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getting some essential groceries and getting my bed and wardrobe sorted out, my first task was to help clean up an outdated list of the Baha'is in this community by trying to find each one that hasn't been seen in a long while, and to visit them, one by one.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