Party Like You Are Hungarian

Still Playing Catch Up...

On our first Saturday in Szerencs we were invited to a party at Adrienne’s house. Her father was turning 60 and she kindly opened her home up to Reagan and me. We arrived at her home with a bottle of wine as a present for her father, and were led to the back patio where they had three grills going and a multitude of culinary options. Chicken, pork, shishkabobs, and grilled veggies were all blazing away on the barbeque. The table was set with a number of salads. Now I should mention here that the salads in Hungary are nothing like salads in America. Picture every salad at every meal you ever go to resembling coleslaw. Swimming in sauce or pickle juice. They do not do the fresh veggie thing here. It is very unhealthy and very foreign to me. I can take stuff like that in small doses, but I simply cannot eat platters of cabbage and pickle juice.

We were instructed to sit down and eat. Apparently the other people who were there had been eating already. Her father had not arrived yet, but one of her sisters was there, along with her boyfriend. Reagan and I sat down and had a bit of chicken and some of the “salad”. There was also a bowlful of tiny biscuits and a tray of drink choices. We finished eating, and all of a sudden they brought out three different desserts and insisted we try all of them. So we took little dollops of each and sampled them. Then Adrienne’s father and mother arrived, along with her other sister and her husband, and their grandparents. At that point about ten more dishes were brought out and everyone started eating again. There was catfish in a red oily sauce, potato pasta cooked in cottage and sour cream, the shishkabobs made an appearance, grilled veggies, and cake. They insisted we try everything… and here we thought the meal was over. Adrienne just kept telling me that Hungarians love to eat and we just had to get used to it. So much food and sugar! It is no wonder they are all moaning about their weight and the number of kilos that they want to lose! This is simply not for me. I don’t eat unhealthy food like that, and I don’t eat all day long, and I don’t eat those kinds of quantities. So unnecessary!

Adrienne also insisted that I drink this horrible raspberry honey schnapps, even after I told her I don’t really care for alcohol. She insisted. Poured the drink into a goblet and shoved it in my hand. So I politely sipped the nasty fire water and then tried to hide my glass behind some other junk on the table. Reagan and I were both in panic mode at that point wondering when they were going to stop making us eat and drink. They are so welcoming and gracious, but so pushy and bossy as well. It is difficult to be polite and refuse. I don’t know what the boundaries are yet. It is so hard to determine what is the right thing to do!



Laszlo and the Cauldron Dinner

Sunday, day four of Szerencs. Today I woke up feeling trapped, depressed and unable to crawl out of bed. These are not normal feelings for me, so I blamed it on the fact that we did not have access to the outside world because of our lack of internet, and the major inconvenience of our toilet still being broken. Did I forget to mention that? The fact that we had to walk over a mile into town to use the facilities was becoming a bit of a problem for me. Our house was smelling like raw sewage and we were having to time our bathroom activities to our forays into town. Reagan and I spent most of the day moping around in bed watching movies on my computer until I finally got up, showered and we headed into town to do a bit more walking around and to find some lunch. We visited the castle grounds again, and walked the full length of the downtown, as well as the outskirts of Szerencs. I would say we put in about five or six miles total. Then we decided to try to find some lunch, except every place we went to was closed.

We stepped inside of a pub for Reagan to use the bathroom, and I inquired in halting Hunagrian to the customers gathered in there where the nearest open “etterem” was. Not a single word of English in the house. However, they were determined to help. One man pulled me over to a map on the wall that showed all of the streets in town. He used gestures and pointing and showed me a restaurant that looked really far away. Then he mimed out the motions for driving. I shook my head and did a little walking thing with my fingers to show him we were on foot. So he shook his head and let me know it was too far. Then he took me by the arm and led me out of the pub and down the street. We used my book to introduce ourselves to each other, and I learned his name was Laszlo. I was able to tell him that I am an American teacher and that I would be teaching at the Rackozi school. He got very excited about that and tried to ask me a bunch of things that I did not understand. Then he walked us to the other side of town (about a mile and a half), and showed us a little pizza place that was open. “Koszonom, Laszlo, viszlat!” (Thank you, Laszlo, goodbye!)

The pizza place ended up being amazing and I deciphered the entire menu while we sat there. I now know the words for all the different pizza toppings. Yay me! After lunch we had to hurry back home to change for the Opening Day ceremony. Adrienne was going to be picking us up and we had to dress up for the ceremony. On the walk back home we ran into Laszlo again and he wanted to ask me something about being a teacher. I thought he was asking me to tutor him, but I was not sure, so I called Adrienne to translate. It turned out Laszlo wanted to hire me to teach his daughter English. Adrienne made arrangements with him to call her back later in the week so that we could set things up. Very cool! I will have my first student soon!

The opening day ceremony ended up being very much like an assembly at any American school. Songs, readings, etc. Pretty exciting considering I was made to sit by myself and did not understand a single word. On the way back to the car we were told by Adrienne that we were invited to this family's house for dinner and that we had to go. We walked into a random backyard and there was a cauldron half full of brown sloppy looking stuff with leaves floating in it. I told Adrienne we had just eaten pizza two hours before that and we were not hungry, but she insisted on putting (and I am NOT exaggerating) about two pounds of this gnocchi type pasta stuff with sour cream and cottage cheese in it on my plate and then ladeling three heaping ladlefuls of the brown slop on top. I hefted my overflowing plate to the table and gingerly began to pick at the food.

Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. They also forced me to drink some local wine that tasted like liquid sugar, and then set a crate of grapes next to me and insisted that I eat those as well. Sigh.