The Wildlife in Debrecen, Hungary

Before you biologists or naturalists get too excited, let me warn you that there isn't really any wildlife here.  Well, that's what it seemed like at first, but I did eventually discover a few mildly interesting critters.  It's weird not seeing squirrels scampering around all over the place, nor their once adventurous furry flattened carcasses littering the roadside.  Not a squirrel in the country, as far as I can tell.

"wildlife", sort of

Of course, there are the typical boring city creatures, such as pigeons galore, sparrows, and mosquitoes.  The mosquitoes are fairly plentiful.  I think I've killed an average of one per day since I arrived in Hungary, but the strange thing is that they don't seem to bite, or perhaps they don't like my foreign blood. On my balcony there is a pigeon nest behind a broom, which seems to be constructed of pigeon poo (the nest I mean, not the broom.)

my balcony with the nest behind the broom

The fledglings are getting brave and wandering around the balcony now.  That explains why you can't see them in the poo nest behind the broom.

a baby pigeon on my balcony

There are lots of crows too.  And half black, half grey ones.  Are they magpies perhaps?  I thought they were black and white, not black and grey.

a magpie?

Other than colouring, and a very wimpy call, they seem exactly like crows.

a chilly, chilling turtle

I saw this turtle come out of the frog pond in the "great forest" to sun himself, but when he felt the eight degree cold and a wind chill, he changed his mind and dove back in before I could snap a photo.  He posed nicely in the floating leaves for me when he resurfaced.

two over-crowded bat houses

I didn't even have my camera, sadly, when I first discovered something strange going on in the tree shown above.  I heard a lot of squeaking on my way by, and it was really bugging me.  I kept circling the area saying "what is that sound?"  I first thought it may be some kind of insect I didn't know about.  Then I just decided to sit under this tree and stare and listen.  Did I see something move in the dark of one of those holes, I asked myself.  Then a bat stuck his head out, then back in.  Suddenly one popped out of the top hole and took flight.  This was at 4 pm on a warm, sunny day.  Then another one popped out.  Were they young bats fledging from the nest perhaps?  They were all pretty big though. All in all I watched over a dozen bats come out of the two holes and fly away, all of them simultaneously shouting, a squeaky symphony.

I didn't see any moles, but evidence of them is obvious everywhere: myriads of molehills.  

mole hills

These bugs were unfamiliar to me.  Not common, but plentiful on this tree!

strange bugs on a tree by my street

And of course, the frog pond has frogs.  I saw some quick ones, but they were too quick for my camera, sorry.  Here is the frog pond below.

frog pond

I had to get some willow tree shots for Dharlene:

me under a willow on the bank of the frog pond

Speaking of trees, they have a lot of oak and maybe beech?  And some kind of maple with giant leaves:

big maple leaf

There are tree-huggers, and then there are hugging trees (you may have seen this guy in one of the Lord of the Rings movies)

the hugging tree

No raccoons, no colourful birds, no possums.  Not sure about wolves or coyotes.  If I get attacked by wolves in the great forest, and survive, I'll definitely blog about it for you...

blog revamped!

I've got a lot to add, but time is short since I spent all morning cleaning up this blog and adding labels!  The labels will help navigate the blog and hopefully help you look for things you're interested in.  I've also added reaction buttons.  I love it when people comment, but I see that's rare.  Feedback is great and it's very encouraging if I see people are reading and reacting.  So even if you don't comment, please hit one of the reaction buttons at least.

I'm off to meet a friend at that favourite cafe I blogged about recently!

Coming up soon: wildlife, Halloween, night-life...

Thanks for looking and reading!

a small trip to a small town: Ebes

Two of the Baha'is in the area have a house in a small town of 5000 people, about a half hour bus ride from Debrecen where I'm staying.  This town, called Ebes, is what looks like a typical Hungarian town: red clay tile roofs, and fences right up to the sidewalk, some of them with scary dogs behind them (see my previous blog about Vecsés.)

So Dan, Jeane and I came to visit these two Baha'ís, Zoltan and Erika.  They met us at the bus stop in tiny Ebes, by this charming church.

Ebes' church

An interesting thing about this town is the way it was founded.  In the communist era, apparently all the farmers from a huge area were collected to this small area, since the soil is fairly fertile.  Their families were uprooted and re-established, consolidated in this little area.  The communist administration decided that it was much more efficient this way, which I guess makes sense.

