á – ah as in ‘pahk the cah in Hahrvahd yahrd’
a – au as in Paul (this one is realllll difficult)
e – eh as in egg
é – ay as in may. Yeah, that throws me too but at least it’s easy to pronounce
i – ee as in fee
í – shoot, I forget how to pronounce this
o – oh as in oreo
ó – oh but not you have to somehow say it faster than just ‘o’
ő - I can’t even write this because the sound doesn’t exist in English. It’s like a cross between ‘ew’ and - ‘ugh’.
ö – like ő but shorter. Somehow I can pronounce all of the ‘o’s properly though
u – ooh
ú – u but shorter. Tough but at least it’s easy to remember the rule
ű - very much like ȍ except that your mouth is open more but more narrowly. Really weird, I know
ü – you guessed it...like ű but shorter
So a word like köszönjük drives me insane but I can at least make a good attempt at pronouncing it. I feel so accomplished. Next up: two word sentences!!
I checked into my little panzió (which you guys might remember means pension), the Vargaház (or Varga House). I love staying in little hotels and this one, basically an extension of someone’s two story house, didn’t disappoint. It really felt like staying in someone’s house which I love.
I didn’t have a map of Budaörs but luckily it is surrounded by hills so I felt confident of being able to walk around for a while and find my way back. The temperature was in the low 30s all day and the sun was nowhere to be seen: perfect conditions for a walk! I immediately set out for a tall hill just above the town that had for some reason a little church on top. I still don’t know why there’s a little church on top because the sign up there was only written in Hungarian and German (apparently there are a lot of Germans living there).
I found my way back down the hill, wandered through a lot of nice little neighborhoods and, after three hours, got back to the hotel. I checked e-mail for a couple of hours and even had a videoconference with someone at work in Austin using Skype, then headed out to find dinner, specifically pizza. I actually knew where I was going, having seen the restaurant earlier in my wanderings. And lo and behold, it was lightly snowing!!!! I cannot tell you how fantastic it felt walking around in it as it was falling and accumulating on the ground. Budaörs is a quiet little suburb so there was very little traffic out, neither foot nor automobile. It was like I had the whole snowfall to myself. I loved every minute of it. Thankfully it was still cold enough for the snow to accumulate a little, maybe to about an inch. That was enough for me.
The next morning I walked about a mile and a half with my luggage to the Budaörs office. I was going to do it anyway but the snow on the ground, some of which was starting to melt, heightened my resolve. I met Eszter and Donat at the office, had a good visit and then drove back with them to Debrecen, where our factory and distribution center in the eastern part of the country is. It has snowed there too but it was almost all melted there as well. Too bad. Of course, the Hungarians were more than ready for spring to come. I had told Donat in December when Austin was getting its massive cold fronts that I wanted to experience a really cold winter in Hungary. His response: “Matt, go to a freezer, crawl inside and close the door. You’re crazy.” This was Thursday.
I had a good day at work on Friday then on Saturday Eszter and her boyfriend Imi, short for Imré (that’s ‘eem-ray’), drove me in a company car out to the caves at Aggtelek. It’s in the northern part of Hungary near the Slovakian border, about a three hour drive away from Debrecen. NI has several cars that employees can use for company business or for the use of visitors like me. I knew this but never considered actually using one myself before. I’m still not sure I would go drive one on my own. Not that I’m scared of Hungarian roads and drivers but that I’d have some problems in the event of an accident.
Anyway, Imi was driving and he did a good job though the GPS kept telling him to slow down in Hungarian. On the way we passed by a memorial to the fallen in the battle of Muhi (moo-hee) back in 1241 (1241!) when the Mongols overran the Hungarian forces. It wasn’t a memorial like a building but rather was a large mound of dirt covered with weeds and quite large wooden crosses. The mound was about 20-25 feet tall and had a pathway winding around it to the top. At the top was a large wooden cross with a wooden angel nailed to it. The angel was actually flying but facing the ground: a ‘fallen’ angel. It was a bit disturbing actually especially since it was near freezing outside and quite gray all around (I hadn’t seen the sun since the plane descended below the clouds into Budapest). Definitely the strangest battle monument I’d ever seen.
If you like military history, you can read about the battle here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi
By the time we got to Aggtelek the sun was out, yay! We were part of a rather small tour group consisting of us, our guide and a Hungarian couple in their 40s. I suppose the cold weather kept everyone away although in the cave the temperature would be a constant fifty degrees or so. Guess if I had a choice in scheduling I’d wait until summer to visit but I was thrilled to be anywhere outside of Debrecen that day. Even better was that instead of having to navigate my way through train stations and negotiate with disgruntled taxi drivers I was being taken care of by Eszter and Imi. It just makes being somewhere so much more enjoyable to be shown around by locals. This is why I make such a concerted effort to do the same thing for non-US visitors I work with when they come to Austin (it’s also an excuse to go do some things I enjoy and eat some good food, eh).
The caves at Aggtelek had something I hadn’t encountered before: an underground river, appropriately named the River Styx. The whole Aggtelek complex, designated a World Heritage Sight, actually runs for 25 miles along the river, beginning in Slovakia and crossing into Hungary. We would be walking for about two hours in the Hungarian section; I never found out the distance. The guide spoke in Hungarian and Eszter translated for me as she felt necessary. The guide was quite nice in that she sometimes waited until Eszter was finished translating before she continued on.
