Easter Eggs 2012

Zwack Pálinka Distillery and Museum

Inside Kecskemét's Town Hall

Although we've been living in Kecskemét for nearly three years, Jon and I had never actually been inside the town hall. It's a big lovely building in the city center with bells that play songs every hour. Today, we finally took a peak inside the town hall to see the room where we'll be getting married this summer.

March 15th in Kecskemét

March 15th is an important national holiday in Hungary commemorating the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Every year the city of Kecskemét selects a different school to perform in front of town hall for the whole city. This year it was Mátyás Király Elementary, the school where Jon and I teach.

town hall


6th and 7th grade students from Mátyás Király Elementary

The second part of the ceremony is the presentation of wreaths to the statue of Lajos Kossuth, an important leader during the revolution.

statue of Lajos Kossuth


"Hussars" standing at attention during the presentation of wreaths

The Néni Experience: Winter Coats

The Hungarian word "néni" (sounds like "nay-nee") basically means "aunt." In school, the first graders call me "Franny néni" because in elementary school it is typical to address your teaches with "aunt" and "uncle" instead of "mister" or "miss." Hungarian is a bit more formal than English, so terminology is important. For children, almost every adult is a néni or a bácsi (sounds like bah-chee). Once when Jon was taking trash out to the dumpster, a little girl asked her mother, "What is the worker bácsi doing?"

Essentially, one uses the term néni to address or refer to a woman who is older than you.

If I were to write a slang dictionary (perhaps entitled "American Hunglish"?) which included the many misuses of the language us Americans in Hungary use, the term néni would be a special entry:

néni
1) Noun. An older Hungarian woman who does not speak English.
Example: "I had a conversation with a nice néni at the bus stop this morning."

To further Englisize this term, one can add on an English descriptor in front of the word to create a truly Hunglish nickname. For example, Jon and I used to get butter from the "dairy néni" in Szeged, we buy our chickens from the "poultry nénis" on the other side of town, etc.

to be néni-ed
2) Verb, past tense. Having been on the receiving end of (generally spontaneous) extremely overbearing hospitality by a Hungarian woman.
Example: "I totally got néni-ed."

You might have been néni-ed if:
- You were just going to join her for tea, but two hours later your Hungarian hostess has fed you far more than you want, then acted truly offended that you don't eat two pieces of cake, and continuously comments about how skinny (in a bad way) you look.
- You bring a néni some homemade jam (probably to thank her for all the food she fed you last time), she invites you inside, and two hours later you leave with at least one grocery bag full of homemade goodies and preserves.
- For weeks, every time the nice old woman who lives downstairs saw you, she would go on and on about how cold you must be because your coat just isn't warm enough. "It's so thin! You must be freezing!" she said, until finally one day, despite your assurances that you are warm enough, she just hands you a fur coat, and tells you if it fits, it's yours.

I totally got néni-ed.

Now, for those of you readers who don't live in Hungary, you may think this is just one crazy néni, but I am not the only American who has experienced this particular phenomenon. Shortly after this happened, I wrote my dear friend Briggi, who used to teach here and had TWO separate coat néni experiences. I asked her to write about them:

I had 2 néni jacket experiences. The first was with Kati upstairs, to whom I was delivering some cookies. She had been thrift shopping and bought a jacket that did not fit well, so she made me try it on and gave it to me.

The other happened on a Sunday evening, Tara and Jamie had left about an hour before and I was watching BBC and working on altering a dress for Hannah, when someone knocked on the door. Confused, I thought it was Jamie or Tara returning to say they had missed their bus. Instead it was a néni. I had met this néni once before, when we drove to a concert, but other than a polite "Jó Napot," ("Good Day") I generally did not say much to her. So there she was, a relative stranger beckoning to me like some geriatric siren calling, ''Gyere ide drágám'' ("Come here, darling!"). So I did what any sensible person would do, locked my door and followed her upstairs. She pointed to her door and then herself and said, "Mária." Then pointed to me and said, "Briggike" (a Hunglicized diminutive of Briggi). After several repetitions we went into her flat. It was back when Russia had turned off the gas (Jan 2009), so we passed through her living room...saying that it was cold, and into her bedroom. There she pushed me onto her bed to sit, handed me her remote control motioning for me to change the channel and disappeared into the kitchen. She was gone long enough that I flipped on the BBC (in reality probably 5 minutes). She came back with cakes and hot cocoa, looked at the BBC, switched it off and put on Hungarian folk songs. Some of which she sang along with. After a half an hour I was beginning to desperately search my lexicon for some excuse to leave, she abruptly turned off the music and said time to go. As I stood and thanked her for her hospitality, she made me wait. She ran to a closet, grabbed a jacket, zipped me into it, tied the waist draw string and sent me back downstairs.

Thanks, Briggi for sharing! If I do write that fake dictionary, I'll definitely have you help me with the entries.

Hungary is a strange and magical place, isn't it?

Christmas e-card 2011

Snow in Kecskemét