Szeged Hospitality

Not only did Kata graciously invite me to stay at her aunt's place in Budapest, but, like I wrote about earlier, she also invited me to come down to her hometown for the weekend and stay at her house before and after her 26th birthday party.

The younger generation speaks English very well in Hungary; the older one -- educated in Russian during the reign of the Iron Curtain -- does not. But the hospitality shown to me from young and old since I got here nine days ago has been all the same.


If the main room in Kata's childhood flat looks like a scene from "Golden Girls," that's because, while I was there at least, it was -- dubbed into Hungarian of course.

Had I not been able to converse with Kata's aunt (pictured left, below) in my crude form of français, I would have needed the birthday girl's translating skills to fill me in on what was happening in each episode, starring Kata's aunt, mother (cutting the roast we had for lunch my last day in Szeged) and 89-year-old grandmother...


... who, after living through two World Wars, a forced conversion from Judaism to Catholicism in order to survive 1940's Hungary, a bout with cancer and an almost complete loss of hearing, understandably gets a little tired during the day.