Righteous, Rock-hard Pecs

In between the hasty departure of the Romans in the 5th century and the leisurely arrival of the Magyars in the 9th, not a whole lot happened in Pécs. Or maybe it did; I could look it up, but then I'm already a day late getting to this post. Let's face it: people don't come here for rigorous, comprehensive history. They come here for lame puns, sweeping generalizations, and vaguely offensive jokes. Whether the offense is due to the content or the quality of the jokes is not for me to judge.

Anyway, the Magyars swaggered onto the scene after a 350-year horseback mosey from somewhere east of the Urals; based on linguistics, they got into an argument at some point with the Finns (perhaps about how to split the enormous tab for alfalfa) and parted ways in a huff. Arriving in Hungary, they surveyed the land, noted the lack of any distinguishing topographical features, and thought, "perfect." From an equestrian's standpoint this makes sense, and like all pastoral nomads who eventually meet the right girl and settle down, they found that the Carpathian basin was also ideally suited for farming. This allowed Hungary to flourish while much of Western Europe struggled, and to weather some of the nastier famines with an abundant food surplus.

With the establishment of the kingdom came the establishment of Christianity as the official religion, and the Magyarized version of Pécs developed around the cathedral, built on the ruins of the Roman cemetery. In fact, the Cella Septichora was possibly repurposed for that role, but a fire in the 11th century necessitated the construction of a new building. The current cathedral is a 19th-century Neo-Romanesque version of the four-tower structure that was established by the 15th century. The museum of the medieval university has some handy reconstruction pictures, hopefully visible despite the blurriness:

What you will notice from the pictures above is the development of a system of walls around the cathedral complex, and this happened for good reason. The Mongols paid a visit around 1240, and believe me, they weren't sending their best; they were sending rapists, murderers, and very few of them, I imagine, were good people. So the bishop built a wall, and the Mongols paid for it! Just kidding; that would be ridiculous.

Speaking of the university museum, I was at first excited to be studying at Hungary's oldest university, established in 1367. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I learned that the university went defunct just a few decades later, and was only reestablished when the University of Pozsony relocated here after WWI; Pozsony was renamed Bratislava and became part of newly-formed Czechoslovakia (and now capital of Slovakia). What a rip-off! I demand remission of my tuition payment.

The medieval university museum has all sorts of great information on the early period, but the consensus seems to be that most people reading this would rather I cut to the chase and share embarrassing stories about me being humiliated in different situations, so suffice to say the double wall still remains around the old city. What was once intended as an area to grill Mongolians with boiling oil, is now a favorite haunt of micturating vagrants and canoodling teens, with the two groups often in uncomfortably close proximity to one another. I'll just share one photo of a particularly impressive barbican, located near the cathedral:

Micturating vagrants and canoodling teens not shown

Ok, onto lighter subject matter, at least for the reader. The Magyars brought with them to this land a weapon so powerful it is not encountered anywhere else on earth: their language. I've now been studying Hungarian for several months and have a vocabulary equivalent to Ivan Drago's in Rocky IV, except I don't know how to say "you will lose" or "if he dies, he dies." On the first day of class our teacher attempted to assuage our fears of this notoriously difficult language by pointing out the following positives:

1. Hungarian is remarkably pure, largely unchanged for the past millennium, so the rules of pronunciation are fixed and consistent

2. The verb form can do double duty as the subject, so "Andrew am" and other caveman talk is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged! Food want. Goulash good. And so on.

3. Word order is largely irrelevant. Ok, there are some conventions, but they are nowhere near as defined as in other languages; must make dubbing/subtitling Yoda a major challenge.

4. There is no gender in Hungarian (how progressive!), which must be why my landlord keeps referring to me as "it, the American cretin."

5. There are basically only two tenses, past and present.

6. Loaner words! Auto, csokolade, elefant, gitar, mobiltelefon, and szalami are all permissible...though maybe not all in the same sentence (bonus points to whoever can get them all in one).

