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Happy Halloween, all!
October 31st and November 1st are a holiday in Hungary, as well, when
people visit cemetaries and put flowers and candles on their loved
ones' graves. From what I understand, it's a sad holiday, unlike the
Mexican Day of the Dead when people also put flowers and candles on
graves. However, none of my loved ones are buried in Hungary, so I
will be celebrating the American way, by wearing a costume (I have yet
to figure out exactly what), going to a party at Amanda and Alethea's,
and trading candy with my fellow BSMers.
Today was the Conjecture and Proof midterm. It wasn't as hard as it
could have been; all of the problems were directly based on homework
problems we've had, and I even successfully predicted what one of the
problems would be. I have two more midterms coming up--Combinatorics
on Monday and Analysis on Thursday--but for today, I can take a break
from studying to celebrate Halloween and to tell you about Kosice,
Slovakia.
Forrest, Ben, and I arrived in Kosice at 5 am last Sunday. Our first
adventure was attempting to figure out how to work the luggage lockers
in the train station, so we wouldn't have to carry our backpacks
around. The lockers were combination-locked, and they had dials to
set
the combination on the inside of the locker doors, as well as dials on
the outside, to allow you to open the doors. However, we had trouble
understanding in what order to set the combination, close the door, and
insert coins--and the lockers bore instructions in Slovakian, German,
and Russian, none of which we can read. We fiddled around with the
lockers for awhile, until a Slovakian man came up to us, pointed at the
lockers, and said, "No, bad." (I think this meant the
locker was
broken.) He showed us where the left-luggage office was, and then
chatted with Ben and me in extremely broken English (once he learned we
were from the US, he inquired which states we were from by
saying,
"NewYorkCaliforniaTexasFloridaMaineMichiganDakotaCarolinaIllinoi
s?") while Forrest deposited our stuff.
We ate bread and Nutella for breakfast in the train station and waited
for the sky to get light. Finally, we ventured out and headed for the
main square. We saw St. Elizabeth's Church and the medieval
watchtower
from the outside, and then saw a woman going into the church. Forrest
suggested that since it was Sunday, it might be nice to attend a
Slovakian church service, to warm our souls and our noses while we
waited for museums to open. So, we followed the woman into the
church. The service was already in progress; the part that we
attended
was kind of boring, because it didn't involve any hymns, just prayers
in Slovakian. However, the stained-glass windows at the front of the
church, with the rising sun just beyond, were gorgeous.
After the church service, we explored the streets of Kosice. That
early in the morning, we had the city practically all to ourselves.
Kosice has a beautiful, wide main street, which is where St.
Elizabeth's Church, the medieval watchtower, a musical fountain (turned
off for winter), and a statue called the "Plague Column" are.
The
streets immediately around the main street are beautiful too, with
ornate, colorful old buildings incongruously housing sporting-goods
stores and the like. However, once you venture out of the center of
the town, you see a lot of concrete apartment buildings. This area
has
the feel of a town with a Communist past.
At 9:00, the Slovakian Archeological Museum opened. We went in and
bought tickets (the student rate was 10 kroner apiece, about 25
cents). The woman at the ticket counter didn't speak English, so our
conversation was based entirely on our expectations of what one would
logically say in a ticket-buying situation: We said, "Three
students,"
holding up 3 fingers; she said, "Student?" and then something we
didn't
understand, so we showed her our student ID cards, which seemed to
satisfy her. She said something else, and set 3 tickets on the
counter, so we looked at the price listed on the tickets and gave her
our money. She gave us our change and 4 laminated sheets describing
the contents of the museum in English. Then she came out from behind
the desk, and showed us which of the sheets corresponded to which
hallways, all the while speaking in Slovakian. Then, mysteriously,
she
took back 3 of the sheets...maybe we had to pay extra for those
exhibits? We went down the hallway that corresponded to the one
remaining sheet--it was an exhibit on the history of Slovakia, from the
Stone Age to the 1800s--and when we returned to the lobby, the woman
came out and gave us the other 3 laminated sheets. Maybe she just
didn't want us to get confused about which sheet to look at.
