March back into Barcs

July 11, 2017. Barcs, Hungary.

    Two hours ago, we arrived at Tünde’s house in Barcs. She and her daughter, Maca, fed us soup and plum rolls as we caught up on news, about Dráva Völge, about her father and their dog passing, about people who have moved on or stayed. We have not yet ventured out into the old territories because it’s so hot, but in a moment, we will walk into town and feel that shadow of nostalgia on a layer of memory. I’ve been back most recently, so I’m more curious to watch Stephanie and the girls re-encounter this town and our romantic year again.

    It’s been a whirlwind since we all gathered together. From Esslingen and some anxiety about the train and meeting up with Stephanie, we successfully met her but then waited for an hour to rent a car and then drove a beast of a vehicle through traffic once we figured out how to make it go, and made our way to Salzburg, where the older two girls were having their final dinner with their orchestra buddies.

    We wandered streets and ate dinner in a place Stephanie and Maisie recognized once we were inside. And on a walk towards the restaurant where we knew Sophie and Amelia were eating their farewell dinner, Maisie requested a picture of her in Mama, which I discovered later to be the exact spot of their photograph seven years before. We didn't find daughters in the restaurant, though I heard some fun local music before coming back down to Stephanie and Maisie; but the next morning, we reunited in their hotel and got to ride the energy of their tour, teenagers on the move in their final ease with one another and their shared stories.

    Sophie and Amelia were in a space of confidence and joy that was delightful to see, and watching the three daughters together with that mix was utterly gratifying. Later in the morning, we returned to a playground they had loved when they were children seven years ago, and they recreated moments, feeling themselves older and happy.

    We found Barna and Zsofi, friends who'd left teaching at DVK to earn enough money to raise their new family in Vienna, and it was so good to see their new baby and their bright lives there in Austria. Zsofi is taking twenty months of government leave to take care of Péter, and Barna is commuting two hours each way to get to his job at the airport. Soon they will be moving back from the suburbs to Vienna proper, which will be more affordable than this tiny town, surprisingly, and closer to Barna’s brother and Zsofi’s sister; but in the meantime, they must lean a great deal on each other, not Austrian in Austria, no longer freely Hungarian in Hungary, and too busy for new friends. They are so devoted to Péter. The love was an immigrant’s love, made of sacrifice and some loneliness, I think, but big love.

    After another six hours, we marched back to Barcs, skirting around the back to arrive directly at the house of our host, Tünde; and later, we walked through a third of the town and cut the rest for a walk by the river. For me, everything felt perfectly familiar, and I found gratifying my sense of space and direction, how at home I was on the blocks of the town, like I’d just stepped away. It’s certainly not the same with the language, which needs a lot of warming up, but the streets, the smells, the textures: I could anticipate the next corner, and there’s something wishful and proud in that.

    The girls remembered experiences as we walked--running into their new teacher, Victor by the river, for example, or the approximate space of their music school; but I’m curious to know more of what it’s like inside them as they re-inhabit these special spaces.

July 12, 2017. Barcs.

    Tünde continued her generous hosting with a spread of meats, cheeses and pastries that wouldn’t all fit on the table in the morning, which, yesterday, we spent leisurely--reading, writing, talking, playing games. Maca and the girls played board games they’d once played at Tünde’s house in Lake Balaton, and here they were again, deriving more pleasure, Maca now almost 20, the others now in their teens.

       Stephanie and I admired Tünde’s lush garden and again we thought we could be more thoughtful and active with our own in Seattle--but I remembered this was one of the things we energetically thought we’d do differently when we returned from our year in Hungary, one of the things we never really did. Others: We thought we’d travel Washington State more, and on an importantly related belief, I thought we could try to keep our weekends more sacrosanct for family time. With weekend violin and viola lessons and my dance class and Maisie’s soccer games, that last piece falls apart, and so did all the other hopes and learnings from our year in Hungary. But Tünde’s flowers and fruit trees and grapevines and berry bushes are lush and maybe will inspire us once more. Barcs, for whatever anyone here might say against it, is incredibly fecund.

