Sea Hunt

When I was a kid I watched a show called Sea Hunt. It starred Lloyd Bridges (more recently of Airplane! fame Airplane! ), and it was all about this guy Mike Nelson (Bridges) who spent most of his life underwater, scuba diving for this and that, and somehow narrating all the while for viewing landlubbers like me. Amazingly, he never got winded.
 
Occasionally, though, Mike would meet up with some meanies deep down and have to suspend narrating while he slugged it out with them. If things got really serious they'd wrestle around and try to uncork each other's oxygen regulator, or, if a knife presented itself, they'd simply cut their opponent's oxygen hose sending the soon-to-be airless airborne toward the surface. (How to Defend Yourself In The Event Of An Underwater Carrot Fight)

I was reminded of those Sea Hunt imbroglios two nights ago when I attended my first ever water polo match, here in Eger. As I mentioned in an earlier post, water polo is big news in Hungary, and huge news in Eger, where, to put it bluntly, it can be said of the Eger Waterpolo Club (Egri Vizilabda Klub), We're Number One! Yes, "we" are Hungary's number one water polo team. I cannot gauge what that actually means, what an achievement it is to be number one in Hungary, because I don't know how many other teams there are to be number one over. Suppose there are only two teams?

Anyway, I arrived about a half hour before the match began, to an already pretty well full and buzzing arena. Bad western "psyche" music thumped while the sports announcer, stricken by the same affliction suffered by most sports announcers -- delusions of grandeur -- bellowed into the p.a., welling up a sliding baritone and stretching syllables to their breaking point, sure in his heart that he was entertaining, an audience treat.

Competing with the announcer, behind a banner that read "Egri Ultra," a highly animated support group whacked their bleachers in unison and sang loudly in what I guessed was either a championing of our Eger guys or a Bronx cheering of their opponents.

The teams, oblivious to all that was swarming above them, as professionals should be, warmed up in their respective ends of the pool, passing around the ball, testing their goalie, swimming the pool's width alternating between quick short sprints and more "leisurely" strokes. I emphasized leisurely because if I had tried to keep pace with their leisurely strokes I would have had one myself, and Mike Nelson would have had to come rescue me as I sank like a stone to the pool's bottom.

Electronic time clocks counted down at each of the pool's four corners, and when those timers reached zero, the teams donned their caps, huddled up, and, apparently exchanged strategies and exhortations at their respective goal. Each team then took to its back line while the ball was placed in a floating donut anchored at mid-pool. Suspense permeated the arena as the match was now cocked.

After what seemed like a mini-eternity the referee blew his whistle, firing each team on a not-at-all-leisurely dash for the ball.

When the thrashing stopped Eger had outdashed their opponents, and the crowd erupted in applause: it was going to be a good night! A jó éjszakát!

Like most sports, waterpolo strategy isn't rocket science. Basically, it follows this flow of events: When your team has the ball, your team swims the length of the pool and tries to put the goal past the other team's goalie while those on defense try to stop you from doing that. Then, when the defense gets the ball and goes on the offensive, tactical objectives reverse. It's like soccer, only waterlogged.

Here is what must be said for the players: they are in great shape, and are able to do things in the water that most of us can't do on dry land -- their ability to pass and catch the ball with precision, for one. Particularly catching -- to see them snatch a whipped, wet ball so sure-handedly while treading water, one might suspect them of velcroed palms and fingers.

Or, when the defensive players, the goalie in particular, sense that the opposing team is about to take a shot, they kick their legs in such a way as to launch themselves out of the water nearly the height of their torsos, freeing their arms, and they just kind of hold that position until a shot is fired.

The part I liked best, and understood least, however, was the game within the game, where, for reasons I couldn't determine, two opposing players would suddenly drag each other underwater and apparently try to drown each other. There would be a lot of thrashing and churning at the water's surface, and occasionally limbs of some kind would break out of the water momentarily before submerging again. The crowd would go wild at these lock-ups, ignoring the actual match still being played. After a few seconds of attempted murder both combatants would come up for air, each looking tremendously aggrieved, each appealing to the referees for justice. True Solomons, the refs ignored them both and signaled to play on. 

I wondered if, in the history of water polo, any player successfully drowned his opponent, and if so, were charges brought, or was it like fighting in hockey, where it's just part of the sport. Good clean fun. Not really criminal behavior.

Come to think of it, those water polo tussles are very much like a hockey fight, except that hockey feeds our blood lust with lots of punches and, well, blood. We see it all, get to see it all. In water polo, though, all that good stuff takes place under water, below the ice, in comparative terms, and so, by virtue of its visible inaccessibility, the violence seems to lose a lot of its appeal. In other words, from the audience's perspective, as the customers paying for the entertainment of the match, what's the value of two guys trying to kill each other if you can't actually see them? Is this what I laid out all those forints for, just to see roiling water? I began to feel cheated. That is why, I was later told, it is better to watch water polo at home on tv, as underwater cameras do catch that action, every choke and gouge and yank and attempted de-Speedoing (and worse).