The other exhibits were about the Roman ruins in Slovakia and Hungary;
the history of currency in the area around Kosice; and, in a vault in
the museum's basement, a collection of over 2000 gold coins from all
over Europe that were found sometime before World War II, hidden in a
house in Kosice. It was fascinating to look at such a quantity of
gold
in one place, and marvel at whatever rich miser put the effort into
investing his money in gold, only to stash it away so neither he nor
his family could enjoy it. All in all, it was an interesting little
museum--and because October is definitely not the tourist season in
Kosice, we were 3 of only a handful of visitors. No pushing and
squeezing to see the most popular exhibits!
After the Archeological Museum, we visited the museum in Kosice's
former jail. This was a little confusing, because the printed info
sheet in English identified the rooms by their compass orientations
("North-northwest (The guard's room). In this room you will
find..."). Without a compass, I kept getting rooms mixed up.
However,
that museum did have an old voting box that was neat to see. (You
voted by putting a ball into one of the cups on top of the box, and the
ball dropped through a hole in the bottom of the cup into a locked
drawer corresponding to that cup.) We also visited a house that was a
replica of Rakoci Ferenc's house when he was in exile in Turkey.
Rakoci Ferenc was a leader who fought for Hungary's freedom (from the
Hapsburgs?) who was exiled. In 1905 his remains were repatriated and
buried in St. Elizabeth's Church, amidst great celebration. Kosice was
a part of Hungary for a long time.
Then we went to the Slovakian Art Museum, which, according to Ben's
guidebook, was open until 2pm. But when we tried to buy tickets, the
man at the ticket desk said, "No. Two." We were very
confused and
asked him more questions in English, which he didn't understand. He
tried to clarify by writing, "14:00" (2pm) on a piece of paper,
then by
speaking German. Finally, Ben asked, "Beszel magyarul?" (Do
you speak
Hungarian?) He did, so Forrest asked, "2 ora-kor lesz
nyitva?" (At
2:00 it will be open?) The man said, "Igen," (Yes), so we
finally
understood and went to lunch. Thank goodness for Hungarian!
We had lunch at an unremarkable cafe, and then had dessert at a pastry
shop. Yum! At 2:00 we went back to the art museum. We
were the only
visitors there--a woman had to come out of her office and unlock the
gallery just for us. The people who worked there were very friendly
and chatted with us in Hungarian. (The combined effect of Kosice's
formerly being a part of Hungary, and currently being close to the
Hungarian border, meant that many of the people at the museum spoke
Hungarian, even though they didn't speak English.) We saw 2 rooms of
art by a Hungarian painter named Mousson, a room of modern art, and a
room of specifically Japanese modern art. It was cool to be the only
people there--you could pretend this was all art in your living room,
you just hadn't moved the couch in yet.
However, even cooler than that was what happened after we finished
admiring the art. The woman who was guarding the room of Japanese art
chatted with us for a bit in Hungarian, asking where we were from, what
we thought of the paintings, etc., and then she told us about another
museum, one that wasn't listed in Ben's guidebook. She pointed it out
to us on a map, and said we should go. We were a little skeptical of
our ability to find the place (since we had already failed to find
several restaurants and one museum that *were* listed in the Lonely
Planet guide), but we did find it: the Loeffler Art Museum.
At the Loeffler Museum, we were greeted by a cheerful, English-
speaking, gray-haired woman. We paid our 5-kroner-apiece student
ticket fee, and the woman proceeded to give us a personal, guided tour
of the museum! It was a small museum, consisting of sculptures and
paintings made by Mr. Loeffler, a native of Kosice, as well as self-
portraits that he collected from his artist friends, many of whom were
also from Kosice. Our guide, who studied art history in college, knew
many of these people, so she told us about both the art and the
artists. "This artist was a very good friend of Loeffler, and a
Jew,
who was in Auchwitz. And when she got out of Auchwitz, Loeffler was
very kind and helped her get back on her feet. It was very nice to
see. This is a painting she did of Loeffler, and this is a sculpture
he did of her..." It was very fun to hear her stories, and she
cared
so much about the art that it made us care more, too. At the end of
the tour we had such a glowing feeling about Kosice! It was almost
time to catch our train, so we donated our leftover kroners (about $10)
to that museum.
I guess the moral of the story is that I highly recommend learning
Hungarian and then visiting Kosice! I hope you are all having a
wonderful fall. I'll talk to you again soon!
Viszlat,
Abra
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