Zoltan is an organic farm inspector, and Erika is a music teacher.  They both speak English very well.  This is Zoltan below, posing proudly with the addition he built on their little house (not so little any more):

 

And this, below, is me posing with his house too:

They have beautiful flower and vegetable gardens around their place, with fruit trees as well.  I had a tart apple which was the tastiest one I've ever had!  All organic and unsprayed.  Here's a very green picture of their back yard, which offers a lot of wonderful food for them:

We had a very relaxing stroll through this fruitful wonderland, and then went in for a long conversation about the Baha'í community in nearby Debrecen.  Probably most impressive during this visit for me was how Erika asked if we were hungry, grabbed a few things from the garden, and in half an hour whipped up an amazing casserole to feed five of us!

 

the sweets!

One of the most wonderful and charming things about Hungary are their sweets, or in Hungarian: sütemény.  Perhaps you can imagine the problem with having such great sweets.  They are readily available, they are inexpensive, and they are very very tasty.  So what I'm saying is that it's difficult to hold back.  Luckily, I've become pretty serious about running here, so that offsets any weight gain issues, I hope.

Just below my apartment at the Baha'i Centre, there is a bakery with some pastries, and they have one thing called an olasz túrós pita, which to my best translation is an italian cheese pie.  But it's square.  And moist and so satisfying, and only costs about a dollar.  I've been having a few too many of those...

Check out this display case in one of the many local cukrászdák (confectionary shops)

 

 The sweets you see here range in price from about 100 forint to 300 forint, or about 50 cents to $1.50.  I had the third one from the right side, on the bottom row on the day I took this picture. I had asked for the most Hungarian thing.  It was called a nostalgia creamy.  Delicious!  And this is a rare shop in which smoking is prohibited.  Also, this is my favourite shop because she makes the best cappuccino at the lowest price I've found, just over a dollar.  She puts a generous dollop of real cream in it too.

All my raving about this place, which is right around the corner from the American Corner where I am right now, has seduced me into another visit.  Less than a 2 minute walk.  I better take the long, scenic route home to burn off some of those delicious calories.  Jó étvágyat! (Bon appetite!)

Rock Suli (pronounced Rock Shoo-lee)

I love the Rock Suli!  But it may be difficult to explain this place; you kinda need to experience it yourself.  It seems to function through a network of alternative, hip volunteers.  A few days after arriving in Debrecen, I was at the American Corner, and was invited to come to a mysterious place for a mysterious reason.  Maybe "ambiguous reason" is more fitting.  In any case, I followed a group of people I just met, past the place I'm staying, and down a dark alley.  Then through a really dark field, and approached an almost entirely invisible warehouse, shrouded in the black of a new moon evening.  I joked about how they brought me there to rob me.  One of them was Tomas, a last-year med student, who said: "based on your age and appearance, you have good genes, so we brought you here to harvest your organs.  Hahaha."

We entered a warehouse obviously decorated through years of youthful artistic expression, in layers, by the hip alternative crowd who hangs out there. The walls were strewn with posters of past events (see above, and below) and new events at the Rock Suli and around town.  Overlapping drum kit rhythms reverberated through the walls as aspiring rock star drummers practiced under expert instruction. I found a small turkish darabuka and played a little, subconsciously probably trying to demonstrate my worthiness to be in such a cool place.  No one seemed very impressed; I am a bit out of practice!  I'm hoping to find a drum in Budapest but I don't live in detached quarters anymore so my neighbours may not approve.  Maybe I can play at the Rock Suli!

A witty lad there named Gergely gave a tour of the place in fluent English.  I quickly learned that this cultural house did much more than rock education and concerts.  They have a wool work room where they create felt!  They model the old Hungarian traditional art.

A beautiful solid felt ball!

Cozy hand made wool hats; not woven, but worked, um, whatever they do to make felt...

Ancient Hungarian pottery work, perhaps?  A kiln in the back. And, haha, speaker boxes for the table!

a collapsible yurt frame, demonstrated by Gergely

The yurt work was the most impressive.  Using the tools the ancient Hungarians would have had, they cut these trees, steamed and bent them, attached them somehow with pig leather, and it expands and collapses, accordion style!  So this was the perfect accommodation frame for the nomadic Hungarian tribes.  If I recall correctly, they then stretch a felt cover over the frame.  Awesome!