It seems to me that Hungary's number one team needs a little Jerry Jonesing, Jerry Jones being the owner of the Dallas Cowboys who, in his brand new stadium, installed above the gridiron a video screen the size of a football field, so that the fans can get a much improved look at the game than they will ever see from their seats. Eger needs that kind of Jerry Jones vision (some despise his brand of ownership. I think he's a genius. How else do you describe someone who gets season ticket holders to cough up a minimum $800 per game to come watch a steroidal TV?). We need to have a big screen in the arena where we can watch the real action, Greco-Roman drowning, just like we saw on Sea Hunt.

Eger prevailed, maintaining its first place position. As far as I could tell, no one on either team drowned. Having tasted of my first water polo match, my take on it is that while I admire the athletes, I don't much care for the sport, especially when the best part, the homicidal dunking, is beyond view. Sure, watching some guys score a bunch of points can, I suppose, be exciting. But watching two guys fight for their lives, that's drama! That's what Sea Hunt had, and what water polo, for now, until we get the big Jerry Jones screen, lacks. 
Eger (White Caps) Wins The 2009 Hungarian Cup 

So Blite On My Feet

Nothing says "I'm not from here" quite so well as trying to dance a traditional dance with people who are from "here."
Though my feet have many times been strangers in a strange land, they have never found a "here" to call their own. Forever misfits, they have come to subscribe to a variation of the adage about stupidity: Better to sit still and be thought a clod than to move one's feet and remove all doubt.

And so when one of my colleagues at the college (Eszterházy Károly College) sent me the above flier recommending that I attend and see a little bit of traditional Hungarian folk dancing, I thought, sure, watching might be fun. When I suggested that she join me -- not as dance partners, just "friends" -- she suddenly remembered that she had to do her hair that night.

With no hair of my own to do, I went alone, trudging in the dark up the steep hill to Hallgatói Klub, the school's student union, arriving some time around 9:00. Inside, in a plain, pubbish room to the right, two fiddles and a stand up base provided the music for a spinning and swirling mass of couples, all of whom were following (or so I imagined) the dictates of Gyula Bécsi, the táncot tánit mentioned in the poster.

Gyula had things well under control. He commanded; the couples acted. He also whistled -- short, stacotto whistles -- I guess as a way of helping the dancers punctuate their steps with verve.

Taken as a whole, it struck me as similar to our own kind of square dance, where a "caller" calls out various steps and configurations to which the dancing partners respond. As Gyula's breathless couples all wore smiles alternating with the excited looks of "what will he call next?!" it was clear that their tánit was providing a good time.

Gyula was tall and trim, maybe early forties, blond, his sweat glistening against clean-shaved skin, and he wore black jeans and black boots with wood heels, needed for occasional traditional clopping. He also wore a white silk-screened t-shirt, expressing what I didn't know, though I did soon discover that others in the dancing crowd, and some seated along the dance floor perimeter as if in waiting, wore identical t-shirts. So, either they were a gang of some sort -- one of those traditional folk dancing gangs marauding the Hungarian countryside --  or else they were his dance troops, foot soldiers in the battle to get unlearned dancers to learn steps and step right. I settled on the latter explanation for the Ts.

I also settled on a beer, a) because I could get one from the little bar, and b) because I thought holding a big stein of beer in my hand would signal my intention to remain still. That, coupled with the fact that I had shed neither my coat nor my hat (notorious from my Jó Reggelt! day; see February 18), I took a seat at the opposite end of the dance floor, sipping and watching, knowing I would be left alone.

One of the jobs of Gyula's dance troops is to not leave people alone, and so within seconds of having plopped myself down a young women, in white t-shirt, black skirt and stockings (white ace bandage over one ankle), and cloppy shoes, stood before me, there to pluck me up. Her arm and open palm extended in the international language of "take my hand," and, after a short deliberation, I did.

I will confess that I was swayed, in part, because she was cute. Dark-haired, fresh-faced, and about thirty years my junior. My thinking: will the stars ever align themselves like this again? Answer: No. Better dance while you can! 

I was also swayed by her demeanor, which, signaled that, despite the fact that she was about four feet tall, she wasn't going anywhere without me. So, I smiled sheepishly, put down my beer, shed my coat and hat, and took her hand.

She may have been better trained dancing, but I was significantly older, with a lot more experience on, and of, my feet, and I knew both their promise and limitations.

So that: Over the years, I developed a simple two-step, which, to my mind, works well in a pinch, regardless of song, tempo, etc, and so I now thought, country. I call it The Smooth. In reality, it is not so much a "step" as a weight-shift, from one leg to the other -- very subtle, so as not to attract to much attention -- but noticeable enough so that anyone keen enough to spot it would say to themselves, "Now that's smooth!" Here are two pictures of me doing The Smooth. On the left, step one. On the right step two. (Both as seen from the perspective of my dance partner). Follow my feet (if you can!).

The Smooth, Step One

The Smooth, Step Two

As you can see, the dance is very subtle, very muted, most unflamboyant. It is the kind of dance that calls very little notice to itself. In fact, one time, as I did The Smooth in a room rigged to motion detectors, the lights went out. 

