Saint Stephen's Weekend in BP

There were several guests at dinner Friday night, and I met some local guys my age, who were quite stunned when one of the guests began to speak Hungarian to the crowd. One leaned over in the middle of the man's speech, to ask if I understood anything. When I said I'd understood a bit, he responded that I was the only one! :-o !!

I understood most of what this speech guy was talking about, but when the guys asked me what he had said, I couldn't remember enough to retell it after the fact. :-/

After talking to this guy and his friend over the course of dinner, the friend told me that I know the (Hungarian) grammar really well, and that despite a few mistakes, he wasn't expecting to hear my accent when I speak. :-)
Guy Number 1 studies medicine at the medical university here, could tell I'm foreign, but couldn't tell if I was English or not. :-p

Oh, and something that really bothers me! If I ask them to repeat something, they'll say it

one...word...at...a...time...

ugh! I can follow you, just don't speak so fast!! Sheesh!

I also met an Israeli girl at dinner. Or maybe she's Hungarian. I have no idea. But her Hungarian was *really* hard to understand! I think she must be Hungarian, but since she lives and teaches in Jerusalem, and therefore speaks Hebrew, maybe her Hungarian has taken on a Hebrew accent? (Like last summer when my Romanian professor told me that I had a Hungarian accent when I spoke Romanian [which I was totally unaware of])...
Or maybe it's the other way around? Maybe she...no, that's not right. Why would an Israeli, who lives and teaches in Jerusalem, be fluent in Hungarian? She must be Hungarian, and speak Hebrew because of where she lives, and that in turn influences her Hungarian... Maybe my Linguistics friends can shed some light on this...

Oh, and the speech guy. He had a Yiddish accent in Hungarian. Maybe that's why the guys, or everyone?, had a difficult time understanding him. Or maybe it was how he put sentences together? Although, when he was talking, I made mental notes on his mistakes, but didn't want to correct him, since there were *more* than enough locals to do that (and who did [at least in the beginning])!

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Saturday morning I was up and out around 10 and after 15 minutes, who do I run into but a friend from the conference! He was going to a book shop and we caught up a bit, talking about the politics of studying certain areas of the world, and then parted ways as he went to meet his wife and I headed for the synagogue.

Lunch at the synagogue was jaw-dropping! There was this older guy there, who turned out to be not only from CA, but the area I'm from, has lived there 20 years, and his grandson graduated high school 4 years ago, at a high school across town from me!! Who woulda' thought! He asked where my parents live, and when I named the cities, he nodded like a local would! :-) This guy and his wife spend 6 months here, and then are in Palm Springs for the other half of the year. He left Hungary in 1956 after the Revolution
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956), when he was 8, and he chatted with a visiting rabbi who was also at lunch; over - and I mean this in the nicest way possible - who among their relatives were sent to which concentration camp: Dachau, Mauthausen, and Auschwitz. The rabbi's relatives to Germany, this guy's to Austria, and relatives of his, outside the capital, to Poland, and how anyone sick (or diabetic) was immediately sent to the gas chamber.





The guy gave me his card and told me to get in touch, saying how I'd have to meet his wife. They're leaving sometime in October to go back to California (CA), and are here visiting his wife's parents, who live in the old part of Buda, also known as Obuda (literally Old Buda). Since he was headed to the rabbi's for lunch today, I'll e-mail him tomorrow. I had lunch with a few people at the synagogue, which consisted of bread, hummus, baba ganoush, egg salad, corn/cucumber salad, and cholent! :-)