13 More Days...

There are thirteen more days before I leave for Croatia.  For the past couple of weeks I have been very anxious about getting all of my preparations done in time.  I no longer feel that way.  Anxiety has been replaced with utter excitement and joy.  I practically need to sit on my hands to keep from bouncing out of my chair. 

Preparing for my interviews, I've been compiling thought provoking questions for the Croatian students that my readers would want answers to.  Much of my excitement is stemmed from wondering what those answers might be and the possibility of making a connection between my soon to be Croatian friends and those back home.  If just one child can have new insight to life in a distant land, appreciation for culture of a world far, far away then I will be a happy woman.   

Recently, I heard someone say that the world is just one big family, a family of the human race.  She was a speaker at a luncheon I attended and her speech was about the importance of family.  It was like she was reading my mind and plucking thoughts right out of my head.  I come from a big Italian family who is incredibly important to me.  We are loud, eat a lot and don't always get along.  But we love each other and take care of each other with a profound sense of family.   Not everyone feels that way about the people in their lives and they certainly don't feel that way about people they have never met.  I suppose that's one of the reasons why this project is so important to me and why I shall spend the rest of my life trying to unite this human race family.

Peace,
Chris

I promise stories of Hungary will resume next time!

My Time in Hungary-Part 2

The day my plane landed in Budapest, Hungary, was the first time I had ever been abroad.  I would experience a lot of firsts that year and so would the country.  The Soviets had just pulled out of the Eastern-Bloc and Hungary had its freedom.  Immersed in a new culture, a new language and with a new set of friends, my mind was opened to a whole new world. I got a crash course in being patient, flexible and most importantly-adaptable.

There was no internet back then. No email. No camera phones.  My experiences are stored in albums  on very low resolution and grainy photographs I got printed at Fox Photo. But they will forever be stored as crystal clear memories in my mind and my heart.

And some of the memories are hilarious...

I could have written a book just on the experiences of going to the restroom.  This was when I began to appreciate the influence European countries have on each other.  First, it's called the WC which stands for water closet, an English term. Almost no English is used in Hungary but they use it for their toilets.  It's usually pronounced "vay tsay" as they would say in German.  I don't think I ever heard it called "dupla vay tsay" which would be the Hungarian pronunciation.

In homes, toilets and bathtubs are not usually together but in different parts of the house. So when you ask your host to use the bathroom, they take you to where the tub is, the whole time wondering why you need to take a bath during their dinner party. I should have asked where the WC was.

Out in public, there were often attendants in the WC that you must pay to use the toilets. It's usually an elderly woman who sits there with a plate where you place a single coin. Sometimes they are the keepers of the toilet paper handing you a single square once you've paid up.  My first experience with this, I walked by the woman, used the restroom and then walked right out. I had seen the woman but had no idea why she was there. The next thing I knew, the woman came chasing out after me screaming in Hungarian. My friends were able to calm the red-faced woman by explaining I was an American and presenting her with 2 coins for her trouble. Only in the country a couple of days, and already I'm causing trouble.

Stand up showers might have existed back then, but I never saw one. A sprayer on a hose connected to the bathtub faucet was our shower.

Washing clothes was a fun household chore. The washing machine that was supplied in our apartment only vaguely resembled a washing machine at all.   Jeanne, my friend and roommate, called it a centrifuge.  I called it the devil.  It was about an 18" tall cylindrical tank that you filled with water and drained from a rubber tube.  We had to start the motor by using a long wooden spoon to kick start the agitator.  Next, we added a little detergent and waited for it to get soapy.  Then you could add a few clothes, and by that I mean 2 pair of socks and a tee shirt.  Once you were satisfied with the agitation process you would drain the soapy water through the tube and start the process over again to rinse the clothes.  Of course, we had no dryer which meant our socks dried stiff as boards.  We learned to wash our clothes ONLY when absolutely necessary.

Cooking....To be honest, I'm not much of a cook.  Not that I can't, I just don't like it.  It takes too long and when I'm hungry I don't want to wait to prepare something.  I had to get over that.  In our little village we didn't have any grocery super centers and certainly no drive-thrus, not that I had a car anyway.  When you needed bread, you went to the bakery who offered several types of fresh loaf bread that was usually still warm.  For some reason, however, it was rock hard in 24 hours.  This was always the case.  We wondered about preservatives or the lack thereof.   So we had to buy bread almost daily.