Anyway, once my diminutive partner placed my hands properly behind her shoulders, and hers behind mine -- we kind of formed a human box -- and I caught the band's rhythm, I fell into The Smooth. Lean right -- gently!, lean left -- gently!, repeat. I had no choice but to ignore Gyula, as I didn't know what he was barking for us to do.

Apparently, for the sweet creature who hauled me onto the dance floor The Smooth was a little too subtle, too nuanced -- dare I say, sophisticated? Immediately she looked down at my feet, and though I don't know what she was commanding them to do, it seemed to me that she was very scolding in tone, very sharp with my feet. I became a little defensive toward them, as you can well imagine. 

Contrary to the pasting she was giving them, I thought Imy feet were doing quite well, all things considered, what with the music so unfamiliar to them, and Gyula shouting and whistling, and all those other couples dancing and occasionally clopping. I thought we maintained our composure quite well under the circumstances.

My partner differed. Her frustration mounted with each fiddle screech. She continued to raise her voice to my feet and then, fed up with their incorrigibility, she began whacking the insides of my knees, as though somehow they were responsible. 

If I had known how to say ouch! in Hungarian I certainly would have said it. But I don't know how to say ouch! in Hungarian, so instead I said what I do know how to say, but with fierceness. "Jó Reggelt!" I said, quite sternly, sure that although "Good morning!" would not precisely capture what I wanted to say to her at that moment, and that it might in fact befuddle her, the tone with which I said it was crystal clear, you can be sure of that. Lay off the knees, sister! 

Now, I don't know about you, but when someone starts knocking my feet and whacking my knees, they become less responsive, not more. Why? Not out of belligerence, but rather out of self-consciousness. And as that self-consciousness struck again, my little drill sergeant  slapped my knees and spanked them with indignance, as though they had said something fresh. Then she started kicking my shoes as they were doing The Smooth, apparently trying to get them to spread apart a little more, or move a little more, perhaps clop some like Gyula occasionally did. Or maybe just because. 

 "Jó Reggelt!" "Jó Reggelt!"

She paid me no mind, kicking at my feet and smacking my knees, and I was just about to box her in a completely different way when she suddenly stopped. Why? Not out of kindness nor mercy, I can assure you. No, it was that the music stopped, and the whole dance floor came to a halt as Gyula (apparently) called all dancers to form a circle, shoulder to shoulder and arms around each other -- I resisted putting my "teacher" in a headlock, much as I would have relished it -- after which we all shuffled as one, a step to the right and a step to the left, slowly, subtly, almost smoothly, around this happy space in the middle of our circle across which "we" sang a traditional song. Of course, I didn't "sing" anything. Occasionally I piped in with some vowel sounds and clearly misplaced and mistimed consonants, but that was it. I also thought about what the little dominatrix might do to me once the singing ended.

Maybe that's why I contributed so robustly to it. I don't know what the song was about, but in retrospect I am sure it was directed at me, perhaps even about me: "When Jerks Can't Dance." "He Dances Like a Goat." "Stupid, Stupid Feet." Something like that. Because it seemed like people were looking at me from all angles, and smiling. Smiling or laughing? I couldn't tell. But I am now sure the little witch tipped off Gyula to get everybody to sing a song mocking me. And to think, I was even taking part!

Too soon the song ended. Everyone clapped, the band picked up, and dancing resumed. And me, my feet, and my knees -- we cringed. But nothing happened. No slapping or kicking resumed. Instead, we had been orphaned. The little monster that dragged me onto the dance floor in the first place and submitted me to corporal punishment there had simply abandoned me, left me standing there. And when I spotted her only a second later, she had already taken up with some Hungarian dude, whose feet were better listeners than mine and whose knees, from her perspective, weren't bleating and didn't warrant a beating.

Wounded, I slinked back toward my beer. It had since gone flat, much like my spirits. Still, I sipped at it to restore them. And as I slouched down in the chair, the dance floor, still buzzing with Gyula's barks and whistles, like out of something in the movies, seemed to be drifting away, getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

I finished my beer and left. And when I got back home I put on some music and me, my knees, and my feet, we did The Smooth, just as we have always done, and we were cool.

P.S. If you'd like to see how some people think Hungarian dancing should be performed, go to Traditional Hungarian, yes; but is it smooth? 

Lost in Liszt (A Case of Inharmonic Convergence)

Yesterday morning, Sunday, I attended an 11:00 matinee concert at Budapest's new and swank Palace of the Arts. Setting out I wasn't clear from the brochure what precisely the program was to be, but as 2011 is the Franz Liszt bicentennial, and Liszt was named in the brochure, I had a pretty good hunch I would hear a Lisztian concert of some sort. Of what sort, I didn't particularly care. Orchestral, chamber, whatever. I just wanted to hear music, and see the Palace.


The event turned out to be less a Lisztian concert than a Lisztian lecture, conducted by a very amiable speaker who doubled as a good though way-too-occasional pianist. Much appreciated by the audience (who tee-heed at all his humorous asides), he left me cold, probably because he was lecturing in Hungarian. And, as this matinee was 90% Liszt lecture and 10% Liszt music, I had a lot of time to think in the drone between piano ditties. 


