Labrynths

Tour Guide #1
We went to the Great Synagogue on Monday morning and took the grand tour—the sanctuary, holocaust cemetery in the courtyard, the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park/ Tree of Life and the Jewish Museum. The main sanctuary is very large with a double balcony on two sides for the women and children. Like other German Reform synagogues it has a large organ. But it also features twin pulpits on either side about a third of the way down from the front. The synagogue was purposely build to resemble a Christian church. Apparently one rabbi would give his talks in Yiddish or German and the other in Hungarian. If you look closely in this website picture you can see the semi circular awning over the pulpits three columns down from the front on either side. http://z.about.com/d/honeymoons/1/0/y/b/1/03interior.jpg

The tree of life in the form of a weeping willow has the names of those who perished inscribed on the leaves. The Museum had information more or less arranged by Jewish Holidays. I saw a scroll that had colored lettering and asked what it was. I was told it was a scroll containing Haftorah sections from the book of prophets that is read after the Torah portion. The museum also had a section dedicated to the history of the holocaust. Many of the Synagogue’s sacred objects and museum pieces were hidden by two Catholic priests during the War.

Afterwards we decided to go to Spinoza’s for lunch but chanced to meet our Synagogue tour guide. She persuaded us to eat at the Carmel, a strictly Kosher restaurant next to Rumbach Street Synagogue. The food was good. Refreshed we took the metro up to Hosok tere (Hero’s Square) and the wooded Varosliget City park. Hosok tere has a huge monumental sculpture of the seven mounted Magyar chiefs who conquered what is now Hungary. Behind it is a pair of semi-circular colonnades each containing statues of seven heroes of Hungary and bas reliefs of famous battles.. This was constructed in the 1890s as part of the Millennium celebration of the Magyar state. Originally five of the statues were Habsburgs from Austria. But the area was damaged by bombing in World War II and when it was rebuilt the Habsburgs were replaced. We then walked through the park with the Vajadhunyad Castle and other replica buildings. Unfortunately the lagoon had been drained to permit some construction. I remember earlier trips to Budapest where we spent some quiet time along the shore of the lagoon watching the people, the ducks and a dog diving into the lagoon after sticks.

On Tuesday we returned to St. Stephen's Basilica and went inside. It was built rather late—starting in 1851 and completed in 1906. We walked through and saw the various mosaics, paintings, and sculptures. But we passed on seeing St. Stephen’s mummified right fist. [We had seen Charlemagne’s thigh bone in Aachen and that was enough]. The women then went shopping

The girls had their sightseeing bus tour of Pest on Wednesday morning but were free for the afternoon. So we had lunch and then walked across the chain bridge to the Buda side. We took the siklo (Buda Hill Funicular) to the Castle level. We walked around a bit and then went into the labyrinth under Castle Hill. Listed as one of the seven underground wonders of the world and part of the World Heritage site in Budapest, this is second only to the world’s oldest underground tourist trap, the Cave of Zeus on Crete. Nevertheless it was worth it. The labyrinth contained reproductions of cave drawing from Europe, a section devoted to shamans and magic deer, the inevitable section on the history of Hungary, and a section called “another world” filled with mysterious objects found unexpectedly when renovating the labyrinth in the 1990s. Don’t want to give away the surprise ending.

Academic Matters
I met with several sociologists at Corvinus on Thursday morning. I had discovered them in the process of looking for English language courses that sociology and social science students from MSU could take as part of an exchange program. The current exchange was through the faculty of business which did not have matching sociology or social science courses. The people I talked with were enthusiastic and proposed that we try a pilot program of exchanging one student each as early as winter/spring semester 2010. I told them that the departments would have to approve the courses as transferable, but I didn’t see any major problem with that. The University level agreements on tuition and other matters were beyond my ability to talk about. One of the faculty members will be in the US in mid June and offered to meet with people from MSU. I told them I wouldn’t be back by then but would email the MSU College of Social Science people, see if they were interested in the exchange and whether someone could meet in mid June. I did that and it looks like something may happen.

