Chapter 13
Freshman
It is very useful that school-years begin in September, when the weather is fine and there is a possibility for the students to do something different from their compulsory occupation. Beginning is always hard. But I have never met such difficulties anywhere else, as when I entered university.
Everything was new and unknown. The behaviour pattern of a secondary school pupil and that of a student of a university is extremely different. A pupil is considered a child, he has his activity regulated by adults. A student is an adult in every respect.
The place, where I began my study has been quite different from that of today. For about 60 years after its creation the Technical University had not changed much. It had consisted only of the main building with a central block and two wings, its main entrance facing the Danube, and on the opposite side the passage to the library, as well as some utility buildings as boiler house, laboratories, all in the same secession style. In the late fifties it has been supplemented by three 4-story brick buildings connected to each other by bridges of sighs on the first floor. These buildings have been situated apart from the original, and it might have expressed also a distance in style. The floors of these buildings have been made of bricks laid on end. Their design has been terrible: a long building with low ceilings and long corridors along in the middle with closed doors on both sides. Without artificial light it has got its illumination only at the two ends of the corridor.
The three buildings have been lain parallel to the river. The latest, closest to the river, has been improved a little with the rooms on one side omitted to make the corridor broader and open to natural light, and its flooring lain by artificial marble slabs. At the time, when I began my study there, it was all. Today the university resembles the Labyrinth of Minos, I can hardly find my way, when I have something to do there.
We took our lunch in the university canteen situated apart about half a mile from the nearest point of the complex. It was part of one of the dormitory buildings.
I have mentioned that it had been a handicap when you came from a comprehensive school. But in a semester we could close up on the students with technical education, as our way of thinking have been better to adapt ourselves. I can tell it also about myself. When I prepared my first drawings, there was a great gap between contents and execution. The latter has always been the reason when they were rejected and I had to repeat them. But the contents have always been right. To the end of the first semester I was ready to do what has been expected from me.
There were terrible details in many subjects that were hard to understand. For example, in mathematics all of us have been lost in the first weeks, but after some practice we could understand the essence. There were subjects, where the name has been known, but the content quite strange. Such has been mathematics, too. There were others, whose name was a riddle, but as soon as we met the essence, it became familiar to us. And there were subjects, where we studied once more the same, as in the 4th grade of the secondary school. And there were subjects, which have been unfamiliar both in name and contents.
My favourite has been descriptive geometry. We have learned the same as in our former school, but to prepare the drawings in a precise way, it was completely new.
In our year there were four hundred students. This vast number of young people have been divided into 14 study-groups. In that way on lectures the whole year has been present in a big auditorium, but on practise lessons everything happened as in a secondary school class.
Every study-group had an assistant professor as form-master. The man who took our group into his hands was more than fifty, but looked less than forty. He has been a bachelor and lived with his sister. He has been very happy to have got a purely male circle, as he wanted to introduce us into his hobby of hiking. Soon he almost lost his enthusiasm, as during the first month our circle has been supplemented by a girl. Until her arrival the master has been in his element, he even used dirty words. As she arrived it came to an end, he was often ill-humoured. Anyway, she could not destroy our relation fully, as during week-ends we went on excursions and she has never been present on them.
He has also been our lecturer for practice in descriptive geometry. The department dealing with this subject had had a big tradition of being eccentric. It originated when every department was a state within a state, the professors being accepted omnipotent on their fields. Before my student time the descriptive geometry department had been under a certain professor Czigany, his name meant Gipsy. He had spread gossips that nobody can know his subject at an excellent level, except God. He knew it at a level of good. His son-in law Strommer – his assistant – he considered to know it at average. It means, a student could get a maximum score of satisfactory mark.
When I entered university, our geometry professor was that man Strommer. He has not been less eccentric than his father-in-law. Once he wanted to show us three parallel straight lines. He took rods into both hands and erected them perpendicularly. He said: "There are two straight parallel lines here. I am the third one." There was a murmur and laughter. "What", he said," do you not consider me straight enough?" He has had a figure so bent, that he almost looked humpy. Well, I think, he knew his subject at excellent by that time.
His three main helpers have been very special men, all of them very good in their field. Our master and another assistant have prepared the textbook for us. The third one has specialized to take on him the traditional eccentricity. He looked like Leo Tolstoy, long white hair and bushy beard. His nickname among us has been Christ. He has been famous for witty sayings.
One time he explained something for the group. After finishing he asked: "Does anyone have questions?" A student stood up and asked: "How to draw a circle through two given points?" Christ did not answer, after a pause he asked: "Does anyone have clever questions?"