Meaning, I drifted back to the night prior, Saturday, around 7:00, as I ordered some Ballantine's scotch in the incredibly opulent and ornate New York Coffee House. Paying twice the price I would have paid anywhere for the same whiskey, my server offered me -- whether in compensation or as consolation -- The International Herald Tribune, a New York Times publication that is much more global in coverage than its parent paper. 
Reading through it, I came across a feature about an 83 year old academic, political scientist Gene Sharp, and how his decades-long writing on nonviolent resistance has become a staple for dissidents all over the world seeking to take down despotic regimes without resorting to armed insurrection. The article cited his influence among contemporary dissidents in Egypt as a recent example.


Dial back about eight or nine years. My then colleague and hall mate, drama critic Tish Dace, preparing to retire, called me to her office door one day and presented me with an armful of books plucked from her increasingly gap-toothed book shelves. They were all by a former colleague of hers, way back when UMass Dartmouth was Southeastern Massachusetts University. That colleague's name was Gene Sharp.


I brought those books home (at least one of which was written in French) that day and put them on my bookshelf. The titles seemed interesting, alluding to Gandhi, strategic civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, and such, but at the time I was very much a junior faculty member just trying to figure out my courses. Reading a colleague's colleague had to go on a back burner, a back back burner. I've kept the books, but haven't creased their spines.


Dial forward again. Now, the fact that these years later I come to Budapest to read about Sharp is kind of interesting in itself, but more interesting still (for me) is that just yesterday I finished reading the chapters in Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge -- the final installment of his monumental and majestic trilogy of the American Civil Rights movement during the years 1954-1968 ("The King Years") -- that cover the 1965 Alabama voter registration drive.


The short take: On March 7, 1965, attempting to walk across the Pettus Bridge from Selma, Alabama, onto Highway 80, and then to continue marching fifty miles more into Montgomery, there to confront Governor George Wallace and Alabama's continuing antics concocted to stymie black Alabamans from exercising their right to register and vote, hundreds of peaceful, committed-to-non-violence marchers were met on the bridge, and, in a fog of tear gas, brutally attacked with billy clubs by gas-masked county sheriff's officers and mounted Alabama state troopers. When the smoke cleared, marchers laid unconscious on the pavement.


Also when the smoke cleared, however, film of the unprovoked attack was in flight and on its way to the major networks. ABC thought it urgent enough to broadcast that very night, interrupting its much promoted television premiere of Judgment at Nuremburg.


It wasn't but a day or two before the world knew of "Bloody Sunday," and from it America was, in the words of President Johnson, "shamed." 


Later that summer the Voting Rights Act was made law by Congress, enfranchising all Americans of not only the right to vote -- which they already had --, but the registration and polling processes by which to do so.


That Bloody Sunday moved opinion, and hence legislation, cannot be denied. Nonviolence prevailed in Alabama. (With the assistance of a lot of violence.)


Martin Luther King believed that through non-violent resistance, hearts could be won, not just from those who witness merciless violence but from those who perpetrate it. When met with non-violent resistance, hate would whither within the soul of the hater. All respect to Dr. King, the jury is still out on that.


Sharp's position is less transcendent: you don't pick a fight with someone who has all the weapons (including the laws, the troops, the armor and bullets), and would love nothing better than to be "provoked" into justified use of them ("self-defense"). Sharp would agree with King's tactics, but on different grounds. King's were professedly philosophical (as well as tacitly practical); Sharp's are baldy practical and resolutely strategic.


And as I sat in Budapest's beautiful Palace of Arts, lost in the acoustic mumble of that Lisztian lecture, I wondered might have happened in 1956 had Hungarian dissidents in Budapest known of, and subscribed to, non-violent civil disobedience, instead of taking on Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails and bolt action rifles? Short of out and out murder before a global audience, what would there have been for the Soviets to crush? 


If non-violent resistance can topple the most despotic regimes, as the U.S. civil rights movement managed in the Jim Crow south, and as the recent take-down of Hosni Mubarek demonstrated in Egypt, what might have been the effect of non-violent resistance in 1956 Hungary? Would it have worked against a brutal, Soviet backed government?


Maybe King and Sharp arrived too late.


Who knows. What I do know is that my Sunday morning could have been made much simpler with a lot more music and a lot less musing.

The Day I Went Totally Jó Reggelt!

Hungary's population is around ten million. According to UN projections, by mid-century, that figure will drop by more than a million. By 2100, it will drop another two million to just over six million. In other words, the country will see roughly a 38% population decline by century's end. That's a lot of Hungarians not being born. Compare that with first on the UN list (alphabetically), Afghanistan, whose current population of twenty one million is projected to grow to ninety million by 2100, an increase of 323%. Those Afghanis are going to be busy!


So, what's wrong with Hungary? Has it lost its spunk? Or is it simply living out some enlightened plan for population control in a world propagating out of control? 


I'm no demographer, but I've got a hunch. It has to do with eye contact. Hungarians don't make any. Not with me, not with each other, though occasionally while strolling I have lifted my eyes from my toes to catch somebody off-guard, clearly eying me, only to see them then seek immediate refuge in their own toes. No wonder Hungary's population is declining: Hungarians are afraid to look at each other, so how, then, are they ever going to meet, fall in love, have families (and maybe babies)?


