Chapter 9
Our German Guests
In the first days of August our guests arrived. They were to arrive at the airport early in the afternoon, but their airplane had not been in a good shape, and the technical crew had not let it start until in order.
My wife went to her mother and the food for dinner has been prepared. In a basket my wife took it home.
The several hours of waiting I spent by rambling around the airport. The open terrace with a fine view over the facilities has been my base, and from anywhere I returned there regularly. There was no fashion of terrorist acts that days, fortunately, and in our country it would only become fashionable much later. To sit in the restaurant has not been for my pocket.
On the terrace a woman addressed me for some information. She could have got it anywhere, it must have been an attempt to get into contact with me. She was pretty and well-dressed, but my senior at least ten years. She was expecting her husband back from the West, but his plane was also in delay. At last my guests arrived before her man.
Our friends have arrived all right. They left their children home and were expecting a fine holiday. Elfie had been here in our country many years before in a youth hostel with her fellow pupils. Her memories were all favourable. About H.’s visit I have given my tale.
We arrived home by taxi rather late. My wife was anxious, but she was waiting patiently. Of the dinner almost nothing became but a small picking, as they were not accustomed to the generosity of our airlines. Their one and the Soviets were giving always a small snack we called "rubber chicken” and a glass of coloured water. Our airlines have never gone over completely to the socialist-type service, they offered always wine and even brandy, after coffee in French style.
Our guests spent the night well – what cannot be said about us – and they were full of energy to see the city. Their first day was tiring for both them and us. For the evening we had arranged dance for them, but they would not go for it. Instead, we sat in the night bar of Hotel Gellert and were chatting until late, sipping the same drink all the time. We agreed with them to go for our lakeside holiday as soon as possible, and spend the remaining days in the capital after that.
The next evening we have been guests with my sister-in-law and his husband. They had taken their apartment two years ago, and my wife had moved into their former room. E. had been pregnant that time and at the visit of our guests their daughter, Erika, was more than a year old.
It has not been an easy evening for me. Neither E., nor her husband, Lesley, spoke German, I had to translate all. But L. had been studying that language and he understood – or rather misunderstood – lot. Misunderstanding German is easy. It has certain verbs that completely change their meaning by putting a verbal prefix in front of them. E.g. "auf” means up, "hoeren” to hear, but "aufhoeren” to stop doing. Also "auf” put in front of "machen” or make, would mean to open.
Well, H. wanted to make a joke and was reminding me of my trip to the GDR three years before. L. thought it was about my misdeeds in pursuing a lot of girls. When I began to explain it, not one of them believed me, E. was even saying:
"Do not apologize. You were independent and such adventures make a man higher in my estimate.” Well, she must have had L. in an extremely high estimate for his past and future.
But what, if I had not been committing them. And it is my firm conviction, that evening my wife started to go on the road that led to her unlimited jealousy that is keeping her in its gripe today.
We have got the keys of the summer home where we were to spend our first week. We boarded the train with a high expectation the next morning, but the weather decided otherwise.
For two days we could enjoy ourselves. There was a rather big sitting room in the house and two small sleeping chambers beside the bathroom and the kitchen. For cleansing, water had to be boiled on the stove. The garden was small and the house has actually been half of a twins-cottage. But then the weather went foul. In a week we had to spend almost five days within, as it has been rainy with a strong north-western wind.
On the lake this wind is as customary as bora in Italy or mistral in France. It comes several times in a year, the week following the middle of August being one of them. That year it came for our honour one week earlier.
In breaks of the rain we made long excursions both by train and boat. By the latter we visited the peninsula Tihany with its famous abbey and cathedral. The first document, a decree of a king, written in our national language, instead of the official Latin, can be seen there, it is the foundation letter of the abbey itself. Before the war, the side wall of the cathedral was famous for the echo. Alas, renovation of the wall eliminated this phenomenon. It is said to have been retelling whole sentences.
There was something else to shake off boredom: it was the last days of Football World Championship in Britain. H. has always been a great fan, he would go to the camping site nearby and sit in the military tent housing guests and a TV-set, "looking into the tube” and backing his compatriots’ team.
The stormy weather has not been over yet, when we moved to aunt E.’s house in the village of my childhood. My role as a translator has gone on. Dislike in my aunt for Germans has decreased a little, especially she liked E. They could even understand each other without my help.
