Sculpted, Defined Pecs

I have decided to end my historical survey of Pécs around 1900, focusing on the beautiful ceramic tiles of the Zsolnay Porcelain Factory. There’s not much to discuss after this time; defeat in World War One led to an economic downturn, World War Two largely passed Pécs by (though apparently a large tank battle was fought with the Soviets in the region...Hungary lost, naturally), and Communism left behind a multitude of nondescript concrete and steel housing blocks, about which the less said the better.

 

Zsolnay refers to Miklós Zsolnay (1800-1880) and more importantly his son Vilmos (1828-1900), who established a porcelain and ceramics factory in Pécs that now—conveniently for me—serves as the campus of the Faculty of Music and Arts. The Zsolnays pioneered methods of firing tiles at a high heat that rendered them largely porous and weather-resistant (called pyrogranite), leading to their widespread use throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Visit Budapest and you will see Zsolnay tiles adorning the halls of Parliament, the roof of the Matthias Church, and many other historic sites. They also developed an iridescent glaze known as eosin, which was eagerly employed by many Art Nouveau artists.

Zsolnay tiles atop the Pécs Post Office

In Pécs most of the following pictures are taken from the factory complex that I walked through every day; the Zsolnays were ahead of their time, cultivating an appealing workplace environment comparable to the campuses of Google or Apple, only with fewer nerds and espresso machines. They cleverly cast extra copies of statues designed for various buildings, and used these to decorate the grounds, something almost unheard of in the Gilded Age of employee exploitation. All this beauty no doubt helped to inspire me, though not as much as Bela's frequent chastisements.

Kiln in the style of a Moorish minaret

Former home of the Zsolnay family in the middle of the factory, now a museum



Entrance to the Zsolnay family mausoleum, flanked by dozens of mourning lions.

Mausoleum.

Roof of mausoleum interior, decorated with tile angels.

Art Nouveau Sarcophagus of Vilmos Zsolnay.

Mausoleum interior.

Beautiful Zsolnay fountain in the main city square.

Detail of fountain, showing mythical Magyar beast created using eosin technique.

I essentially attended school at Hogwarts.

As my time in the land of the Magyars winds to a close, I thought I would devote the bulk of this post to some reflections on the pros and cons of living in Pécs specifically, and Hungary and Central Europe generally. These are grouped as rants and raves, or as I will call them, Mohacses (after the greatest Hungarian defeat) and Matthiases (after the greatest Hungarian king).

 

Mohacs: Glumgarians

 

You may recall I had some rather uncharitable things to say about the Magyars in my first post, and two years later much of my initial assessment still holds true. Despite my feeble efforts to learn their incomprehensible language (see below), my interactions with the locals are all too often strained, cold, and opaque; great qualities when selecting your yogurt, less desirable in social exchanges. Many Magyars just don’t seem to take too kindly to foreigners, even ones as delightful as I imagine myself to be. Service at restaurants is typically of the “frisbee” variety, as a friend describes it; the default mode of interaction on the street is a dead, reptilian stare; and smiles are as rare as ice cubes and air conditioning. Mind you, these qualities are equally present in neighboring countries, but—no doubt due to linguistic and cultural isolation—the Magyar society is a particularly closed one. Consider a recent exchange I managed to have in my halting Hungarian while attempting to order a taxi over the phone:

 

Me: Good evening. Do you speak English or German?

Magyar: No….I'm Hungarian.

Me: Yes; thank you.

 

Matthias: Fungarians!

 

Thankfully, I have been fortunate enough to meet and befriend Hungarians that are capable of smiling, cracking jokes, and human warmth, even if their humor is of the darker variety. My landlord, neighbors, and several classmates have all been great company, and able to poke fun at their national pessimism. They have been endlessly patient with my general cluelessness, and I am hoping some of them will be able to visit me in America in the future.

 

Mohacs: Magyarul

 

I needn’t reprise my diatribe against the Hungarian language, but two years and dozens of hours of classes later, I still don’t really know what anyone is saying. Interestingly, just before I left I was starting to feel more hopeful about the language--I can understand about ten percent of a given conversation, and a Dutch friend of mine has miraculously achieved near-fluency--but I now realize I would need at least two more years to start getting comfortable using a language with zero utility elsewhere in the world.

