Rószafa citeraegyüttes

We went to a folk music concert concert yesterday evening.  It was quite a lot of fun, there was plenty of dancing, citera playing and a little bit of drinking.  :P

I won't say much about it, but I wanted to leave you this video of the citera band that my teacher leads: Rózsafa citeraegyüttes.

- Daniel.

Vlad Tepes - War Hero or Prince of Darkness?

The hotel that we stayed at in Sighisoara was built in 1797, so it was right in the centre of town near the citadel.  It was awfully difficult to find and involved us driving up a dark, narrow stone paved alleyway.  It was half past twelve by the time we arrived and fortunately the owner was nice enough to come and meet us.  The check in time was supposed to be ten o'clock so we were running pretty late.  We were pretty happy to get there, especially considering all the issues that we'd had earlier in the day.  The hotel itself was fairly nice, but our room was up a set of very steep wooden stairs which Iago rather hated.

It turns out that we'd arrived in Sighisoara just in time for the town's annual Medieval Festival. So, the next morning after checking out of our hotel, we wandered around the stalls for a while soaking up the ye olde vibe.  It was a bit of fun with some music, performances and lots of stalls to look at.  I went into a local museum which had a bell tower, I got to pose with a sword and shield (no matter how geeky I feel when I grab the odd medieval weapon and pose for the camera, I always seem to go back for more), we did some shopping and we took a couple of photos of the house in which Vlad III Dracul was born.

The history regarding the man we now call Dracula seems to be interesting.  The Romanians didn't really seem to like the connection between Vlad Tepes (read: Vlad the Impaler) and a monster of evil.  The history books tell that Vlad III was a brutally effective ruler of the Wallachian (present day southern Romania) state in the 15th Century.  Sure, his favorite method of torture and excution was impaling but he was a patriot damn it!  He was actually considered to be one of Romania's greatest leaders, and was voted the 12th greatest Romanian just after Nicolae Ceaușescu (a communist Head of State so hated that he and wife were publically executed in 1989) and just before some bloke who owned a football club.  Romanians are weird.  Anyway, although there were a few stalls selling Dracula mugs and whatnot at the Festival, the whole Bram Stoker version of Dracula was mostly kept in the corner.

After an hour or two, we'd had enough of the Festival and drove our way further south to Castle Bran.  This was one of the castles that was credited as being the home of Dracula in Bram Stoker's books, but yet again, the Romanian public didn't seem willing to ham it up.  The castle was elegant, well maintained, orderly and most utterly evil.  Oh, sure, it was all presented to be the former homestead of Queen Marie (1875 - 1943) but behind the tapestries, I imagined the stains from when they used to weep blood; and behind the quaint reading rooms with their fancy Tudor chairs, I saw the shadow of the ghost of evil.

Dracula, as written by Bram Stoker, may only lurk in the visages of cigarette trays and plastic steins, but his mark is all over the God cursed country.  May God have mercy of their souls.

Anyway, it was quite a long drive home.  We stayed a night in the town of Bistrita, which also holds another loose connection to the book (the character Jonathan Harker stayed in a hotel there), then we arrived home at around 4pm this afternoon.  We even managed to avoid some of the potholes on the Romanian roads on the way back. Progress. Good times.

- Daniel.

7 hours to Carei

Today, we started off on our first real vacation since the school period ended.  Boy, were we looking forward to it.  After the stress of teaching at the summer camps, and the boredom of not teaching at the summer camps, we were looking forward to doing something that had nothing to do with either teaching or not teaching summer camps.  The plan was to go to Sighsoara, the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, then head off to Castle Bran (one of the castles that he was thought to inhabit - we saw one of the other ones earlier in the year), then head off to Bistrita where Johnathon from Bran Stoker's book stayed on his way to Castle Bran.  Adventure!

It's a 7 hour trip from Máriapócs to Sighsoara so we had grand plans of leaving at 6am and getting here at 1pm.  So after sleeping in we were making good time to leave at 10am, and were well over the border between Hungary and Romania by 11am.  A one hour trip to Carei, not too bad.

