Students at the Market

I have been very delinquent in posting to this blog. I started this one in September and now it is nearly one month later. I have also heard from many of you that the more photos that I can include, the better. I want to tell you about our first outing connected with our Hungarian class--our trip to the market. It was a fun time at the market that happened at the end of the students' first week here on August 28. We had all learned the Hungarian words for vegetables, fruit, 'how much does it cost?' and had learned how to count so that we could purchase items and make change.



This market is just a quick ride from the students' dorm on tram #18 on Fehervarti ut.



It is a very modern building and when you enter you can either go down a few steps to the lower level that has several sections or up an escalator to the main sales floor.



This picture shows the top two levels of the market. The top level sells ready made foods that you can have for breakfast, coffee or lunch. On the middle level you will find all sorts of fresh produce, poultry, meat and fish.



On the lower level there are two separate grocery stores and many meat, vegetable and pastry vendors and are open longer hours than the stalls on the second floor that close about 3pm or 4pm.

These shops are more permanent and seem to be thought of as lower quality or less fresh than those on the middle level. But still, if you arrive at the market after 4pm, you can still find a great variety of produce, eggs, cheese, etc.



You go up an escalator to the middle level which is full of all sorts of vendor stalls and shops--vegetables, slaw, flour, meal, nuts, honey, fruit, paprika, chicken, duck, goose, fish, etc. Everything you can think of is there.

The second floor is a feast for the eyes and the appetite. The center section has mostly fruits and vegetables. Also available are beans, nuts, honey, eggs, and paprika. You can see the meat shops along the side.



You can often find vegetables packaged ready for soup making--carrots, parsley root, onions, celery root, etc all in one package.

The parsley root is the long white vegetable in this package and is commonly used in soups and stews. It looks and tastes similar to what we would call a wild carrot in the US.



This is another vegetable that is commonly used in Hungarian cooking--the celery bulb. I think it's very interesting that one culture uses the bottom of a vegetable and another one uses the top!



Here are celery root and parsley root together.



These students are deciding what to buy. Their assignment was to speak only in Hungarian to make their purchase.



You can also buy flowers and paprika from many vendors. That's paprika in those large plastic bags. Hungarians use a great deal of paprika. Many times the red color in a dish is due to the paprika instead of tomatoes.



Along the side, near the meat cases, are shops that sell slaw and pickled items. Somethings on menus you will see "winter picklings" listed as a salad or appetiser choice.



Now to the meat! The pork is really the best. They have lots of it and it dominates most restaurant menus. It is beautiful and fairly inexpensive, as food goes, and comes in the same cuts as in the US.

The cuts of beef are more of a mystery and make you wonder exactly where this meet came from! Also the beef that I have purchased has been so tough that now I just use pork in any recipe where meat is needed.



While I love fish, the fish in Hungary is not all that attractive. The only way I have found that it really tastes good is if it is fried. And I rarely order it since fried fish here tastes just like fried fish anywhere. It's good, but there is so much else to enjoy that I won't be able to have back home.



This is carp. You can see how it is scored to allow it to be cooked with the bone left in it. Again, I haven't been too eager to try carp.



Here is Corwin's favorite food. He especially likes the way the chickens still have their feet. In addition, there are all sorts of extra parts available--liver, heart, gizzards, etc.



Then on the upper level (another escalator) is an area of shops selling ready made foods for lunch or snacks. Here you can buy soup, goulash, fried fish, desserts.

Our last assignment was to order (in Hungarian) and taste some typical Hungarian foods. These students are eating langos (pronounced langosh). Langos are a bit like elephant ears--big pieces of fried dough. They can be ordered with any number of toppings--cheese, ham or sweet toppings like strawberries.



The seating is at long tables with benches. Everyone sits together--wherever you can find a seat. Here are some more of us eating langos and palancinta. Palancinta are crepe-like ultra thin pancakes. They fill them with all varieties of fruit filling, jam, or turos (similar to ricotta cheese or cheesecake like filling) and roll them up for easy and delicious eating. Our Hungarian teacher, Ms. Kati Fugedi (in the black striped top), is expressing her approval of our choices and use of the Hungarian language.

