Weisz family (minus "Zsoltan")We are sleeping in until 9 am these days, finally getting into our vacation mode. We will head out to Szentendre today, trying out public transportation with Dori, our foreign exchange student.
After a long morning relaxing yesterday, we headed out to Gerloczy, a well-kown restaurant in the downtown area. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg used this restaurant in one of his movies to mimic a Parisian café’ and that is entirely plausible since it was another one of those wonderful outdoor restaurants with great food.
We walked to the Dohany Synagogue where I gave Courtney a 30-minute tour of the temple, the memorial tree, and the Jewish museum. I have been here before, of course, even on this trip, so I was not as overwhelmed by emotions this time.
But I did want to visit the little shop by the synagogue, perhaps to buy something like a table cloth. An elderly lady staffed the kiosk, speaking a pastiche of English, German, and Hungarian. I didn’t really find anything that I wanted and just as I was about to leave, the lady asked me if I was Magyar (Hungarian). I explained in my awful Hungarian that my father was from Ujpest, the neighboring city to the north. The lady said that she was from Ujpest and that her family name was Weisz, the same as my grandmother’s.
The name “Weisz” is “White,” and as common a name in Hungary as it is in the U.S., so I did not over-react, but the coincidence was too much, so I showed the elderly lady pictures of my grandmother.
It turns out that in lady's family (I think her brother-in-law’s sister) was Miksa Weisz of the Ujpest synagogue congregation. If it is the same Miksa Weisz as the person whose name I was familiar, then it was the man who signed my father’s bar mitzvah papers and who officiated at my grandparents’ marriage. Of course, I started to cry, and the elderly lady took my hand in sympathy. She reached behind her to give me a souvenir ceramic tile with a blessing for the house, and said, stroking my hand, “Life good. Alles ist gut” (“All is good.”) I stumbled away from her booth, overcome.
Later in the evening, the Weisz/Kelenyi family joined us at the hotel for a stroll around the Island and the little zoo here. Little Nora is teething and doesn’t sleep much, but she was charmed and fascinated by Courtney (“Zsoltan”), as were the adults. The Hungarians just love Courtney's perfect acctent.
The family couldn’t join us for dinner and as usual, our visit was all too brief, but this is the nature of my family—spread far and away with only the shortest opportunities to be with one another.
The family could not stay for dinner, so Zsolt dropped Courtney and me at Robinson’s, a lakeside restaurant right behind Heroes Square. Our meal was lovely, but as usual, service is very slow, perhaps because the food is being prepared right there instead of being defrosted a la American style.
The manager found Courtney’s efforts to speak Hungarian intriguing and gave us two shots of cherry palinka on the house. And then another round of palinkas. Then the manager became even more attentive, insisting that he calls us a taxi (apparently it is not a good idea to just find a taxi on the street at night.) As we were waiting, we were given two more rounds of palinka. By the time I got in the taxi, I was singing the one Hungarian song I know, a children’s lullaby about a little cow, and the Allen Sherman lyrics to Rhapsody #5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk93XnOnOKg). Enjoy:
If you like Hungarian food,
They have a goulash which is very good.
Or if you wish a dish that's Chinese,
Somewhere down in Column B there's lobster Cantonese.
Enchiladas, that's what people eat in Mexico.
Shish kebab is skewered, in Armenia you know.
Then there's blubber, the favorite of the frigid Eskimo.
Such delicious dishes, no matter where you go.
Chicken cacciatore is Italian.
Kangaroo souffle must be Australian.
Mutton chops are definitely British.
Chicken soup undoubtedly is Yiddish.
Pumpernickel comes from Lithuania.
Hassenpfeffer comes from Pennsylvania.
Wiener schnitzel's Austrian or German.
Kindly pass the sauerbraten, Herman.
Borscht is what they're eating in the Soviet.
Wait, I think we've got some on the stove yet.
See the Mau Maus underneath the jungle sky.
Jolly Mau Maus, eating missionary pie.
Frenchmen eat a lot of bouillabaisse there.
Dutchmen eat a sauce called Hollandaise there.
Smorgasbord in Swedish is the winner.
In America it's TV dinner.
So there you have one food from each land.
Each one delicious, each one simply grand.
Mix them all up, in one big mish mash.
And what have you got? Hungarian goulash!
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