On our way through Carei, however, we noticed that our GPS seemed to be taking us north, when we really wanted to go south east.  Besides, we could see the sign that pointed us towards a major town on the way, so we bravely discarded our GPS's advice and struck out south east.  Unfortunately, it seems that it is damn easy to get lost in these small country towns of Romania.  Nothing seems to make sense, and you spend most of your time avoiding the small quarries that everyone politely calls potholes that you can easily miss a rusted signpost that may or may not have had the sign that you were looking for.  So it was that we were quickly lost.

It took us another three hours of driving only to find that we'd somehow weeded our way back to Carei.  Hm... four hours to Carei, not brilliant.  What's more on the way back to Carei, the brakes began to fail.  Well, maybe fail is a bit of an exaggeration but they were definitely spongy.  Screw it, we thought, we're going home.  Mission failed.  All over red rover.

But by the time we got home, had some lunch and organised to see the mechanic, we had our gumption back.  So once the mechanic gave us the all clear (he accused me of having the handbrake on... ghastly accusation if you ask me), we jumped back in the car at 4 pm and made mighty good time back to Carei (a tidy 7 hours from when we originally set off that morning) and have been scooting across the countryside all afternoon and just arrived in Sighsoara around half an hour ago at around half past twelve.

I'm tired, but happy we pushed forward.

- Daniel

Baths, bells and blood

On Friday afternoon Daniel and I visited the resort town of Hajdúszoboszló, also known - no joke - as Hungary's "Mecca for rheumatism". Ever since we first arrived in Hungary, people have been raving to us about Hajdúszoboszló's fantastic thermal baths and encouraging us to go there and experience them for ourselves...so we did. And they were okay. Personally I think the ones closer to home in Nyírbátor are just as good.

The pools at Hajdúszoboszló were really crowded. I had to wait over half an hour just to secure a seat with a massage jet, and I never got to try out the sloping water beds because none of the selfish cows who were using them would move. Hmpf. In spite of this, the baths were really quite relaxing, and we felt cosy and warm in the water even though the sky was overcast and threatening to rain.

After we left the baths, we wandered around outside for awhile. We discovered the Bell House (Harangház), a structure erected in the year 2000 to celebrate the millenium. It contained a lot of bells. 

Last night was even more exciting. We were invited to attend the final performances of the drama camp that had been using our school in Máriapócs as a base for the past week. About sixty teenagers took part in the camp, spending a week doing lots of fun stuff like singing, dancing, acting, costume design and set construction. All of the performances were in Hungarian, so much of it went over our heads, but still, it was a very impressive display. Daniel's favourite performance was the updated version of Snow White. We knew we were in for something a bit different when the curtains opened to reveal the graves of three of the seven dwarves. I'm pretty sure that Prince Charming was dead too because Snow White seemed to have fallen on tough times and taken up employment as a cleaner. From there things just got weirder...and bloodier. It was a lot of fun.

- Amanda

Carei, Romania

Next week Daniel and I are planning to travel deep into Transylvania (central Romania) with Iago, so today the three of us set off to see a town just across the Hungarian-Romanian border as a bit of a practice run. 

Carei (known as Nagykároly in Hungarian) is about 12 kilometres from the Hungarian border. It was settled in the early 14th century and remained part of Hungary until towards the end of the Second World War. Its major tourist attraction is Károlyi castle. 

After some searching Daniel and I did manage to find the castle, but unfortunately it didn't seem to be open for tours as it's currently undergoing significant renovation works. Still we had fun walking around the castle gardens and sharing a yummy pizza at a nearby restaurant. Iago also enjoyed the trip as he was able to befriend most of Carei's stray dog population.

 

   

The only negative element of the trip occurred as we were crossing back over the border into Hungary. The border guard seemed very annoyed that I had a Hungarian passport but didn't speak or understand much of the language. It made me feel bad :(

On a funnier note, here is the result of our first attempt at using the self-timer on our camera. It seems that the auto focus option was accidentally disabled when the back of the chair that we had the camera resting on pushed the touchscreen during the countdown. I kind of like the blurry effect!

