Jan 132024
 

In 1981-82, I served as a conscript in what was then called the Hungarian People’s Army.

As an engineering student, I was trained as a radar operator, which is several notches above cannon fodder I suppose. Still, I do not have fond memories of the time.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that there were some educational moments.

Having once lived in a resort hotel that my stepfather was managing, in the spectacular, historic small town of Visegrád at the bend of the Danube, I learned how a commercial-grade kitchen, serving 100+ people, operates. Standards in Hungary were quite strict at the time, and managing such a kitchen entailed both enforcing food safety and hygiene standards and tasks such as managing and recycling meal samples, which would be used by health authorities in case of a suspected case of food-borne illness.

The military base where I spent most of my time as a conscript was an active air defense installation, part of the country’s peacetime air defense network. Nonetheless, they had a chronic shortage of officers, which meant that many tasks that would normally have been assigned to commissioned or non-commissioned officers were instead handed to us conscripts. Once they learned that I had some knowledge of how a kitchen is run, I was frequently assigned kitchen duty: No, not washing dishes (though I did that, too, in the early months of my service) but as kitchen supervisor, responsible for everything including obtaining the needed ingredients from our food storage (run by a civilian employee) and taking samples. It was a surprisingly educational experience.

Or how about the time when I was tasked with ordering… a freight train? Not just any train, mind you, but a specialized train (and route) to carry oversize equipment (our large Ural trucks that carried radar equipment and electronics) with a larger-than-standard cross-section to the USSR border, to participate in some international war games exercise. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go myself, my participation was limited to a journey to the regional headquarters of Hungary’s national railway company, where I had to patiently, and correctly, explain to the person responsible what kind of train we needed and why.

I also did minor tasks such as keeping the base’s one and only television set (an aging color set, a Videoton Color Star television, a mostly Soviet design I was told) alive. I was also responsible for the base’s movie projector, and I took weekly trips to Budapest to get a fresh movie on film, for movie night Mondays (back in the early 1980s, there was no television broadcast in Hungary on Mondays.)

The base where I served no longer exists. First, the military abandoned it. The municipality that inherited it tried to sell without much success, even as the facility was stripped, e.g., of nearly all metal bits by (I presume) metal thieves. Someone took a walk around the base in the early 2000s and put the resulting video on YouTube; it looked almost like parts of the city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, except that in this case, I was looking at a building that I remembered very well personally, having spent some nine months of my life there.

In the end, the entire facility was demolished, to make way for a solar energy farm, if memory serves me correctly.

All that is to say that I was quite surprised, pleasantly I might add, when I discovered the other day that back in 2022, the local municipality decided to install a small memorial plaque thanking all those who served there in defense of Hungary’s airspace. The cynic in me was wondering if there was any profit in this act (it was, after all, partially financed by the EU, it says so on the plaque itself) even as I actually felt a bit of gratitude that our service was not completely unnoticed after all.

What can I say? The plaque is actually quite nice. I might even visit the spot some day.

 Posted by at 4:34 pm
Dec 112023
 

A welcome sight: A seemingly civilized discussion between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Viktor Orban.

Of course “frank” in the language of diplomacy can mean many things, but if their posture is any indication, the conversation might have been mutually respectful, perhaps even productive. Moments like this have been known in the past to break the ice where more formal encounters led nowhere. One can only hope…

 Posted by at 11:11 am
Oct 212023
 

It was 82 years ago, back in 1941, that the country of my birth, Hungary, switched to driving on the right [link in Hungarian].

Streetcar with a large sign reminding the public to drive on the right

The decision has a sad history. It was prompted by the experience earlier that year when Hungary allowed the transit of Wehrmacht troops on their way to occupy Yugoslavia.

This was yet another step towards Hungary fully committing itself to the German effort, giving up any semblance of neutrality.

For Hungary’s prime minister at the time, Pal Teleki, this was the last drop [link in Hungarian] in the proverbial bucket. Early in the morning on April 3, 1941, he shot himself. His farewell letter to Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time, simply stated, “I did not hold you back. I am guilty. Pal Teleki, April 3, 1941.”

