The New Year

12 01 2012

So Gyorgyi went back to Hungary. And I stayed here in America.

That is how my New Year started. And obviously it’s not a great way to begin.

Gyorgyi came to America on a 90 day tourist visa. While here we have been in contact with one of Cleveland’s best immigration lawyers, who is actively working on our case to eventually bring Gyorgyi back on a work visa through our company.

For those of you who don’t know what this process is like– just take a metal stick and slam it into your knees over and over again and you’ll sort of get the sensation of what the American immigration process is like these days.

The good news is that her education credentials were finally evaluated and the firm has determined that she has a BA equivalent in English and Marketing, which is exactly what she needs for us to bring her on a work visa with our company.

Now it’s all in the waiting.

You can’t just apply for a visa like you apply for a drivers license. It takes time and there are certain dates when you are able to apply and there are only a few visas that are given away each year. The earliest that we can apply for her visa is in April and the earliest that she can reenter the US on a work visa is October.

Ten months.

She can still come back (we’re hoping this summer) on 80 days of tourist visa days that she has left for 2012, but she’ll have to go home yet again and come back in October if a visa is granted.

She is also applying to start the MBA program in International Business at Kent. We should know whether she gets in with funding in April sometime.

I don’t have any political points to make. And even if I did, I wouldn’t make them here for fear that someone might look at this who has any decision making power and think I’m being disrespectful to the process and black list her or something.

I don’t have any historical points to make either. Not about how this country is a country of immigrants. How my coal miner grandparents who gave their lives in the mines or risked them in the world wars were immigrants. No, I won’t try to make those points.

The only point that I would like to make is this: in this new year, let’s try not to forget that a lot of people (hard working people–loving people) just want to make a better lives for themselves and their families. Regardless of your political affiliations, try to exercise a little compassion before you speak loudly about issues and people you really know nothing about.

It can be a mean world out there, but let’s not punish people for who or how they love.

As for Budajest, I will keep this site up to document this process and my other projects. I’ll be working as a strategic planning consultant this winter and spring, as well as writing and working on other projects. I won’t be able to post as many lovely European pictures as usual, though Ohio does have its charms.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me and supported Gyorgyi and I. I cannot tell you how much it means. In the darkest moments when it seems like the whole world is unfair, the support and care is what keeps us trudging along.

Onward.

 

 


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Uncategorized

Slap Leather

22 12 2011

Slap Leather finalG.indd

I don’t like to do a lot of self promotion on this blurb, but tonight my chapbook, Slap Leather, published by dancing girl press, came out. I am very happy and very proud of the book and the press. Thank you to everyone who made it come together. Here is a little sample. Happy Holidays everyone!

THE GRASS WIDOW

If you haven’t heard
of the grass widow,
hang around. She’s fond
of fires, is half seas over
for flumes. Doesn’t draw
the blinds at night—

prefers the moon
and her convolutions.

They say she stitched
closed the beak
of a meadowlark.

Sing-songed, the grassland
ocean in her throat.

Full as a tick and twitching.


Comments : 3 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Kalács and Beigli

10 12 2011

Once a year at Christmastime, my mom (as her mom did before her and her grandmothers did and great-grandmothers did before them) makes what we call kalács (pronounced kolach). Kalács, as it’s known in Hungarian, is actually a sweet brioche-type bread commonly served at Easter, but somewhere along the line, Slovak-Americans and Hungarian-Americans smashed a few different holiday breads together and what was once known as Beigli (and still is in Hungary) is now usually known as kalács in English. The reason for the confusion is that the word  kalács (despite being a Hungarian word) is Slavic in origin. But let’s get back to the deliciousness.

 

While the breads can be filled with a variety of ingredients, the standards are walnuts, poppy seeds and apricots. My mom doesn’t really like poppy seeds, so our  kalácses have walnuts and apricots. So we mix up pulverized walnuts with a little sugar and condensed milk. It’s not too too sweet, but you wouldn’t want to eat a cup before getting your blood sugar levels tested. In a second pan we boil down the apricots until they are like jam.

 

This was my first year making the recipe (under my mom’s direct and strict supervision, of course). As she did when I was a kid, she scraped the dough from my fingers because she was worried I had too much margarine on my fingers and not enough was getting into the dough. Don’t worry though, Internet, she only scraped me with the sharp side of the knife a few times.

Dry margarine-coated ingredients are mixed with egg yolks, yeast and sour cream.

And pretty soon a rollable batter can be turned out onto the table.

We form them into dough balls, which then have to rise. This is fun because while over-kneading is discouraged, you can slam the dough balls onto the table. It’s quite satisfying.

After the dough balls rise a little bit, you can roll them out and spread on a layer of nuts or apricots.

