BKV Strike Called Off
Budapest transport company BKV’s in-house unions and management reached an agreement on Tuesday afternoon, averting a two-day strike planned on Thursday and Friday. BKV management accepted union demands to extend by one year the collective bargain contract, which was due to expire at the end of 2008. Read more »
The Hungarian gay pride parade
This morning I heard one of the right-wing organizers explain that his organization is a peaceful group of concerned citizens. They just want to defend family values. Their only aim is to stop the yearly gay pride parade in Budapest because they consider it a form of advertising for homosexuality. But they will never resort to force. The organization’s name is Rendszerváltó Fórum. And what do I see in the online edition of Népszabadság tonight? “The most forceful attack against the demonstrators came from Rendszerváltó Fórum’s meeting at Franz Liszt Square.” Well, well! The report continues: “On the square the demonstrators tried to break the cordon [the police had erected] and attacked the police, who answered with tear gas.” At the far end of Andrássy Street, on Heroes’ Square, hooded and often masked demonstrators attacked the policemen, using Molotov cocktails, rocks, eggs, whatever. Here the police used water cannons as well as tear gas. Because of the “battle” on Heroes’ Square the police diverted the participants in the parade off the main road. In order to make sure that they were not attacked after the parade was over, as happened last year, the police directed the gays into the old nineteenth-century metro that was closed to the public for the duration. That way they could leave the scene without insults or bodily harm.
However, some people were not so lucky. József Orosz, a reporter for Klub Rádió, was recognized at the Kodály Circle. His attackers first abused him verbally, but soon enough they became violent. He was hit on the head and on the shoulder. For a brief period he lost consciousness. According to Orosz, one of his attackers yelled to the mob: “Come here, you can spit on Orosz.” Orosz is a liberally minded reporter and hence often the target of the extreme right. Gábor Horn, the SZDSZ politician, was also recognized by three young guys who spat on him, poured beer all over him, and at the end slapped him around. Gábor Szetey, former undersecretary in charge of the reform of public administration and the only member of the government who openly admitted to being gay, was recognized as he was leaving the scene with Katalin Lévai, a MSZP member of the parliament of the European Union. They managed to survive the ordeal unscathed thanks to a police car that came to their rescue. The mob subsequently broke the window of the car, but the passengers were unharmed. Lévai, who is a great champion of equal opportunity in Brussels, was shaken. She expressed her total amazement at the behavior of the extremist demonstrators. The whole scene reminded her of what she imagined to be the mood at a lynching or a pogrom. She added that it was horrifying to witness the egg and rock throwing and the physical attacks. Something like that shouldn’t happen in a European city, she said. She will write a report to the socialist delegation of the European Parliament and also to the head of the organization dealing with gay rights.
How can this happen? Why is it that until two years ago these gay pride parades went off without any trouble?
Read the rest of the article »
Cabinet Allocates Ft 10bn to GPs, Dentists
To compensate for the shortfall of revenues following the March 9 referendum in which doctor visiting fees and hospital fees were cancelled, the cabinet is ready to allocate Ft 10 billion to GPs, pediatricians and dentists. Read more »
Attitude Toward Life
The proverbial Magyar dissension and lack of perseverance are probably the legacy of those Turkic tribes which frequently formed short-lived nomadic empires bent on the conquest of the world and soon in collapse for no apparent reason. The dreamy, unrealistic optimism, the expectation of miracles is, perhaps, a tradition handed over by the stargazing poets of Mesopotamia. Read more »
Forint Strengthens to 3-month High
The forint strengthened to a three-month peak of Ft 253.3 per euro yesterday, riding an upbeat global mood. The forint hit 162.3 per US dollar, an 11-year high. Read more »
Language – a Source of Identity
The people of Hungary speak the Hungarian language. This is their target language and their traditional language. Hungarian is considered by many to be among the most challenging languages worldwide. Read more »
Hungarian Culture: Books & Publications
Books and publications I used as resources for the Hungarian Culture – Understanding People – Multicultural Competence articles on this website:
Read more »
Gymnastics of the Brain: Hungarian Language
There is one thing to the foreigners about the Hungarians that is more complicated than the Rubik’s cube. If in some way foreigners find the Hungarian people a complicated race, even more so the Hungarian language causes both their brains and tongues to do Olympic level gymnastics. Read more »
Roman Beach (Római Part)
Római part, or Roman bank, runs along the side of the Danube in District III, out by Óbuda. On a hot Sunday afternoon the grassy waterfront is filled with families enjoying the sun. Read more »
National pride
A few days ago Tárki, a polling company, together with Image Factory, a firm offering “political and business solutions,” looked into the question of national pride and the nation’s self image.
