Monthly Archives: February 2009

To Kreischberg

Posted on by
4

dscn6703

Budapest has been blanketed with her second snow since Thanksgiving, though this time it’s lasted for about two weeks and has covered most of the city.  I don’t think it’s going to last long, as by the first of the month the weather is supposed to warm up again, but it’s beautiful while it’s lasting.

dscn6696

Snow on rooftops, lines of street cards, lions’ heads.

dscn6705

And it’s perfect to put anyone in the mood for a little slope time.

dscn6717

Tomorrow we’re leaving for a snowboarding trip at the Kreischberg resort, which is in Murau, Austria, at the foot of the Stolzalpe Mountain, which apparently is the sunniest mountain in the region.  That sounds nice.  We have all of our equipment, including helmet and protective gear (picture above for my mother so she won’t be too worried about me plummeting down black diamond hills like an ice rocket).  I probably won’t be posting until I return on Monday unless the videos of me falling and falling and falling repeatedly for hours on end are too hilarious not to post during the weekend.  I can tell that I’m slowly turning into my father, in that even more than the snowboarding, I’m looking forward to the resort and sitting by crackling fireplace with a window view to the mountain.

Vajdahunyad Castle

Posted on by
Reply

vajdahunyad-castle

Vajdahunyad Castle is in Budapest’s City Park. Like many great cities at the turn of the century, architects from all over the country were buzzing around trying to erect structures for the turning century celebrations. From Machinery Hall in Chicago’s Colombian Exhibition, to Eiffel’s tower in Paris, it was an era of structure, opulence, and architectural and engineering ingenuity and flare.

I’m particularly interested in these years, the last decade before the beginning of the 20th century, because it was around this time that Sándor Petje and Viktoria Kovacs, my great-grandparents, were wandering around this city, in the heyday of youth, just before Sándor would leave for America. I imagine them on the streetcar or in a café reading a paper, a story about the millennium celebrations in Hungary, as 1896 would mark one thousand years since the arrival of the early Magyars to the Carpathian Basin.

It seemed like a hopeful time. A time of art and culture. Literature. Sciences. Well before communism. Before failed revolution. Before WWI and the cruel Treaty of Trianon was signed, re-establishing Hungary’s boarders, cutting out nearly 75% of it’s territory, 65% of it’s inhabitants (almost 1/3 ethnic Hungarians). This is a very interesting and tragic tidbit of Hungarian history and I will write more about it soon. But until then, you can get a visual reference from this map:

hungtria

The center chunk is Hungary now. Everything else was Hungary before June 4th, 1920.

But back to the millennial celebrations. It was a good time in Budapest. And with these celebrations approaching, Hungarians were in the mood for something artful. And that’s exactly what Ignác Alpár gave them with his design for Vajdahunyad Castle.

dscn6627

Alpár, who began his career as a stonemason and studied under the prolific Imre Steindl (architect of the Hungarian Parliament building), modeled the castle after another similar structure in Transylvania. But the structure itself really showcases styles ranging from Middle Ages to Baroque. The castle isn’t really a castle at all, but rather a series of buildings within one complex.

dscn6634

This past weekend we took a walk around the castle to get a view of it without the craze of the Mangalica festival. Even though I have been to Budapest City Park several times, especially because it is right behind Hero’s Square, I had never been to the castle. There are some other interesting features at the complex.

dscn6635

For example, right now you can ice skate in the front of the castle. If ice skating isn’t your thing, there are so many nice paths, structures, and sculptures to see. Like this one, of George Washington:

dscn6618

The engraving reads, “To the Memory of Washington.  The Hungarians of America, 1906.”  It’s nice, but I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why there is a statue of George Washington in city park.  George and the turul.  Go figure.

My favorite sculpture here so far, except maybe that of the Little Prince and several in Szeged is the incredibly eerie and creepy statue of Anonymous:

anonymous

The statue was built by Miklós Ligeti and is meant to represent the chronicler to King Béla (though there were a few Bélas in a few different centuries and to my knowledge no one knows which one he meant). Regardless, he was said to chronicle the history of the early Magyars. Despite the spookiness of the statue (believe me, I would run like I was on fire if I came across it alone, at night), I still feel akin to the symbol. You work, you write, to figure out the past of your people and your culture. Some things get recorded and understood. And some remain behind the hood.  Still, I like to imagine Sándor and Viktoria in places like this.  It’s a charming part of the city, and I like to think they thought so too.

pig 1, pinko 0

Posted on by
Reply

festivalsign

Mangalica (or Mangalitsa, as they are known everywhere in the US except your local Hungarian butcher) is basically a gigantic pig with cute curly hair.  And boy, are they fat.  Really, really fat.  Their name actually derives from the Serbo-Croation word for fat hog.