Food or Why I'm Not Thin

This will just be a listing of great foods we have been enjoying. This place has terrific food! This first one is a beef soup that Corwin ordered. You often get the broth and noodles in the bowl and vegetables and meat on another plate. This picture was taken after Corwin had already moved most of the meat and the carrot from the plate and added them to the broth. That leaves a large potato, 2 slices of dumpling and some more of the beef meat on the side plate. The bones were vertebrae, so it was probably neck meat. Then you add all of it together.



This soup was served with just the meat in the bowl and a plate to the side holding the vegetables and a pitcher of broth. This is what it looked like when Corwin put it all together. This one included sour cream. Bread always comes with soup. At one restaurant we saw many other folks having a bowl with a large dumpling in it and a large pitcher of broth on the side.



This is a fried smoked cheese I had. It had toast and a great fresh salad with it. All the salads have lots of cucumber and yellow peppers along with tomatoes and lettuce. Dressings are usually made of yogurt or mayonnaise. Always good--but remember my motto "I've never met a carbohydrate I didn't like."



This tongue sandwich was good as well. Just a little culinary trip down memory lane. I think my Mom's tongue sandwiches had thicker meat and thinner bread, but this one was still good. The salad was in a basket affair made of some sort of cheese flavored dough.



Here's another favorite food--gizzard goulash! It was served with some very interesting round pasta--almost like risotto, but not.


This was a great one. It was a grilled chicken breast covered with tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella cheese. It came with fried potatoes and some salad and we ordered a side cucumber salad. Yum! At the top is Corwin's plate with some slaw and a pickle showing.



We've taken trains five hours to the south and four hours to the east and have not seen one hog in a field. We did see some sheep and a few cows, but no pigs. And the great majority of the restaurant menus and the meat in the stores is PORK. Where does it come from? We need to travel west. Maybe that is the Hungarian Iowa.
Anyway, this is one of the many pork dishes we've enjoyed--pork chops with onion rings, sliced fried potatoes and pureed peas.



This was one of my favorites--pork medallions with mushrooms and dumplings. I love these dumplings and you can buy them dry in a bag like we buy pasta. Wonderful! I plan to bring several bags home. The mushrooms are also wonderful--all kinds! They have the kind like we have in the US and all the other weird looking floppy ones. They have all been so good. Again we ordered a side cucumber salad. This one came with sour cream.



This is pork again. It's a cutlet, sort of rolled up and stuffed with cheese and sausage and it's sitting on some mashed potatoes and red cabbage.



This is a catfish goulash. It wasn't my favorite, but it was worth a try. The best part was the square noodles that came with it. They were covered with cottage cheese which was very tasty.



This is another pork cutlet that Corwin ordered with red cabbage, slaw and french fries. Also very good.



Now we come to desserts. They are wonderful as well. This is ONE serving of an apple strudel with a vanilla sauce.



And this is a vanilla pudding with dried fruit in it swimming in a raspberry sauce with a chocolate wafer.

We quite often have to eat only soup so that we have enough room for dessert or eat a regular meal at noon and then have just dessert and coffee at night.

Bon appetit or eet smakelek or happy eating!

Timisoara, Romania

Last weekend we took the train to a city in Romania that is close to the Hungarian border. In fact, in years past the region was part of Hungary. Historically this area was called Transylvania and is today part of Romania. The train trip took 5 hours. It was very hot. I’m still puzzled as to why we didn’t get 1st class tickets (air-conditioned), but we didn’t. Corwin looks quite comfortable here, but this was after the seats around us were vacated. We started out with a full train, and little by little, it emptied out. We both had plenty to read and our CD for learning Hungarian to listen to, so the trip passed quite quickly.



When we arrived in Timisoara it was about 9:30pm and dark. As we were leaving the train station Corwin mentioned that he had not map-quested the walk to the hotel. He really didn't know the way, nor how far away it was! He had been in Timisoara in 2005 and we had a reservation at the same hotel that he had stayed in then. He remembered it as not being very far from the train station.

We didn’t see an ATM in the train station which left a lot to be desired. So we had no Romanian lei (money) either. Well, it was a long walk--about a mile and a half--but what made it seem even longer was that it was dark and Corwin was uncertain of the way! He kept saying things like “I think this looks right”. We walked for about forty minutes just following the signs for "Centru" and it was after about twenty minutes that Corwin became sure of the way. At least it was warm and not raining. The Hotel Continental is very nice and we were very glad to see it!