Let me now proceed to demolish these laughable claims one by one:

1. Sure, pronunciation is fixed, but it's also bloody impossible. Hungarian vowels never met a diacritic they didn't like, and looking at a page of the language suggests a typesetter collapsed on the job. Virtually every word is festooned with accents, umlauts, and an elongated super-umlaut that's actually called the Hungarumlaut (I'm not making this up).

 

These are the only band names pronounceable in Hungarian

Once a Hungarian is done violating the vowels, it's time to cross-breed the consonants. One of those loaner words is "jeep," only it's not spelled that way; it's spelled "dzsip." Of course it is. "Ly" is "yuh," "Ny" is "nyuh," and I'm still not sure what to do with "ty."

2. Sure, leaving off the subject saves some time, but remembering the verb endings is, for me at least, nigh on impossible. Is it -unk or -ünk? -tek or -tok? It also doesn't help that they all look and sound awfully similar.

3. Word order does, in fact, matter. It's apparently all about the "focus point," and that's where you have to put the right word or the whole sentence falls apart. Failure to do so can result in dire consequences; you might go into a tobacconists' to make a simple purchase and say the following:

Worse is the case scenario (worst case case scenario?) in Hungarian: there are 18 of them. One Eight. This means words are constantly getting suffixes appended to them depending on whether you're for, into, in, from, to, at, on, about, with, for, until, turning into, or as something. These are known variously as illative, inessive, allative, adessive, and so on. I'm particularly looking forward to the supressive and the terminative, and yes, these are all the real terms.

4. Sure, not worrying about gender would seem to simplify things, and is the opposite of the situation in German, as lampooned by Mark Twain. Still, I can imagine it leading to confusion:

Coach Gabor: Ok team, we're down by a goal but there's still time to turn this thing around; I won't have the coed intramural soccer title taken away from me. Here's the plan: Eszter, you pass the ball to Zoltan. Zoltan, pass the ball to Aniko. Aniko, pass the ball back to Eszter. Eszter, kick the ball to Istvan who will score the goal. Now somebody repeat that back to me.
Aniko: It passes it to it, it passes it to me, I pass it back to it, it passes it to it, and it scores the goal.
Coach: Exactly.

5. So basically Hungarians are either stuck in the past or living in the present; they have no future. Does that sound like an ideal situation?

Hungary: Where then will soon be now.

6. I'm pretty sure all the loaner words were on page three of the textbook, because I encounter one every three days or so. I went to the opera tonight and here's what I picked up from the supertitles:

something something IT something something THE something something WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! something something something GOOD NIGHT.

Why doesn't anybody ever order a "szendvics" or ask to see the bus schedule in an opera? Work with me here, people.

To sum up, I'm unlikely to become fluent in Hungarian anytime soon. Luckily, enough people speak English or German that I'm able to get by well enough. Particularly entertaining is my chamber music lessons: the violinist and teacher speak German with me, the cellist and I speak English, and they all speak Hungarian with one another. Somehow it works.

Next month I'll look at the period of the Ottoman invasion, and think of some amusing stories wherein I perturb the locals; shouldn't be too difficult.

Chiseled Pecs

For a North American, a building older than a hundred years old is a big deal, and for a west coaster anything over a hundred and fifty years old is more or less nonexistent. Quite the opposite is the case here, where archaeological remains date back almost two millennia, and a hundred and fifty years back is almost the end of the story rather than the beginning of it. In this post I will focus on the Roman ruins of Sopianae, the ancient city that became Pécs. Afterwards I will write about my piano lessons, which have been exhilarating, revelatory, and often soul-crushing experiences...in a good way.

