International Reflections

Time for Bon Voyage

Today--Friday--is departure day.  Alhough initially I was not pleased with the Rochester-Chicago-Brussels-Budapest itinerary, in light of hurricane Irene coming up the east coast this weekend, I think the cosmic muses must have been watching over me.  The Rochester-Chicago plane at 3 pm is still scheduled to depart, and I presume the 5:30 pm plane to Brussels will be using the great circle routes over Greenland, etc.  Of course, this is easy for me to say sitting at my desk before I pack my laptop in my carry-on.  Anyway...the destination sometime Saturday afternoon is the lovely city of Veszpre'm (accent mark over the "e")--an ancient university town built on several hills, population today about 63,000Veszprem .

  Here's a brief look at my destination and the statues of King  Stephen, founder of Hungary, and his wife Queen Gisela.         --Monica Weis SSJ  

King Istvan and Queen Gisela

"How I spent my summer vacation" or "Struggles with a new language"

Teachers are notorious for asking students to write about their summer vacation, but that dull topic usually creates writer's block.  I have been experiencing a new variation of this: speaker's block.  For the last six weeks, every morning after breakfast, I have been listening to a CD on Conversational Hungarian, trying to learning how this difficult language operates (not even part of the Indo-European family!).  I am up to Unit 16 and applaud the pedagogical approach and even know some phrases--"Mit scinal ma?" [What are you doing today?] and its response "Vasarolok" [I am going shopping].  Nevertheless, some days I have to listen to the lesson twice because my tongue--or maybe it's my mind-- just can't get around some of the "sz" and "sc" sounds.  And then there are accent marks {missing in the phrases above) that change the vowel sound!  But I am loving this challenge and having fun startling colleagues with a new sentence almost every day.  I suspect they will be glad when I am finally on the airplane next week, and they can relax into hearing only English.

And so the adventure is about to begin.  Last evening a group of us who have been to Hungary gathered for dinner at Scott and Marianne's home--and ate and drank what else?  Hungarian food and wine.  You can see most of the happy folks here.  All for now.  --Monica Weis SSJ

A quick history of an ancient area

As part of my reading this summer, I am trying to digest  Paul Lendvai's 500+ page The Hungarians--certainly more detail than I will need to have at my fingertips, but worthwhile reading nevertheless.  I discovered that the Carpathian Basin has been populated for several thousand years BCE: invaders from the east and west were attracted to the good soil, minerals, and rivers. There is archaeological evidence of Neanderthals, Celts, Romans, Huns, Goths, Germans, Magyars, Turks,--all before the first millennium.  After the Great Migrations various clans and chieftains were finally consolidated by King Stephen (St. Stephen) in 1000 CE--and thus began the nation of Hungary which has been invaded, conquered and reconquered, enlarged, annexed, and reapportioned multiple times. The Ottoman Turks had their turn in the 1500s, the Habsburgs in the 1700s [how come in high school social studies, we learned to spell this dynasty as Hapsburgs??] Even in the 20th century, the two World Wars reconfigured the boundaries of Hungary and determined who was in charge.  Sadly, the people have suffered from the Nazis and Stalin regimes, but now in the last 25+ years are reveling in their new liberties.  It will be a joy to be part of their 'standing tall and breathing freely.'  Meanwhile I am struggling to learn some Hungarian phrases.  More about this language in my next post. --Monica Weis SSJ