Matthias: Németul

Luckily, German (Németul to the Magyars) has stood me in good stead when English wasn't an option; most educated Hungarians speak at least one of the two. I'm far from fluent but then they aren't either, and we manage to make it work provided there aren't any native speakers around to correct us with Teutonic pedantry.

Matthias: Austrian trains

I will miss the ease with which one can get around by train in Europe. Particularly cushy were the Austrian trains, especially when I occasionally splurged on first class; plush leather seats that recline, food and beverage service, and all the modern amenities. From Vienna you can reach Budapest in under three hours, Prague in under four, and Munich in under five.

Mohacs: Hungarian trains

...are another story. What should be a two hour journey from Pécs to Budapest ends up being three, with long stretches of track in which it would be faster to get out and walk (I'm surprised I was never asked to help push). The only discernible difference between first and second class is the presence of power outlets in the former, and the toilets are the old-fashioned ones that give you an exhilarating view of the tracks as they whiz (poor choice of words?) by. Particularly egregious in the last few months was the need to take a bus for part of the journey, since there is currently track work between the two cities.

Matthias: Architecture 5^th century to 1950

As this blog has made clear, I am a big fan of the many beautiful buildings I have been able to enjoy during my time here. I was also fortunate to take art history classes with an excellent teacher, who helped me better appreciate the differences in various architectural styles. I now finally know enough to obnoxiously correct my colleagues, which always goes over well.

Mohacs: Architecture 1950 to present

Call me old-fashioned, but I simply can't warm to the gray, rectangular concrete monstrosities that blight the landscape of Pécs and many other Central European cities. My art history prof did help me appreciate some of the modernist architecture of the early 20th century (Mies van der Rohe et al) and my neighbor was an architect working on an interesting theater project, but my tastes run more to the Renaissance and Baroque. If I can't imagine myself wandering the grounds in a powdered wig (without being arrested, that is), I don't want to be there.

Mohacs: Restaurants in Pécs and Vienna

Ah Pécs, so lovely in so many ways, but fine dining is not one of them. There are a handful of decent places (the kebab place, the pizza place, strangely enough the Mexican place), but more often than not my experiences eating out ranged from mediocre to revolting. A tip that is common sense and requires no further elaboration: sushi in medium-sized Central European cities is best avoided.

The situation in Vienna is different, which makes the mediocrity of restaurants there all the more inexcusable. I can understand how restaurants in the remote reaches of Hungary suffer in quality; I can't understand how the same can be true in what is supposedly the most livable city on earth. In Vienna what rankles me most is the obscene markup and the even more obscene behavior of the staff. I have had waiters openly ignore me, insult my dining companions, and generally conform to every negative stereotype of the Viennese as cold and supercilious. Even on the few occasions when I splurged on a high-end restaurant the experience was unbearably stuffy. I remember one automaton waiter saying after serving every course, and I'm not exaggerating: "It's an amusing little dish; have fun with it." What did he have in mind? Do I want to know?*

Matthias: Restaurants in Budapest and Prague

Thank goodness for Budapest and Prague, two cities with plenty of great options for food of every type and price. Both cities have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit and are big enough to offer at least one great restaurant of every type, including sushi (not from the Danube...I think). Prices are generally reasonable, service is usually very good, and the experience doesn't leave one a quivering, nauseous blob in the bathroom corner.

Mohacs: Hungarian choir

I reserve my final Mohacs for an experience I have avoided discussing so far, for fear that it would trigger traumatic memories requiring extensive counseling. For the past two years I have been the lone non-Magyar member of the University of Pécs' award-losing student choir. In a cruel twist of fate the dean of the school happens to be the director of the choir, meaning that he has a limitless supply of slave labor to help fulfill his infernal musical aspirations. At first I had high hopes: the dean was disarmingly kind to me in his halting English (I was something of a curiosity), the music was beautiful (lots of Kodaly and other great choral composers), and we only met twice a week.