The cave had a concrete pathway along its length which made the walking pretty easy. The river was more of a little stream but occasionally the whole tunnel floods pretty badly during heavy rainstorms. You could see where stalactites had been knocked off the ceiling by floods and were now laying at weird angles like crushed matches.
After exiting the cave, we walked back to our car over the hill and through the woods, eh. It was nice to do a little hiking, the first time I’d done that in Hungary, and I was especially thrilled to encounter a frozen pond. Up until that point the largest body of water I’d ever seen frozen up close was my birdbath out back (I once saw the frozen St. Lawrence River but that was from an airplane). I wanted to run out on the ice so badly but figured that might be an easy way to see something else new: the inside of a Hungarian hospital. Still, I was excited just to walk out on the edges. It’s times like that when I pause to think whether it would be great to live someplace further north (nah).
We drove back to Debrecen only to continue on to the small town of Barand about 25 miles southwest of Debrecen to have a late dinner with Imi’s family at their house. We arrived at their house around 8pm and I was introduced to his mother, father and two brothers. The menu included fish soup from the mother’s hometown, fried fish with bones in it (I had a lot of fun picking them out...the family was very worried I was going to swallow one), some sort of mayonnaise slaw and some other things I don’t remember (I’m now writing this three weeks later, give me a break). After dinner, Imi and Eszter dropped me off at my hotel around 10:30 (poor Imi had to then drop off the car at NI, then drop off Eszter and then drive back home). It was a great Saturday though.
The next day I slept in then woke up to find that my internet, which hadn’t worked since Thursday night, was still not working. Sorry Péterfia Panzió, I love you and all but I can’t function without internet, particularly since I need it for work purposes and to skype with Jennifer. I checked out with the intention of staying at the Divinus, the 5-Star hotel just a ten minute walk up the road which all NI employees seem to stay at and that Donat thought I was crazy for not staying at. The ladies at the Péterfia seemed genuinely sad I was leaving but I explained to them in my atrocious Hungarian that I’d told them about the internet on Saturday morning and it still wasn’t fixed. I felt a little sad myself for leaving but oh well.
The Divinus is a very nice hotel but there’s nothing in the rooms that makes you think it’s 5-Stars. Maybe the fact that there is intentionally no shower curtain on the shower though the vent fan is running so well that when you finish the shower you don’t feel cold. I think the 5-Stars comes from the all amenities like the good breakfast buffet, spa and other stuff I didn’t use. In my opinion, you can’t be 5-Stars unless you have one of those Japanese toilets that does special stuff like talk to you.
At 11:30 I was in the little suburb of Józsa (yo-ja...the ‘j’ being like ‘g’ in Gillette) practicing with my buddy Misi’s Under-20 soccer team. It was in the mid-30s outside but they were still practicing. Misi let me borrow his cleats which made running around possible on the incredibly muddy field. I only participated in one drill (in which they played ultimate frisbee with the soccer ball and could only score with their heads) and then in a practice game (that worked out well because they needed a tenth person for the teams to be even). After that Misi and I played a game of pick-up basketball in the gym of his old school (I beat him 24-22 behind some miracle two-point shooting). Then we had an early dinner of ghoulash (called gulyás by the Hungarians) with his girlfriend. I watched the first half of a soccer game on TV with them and then caught a cab back to the hotel. I felt like I had been a real Hungarian that weekend; what a fabulous weekend! Maybe next time I’ll go to Romania, eh.
I worked at the office from Monday through Thursday. The only social highlights were playing volleyball with a bunch of NI employees in a high school gymnasium one evening and getting taken out to dinner by Donat, Eszter and Ildikó (the other person I indirectly supervise in Hungary) on Thursday night. The next morning I rode with Donat and two other NI employees to visit the Institute of Chemical Analysis in Budapest.
After the ICA visit Donat and the other two guys (Zsolt and Tibor) dropped me off at another panzió in Budapest as I was going to fly home in the morning. This panzió was one I’d been meaning to stay in for the past year and a half but never had the opportunity until then. It was called the Passzió Panzió and no I don’t know what Passzió means. I wanted to stay there because it seemed to be located in a nice residential neighborhood. My room was quite small, smelled a little like smoke and had no curtains on the window (allowing for someone in the building across the way to peek in if they wanted) but otherwise it served my purposes just fine.
The next morning it was off to the airport to fly home! First Frankfurt, then Philadelphia and then ending in Dallas. I had window seats the whole way, yay! I didn’t sleep the whole way but it’s usually easier not to sleep on the return trip since it’s daylight most of the way. I left Budapest around 9:30 in the morning and arrived in Dallas around 9:30 at night, making it about 22 hours of travel from door to door. The plane to Dallas had three soldiers on it, two of whom were welcomed by family members with large banners in the baggage claim. Made my reunion with Jennifer seem much tamer; I felt like clapping for the soldiers and was actually kind of moved.
The next day Jennifer, Graham, Maisy and I bid adieu to my in-laws and set out for home. It felt good to be back but there’s also a small part of you that misses the co-workers and friends you have overseas.
The next trip on the agenda is a four day jaunt to Phoenix for a conference; I’m working on that write-up now as well.
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