Wine Festival, Parent’s Meeting and Visitors

Our last two weeks have been filled with growing school responsibilities as well as by visits with old friends. The weekend before last found us at a wine festival in Pežinok, a town about 35 minutes north of Bratislava and one of the several towns on the local “Wine Tour.” The “Small Carpathian Mountains” just to the north of Bratislava are the sites of several small wine villages that produce quite good vintages. The whites are light and dry while the reds tend to be smooth and fruity. While in one of the small towns, we saw wagon after wagon being pulled up to people’s homes and grapes being unloaded. Some were small trailers attached to a car and containing only a few bushels of grapes, probably for individual family use. Others were large farm wagons pulled by tractors and destined for a vintner who would offer the product for sale.

The wine festival was an event that took up most of several streets in the small town of Pežinok. We understand that the festival moves from town to town throughout the region during the harvest season. This event contained hundreds of booths, carnival rides, and entertainment of various sorts. The entertainers varied from costumed dancers and musicians to American Indians playing flutes and hawking CDs (click here for a video.) The booths sold local crafts (some very nicely made), junky toys, local food (sausages, kraut, slabs of pork, and general carnival fare), and Burčiak. The latter is very young wine containing a good bit of yeast. The local American teacher folklore is that it ferments in your stomach, but we only had a small glass so we can’t verify that tale.

The rest of that weekend was spent in trying to get ahead in our preparation for school by a couple of weeks since we were expecting our friends Doug and Barbara Faires during the next week. We were successful to the extent that we were able to spend time with them on both Wednesday and Thursday evenings and then travel together with them on Friday for a couple of days in Budapest. Another distraction was a meeting with the school parents on Monday of that week. This was somewhat stressful in that we could understand nothing of what was happening until after the meeting when one of our Slovak colleagues gave us a short version of the heated discussion. It turns out that the parents of a small group of nineteen students who had been moved into the school from another school that was closed were not happy with some of the arrangements and were raising questions. We were happy to be there to lend support to our Slovak colleagues and leaders, but we wish we could have understood the proceedings. In any event, it was good to be able to spend time with Doug and Barb as they began their three week tour of Central Europe. They are using Bratislava as their headquarters and will be here again in a week and then again several days later.

The trip to Budapest was very interesting and relaxing. It’s only a two and a half hour train trip and we were able to leave after our classes on Friday and arrive at our hotel in time for dinner. We stayed in a hotel adjacent to the Opera and it was a very fortunate place to be since the Opera was celebrating its 125th anniversary that weekend with Gala concerts on both Saturday and Sunday evening. We had left our fancy duds at home, but we didn’t have to miss much because they broadcast the concert on a giant screen with an excellent sound system on the street in front of the Opera. This is one of the main streets in the city, but they closed it off for several blocks, set up chairs, and arranged for the broadcast by what appeared to be the Hungarian version of PBS. The whole thing was free; what a great idea! There were people of all ages there, including young guys who went for beer at the intermission but who also applauded vigorously along with everyone else for the performances. It’s interesting to see such a different attitude toward music and art. We should talk to folks in Cincinnati about doing this.

We spent the morning on Saturday taking a boat trip to Szentendre, about two hours up the Danube from Budapest. It’s a charming arts community with a beautiful setting on the river. After a 45 minute train trip back to town, we walked around Buda, the old part of the city and enjoyed the beautiful views of the Parliament and city of Pest across the river. After walking across the Chain Bridge, we visited St. Stephen’s Basilica and then returned to the hotel for dinner and the evening of music in the street. On Sunday we spent the morning in the Museum of Applied Arts where we saw a very interesting display of Hungarian Art Nouveau furniture. While it had many of the features of other furniture from this era, there were rustic touches that were very interesting. After lunch, we caught the train back to Bratislava and finished the evening by preparing for the next day’s classes.