29 August – 1 September 2019
In the few days after I arrived and before I left with 11 other students on the orientation week, I did some orienting to Kecskemét myself, and started to get the wheels rolling on several different things I needed to get done.
One nice thing about Kecskemét (“kech-ke-meyt”) is that everything in the center is close together, and all bound together by Rákóczi út. (st.) and the pedestrian avenue that it turns into. In the picture above, Rákóczi is the green strip that comes into Kecskemét from the left. The bigger block of trees is where it has a T, but for pedestrians pretty much just turns into a pedestrian only walkway, with fountains, places to sit, etc.
As the picture at the top shows, my flat is very close to the Institute: just 3-4 minute to walk.
One of the places I got to know in these first few days was the Malom shopping center, which you would be able to see in the lower left corner of the picture, except that it must have just been being built whenever it was taken. It is about 5 stories high now. It has a Telekom store (Hungarian version of T-mobil) where I have gone to learn about getting a phone, a phone store where I got a phone, and a nice grocery store and bakery at the bottom.
Although I had good service the second time I went to the Telekom store (questions answered accurately, in English), the first errand there was really quite bad. Technically I was in their line from about 10 in the morning until 4 or 5 in the evening. They had a kiosk where you’d request to talk with one of their representatives, and then it would spit out a piece of paper with a number. Each person would wait until his number came up on the screen, and then go up to whichever desk they were directed to. When I went up, I saw the several flags indicating different languages, and when I tapped on the USA flag, the kiosk asked whether I’d like to speak to someone in English. Of course! So I got my ticket with my number. Well, my number was something like two hundred ahead of the current one up on the screen, and the store was far from crowded. What I realized progressively more and more throughout that morning, and then early afternoon, and then late afternoon, was that the Telekom store had set up their service so that they could choose to see me, or choose to wait until they had someone who wanted to try their hand at English. Apparently that day, English was not something anyone could do, or that they wanted to try at.
I didn’t realize this at first, and figured I’d just need to wait until the numbers clicked up the 200 notches. Obviously, it was far away, so I could spend time doing other things, such as explore the grocery and start trying to translate labels, meet my roommate Jackson and take him back to the flat (he’s here for a semester from Capital University in Ohio), and also start trying to decipher the Telekom website. Only the first 2 pages or so had an English version, so this turned into many, many hours of back and forth research with Google translate in the ensuing days.
That evening I eventually decided to pretend to the kiosk to be a Hungarian-speaker who couldn’t speak Hungarian. The number that it spit out showed that there was practically no line. However, by coincidence or not, my “English service” number came up right before my new number, so I did get to go up and speak to someone. However they didn’t really speak English, and only “ein bisschen deutch,” so we ended up using google translate (I figured maybe some of the German I learned this past year might be useful–I have used it some already). According to the guy, I could not get a monthly phone plan without having a Hungarian address card as well as an EU registration or something. There was a SIM card I could have gotten, but not having a phone to use it with, in addition to other factors, I didn’t get anything from Telekom that day. Emese told me the thing about the address cards was bunk, because I was not Hungarian. The second time I went in I asked that Telekom employee about it and he (in English!) said “No,” I didn’t need one, but I did need to have a Hungarian with one come with me to vouch for me to get a monthly phone plan. I also found out that the SIM card they were offering only came with 80 minutes of domestic calls, 1GB of data, and just FIVE SMS texts. So, I confirmed that it was not a good idea to get.
As I mentioned, I did other things that day while I was “in line,” such as going down to the grocery store.
Visiting grocery store at Malom was enjoyable, because after looking at prices and doing a little conversion, I realized that my actual food costs were going to cut my estimates at least in half. Food is quite inexpensive here, and in some cases, much better quality. For example, I got some very nice apples (they were in great shape for being 2nds) for 160 Hungarian Forints/kilo. Right now, $1 USD is pretty much right at 300 Ft., so 160 Ft./kilo is $0.24/lb for apples. The standard simple Hungarian cheese (Trappista) is right under 1500 Ft./kilo. That’s a bit under $2.25/lb for cheese. Eggs are between 30-40 Ft. per egg, which is about $1.40 per dozen, although they have cartons of 10 here.
The eggs here are magnificent. Their yolks are more orange than ANY I have ever seen. They are probably 400% more orange than the regular sub-par quality US egg. They are probably 200% more orange than any of our home grown eggs. They are VERY, VERY, orange; I would not be far off to say that they are as orange as a Halloween pumpkin. This was great to see, because the color of the yolk is an indicator of the health of the chickens. The Hungarians have to be doing something right.
From what I have asked, I think all the breads here are from sourdough, at least at the one bakery at Malom. When I translated sourdough into Hungarian (yes, that’s a bit iffy on Google translate), and asked the bakers if they had any, they said that “all” the breads (“kenyér” in Hungarian) were that. When I asked Emese (“Em-esh-e”) more specifically about it, she was confirming this across all my descriptions. She also said that until just a little bit ago, there was no sliced bread you could buy in Hungary, and that they have something like as many breads as the French. All is also great to know: like with the eggs, I won’t have to be choosy. I’ve picked a different dark brown looking loaf each time I’ve gone. Currently I’m on one that turned out to be buckwheat. It is made for butter, and butter made for it. Their tastes fit each other perfectly. I hadn’t gotten any butter yet, but my taste buds got the request across very clearly so I finally got some today. Until now I had found a little tub of “Lipazsír,” (duck grease..I know you from home!) that I got for cooking. With sea salt, garlic, and other herbs it went well on the first loaves I had got. I did figure that I wouldn’t have much competition to keep it to myself though. Gareth, (roommate #2 of 3, who is a Capital U. classmate of Jackson, here for the semester, 6’8″ tall), he really gets a kick out of the fact that I label everything. I told him he shouldn’t be surprised; I have 5 siblings. There was another one of the students who knew what I was talking about. Theresa is a Portuguese student who is one of the other 3 BA students starting this year at the Institute. She has 4 siblings.
(I was surprised to learn that their are only 3 in my “class.” There are other BA and MA students in their 2nd and 3rd years, but the majority of the students are here for a 1-year diploma course of study, or here on exchange for a semester. I will have some individual lessons, some with the diploma students, and yes, some with just the two other BA students in my year. I think that will be nice. )
So, the Malom shopping center is about 4 minutes away, walking straight down the main drag of Rákóczi. There also is a big farmers market even closer, that happens to be right on Wesselényi (“veshel-eynyi”). Our flat happens to be at the corner of Rákóczi & Wesselényi.
Everything except the farmers’ market is within a block of Rákóczi. The farmers’ market is a whole three blocks. Getting places has been very easy. 🙂
That’s all for now! More to come soon.
Sincerely,
Samuel Rausch
Hungary4Harmony 
I’m amazed that butter didn’t come home with you on your first outing, since it’s one of your fundamental food groups!
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