This picture doesn’t do it proper justice, but the water is truly like cobalt. It is seriously beautiful here. This is just a preview, but it’s wonderful and peaceful.
Cobalt
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Monthly Archives: May 2009
The Magyar Ocean
It seems too early to be making weekplan plans already, but alas the weekend starts tomorrow. I’m going to be in Balatonfüred, which is a tiny little resort on the shore of Lake Balaton (Hungary’s ocean), and the location of a Central European oil conference. I’m not going for the conference, really, but rather as an opportunity to have a nice lake holiday, and maybe serve as an emergency conference errand or editing gal. We’ll see.
Balatonfüred is known for its pier, its proximity to wine country, and for attracting fishermen and sailors. There are mineral springs and two marinas and lots of nice little quaint restaurants overlooking the river. In addition, I’m staying at a swanky, new hotel with a gorgeous wellness center. Most of all, before the weekend crowd from the city comes rushing in on Friday night, I’m looking forward to sitting by a big bit of water, reading, letting the sun dim my eyelids–something I haven’t done since last July in Hilton Head, SC. I miss big water when I’m landbound. So I can’t wait to get to Balaton, the magyar ocean.
As a footnote, I should mention that if you’re from NE Ohio, and you’re interested in trying Hungarian-style food, there is Balaton Restaurant at 13133 Shaker Sq (216) 921-9691. It’s been reviewed fairly widely and always seems to get a lot of praise as being authentic Hungarian. I think I might try it this summer and see how it stacks up to the real thing.
Boldog Névnapot Györgyi
Today is Györgyi’s name day. Name days are pretty big deals here in Hungary, as in the rest of Europe and Latin America. They rival birthday importance, and usually more people know it’s your name day than your birthday because a name is on every day on almost every calendar. So you always know whom to celebrate. The tradition originated with the celebration of Catholic saints. On some days the orthodox tradition still exists where specific saint’s feast days are celebrated, but mostly it’s just for individuals.
I thought I would take this opportunity to publicly celebrate Györgyi, whose name probably most westerners cannot pronounce. DYUUR-dyee. That’s how the phonetic book suggests saying it, but it’s not really correct either. But since it’s the Hungarian feminine form of Gyorgy, which in English is George of course, most Americans just call her Georgie. Though if she showed up to Ellis Island a century ago, her name probably would have been changed to Georgia.
Regardless of spellings and pronunciations, to many people, naming is such an important artifact of identity. It certainly applies in this case. Originally Greek, from the name Γεωργιος (Georgios), which itself was a derivation from the word γεωργος (georgos) meaning “farmer, earthworker”, which again was another derivation from the elements γη (ge) “earth” and εργον (ergon) “work”.
Whether her mother knew it or not, this name is absolutely fitting to Györgyi. Probably one of the most kind, generous people I know, she is also a relentlessly and tirelessly hard worker. I’ve always been drawn to people and things that seem close to earth. Not like in the braiding the hair of moss trees kind of way, but in people who seem tuned into things that, in this often hard and cynical word, are so easy to forget—like kindness, love, honesty and humor. I’ve been very fortunate to know good and true people in my life, and I honestly wink at the stars for my fortune this year in meeting, by far, the best.
Boldog Névnapot Györgyi!
Labor Day
Somehow Zsolt and Andi managed to get the leather couch from the basement of the house to the grass
So Friday was Labor Day here, which means that basically no one had to go to work and most shops were closed. It was a perfect evening for a small shindig, so we headed over to Zsolt & Szilvi’s place for a little garden party.
Even though there was a little chill in the air, it was the firs outside party of the year, which always puts me in a good mood. Being the only non-native speaker in the group, after about four hours I stopped concentrating on words and just enjoyed the evening and ambiance. Mr. (self-proclaimed virtual zombie) & Mrs. Zsolt live in a really nice house on the outskirts of town. It used to be a weekend house for the city’s wealthy elite, before getting re-appropriated during the communist days. Zsolt gave us a nice tour and showed us a closet that used to be the servant’s room, complete with a hole in the ceiling for a ringing attendant bell.
I made cheeseburgers, bacon-wrapped stuffed mushrooms, and a orzo summer salad. Anita made a yummy greek salad, and Brigi made some delicious flourless brownie-cookies (but it was too dark to get a picture of those, and they were eaten too quickly anyway!).
Barnabás had a fairly traumatic evening with the cat and ultimately ended up hanging around people waiting for food to fall on the floor. And as usual, he didn’t want for attention.
The late afternoon extended into the evening and we sat around chatting and laughing and zolt toasted to Marci who had his birthday. It was a nice, relaxing evening, and it makes me really look forward to going home to America and hanging out on my parent’s patio and just enjoying a slow evening with good people and nice conversation. Probably conversation is one of the things I miss the most about home. I really have to hit the Hungarian books harder.
Even though I couldn’t understand about half of what everyone was saying (or maybe a little more), I still had a really nice time. Before the cab arrived to take us back, there was an impromptu dance party. Hungarians know how to have fun, that’s for sure, but for everyone’s sake, let’s just say that it’s their greatest fortune that my camera had run out of batteries by then.