- Amanda

Fancy meeting you here...

This week Daniel and I have been trying to diet. Basically this has involved eating A LOT of watermelon (the dude at the watermelon stand recognises our car now), and trying to exercise more than usual. Things were going really well at first, then we caved and had pizza for dinner on Friday night. No biggie, we figured that it was just a minor stumbling block. Then we had Chinese takeaway for lunch yesterday. Hmm, two unhealthy meals in two days, not good. Surely, we'd be better today.

But no. As you can see from the photo below, things got worse....much worse.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found evidence of another evil empire - in the form of a lego Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith - lurking near the KFC. In hindsight, I suppose this should have tipped us off that we were in a bad place.

Anyhow, tomorrow is another day so we'll give the diet another shot.

- Amanda

Stork update

A few months ago we posted about the storks that had built their nest in front of the church in Máriapócs. Daniel and I have continued to observe the nest ever since and have really enjoyed watching the chicks grow. At first it was difficult to even see the chicks, and we were only able to catch glimpses of the tops of their heads every few minutes. But now, as you can see, it's impossible NOT to see the babies. They are huge!

So far we haven't seen the chicks attempt to leave the nest, but I can hardly blame them for waiting. The nest is sitting atop a pole that looks about 20 metres tall, and I can imagine that falling from that height would be rather painful (if not fatal) for a young stork. 

Apparently the storks will all stick around until Autumn, then make their way to Africa.

- Amanda

Birthday!

Last night, we were invited over to our principal's house for "a talk".  We were a little bit worried as having "a talk" with the boss is always a bit worrying.  I asked our colleague Ili what it might be about but she said that she didn't know.  It's been really hot over here at the moment with most days hitting the high thirties with very little wind.  So when five o'clock rocked around we really didn't feel like going out into the heat to possibly be yelled at, but we went anyway.

Sanji, our principal, lives in the nearby town of Pócspetri which basically begins where Máriapócs starts so it was a quick 2 minute drive to his house.  Once we got there, we discovered that it was a surprise birthday party for me and all the teachers were invited.  It was really nice of them to organise it, there was an awesome Hungarian soup... wait... have I talked about how awesome Hungarian soups are?  I don't believe that I have.

Hungarian soups are awesome.  They are relatively simple to make, they just involve chopping the ingredients into chunky bits then adding them to water at the right times.  Sure there are some spices or other herbs that are added but they just come out really well.  I've never been one for soups, truth be told.  Back in Australia, Amanda and I tried to go through a soup stage and we boiled all sorts of things in a pot in order to get something that could be called soup but it just never worked out.  Hungarian soups work out.  Enough said.

Anyway, in addition to the soups, there were steaks, chicken, potatoes, greek salad and a swath of cakes and sweet cake like things called sütemény, which seem to include everything from a slice to a cupcakes.  Wonderful stuff.  Ili made this peach slice sütemény which was wonderful.  I ate heaps of it.  In addition there were plenty of welcome drinks of palinka (home made from grapes) and plenty of beer.  It was a great night, all in all.

Today, was my birthday, and it was pretty cruisy.  I practiced my new citera that heaps of people went in for (Thanks Mum and Derek, Dad and Deb, Dave and Anthea, Christine and Danni!).  It's a great citera, a tenor, which is larger than I was used to with the prima. So I have to learn to play it, but once I do I will be able to play harmony a lot better.  I really love it.  

- Daniel.

Vet...or not vet?

Okay, this is a bit of a nothing post as we've enjoyed a bit of a nothing week. After the excitement of running Summer camps in Budapest and Pécs, it's been awesome to spend a whole week at home just chillin'.