In the morning after a great breakfast at the hotel we began to explore the town. We had our questions answered in the Tourist Information Office near the very beautiful central plaza, called Victory Square. The Opera House is at one end and the Metropolitan Cathedral (Romanian Orthodox) at the other. It is at least four blocks long and is lined with stores and restaurants and filled with fountains, beautiful sculptured gardens, and benches to enjoy the area.



The Romanian Orthodox Cathedral at the southern end is a huge imposing structure. It was built in 1936-1946 in a style that combined Byzantine and Romanian Moldovian architecture.



Some of you may know that the protests against Ceausescu in Romania began in Timisoara. This is the site of the revolution that took place from December 16th to 22nd in 1989. Beginning on December 16th the people gathered in this square to protest the mandatory moving of a Hungarian Reformed minister. As more and more people gathered, they began to chant “Down with Ceausescu”. We took this picture of a poster showing all the people in the square at that time. The communist authorities opened fire on the people in the plaza, killing and wounding many of the citizens.



Every day that week large numbers of people gathered in this square. During the last days they faced the cathedral and prayed for freedom. The picture is a poster that we saw at the memorial. It shows the people facing the cathedral during that time.

Timisoara was declared free on December 20th, Ceausescu left the country on the 22nd, was executed very soon after that and the rest of Romania was declared free from Communism. By the time the fighting ended in Timisoara (on December 20th) and Bucharest (on December 22nd), there were 1,104 people killed and 3,352 people wounded.





We also visited the Memorial of the Revolution. It didn't look very impressive from the street, but after you go through the doorway, you enter a courtyard in the center of the building. There was a chapel on the first floor and exhibits and a film on the second floor. This was a very impressive memorial to all those who died in the revolution. The curator took us through the museum. He had been shot in the leg during the revolution.







We went next to Unity Square. It’s unusual for European towns to have two major squares, but Timisoara does. They are a few blocks apart. Unity Square is less commercial, smaller and surrounded by more national landmarks--the Roman Catholic Domed cathedral (yellow in color) is the top picture, the Serbian Orthodox Church (middle picture), which is built with its backside on the square, and the gigantic Baroque Palace which is now the art museum.





After lunch back again in Victory Square, we wanted to visit the Orthodox Cathedral. It was Saturday and the cathedral was holding weddings about every thirty minutes—I have no idea how many there were, but we saw at least three bridal parties come and go in the time we were there. Two people in the wedding party, who usually looked as if they were the maid of honor and best man, each carried a large candle that was about four feet tall. The only good picture we could get with the wedding party and the candles is this one where the priest is holding a candle, but that was not the typical arrangement. All afternoon there were decorated cars, with horns honking, driving through the town.





Victory Square had the most beautiful sculptured gardens. Most of the color came from using different foliage of begonias, dusty miller, ageratum and some other lighter green plant which may have been a type of herb (it didn’t have a flower). It appeared that these were pruned to maintain the patterns. Don't get any ideas about seeing something similar next summer at our house!





The square had a lovely fountain and lots of pigeons!



There was also a statue given to the town by Italian officials in 1926. It’s a copy of the 5th century Roman statue of Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf.



When we were touring the National History Museum, there were two students there who spoke English and were sort of guiding us. Finally, one of them asked Corwin if he had been in Timisoara before. When Corwin said that he had taught a short course there in 2005, the student said, “I know. I was in that class.” Talk about a small world. These two students are nearly finished with their studies in political science, and we enjoyed a great conversation with them.

The train trip back was also interesting. We sat near a man who spoke Romanian, Hungarian, English, and German. He talked with us off and on during the five-hour trip about conditions in Romania today. He was on his way to Germany where his mother lived and where he planned to buy a used car. Apparently used cars are much cheaper and more readily available in Germany. One of his friends makes a trip or two a year to buy several cars. He trucks them back and then sells them in Romania. We had noticed many fields of cars along the border. This man explained that if you bring more than one car across the border, cars are kept there until the authorities can determine that they are legally owned and appropriate to bring into the country.

It was a good weekend and it seemed good to get back to Budapest where we are beginning to feel more familiar.