Milk came in sealed pouches on a shelf, usually not refrigerated.  You would cut a corner of the pouch to pour the milk.  If there was any left, you would transfer it to a container or throw it out.

The outdoor market in the town center was where most people bought their eggs and produce.  When you bought eggs you had to supply your own containers.  Quite often the eggs still had straw and chicken poop on them.  That was unsettling at first, but where did I think eggs came from anyway?  What was more unsettling was buying a chicken with the head, feet and/or feathers still attached.  We learned to buy chicken at the butcher after that.

Born and raised in Texas, I took beef for granted.  I did not consider it a luxury but a staple.   Not only was beef hard to find in Hungary, it was very expensive (and usually not very good). Meat dishes were made with pork or chicken.  Spaghetti was made with ground pork and hamburgers were pork burgers.  Whenever we got a craving for beef we would take the train into Budapest and get a Big Mac from one of the 2  McDonald's they had back then (and also get ice in our drinks!)

The other thing that was difficult to find was turkey.  We prepared a big Thanksgiving feast for our friends but we had to use chicken, lots and lots of chicken.  We asked the guests to bring side dishes, like we do in America.  Turns out, American and Hungarian side dishes are a lot alike.   We all had such a wonderful time.  I think our new friends were just as excited as we were to celebrate this very important American tradition.

A Hungarian Thanksgiving.

In this picture we have Hungarians, a Swede, a German, a Brit and an American.
 That's usually how our get-togethers were.

Lovely Ute and her violin.

Leslie folk dancing.

...and the parties always ended like this. So much fun!

I did love Hungarian food, though.  Most dishes were served with a rich pink sauce made from cream, butter and paprika. Oh, and the sausage!  The markets would have it hanging by links from the tops of displays.  I would eat it sliced on fresh bread with delicious white cheese.  (I never saw yellow cheese the whole time I was in Europe.)  I would eat this open faced sandwich every single day.  Never since have I eaten such good sausage.

In the winter, the selection of fresh produce was slim.  We became very skilled on the many ways to cook potatoes, onions and pickled paprika peppers.  I learned how to make potato latkes which I loved and continued to make for many years later.

In all seriousness, these experiences changed and shaped my perspective about, well, everything.  I feel so fortunate to have had my time in Hungary.

Next time...Wine!...Travelling through Hungary visiting the vineyards and other wonderful towns.

My Time in Hungary



In the early 90's, I lived in Gödöllő, Hungary, a rural village outside of Budapest where I taught English to elementary school children. By far, it was one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of my life. I lived there with my best friend Jeanne, from Texas, who also taught English but to university students. We shared an apartment and tried to fit in to the traditional Hungarian lifestyle. (as much as two city girls from Dallas could anyway)




View from our apartment balcony in October...

and in November...

and in December...

Americans have a passion for travel. Typically, however, we travel to areas that have been "Americanized" for us. The locals speak English and serve us American food with lots of ice in our drinks. That was hardly the case for us in Gödöllő.  Almost no one spoke English and Hungarian is not an easy language to learn.

Contrary to what many Americans think, Hungarian is not a Slavic language. It is actually Uralic, distantly related to Finnish (of all things!) with a Latin alphabet. So it looks like English with extra letters. The language is logical. What you see is what you pronounce, unlike English which has so many frustrating rules. My friend and I did the best we could to learn practical Hungarian so we could function in our new digs.

I found this on the Internet. I actually do know what it means although it doesn't make much sense. Something like "due to your continuous pretending to be indesecratable". It was part of a Hungarian language lesson I took to show how prefixes and suffixes can be continually added to a core word.

Grocery shopping was where we needed our practical Hungarian the most. My friend Jeanne sometimes had to purchase a kilo of cheese when she went to the market because she didn't know how to say "half" or "a quarter". Do you know how much a kilo of cheese is? Over 2 pounds! And then there was the time I thought I was buying cheese at a corner shop but when I got home I bit into a big piece of yeast cake.  I tried to stick to buying rolls after that.

In the school where I taught, I was required to teach only in English. To speak any Hungarian during a lesson was frowned upon. While this methodology is proven to be successful, it was quite frustrating.  Sometimes I felt like I was in a game of charades, flailing my arms around and dancing around. Once, I had a student who wanted to know the definition of hillbilly. Try acting out that one.

