattering of English: older citizens had learnt German while the present generation were struggling with compulsory Russian lessons.

I placed an advertisement in the local newspaper in the hope of finding a teacher. It was answered by a woman who had left Budapest in 1956 and now lived in a small community of fellow-countrymen in Reading. There was only one problem: she was unable to speak sufficient English to enable her to teach me - and this after 26 years in England! And so it was that I decided to wait until we arrived in the country and start in earnest then.

Paul had already acquired the then only available language teaching book, Learn Hungarian. It contains such gems as the conversation between the Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian railway workers, textile workers and miners meeting at Keleti station, all addressing each other as Comrade, and illustrated with a small drawing of them all holding hands as they wait for their train! Or the farm where the animals are ‘beautiful’ and the 'peasants are happy, rich and jolly.' Whilst this is arguably the best book available if you are serious about learning Hungarian grammar, it is also a wonderful example of the socialist idyll Hungary wanted to portray to foreigners.

Having arrived to live in Budapest in the summer of ’82, I enlisted the help of a university English teacher to help me with my language learning. As we limped towards chapter 4 or 5, I still felt queasy before attempting to secure the correct ending to my verbs. It was at this point in the book that they gaily began a new unit with a second set of verb endings! And so it was that Learn Hungarian joined a shelf of books busily gathering dust, and Péter lost his ‘second job.’

I decided that I would try and pick up the magyar nyelv by the so-called Direct Method (otherwise known as making an ass of yourself). This involved the endless repetition of phrases until they tripped off the tongue effortlessly. There was not the slightest room here for ambiguity in pronunciation: no Hungarian ever heard a foreigner try to speak his language – and certainly not in a market! Tourists in the 1980s were limited to East Germans (who came only in summer and headed straight for Lake Balaton) or Poles who came to buy and sell, and they tried to make use of the few words of Russian they hoped Hungarians might understand. Anything less than perfect pronunciation would be doomed to failure.

The day arrived for my first solo attempt. I prefaced my raid on the market by standing in the flat and repeating the sentence to myself for what I wanted to buy, and then rushed down and tried to find a stall without any customers so that my excruciating attempts were not witnessed. I found a butcher standing looking bored. After checking the coast was clear, I approached the stall and blurted out my well-rehearsed sentence: egy fél kiló darált húst kérek. I waited, hopefully, while he stared at me. Then folding his arms, and regarding me with the same curiosity Darwin might first have looked at the Galapagos turtles he said, ’Where on earth do you come from? You speak such horrible Hungarian!’

The Hungarian Cow

2009-10-05T20:22:00.012+02:00

Next to their children, Hungarians love their pets unconditionally.
Budapest is inundated with dogs of all shapes and sizes – those shapes and sizes frequently reflecting a closer affinity to their owners than the size of apartment they are kept in! Whilst their country cousins may keep their dogs out in all weathers, housed in a simple kennel even in the middle of winter, Budapest pooch owners pamper their pets with trips to the cosmetician, and equip them with coats and even miniature Wellington boots, before subjecting them to the rain or snow of the city’s streets. Recent developments have seen somewhat less ‘dog rubber’ (kutyagumi) on the pavements and the ready availability both of plastic bags with which to collect it, and ‘toilets’ in which to deposit it.
Cats, too, are beloved by many, and I still remember the old lady who appeared nightly at the gates of the old Garay téri piac (market), where she fed the strays who waited on the other side.
More unusually, I watched in disbelief when I saw a man taking his goat for an early morning walk on Andrássy út, stopping to allow it to graze on the small bushes which bordered the pavement!
Yet stories abound of dog poisoning – invariably put down to the neighbours. When one of our cats had a suspected fracture we took her to the vet’s for an x-ray, only to be informed that she had three pellets in her – obviously the result of someone’s taking pot shots at her with an air rifle. But all in all, Hungarians reserve their greatest love for their adored pets – second to their children, of course.

