Latest Covid-19 related news of Hungary

Since our last blog post there has not been any changes to restrictions in Hungary, please click on the following link to read about the latest Covid-19 news and restrictions of our country:

Carnival Season = Farsang in Hungary

Farsang in Hungarian is the name of the period from Epiphany (Vízkereszt in Hungarian, on January 6th) to Pancake day (Húshagyó kedd in our language, it is before Ash Wednesday, it is the 47th day before Easter Sunday), to the beginning of Lent. It is traditionally celebrated with happy feasts, balls, fun, folk festivals. The characteristic of the carnival season is that there is no important religious holiday associated with it in the Christian liturgical calendar, it is mostly based on folk traditions. Carnival events from pre-Christian times were prohibited in the 16th and 17th centuries, because of their wild customs mostly symbolizing lust, hedonism. In Hungary during old times, Farsang was also a period of mating and was also an important “wedding season” as it was already forbidden to hold a wedding during the Easter fast period.

The highlight of Farsang is the carnival. This period of the last three days from Carnival Sunday to Pancake day is actually a winter farewell, too. Famous carnivals (the Rio Carnival, the Venetian Carnival) are held in many cities around the world, and in Hungary the most notable event of the carnival is the ‘Busójárás’ in Mohács, a city on the southern part of Hungary, close to Serbia.

The Busójárás

Busójárás is a celebration of the Šokci people living in the town of Mohács, Hungary, held annually at the end of the Carnival season, Farsang, ending the day before Ash Wednesday. The celebration features Busós (people wearing traditional scary masks) and it includes folk music, parades and dancing, masquerading. There are 2 reasons why they dress up in scary costumes:

1. To scare winter away
2. To scare the Turks away… (A big part of Hungary was under Ottoman occupation between 1541 and 1699)

The Busójárás lasts for six days and it is held usually during February. Ten thousands of people visit this event and since 2009 it has been on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list.

Photo: alfatours. hu

Photo: promenad. hu

A delicious thing we eat at Farsang

The Farsang Doughnut or Farsangi fánk as we call it in Hungarian. It is a soft yeast cake, we deep-fry it and fill it with fruit jam or eat it empty with some powdered sugar on top, yummy! Once we are back on track after the Covid-19 restrictions are eased, you can learn about more delicious Hungarian sweets on our Free walking tours in Budapest!

Photo of doughnuts: kifoztuk. hu

 

 

Latest Hungarian Covid-19 related news

Right now there are about a 150 000 thousand people vaccinated with the 1st dose of the vaccination and about 12 500 with the second dose as well in our country. In the last two weeks the number of cases seems to be decreasing, but the threat has not yet passed.

You can read the short summary of the valid Covid-19 restrictions in Hungary in our previous blog article:

The story of Ágnes Keleti, the world’s oldest Olympic champion

This lady just celebrated her 100 birthday on the 9th of January which made her the world’s oldest living Olympic champion, we are very proud of her… 🙂 And now, let’s see her story…

100 year old Ágnes Keleti on the 9th of January (photo: Keleti 100 – Facebook page)

It is not rare that many famous sportsman are preparing for another profession, but then chance determines their career and “accidentally” they end up as some of world’s best sportsman… Ágnes Keleti wanted to be a violoncellist, she was talented, too, she had already performed at the Hungarian Academy of Music, but then a Christmas party came , when she was in high school.  She made a mistake… She wanted to play the swan (Saint Saens) when she was hit by a sudden “short circuit” and froze. She might have played in a symphony orchestra as an adult, she might have been one of the best cellists of Hungary.

But finally she became one of the most successful athletes of her age, whose name is known all over the world. If she had a little more luck, she would have won even more than five Olympic golds, she could have gotten up to eight. Of course, five is not a small thing, there is no other Hungarian athlete who won four golds at an Olympics. Unfortunately, they could not celebrate her successes, what’s more, after 1956 (there was a revolution in Hungary against the Communist dictatorship that year), she entered Hungarian territory again only in 1983, so she is hardly known at home…

She was 16 when she started doing gymnastics, at first just to entertain herself. However, Zoltán Dückstein, one of the good coaches of that era, noticed her talent. In 1940, when she was 20 years old, Keleti was already a Hungarian champion, if the Olympics were held that year, she would have had a place in the team… but since she’s Jewish, she could not be part of it. Unfortunately, because of her Jewish origins, the following years were more about survival, than doing sports…

Trying to survive

She took any kind of jobs what she could, she was a furrier’s apprentice, worked in a munition-factory, and used all tricks to survive. She did not put the stigmatizing yellow star on her clothes, and she bought the documents of a certain Piroska Juhász, she paid with all her valuables and money for it. Her uncle and cousin were taken in front of her eyes by the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian fascist party that supported the Nazis and the deportations of Jewish people in Hungary). Her wealthy father, who was a co-owner of a factory, died in Auschwitz. In 1944, the worst year of the Hungarian Holocaust, Keleti was hiding on the Hungarian countryside. Then in January, 1945 the siege of Budapest ended, and her husband returned  from the Mauthausen concentration camp in the spring weighing 33 kg…