Attila, Tomas, me, Dori, and Kent on the Rock Suli tour

Rock Suli: Rock, school, and a whole lot more!

in hot water

One of Hungary's exciting natural resources is mineral rich geothermal water, and it's mostly available on this end of the country.  These murky magic waters attract people from all over, and of all ages (but mostly 50 - 100 years old.)  Actually, I've never seen any children in there, so they must not be allowed.  I saw a few teenagers, but I usually go (ok, only thrice now) when it's cheaper in the morning on a school day.  They'd probably be freaked out by all the really old people anyway.

Mmmm, yum yum.  I'm eating leftovers from an Indian restaurant (the only one I think.)  It's really a great place: classy, tasty, and well decorated, but it's pricey, especially by Hungarian standards.  For example, the vegetarian Hari Krishna restaurant cost about 1500 Hungarian Forint, which is about $8, for a large plate with some variety and a lassi drink.  There are of course much cheaper, fast food type options.  At Kashmir, it came to about $20. But hey, I'm still enjoying the leftovers!

Back to the hot baths: I shall briefly outline the three times I went there:

First time: I was bored and wanted to check it out.  The building is beyond huge, and very complex, like a maze.  So it took me a while to find my way around.  The receptionists were thrilled at my attempts to communicate in Hungarian, but there was luckily one girl who was able to eventually clear a few things up in English for me.  By some miracle, I didn't walk into the women's change room or stroll casually into a public area while nude. (I've done that before - I remember a mother with her little children who almost fainted!) They have four huge pools, with domed cathedral ceilings, in a circle around two small central tubs.  The little ones would hold about 15 - 20 people each I suppose.  One is the hottest, at 40°C, and the other is the coldest, at 20°C.  The huge ones around them fit dozens of people each, and have various temperatures in between.  No photos possible, sorry.  Nothing eventful happened that morning.  I arrived around 9 or 10 am, and soaked a lot, got all wrinkly, and left before 1 pm, when it costs a lot more.  I don't know when they open in the morning, but from that time until 1 pm it's 1050 forint, or about $5!

Second time: right next door is another huge complex called the Aquaticum.  It's one of the tram stops, just past downtown on the way to the university.  This place is more expensive and more for families.  It's like a giant indoor water-park, but with a bunch of bubbly hot tubs too.  And if you pass through this water-park, on the inside, you will end up in the sauna area.  On the Hungarian National Hot Bath Cultural Day (I'm serious) it was half price for entry.  AND they had a special "sauna seance".  (It's actually a lot easier for me to spell that in Hungarian now!)  No, we weren't calling spirits down into the sauna to sweat with us, as fun as that would be, but they use this term instead as a "sitting" or "session".

Yep, that's right, I did the salt and honey scrub!  Note the ridiculous price, which may as well be free: 500 Ft or about $2.50.  Sweet!  (and salty!)

After paying and entering, I got lost in the complex, naturally.  Sadly I arrived at the sauna area a bit late and wasn't allowed to interrupt the first session: the chamomile aroma-therapy sweat fest (my translation.)  But in the end I was glad I missed it, since I barely survived the other two!

Everyone is given a bed sheet to wear, girls and boys! and the sauna is laid out with sheets to sit on too.  Then you sweat for about 10 minutes.  I was worried with my high blood pressure - which by the way is under control now with some mild drugs - since it was a bit crowded and I sat on a higher teer.  It got sooo hot, and then the crazy girls running the show would frantically whip a towel around near the ceiling to bring the hot air down.  Then on top of that, they would fan each person, one at a time, which heats you up even more.  There was a lot of talk I didn't follow at all.  Probably just important safety procedures.

Then they passed around bowls of what looked like table salt.  And we proceeded to scrub the salt all over our skin.  I felt a little bad for the girls since they couldn't scrub their middle sections with the sheets hiding their upper and lower parts, and the innocuous midriff between.  My hands were headed for my face when a kind bilingual girl translated that scrubbing the face with salt was a bad idea; just because of our eyes I suppose.  Then more sweating.  Then out to shower and dunk in a cold water pool.  Very cold water pool!  We were still wearing only the sheets.