Hungary went on to fight with the Germans against the USSR. When it became clear that the Germans cannot win, Horthy made a half-hearted attempt to extricate the country out of the war. Instead, he was removed from power by the rabid national socialist Arrow Cross, with support from occupying German troops, who in the remaining few months of the war assisted the Germans in the deportation and wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungary’s Jews. In the end, the country was liberated but at a tremendous cost: Much of Budapest lay in ruins, devastated by a brutal Soviet siege, with all the city’s magnificent bridges across the Danube destroyed by the retreating Germans. Eventually, Horthy’s worst nightmare became reality: The “Bolsheviks” took over and stayed in power for more than 40 years, which included the a bloody intervention by the Soviets in 1956 to crush an anti-communist revolution.

Meanwhile, Budapest’s “millennial” subway, the continent’s first all-electric urban underground railway, continued to drive on the left all the way up to 1973, when the line was rebuilt, new rolling stock were introduced, and these trains, too, were switched to right-hand drive.

 Posted by at 9:41 pm
Oct 172023
 

Here are two images. The first is from 1943.

By way of explanation, the gentleman on the left is Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time. The gentleman on the right with the famous moustache needs no introduction.

The second image is from today, October 17, 2023:

The somewhat overweight gentleman on the left is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. The gentleman on the right is well known I suppose.

I don’t think I need to comment on why I opted to post these two pictures together. All I have to say is that this second image will come to haunt Hungarians in the future much the same way as the first.

 Posted by at 3:52 pm
Aug 122023
 

Here’s a Hungarian-language letter, an official note from 120 years ago that has been making the rounds on the Hungarian Interwebs for many years already. As far as I know, the letter is real, penned by a well-known Hungarian scholar, also known for his poetry. Below is my translation: watch it, the language is more than a little, hmmm, rough.

506/1903

To the esteemed Public Works Office
in the town of Pecs

Concerning your official transcript 1090/1903 that arrived with yesterday’s mail, in which you ask what needs to be done with the old spurs that were found in the outskirts of the village Magyarbeki? With official respect, my answer is that you gentlemen should fuck your spurs, because in this heat of 35° Reaumur, we cannot deal with such shit.

Aug 18, 1903, Budapest.

With all due respect,
Horsedick up your ass
Dr. Laszlo Rethy
Deputy Director, Hungarian National Museum, Department of Coins and Antiquities

To the Hungarian Royal Public Works Office of District XIV, Pecs

Ahem. For what it’s worth, 35°R is 44°C or about 111°F.

In other words: damn hot.

 Posted by at 4:51 pm
Jul 312023
 

My high school classmate György (Gyuri) Matavovszky spent the last almost 17 months volunteering for the Red Cross, helping Ukrainian refugees. Without further ado, with his permission, here is an English translation of his latest Facebook post, which sums up his experiences and his personal journey, while also revealing a lot about the sociopolitical environment in which he lives in present-day Hungary.


I shall now take off the Red Cross vest that I first put on 503 days ago and have worn for about 50 night shifts since then. The Hungarian government is closing down the aid point set up at the BOK Hall due to the war, where newly arrived and other homeless refugees from Ukraine could come until now and receive very modest care, minimal food and drinks, hygiene facilities, camp beds with bedding in a communal sleeping area for one, in some exceptional cases two-three nights (since life in Hungary is so good that everyone’s situation surely gets resolved in one-two days, so no one needs to stay longer).

The hall opened for this purpose at the end of March last year. Back then, aid organizations and representatives of various other bodies were moved here from the train station. There was a children’s corner, doctor, pet care, child welfare services, ticket office, mental health support, shuttle buses ran hourly between the train stations and the hall, 1000-2000 people came through here daily back then, who were very easy to provide for initially, as we received huge amounts of donations. The number decreased exponentially, but willingness to donate even faster, so we soon reached the point where rather than abundance, it was need that made things difficult for us. Then everything slowly shifted to a lower gear, for example in November the medical care was also terminated, which I know because I had to accompany a sick person to the Military Hospital, and wait with them from 11pm to 3am for the four hours the Hungarian healthcare system needs to carry out a routine examination. In February, I was a hair’s breadth away from someone dying in front of me. I failed to recognize the signs of a heart attack in a refugee who arrived across the green, or rather blue, border (the Tisza River) – luckily a colleague of mine was more alert and called an ambulance just in time. In the end he survived, now he lives with his family in Győr, has a job too, we know about him.