How wrong I was. What I didn't realize was the existence of so-called "choir weeks," which are exactly what they sound like: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nothin' but choir. Ok, more like 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but bad enough. Worse still, these weeks were always in preparation for some much-vaunted trip to China in which I never took part, necessitating the singing of such crowd-pleasing dreck as Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," Michael Jackson medleys (including some pretty anti-Semitic lyrics), and various forms of Classics Lite. My frequent absences from such events soon soured the dean's opinion of me, leading to some very awkward exchanges in the halls. Oops.

Matthias: Hungarian piano teachers

Of course I have to conclude by focusing on my impetus for coming to Hungary in the first place; the desire to soak up firsthand pianistic knowledge from the land of Liszt, and here the Hungarians did not disappoint. Some of you have picked up on the Freudian/Jungian implications of my piano lessons with Béla, and indeed each lesson did feel like we were enacting some father/son, master/apprentice conflict from antiquity. Did I view myself as a piano demigod constantly trying to measure up to my Zeus-like father? Did I want to murder Béla and marry his wife, who is in fact my mother? The answer to both questions is, of course, yes.

Speaking seriously, it has been a privilege to work so closely with someone who understands the music of Liszt, and music in general, so profoundly. Having studied music academically for many years, it has been humbling to realize how much hands-on knowledge I had, and have, yet to acquire. Though they will never read this, I would like to thank Béla and the many other excellent teachers I encountered during my two years here. A touching moment came after my diploma concert, which went better than anyone could have anticipated: Béla shook my hand and said with great solemnity, "you are no longer my student; you are now a colleague."


Not much can be said after that. This concludes my first and most likely last foray into the world of blogging; hopefully reading these sporadic installments has been edifying or at least entertaining. I look forward to sharing more stories about life among the Magyars in person, and wish you all an egészséges, pihentető summer. Viszontlátásra!

*My recent experience in Salzburg shows that insufferable Austrian waiters are not confined to the capital. My friends and I visited a restaurant with the most unpleasant wait staff I have ever seen. My attempts to speak German to them, far from establishing rapprochement, made matters worse; the only thing an Austrian hates more than hearing English is hearing High German. I politely asked the waiter for horseradish or "Meerettich." He stared at me, uncomprehendingly, and finally answered with a contemptuous, "Ach so....KREN!" We left a very small tip.

 

Plump, Prosperous Pecs

This post is a month overdue, but in my defense two big events occupied much of the last month. First was my triumphant return to the stage of the local Liszt society, a performance about which my teacher told me, in characteristic fashion, I can be "half happy," which is equal to "half miserable" by my calculations. As in any unhealthy relationship (captor/hostage, bully/victim, Sonny/Cher) this all seems perfectly natural to me. Some gems from Bela's lessons leading up to the event:

"That was better than I thought it was going to be"
"You made fewer mistakes than I expected"
"Actually, the last page was not bad"

and, after I jokingly started taking his possessions from a table while I was leaving the lesson, and without missing a beat I might add,"And yet you don't steal any of my knowledge!"

Ouch. However, I have since come to realize that this is mild by Hungarian standards, as I learned during a piano masterclass today with a teacher from the Liszt Academy just down the (three hours by train) road. The zingers flew fast and furious, but here are three that stood out:

(during a particularly chaotic passage) "It's like the Afghan War: everyone's shooting at each other"
(At a march-like section) "Oh dear, now we're in Nazi Germany"
"Don't stop here; there's no passport control"

The second reason for my delay was a training trip for a tour I'll be running this summer of Romania, Serbia, and Croatia, or as they're known in these parts, "Greater Hungary." By the way, they love it when you say that in those countries. I especially enjoyed my time in Transylvania, though I think a local nobleman followed me home. Yes, the other night I was visited by this handsome fellow, who flew in my window and proceeded to circle the chandelier like a plane in a constant holding pattern:

"Can I be your most rabid fan?"

Thinking quickly, I called the neighbors who sent their daughter, a future vet, to deal with the situation while I heroically cowered in the corner. Eventually the disoriented shapeshifter was caught (passive voice; by me or the neighbor, who can remember?) and released to fly home, no doubt to the menacing ruins of some fortress on a hill somewhere.