Some people, including me, got a new sheet to wear.  Then they called us back in after a few minutes for part two: exactly the same procedure but this time with honey.  I thought it'd be a sticky mess, right?  But with all the sweat and sheets, it wasn't.  More sweat, ridiculous heat, towel waving, etc.  Then out to shower and cold dunk, and the seance is over.

I hope it didn't make me look 10 years younger.  The Hungarians smoke and drink a lot, and eat a lot of meat.  So they usually guess my age at about 25 years old.  After all this seancey stuff, I didn't really want to look 15!

Third time: this morning.  A couple of days ago I felt like I must have sleep walked all night moving stoves and fridges, since I woke with a really bad kink in my neck.  The next night it kept me up and it was just getting worse.  Well, finally I had a legitimate excuse to go to the magic murky hot baths!  One nice feature they have are a couple different waterfalls, which felt like dozens of warm fingers working on my back and neck.  Mmmmm, so soothing.  I arrived a bit late this time, at 10:30 am and asked, in fine Hungarian, what would happen if by the time I showered and dressed, I exited at 1:05 pm.  "Nothing!"  said the receptionists, cheerily.  After 1pm, according to the price list, it's 1.5x the morning cost of $5.

So I circulated through the various pools and alternated super hot and super cold for my neck, and snuggled in between a couple really old ladies to catch a bit of the massaging waterfall.  At 10 to 1pm I scrambled out, with my neck feeling much better, to the shower area.  By the time I got dressed and out to the front desk where you turn in your wristband microchip, it was 1:13pm.  "Rendben?" I said. ("It's in order?") She responded, no, you need to pay, and pointed at the clock.  I became agitated and reminded her of my question earlier, and she said (all in Hungarian), it's not 5 after, it's a quarter after.  So I had to pay the afternoon price.  If I wasn't all showered and getting tired of all the soaking, I would have gone back in for a couple hours.  I paid the different, and muttered a few phrases like, this is crazy, I can't believe it, etc.  I wanted to say, I'll never come back to this place!  But there isn't much competition, so I knew that wouldn't be true, I'm definitely going back.

Now friends, before you get too envious, consider this quotation from the Baha'i writings:

"O Son of Earth!  Know, verily, the heart wherein the least remnant of envy yet lingers, shall never attain My everlasting dominion, nor inhale the sweet savors of holiness breathing from My kingdom of sanctity."

Would you feel better if I said the washrooms weren't that nice?

community building

It occurs to me that I haven't said much about why I'm in Hungary, other than that I'm helping the Baha'i community there.  So what is the Baha'i community doing here in Hungary, and indeed all over the world?  To explain that briefly is challenging.  Here is a small attempt.

We are currently focusing on community building, through four main activities, which we call the "core" activities.  These work on uniting people and uniting neighbourhoods.  Baha'is believe in a two-fold moral purpose, which entails working on one's own spiritual transformation, while also working on the general betterment of the world.  The four core activities are: devotional gatherings, children's classes, juniour youth groups, and study circles.  In a message to the Baha'is of the world in 2010, the Universal House of Justice -- our elected institution which guides the international Baha'i community -- explained that our work can rightly be viewed as community building, and as a "process that seeks to raise capacity within a population to take charge of its own spiritual, social, and intellectual development." In the same message, it wrote about the core activities in this way:

"...meetings that strengthen the devotional character of the community; classes that nurture the tender hearts and minds of children; groups that channel the surging energies of junior youth; circles of study, open to all, that enable people of varied backgrounds to advance on equal footing and explore the application of the teachings to their individual and collective lives..."

I'm really regretting that I didn't take a photo of the wonderful devotional gathering we had last night! In attendance we had two friends from near Budapest who were in the neighbourhood, Raymond and Forough; Dan and Jeanne who live in the attached apartment, and who I share the kitchen with; two young Hungarian Baha'i guys, Richard and Attila; as well as Kitti, a youth I know from the american corner.

Instead, here's a photo of Dan and Jeanne and I, at least.  This was during one of our morning devotionals:

a few random things around Debrecen

A zillion elementary school kids got on the bus with us.  Field trip to the zoo! (I haven't been yet.)