Present-day Hungary was colonized by the Romans in the period spanning the reigns of Augustus (the first emperor) to Claudius (the lispy, gimpy one...that's inbreeding for you), or roughly from the middle of the last century BC to the middle of the first century AD.  The territory--bounded by the Danube and Drava rivers to the north, east and south, and also containing parts of Austria and the Balkans--was named Pannonia, after the peoples who, along with the Celts, inhabited the region at the time. In the early second century the emperor Trajan split the region into the western Pannonia Superior and the eastern Pannonia Inferior (that had to hurt), while in the late third century Diocletian further split these sub-regions in two, forming the four regions shown below:

Map showing division of Pannonia Superior into Prima and Savia, and Pannonia Inferior into Valeria (note location of Sopianae) and Secunda

Aquincum to the north was the military capital of Valeria, and there is still an impressive set of ruins there just a few miles outside of Budapest. Sopianae in the south was the administrative capital, and the center of important trade routes passing through the Mecsek mountains just north of the city.

By the 4th century Sopianae was a major city centered in the southwest quadrant of the current city of Pécs, prominent enough to have three cemeteries, the wealthiest of which was located more or less where the cathedral currently stands. A few words on why this is: as the Roman Empire started to dissolve in the 5th century (guess you can only get way with inbreeding for so long), Sopianae was apparently "ceded" to the Huns in 430. I have a feeling it was a bit more complicated than that:

Hey, my first meme! I'm sure this one will spread like wildfire.

I'm sure the Huns embedded a "light raping and pillaging" clause in the fine print of the contract. Whatever the case, when the Magyars/Hungarians resettled the area several centuries later they opted to build their town on the ruins of the old cemetery; guess they figured the residents wouldn't object if they borrowed a few bricks. One theory for the origin of "Five Churches," the Latin/German name of Pécs, is that the original settlement was built from the ruins of five of these burial places. Over time the cemetery was built over, and eventually lay forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1930s. Several of the tombs are now open to the public, and the complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thinking back to two friends' wedding vows (you know who you are), I want to remind you of your solemn vow to kiss in as many of these locations as possible; no begging off due to necrophilic qualms.

The heart of the main visitors' center is the Cella Septichora, or Seven-Chambered Room, an unfinished tomb from the end of the Roman period.

Three of the seven alcoves of Cella Septichora

 Roughly 130x60 feet, this was the main site to be excavated in the 1930s, and was never used as a burial place; presumably when the Huns showed up more pressing life and death matters were at hand than putting the finishing touches on some rich guy's post-mortem McMansion. The tomb is largely built out of limestone, with brick lines every couple of feet to ensure everything was level.

Detail of an external wall of Cella Septichora; they forgot to pop down to Loew's to buy the faux stucco finish

 Moving further into the museum, there are a number of well-preserved artifacts, including several sarcophagi. Fun fact: sarcophagus, from Greek, means "flesh-eating"...lovely.

A well-preserved sarcophagus in Cella Septichora. The tenant...not so much.

A well-preserved sarcophagus...

And a not-so-well-preserved one (bumbling/impatient grave robbers?)

Glass pitcher, 5th century

 Two smaller burial chambers in the museum are of note. The first is the wine chamber, so called due to a painting of a wine pitcher in an alcove, evidently indicating the object to be placed therein. Clever sorts, these Romans. If this seems a bit pagan-y, it is; these burial sites are interesting hybrids of pagan practice--in which the dead are buried with goods they will need in the afterlife--and Christian practice, where the emphasis is more on biblical messages of death and resurrection.

View of alcove painting, wine chamber

View through the roof of the wine chamber

Bird's-eye view of wine chamber

 The most impressive element of the museum, though, is the Peter and Paul chamber, named after the wonderful paintings on the wall of the two most important apostles. They flank a christogram, an early Christian symbol formed from the first two letters (chi and rho) in Christ's name in Greek.

Christogram flanked by Peter (R) and Paul (L), no Mary

 Various biblical scenes on the walls are too faded to be accurately discerned/captured satisfactorily by my camera phone, but the ceiling boasts an impressive painting of four sharp-dressed men (like a clean-shaven ZZ Top, or Zed Zed Top as they are known in Canada...but I digress). Presumably these were the patrons, residents, or family otherwise connected with the tomb.

