BKV

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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!’