After spreading, it’s roll up time, after which the rolls have to rise for another hour before baking.

Then it’s just a short thirty minutes before  kalács/beigli perfection!


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Cooking with Györgyi, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Beaufort and Gilbert

26 11 2011

On Wednesday we went into Beaufort, which is less than ten miles from Dataw Island. We took a historical carriage ride tour of the town and learned a lot about the area. Plus the Belgium draft horse, Gilbert (who plowed fields up in Amish country Ohio as a youngster) was absolutely adorable. He moved about as slow as southern molasses, but had a relentless amount of charm.

Brief history:

The area around what is now Beaufort was actually the second European-discovered parcel of North America (after Ponce de Leon’s St. Augustine), though it has inhabited for nearly two millennia before that by American Indians. Beaufort is a French name (bow-fort), though most Beaufortonians pronounce it the good ol’ fashion southern way (bew-fert).

Plantations are far and wide here. And before the Civil War, all landowners grew Sea Island Cotton (courtesy of their slaves), which was, at the time, the second most profitable crop in the world (second only to opium). It was longer, silkier and finer than even the best Egyptian cottons. Of course a few decades after the Civil War, the fields that hadn’t been burned were eaten up by the boll wheevil, and the crop went extinct.

The town and surrounding areas were quite rich, due to all that cotton. But then South Carolina seceded from the Union and the Civil War began. Beaufort was lucky, however. With advanced warning of incoming Union warships, the whole town up and left (the newspapers up north called it the Great Skedaddle). So when the Union soldiers arrived in 1861, there was no point destroying the town. They used it as a medical base and marina. And a few years later, when Sherman went on his burning rampage, there was no point burning a Union-controlled town. So Beaufort is still one of the most nicely preserved antebellum towns.

We took a lot of pictures of the great Live Oak trees and their sweeping Spanish moss, the wonderful antebellum architecture and of course, the star of the day: Mr. Gilbert.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : History, Traveling

Piggly Wiggly Turkey Trot

24 11 2011

This morning at 5:30 a.m. my dad, Györgyi, Brandy, Jeff and I left Dataw and headed over to Hilton Head for the 23rd annual Piggly Wiggly turkey trot 10K. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning and we (along with 1,400 other runners) joyfully trotted through the island. Getting the t-shirt (above) was our primary motivation, but we all ended up having such a wonderful race and early Thanksgiving morning.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Family, Holidays, Running, Sports

Thanksgiving in Lowcountry

23 11 2011

I’m sitting at the edge of the marsh on Dataw Island, South Carolina. The tide is just retreating and in the distance, in deep water, three shrimp boats lower their nets. It’s raining, but only hard enough to unhinge a few leaves, annoy the alligators and disturb the piles of oyster shells that the raccoons dragged in last night, from the marsh, and struck open with rocks to access the silky nectar inside.

We arrived to my aunt’s home among the great sea islands of South Carolina yesterday. We’ll be here through Thanksgiving, then spend a week in Hilton Head.

Even though I grew up a true blue Yankee, my family has spent a lot of time in the last fifteen years down South. And this part of the country, with its straight-trunk wild-haired palmettos, humid breezes and tidal waters is what I miss the most when I’m away from the States. It’s true I’ve come to romanticize the South, which probably really set-in when I lived in Georgia, but I can’t help it. I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, but my heart is really at home here.


Comments : 5 Comments »

Categories : Family, Tourist, Traveling

New York City

7 11 2011

Woody Allen said, “There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?”

Last week, Gyorgyi and I were in NYC. We stayed with my awesome cousin, Brandy in her Gramercy apartment. We experienced a true, NYC Halloween, toured from the Bowery to Spanish Harlem. We saw the fantastic Addams Family on Broadway, calculated inches in the tenements, stalked Jennifer Aniston, ate bagels on a tour bus, and experienced as many must do’s (like Shake Shack, Gray’s and Dim Sum in Chinatown) and we could.

New York City hides so many unseen alleys that I wish we had a year to investigate. But in the time that we did visit, we certainly felt the prowess of a super-city. The quiet and the vocal. Times Square and Curry Hill. An elevator to the 80th floor and a simple, Sunday dumpling.

I’m a European blogger, so maybe I have no say whatsoever. But if you’re considering going, go. Eat, explore, indulge. Walk fast across the avenues and slow through the parks. Go to NYC as Kurt Vonnegut says: “…to be born again.”

(click on the picture for our NYC slideshow)


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Tourist, Traveling

The Colonel Comes to Szeged

12 10 2011

There are some stories that are so vital, so momentous, so crucial in forming a town’s legacy, that they demand telling and retelling– the shouting from rooftops– the clamoring of newsies at the ports and tram stops– the etching down of details so as they are never to be forgotten.