I had a few email exchanges with Julia, the graduate student who had invited us to her home for Sunday dinner a week earlier. She had turned in her dissertation which covered the history of US health care reform efforts during the twentieth century. She had received some early comments, one of which dealt with her interpretation of American’s being self reliant. We talked and she later emailed me the question and paragraph from the dissertation. I emailed back that I thought her examples were more about family values—Americans preferring nuclear family and independent households—than with self reliance. We exchanged emails over the next few days. She had a personal question about why evangelical Christians in Europe had supported national health insurance while in the US they seemed opposed. I pointed out the differences between mainline and traditional Protestant churches in the US both of which claim the term evangelical. I wrote that if one believed that salvation comes through grace and faith, then doing good work or deeds by helping others will not bring salvation. The Mainline Protestants were more likely to carry out good deeds and work for social justice than the more traditional churches.

Friday evening we went to another salon at Bruce’s. Laszlo the historian who had spoken to us at orientation back in February led the discussion. He was frustrated that Americans and Western Europeans have distorted the recent election results as an indication of Hungarian intolerance of or enthusiasm for racism and fascism. The cause was the rise of Jobbik the far right wing nationalist party that captured over 15% of the vote. [I pointed out that if we had the same party ballot system in the US, at least 15% would vote for the right wing “Tea Party” that had disrupted town hall meetings on health reform last summer.] One of the Hungarian professors said he had voted for Jobbik although he didn’t agree with everything they stood for. He claimed that many small rural communities had supported Jobbik because the villages had no real police to prevent or investigate “Gypsy” crime—which can range from petty theft on up. They relied on the Hungarian Guard Movement to protect them against Gypsy crime. The Guard was forced to dissolve, but had tried to reorganize under a different name. [Over one hundred years ago “Jewish” crime was similarly defined and politicized. The black uniforms and red insignia of the Guard resembled the uniforms worn by Hungarians who assisted the Nazi in World War II.]

But above all he was clearly a nationalist wanting to discuss the Treaty of Trianon that divided up Hungary after WWI and left sizeable Hungarian ethnic communities in newly created countries while Germany was left pretty much intact. Jobbik called for granting ethnic and/or linguistic Hungarians in neighboring countries dual citizenship. This is a classic case of nation not exactly corresponding with statehood boundaries. The dual citizenship could range from granting easier access into Hungary for education and jobs to voting rights on the party ballot for Parliament but not the local district Parliamentary elections. Fidesz, the right center party, also favors non-residential dual citizenship. Since it won over two-thirds of the seats in the April 2010 election, Fidesz can do just about anything it wants. In 2009 Slovakia passed a law requiring that Slovak must be used in all official contacts, including the police, fire brigade, postal services and local government, with fines up to 5,000 Euros after one warning. Both are members of the EU. Stay tuned…

On the Town
We were invited to Sunday dinner at Helga’s, one of the younger professors. She, her husband and children live in a large flat located on a side of Gellert Hill overlooking the Danube. Peter was there as well. We started with Hungarian meat pancakes (hortobágyi húsos palacsinta) which were delicious, followed by chicken paprika and a cherry tart. We were able to take a few of the pancakes and tart squares home with us.

We bought our fifth and last monthly BKV transit pass. It was a reminder that we have only a few weeks left. Tari can feel herself beginning to look forward to going home. Her biggest problem here has been the food. She never considered herself a picky eater but both here and in Japan she has not been able to get to like the local food. She does like Hungarian Gulyas soup, chicken paprikas, and of course the pastries. She is not a cook and spends as little time in the kitchen as possible. Good Hungarian cooking takes time. The meals we have had at the homes of local Hungarians were wonderful. Much of the Hungarian food in restaurants tends to be a bit on the heavy side. The beef in the food stores is not good.

On the bright side, we have been losing weight eating chicken, ground turkey and fish (salmon filets) at home. But that gets so tiresome. Since we have eaten out for the past week with Emily and Pam, Tari is even more intolerant of cooking at home. She is sooooo looking forward to getting home to her own kitchen and American grocery stores. Of course there is another week of eating out here with Harry's friends and she is learning what to stay away from in the restaurants.

All in all the past four months has been a good experience, but living in a foreign country for an extended period of time really is different from a vacation trip. At the beginning it's all a grand adventure but time wears you down with those things that you find difficult. For a vacation trip you go home before it gets hard. If people stay longer (like one or two years) they learn to cope better or can justify buying those items that make life easier.