Final Exam

by OLGS, guest blogger—

I completed my two weeks of Magyarul language camp and the Summer Program invited me to take the final exam for the intensive course. The test was a mixture of multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short essays. I used the full two hours allotted, even as my younger classmates decamped after half an hour or forty-five minutes. Maybe it was easy for them, but not for me. The main thing in Hungarian is to make sure verb, noun, adjective, and adverbs have the correct matching suffixes. That means every word in a sentence has to be checked against every other word for harmony.


The results are now posted: I scored a 76 out of 100 possible points. At the Yale of President Bush’s day, that would have been a “Gentleman’s ‘C’,” but here at the U of Debrecen, the grading curve is such that I earned ‘“honours” for my exam, as you can see on my “Tanúsítávany” above.

New exhibit at the Debrecen “Modém”

by OLGS, guest blogger--

I visited Debrecen’s Museum of Modern Art ( A Modém) to see an exhibit titled “SzocReal,” or Socialist Realism art in Hungary from 1949 through 1956. There were a lot of paintings showing toiling peasants and workers, but always with a smile on their faces as their toil was contributing to the new Hungary. Even the ticket-checker on the tram was smiling and the passengers smiled back.

The crowning achievement of the exhibit was the reconstruction of the Budapest Stalin statue (see above). Originally unveiled in 1950 in central Budapest (see below), the statue was pulled down in October 1956 and the head of the dead dictator served as a support for a traffic sign (see below). Red Army forces collected the broken pieces and in some obscure warehouse the pieces have rusted for the past fifty-two years. Incredibly, the curators of the Modém collected the scattered pieces, welded the ten-meter-high monster back together, polished it to a deep bronze, and now it smiles over the exhibit-goers inside the courtyard of the Modém.

Kossuth Lajos and Debrecen

by OLGS, guest blogger--

Even bigger than the statues of Protestant cattle-herders and theologians is the giant statue in honor of Louis Kossuth (Kossuth Lajos, as the Magyars say it). He helped lead the 1848 “Springtime of Peoples” in Europe against the absolute rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. For a while, he and his fellow revolutionaries succeeded. At first, they sought Hungarian autonomy within the Hapsburg Empire, but when that was not forthcoming, Kossuth proclaimed Hungary independent of Austria in Debrecen's second St. Andrew’s Church (the first one burned in 1803). The new Hungary claimed its sovereignty extended to the full borders of the historic kingdom of Hungary, that is to say, more than half of the Hapsburg lands.

In response, the Hapsburgs called for help from the Romanovs and soon enough, 350,000 Russian soldiers invaded Magyarorszag and chased Kossuth all the way from Debrecen to New York. Nonetheless, the Hungarians still revere him as a champion of their nation. The picture at the top was taken a few days ago; the one at the bottom with the flag draped over the base of the statute was taken today.

Debrecen’s defiant Protestant past

By OLGS, guest blogger--

I went on a Sunday walk with some other Magyar language students. The town is filled with monuments to Calvinist theologians, and I think the ones not famous enough to merit an eponymouos tram stop still get a marker. Some are statues, some are plaques. Nearly all have a braided and beribboned Hungarian tri-color wreath laying in honor at the base. The statue of Istvan Bocksai (above) commemorates a great Protestant cowboy-rancher-warrior-noble. He and other Debrecen landholders had grown wealthy in supplying livestock to the armies of the Hapsburgs, and if I read this correctly, to the Ottoman Turks. The Hapsburgs did not like this and attempted to put him and his church, St. Andrews, out of business. Bocksai led a raid in 1604 all the way to Vienna and forced the Hapsburgs to recognize his rule in Debrecen and the place of the Calvinist church.

Another statue nearby Bocksai's commemorates some clergy and lay people from St. Andrews who were arrested during the Catholic Reformation that followed the expulsion of the Turks from Hungary later in the 17th century. The Hapsburg rulers seized some Debrecen Calvinists, dragged them to nearby Eperjes(*), and broke them on the wheel as an object lesson to other Protestants. Ouch!

The final memorial I saw was the most interesting, the so-called Calvinist shrub. Also during the Catholic Reformation in Hungary, the Protestants planted a small shrub near St. Andrews. The Catholics mocked this plant and said it would soon die, as would worship at St. Andrews. The Protestants answered that so long as the shrub lived, so would Calvinism. You can see for yourself the results below.

(*) Note: Eperjes, today known as Presov in nearby Slovakia, is the home of the three Joes' paternal great-great-grandmother. She had nothing to do with the Reformation or Counter-Reformation.

Washington County, Maine

Before OLGS took off for Hungary and the fleshpots of the spa life, we went down east with my parents. Much revisiting the past--trips to graveyards, a few childhood friends (my parents', not mine), and a few relatives. Washington County is still dirt poor. Still bleak. Still unpopulated. Still beautiful.

We had quite a bit of fog, which was not the case last summer. Our real estate lady informed us that fog is very common in July. As long as you're not driving in the dark on an unfamiliar road, it's quite lovely, keeping everything silent.

We rented a house in Roque Bluffs, which has undergone quite a bit of development, at least for this part of the world. It was perched on a cliff, so there were no beachcombing trips. However, we were close to Roque Bluffs State Park, which has a lovely beach (see above), with hardly anyone on it. At the back of the beach is a big hedge of rugosa roses. The smell is intoxicating.