This is not one of those stories.

It is, however, one of the bigger news stories of late. A story to rise above the local black and whites with news of Europe’s potential double-dip recession and Hungary’s Swat teams confiscating Brat Pitt’s prop guns for World War Z.

Drum roll…Kentucky Fried Chicken has finally made its way down to SE Hungary, which is sort of a big deal, but not quite the harbinger of the dawn of Szeged’s Golden Era, as you might think was the case from reading local news reports and various frenzied social media postings.

Still, when the new mall opened last week, we decided to go and see just how Colonel-crazy people here would get.

On Thursday evening at about 8:30 p.m, there must have been 1,000 people in the food court. Every tray was scattered with little chicken bones, and each line was still 10-people deep. Would I be exaggerating to say that half of the city was in the new mall’s food court? Maybe. But I bet almost that many visited throughout the week. I would say the crowd was similar to the one with people waiting for a burned coffee from the new Starbucks in Budapest last year (now there are FOUR in the city!)

I’m sure someone on some other blog will write a scathing social critique about American fast-food globalization, how we export all of our worst qualities, how it does this and that to economic zones x through x. But the truth is that no one in this little European town was complaining. They give free refills on soda, for God’s sake, which is just about as close to a miracle as you can get in Hungary.

It was not with any journalistic intention that we ordered something as well, and I felt a little guilty pride for America’s first Colonel of chicken. I suppose the spicy wings, which are pretty damn good no matter where in the world you order them, taste a little extra special when you’ve been away from home for so long. So thank you, Harland. Love, Budajest.


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Food, History

On the 13 Martyrs of Arad (and not clinking beer glasses for 150 years)

6 10 2011

One of Hungary’s three national holidays takes place on March 15th. It commemorates the country’s failed revolution of 1848-1849 against the Austrian-Habsburg rule.

Hungarians often return to this date. Much more in spirit than perhaps the failed revolution in 1956 against the Soviets. So many national heroes come out of the 1848/49 revolution. Among them Lajos Kossuth: President-Regent of Hungary and freedom fighter whose fiery speeches were read aloud throughout Europe. Who had to flee Hungary, was taken in by the Ottomans, and then ferried to safety by the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Mississippi.

And of course the bard of the revolution and poet most closely associated with the Hungarian national identity: Sándor Petőfi, whose poems are still memorized today by Hungarian school children. Petőfi’s pre-existentialist stoicism, entirely typical of Hungarians, put forth by his perfect 12-syllable anapaestic line:

Elhull a virág , eliramlik az élet.  The flower will wilt—fleeting life fades tomorrow.

So why am I writing about this today? Because was on this day in 1849 when 13 of the Hungarian generals were executed in Arad, Romania. Four were shot and the rest were hanged. And the Prime Minister, Lajos Betthyany, was executed in Pest in what today is Szabadság Square. The entire Kingdom of Hungary went into silent, passive resistance for an entire decade.

It is said that while the generals were being executed, the Austrian generals were drinking steins of beer, loudly clinking their glasses together in celebration of their victory over Hungary. From that day, Hungarians vowed to not clink their beer glasses for 150 years. Though the time frame passed in 1999, it’s still considered bad manners to clink beer glasses in Hungary.


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : History

St. Ilona Syrah Rosé 2010

30 09 2011

The Kreinbacher Estate is tucked into the mineral rich Somló hill in western Hungary. It is a relatively young wine estate, the final plantations having been completed in 2005 next to St. Ilona Chapel, the namesake of the wine. They currently cultivate approximately 25 hectares of grapes, and their head winemaker is Zita Horváth.

I’ve enjoyed many wines from this particular region, especially Olaszrizling and Furmint. Somló has volcanic soil that covers basalt rock, which add to the rich mineral quality of the wine. The area’s microclimate of long sunny days and cool breezy nights only enhance the rare quality of these uniquely Hungarian wines, many of which you will never try outside of the region and country.

Earlier in the summer I tried a St. Ilona Olaszrizling, which I thought was fantastic. I had never tried a Syrah Rosé before. But as I was telling Gyorgyi a few weeks ago, this really was the summer of Rosés because we tasted many and were so pleased with almost every one. Kreinbacher’s was no different. St. Ilona’s 2010 was bright, alive with minerals and balanced acids. Based on the recommendation of the local wine shop I served it extra cold so that the Syrah would draw out the flavors of the terroir, that sunny, basalt quality found only in Somló.

The wine was on sale at the shop for 1300 HUF, which is about $6. An excellent deal for a really pleasant summer wine.


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Hungarian wine

« Previous Entries


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.