But this is just one example, because there were many other very difficult situations, too. It wasn’t just the arrivals from Ukraine that were problematic, we Hungarians often didn’t get along easily either, there was tension even among the volunteers at times. Is it okay to give coffee in the middle of the night—this remained an eternally returning question that still has no consensus answer. Because if we give it, they get more lively and won’t let the others sleep, or make more demands of us, too. But if we don’t, we deny them the one joy they may have that day. We too often lost patience, but I won’t focus further on the downsides of our performance. On the very first night I decided that I’m not here to help the refugees, but they are helping me, and I stuck to that pretty much. I accompanied some of them to trains, planes, airport buses, when that was the simplest or most humane way to give directions. In the process, I always developed a connection with them that could no longer be let go of without tears—the worst is when you stand on the platform, hugging them and they hug you too, and you both know you will never see each other again. These moments were always unbearably painful.

The nights had their own arcs—the shift started at 8pm, by midnight we only felt like we were getting into it, by then we were usually tired enough to start feeling a bit numb from it. Somewhere between 2 and 2:30am was the low point, from when the mental state tips over, you start to feel the dawn coming, and this generally calms you down too. The second half of the night was always much easier, and in the morning not only does the sun rise outside, your heart is flooded with light inside too – I always left tired but with great peace in my heart – I will miss this feeling a lot.

Let no one think the BOK Hall is closing because the war is over and there is no more need for it. The war is not over, the BOK Hall would be needed, but the community is poor, I mean there is very little good intention in the budget, we are completely exhausted morally, in character, currently at rock bottom, though I’ve written a lot about this before. There will be something, somewhere instead, but it will be operated by the pro-government Maltese Charity Service, and for sure it won’t be worth even this much. I won’t participate because I’m not Catholic enough and anyway I’m sick of the whole thing. I was sick of it before too, but the Red Cross supervisor kept my spirit up, his name is Gyuri too, we could never decide whether I’m one and he’s the other, or vice versa, I think it’s the latter actually, in my phone he’s saved as Egyik Gyuri (Gyuri One).

I don’t want to be without social work long term, I hope one day I’ll wear a Red Cross vest again, I hope not too long from now. Now I need to pull myself together for mural painting, but if I can get that going maybe I’ll have time for something similar again. I don’t want to be a social worker, but from now on I want something like this always to be part of my life, because meeting unfortunate people results in a fantastically intense wake-up call, and I think in the long run it really helps staying awake. For example, you understand that they often live a much more real, much more honest, much more self-consistent life than us, who collect a pile of assured money every month, which we then spend floating in a beautiful bubble.

There is a lot of cognitive dissonance in the Red Cross too, but still it’s far from the worst organization in the world, its past shines through its present a bit, in my work I managed to meet exemplary people, including some much younger than me who can behave very consciously, very maturely in trying human situations, and in whom I see a lot of potential still. As I look at it, this hidden potential will be needed sooner or later, or rather is needed now, it’s just very hard for the penny to drop, it’s very hard for us to notice this spiritual need.

I won’t beat around the bush, before the war I too spent my days in deep slumber, and I still don’t feel fully awake. However, I very much hope enough bridges have burned behind me that I won’t be able to flee back to where I was living before. In this service ending now, I feel the next personal message from life: Gyuri – one or the other, doesn’t matter – You are mature enough now, You don’t need to do this anymore, because with what you’ve done so far, you’ve detached yourself enough from your previous mode of existence, you’ve gotten from A to B, and even if you don’t see filthy, dirty refugees around you for a couple months, you won’t slide back to where you were before. Yes, I feel this whole thing was an initiation, a tangible step on the path to becoming human, which I desperately needed, and by some miracle this time I didn’t brush it off with some stupid response, as I’ve done countless times before, but this time not. This is what war does!

 Posted by at 3:07 pm
Oct 272022
 

To those who know my city of birth, Budapest, this is an astonishing picture that I came across on Facebook.

In the foreground is Margaret Bridge, spanning the Danube. The kink in the bridge is where it touches Margaret Island. Beyond that, on the Pest side, it’s Saint Stephen’s Boulevard, named after Stephen I, Hungary’s first king. The two small domes on the left are part of the Western (“Nyugati”) railway station building, designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel).

But then… thanks to the magic of the telephoto lens, in the background we see another major railway station, the Eastern (“Keleti”) station. I never before realized that these two railway stations, which are actually miles apart, line up like this.

Not only that but behind that second railway station, we can even see some housing projects that are quite some distance away, near the terminus of the city’s #2 subway line.