       The Grosskopfs walked into town just in time for lunch to shut down most of the shops; and also, when we last experienced Barcs at this time in the summer, we were so busy taking in our new world, perhaps we didn’t notice the emptiness of the town without its young students: Barcs presented itself as smaller and quieter than we remembered. But we had sodas in Old Gold, and Amelia tried out the new trampoline in the playground by the shopping plaza, and we looked for a bathing suit for Maisie in one of the several Chinese clothing stores, which took a very long time, and long enough that Sophie and I finally had to get out, and Sophie turned the corner while I saw a car that looked like the car that took us to Italy, Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria, Serbia, Romania, Germany, even across the Mediterranean to Greece--the license plate sounded right, too--and when I turned the corner to look for Sophie, there were Kata Göcsei and Kata Dévai with my daughter!

        I was hoping to bump into people I knew in town--but here were such good friends and people I was so anticipating, these two Katas, gathering at Old Gold to plan the dinner party we were going to attend that very night. Stephanie, Maisie and Amelia emerged from the store without a bathing suit. I loved watching the faces, watching Stephanie reunite, watching Kata and Kata see our daughters again after years. And a small part of me was also thinking about the fun drinks with fruit stuffed into the glasses that the Katas had before them on the table.

        I was sorry to hear about Dévai Kata’s father, for her sake, but also for ours: her parents came over often when we lived in their house, and Erzsebet and Lazlo invited us to their house several times, too--they were both so warm and tender, and showed so much humor and expression, communicating well without English (though perhaps our Hungarian was much better, too). Lazlo plied me with his pálinka, made it part of a joke. He was a good and sweet man.

        I was also excited for Dévai Kata, whose PhD was in the mail and who has published four articles now, and though she won’t be putting her degree to its fullest use, will teach in one context and maybe also another.

         And for Göcsei Kata, and the most brilliant smile in the world, I was so looking forward to meeting her boy and seeing once again her indomitable daughter, Zoé, who went to the village school with our girls and was their very best companion.

       And I liked being in the company of this friendship between the Katas, who bring out such teasing and joy and respect and love in each other.

       And there it was again last night, but with plates and plates of food they prepared, along with Horvath Kata--my mentor and our guide over that year. And Tibor, whom I quickly told had angered friends in Seattle over his Facebook posts promoting religious freedom over what he considers overweening North American protectiveness of transgender or gay rights, was there with a big Tibor smile, and Gábor, such a good friend over our year, who was always so willing with a big laugh and unembarrassed English.

       Tibor and I caught up with news from each school. I learned a little more from HKata about going more fully into teaching. Dévai Kata’s brother, Lackó, came over and spoke a fast Hungarian at me, but we talked about Victor Orban and Donald Trump, and then about Lacko’s father.

       And we ate quiche, a deer pörkölt, some other deer in a creamy fruit sauce, pasta salad, potato pancakes, salad greens, chicken wings, fat blackberries, and then several kinds of delectable cakes.

        We had a boisterous and easy time.

        But the most notable thing in the house that night (oh, and to be in that house that was our home for a year--this felt very good, too) besides young Barnabas, the fearless Göcsei imp with his toy car and little boy desire, was seeing all the girls again: The Dévai girls, Kata and Lili, are now taller than any of us Grosskopfs, and Kata is a young woman. Zoé is equally tall (why is everyone so tall?); and all the energy she had, all the charm, all the face-forward joy of her, it’s here again and feels perfectly natural in a vibrant teenager.

         The adults, the teenagers, we did a lot of laughing, and there was also some dancing and karaoke (with Let’s Dance and something else on the video box), and it felt like the party should never stop.

July 13, 2017. Barcs.