Another time he finished a topic and, being at the end of a lesson's 50-minute period, he said: "Now we make a break, you can take your sandwiches, or the opposite."
Our form-master has taken us with him first to the hills near the capital on the south-western side. It was a good walk of about 8 miles, but we could complete it in a Sunday morning. At the end of the route we have dissolved and, as it was near to one of the two villages, where our suburban train stopped, I was heading for the train.
As I reached the first house of the village, from an open window a girl addressed me. I greeted her also as I recognized her. She was one of the schoolgirls familiar to me only by seeing them every day on the suburban train on route to school. For about a year I had not seen her.
I had always considered Agnes the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood. During that year she had become even beautiful. We have spent some minutes chatting. I have been a little surprised by her directness as I had never been treated by her so closely. She had lived there with her mother in a very little flat.
Following this first encounter I have visited her many times, using mainly my bicycle. To that time I became a good rider, until the cold weather drew near, it has been my means to go to the university. This girl A. has remained a good friend of mine for years. Being a fair guy I did not want to cause gossips, so I have not courted her, but to go to dance with her, or to take her to the cinema has been a possibility. Later, when I thought of taking a closer look at her, although, I have not been in love with her, it was too late. She became acquainted with an impossible young man, who was punished with a female characteristic, namely, instead of love he felt a desire to own her. Well, I know nothing about their further life, but such girls, as she was, seldom allow themselves being caged.
Until the cold weather arrived that year my study-group had some more excursions together and, I dare say, the man has achieved his goal. Our group remained together for all the five years, until we all got our diplomas.
That master of ours can be considered as a starter on an engine. If the tank is filled well with fuel, it is enough to start it and it will run, till the fuel runs out. It is worth to recount some of our bigger excursions. But first let me make a sketch of the conditions for domestic tourism that time.
Not unlike all over the world, people in our country discovered nature and necessity for walks, when they began to dispose of some leisure time. In the '20s and '30s tourism was expanding and as not everyone had automobiles, tourism meant generally riding a bus or a train and walking a lot. For these hiking tourists it soon became uncomfortable to arrive to a hilltop or a cave or a spring to put up their tents, taking water from far away and prepare their meal. They formed societies and with small contributions built cabins on the frequented places. Such cabins still existed when I began to rove the hills, and it was a custom to use the collected firewood and water, and before leaving to collect a quantity of them for later visitors and to dispose of your own garbage. On the most frequently visited places these cabins have been developed into so-called tourist homes with accommodation, as well as restaurants.
The tourist societies had offices in the capital or the bigger towns, where rooms could be reserved in advance. After the war the same system has worked, only the responsibility to manage these tourist homes has been given to a state enterprise. This system survived many hard decades, but consumer society has killed it. The number of guests – it has been managed as a hotel network – decreased and prices had to go up. At the end of the socialist era, with the privatization of the units, its fate has been decided. At present there are no tourist homes, hotels or anything. And I have an image about future: with a lot of people not to be able to afford luxurious places, the hiking tourism has its opportunity to start from the ashes on other places of the country.
Well, in our time it was highly possible to reserve accommodation for the dozen boys and girls, and under the load of good rucksacks to discover our country. Generally we have chosen school holidays in the autumn and spring. Once or twice there was a skiing program, too. I have always been a passive member of the group accepting programs organized by more agile people. But I could enjoy myself and have never been spoiling others' amusement. It is worth making a review of the group in my study-group. My good pal in the group has been Louis, but he has been our senior by 2 years and he has always had his own arrangement with girls. He has only taken part in trips once or twice. We have been preparing for the exams during some semesters together and his somewhat slower wit enabled me to learn subjects twice as well as it was needed.
L. has been forced to get his partners outside the university. To prove it here is an anecdote.
"How to classify girls for their beauty?"
"There are angels from heaven, then others very beautiful, then those who are beautiful, then the pretty ones, then there are kind ones. They are followed by plain girls, then come the ugly girls. There remained the very ugly and at last come girls from the Technical University."
I have not had any desire, either, to get a partner from among them, however, the above joke was rather overstated. The girl who came later to our circle would go into the category of plain ones. A really ugly girl I remember only one. Her circle called her a mine monster. I suppose she has become a good engineer.
Another guy I had good relation with, has been Kalman. He was an extremely good fellow and he had a close friend from their former school. It was Gabriel, by his surname his father must have been a Greek. He has been a true heavy-weight wrestler and he did it all the years I knew him. These two boys have been inseparable all over our university years. I liked both very much.