Telephoto lenses are really tricky. By the way, in case anyone wonders, the image is from 1982. There’s plenty of traffic on the bridge, but notice that most of the cars are characteristic East Bloc models: Ladas, Trabants, a Skoda, a Moskvich if I am not mistaken, a Wartburg. The buses are the same Ikarus models that once roamed the streets even here in Ottawa. The streetcars were built by Hungary’s Ganz. That streetcar line is supposedly the world’s busiest, today served by rather nice-looking, very long, high-capacity Siemens trains.

 Posted by at 1:41 am
Sep 172022
 

One of the many novels by prolific 1930s Hungarian author Jenő Rejtő featured a horrific penal colony somewhere in colonial French Africa. Near the end of the novel, one of the minor protagonists, the military commander of the colony, already in retirement in Rome, recalls the past. As he enjoys the beautiful view from his window, he thinks that “and right now, Bahr el Sudan also exists for sure, and Tiguer, the corporal with the red moustache, is just now hanging a wet blanket, which smells like horses, over the window. This is a strange and unsettling notion.

Sometimes I feel the same way, not so much with respect to distant places in the present, but distant places in the past.

Take this image, a montage of two photographs taken from a wonderful Hungarian photographic archive that someone just shared on Facebook, showing an intersection in downtown Budapest, not far from where I grew up.

The picture predates us living there but not by much; it was taken in 1961, we moved there in 1967, but everything looked pretty much the same. I know this intersection like the back of my hand: the stores, the buildings, everything.

And when I view this image, it comes to life in my mind. It feels tangibly real. I can even smell the smells: the smell of freshly ground coffee (I even remember the noise made by the electric grinder) in that deli store on the corner, the smell of paint and household solvents permeating the hardware store next door. The sound made by those trolley buses as they rolled down the cobblestoned street (only the intersection was asphalt-paved at the time) as it even rattled our fourth-floor living room windows.

It all feels so real… it is a deeply unsettling thought that I am separated from what is depicted in this image not just by distance but also by time. The view that I am looking at is older than I am, as it was taken 62 years ago.

 Posted by at 1:36 am
Apr 102022
 

Last week, Hungary’s Orban won a resounding victory in Hungary’s elections.

I was not happy about it, to be honest, and many of my liberal-minded friends were bitterly disappointed.

But a few of them began to look more deeply into the reasons behind this outcome. A recent article* by my friend László Mérő, a Hungarian mathematician and publicist, was illuminating. László decided to volunteer in the elections process as a scrutineer. He ended up in a rural electoral district, where he had a chance to talk to many of the voters who cast their ballots, including both the roughly 30% who voted for the united opposition, but also the majority who chose Orban’s government instead.

His conclusion? There was no fraud. The process was conducted professionally, transparently, and cleanly. The government may dominate traditional media (indeed, this is one of the cardinal sins of Orban’s autocratic government) but the voters were not uninformed. They were aware of the opposition, its message, and its goals. They didn’t favor the government because they were brainwashed. They favored the ruling party because those candidates did a much better job on the ground. They were known to the voters, unlike the fly-by-night opposition.

And anyone who thinks Orban represents some fringe must think again. Just days after his resounding victory (he not only retained, he even increased his two thirds parliamentary supermajority) we were reminded by press releases that CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, was already set to hold its next meeting in Budapest. Orban will be the keynote speaker.

Wait, CPAC? The conference series held by one of the most respectable American conservative organizations, the American Conservative Union, dedicated to the foundations of conservatism, including personal liberty, freedom, and responsible governance?

That’s no fringe.

And, I strongly suspect, at least one of the reasons why Trump, Orban and other “illiberal” leaders and opinion-makers managed to hijack conservatism is that liberalism, in turn, was hijacked by the “woke” culture: a culture that is ready to “cancel” anyone who disagrees with whatever the canonical view of the day happens to be on race, gender, and related issues. I mean, J. K. Rowling? For real?

The fact that it all happens in a geopolitical context, allowing the likes of Putin to use his propaganda machine to try and divide the West even as his murderous horde of ill-equipped, badly led soldiers is rampaging in Ukraine, behaving like the worst of the Nazis (and prodded by Kremlin propaganda outlets to erase Ukrainian national identity) while pretending to “denazify” a country led by a Jewish president, is just the icing on this proverbial cake.