At first I took the no-look-see thing personally, as though there is something peculiar about me too startling or ogreish to glance upon, an American Medusa. But, now, after a month, I am convinced it is not me, but them.


And, as I hinted at in my second blog posting, this aversion is likely an inheritance from the Soviet era, when a wrong look could get you in big trouble. Understandable. Hungarians were battered under a repressive police state. But this is 2011: the Soviet Union, and AVO, the Hungarian version of the KGB, have been dead for twenty two years, and the free state of Hungary has been alive for twenty-two years. Perhaps it's time.


So, I decided to see if maybe I couldn't put my hosts at a little more ease, with each other, and with me. I decided that rather than bend to their no-look-see tradition, I would try to shock them out of it. I decided that I was going to say hello to every person I passed, and see what happened.


I put my plan into action a few days ago, when, early in the a.m. and on my way to the coffee shop, walking along the stone-walled stream I said flatly -- because saying so cheerily would, I thought, have been over the top -- to each passerby, "Jó Reggelt" (pron: yeo rreggelt), "Good Morning."


Results were instantaneous. Every person -- men, women, boys, girls -- each one upon hearing "Jó Reggelt" raised their eyes to meet mine and came back at me with their own "Jó Reggelt," tentative and confused as it might have been. "Alright!", I beamed inwardly, "I don't have to be the invisible man!"


Inspired, emboldened, on a roll, I put off the coffee shop and continued walking the plaza, the streets, "Jó Reggelting" left and right, and, okay, perhaps this was a bid madcap, but I also began doffing my hat with each greeting.


It all seemed so simple to me. A simple hello, a little tip-o-the-hat. "Jó Reggelt." "Jó Reggelt." "Jó Reggelt."


I had a fantasy: I would single-handedly break Hungary out of its Cold-War legacy. I would melt their fears. I would warm their eyes. Statues would be erected in my honor all over Hungary: Jerry Blitefield, The American Who Went Jó Reggelt. I was quite proud of my little breakthroughs, and energized by them, I spent the rest of the morning roving Eger and "Jó Reggelting" with abandon.


Around noon, "Jó Reggelted" out, I finally made it to my coffee shop, where I have become a regular, and where the shop's owner, a friendly woman about my age with better than passing English, greets me warmly with each visit. 


Once inside from the cold I removed my hat and jacket and sat down at a little round table. When the shop owner approached we exchanged smiles and "Jó Reggelt." Then I got down to business: "Hosszú kávé, kérjük,"  (pron: hoesue kahvey kairr yeuke), "Large coffee, please." "Of course," she said, visibly amused (bemused?) by my mangled Hungarian.


As she left to prepare my coffee, outside I heard the slow approach of bullhorn and someone exhorting something or other through it. As it got closer, and its message became more audible, I had hoped to maybe pick out a word or two, but no use. 


My host returned with the coffee and stood at the table with a blanched look, listening to the approaching public announcement. A police car, the source of the announcement, rolled slowly past the shop door and carried its message up the street. My host looked past me to my jacket and hat on the adjacent chair, then turned her eyes to me gravely and without removing them put down the coffee with two hands.


"What did they say?" I asked, curious and a bit alarmed by her change in demeanor.


Still fixed on me, she said, "They, um, are urging caution. They say, um, that a crazed person is on the loose. That, um, he is likely not dangerous, but that he is clearly unpredictable. Erratic. Out of his mind. That everyone should proceed with caution, and call the police at once if they spot him or come across him."


"A crazy person. That can't be good. What should I look out for?"


"Well, um, the police said that he is about your height. And that he is wearing a red jacket, very similar to the one you came in. And that he wears a white hat tied at the top, very much like yours. And that he has been seen saying "Jó Reggelt" freely, all over town, and tipping his hat, too."


Korty (pron: korrtch). Gulp.


When I left the coffee shop soon thereafter I shoved my hat in my pocket and walked straight home, unobtrusively. I suspect none of the people I passed looked up to take notice of me; I didn't look up to take notice of them. I arrived back home and in my apartment, undetected and unidentified. I stayed in the rest of the day, and all the next day too, long enough, I had hoped, for that crazy person to have been caught or run out of town. 

Sentenced to Hungarian Pepperoni and Bacon, And What I Did With Them (apologies to all piscatarians and higher)

With the dreaded pepperoni and bacon heckling me each time I opened the refrigerator ("I'm no sausage!", "I'm not chicken!") I decided I wasn't going to subject myself to their taunts for the entirety of my stay in Hungary. I was going to strike back. I was going to cook something with them -- no, I was going to cook them into something --, and even if I ended up with something I could barely stomach, if I could stomach it, I could continue to make and eat that "recipe" so that in time, slowly, I would hack at their not-sausageness and not-chickenness until they vanished. I would eat them out of existence.


So, here is what I did. I cut a chunk of the pepperoni and a thick strip of the bacon, and diced each -- dismembered, is how I like to think of it. Then, with the blade of the knife I shoved them off the cutting board gangplank into a sautee pan. I lit the gas, turned the flame low (a slow, painful flame), and waited for their fat to fry. I struck a light under a pot of water to cook some penne, and stood back. 