Ceiling of Peter and Paul chamber with four portraits

Roof of Peter and Paul chamber

 Just down the street from the visitors' center is another mausoleum, discovered in 1975. The reconstructed floorplan outside gives a sense of its impressive scale:

Entrance to mausoleum, due south of Pécs cathedral

 The interior is more modest, but features a very impressive sculpted sarcophagus, and a wall painting of Adam and Eve in excellent condition:

Sarcophagus in the Mausoleum 

Painting of Adam and Eve, Mausoleum

Seeing such strong connections with a distant past, united to the present by the enduring Christian faith, is a powerful experience that should no doubt be treated more reverently than I have done here.

Moving onto piano studies, I will say a few words about my teacher as an artist, a man, and a teacher, in that order. In the interest of preserving his privacy I will call him Béla, as good a Hungarian name as any (as far as I can tell, Hungarian men are either called Attila, Béla, Gyorgy, Istvan, or Zoltan), and one that connects him to Bartok, a composer in whose music he specializes. I first met Béla several years ago when he played for one of my summer music tours in Budapest. I remember the scene vividly: we were in a Baroque concert hall looking across the Danube at the spires of the parliament building, the sun was setting, and a thunderstorm was getting underway. My teacher launched into one of the most exciting renditions of Liszt's Mephisto Waltz I had ever heard, and as actual bolts of lightning illuminated the musical pyrotechnics, I thought: who is this guy?

The next day he performed a few more Liszt barnstormers with ease, and I was in awe. During the course of the next few music tours I gradually worked up the courage to talk to him, and ultimately invited him to perform at the university where I was teaching in Canada. Béla brought a much-needed dose of high culture to the area, performing in classes and at faculty homes, teaching piano students, giving a fantastic all-Liszt recital to a packed audience, and topping it off with an organ recital in Vancouver, complete with a brilliant ten-minute improvisation on Christmas carols.

Over the course of his visit I came to know Béla the man, and he is quite the character. Let's start with the appetite; evidently playing piano like a boss requires a lot of calories, because this guy was eating me out of house and home! Every meal required soup, salad, entree, and dessert, no exception, and as the dinner bills crept higher and higher, I thought: I really hope the university will pay for this (they did). In keeping with his otherworldly character, Béla is also delightfully childlike, and loves telling silly jokes, clowning around, and generally comporting himself without any of the insufferable pretentiousness of an academic who uses words like "comport." My best memory of his visit to Canada is his exuberance as we wandered the beaches of Stanley Park, him collecting shells to bring home to his children. I knew that, were I to study with him, his would be a gentle, nurturing presence.

How wrong I was. Béla the man is modest and unassuming, but Béla the teacher is a cold, unrelenting taskmaster. I've had great piano teachers, but thus far have been spared the indignity of suffering under the lash of a terrifying eastern (okay, central; mustn't offend the Hungarians) European. I always thought I would benefit from the treatment, but I don't think my sensitive adolescent soul could have borne it. Even now I'm not so sure how well I'm holding up.

I should mention that I'm largely being tongue in cheek here: Béla's critiques are never personal, but rather always rooted in his absolute commitment to passionate, complete musicianship. What I've come to realize is that I have a lot to learn before I can truly call myself a pianist; without getting into the details of lessons, much of our work consists of extremely minute, seemingly nitpicky adjustments based on phrasing, weighting of chords, pedaling, and all sorts of nuances that seem trivial taken individually but together add up to the difference between playing that is compelling and playing that is merely competent.

Béla's critiques are never meant to be cruel, but some of them are so funny I had to start writing them down...after I recovered, that is. Some highlights:

"Your playing is correct but it is boring. It sounds like a MIDI file."
"Where are the colors? Are you satisfied with this?"
"Your thumb is very lazy." (apparently I have some of the laziest thumbs in the biz)
"So you CAN play beautifully! Why don't you do so more often?"
"You played this part very well" (pointing to score where it says "long pause")

and my personal favorite:

"Can I be honest with you? At times you sound like a bar pianist."

Words fail me...


Ok, I'm better now. Next time I'll talk about how Hungary fared during the Middle Ages (hint: not well), the awful Hungarian language, and other uplifting topics. Sziasztok!

