Money Makes the World Go Round

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to London, I found myself loitering outside a small newsagent’s: I wanted to buy a tube of Polo mints, but having just withdrawn some money from an ATM, found I had no small change, and would therefore have no alternative but to proffer a £20 note for this small item.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?

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

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....

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

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

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

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.