We have spent a week there in her house and there was a week-end during that time. The week-end saw the arrival of the couple being in agreement with aunt E. The room where E. and H. were sleeping – and we, two years before and since – was needed. As there were two beds in the other room and we used only one, the obvious solution would have been for E. and H. to sleep in the other bed together. But H. refused, took out the inflatable mattress from the bag and slept on it. In every few hours he had to get up and inflate the cushion under his feet as it leaked.
From that village we crossed the lake by boat, and ascended the hill of Badacsony. Our friends have been fascinated by the sight of the other shore with its volcanoes from our place. Being up on the hill they had their greatest experience in their life that far.
Our village seen from the boat or the other side is two gentle uniform hills. But, especially in the afternoon, getting the sunlight on them, the right-side hill has a "vest” on it. It is the loess precipice with the small caves for my childhood adventures. The southern shore is quite flat beside them.
We have walked along the ridge of the hill to the eastern edge and, standing above the closed quarry, we could see as far as the peninsula with the abbey 18 miles away. The air has been swept clean by the storm, the sight was as sharp as if it had been two steps away.
After the storm we had some fine days and took advantage of them. The rowing boats of the lake with their traditional form have caught their attention. These boats took the true form of a life-boat for sea-going vessels, lakeshore people called them nutshell boats. Being made of quality wood they could be used for many decades. We took the guests rowing in a boat of four, and it has really been a good experience.
Our friends had seen many places before and had tested the food of numerous people. I think, beside their own traditional dishes, they like most our national meals. There are some, that could not have been developed without our history, our country to have been a multinational country for a thousand years. Even the names of them refer to places, towns or whole countries belonging this day to states formed after World War I. Take e.g. stuffed cabbage of Kolozsvar (today Cluj Napoca in Transylvania). It mixes the characteristic German sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) with Hungarian meat balls (dumplings) and a Serb-style stew with a lot of onions and red pepper. It is not only a meal, it is a risk for your health. But, when taken with bread and in a quantity fit for your organism, it is a dish of the gods.
There is another characteristic dish for the old country, goulash. The word itself means cowboy. Our cowboys on the great plain sitting on their horses in the traditional long, wide-legged white trousers, unbuttoned vests and wide-sleeved white shirts, with the cocked black hats on their heads, they had been preparing this meal in open stew-pots on open fires. It is a stew of beef, cut into small pieces and roasted down in fat with onions, before covered by red pepper and thinned by water under it. Generally it is eaten as a soup with noodles in it. But you can pour less water, and then it is eaten with dried noodles, prepared in a way as rice.
Fish is the most important raw material for meals on the lakeside. The fish-soup in our national way is the best meal of the world. There are three kinds of fish in it: small fish as bleak (very thorny), fine fish as perch (without any thorns) and fat fish as carp or cat-fish. The small ones are boiled in water with onions, until they fall apart. Then fish-meat and the taste of onion is pressed through a mesh, together with the fluid. It is the most important item, pressed meat and onion taste is put back into it. When it is boiling once more, the fat fish with the necessary salt is put in. Heated to boil once more, the soup receives the fine fish. Boiled third time, red pepper is thrown on the surface. It would be solved by the fat floating above. This soup is proper with hot red pepper. You need to take it with bread and, according to the saying: "If you drink water after a fish-meal instead of dry white wine, the fish will think it has been eaten by a dog.”, you have other obligations to finish your dinner.
There are other fine dishes with us, but I do not want to make this story a recipe-book.
All in all, our German friends liked to take our national meals. Alas, waiters began to be spoiled by the growing number of tourists. One day in a restaurant we were served spoiled beer and even got near to beating, when we argued. Another day a lot of old, spoiled beer has been put on our table, although we wanted to order wine.
Having spent two weeks on the lake we returned to the capital. The last days of their holiday our guests enjoyed not less.
I have taken H. to my working place, in the meantime the girls went shopping. My colleagues received him cordially, and our "coffee-angel” Magdalene prepared him a real coffee. Then I did not know too much about coffee, only what an ordinary man would know. But later in Ethiopia I would learn all I can. There and then H. was astonished to find it was coffee. At his first sip he thought it was some poison. My colleague with a relative in the GDR said:
"Well, it is not ,Schwarzes Wasser’ (black water).”
He liked the yard very much. I think, he has learned more about our shipbuilding and repair, than in the three weeks three years before. Our visit in the repair yard was a Friday. The next day would be our first Saturday off ever. Since that day for some years we had every second Saturday as a day off. Later it became extended to every Saturday.
Following some sentimental walks in the city they flew off and our life returned to the normal routine.