Defining my Pecs

The title of this post notwithstanding, the name of the town where I currently live does not, in fact, rhyme with that most prominent and imposing part of my physique. Will this homonym/homophone disconnect prevent me from making future puns? Absolutely not. Will you grow increasingly annoyed with me for doing so? Almost certainly. Do I care? Maybe a little. Enough to stop? Probably not.

Obnoxiousness is clearly a familial trait, since my dad seems to delight in refusing to pronounce the name of Pécs correctly, and so far has yet to repeat himself, which is impressive. I’ve heard Peks, Pech, Pez, Petz, Pesc, but never Paych, which is the proper way to say it; think of a southern belle drawling “Peach” and you’ve got it. He would have been better off sticking with the German name, Fünfkirchen (Five Churches), itself derived from the older Latin name Quinque Basilicae/Ecclesiae. The etymology of the current name is uncertain, but one theory is that it is related to “beş,” the Turkish word for five (thanks, Wikipedia!).

While the current name dates to the 13^th century, the Turkish occupation would not occur until three hundred years later. Five hundred years after that time, and the Turkish architectural influence is the first striking feature one notices about Pécs. Actually, that’s not true; the first thing one notices as the train pulls into the station is the Communist-era TV tower perched atop the Mecsek Mountains:

More on this structure, the spectacular views from its observation deck, and the less than spectacular amenities of its restaurant, in a future post. The second thing one notices upon exiting the train is row upon row of drab, gray, concrete apartment buildings, another relic of the socialist years. But the THIRD thing one notices after a ten minute walk through the gray gauntlet is Széchenyi Square and the Mosque of Pasha Qasim in its center:

The mosque has been returned to its original function as a church, but deliberately restored to retain the characteristic Ottoman dome and arabesque decor. Another mosque in town is a much better preserved monument to the Turkish past, but this and other buildings will be discussed in a future post.

As this abrupt jump between the 20^th and 16^th centuries indicates, eclecticism is very much at the heart of Pécs’ identity. Just around the corner from the town square we leap a further thousand years back from the time of the Turks, to Roman ruins from the 4^th century:

 

From here we can walk a few minutes in any direction and easily find churches, palaces, and other structures from virtually every era and style of the past millennium: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and all the various “neo-“ historicist styles of the 19^th century  (neogothic, neobaroque, etc.). Girding it all is the medieval wall, effective at keeping out Mongol hordes, less effective at keeping out Turks or, well, Americans. My apartment looks out upon these walls and upon the city cathedral, redesigned in neo-Romanesque style in the 19^th century:

The above description makes it sound as if I first arrived at my new home by traversing the city on foot, but I was in fact met at the train station by my landlord, a young law professor, in a manner that suggested we would soon become friends. Waving to me excitedly from his zippy Alfa Romeo, he promptly drove over the curb, narrowly avoiding detaching both his bumper and the head of a passerby. My kind of style, I thought. In the course of an orientation tour of the town I learned that his family has lived here for generations: his grandfather was a highly respected doctor who saved the lives of many coal miners in the nearby town of Komlo, and eventually earned enough money to build his house in 1938.

Timing is everything, and as that date suggests, Hungary was about to receive some visitors who would make the Mongols and Turks seem downright cuddly by comparison. Between the war and communist seizure of private property, my landlord’s grandfather never actually managed to live in the house he’d worked so hard to build. Despite this, he remained positive, refusing to let external circumstances dictate his life: He continued to work as a doctor, played the piano, read, and took long walks. It’s clear my landlord views him as a sort of hero, someone who didn’t succumb to the usual Magyar propensity for self-pity.