I haven't really figured out the cuisine in Debrecen yet.  I'm proud to say that I've been in Hungary for over two weeks now, and I only had a small piece of chicken at my great-aunt's house.  You see, at Christmas every year I go to my grandmother's house near Welland, and she always cooks tonnes of meat.  I appease the family by having one piece of breaded, deep-fried chicken breast.  So my grandmother told my great-aunt Marika in Vecses that I eat chicken, but only the breast.  (It got lost in the translation some when Marika kept grabbing her bossom and saying, in Hungarian, chicken boobies are okay, right?)  So when I arrived at her house she had already cooked some chicken boobies, so I had to eat some.  Anyway, no meat since then.  But check out this wierd pizza!  I dissected it and took a picture:

Ya, those are pickles on the pizza; and peas and carrots and corn from a can.  It actually wasn't too bad.  Since then I've found out that the bakery right below my place makes tasty pizzas, but unfortunately always with meat.  I've made a running order with them, so I pick up a pineapple pizza every Friday at noon.  Yum!

This clothing store is the main competitor of "Bottom of Fashion."

A cute building.  The architecture is really interesting here.  I don't think I can wait for a blog entry dedicated only to that, so I'm going to include my favourite shots as they come in.

This is one of the medical school buildings on campus.

I love the balconies in Hungary! 

Kilencven kilenc luft balloons?

Well, not exactly 99, but I count 62 hot air balloons in this picture.  This was the third or fourth day that we noticed dozens of these in the air, sometimes floating over the city.  We just thought it was a popular leisure activity for Hungarians here!

I have since discovered that there is an international hot air balloon competition going on here.
A few nights later, I stumbled upon this spectacle downtown.  I was passing through on the streetcar when I noticed a huge crowd downtown gathered all around the front of the big yellow cathedral. Then I saw a lot of people with cameras aimed up at a sharp angle towards the sky.  I jumped out of the street car when it stopped, wondering what all the commotion was.  Then I followed everyone's gaze upward and couldn't believe I didn't see them earlier!

There was one tall skinny blue balloon sponsored by a local phone company called telenor, and a chubby white one that was just being inflated, sponsored by a bank.

 

It was pretty cool to see them struggle in the breeze.  There were a few people clinging to the basket to hold it down, and a couple guys managing the orientation with ropes.  When a mild breeze blew in, the baskets would slide, and the balloons would sway and bend right over, dragging the rope guys around.  I'm still surprised they didn't get hung up on the steeple.

 

American Corner

I've been spending a lot of my time in a really cool building downtown, in an office called the American Corner, run by the American embassy, Debrecen University, and Debrecen city council.  They have lots of programs, including a conversational English class, where Hungarians come to practice chatting with native speakers.  I went there to volunteer as a native speaker.  They let me in, despite being Canadian.  The first night, everyone in my group of about a dozen people turned to me for a topic. Not sure where this came from, but I proposed these questions: Why does disease exist?  Was it created by a loving creator, and if so, for what purpose?  What a great conversation we had!  Many concepts from the Baha'i Faith came in very handy, including the purpose of our material existence, and the life of our spirit.

Here I am with two of my new friends from the American Corner.  Tamas is in the middle.  He's a 5th or 6th year student of the medical program and we've become good friends.  Unfortunately for me, he's off to Budapest today for a 5 week practicum, much of which he says will be in a prison, since his thesis regards the criminal mind.  Dori is on the right.  She runs the office, which is also a library of English books and DVDs. She speaks english beautifully and is very helpful.  Gabor (not in the photo) is another fine lad who works there.

They let me use their computers to update my blog!

Catostrophic Toxic Chemical Disaster!

I've got some catching up to do with this blog, but Dharlene encouraged me to let everyone know that I'm doing fine.  Apparently the toxic spill disaster is all over the news.  A couple of American friends here told me about it, and I'm sure it's all over the news here too, but I can't understand the news and thus rarely listen to it.  Plus, I don't have a TV and internet use is limited.  Thus, I'm sure you know a lot more about this catostrophic toxic chemical disaster than I do.  But I can tell you how far away from it I am...

I'm on the other end of the country, as this map demonstrates:

So please rest assured that I'm okay!  Better than okay really.  I just came from the thermal baths and scented sauna.  I was soaking all morning.  Not in toxic sludge.

