Day 10: Egeszegedre!

This is one of a series of entries from my travel journal chronicling my recent trip to Europe. You can click here for the archived entries.

Day 9 | Day 11

Budapest photo gallery.

The Great Hungarian Plain, Hungary 15/06/08

I'm currently on a shuttle bus traveling back from the wedding in Lajosmizse to Budapest. It was an amazing celebration. The bride and groom, Katinka and Don, were more than generous and hospitable despite my being a complete statistical outlier, having come as Jeff's platonic date in the absence of his girlfriend. We were at the Gerébi Kúria, a hotel in the middle of the countryside about an hour's drive from Budapest. It was a really nice setting for a wedding. Quiet, serene, picturesque. We arrived yesterday around two or so, checked into a very nice room at the hotel, and headed to the restaurant for a while before the reception. I had a plate of smoked salmon.

We then put on our finest duds (I received yet another compliment on my $100 three year-old suit from Filene's Basement. Perry Ellis. It's the man that makes the clothes!) and headed over to the pre-wedding reception. Don and Katinka had a fairly small group of friends from Europe and America - mostly Brits plus a French girl - who were all very friendly and cool. We hit the reception early and made quick work of a few bottles of white and blush (blush? I think the last time I drank blush it was in boxed form some years ago) and the appetizers (stuffed puff pastries with doe and cabbage, from what I could glean from the extraordinarily friendly and helpful bartender who unfortunately did not speak English very well - although to be fair, his English was far better than my command of Magyar). I decided that the bartender was Vassily's brother. Vassily himself was a glum Hungarian in a track suit who was sitting on a stump and turning a spit upon which was an entire pig, roasting over a huge pile of coals. The heat was so intense I could barely get within a few feet, yet poor Vassily was sitting on top of the thing turning that spit. The pig must've just been put on because it looked raw, but it would certainly be delish in the future.

We met Dani, a Hungarian friend of Katinka's (who was born in Hungary and has family and friends here - the entire reason for this escapade) who was very cool and helped us out with the local custums and taught me a bit of Hungarian. Evidently the direct translation of the phrase for hors d'oeuvres in Hungarian means "beer ice skating," because you eat a little bit of food at a time. Dani tried explaining this to me several times but I still don't understand it at all. The rest of the guests eventually arrived and there was a ceremony for the parents' giving away of the bride and groom. It was very nice to see. The guy heading the show was a hired MC of some sort. A real card - hamming it up big time, cracking jokes in Hungarian to the titters of delight of the numerous old Hungarian ladies in the crowd. I even found myself laughing and I had no idea what he was saying. He was a dead ringer for Vassily's brother the bartender/waiter and I honestly thought it was the same guy for a while. At dinner I saw them together, however, and figured that he was yet another brother of Vassily's.

After the giving-away ceremony we went to a hall for the actual wedding ceremony. It was initially going to be outdoors but it had started drizzling. Vassily kept turning the spit throughout. The ceremony was very nice, with English translation following the Magyar. Don's dad was in full kilt regalia with his military service medals pinned on his chest - a very impressive display. After the ceremony we headed back to the main hall for an unbelievable feast and celebration - the alcohol flowed copiously, with huge glass steins of beer, bottles of wine on the table, and shots of this curios apricot brandy (pálinka, the national liquor). The food was wonderful, consisting of a banquet entitled "Sir Gerébi's Favourite Meal." I snagged one of the menus from the table:

We started with Ujházi Gyöngytyúkleves (guinea fowl soup), Vadpörkölt Galuska, Sós burgonya (a stew of the most tender, flavorful wild meat poured over gnocchi and boiled potatoes), Odény vegyes saláta (a salad of lightly pickled vegetables - pickled veggies are big in Hungary), and a Sültes büfé, or buffet of roast, including Pulykamell érmék kelvirággal csöben sütvi (coated turkey breast medallions), Ropogós sült libacomb (scalloped veal lightly breaded), Borjú bécsi (goose thighs - delish), Grillezett zöldségek (grilled veggies), Rizs (rice), Petrezselymes burgonya (potatoes with parsley), and Párolt zöldköret (more veggies). There was dessert, of course, along the lines of Almás (apple), Meggyes (sour cherry), and Túrós és káposztásré (cottage cheese, cabbage, and strudel). The scheduled Éiféli büfé, or midnight buffet, would have Ropogós sült malac (roast pork), hagymás tört burgonyával (mashed potatoes with onion), és párolt káposztával (braised cabbage), Sajtkóstoló (fruit), and of course Gyümöles (cheese). And let me tell you, typing this passage with all those accents took a long time.

Ah ha! A midnight buffet of roast pork - Vassily's long, hard day at the spit would finally pay off. There were a lot of MC-driven hijinks involving the newly married couple. There were four dancers - two men and two women - in traditional Hungarian dress who put on an uptempo show, replete with high pitched yelping, whistling, singing, snapping and boot-slapping. Several costume changes occurred. The two men did one number with long staffs which they banged upon the ground and clashed with one another's sticks. At the end of the dance the older man smacked his stick on the end of the table right in front of me (I was sitting at the very end of one of two long banquet tables among the other three American guests). Great entertainment. There was also a live band playing folk music comprising a bass, a couple fiddlers and something called a cymbalon, a sort of grand piano without a keyboard with the cover torn off. The musician sat on a bench in front and hit the strings with mallets that he held in each hand. An interesting sound. He played very well, including an impressive solo. Evidently this instrument is becoming a bit of a lost art, however. He was on of few players left, at least locally. One woman, who was the translator during the ceremony and also Dani's mother, told us that he wasn't going to teach his sons how to play (presumably because they weren't interested in doing so but who knows). And all the while Vassily kept turning that spit. The party was a blast. I ended up dancing with ladies from ages 4 to 64, including one French girl. I got fairly bladdered as the festivities crept along towards the wee hours, and Jeff and I called it quits after an unsuccessful attempt to crash the other wedding going on nearby (it was dead over there).

I never did get a chance to taste that roast pork. Poor Vassily...and poor me!