My landlord has also worked to shake this disposition, which cannot be said of the administrators I met at the music department at the university the next day. Lovely people all, but all too ready to indulge in Hungarian defeatism and self-flagellation. In an hour-and-a-half orientation, we accomplished little beyond reflecting on the dismal state of university bureaucracy. As attempts to use one or another online resource failed, this or that administrator replied with a shrug and comments such as, “What do you expect? We’re in the eastern bloc.” Also notable were meandering tangents that were undeniably entertaining, but hardly germane. As one admin—who shares both the name and gift of prolixity with a certain prominent Humanist writer—observed: “Hungary ranks number one in indigestion and poor health but students still have to pay for the gym; cigarettes are free though.” When I told him I was planning on studying Hungarian he said, “Why would you do that? This is a manifestation of masochism.”

The point of this tangent about tangents is to refine my superficial analysis of the Hungarian character from the last post. Pride and shame seem to go hand in hand here: pride for what Hungary was and might have been, shame for what it’s become. And there’s no middle ground here, either; Hungary is either the best or the worst. In the case of the former, a running joke has a certain Hungarian I know claiming credit for every notable invention in human history. The fork? Hungarian. Indoor plumbing? Magyars flushed with success. The ballpoint pen and Rubik’s cube? Ok, those last two are actually Hungarian inventions.

Conversely, Hungary now is apparently in utter shambles. The country undoubtedly has its fair share of problems, and I will leave it to people better informed in current affairs to detail what those are. Suffice to say, the economy, government, and standard of living are far below the post-communism hopes of many Hungarians. Still, to this naïve outsider it doesn’t seem so bad, though I am admittedly the beneficiary of a very favorable exchange rate. I don’t wish to diminish legitimate concerns over low salaries and slow economic growth. I’m more interested in perceptions, and many Hungarians seem to view the rest of the world through green-tinted glasses, and themselves with unfairly harsh standards. A constant refrain is that Hungarians are unfriendly, but I have not found that to be the case. Yes, they can be gloomy, but they are always exceedingly polite and apologetic when recounting the litany of abuses they’ve suffered at the hands of cruel Fortuna.

My perception of a disconnect between Hungarian pessimism and a sunnier reality is also colored by living in Pécs, undoubtedly the nicest small city in the country, and a beautiful city by any standard. In 2010 it was the EU cultural capital, as a result of which Pécs boasts a revitalized town square, a new concert hall, and amenities that rival or surpass those of other comparably-sized European cities. Untouched by the conflicts of the 20^th century, the city feels a bit magical; my neighbors refer to it as Hobbiton and the town clock even chimes out this little Baroque ditty several times throughout the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jPwdVo5rxY

The denizens of Pécs hustle and bustle in rhythm to this tune, going about their business in little Victorian waistcoats and top hats. Or so it appears to me.

In future posts I’ll visit some of the historical sites I touched upon above, detail the severe emotional trauma suffered during my piano lessons, deconstruct the nightmare that is the Hungarian language, and otherwise chronicle my picaresque exploits.

A Proud People

"Andrew, the Magyars are a proud people; they DON'T like being teased." Such was the stern warning issued to me by a relative when I revealed to her my intention to study in Hungary for a year. She herself had spent several years in the country, so her knowledge of the Hungarians--or Magyars, as they call themselves--was firsthand. 

"What ever do you mean?" I responded with feigned innocence, in hopes she would envision all sorts of scenarios in which my big mouth would cause me to suffer verbal and physical abuse, public censure, and eventual deportation. My disingenuousness having achieved the desired result, she retreated in annoyance, muttering something to the effect: "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

In my travels I'd already observed a certain Hungarian pugnacious streak. There was the surly old laundress in Budapest who shot me a glare when I attempted to communicate with her in English. Deep frown, rapid shaking of the head. "Sprechen sie Deutsch?" I next tried, drastically worsening my position. Incredibly vehement head shaking, a frown now threatening to exceed the bounds of her considerable jowls. Defiantly rearing up to her full height of 4'11 3/4", she thrust a proud thumb to her bosom, broad as the Pannonian plain, and majestically intoned, "HUNGARIAN."