Very quickly, the bacon's fat began to glisten and liquify. The more stubborn pepperoni took a little while longer, but soon it too was sweating. I stirred; they sizzled. Heh, heh, heh. Who's laughing now?


The water reached a boil; I tossed in three handfuls of penne, stirred, and stood back. The sautee pan continued to sizzle, releasing aromas that, I have to admit, weren't half bad.


At the nine minute mark of the pasta's eleven minute cook time, I opened a jar of Barilla basil tomato sauce, and dumped have of it onto the rendering meats, stirred, and stood back.


At the eleven minute mark I turned off the flame, lifted the pasta pot, drained the scalding  water, and poured the steaming macaroni into a bowl.


I then stirred the pepperonied and baconed tomato sauce a little more, shut the flame beneath it, and ladled the mix over the pasta. Afraid to face the concoction alone, I poured a big old glass of pinot noir to give me moral support.

And then I dug in. 


It was, in a word, delicious. Seriously. Seriously delicious. So much so that, instead of considering the pepperoni and bacon as my enemies, I now consider them my pals, my gustatory amigos. And when the time comes, you can be sure I'm going to head straight back to the local market and order me some more chicken and sausage.

My First Hungarian Sentences, And What I Achieved With Them

Few things can give a foreigner the sense of triumph, the sense of empowerment, the sense that a huge, lumbering door is finally opening up to them, than to complete a normal, day to day transaction in the host country's language. And so, after nearly three weeks of eating in restaurants, where pointing at menu items despite not knowing what would actually arrive (though sure it would be some variation of pork), and nodding all-purposely at whatever the waiter said regardless of whether it had the intonation of question or statement, constituted "communicating," yesterday I decided to plunge headlong into wider Hungarian culture, and with it, immerse myself in Hungarian language -- without the guide wires of a menu or sympathetic professionals accustomed to working with the confused.


I decided to go shopping, food shopping. But not the kind of food shopping where you fill a basket with items, disgorge the basket on a belt at whose end an "associate" disinterestedly scans the bar code and places the item by the bagging area for you to pack -- that kind of shopping can be executed in utter silence.


No, the kind of shopping I am talking about is market shopping, in Eger's large indoor market where local farmers bring their goods to be sold -- fruits, vegetables, loose eggs, slaughtered but not yet fully dressed pigs, chickens, and even beef. In the market there are no scanners, only men and women who, when one gets within a certain proximity of their stall or showcase, begin speaking, somewhat volubly, saying what, who knows.


But because I want to live the local life here, be with the people, so to speak, and not be carried along on some capitalist conveyor belt, I knew that I had to do my shopping in the market, and that in order to do so, I couldn't just grunt and point. Nor did I want to. I wanted to communicate, really.


And so, girding myself for the risky business of talking to a human being or two, I spent some time with google translate (http://translate.google.com/#) -- which was quite helpful --, learning how to speak the things I wanted to purchase, just a few simple things. But, with their success I knew I would be emboldened to go for bigger game. So, I settled on two basic items: a piece of chicken and a piece of sausage.
"Egy csirkemell, kérjük" ("One chicken breast, please.") and "Egy kolbász, kérem" ("One sausage, please"). Easy enough.


Now, even though I practiced those two phrases until I was sure I sounded as though I had been born and raised in Eger, I was neither so naive nor so bold to think that what I thought I heard when I spoke those phrases would sound anything like what they should have sounded like to my audience. And because I had been told repeatedly since landing on Hungarian soil that people greatly appreciate just the attempt to speak some Hungarian and will go a long way toward overcoming the gaps, I thought it best to begin each transaction ingratiatingly, with an apology: "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok" ("Sorry. I am an American."). My strategy was to confess at the outset to my tongue's two left feet, own up to my need for compassion, and then be forgiven.


I wrote each phrase on a scrap of paper and rehearsed them over and over as I walked down to the market. By the time the market came in sight I was feeling quite confident, wondering why I had ever been so sheepish. Maybe I wouldn't introduce myself with an apology. Maybe I would just order the items, and when I say "order," I mean order: "You there! Chicken man! Give me a chicken breast! And it better be fresh!", "And you! Sausage man! Snap to! A piece of your best sausage! Stat!" 
  
I admit I donned a bit of a swagger as I approached the market entrance, but as I walked through the sliding doors it was as though they had pulled a cape from my shoulders and with it whatever confidence I thought I had. I felt sort of naked. But there was no turning back for me. I had to see this through. 


I knew I was in trouble when even my opening apology to the chicken man met with a squint. I repeated "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok," and received only a shaking head and a shrug for my contrition. I cut to the chase, then, and simply tried to order the piece of chicken, outright. Chicken man just congealed into a chilly stare, at which I melted away to regroup before trying my luck with the sausage man.  