I have mentioned that our year in the first semester consisted of about 400 students. Never before had been so many students accepted for one year at any faculty. Besides, even if it had been nearly that number, during the five years it had generally decreased to less than 100. Our bunch has been an exception: it has numbered the same 400 students after the five years we spent there. I guess, the reason of that exceptional phenomenon was that a great many students, who had taken part in the 1956 autumn activities and had been banned to go on their study, could join us by a state lift of their ban.
For the great number our lectures have always been kept in the biggest auditoriums in the Central Block of the university. It was very advantageous as these big rooms have been well equipped. Also, the professors liked it better to come there. Beside the geometry professor we have had others worth mentioning. Mathematics in the first semester has been lectured by three different people. The professor having been there for many years has left us for his former chair in an East-German town. He has been with us two months and during that time he could wake up our interests for the object. One time, facing a special task to be solved by integral calculation, he told us how he first solved that problem in 1944 as a prisoner of the SS in Germany sitting in a corner room on the 6th floor of a house. The room has been open on one side by a cannon shot. The problem has involved the trajectory of that shot. Later I have been told he was a prisoner for not collaborating with the German army in some mathematical problem solving.
His two successors have followed him in a back-to-back way and one of them has been a famous drinker. A pub near to the university has been referred to as his department. He has been best in periods when he has been half drunken. There was an example about border values of an electric field between the two plates of a condenser. He has proven us by calculations that the problem would not be solved by cutting off the border of the plates. Alas, there would be a new border value again.
We have had a subject called "general machine building principles". It has been lectured to us by one of the most likable professors of the university. He used his own textbook that has been a new edition of the original one. And that original had been compiled by a professor Pattantyus – his name means gunner – who would lend his name – posthumously – to the 14-volume handbook for mechanical engineers. When I began my career as a designer I could use its first 4 volumes published.
There is a classic anecdote about him.
One night in the '30s a policeman is walking along the high fence of the university during his watch. The gates are locked. Suddenly a dark figure is climbing over the fence. He grabs him:
"What are you doing here?"
"I was sitting for my examination with Professor Pattantyus”, says the student.
"You want to cheat me. It is half past eleven.”
"Professor P. often examines us till morning.”
The policeman lets the student go, but he has some doubts. In a short time there comes another man over the fence. The same dialogue takes place and the policemen lets him go, too.
Very soon a third figure is coming. The policeman looses his temper and hits him on the head as he lands. He shouts:
"Do not try to tell me that you were with Professor P., too!”
"No”, says the man, "I do not tell you that. I am Professor P.”
Professor Vargha, our lecturer in that subject did his best to make us interested in it, but he did not succeed. The main reason might have been that, what he wanted us to learn, had been obsolete for at least 30 years. Two years later this subject has been cancelled.
In my specific situation his subject has had one important detail: the indicator diagram of steam engines. Two years later at my first – and last – encounter with steam river-boats I will have remembered well what he has helped us to understand.
The end of my first semester has come nearer. I have handed in my drawings – sometimes repeated until I found the right solution: I have paid a small sum to fellow students for every fault detected on the finished work, after that the assistants could not find any, except one left there by will to enable them to find something wrong, it could have been frustrating for them to find nothing wrong in a student’s drawing – and have written my test papers. It has been time to prepare for the examinations. In that first semester I have faced 10 exams.
Shuttling to the university and back by the same suburban train I have had my possibility to consult with older students. I have learned that it was advisable to make my time-table of exams in a way, that 2 to 3 of them be finished before the beginning of the exam break. It would look hard to prepare for exams in some subjects simultaneously with other activities, but in fact those preliminary exams were much easier to do than normal ones. I have taken this advice seriously.
Soon after the traditional "ball for the freshmen”, where other girls than those from the university also could be found, I began to memorize rules and solve examples to prepare for the pre-exams. I have had a good bet: these 3 were my best results ever.
The normal period for exams has lasted to the middle of February and, as my time-table was closed in the middle of January, I have had one month for recreation.
By my results I have earned the respect of both my sister and my friend Z. The latter had not bet on me to finish the first semester with a high score.
In the second semester even the new subjects have caused less concern than we had experienced in the first one. We had exactly two subjects quite new. One of them was the detailed study of different machinery elements built in at the same form and condition into different kinds of equipments, e.g. screws, shafts, bearings, gears, etc. We were given tasks in the first semester to make drawings about them. But to draw them in a way when we have learned everything about them was much easier as they became familiar to us as if ourselves had manufactured them. In connection with this subject we went once a week into the workshop of the university to make certain pieces by our own hands. Filing a cube has been the first task and it has earned me the respect of students having come from technical schools that my work has been considered best of all.
This subject called "elements of machinery design” has been accompanying us through four semesters.