Unfortunately, while it's been a lazy week for Daniel and I, things have been a bit tougher on Iago. He managed to pick up some ticks while we were in Budapest, and while I spent several hours literally going over him with a fine toothed comb to locate and remove them, we still thought it would be best for a vet to check him out. Ticks can be pretty nasty and in some cases can lead to nausea, lethargy and even paralysis in dogs. For this reason, you're supposed to keep any ticks that you remove from the dog so that the vet can analyse them to see if special treatment is necessary. Unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to keep such gross things around any longer than I had to, so I drowned them in a small bottle of Unicum (the vilest alcohol in our supply), and tossed them out. 

Luckily, the vet didn't seem bothered by the fact that I had destroyed all evidence of Iago's tick infestation. In fact, the vet didn't seem at all bothered (or even very interested) in Iago at all. He turned up at our house, we introduced him to Iago, then he just kind of stood there while we tried to explain the problem. We pointed out where the ticks had been, and he gave the area a 1-second glance, then shrugged his shoulders. O-kay then. Perhaps he'd be more interested in giving Iago his annual heartworm injection? No, it turns out not. Apparently treating dogs for heartworm is pretty unusual in Hungary. Hmmm. 

After that we all kind of stood around awkwardly for a bit, then we thought we'd ask the vet to take a look at Iago's ears (he often gets infections, especially during Summer when he swims a lot). Watching the vet try to look at Iago's ears was pretty weird. He seemed to have almost no idea what he was doing, almost as if this was the first time he'd ever had contact with a dog before. It was very strange and made me wonder whether he even was a vet, or just some random guy who'd happened to turn up at our house and been too polite to leave when we started asking him to check out our dog.

Anyway, after a bit more confused standing around, the vet left, telling us he'd be back again in the afternoon. Umm, okay. Daniel and I left Iago outside and continued our holiday chillin' inside. Ahhhh, good times.

A few minutes later, we heard children's voices in our front yard calling out to Iago. It seemed that our new neighbours' children had finally arrived! They have three daughters aged about 3, 6 and 9. Ever since their appearance earlier this week, they have been outside playing with Iago every day. Their favourite game seems to be to stand at opposite ends of the garden, then call Iago to run alongside them to the other end, then back again, over and over. It's super cute, especially as their parents seem to have explained that Iago only understands English, so now they call out "Iago, come" before they start running.

Understandably, Iago has been pretty knackered the last few nights. Entertaining three energetic young children all day is a big job for such an old doggus.

- Amanda

Pécs and doughnut peaches

Daniel and I arrived back from teaching our second Summer camp last night. Boy were we glad to get home. The camp took place in a gorgeous town called Pécs in southern Hungary, about 40 minutes from the border with Croatia. Pécs is full of small, windy streets, old buildings and its centre is surrounded by the remains of a medieval stone wall. Our accommodation was located in the hilly part of town - some roads were so steep that I was convinced on several occasions that our car wasn't up to the challenge and that we were about to start rolling backwards down the mountain. Fortunately, I was wrong :)

Monday morning started out well enough. We'd found the building the day before, so we arrived early and set ourselves up. I was a bit put off by the building's exterior - a drab puke green box surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds - but the inside was really quite impressive. It was purpose-built as a children's centre so there were lots of classrooms, an awesome theatre and a large, open plan foyer where kids could watch Scooby Doo cartoons before classes started. It seemed that many other Summer camps were also being offered in the building, so the place was crawling with kids. Excellent.

Soon enough all ten of our students had arrived. There were six girls aged between 7 and 14 years of age and four 11 year old boys. In hindsight, this mixture of kids should have raised some red flags, but at the time we were just really eager to get started so we didn't dwell on things too much. The first day passed by reasonably quickly - we played lots of simple games and revised basic vocabulary. Throughout the day, Daniel and I tried to chat with each of the kids to get a feel for their language level. It soon became obvious that some of the students were very, very, very good and were already speaking in sentences and able to express their opinions and thoughts quite clearly, while others knew a lot of vocab, but nothing really beyond that. We tried to accommodate the different language levels as best as we could, but it was difficult. Clearly, we would need to rethink our strategy for Day 2.

