A Fulbright Week

Penitence
I was sent the power points to review for the Semmelweis English Language Medical Program late last week. I emailed back my comments over the weekend. When I arrived at the faculty meeting on Monday afternoon they were passing around the sign in sheet. I had not been asked to sign in at the previous faculty meetings, but today they said I should sign in. So I printed my name on a blank line and signed in. They then commented that I would now be eligible for continuing medical education credits from the Hungarian Medical Chamber. It may have been a bit of a joke but I was flattered and felt I had been accepted. Then they proceeded to hold the whole meeting in Hungarian, explaining that they had forgotten to bring the flash drive with the English overheads on it. I accepted this as perhaps penitence for my failure to show up the previous Friday for my talk. Actually earlier that morning the faculty member who arranged the seminars came up to see me. He apologized for not having reminded me of the seminar and I apologized that I had misunderstood about meetings and seminars. We agreed to try to hold it in two weeks, but needed approval from the dept chair.

Lecture on the Athenian Plague
I gave two lectures this week. The first was on the Athenian Plague of 429 BC. I had spent over a week gathering the information and putting it together in a power point. I personally learned a lot. The lecture was on Monday afternoon and it was pouring when I left for ELTE to give the talk. About twenty people attended including several faculty and graduate students in the Ancient History Dept. Things went pretty smoothly. When I was done I faced dead silence. This has only happened a few times in my over 40 years of teaching. I interpret as meaning I have presenting something that was not expected and brought a different perspective on the topic. One of the students did say it would take some time to digest what I had presented. George (check name) the chair of the dept who invited me to give the lecture then asked a question about typhus as the cause of the plague. I had come across a report of finding a mass burial grave in Athens during construction of a new subway for the 1996 Olympics.

One student then asked whether this could be applied to other eras in history. So I mentioned the Cholera epidemics of the 1840-70s and how they contributed to the building of sewers in major European cities, and then HIV AIDS. I argued that since modern science had been able to identify and then create a treatment for HIV AIDS within a very short time period—less than 20 years—the forces that could have led to a religious revival movement didn’t have a chance to take hold, although such reactions were most evident in South Africa. I also said that Asclepius represented a combination of the new Hippocratic medicine approach blended with the rise of a new healing god.

I then went to Corvinus and had an interesting hour discussion with Norbert Kiss who is in public administration and management. I mentioned my evaluation research and policy, and he told me about an HMO pilot study, his work on hospital quality assurance and some work of his colleagues on pharmaceutical purchasing. We agreed to exchange some papers and he would see about having me give a presentation in a class or two in April.

Classroom Challenges over Medicare and Medicaid
On Wednesday I presented a lecture on US Medicare and Medicaid to the 25 medical students. I worked my way through Medicare parts A B C and D. By the time I got to D the students were incensed. How could a first world country have such a disorganized and irresponsible health care system? I realized that they were assuming Medicare would cover everyone, not just those over 65. I also explained that if someone came in with a bleeding broken arm that they would be treated in the ER but not admitted to the hospital. The initial high deductible really bothered them. One of the students remarked that with all the deductibles, copays and other requirements it seemed as if the Medicare was designed to encourage old people to die. I told him that Sarah Palin had expressed similar thoughts (although I am not sure they knew who she was and they didn’t ask).

One student asked me what I thought of Michael Moore’s’ film Sicko. I said that much of it was true—for example, his Canadian relatives thought they had it much better than his relatives in Flint Michigan. I mentioned that he interviewed a very upper bourgeois young couple in Paris who had a fabulous apartment and had no problems with health insurance or health for that matter. I said I had looked more closely into how the French system worked and was paid for. The French merely show their insurance card and the system then takes care of everything for them—no visible paper work and no apparent difficulties in receiving treatment. While they do pay high taxes and premiums, these are automatically deducted and presented no real choices for them to make. The student from France supported me and said that the health system was adding to the national debt. Peter, my sponsor, pointed out that in France and Hungary the complexity of the system is behind the scenes while in the US it is all front stage.

Fulbright First Friday
Lori, one of the Fulbright faculty at Pecs, suggested that a group of us get together for dinner on Thursday evening before the First Friday trip to Piliscaba, Parkany-Struvo, and Esztergom. We ate at the small French restaurant and had a very nice time. Tom Burns, a specialist in Roman history and former chair at Emory. His wife had worked in the medical library. They had extensive travels and work in Europe. He had many interesting stories and the next day would comment on where the Roman camps and settlements were and what went on in them. His wife and I played small world and found some mutual acquaintances.

On Friday morning we boarded a bus and went to visit the Pazamany Peter Catholic University in Piliscaba. The university was founded in 1636, the same year as Harvard, although representing opposite ends of the Counter Reformation. The Pazamany acquired a new campus in Piliscaba when the Soviet army abandoned its barracks in the early 1990s. New buildings were designed and the outside of the barracks redone by the group of Imre Makovecz and it has become an architectural landmark. You can check them out at http://www.pbase.com/bauer/stephaneum_campus_in_piliscsaba_hungary Lazlo Muntrean, a former Fulbrighter at Univ of San Francisco who is teaching at Pazamany, presented a talk about the architecture and Makovecz.

We then went across the Danube into Solvakia to have lunch at the best Hungarian restaurant in the area. We were reminded that this part of Solvakia had been a part of the Hungary until the end of World War I and still had a very large Hungarian population. The food at the Casablanca was excellent, especially the chestnut puree (gesztenyepüré) dessert.

After lunch we crossed back to see the Basilica at Esztergom. Esztergom, originally a Roman outpost on the Danube, became the center of the Catholic Church in Hungary. Stephen was crowned king here in 1000, and a recently completed sculpture commemorates the event. After it was sacked by the Tartars, King Bela IV moved the crown to Buda which was more defensible, but the Church stayed and the current Basilica is the largest church in Hungary. The central vault features Saints Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine. Tom Burns pointed out that these were four intellectual leaders of the Church and stand in contrast to the usual four apostles.

A large side chapel in the Basilica was moved, stone by stone from its original sight on a near by hill that was named after St. Thomas Becket. While studying in Paris, Becket who became archbishop of Canterbury befriended Lukács Bánfy, who became archbishop of Esztergom. Both were advocates for church autonomy but after Becket was martyred the hill was named in his memory. So Becket not only helps Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, he protects Esztergom The Basilica holds the remains of Cardinal Mindszenty who opposed the Communist takeover of Hungary in 1948, was imprisoned, released during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and then lived in the American embassy after the Russians retook Budapest.

On the Town
On Wednesday night we did BurgerKing and an opera. The opera starts at seven and I lecture until 5:30. So I rushed home, we took the metro to Oktogon, ate at the BurgerKing and then went to the Opera. At BK we sat at a small table near which was a sign that explained the charge for using the bathroom could be waived on showing a meal receipt from that day or getting a receipt in the bathroom and having it deducted from the meal purchase.

We saw Turondot, Tari’s favorite opera, which she knows very well. The opera really carries and has a lot of good music and arias. The staging encouraged the singers to move around. The scene of Ping, Pang and Pong talking with Calaf was done in front of the curtain with the three ministers first removing their ceremonial make up and then putting it back on. At one point they briefly opened their portfolios to allow Calaf to see the Chinese character each contained. Turned out these were the answers to the three riddles.