It is a sad truth then, that Hungarians dislike one another. They happily relate to newcomers and foreigners, a number of anecdotes to illustrate their profound antipathy to their fellow Magyars. For example: there is the well-known saying that if my cow dies, I also hope my neighbour’s cow will die. No Hungarian can bear to see their neighbour doing better than they are.
A blacker, and altogether more depressing version of the same idea is when a man descends to hell, only to see Satan watching the futile attempts of various groups from a number of nations, to make their escape from the fire and brimstone. A group of Russians clamber to the rim of the pit, but as they put their heads over the top, they are shot by the waiting soldiers above them. The Germans, also reaching the summit are greeted by shouting, threatening guards who order them back into the fires below, and being Germans (so the fable goes) they obey. Finally, the man sees a group of Hungarians, also intent on their escape. No guards threaten, no soldiers lie in wait to shoot them. Why then are they still in the smouldering pit? He turns to Satan and asks for some explanation. Satan says simply, ‘Watch.’
As the first of the Magyars scrambles to the top of the pit he is pulled back by those below him….

The Hungarian Health Service / Part Two

2009-10-05T12:43:00.021+02:00

A feature of Hungary’s National Health Service which is as alien to most people as it is outrageous, is the institutionalised habit of ‘tipping’ doctors.
Exactly when and how it started seems to be the topic of some debate, but what is certain is that it existed before the beginning of Communism. In villages it appears it was a tradition to bring the local family doctor produce from one’s garden or allotment, the spoils of a pig killing or some home-made wine. Similarly, other esteemed figures in small town life, such as the priest, could also count on having their meagre incomes supplemented in this way.
In cities, this presented somewhat of a problem, as most people did not have access to such produce, and naturally resorted to giving money instead.
Quite when this became expected, compulsory even, is unclear, but that it did, cannot be disputed.
Before 1989, almost everyone earned a standard wage, irrespective of their type of work: a teacher, a doctor or a bus driver, earned within a few hundred forints of each other. A combination of the already-ingrained habit of giving doctors a ‘present’ following certain types of treatment and all hospital surgery, and a feeling that they deserved more than the average worker, completely established this custom.

Thus, if you were going into hospital, your preparations – alongside packing your own toilet paper, cutlery and mug – was to enquire from others what the going rate for this intervention currently was. The requisite amount was then put into the customary envelope, in readiness to slip to the surgeon at a suitably private moment, out of ear and eye-shot of colleagues and nurses. This could generate a certain degree of cloak-and-dagger activity, in those instances when the doctor could not be found except in others’ company – though most doctors generously gave their patients an opportunity to pass over the envelope when issuing them with their discharge notes, in the privacy of their offices.

When I enquired whether my friends feared the doctor might not take care with an operation or the like if he were not paid, it was explained to me that the money was always given following surgery, and not in advance. Logically, then, he could not know beforehand whether he would be tipped or not. However, people always feared that if they had for any reason to return, to have some further treatment, not giving money could prejudice the doctor against them. It should be added that nurses – who are indisputably poorly paid – also expect small ‘presents’ to attend to their duties.

Typical of the double-think that anyone familiar with Orwell’s 1984 will already be aware of, every department on every floor of every hospital had to display a written declaration outlawing the giving and the acceptance of such gratuities – universally ignored. These framed edicts were still hanging there after ’89 when income tax was first introduced, and when the government decided to tax doctors on these very ‘earnings’!

Today, in a society where there are extreme disparities in earnings, and when some kind of attempt is being made to stamp out corruption in all its various forms (with only varying degrees of success), the situation has become more complex. There is no ‘going rate’, and patients are reluctant (at best) to discuss what they are giving the doctor. An enquiry made to a fellow patient who is in for the same surgery, as to what they think is the appropriate amount to tip, is inevitably answered with: ‘Whatever you can afford.’ Not a lot of help.

How much simpler it is in the private clinics, where the rates are publicly displayed for all patients to see. As it is, whatever you decide to give in the ‘free’ National Health system, you feel it is probably too little, leaving you with the uncomfortable feeling that should you be forced to seek that particular doctor’s help in future, he may be ‘too busy’ to deal with you.
Though a few brave souls actually choose not to tip, how much better it would be if this system which demeans both patient and doctor alike, and undermines any truly professional relationship between them, were well and truly stamped out altogether.