342857673_3e9af4bd66

Which is also why they are so delicious.  According to local foodie and author Carolyn Bánfalvi’s recent article in Saveur, “The breed nearly disappeared in the 1950s when Communist-era pig farmers turned to leaner hogs that produced larger litters. In 1991 there were just 200 Mangalicas left, but a few dedicated farmers started raising them for specialty markets, and populations have bounced back to the tune of some 50,000 last year.”

Luckily, the United States has also seen a return to the farm-raised, market fresh, Anthony Bourdain foodie culture in the recent years.  And from most articles I’ve read on the matter, Mangalica is needling its little fatty self into the food culture there.  And that’s good news for anyone who likes sausages, salamis, roasts, etc., because this pig gives up some of the best in the world.

eating2

Now if you are a reader of this blog, you will know that Hungarians are festival-crazed.  They will festivalize anything and everything, from a pig to a grape seed.  Magyars love to get out, walk around, take in a little grill smoke, eat some kolbasz, drink some pálinka and wine, and genuinely enjoy the festival day.

dscn6494

On the day that I went to the festival, which was the first warm and sunny day for a month, I truly believe that every single person in Budapest was trying to cram themselves into Vajdahunyad Castle is in Budapest’s City Park.  It was absolute madness, which is why I didn’t any pictures except for the area where people were eating in the eerily quiet pose that is the pork haze.

eating

Vajdahunyad Castle is an interesting structure in itself, and I went back this weekend to get some pictures without the festival crowd.  More on this Transylvanian-inspired, once-cardboard structure tomorrow.

Béla és Bandi

Posted on by
2

dscn6512

Since my usual response to “so what’s so great about Hungarian wines?” has up until now been um, everything, I decided to take the time now and add a little detail in the form of a regular wine review.  While I’m no Philistine, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a prominent member in the wine community.  Still, I know a few things here and there, and since I’m constantly talking about the great Hungarian wines I figured if you enjoy wine and aren’t familiar with these varieties, then this will be helpful.

Wine is a big deal in Hungary.  In fact, Hungarian is only one of two European languages (the other is Greek) in which the word for wine does not derive from the Latin form.  So let’s talk about bor.

logo

I was inspired to do this after a recent trip to the recently opened Bortársaság in the first district at Lánchíd utca 1.  G has been in several times buying wines for clients and is always appropriately dazzled that they know her membership number by heart.  But Saturday was my first trip there, and we only popped in as an afterthought on our way to do some other errands in Buda.  Even though it was only about ten a.m., the wine expert insisted that we sample five wines, three whites and two reds.  And for those of you out there who are concerned about getting short glassed (mom), let me assure you that this lady practically pours a full glass of wine—and just for a sample!  Though we left the store kind of wasted, we had in tow some really great wines.  Hence—the genesis of the wine reviews on Budajest.

So the first wine I want to write about is called Béla és Bandi.  It’s a 2007  Muskotály (or Muscat, in English) and is from the Balatonszőlős, which is around the region of Lake Balaton, and it almost exatly like what most Americans believe Hungarian villages to look like:  typically cloudy, gray, dreary, soviet, etc.  Here is a picture from google images:

front

Béla és Bandi are very cute, old fashion Hungarian male names.  And the wine was absolutely charming.  It had the sweet, floral aromas of a Muscat, though it was neither too dry or too sweet.  With grapes from three distinct fields, there is a subtle overlapping of flavor, but we ultimately found it to be a perfect, uncomplicated white table wine.

Now, here’s the kicker.  Right now it is only 904 forints a bottle.  With the exchange rate as it is, that is just under 4 USD.  FOUR.  Now that is stimulating economics.  Oh, and I think that Bortársaság ships almost anywhere, so if you’re like me in these troubled financial times, I say stock up, settle in, and enjoy one of life’s last great pleasures.   The Béla és Bandi 2007 Muscat is a great place to start.

From Ballet to Brûlée

Posted on by
4

mupa

The truth is, you really cannot claim yourself to be an open-minded, progressive, viewer des arts until you’ve seen a few things.  Now, I don’t claim to be even close to an expert, but I’ve seen a few things in my day.  Extended performance pieces shut down by cops, food art raided by the health department, certain slam poetry performances that no one should ever be exposed to.  But still, I go back time and time again.  It’s entertaining.  Stimulating.  Interesting, if nothing else.  And though I know I’m going to get a lot of hate mail for this one, I’m ready to add a new category to my list of you-must-survive to claim to be an art lover:  contemporary ballet.