Elections are under way in France today. A possible Le Pen victory might have dramatic consequences.


*Magyar Nemzet, 2022.04.06 — In Hungarian

 Posted by at 1:20 pm
Apr 032022
 

Hungary’s elections are coming to a close. All indications are that not only did Viktor Orban win, he won big: it appears he will retain his two -thirds constitutional supermajority in Hungary’s parliament. Yey-ho, illiberal democracy!

And they had the audacity to campaign as the party of peace: by confronting Putin, they argued, the opposition wants war and it is the government’s cowardly attitude that will somehow save the country from getting bogged down in conflict. (Because, you know, this attitude worked so well in the last major war in Europe, which witnessed Hungary as Hitler’s last ally, deporting over 600,000 of its own citizens to Nazi death camps, and having much of the country destroyed when the frontlines finally reached it in 1944-45.)

Meanwhile, Putin’s popularity in Russia is through the roof: The “Nazis” of Ukraine must be crushed, say people on the streets, and perhaps then Poland is next!

In America, Trump’s followers are regrouping, hoping to take back the House, the Senate, and eventually the White House, lining up behind their authoritarian leader to whom the rule of law means nothing unless it serves his personal interests.

Even here in Canada, all in the name of democracy of course, hundreds of unruly truckers blocked my city for nearly a month, and what is worse, their effort was (and remains) supported by millions. Perhaps still a small minority but still: It is a minority that is supporting a movement that is openly unconstitutional and insurrectionist.

And the sad thing is, we’ve all seen this before. The world went through something eerily similar a century ago. The Bolsheviks were popular in Soviet Russia. Mussolini was popular in Italy. Franco was popular in Spain. Hitler was popular in Germany. Even in places like the US and the UK, the likes of Charles Lindbergh or Oswald Mosley had considerable following.

I could ask the pointless question, why? Social scientists and historians probably offer sensible answers. But that doesn’t help. So long as people, even well-educated people, are willing to believe pseudoscience, ridiculous conspiracy theories, half truths, insinuations, and above all messages of hate: the compulsion to hate (or at least fear or distrust) someone, anyone, be it Ukrainians (or Russians), hate “migrants”, hate liberals, hate homosexuals, hate “others” however their other-ness is defined…

Screw you, world. I’m going back to physics. Just leave me alone, please.

 Posted by at 5:30 pm
Mar 292022
 

For the first time in my life, I exercised my right as a Hungarian citizen and voted.

Before I left Hungary, voting was pointless: my choice was the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party or else. The “or else” meant nothing.

More recently, I didn’t feel it kosher to participate in elections in a country where I do not reside and do not pay taxes. Then again, thanks in part to the current government, a great many Hungarian citizens who do not reside in Hungary or pay taxes there have gained the right to vote… so perhaps it’s not unethical for me to do so as well.

So I did.

Incidentally, the Parliament building in Budapest is quite an impressive edifice.

 Posted by at 3:28 pm
Feb 272022
 

This photo of a WWI/WWII memorial in Vácrátót, Hungary, just appeared in my feed moments ago in a group dedicated to historic photographs.

Yet it reminds me not of the past but the present: the observation that almost all the refugees streaming from Ukraine to Europe are women and children, as men stay behind to fight.

 Posted by at 4:02 pm
Sep 192021
 

A little over 50 years ago, we were all excited in the city of my birth, Budapest. This fine city, home of the old continent’s first subway line (and the world’s first that was built from the onset as an all-electric system), was about to get a modern “metro”. Using Soviet technology, the M2 line was opened to great fanfare, providing a rapid connection from the center of town towards the eastern suburbs on the Pest side. The line was soon extended under the Danube, reaching the Buda side’s main railway station in 1972.

Why do I mention this in a blog entry about Ottawa’s LRT? Simple. This 50-year old system, using technology from the former USSR, has operated reliably ever since. I know from experience: for a while, I used to take it daily, back in the 1970s and the early 1980s. The expectation of urban travelers is that barring rare, major emergencies, the system should work like clockwork; and when an emergency disrupts system operations, service is restored within a matter of hours. This expectation was, in my experience, always met by the M2 line. The most serious accident on the line happened in 2016, when a train rear-ended another, injuring ten passengers. Even in the wake of this accident, service was rapidly restored, albeit with a speed reduction at the accident location while the ongoing investigation tried to determine the cause.

