December 12, 2010: Another cold weekend in Budapest

December 12, 2010: As you probably have figured out, the last few days have provided little to report in my blog. On Friday, I met Ric and Jack who had come to Budapest from Nyiregyhaza (a three hour train trip!) to do some last minute Christmas shopping. We met on Vaci utca after my school let out. By then they had done most of their shopping so we went to the Strudel House near St. Stephen's Basilica for strudel and cappuccino. The strudel maker was hard at work preparing more strudels. Very interesting to watch him at work first stretching the dough from a small ball into one enormous thin sheet of strudel dough into which he placed curd, sour cherries, plums, and all the other fillings that the Strudel House sells.

Strudel Maker - notice the thin pastry on which he's pouring the fillings

After rolling the dough into long cylindrical "tubes", he cut them into pieces that were about half a meter long (He even used a ruler to measure them), placed them on a flat tray and put them into the oven to bake. So far I've tried three flavors of strudel the three times I've been there: apricot, sour cherry, and plum. There are perhaps twenty flavors to pick from so it'll be a long time before I try any of these again since I always try new flavors, but all have met my expectations. Jack, who is a strudel connoisseur, told me how delicious the strudels with poppy seed fillings are -- he said you can't conceive of the taste until you've tried it. I guess I'll have to try that flavor next. Jack also told me the Hungarian myth regarding the popularity of poppy seed pastries in Hungary. Apparently hundreds of years ago, the emperor ordered someone to get a certain tree. It so happens that the tree's name in Hungarian is very similar to the word for the poppy plant in Hungarian, the only difference being a diacritical mark over one of the vowels in the two words. He ended up bringing a poppy plant instead because the diacritical mark was missing on the word of the tree he was supposed to bring to Hungary. The poppy plant was brought to Hungary and planted, starting the popularity of poppy seeds. Jack wasn't exactly sure about this, but it makes for an interesting story, one that shows the importance of the diacritical marks in the Hungarian language.


After the Strudel House, we roamed a bit more and since it was so cold and Jack and Ric's train wasn't going to leave for Nyiregyhaza for several hours, we decided to kill some time at my favorite restaurant where we had a drink. After that, it was off to Nyugati Train Station where I said goodbye to them. They are both going to the States for Christmas and Ric will have surgery on his hip which has kept him in agony for several months now so he won't return until February; and Jack will be going for good -- his school told him that "it seemed silly to return to Hungary in January to teach for only two weeks when the semester ends." They certainly didn't want to create the impression that they're pushing him out the door -- they would have loved to keep him for the entire school year -- but they thought it was a lot of money for him to pay for a round trip ticket for just two weeks of teaching. I think that Jack will take them up on their offer, so I won't be seeing him again until he and Deb visit LA on their way to Indonesia when they'll be visiting their daughter who is in the Peace Corps. Come to think of it, I won't be back in the States when they visit LA, so I'm not sure if I will see them again!

As for Saturday, it was a cold wintry day so I went to Tesco to buy some some things in preparation for Ruth's arrival. I spent the rest of the day preparing for my upcoming lessons. I've decided to transition from dictations to something a bit more challenging for the intermediate students. They've been doing extremely well in the dictations and they're ready for the next step. I plan to read them stories from Greek mythology which they will summarize in English for me. The story I plan to read is a long one and I've broken it into pieces ending each reading with a cliff hanger to build "excitement" in the upcoming lessons -- sort of like Shaherazade. We'll see how that goes.

As for today, I continued preparing for Ruth's arrival by blowing up a huge air mattress that I borrowed from a colleague. The air mattress is so big it hangs over the edge of my bed, but at least it'll be more comfortable to sleep on than the hard bed I currently use. Then, later on today, I'll be going out with a Hungarian friend to have some drinks. I haven't seen this friend for quite some time and it'll be good to catch up on things.

Later: Just returned from seeing my friend. We met in Ujpest Kozpont and from there walked to a bar that was nearby. The bar seemed very cozy and we spent our time catching up on what each of us is doing.

As you can see, many of the customers smoked, so by the time we left the bar three hours later, I smelled like an ashtray. That's one thing about Hungary I'll be glad to see change -- the smoking in restaurants. 

Our conversation covered quite a variety of topics. I learned that Fidesz has made another change that will be effective in January and that is in the tax rate that people will be assessed. My friend told me that it will be reduced from the current 45% plus to 16%. Apparently Slovakia reduced their tax rate some time ago and at that time Hungary was far more prosperous than Slovakia but with the tax drop, Slovakia has bypassed Hungary in prosperity. The reason for the improvement is that before the tax rate drop, there were many people who worked "in the black" meaning they worked without reporting their income or jobs to the government thus giving the government no taxes for this unclaimed work. When the tax rate was reduced the people felt that 16% was a reasonable tax rate to pay and claimed all income legally on their annual tax statements. The result was that the government took in more money than when they taxed only people who legally worked at the rate of 45% plus. Right now there are a lot of Hungarian workers who work "in the black". We'll see how this goes once the rate is dropped.


My friend and I also discussed the "gypsy problem." I prefer to think of this as a "gypsy challenge" but I've heard the other term spoken so much that I refer to it that way. As you may have heard in the news, Romania and Hungary have large gypsy populations. The upbringing of the gypsies is very different than the upbringing of non gypsies. I've heard it said that gypsies don't believe that they need to work since the government gives all unemployed people financial compensation. Also, gypsies are given even more money so long as their children are students until the age of 18. What this means is that gypsy parents procreate in order to have more children going to school so they can collect this stipend. And, the gypsy parents are adamant that their children attend school since the stipend stops if their children are absent. My friends also say that some of these gypsy students show promise academically, but when they reach the age of 18 when the money stops coming in, the parents won't allow their children attend school anymore.


I've also seen gypsies profiled (They are darker in complexion than other Europeans making some believe that gypsies originally came from the Indian peninsula so they are easy to spot) and discriminated against. It really is a dilemma that needs to be addressed, and the problem seems to have the same issues as the racial tensions that we experience in the US. At the Town Hall that I attended at the US embassy last week, the Ambassador announced that there would be a conference in mid December to discuss the gypsy issue, so it appears that the issues are not being swept under the carpet -- at least by the US.


My friend and I also discussed the financial situation in Hungary. He described exactly what I've noticed on my own in Hungary regarding the low pay of teachers and others but in far more dramatic terms. He said that the salary of a typical teacher is around $400. From that, around $300 is spent on rent and $40 goes to heating during the cold months. Then there are taxes that must be paid (~$180) not to mention phone, electricity, water, and food! Doing the math, you can see that no teacher can live on the salary of only one job. Many have to take on two full time jobs just to keep up with daily bills. Further, there's nothing left over to pay for clothes, eating out, or doing anything "on the town". I really do feel for my colleagues.

My friend also compared life under the communist regime with life since 1989 when Hungary became free from Russia. He said that the amount of disposable income under communist rule is much the same as the disposable income Hungarians earn now. The only difference is that under communist rule, there were fewer choices of things to buy. Now, there are more choices to make but the amount of money available to spend is the same, meaning that if one buys a new shirt, say, a consumer can buy only the one shirt but he/she has more choices as to what that shirt looks like. With the amount of money available for spending, the consumer is still trapped with limited funds to spend.

Our other discussions were centered on our teaching jobs, our aspirations for the future, and our families. It was great to see him after such a long absence.