Some years ago I was given a box of chocolates by a gynaecologist for whom I had done some revision of a translated article he was hoping to publish. On opening it at home, I found an envelope containing 20,000 forints in the wrapping paper. He had obviously been presented with the chocolates by a patient (in preference to just an envelope), but not realising what lay within, and having no use for the chocolates, had passed the gift on to me. I hardly knew him, and he was thus surprised to find me waiting for him in the hospital the following day. However, as I explained the situation as delicately as I could, he gave not the slightest hint of any embarrassment or awkwardness. Pocketing the envelope he wished me good-day, and returned to his waiting patients.

Personal Space

2009-10-04T20:11:00.010+02:00

Personal space, its uses and abuses, is one of those things you seem only to become conscious of when you start to travel.

Living space in Hungary was severely restricted by the communist government. One person was allotted a mere 10 square metres, meaning a family of four was only entitled to 40 sq.metres of living space. Those living in larger apartments were forced to divide their flats up, invite relatives to share their home, or have complete strangers foisted upon them. Thus, if you have ever wondered about the bizarrely ‘planned’ layout of your flat, you’ll know why!

The ‘flat problem’ in Hungary was alive and well when we arrived here. Just as for the telephone, waiting lists for flats averaged ten years or more, unless you were willing to have three children in as many years, putting you to the top of the list. In the meantime young couples lived with one or other set of their parents – no doubt a factor in the high rate of divorce. (Renting was not an option – rents amounted to an entire wage for a month, and there was a high degree of mistrust on the side of landlord and tenant alike. This solution to the flat problem was extremely rare.) It was not unusual to find three generations of a family living in one flat, sharing one bathroom and one kitchen.

Possibly it is for this reason that I have found Hungarians to be quiet and unobtrusive in public places: used to living in such confined spaces they have adapted in order to maintain a modicum of privacy. They generally talk in lowered tones, reminding their children also to keep their voices down; and on the Margaret Island which is deluged with people on a sunny weekend, there are no ghetto blasters and wailing children, as I remember in English parks. Foreigners are instantly noticeable speaking at twice the volume of the locals (dare I say it? especially Americans!)

However, Hungarians have some instantly noticeable and quirky uses of personal space. Quiet they may be, but also blissfully unaware of those around them! The habit of sitting on the outside seat on buses and trams, even when they are only going one or two stops, leaves you with two equally unattractive alternatives: to attempt to climb over them, or to continue to stand – often adjacent to them, hoping they might slide over – but no.
On the London tube, something I detest for its overcrowdedness, any slight contact with another results in mutual apologies. In Budapest, pedestrians and public transport travellers seem to lack all awareness of others, silently bumping and pushing those near to them. Unless you stand within a dangerous proximity to the edge of the platform, it is perfectly likely that someone will wedge themselves immediately in front of you in order to be able to enter the tube or tram before you.

At the wonderful Turner and Italy exhibition a few weeks ago, I stood in contemplation of one of the paintings. I must have been no more than a metre from the canvas. Suddenly, a man walked between me and the picture, squeezing himself into the minute space, practically standing on my feet, and obscuring my view of everything except the back of his bald head! I wondered if sufficient inches remained for me, in turn, to manouevre myself in front of him, and what his reaction might be.
I adjoumed to the next picture.…

The Post Office : Part Two / Telephones

2009-10-04T13:20:00.005+02:00

Sitting on the 5 bus last weekend, forced with everyone else to listen for twenty minutes to the whining monologue of a young woman, I wondered if this could be regarded as an example of post-communist progress.

As with most aspects of modern life, Hungarians have very quickly caught up with western trends, this extending to the ubiquitous use of the mobile phone. In fact, when the large, brick-like contraptions first came into being, there were probably more of them evident on Budapest’s streets than on the streets of London: for one simple reason - because so many people still had no landline telephone!

Possession of a telephone before 1989 was the major selling point for flats. About one in ten people in Budapest owned one, while in some villages it was only the doctor who did. Waiting lists for acquiring a phone were around 12-15 years – not the apparatus itself, but the line. I was assured that the reasons for this were primarliy (if not entirely) political, inasmuch as communications could hereby be both limited and monitored. Many topics were not deemed safe to discuss on the phone, as for example, matters connected with foreign currency. In these cases the code used was: This is not a telephone topic.
But your problems did not end even if you were one of the lucky few to have a phone. Hefty bribes were also payable even just to get the name and number of the person who could assist you in your quest.