The spill was from an aluminum plant.  Just another reminder to recycle.  Imagine, if all those aluminum cans that many of us just pitch into the trash were instead recycled, this sludge dyke probably wouldn't have broke.  By the way, there's no recycling program in Debrecen...

my first tasks in Debrecen, Hungary

After getting some essential groceries and getting my bed and wardrobe sorted out, my first task was to help clean up an outdated list of the Baha'is in this community by trying to find each one that hasn't been seen in a long while, and to visit them, one by one.

There are about a dozen Baha'is that haven't been seen in a while on this list.  This task proved very challenging since the buildings here are so complicated.  Imagine a wall of adjoined buildings, three or four stories high, creating a solid, uninterrupted surface along a long road with only a small gap between them for the sidewalk.  House numbers are sometimes rare.  On one of my excursions I found the number I sought, but it was accompanied by a few other numbers I wasn't sure about.  E.g. Bacsilizsinszki Zsilliacsy utca 45, IV/3.  So I found 45 and there was a buzzer and a giant door, like a garage door.  The buzzer had a keypad but I couldn't comprehend what I should do with it.  I punched some numbers, like 3 or IV = 4, and once heard something like ringing but no-one answered.

Eventually, someone arrived with his children and unlocked this huge door to enter.  I told him, in broken Hungarian, who I was looking for, and he said he didn't know him but agreed to let me in when I said I came a long way, from Canada!  In awe, I walked through a tunnel with him, which opened up into a huge area with terraces and balconies and gardens and a few parked cars.  He told me to go to the fourth floor (IV apparently), pointing to a spiral staircase.  On the fourth floor there were about six different doors, none of them numbered and half of them with buzzers.  I can't imagine how the postal service functions around here.  I guess to qualify you have to have lived in the area your whole life perhaps?

I disturbed two old ladies, one of whom was helpful and pointed to a door for a young man but she didn't know his name.  I buzzed.  Success!  My first contact with a Baha'i that we wanted to find from this list.  Sure enough, his email and phone number changed.  We chatted, exchanged contacts, and I gave him a calendar of events for the month.

Other excursions were equally challenging but not so pleasant or fruitful.  I recently returned to an address seeking another lost Baha'i from the list, after getting a little discouraged the first time by an old lady screaming incomprehensibly through the buzzer at me. The second time I reached a man who claimed to have the name I sought and then hung up on me.  I entered the building, a 15 story apartment building this time, with someone who again was willing to let me in.  A man came from the elevator just then and told me I was looking for his father, with exactly the same name, who passed away.  When I left that building, I felt a sad melancholy rise within me.  I crossed the street to one of the giant yellow temples, sat on the stairs, and recited some Baha'i prayers from memory for this lost, forgotten, and now deceased Baha'i.

Arrival in Debrecen

On my arrival in Debrecen, I was met at the train station by Dan Engel, a short, cute, american with a charming smile.  Dan and Jeane are in their late 70s, retired, and are pioneering in Hungary right now.  They sold everything and are homeless, as they say.  So they now occupy and act as custodians for the Baha'i centre of Debrecen.  I see these two as a very good example of "shedding the lethargy".  They don't speak the language at all, they don't have health care here, and they left all their family and friends behind to move to this foreign land, in an effort to help support and propagate the Baha'i Faith here.

The Baha'i centre is a beautiful, big apartment right downtown.  It was owned by a Mrs. Afnan who passed away a few years ago and left it to the Baha'i community.  There's a big double living-room that can be split in two.  That's were I now live.  Here's a photo of the east side of the living-room.

Here's the west side:

This side is my room, where I live.  Turn left at that door, and that's a hall to my bathroom and to the kitchen which is connected to the apartment where Dan and Jeanne live, with their own on-suite bathroom. Here's the couch...

... which transforms each night into a bed...

(And back again into a couch every morning, since this is the Baha'i centre, not a bedroom.)

Here is a corner cabinet:

Which I transformed into a wardrobe/closet:

This building itself is a little nondescript from the outside, but it's interesting on the inside with cool stairs (we're on the 3rd floor), and lots of confusing doorways.  The architecture in the vicinity is a real mix of awe-inspiring, and bland.  Here's a building across the street:

McDonalds in one of Budapest's train stations, with a McCafe