On Friday night, Györgyi and I went to the Művészetek Palotája where the ballet company of Győr was performing Gaudí in the Fesztivál Színház.  The Művészetek Palotája, or Palace of Arts, opened four years ago and won the Prix d’Excellence in 2006.  It’s a stunning structure, both outside and in.

mupa35720080827174216

The ballet that we saw was inside the Palce of Arts in a small theater called the Fesztivál Színház.  Even though the main structure is so large, the smaller theater where we saw the ballet was quaint.  It also smelled like new wood, which is incredibly appealing to me.

fesztival_szinhaz
So the ballet was two hours with an intermission in the middle.  We were drinking wine in the lobby before the show and they made at least four announcements that the show was about to begin.  I still haven’t adapted to the Hungarian sense of time, which is always just a little bit late.  While I gulped the last of my wine and warned G that the announcement had been made, she calmly reassured me, “Oh, they’ll make at least another two announcements.”  And she was right, the dance started about 10 minutes late because at the exact starting time only about twenty percent of the theater was full.

gaudi-plakat

So Gaudí was interesting in that kind of in italics kind of way.  I mean coming out of school with a liberal arts masters degree I could go back and forth with quasi critical observations, but in my brain I was really thinking, “why are those people rolling around on the floor” and “someone should really use bleach on the costumes b/c they look like dirty underwear.”  But Györgyi is someone of an expert of contemporary dance, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.  Here is the explanation from the ballet company:

He has formulated perfect harmony by combining various styles and materials. We, using the versatility of various cultures in ballet, attempt to present the Antoni Gaudí, the main character’s life, habits and the four of his most important works. The architect’s death does not represent mortality but the beginning of a rebirth, the eternity left for us in his legacy.

gaudi_473px

Even though I couldn’t make the connection from what I was seeing on the stage and what was written in the program guide, there were several really beautiful dances.  The set design was fantastic as well and the production also made use of screens and light in a really interesting way.  I didn’t really get religion, isolation, or rebirth from it, but at the end of the ballet, Gaudí slams five or so balloons onto the stage floor, which explode in colored paint, which was, for lack of more sophisticated observation, really really cool.

After the ballet we went to dinner at the very lovely Trattoria Toscana. I regret not taking pictures of the meal, because it was thoroughly delicious.  Before leaving, I read some of the local restaurant reviews by (mostly) American visitors.  Everyone agreed that the food was amazing but the service was terrible.  This is a common complaint with American visitors to Budapest.  But I thought that the service was fine.  Of course our waitress didn’t give us kisses on our cheeks or tell us how brilliant we were, but she got everything right and didn’t scowl.  Americans need to just relax about this issue about service in Europe.  It’s not going to change, so just embrace it and enjoy the food.

For starters I had a warm radicchio salad with bacon and pine nuts.  It was incredible.  For my main course I had a homemade pasta with a variety of fresh seafood including prawns, lobster, clams, muscles, and octopus. G also had a homemade pasta with prosciutto and porcini mushrooms.  Our deserts were equally amazing.  She had white chocolate moose and I had a gigantic crème brûlée with fresh strawberries.  We each had a cappuccino.  Finally, to put the service issue to rest once and for all, as we waited to finish paying the bill, the server (who had noticed that we were speaking English, by the way) asked us, in English, if we would like some complimentary grappa or limoncello.  This is a courtesy that they extend to everyone as they wait to finish paying.  We both had limoncello and it was the perfectly sweet ending to a lovely night.

February

Posted on by
4

dscn6465

I had another lovely weekend in Szeged, as usual, and it wasn’t just because the Steelers won, though I did stay up until 4:30 before heading back to Budapest a few minutes later.  G and I tried to find Americanish things to cook for our little Super Bowl party, but without key ingredients like cilantro, hot sauce, torilla chips, jack cheese, avocdos, etc., it was a bit of a challenge.  We ended up ordering pizza around nine and making popcorn balls, the only other thing I could think of as I stood pouting in the long aisles of Tesco.  We did find American beer, though.  Even though I would never drink Budweiser in America, when I drank it on Sunday night I had that this-is-the-best-drink-ever-invented feeling.

February is goign to be a busy month around these parts.  This weekend I’m going to the theater and the Mangalica Pig Festival.  And further down the month there is snowboarding in Austria and hopefully a sidetrip to Belgrade at the end of February.  I find it’s best to keep busy during February, though it’s much easier here since the weather is pretty survivable right now.  Almost 50F.  Not bad considering my parents have snow higher than their mailbox in Akron.