Speaking of Transylvania, it's interesting to note that it was a semi-autonomous province while most of Hungary was under Ottoman rule, and consequently was the place of origin of the first of several failed attempts to regain Hungarian independence, the Rakoczy Rebellion in the early eighteenth century. Ever risk averse, Pecs prudently remained loyal to the Habsburgs...resulting in Rakoczy's army pillaging the town. Nevertheless, the city recovered, was eventually granted Free City status in 1780, and evidently was not a major player in the 1848 revolution either, though my street pays tribute to the 13 Martyrs of Arad, Hungarian generals hanged for their role in the rebellion.

Not sure how I feel about living on such a morbid street.

                                       
The situation in Hungary finally stabilized through the Compromise of 1867, returning a degree of autonomy to the eastern part of what became known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Industry flourished in Pecs: a brewery, Littke champagne...er, sparkling wine, Angster pipe organs, and Zsolnay Ceramics, which will be the subject of my next and final post. Many of the most impressive buildings of the city date from this period, which I will now show in no particular order. First is doubtless the most impressive, the Neo-Romanesque cathedral, a rebuilding of the medieval structure finished in 1891.

Of views I have held out my window, this is somewhere between a glaciated mountain and a brick wall.

Next is Kossuth Square, named after the hero of the 1848 revolution honored with a statue in its center.

To the right of the Square is the Synagogue, still in operation.

 Interlude: much of my knowledge of this era was aided by a recent visit to the City Museum of Pecs, tucked away in a nondescript side street and evidently forgotten by all. With some hesitation, I rang the bell and, after a good five minutes, I heard footsteps and a woman of a certain age answered the door. As she stared at me in astonishment, I managed to communicate my interest in visiting the exhibit in my halting Hungarian. Shrugging in acquiescence, she shuffled back to her desk, blew the dust off a comically large key, and unlocked the museum. A relic of the Communist era, most information therein was either typed or handwritten on yellowing paper in Hungarian and German, the latter language offering me at least a fighting chance. Particularly enjoyable were the 3d models and charts tracking the development of the city through the ages:

The walled city of Pecs: cathedral and bishop's palace in NW corner.

Model of the former town hall.

Photograph of Cathedral before rebuilding; note lower towers without spires.

Chart showing ethnic makeup of Pecs over the years. "Német" is the German minority.

 What follows are buildings I pass on a daily basis:

Former home of Littke Champagne; the cellar is now a restaurant.

Nador (Palatine) Hotel, the first hotel in town, sadly now unoccupied.

Town Hall, with statue of John Hunyadi.

County Hall

Hotel Palatinus, a beautiful Art Nouveau building.

The Theater, a Neobaroque monstrosity.

Statue commemorating Franz Liszt's lone visit to Pecs in 1846.

Plaque commemorating the same visit on the house where Liszt performed.

Cathedral Square after an unseasonably late snowfall.

Administrative building of the University, notable for its Atlases and fading splendor.

Evidence of lick-and-stick facade over brick, hallmark of nineteenth century building methods.

 This post will be on the briefer side, but this is merely the lead-up to the grand peroration in which I will brilliantly tie everything together, finally giving Hungary the special treatment it deserves...or finishing the job the Ottomans started.

Back to intensive Pecs training/Purely ornamental Pecs

This post will conclude with the obligatory next stage in our journey through Hungarian history, but first I will address the question that is no doubt on everyone's lips: has my piano teacher broken my spirit yet? What well-timed barbs has he aimed at me to shatter what's left of my faith in my abilities? Have I smashed my piano in a fit of desperation and taken holy orders, resolving never to return to Hungary?

To my surprise, it's actually going well! I think the non-debacle of my concert last February was a turning point and has led to some grudging gestures of respect on the part of "Bela." In fact, in the fall he invited me to join him in giving a series of concerts in smaller towns throughout Hungary, the first of which took place in the bustling vacation town of Siofok on Lake Balaton. Bela tossed off a lengthy improvisation in the style of Rachmaninoff like it was nothing, while I expended considerably more energy playing a Liszt piece and Beethoven Sonata, quite well I thought.

