The Apple Festival

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Yesterday, we drove from Mariapocs (A) to a small town on the border of Romania called Csenger (B), to celebrate their Csengeri Almafesztivá. It's a small town, with a population of around 5000 people who are mostly employed in the vocation of... apples. There are a multitude of orchards in the area and a rather huge juicing factory where they make not only apple juice, but the absence of apple juice in the form of apple chips. If you are not employed by the apple industry, my understanding is that you make shoes at the local joint Hungarian/German venture (which make rather nice shoes according to Ili, our colleague). Ili lived here for around 20 years, working (in spite of my previous description) at the local high school, teaching English. It was a nice trip for her as she got to catch up with many old friends.

The day started off wet, but that was no hindrance for the locals who were out there in force with their large pots cooking up all sorts to stews, soups and cakes. Each "organisation" within the town, i.e. the tűzoltóosztag (fire department), Posta Csenger (post office), the primary school, the high schools etc, all decorated their stall with apples, pulled out a large pot and spent three hours or so cooking up these awesome concoctions. The stalls were then judged on their presentation, the quality of their food and the "specialness" (we and no one else we asked could figure out the qualities of "special"). As mentioned, Ili knew just about everyone so we had a very good selection of the local produce, including some awesome pork stew, any number of apple cakes, crumbles, slices, preserves, chips, juices, and of course the ubiquitously eye watering and throat burning Palinka. Actually, I think I'm starting to enjoy the vile stuff. As they seem to say in Csenger: "Most people drink Palinka after eating, whereas we drink it before and after... also quite a lot in the middle."

The rain cleared up eventually, and it turned out to be a really nice day. The sun was out, there

was plenty of music, folk dancing and eating. We ended up going on a bit of a walk around town, as it turns out that Csenger always employs the services of a famous Hungarian architect: Imre Makovecz. This tends to make the town have the same kind of feel all the way through, which is really very pretty. In fact, Ili's house was designed by Imre so I get the impression that it should be fairly well sought after (this said, I think it has been on the market for two years due to the fact that the only advertising she has done has been to post an Eladó sign out the front). Still, many of the buildings looked very impressive.

After the tour, we visited a few more stalls, bought some preserves, ate kürtőskalács which are a traditional Transylvanian pastry. They were pretty awesome, basically a cylinder of dough, cooked in front of you then powdered with either cinnamon, cocoa powder, coconut, walnut or vanilla. Here is a picture of Amanda enjoying her kürtőskalác with Ili standing behind enjoying the crowds.

- Daniel.