The difference between chicken man and sausage man went beyond the difference of chicken and sausage. Chicken man was a regular looking guy in a clean white smock standing, more or less eye level with me, behind a glass case of neatly arranged yellow chickens. Sausage man, on the other hand, was a butcher and he looked like a butcher, big, burly, perhaps a bit world-weary at having to swing a huge cleaver all day. His glass case was filled with slabs upon slabs of meat unrecognizable to me. Whatever they began as, his blood-stained apron clearly showed they came to a violent end, and there was more to come.

As I approached sausage man he looked down upon me from what seemed a great height. Could he really be that tall, or was he standing on something? His face was flushed the color of his apron. I gave "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok" my best shot and, Eureka!, he understood, though he looked more exasperated by than appreciative of my confession. In fact he sighed. 

Still, I was thrilled. I had uttered something, and it was understood. What euphoria! And so when with renewed vigor I said, "Egy kolbász, kérem," and he held up for my approval about two yards of hot pepperoni, which I hate, I said, "Igen! (Yes!). Jó! (Good!)," though the nightstick of shriveled, dessicated sausage was far more than I wanted, especially given that I didn't want any of it. But we were communicating, he and I, so how could I say no? Yet, I was not going to be some kind of American pushover -- meaning, even though we were communicating I wanted him to know I was still in charge. I gave him the international hand gesture for "half", at which he moved his hands together mid-stick, said "Hmm?", to which I nodded, and he snapped the pepperoni in two, at which point it also became clear to me that he had a history with chickens. 

Anyway, he wrapped the dreaded pepperoni in paper and then asked what could only have been something like, "Anything else?", at which, wanting to show that I understood him fully, I pointed at a thick slab of what appeared to be dried bacon, probably about a half pound of it. Of course, I had no idea what I would do with a slab of bacon (apart from induce a heart attack), or, in fact, what could be done with a slab of bacon, but that was beside the point. I was shopping like a Hungarian, in Hungarian. Pepperoni, bacon, who cares? 

He wrapped the slab, too, in paper, asked the same question which lead to the bacon in the first place, to which I responded authoritatively with "Nem (No)." He handed me both my items, I paid him, gave him my most constrained, it's-second-nature-to-me "Köszönöm (Thank you)," to which he in turn nodded, though ever so slightly. As I left the market, I felt as though the sliding doors redraped my shoulders with confidence.

And so, that is the story of my first successful Hungarian conversation, and how I came to have pepperoni and bacon, when what I wanted was chicken and sausage. 

UPDATE: Both pepperoni and bacon are now available on eBay.

A Land of Swimmers

Close by my apartment is a huge, beautiful, Olympic-grade indoor swimming pool. When not displaced by Eger's water polo team -- nationally ranked and perhaps the source of Eger pride -- the pool's many lanes churn with swimmers of all ages, from babies barely buoyant to those for whom quite naturally each swim may be enjoyed as their last. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen or more people in a single lane, lapping up and down, up and down, following the understood rules for passing, yielding, etc. Some use devices -- hand paddles for pulling with their arms, only; kick-boards, for working their legs only. And some, swim just for recreation and/or fitness.


A few days ago I stood at the bright stainless steel railing on the second tier balcony overlooking the pool, a great to-ing and fro-ing, a contrast in styles, speed, and purpose. Along the lane nearest me, almost right below me, a middle-aged woman, clearly a coach, walked along the poolside tiles shouting words of encouragement to her young students. I can't say their ages exactly, but they were in the early years of elementary school, and from where I stood they looked no bigger than my thumb. One little guy in yellow swimtrunks worked furiously against the resistance of the kickboard he held in front, his little legs thrashing the water with fierce energy. Unfortunately, all that energy did not convert to motion, or at least forward motion, as, despite his determined effort, he only inched forward. Yet, he persevered.


A young woman, knitting needles and yarn still in hand, appeared alongside me and began shouting something to the struggling tadpole. I didn't understand her, obviously, though I suspected she was channeling the former U.S. Olympic gymnastic coach and Hungarian native, Béla Károlyi, who in the 1996 Olympics fortified Kerri Strug's resolve for one final vault, despite her broken foot. "You can do it, Kerri!" was heard round the globe. And she did do it.


The little guy's mother was no less sure that he could do it, and she spurred him on. A mother's love: I am always warmed by it. So I took a chance. 


"Beszélek Angol?"


She turned, surprised. "Yes, I speak English."


"That is your son down there?"


"Yes."


"What was it that you were shouting to him?"


"I told him not to give up. To keep going." She looked back at him, kicking away, going nowhere. She shook her head a little. "He tries so hard." She shouted something else to her son, and then watched him.


"He'll make it. He's got grit."


She turned to me. "Grit? What's this grit?"


"Grit. Determination."


"Ah. Determination. Yes. Well he does have that."


I moved toward generalities. "Swimming is quite popular in Hungary, isn't it?"


"Yes, it is," she said, her eyes back on her boy. "We love our swimming. And our water polo."  

"Do you hope that he'll one day play water polo?"


She swung to me and laughed. "István?! No! I'll be happy if he just learns to swim for survival."


"Survival? I don't understand."


She looked at me with incredulity. "Surely you've heard of global warming. You, an American, especially."


"Well of course," I said, blushing a bit with national guilt.


"And so you've heard then of the melting ice caps, and the rising waters."