Firstly, you might have a party line, (a ‘twin’, as they were called) whose identity was secret, though occasionally people had managed to find out. It could be someone in the same building, or someone in another district entirely. Only one of you could use the line at a time – so if you had been paired with a particularly lonely person with lots of time on their hands, you might constantly find yourself picking up the receiver to the sound of silence on the other end – especially as calls were charged at a mere one forint a call! And if they did not replace the receiver properly, days might pass when you were unable to use it at all! (Hence the secrecy, as threats were not unknown!)
Secondly, assuming you had a telephone, and even better, had no ‘twin’, you could not be guaranteed a line. The joke went that the Hungarian spy was caught because on making a call, he lifted the receiver and first waited for a line before dialling. Quite regularly, you might also find yourself at the centre of a real ‘party’ line, when two other people would unwittingly already be talking on ‘your’ line, demanding you hang up!
Rain could also frustrate your attempts to make a call. It was widely believed that the Hungarians had bought their telephone technology from Sweden, but had not insulated the lines, and therefore wet weather meant phones were regularly unusable. And woe betide you if you failed, for any reason, to pay your bill immediately. Your phone would be disconnected, possibly permanently.
And all this was if you were lucky enough to have a telphone at all!

Pity the 90% who had to use public phones! There were two varieties – the yellow boxes for domestic calls, and the red ones for international calls. The string of variables that usually prevented you from making a call are almost too many to ennumerate: the receiver was in pieces; you couldn’t insert the coin; you inserted the coin and it fell through – again….and again…; you inserted the coin but it was just swallowed, and the line remained dead; you got through but the other person could not hear you, in spite of your most frantic screams….It was usually less stressful, and took hardly any more time, to see your friend personally!

After five years, and in our fifth flat, we became the excited owners of a telephone. It was a party line, but our ‘twin’ was a friendly neighbour, so the relationship was amicable. With five years’ experience of making calls in Budapest, I thought I was as much of an expert as any local, and could not be caught out by the vagaries of the Post Office. I was wrong. On returning from a summer visit to England, the neighbour told me that our number had been changed whilst we were away. Not only had we not been notified (see the blog on Information Blackout!), nor could we find any explanation for the change, but we had no idea what our new number might be!

We were to find out soon enough, though, when we received an endless string of calls from people enquiring about the availability of spare parts for their washing machines. We had (inadvertently?) been given the same number as the Hajdu washing machine repair shop! Another service from magyar posta!
Maybe, being forced to endure others’ mobile calls is a relatively small price to pay – at least I can get off the bus or listen to my Ipod!

The Hungarian Health Service Can(not) Help You / Part One

2009-09-30T19:22:00.007+02:00

In the early days of working in Hungary I made frequent visits to teach a group of students in Orosháza, who at that time, worked for the glass industry; they counted two doctors among their number. The lesson dealing with the topic of Health, and all things connected with it, almost inevitably ended with discussion and complaint about the Hungarian health service. Several students related tales enumerating the all-too-familiar shortcomings of hospitals, and the resultant consequences. The two doctors had, no doubt, to endure such conversations on a daily basis, and thus sat impassively throughout. When the last such tale had been told, one of the doctors sighed philosophically, summarising the dilemma: ‘The problem is, we all have to die.’ Quick as a flash, another student countered, ‘And the Hungarian Health Service can help you!'

I have had a number of sojourns in a variety of state-run hospitals, along with being in attendance when my family or close friends have found themselves there. The situation is not as black and white as it would seem at first sight – or as terrifying as it appears to the expat who happily taxis out to Telki Hospital (hotel?) at the first sign of trouble, Gold Card Health Insurance in his back pocket! I have infinitely more trust in the doctors employed within the crumbling walls of the state sector, than in some of the privately-run clinics with which I have also had some experience.