    Yesterday, after reading books and after Maca brought out the original German Settlers of Cataan to play with the girls, and after comparing Stephanie’s sweet version of French toast with Tünde’s salty version, and after we still later made and ate Caesar and Greek salads, we took the car ten kilometers out of town to Dráva Völge’s forestry campus in Középrigóc, to visit adored friends, Péter and Kriszta.

    Péter (and Kristza over his shoulder) has been my best correspondent, and they always seem to know exactly what we are up to (and these very words, I think, will be read by my father, my stepmother, and Péter and Kriszta, and I have no hope beyond that). Besides this, I value their humor, their intensity, their honesty, their charm and their friendship very much. I can laugh at the world with them. And they are so good with the kids, once little, now older: Kriszta and Péter engage with them and put them at ease.

    We ate and drank and took a good walk through the woods, ending at Lake 9, a familiar spot for the family.

    Later, we would leave Kriszta and Péter and go to Tibor and Kata’s house, where we would join Gábor and Zoé, and the girls would all play some creepy-looking game on the trampoline while Barnabás would play with his toy car in the dirt and the adults sat and talked and later, the girls would all get out their instruments--three violins, two violas--and they would play a couple Christmas songs when Kata and Lili could be urged past their intimidation because Sophie and Amelia are much more advanced and not only warmed up but played a few of the recent pieces from the concert tour and so sounded gorgeous, but finally they would all play together, and we would say goodbye to the old living room, and this good family.

    But for now, we were saying goodbye to Péter and Kristza. It felt abrupt, somehow, somehow wrong. There was an aching in it. But we got in the car, Péter helped me back out without driving into the ditch, and we went away.

July 15, 2017. Barcs.

    We returned to the dazzling city of Pécs yesterday, walking the picturesque plazas and avenues of the old city with Zsolnai-tiled roofs and decoratively tiled pedestrian walks by chlorinated fountains and such majestic buildings.

    Sophie, Amelia and Stephanie visited the third century crypts beneath the city while Maisie and I sat by a fountain regretting the separation, and then, when the others emerged thoughtful and jubilant, regretting missing the experience also. On the way, we examined the many Pécs lovers’ locks near St. Stephen’s Cathedral, because once upon a time, I etched our names--maybe it said something like, “David szeret Stephaniet”--into the metal of a gold lock and clasped it to the gate and threw away the key. I must assume not finding the lock again is just as romantic as throwing away the key: our love is even more unlockable.

    We visited a Fulbright teacher, Dori, who exchanged with Keith in Connecticut. In the main square with Dori, we were drinking big fruity drinks out of enormous mason jars and then later trying a little cake and ice cream in a shop she recommended. Dori also strongly recommended we visit the Zsolnai factory, which I had done with her in the last visit here, but instead she helped us locate the kürtőskalács--a festival sweet dough wrapped around a dowel and roasted over ashes and then rolled in cinnamon sugar or walnut--we had thought about for half a decade and didn’t know how to replicate, just in case fruity drinks, cake and ice cream weren’t enough sweets for the palate.

    In the evening, we said goodbye to Horvath Kata and her husband, Kornél, or rather, she said goodbye to us, with a dinner she had prepared all day and that tasted as wonderfully as if it had: a cold apricot soup, paprika chicken, and Gundel palacsintak--pancakes wrapped around and covered by nuts, chocolate and vanilla. Today, in a wine region east of Pécs, Kornél will be in a race dedicated to rosé wines, and will wear pink with all the other runners and will drink wine at all the water stations. Maybe I’m a little jealous of this. For now, it’s good enough to be fed well by good friends.

    There is no shortage of this. Every morning, Tünde has walked to the bakery and other places where she has picked up fresh pastries, breads, cheeses and meats, and has served magnificent breakfasts with her homemade jams and local butter, and I’ve only had to be careful about the way I handle the hot peppers, in case later I accidentally rub my eyes and suffer the brightness of the Hungarian earth.