Often times, I had to cheat. One of my Hungarian friends made an emergency language book for me. Included were all of the important commands that any teacher needs...sit down, listen to me, be quiet.  I also had the translations for idioms I found difficult to explain such as off the wall, bogus, passing the buck, and thick as thieves.  The kids loved these.

Since I was not a university trained English teacher, I had to make up my own set of teaching methods. The teaching books assigned to me were in British English. That was usually the case for those teaching English as a foreign language in Europe. I don't speak British English and I didn't want to confuse the kids so I taught both. First, I would teach the lesson in British English and then I would tell them how an American would say it. I didn't care which they chose they just had to be consistent. Some may ask what is the big difference so let me give you an example. One of our lessons was a situation at a school dance where you had to learn appropriate things to say. The first was where a boy approaches a girl and says, "Might I have the pleasure of this dance?" If this doesn't speak volumes about the difference between the two sides of the pond I don't know what does. Of course, I didn't tell the kids that if you say this in the US you run the risk of getting beat up on the playground. I just explained the American way of asking, "Wanna dance?" You should have seen the smirks on their faces as they looked back and forth on the black board at the two options.

I remember one very odd chapter in the instructional book for conversational English.  The lesson was about Howard Hughes and how he invented a push-up bra for Jane Russell. I'm not sure in what social setting that conversation would ever happen, especially for elementary school students.  We skipped that lesson.

Often times, I would make up my own lessons. My favorite was about Thanksgiving. Feeling a little displaced and homesick toward the end of November, I decided to teach the kids about our quintessentially American, holiday. I stayed up late making construction paper Pilgrim hats and Indian headdresses and choosing the right shades of lipstick for war paint. The next day at school, I got mixed looks of apprehension and "she must be crazy" staring back at me when they learned I was going to paint their faces. But everybody participated and by the end of class they had received much more than an English lesson. These children were able to peer into the window of an American child celebrating a cherished holiday that is rich in history and culture. Wide eyed parents entered my classroom when they saw their kids faces. Every student left excitedly retelling their experience. I am certain no lessons of American Thanksgiving have ever been in a British English language book.

This is how Jeanne found me when she came home from work.

What selfies looked like in the 90's.

My awesome students.

Zoltan is the top left student. Such a smart and interesting child. I wonder what amazing things he and all of them have accomplished since this picture was taken.

A New Chapter Begins...in Croatia

Many of you have asked, upon hearing that I had sold my stores, “Now what are you going to do?”  While the answer to that question was trying to explode out of me with excitement, I wanted to wait until my project had fully taken shape before I shared the details.  So, I have created this blog to keep my friends and family updated on my adventure of a lifetime.   

It has been a dream of mine for quite some time to explore faraway places, be immersed in the culture and share what I learn.

Having lived and worked in Hungary many years ago, I discovered that a world existed outside of my Dallas, Texas bubble.  I arrived to this Eastern European country at the end of the cold war.  Hungary was no longer a Soviet Bloc country and the last of the red stars were being removed from the top of government buildings when I got there.  It was history in the making. 

My time in Hungary changed my life.  Of course, I was home sick much of the time.  But I will never forget how moved and touched I was by the relationships I made with the Hungarian people and other expatriots.  When we think of how different a foreign land is we assume the people are just as different.  As it turns out, we are not.  We are the same.  We raise our families, go to work, plan for our futures all the same way.  Yes, our attitudes and opinions may be different but isn't that the case between American towns and communities as well?

I couldn't wait to share my experiences with everyone back home. While my friends and family loved my stories, the entire concept of Eastern Europe baffled them.  Most didn't know where Hungary was or even the continent.  This is where it all began for me, fueling my passion for travel writing.

So the adventure begins in Zagreb, Croatia. I leave May 12, 2013 for a 33 hour flight (only 10 hours of it are actually in the air) and will stay for 2 weeks. My dear friend, Mark, whom I know from my days in Hungary, has arranged for me to visit schools in Bjelovar and in Koprivnica. I will be a one man show, taking all of the video and stills myself, while interviewing students, teachers and families.  I will post daily to the blog but the final production will be made when I get back home. 


For now, I thought it would be interesting to post stories of my time in Hungary.  A lot has changed since I was there, including the formation of the Euro and the European Community and hairstyles, yikes!! But I am sure you will find it quite entertaining. 

So stay tuned...I will have my posts on Hungary up in a few days.