There were a number of things which surprised me on my first encounters with hospitals, and which I imagine still surprise the uninitiated foreigner, brave enough – or poor enough! – to opt for a state hospital. A few examples: there are no curtains around the beds in a ward, making you an unwilling participant in your fellow patients’ medical interventions - I still remember lying approximately two feet from a woman having a liver biopsy. You need to take your own cutlery and drinking vessels, along with a tea-towel so you can do your own washing up when you’ve finished. And most importantly, you need to be provided with edible food! Few countries could boast of their hospital fare, but a bread roll and a cheese triangle are all you are likely to be given between noon of one day, and breakfast on the next.

My first stay (in the old MÁV korház) was in 1987 for the birth of my son, John. A few weeks before his expected arrival, I went to the British Embassy in order to clear up questions relating to his nationality, with the Consul. Summarising the information I had been given, I concluded, ‘So there’s no real reason for me to return to England to have this baby?’ I still vividly remember how he peered at me over the rim of his spectacles and said, ‘Tell me – have you ever been in a Hungarian hospital?’

The Post Office: Part One / Letters

2009-09-24T19:08:00.015+02:00

‘Why don’t you write about the Post Office?’ asked a friend this week, knowing only too well my fraught relationship with that particular institution over the last thirty years. Were I writing this by hand, the tension and frustration evoked in those memories would be discernible in my manuscript.

In a world where all salaries were paid in cash and a current bank account was as unknown as a Big Mac, the magyar posta assumed a far larger role in people’s lives. All bills were paid here, letters, parcels and money sent, and the ubiquitous stamps could be bought for official documents. And in a country where only about every tenth person had a telephone – most of which went wrong with alarming regularity – trips to the post office were frequent, either to use their (somewhat) more reliable phones, or to send telegrams to those not fortunate enough to have one.
The disastrous combination of every member of society requiring the services of the P.O., and their snail’s pace of work, guaranteed that you were unlikely ever to get away with less than half and hour in the place; an hour was more usual.
Some of my most bizarre experiences have taken place in this venerable institution. In December 1982 I took some thirty or so Christmas cards to Nyugati P.O. on my way home after work. The queues were longer than I had hoped for in the evening, and resignedly I joined one of them. A more unseasonal pall of gloom would be difficult to imagine: no Tidings of Good Joy far less Peace, Goodwill to All Men here! Just the slam of the door, the bang of the rubber stamp, the surly silence of those manning the brown be-curtained glass windows, and the sighs of the customers already half-an-hour into their long wait. The flicker of 40watt bulbs did little to brighten the dingy hall.

As I approached the front of the queue I realised that the Post Office had now branched out into Christmas card sales. An elderly woman stood examining a pile of cards in her hands. Leaning towards the clerk behind the glass she said,’ I quite like this one. What do you think? Or maybe this one’s nicer?’ she continued moving on to the next in the pile. Thus for a further ten minutes as the queue waited, helplessly.

As my turn came I pushed the small stack of envelopes towards the impassive clerk. His face registered incredulity as I spoke the well-rehearsed words,
‘Airmail, please.’
‘All of them?’ he asked in strangulated tones.
I nodded; (this was a post office, was it not?)
Looking past me into the dim shadows of the distant end of the room he called, ‘Laci! Bring a chair!’
Now it was my turn to look incredulous, as Laci (presumably) emerged from a door, carrying a wooden chair. Without a word he placed it next to me and sloped off. I soon understood why.
It took half an hour to complete the process of weighing each card, finding the appropriate stamp, licking it and sticking it on, then similarly the Airmail sticker, and finally adding up (and checking the addition) of the list of thirty numbers.
In November 1983 I found a friend travelling to Vienna, giving him my cards and some schillings; it took him a mere seven and a half minutes to get them safely on their way.