Three years ago 40% of all Hungarians were proud of being Hungarian. Today, only 32%.
This question of national pride has always puzzled me. Where we are born and what language we learn as infants is really happenstance. Something over which we have no control. Why anyone should feel pride because of it is beyond me. Especially if we try to flesh out the basis of this pride. Read more »
Forint Weakens
The forint was trading down more than 1% against the euro at near 254 Wednesday after rumors of a possible downgrade of Hungary by credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s. Read more »
The legendary Hungarian IQ is efficiently repressed by their lamentable EQ…– this is the Hungarian way of giving a sporting chance in life to other Europeans.
- Ardó Zsuzsanna in Love Blues
Payback Ethic
One Hungarian value that this author and many foreigners noticed was something called the payback ethic. Throughout the world people will treat others in return the way they are treated, but Hungarians seem to take this farther than others. One person said, “It is hard to do a favor for Hungarians Read more »
Cogwheel
Idea for Fun in Budapest: Ride the Cogwheel train. The cogwheel train is a cute mountain train that climbs up the Buda Hills from the Városmajor Park to Széchenyi hagy, where it connects the Children’s Train. The entire trip takes about 20 minutes. Take the #56 tram from Moszkva tér; only 2 stops for the cog-wheel train. Enjoy!
Plastic Surgery in Budapest
You can take advantage of the very high class cosmetic, surgical and medical treatments in Hungary. These treatments will normally be found at up to 50% less than the cost of similar treatments in other countries. Read more »
HANS SELYE – Physician, designer of stress theory
January 26, 1907, Vienna – October 16, 1982, Montreal
Physician, designer of stress theory
Hans (János) Selye studied medicine at the German university in Prague, and then in Paris and Rome. He became a physician in 1929 and chose a career in research. In 1929, he joined the staff of the Institute of Pathology in Prague, and then moved to the United States in 1931 on receiving a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship. Later, he moved to Canada where he taught biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal.
He was a professor at the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal from 1945 to 1976, also serving as general adviser for surgery to the United States Armed Forces. In 1976, he became president of the International Institute for Stress Research.
Janos Selye’s work included numerous areas of physiology. He was concerned with endocrinology, cardiac cell death, the problem of steroid anaesthesia and hormone regulation. Selye is best known for his stress theory.
Hans Selye held honorary doctorates at 18 universities, was a member of the Canadian Academy of Sciences and 43 scientific societies, was declared an honorary citizen of many cities and countries, and held many high-ranking awards. He wrote a number of books including The Stress of Life, From Dream to Discovery, In Vivo: The Case for Supramolecular Biology, and Stress without Distress.
Janos Selye, Hans Selye, physician, stress theory
The latest Fidesz ideas about the economy
Yesterday with a certain fanfare Viktor Orbán and Mihály Varga held a joint press conference during which they outlined their plans to ease the economic pressure on the Hungarian population caused by rising food and energy prices. As we know, the parabolic rise in the price of oil and all other energy sources is influencing the economic health of the whole world. Even the price of food is partly connected to the rise in the price of energy. Although in the United States the presidential candidates advocate immediate remedies (like lowering the excise tax on gasoline or a windfall profit tax on oil companies) cooler heads who aren’t trying to get elected prefer to let the market work things out. Admittedly so far the market hasn’t done a very good job. Crude oil in the U.S. is up 400% since Bush was inaugurated in 2001; heating oil is double what it was a year ago. There’s lots of finger-pointing: China and India are using huge amounts of oil, the U.S. dollar is in the toilet, environmentalists prevent oil exploration, speculators are driving the price into bubble territory. So far we’ve seen only limited demand destruction in the U.S. The upshot: no one knows whether oil is heading to $170 as the president of OPEC predicted, whether it will hit the round number of $200, or whether it will settle back down to more reasonable levels.
The Gyurcsány government is pursuing a cautious course: next year’s crop should be very good and lowering VAT on food usually makes no difference because, based on past experience, any decrease in VAT is offset by an increase in the price of the product. VAT goes down, the price of the item goes up, and the consumer doesn’t gain a cent. On the energy front Hungary is suffering from horrible inefficiencies. For instance, the Hungarian consumption of natural gas is sky high because of the shoddy apartment buildings erected during the era of plentiful and dirt cheap Soviet gas. Moreover, these rows and rows of ugly apartment houses are heated by distance heating that is very convenient but also very expensive. Most of the apartments in these buildings don’t have their own thermostats, and the only way to regulate heat is by opening windows. The owners of these apartments cannot turn a thermostat down at night or during the day when they are at work. Or during the two weeks of winter holidays. Insulation is practically nonexistent, and through the single pane windows heat pours out. The government did introduce some financial incentives for the owners to consider investing money into fixing up their apartments and for all the owners jointly to do something about the thermostat problems. In East Germany these apartment complexes (in Hungarian panelházak) were simply torn down. Hungary and I assume the other former socialist countries couldn’t do that: there was no rich West Hungary or West Czechoslovakia behind them.