Fast forward to 2021, to the proud capital of Canada, a G7 nation, supposedly one of the most advanced economies in the world, certainly one of the richest, wealthiest nations. Ottawa used to have an extensive streetcar system. Like similar systems in so many cities around the world, this system was dismantled, wantonly destroyed in the late 1950s, when urban planners looked at streetcars as unwanted relics from the past.

Finally, in the 2010s the decision was made that Ottawa needs urban rail transport after all, and the Confederation Line was built. It was opened to the public after many delays in September, 2019. The initial, 13-station segment cost approximately 2.1 billion dollars.

And… well, until now I refrained from commenting because, you know, be patient, good people know what they are doing, sometimes a system has more kinks than anticipated, all that… but no longer. This 2.1 billion dollar system is a piece of crap.

It has had trouble when the weather was too warm. Define too warm? Well, 30 degrees Centigrade. It has had trouble when the weather was too cold. Never mind that Ottawa is one of the coldest capital cities in the world; a little bit of wintry weather below freezing was enough to cause  problems. It has had trouble with train doors, trouble with the rails, trouble with axles and who knows what else. And it now experienced its second derailment.

And no, don’t expect them to rapidly restore service, repairing the affected track and perhaps as a precaution, instituting a temporary speed reduction. No, we are told, the entire system will be shut down again for at least a whole week!

And I cannot decide (I don’t have enough information) if this is gross incompetence or tacit acknowledgment that the system has severe systemic problems, and that the derailment (second in two months!) was not so much a random accident but a result of a badly built track, unsafe trains, or some such cause.

In light of this, I wish they had just imported 50-year old Soviet technology. The darn things may not be pretty (they don’t actually look bad, mind you), may be a tad noisy, but they work. And work. And 50 years later, still work.

As opposed to this piece of… stuff.

And it’s not like railway technology is a new invention. Budapest’s old, 1896 line celebrated its 125th anniversary this year. London’s Underground is even older. And that’s just urban underground systems. So it’s not like some exotic new technology that still has issues. It’s just… I don’t know. Corruption? Incompetence? Just sheer bad luck? Whatever it is, I think the residents of our city deserve better. And those responsible should be held to account, if necessary, even criminally.

 Posted by at 7:11 pm
Jul 152021
 

I wrote an answer today on Quora that, I realized, belongs in my blog.

The question was about once significant medieval towns in Europe that have since faded into obscurity.

And I had the perfect answer, on account of having lived there back in the 1970s: The town of Visegrád in northern Hungary (known these days on account of the Visegrad Four, the informal alliance of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia which began with a summit in this town held in 1991).

Once the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, and also home of the Summer Palace of King Matthias Corvinus during the heyday of said kingdom, today the town (really, a village; it gained the legal status of town only because of its historical significance, not on account of its population, which numbers less than 2,000) is just a minor settlement at the Danube Bend, where where the river Danube makes a 90-degree turn towards Budapest.

I used to live in a building just at the base of the stocky Salamon tower near the center of this image. Image from Wikipedia.

Visegrád is a fascinating town, full of history. Unfortunately, because of said history, most of it is in the form of barely recognizable ruins. Ruins of a citadel at the top of Castle Hill, its last functioning remains blown up by the victorious Austrians after the failed struggle for Hungarian independence in the early 18th century. Ruins of the sprawling Summer Palace complex, used by locals as a source of building material for centuries until very little of the original buildings remained. Ruins of the tower of Salamon, part of the lower castle, rebuilt decades ago using modern materials and housing a museum, but badly in need of repairs. And more ruins, ruins going back to Roman times, everywhere.

The name of the town itself is of Slavic origin (literally means high castle I believe) but many of the town’s present-day inhabitants are of German descent. I recall names of classmates like Gerstmayer or Fröhlich, and it was not uncommon to hear family members talking to each other in German on the streets of the town when I lived there as a child.

I have fond memories of the place; I attended school there from grades 6 to 8 before moving back to Budapest. I still visit Visegrád from time to time when I am in Hungary, albeit only as a tourist, as I no longer really know anybody there. It is, to be sure, a very popular tourist destination: the Danube Bend is spectacular, and the hills surrounding the area are crisscrossed by well-marked, well-maintained tourist trails. And, well, ruins or no ruins, the history of the place is absolutely fascinating.