Most memorable was my first meal in Budapest, where our waiter was not so much angry as gloomy, bearing on his hunched shoulders the weight of several hundred years of oppression, thwarted political and military ambitions, and a general sense of under-appreciation on the global stage. Tossing our bowls of goulash on the table so carelessly that several forlorn potato cubes nearly went overboard, he offered the world's most unconvincing, "Enjoy your dinner," before shuffling away. In recounting this incident to a Czech friend, the story evolved into the waiter merely saying, "Mohacs...blech!" a reference to the 1526 battle in which Hungary lost most of its territory to the Ottoman Empire. It's all been downhill since Mohacs.

Perhaps no study in contrasts is as revealing as that between the Czechs and the Magyars. Both nations have spent their history surrounded by some--how shall I put it?--"handsy" neighbors. The Czech response seems to have been to hunker down, work hard, and make the best of the situation. In contrast, the Magyar response seems to have been to retreat into naval-gazing, defeatism, and grumpiness. Lest I be accused of gross generalizing, this is the assessment put forth by several Hungarian colleagues. One said to me, "We're not smart like the Czechs. Look at Budapest; it should be attracting Prague numbers of tourists, but it doesn't. How dumb are we?"

Dumb? That's not quite accurate, because no one could accuse a people who have fielded so many giants in the arts (Liszt, Bartok, etc.) and sciences (Go Big Green!) as lacking in brain power. What my friend meant is that the Hungarians can be stubborn beyond the point of reason. Such is their thinking: you won't flock to what is unquestionably the finest city on the Danube? Fine, be that way; we don't need your filthy lucre. I've observed waiters in Prague gamely endure oafish English stag parties, something it's hard to imagine would be suffered by our Budapest waiter friend. 

At heart, Czechs are little forest people who don't like to call too much attention to themselves, while the Hungarians are proud horsemen who galloped drunkenly into Europe a thousand years ago, no doubt by accident. The mentality is completely different. A visual demonstration: consider the central statues one is most likely to encounter when visiting Prague and Budapest, respectively:

First we have the statue of Jan Hus in Prague's Old Town Square. Hus was the heroic church reformer who stoically suffered martyrdom fighting for a more inclusive liturgy in the 15th century. Beleaguered but not broken, physically humbled but mentally strong, he stands defiant against a corrupt world. The monument is grand but hardly ostentatious, a tacit acknowledgment of the Czech people's historic subjugation.

Next is Budapest's Hero's Square, specifically the seven figures at the base of the central column. These are the legendary chieftains who supposedly founded the nation. Sculpted with apparently no regard to historical accuracy, these Magyars are rocking some serious 'staches and head gear, and if their chests were thrust out any farther it would be obscene. Granted, historical context matters; the latter monument was commemorating the millennial anniversary of the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary (896-1896), by this point Hungary was ostensibly an equal partner in the Dual Monarchy, and national feelings were at an all-time high. Still, it's hard to imagine the Czechs erecting anything so unabashedly self-aggrandizing. When a 2005 TV poll asked Czechs to name their greatest countryman, they chose the fictitious figure Jara Cimrman, an absurd Baron Munchausen-like Renaissance man. This is the equivalent of the English voting to name a ship Boaty McBoatface, but on an even grander scale.

The point of this comparison is that the Hungarians take their identity very seriously, the more so since it's been routinely threatened over the years. The Turks occupied much of the country for 150 years, the Austrians for another 150, and the Nazis and Soviets behaved...well, like Nazis and Soviets. Recent political and economic setbacks haven't helped matters; Hungary's in the EU, but not on the Euro, and the immediate post-Communist promises of prosperity haven't materialized as expected. My landlord put it very well: "we don't belong to the west, we don't belong to the east, we speak our own language; where do we fit in?"

In coming posts I'll consider this question, focusing on Pécs, the small, beautiful city where I currently live. By looking at the history, the (impossible) language, and various everyday occurrences, I hope to better understand these proud, stubborn, and generally lovable people. 

*Proof that the Magyars can give as good as they get, they say "I am Czech" when they want to say they feel ill. Take that, Vaclav! They also say, "Go back to France!" when they want to say "Go to Hell." Take that, Pierre!