Cultural Tax on Clothing
Socialist MP János Schiffer has proposed expanding the 0.8% “cultural” revenue tax to include clothing. The government supports the idea, because clothing represents cultural values through design, Cultural Ministry undersecretary Márta Schneider said. Read more »
ZOLTÁN KODÁLY – Composer
December 16, 1882, Kecskemét – March 6, 1967, Budapest
Composer, father of the “Kodaly method”
Kodály began collecting folk music in 1905. In 1907, he became a professor at the Academy of Music, teaching music theory and composition. He published his first composition in 1910. In 1919, he worked in the musical directorate of the short-lived communist government, for which he was banned from teaching.
Isolated, he composed Psalmus Hungaricus, which was acclaimed internationally, followed by Háry János in 1926, popular all over the world. Székely Spinning Room was premiered in 1932. Other Kodály works include Dances of Marosszék (1927–1930), Summer Evening (1927), Dances of Galánta (1933), Te Deum of Budavár – composed to mark the 250th anniversary of the liberation of Buda (1936) and Peacock Variations (1939).
Kodály’s studies in music theory were also particularly significant. A monograph called Hungarian Folk Music was published in 1937.
During World War II Kodály was active in rescuing persecuted people and eventually had to go into hiding himself. He composed Missa Brevis in 1945. He was active in the democratic transformation and became chairman of the board at the Academy of Music. From 1946 to 1949 Kodály was President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His work, Czinka Panna was premiered in 1948, and the Kállai Duo was first presented in 1951.
A series of books, Modern Music and the Folk Music of Hungary was published between 1951 and 1967, introducing his concepts on music education. In 1948 and 1952, Kodály was awarded the Kossuth Prize for his oeuvre, which included ethnography, music history, music aesthetics, music criticism, history of literature, linguistics and language culture.
Music education was central to his work throughout his lifetime, and included methods of teaching singing, reading and writing music in early education, and promoting choirs based on local tradition. The Kodály Method of Music Education is now recognized and used throughout the world.
Zoltan Kodaly, composer, Kodaly method, music education, ethnography, music history, folk music
Mariott Hotel Lobby
When you can’t take it any more… Stop your life for a couple of hours and become a lobby rat at Marriott Hotel Lobby. The place to pick up a free Budapest Sun. If there aren’t any in the lobby, go up the elevator to the third floor and there will be some at the door. Read more »
A bit more math
As I predicted yesterday numbers are flying. And not just numbers but words too. To recap: Viktor Orbán and Mihály Varga held a press conference on Wednesday where they outlined Fidesz’s remedies for the soaring food and energy prices. They claimed that a drastic decrease in VAT (ÁFA) would not cost the central budget a single cent (or to be more authentic, a fillér). The loss of revenues would be amply compensated for by increased domestic consumption.
One didn’t have to wait long before Ferenc Gyurcsány responded with his own press conference. Like Orbán he didn’t come alone. But unlike Orbán he didn’t have a high-level economist in tow but rather an ordinary elementary school math teacher. The claim was that any sixth-grade student should be able to realize that Orbán’s proposition is nonsense. The school teacher stood in front of a blackboard and explained that if Mr.Citizen went shopping for food in the supermarket and purchased 1,000 Ft worth of stuff, at the checkout counter he would pay a total of 1,200 Ft given the 20% ÁFA. If that ÁFA were reduced to 5%, Mr. Citizen would have to buy 4,000 Ft worth of food for the budget to receive the same 200 Ft in revenues. Surely, said Gyurcsány, this is an impossibility. People will not buy four times more food than they do today. Here is a photo with the simple arithmetic on the blackboard.
Meanwhile Fidesz altered their estimates. No longer do they claim that there would be no loss; rather, there would be a shortfall of only 120 billion as opposed to the government’s estimate of 320 billion. Read more »
Mile Posts of Hungarian History
What are the Hungarian People Like?
The stereotypical Hungarian is pessimistic, historically conscious, pessimistic, cleverly pragmatic, contradictory, pessimistic, and appreciative of the fine arts and good food. Did I mention pessimistic? Read more »