Information Blackout

2009-09-21T21:21:00.009+02:00

Communication, imparting information, clarity and transparency: all seem to represent as painful a procedure for Hungarians as a trip to the dentist or even the confessional.
It is no secret that the Liszt Academy is in dire need of renovation, from the electric wiring, the plumbing and plastering, to the creaking wooden seats of the concert hall, almost guaranteed to send you running to an osteopath the morning following a concert.
Liszt was born in1811 and died in 1886, thus rendering dates in multiples of 50 and 100 from then on automatically earmarked for jubilations and celebrations. Such will be – would be – the year 2011: the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth. It would seem unthinkable that this particular year should be chosen for renovation work, which could see the Academy closed at the very time locals and foreigners alike will be making anniversary pilgrimages to the city. And yet….this is Hungary.
The Zeneakadémia will be closed from November, and will quite definitely have its doors shut in October 2011. What is more, as yet no-one seems to know where it will be moving. The rumoured – and seriously mooted – options have variously included the now-abandoned building of ELTE’s English department on Ajtósi Dürer sor (itself in even direr need of renovation); a disused hospital at Lövölde tér; the home of the World Federation of Hungarians near Heroes' Square (apparently rejected for political reasons), and the idea put forward that it should be fragmented into a dozen or more buildings which have a few spare rooms, scattered over the capital.
The latest rumour circulating among (understandably) interested teachers and students alike, is that they will move into the Post Office building in Petöfi Sándor utca.
No information of any sort is available on the Academy’s website – including the ‘News’ section which does not so much as mention the imminent closure of the building - while the press reports only that ‘the Music Academy will be moving to temporary accommodation while renovation work is completed.’
Students at the official opening ceremony of the Academy last week were informed by the Rector that they will be told of the new location “at the appropriate time.” And therefore, at the appropriate time, I shall inform you, too.

Queuing

2009-09-14T21:57:00.013+02:00

The wonderful study of England and the English written by George Mikes (alias Mikes György) includes a short chapter on the British fascination – one might even say obsession - with the art of queuing. Mikes chose to describe it as ‘the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race.’
A cartoon I once saw in a newspaper depicts a middle-aged couple queuing at the supermarket check-out, only to be bypassed by a greasy-looking (and obviously not English!) man, intent on being served first. The woman looks at her angry husband, and by way of quelling what threatens to be a most un-English outburst, she calms him with the words: He can’t help it, dear – he’s a foreigner.

Thirty years ago, Hungarians regarded the subject with the same degree of disdain as Mikes. Queue jumping was endemic: there was no shame inherent in ‘overtaking’ people who had been waiting for an hour before you had even arrived, nor honour in waiting your turn patiently. Queuing was for those lacking the wherewithal to bypass the annoying process; ‘losers’ who devoid of the technique of getting to the front first, would have to suffer for their disability by having to wait their turn.

In my early days of pre-1989 Hungary, I soon learnt every trick in the book of The Art of How to Avoid Queuing. First, there were countless variations on the ‘due to circumstances beyond my control’ theme. These included the brazen – ‘I’m in a hurry,’ – often finished off with ‘because I live in the country and my train’s leaving,’ or ‘because I came yesterday and I wasn’t seen,’ but best of all, and always a sure-fire winner, ‘I have to get home to breastfeed the baby.’ Mention of children (preferably sick ones) always guaranteed you immediate access to whomever and whatever you wanted, (assuming you were female).
Another favourite was to hang about nonchalantly somewhere near the door in question, only to shoot through it, akin to an olympic athlete, when the door handle moved just an inch from the inside. Equally popular was to place yourself at the side of a long line of people, and gradually worm your way in. Other Hungarians rarely, if ever, complained – after all, they frequently used the strategy themselves. (This can still be observed today on every Easyjet and Wizzair flight departing Ferihegy One.)

Five years into an EU Hungary, a certain veneer of order has been imposed by banks and the like, in the form of a numbered ticket system. This cannot be circumvented, but is shamelessly abused by T-mobile and the like, where if you want to purchase a phone, you take priority over everyone who has been queuing an hour or more to query a bill.
And in shops, despite a passing nod at the ‘European’ (and therefore civilised and certainly not Balkan!) acceptance of queuing, as soon as a cashier closes her till, and the snake of customers has to move elsewhere, it again comes down to a Darwinian survival of the fittest: no semblance of self-control remains as everyone rushes from the back of the line they were in, to the front of the new one!
It has been said that if the British re-introduced capital punishment it would be for one category of miscreants only: queue-jumpers!

We are very pleased not to be of service….