At our lesson the next week, Bela, master of the left-handed compliment, opened with this gem: "Andrew, you played the Liszt as well as anyone could have on that terrible piano. Now, the Beethoven on the other hand..." Well played Bela, well played. During the two hours that followed, all the old fan favorites made an appearance: 

• "are you satisfied with that?" 
• "where are the colors?"
• "It's boring!"
• "You missed a note on page 7!"
• And the perennial favorite, "Your thumbs are still lazy!"

To this excellent roster Bela has now added a few more starting players, my favorite of which is as follows: when I get to a particularly difficult passage in the Liszt pieces I'm currently learning and he knows so well, he rapidly approaches the piano, leans forward, and gazes intently first at my hands, then at the score, his eyes darting back and forth in hopes of catching me cutting corners. I find this disconcerting.

Bela was recently away giving concerts in Japan and Switzerland (he is apparently beloved in countries valuing precision), so during those weeks I visit an emeritus professor in his elegant fin de siecle apartment. A diminutive, bespectacled figure, said professor shuffles to the door, greets me in fractured German, offers me a pair of Hausschuhe, and the lesson begins. The emeritus professor draws upon his decades of experience (he is 86), mountains of scores, and meticulously labeled music recordings to offer sage counsel strangely devoid of the emotional abuse I've come to accept as my lot in life. Perhaps he would also like to crush my soul, but his limited German precludes such action (kind of a shame, really, since German would offer plenty of possibilities).

In between lessons much of my time is spent practicing on Bela's old piano at his parents' house in a neighboring town. These experiences are always memorable: the harrowing bus ride (all Hungarians revert to marauding horseman mentality when behind the wheel), the trepidatious walk through the grim remnants of a communist coal mining town, and finally the glorious emergence into the garden of Eden of his parents' humble country home. Both in their eighties, they don't speak a word of English but their eyes communicate the same familial warmth lurking somewhere behind their son's oh so hurtful words. We manage to communicate through my limited grasp of Hungarian, sign language, and meaningful grunts. Lunch always consists of fresh vegetables from the garden, and I am always sent home with bags of tomatoes and peppers.

I have also managed to interact a bit with the youth of Hungary, and am surprised to learn they know more about American sports than I do; granted, that's a low bar. When people learn I am from Seattle they always ask if I like the Seahawks, to which I always respond, "Do I! That's Errol Flynn's greatest swashbuckler! Wait, he did more than one?" Baseball, however, remains a hard sell, mainly because no one has any idea what's going on. I recently had a conversation where a Youngarian (if you will) was describing what I eventually realized was this sort of scenario:

In classic deadpan (the accent really makes it), he concluded by asking, "This is a sport?"

Anyway, back to the history of these bemused, beleaguered people. As a refresher, when we left off the Hungarians had endured 150 years of the Turks doing this to them:

Mmm...tender.

There's only so much of that sort of treatment a proud Hungarian can endure, so it is no surprise that efforts to liberate the country persisted throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 provided the impetus to push the Turks out of the country for good. By this point the portions of Hungary that had not been subjugated by the Turks had been incorporated into the Habsburg Empire, and the Austrians found themselves faced with two big problems: The Turks left behind a largely depopulated, undeveloped country, and the few Hungarians who were left had converted to Protestantism.

The solution to the first problem was easy: who better to repopulate and build than the industrious Germans? The call was sent out, and soon German settlers, often from Swabia, were floating down the Danube on makeshift rafts; to this day there are large groups of Donauschwaben living in Hungary, in Pécs in particular.

The solution to the second problem was to bring in Catholic monastic orders and architects to erect a whole host of Baroque churches and monasteries, and these still dot the Hungarian countryside to this day. Here, in no particular order, are some of the highlights found in Pécs:

 St. Francis of Xavier Church, built by the Jesuits in 1739

Church of Saint Augustine, built by the Franciscans in 1710

Saint Francis of Assisi, 1718-1760. Formerly a mosque, located near the ruins of the Turkish baths

Church of Our Lady of the Snows, 1697. Built to commemorate plague of 1690-1691

Lyceum Church, built by the Hungarian Paulite Order, 1741-1756

It's going to be hard to say goodbye to all these beautiful buildings, but I'm fortunate to enjoy them on a daily basis now. In the next installment we'll look at some more impressive buildings from the next century, and I'll try to document some more run-ins with these magical Magyars.