Unfortunately, on Monday night we received a phonecall from our employer to tell us that three of our students (two siblings and their cousin) had dropped out of the camp because they felt that the program was too easy. It was a real shame as Daniel and I were in the midst of discussing how to better assist those very students when we got the bad news. Oh well.

Tuesday went a little better. We separated our remaining students into two groups and took them through a series of games and activities that were more at their level. I think it worked pretty well. Since there were only seven kids left, we all came together to play outside games and sports. We were lucky enough to have another teacher named Jodi with us, and she was awesome at organising the outside activities, plus she showed the kids some cool origami during craft time. What a lifesaver! 

The only real issue we encountered on Tuesday was during the drama session. The two older girls who had dropped out of the camp had been the major characters and the main developers of the plot for the end-of-week drama performance. Their sudden departure left some pretty big holes in the storyline and it took the entire drama session on Tuesday to get things back on track. Of course, this meant that we now had one less day to actually rehearse the play before Friday's show. Aaargh!

Anyway, in spite of things going relatively well on Tuesday - no more dropouts, hooray! - we really weren't feeling the vibe in Pécs. These seven kids were much harder work than the eight kids I'd taught the week before and from Wednesday there would be no more Jodi to assist us :( In addition, we were running low on classroom supplies and we were both feeling pretty darn exhausted overall. Not a good state to be in with seven kids looking to us to keep them entertained and happy for another three days.

Fortunately, Wednesday passed without any major incidents. One of the kids seemed pretty subdued, but when I asked her if everything was okay, she assured me that she was fine. I assumed that she was just a little lonely because Jodi was gone, and because she was now the oldest girl by several years. I tried to spend a bit more time with her and came away really impressed by her English language skills. She seemed a little happier by the end of the day, but I still had a terrible feeling that we wouldn't be seeing her again....

Sure enough, on Thursday morning we received a call saying that the girl had dropped out of the camp. Apparently some of the boys in the class had been bullying her and she had been up half the night vomiting at the thought of coming back for another day (although her mother went out of her way to assure us that she had enjoyed the camp otherwise). I was utterly devastated and really, really angry with myself for failing to notice something that was obviously occurring right under my nose. Generally I'm a big advocate of English teachers who don't speak the local language because it forces them and their students to speak English to communicate, but in some cases (such as this one) it was a real disadvantage not to speak Hungarian because we couldn't understand the bullying that was going on.

By now we were down to only six students (three 11 year old boys, an 8 year old girl and two 7 seven year old girls). I was utterly paranoid that the boys would choose another victim to bully, so every time they said something in Hungarian to the younger girls, I would quickly tell them to be quiet and obsessively ask the girls if everything was okay. It wasn't a particularly fun environment for anyone and the last two days of the camp seemed to crawl by in super sloooooooooooooooooow motion.

Finally, it was Friday afternoon and all the parents had arrived to see their kids perform in the end-of-week play. It was a bit of a disaster. The plot didn't make a lot of sense, some of the kids refused to dress up, and it was all over in about 5 seconds. Still, I think they did a really good job - everyone remembered their lines and seemed to be having fun. In summary, the play was about an emo who was allergic to his teacher's cat. To fix this problem, the emo bought a dog (for $2000) from a normal boy in the hope that it would kill the cat, but the dog didn't want to commit such an act so the cat encouraged it to run away. The emo, now dogless and out of pocket $2000, then hired an assassin to steal back his money. At this point, no one had what they wanted and everything was all confused so the assassin came up with the only possible solution - dancing! The end.

The play was scheduled to start at 3:45pm. By 3:47pm it was all over and we were waving goodbye to the students and their confused parents (many of whom seemed to still be waiting for the real play to begin). By 4:03pm we had cleaned out the classroom and were climbing into our car, very glad to be seeing the puke green building for the last time. It was such a tough week and I'm so, so glad that it's over and that we're now officially on holiday until September.

Oh, in other completely unrelated news here is a picture of some doughnut peaches that I bought at the supermarket today.

- Amanda