But looking at the tiny village, its single church, small school, its sole tiny movie theatre, the few narrow streets with mostly single-story buildings, you’d never guess the rich history of the town.

Church of St. John the Baptist, in the center of Visegrád. Lovely clock. Google Street View image.

 Posted by at 11:53 pm
Jun 302021
 

Yesterday, I saw an image of a beautiful altarpiece, Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden’s Santa Columba triptych from 1455.

It was described as the biggest spoiler in history. Look at the center panel depicting the classic Nativity scene. Now look more closely at the center column:

Oops.

And then, I saw another image, a 1958 photo from Pál Berkó, courtesy of the Hungarian Fortepan photo archive, depicting the crowd greeting Khrushchov on account of his visit to Budapest. Greeting him with… smartphones in hand, taking selfies?

Not exactly. Those are actually mirrors that many used to be able to see over the crowd. But the resemblance is…

I guess it’s true: The more we change, the more we remain the same.

 Posted by at 8:03 pm
Apr 032021
 

My beautiful wife is getting really good at this.

She just made this kalach (kalács), Hungarian style braided sweetbread/eggbread, on account of Easter.

It is absolutely yummy for breakfast. Might work for lunch and dinner, too, if you ask me.

Yes, it has raisins in it. I love kalach with raisins.

 Posted by at 1:05 pm
Mar 272021
 

Courtesy of Radio Free Europe, here are some images (yes, do click on the link for the full experience) of the city of my birth, Budapest, in ways you may never have seen before, superimposing images from 1945 and the present.

It is incredible, what this beautiful city went through during that war. (Reminder to those who blame Stalin for the destruction: It was Hungary that declared war on the Soviet Union using a bombing that might have been staged, and which in any case was minor, as a pretext.)

The city is beautiful again. I visited just over a year ago, literally days before the world shut down on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever my thoughts about Hungarian politics and attitudes, it was a very pleasant trip with many pleasant encounters.

And looking at these horrific images of past devastation, I was reminded that even though I have not lived there since 1986, it remains the city where I was born and grew up: most places I recognized at a glance, in both the “before” and the “after” photos. Only Ottawa comes close as a place that I know this intimately.

 Posted by at 3:22 pm
Mar 192021
 

I remembered something today. A set of playing cards.

I never had a card deck like this but some of my grade school classmates did. This was the (very) early 1970s in communist Hungary. It was through these cards that I first learned of the existence of luxury sports cars, supercars like Ferrari, racecars like Lotus.

It was cards like these:

These were not some imports from the decadent West. Not subtle imperialist propaganda. These cards were produced by the state-owned Playing Card Factory (yes, that was the name of the company!) and they were much coveted by many 7-year olds. Like me.

But now that I think back, it makes me wonder: Exactly what were they thinking? I mean, this was a bleeping communist dictatorship (of the goulash variety, but still). What on Earth did they think they were doing, these self-appointed masters of agitprop, poisoning our young, impressionable minds with such blatant Western consumerist propaganda?

Ah, the sweet irony.

 Posted by at 9:28 pm
Feb 062021
 

In recent days, especially in light of the sudden drop in vaccine deliveries in Canada, I saw a lot of criticism aimed at the Canadian government and its perceived failure to secure vaccine supplies or vaccine manufacturing in Canada.

Reality is a little bit more nuanced. Manufacturing a 21st century vaccine is not exactly something that can be done anywhere. The fact that Canada doesn’t presently have the expertise or infrastructure is lamentable but that’s the result of a decades-long trend, not the decisions of the past several months.

Meanwhile in Hungary, Orban’s government is criticized for telling people that they will be vaccinated with whichever vaccine is available at the time; if you don’t like the vaccine being offered, you’re sent to the back of the line. A bit harsh, to be sure, but this is a bleeping global health emergency. Orban’s government may be criticized for acting in haste when they approved the Chinese and Russian vaccines (although the Russian vaccine seems effective; the Chinese vaccine is probably also fine, what is questionable is the ethical shortcuts they took with the testing and approval process). But acting in an authoritarian fashion when there is a global health emergency is precisely what even the most liberal, most democratic governments are expected to do. Orban can, and should, be criticized for undermining the country’s democratic institutions, its press freedoms, its judicial independence, its constitutional principles, but not for acting decisively when decisive action is needed during a pandemic.

 Posted by at 6:29 pm