"Yes," I said, more as a question than as an affirmation.


"Well, we in Hungary, and especially here in Eger, we are going to be prepared. When the tide rises, we will be ready." 


I pictured the map of Europe in my mind. In it, Hungary is completely landlocked. "But you are not near any water."


"Really? And what about our stream?"


"What about it?", I said sheepishly, not getting the connection that for her was so apparent. 


"When the stream rises and floods Eger and the town is underwater, what then?"


"Do you really believe that's going to happen?"


"Believe? No. I know it. We all know it. Our government has urged us to get ready, to prepare. That is why we swim. That is why István swims. So that when the time comes we will be able to survive, like ... like ... what do you call frogs?"


"Frogs?"


"No. Another word. Broader than frogs."


"Amphibians?"


"Yes! Like amphibians! We'll swim to work. Swim to school. Swim to the store. We will swim! The water will not stop us. We will be ready!"


I thought about what she said, thought about whether she was crazy. Then I leaned over the railing and shouted, "Go, Istvan! Go!"

A Stream Runs Through It

Each morning as I make my way to coffee (kavé) I walk along a low stream that meanders its way through Eger between high stone walls. About fifteen feet across, and maybe a foot deep, it isn't exactly the Danube, but still it's water and it adds a bit of romanticism to this gothic town. As the stream is fed by rain run-off and snow melt, I can imagine it quite puny during dry spells, rasping over rocks and parched bed. Today however, with the recent spike in temperatures, it is quite robust (as streams go), gurgling and burbling, flowing, so much so that a pair of mallards gave themselves up to it: After paddling in place against the current when their aim was to make it upstream, they must have asked each other "What sense is this?" (in Hungarian, of course), about faced,  and happily sailed away.

Smile A Little Smile For Me, Hungary

 

I want to be a good American, perhaps the good American, but so far I'm failing miserably. I walk the narrow streets of Eger seeking to make eye-contact with each passing person. And, if it should happen that someone does look up from the pavement to meet my glance, I smile, only to be returned a deflating, cold stare. From my perspective, perhaps from an American perspective generally, Hungarians are hard people, at least on the surface; from their perspective, they probably wonder why Americans have this idiotic need to smile when there is really no basis for it.

It's difficult for me not to throw Hungary on the couch and psychoanalyze it a little. After all, it is only little more than twenty years since the Soviet-backed communist government -- paranoid and obsessed with spying on its own citizens -- fell, and so most of those I pass in the street are children of that era and that regime. Perhaps what I construe as unfriendliness are simply the childhood lessons of reserve and distrust carried forward into adulthood. 


Which is not to say that Hungarians are impenetrable. I have been met with kindness and humor, though none of it immediately, and none of it without a certain feeling-out or vetting. The good news is that with each other, when familiar with each other (friends, lovers, families), they demonstrate spirit equal to any American. Broad smiles; big laughs. I just need to get on the inside of all that. And I will.  

In The Throes of Democracy

As part of the Fubright experience, and in order to ready us Fulbrighters for our prospective assignments throughout the country, grantees participate in a four day orientation, a kind of crash course in all things Hungarian. I've been getting oriented in Budapest for the past four days, and am now on the bus back to Eger.

Orientation was interesting, and I gained good insight about this complex, young democracy. I learned about its recently revamped system of higher ed; Hungary's damn long history (a millennium plus, though with less than a handful of trophy years); that discussion of the "Roma" (politically correct for Gypsies) causes people to shift uncomfortably in their seats. 


But the thing that has struck me most is Hungary's current discontent and sense of promise/foreboding, and how much it parallels American discontent and sense of promise/foreboding (or, I suppose, Hungarians might say ours parallels theirs). For instance, Hungarians are very unhappy with their government and economy, two terms essentially synonymous when the later sours. So, the fix, in American terms, during the last election, was for the Hungarians to throw the bums out. How might "bum" translate into Magyar (the true name for the Hungarian language)? Answer: Anyone unlucky enough to have been in office at the time. So, having hauled incumbents to the curb to be taken away with the trash (or, more likely, to be recycled), a new government assumed the bums' places -- with a two thirds majority! -- in what would be the equivalent of our presidency and congress. Quite a bit more than the Democrats' recent "shellacking," and probably more deserving of the noun. (Think Crocodile Dundee: "Aw, that's not a shellacking. This is a shellacking!")


Though I am clearly and outsider at this point, I have enough power of perception to see that the country is divided, with some taking a deep breath hoping that the new conservative Fidesz government will overcome the crippling economic policies of the ousted Hungarian Socialist party, and others taking a deep breath hoping that the nationalistic Fidesz government will not swing too far to the right and retard Hungary's hopes for rising status in the European Union. 


Of immediate concern is Hungary's constitution which, though amended several dozen times, is the same core constitution drafted during its days of communist rule. Fidesz has seized its super majority to chuck the current constitution and write a new one, and will be passing it within the next several months. Political supporters are glad to at last be free of the Soviet-era vestige; Political opponents and others wary of Fidesz' unassailable legislative power are concerned the government might constitutionalize a hard right doctrine.
More to come.
G'Day.