2009-09-12T22:10:00.008+02:00

Unsurprisingly, the concept of customer service in a Communist society was a contradiction in terms, illustrated on a daily basis.
The first hurdle was to even get anywhere near the goods you were considering purchasing. In bookshops and record shops a counter and a cordon firmly separated you from the items in question, each of which had to be asked for by name or title – though these were indecipherable from such a distance, leaving you craning your neck and straining your eyes in the hope of being able to identify what you might want. Browsing was both alien and forbidden.
‘Have you got a …..?’ or ‘Where can I find the….?’ were invariably greeted with a shrug of the shoulders or a vague wave of the hand into the distance.

The answer, ‘We might have it in the storeroom,’ on the other hand, provided you with the opportunity to indulge in some small-time bribery. An answer of ‘I would be grateful if you would have a look,’ meant you were tacitly agreeing to tip the assistant for taking the trouble to fetch it.
It was a matter of complete indifference to everyone whether you bought anything in their shop or not. The assistants were paid a pittance (as everyone was) and no-one stood directly to gain from your purchase – except if you had to tip them to sell it to you in the first place!

Where the transaction was more complicated, possibly in an office or suchlike, it was not at all uncommon to see satisfied customers or clients return with bouquets of flowers and other presents for the person who had so pleased them by, in fact, just doing their job!

Friends visited in the summer, and on their last afternoon we went to the House of Terror museum, ending up in the shop half an hour before the museum closed. Standing with the card and money in her hand Rose turned to the counter, but no-one was there. A young French couple stood waiting to buy a book. A security guard informed us that the shop assistant had gone home. ‘But the museum doesn’t close for half an hour,’ I said. He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow morning,’ he said. They were flying back the next day. I took Rose’s money from her hand, put it on the counter and walked past the stupified guard, postcard in hand. ‘You can’t do that,’ he began; we did.
Then on Friday in a small, unassuming café where I sat out on the pavement, the flowers I had just been given were smilingly put in a jug of water; food and drink were brought quickly; and when I left, kitchen paper was offered for me to wrap the stems of the flowers in for my journey home.
Today, most shopping experiences seem to straddle the old, ‘We are very pleased not to be of service,’ variety, alongside what foreigners consider normal - and what those of us innured to old Communist ways still find a pleasant surprise worth commenting upon.
Following a ‘normal’ transaction where the assistant talks to me politely (smiles, even!), offers to get something from the infamous storeroom, packs it up and hands it to me (with a smile!) wishing me viszontlátásra, I cannot desist from thinking (saying, if I’m with someone else) : She was friendly / pleasant etc. And if they have had to go to particular trouble – ringing another of their shops to see if the item is available there - I still have to stop myself wondering what tip I should give!

Őrült ez az Angol? (Are these English people mad?)

2009-09-09T19:03:00.003+02:00

This was the question posed in the title to an article written in a Hungarian newspaper in 1989. The ‘angol’ in question was me – or more accurately, all four of us, including Paul, and our young children, Hannah and John.
Though I cannot now recall the precise details surrounding the writing of the piece, it must have been connected with our then seemingly irrational decision to settle permanently in Hungary.
The Hungarian journalist cast serious doubt on our sanity in taking this step – something not voiced by our English family and friends. Our optimism in a future life in Budapest was countered by the characteristic pessimism of the Hungarians we told.
The adage goes: What’s the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? Answer – the pessimist has more information! (Did Hungarians come up with this clever definition?!) This would explain their take on our decision. The question in the article should probably have been asked in 1982 when we initially set off in our VW Beetle for Communist Budapest, where at the time only about 10 British people were living!

Anyway, a couple of decades and a few tens-of-thousands of expats later, we’re still here, and this blog gives me a chance to write about a life in Budapest that’s a bit more up-to-date than what is described in my two books. In 1989 we asked Caroline (a close English friend who came here in the 60s) whether she thought our children might become schizophrenic, living two lives which were culturally so very different. Without any hesitation she replied, “No. But you might.”

As I daily walk the streets of a city I’ve known and loved since the 80s, I realise that the changes that Budapest has undergone - as well as the effect these changes have had on its inhabitants - have certainly made me ambivalent.
Would I want to turn the clock back? Not really. Do I like the changes I see?

Follow this blog and I’ll try to explain………