A new beginning after WW2

By the fall of 1945, they already restored a gym to such condition that they could do sports there. They achieved that Rezsőné Herpich, the most prestigious coach of the era, was able to return from the expulsion, and the national team reunited. The team traveled to the 1948 London Olympics with the chance of winning, but Keleti was injured unexpectedly. She watched her team in London finish second behind the Czechoslovaks…

Young Ágnes Keleti – photo: tornasport.hu

The first golden medal

Keleti was already 31 years old at the Olympics in 1952 in Helsinki and there she wanted to make her big dream come true and become an Olympic champion. They prepared for the final of the ambiguous railing under political pressure while knowing that they had to loose the golden medal and the Soviet team had to win it… However, Mátyás Rákosi (the leader of the Hungarian Communist party 1947-1956, during the period we call the “Heavy dictatorship”) changed his mind in the last minute and asked the team leaders to do everything for the Hungarian success.
You can learn more about the Communist dictatorship in Hungary after WW2 on our Communism tours in the future, when we start running our free tours again: https://www.triptobudapest.hu/tours/communism-walk/

Four gold medals from 1 Olympic games – a Hungarian record

In 1956 in Melbourne, where Keleti’s sister had been living, her farewell appearance ended with four gold medals, and if she didn’t have a spoiled jump, she could have won the fifth as well. Even so, there are two important records attached to her name:

• No other Hungarian gymnast has ever won gold at two consecutive Olympics
• To this day in Hungary, she holds the most Olympic medals (10) preceding swimmer Krisztina Egerszegi  and sprint canoer Danuta Kozák
• Internationally, her performance is not small, Keleti has the third place in the eternal ranking of gymnasts behind the Soviet Larissa Latinyina and the Czechoslovak Vera Caslavska

Her life after 1956

Keleti did not return home to Hungary (like many other Hungarian sportsmen…) from the Melbourne Olympics. She settled down in Israel in 1957, married a Hungarian man there and had two sons. She came home first after the change of regime in 1989, and has visited several times since. She played a key role in the creation of Israeli gymnastics, and from 1958 to 1980 she was the federal captain of the Israeli national team, while preparing the Italian national team for the 1960 Olympics. The 3 things that describe her the most: Humor, love of life, laughter 🙂

We wish you these all over the world, especially during these hard times…

 

 

 

Covid-19 related news of Hungary

Since our last blog post coronavirus related restrictions in Hungary has not changed. We might have reached the top of the second wave of the pandemic here, and they are going to decide in the next couple of days about changing the restrictions or leaving them as they are now. You can find the short summary of the valid restrictions of Hungary at the following link:

Story of a world-famous Hungarian explorer and writer

We have started sharing stories of internationally known/important Hungarian persons or things, and the following story is going to be about Gábor Molnár (1908-1980), a world-famous Hungarian explorer and writer, who wrote his works blindly after losing his sight in an accident.

Gábor Molnár was born in Óbuda (Old Buda, north from Buda now) and used to visit the Zoo of Budapest a lot already in his childhood and youth. He used to read the works of Hungarian explorers a lot, too (Lajos Bíró, Ármin Vámbéry, Sándor Kőrösi Csoma). In 1929 he read about an expedition to Brazil in the Christmas issue of a Hungarian newspaper. He couldn’t have hoped to go on a research trip on his own once, so he applied to this trip in a letter. To his great surprise and joy, because of his talents, his shooting skills and his determination, he was chosen as the third member of the expedition to increase the animal and insect collection of the Hungarian National Museum. However, after their arrival, his two companions became seriously ill, and in order to finance their healing and return home, they even had to sell the weapons and equipment of Gábor Molnár, who thus continued exploring and collecting alone without any financial support.

In Brazil he took the job of a site manager at one of the Ford Company’s rubber plantations, with the stipulation that he could set out on his own expedition at any time. From the money he received there, he equipped the following voyages of discovery and paid his companions from this wage. During the explorations he met native Indians, collected special animals, including valuable giant snakes, beetles, insects, animal skins, which he sent home to the Budapest Zoo and the National Museum. Molnár was not paid for these, he only got a diploma and other moral recognition.

On March the 7th, 1932, there was an accident that changed his life forever… In a Ford warehouse that was under his supervision a subordinate, a young boy, found an explosive package. Gábor Molnár himself wanted to remove the igniters, but on the way to the nearby river they exploded in his hands, and as a result he lost his eyesight.

Gábor Molnár’s first full book – Adventures in the brazilian jungle

Returning from Brasil and starting writing

He came home from Brazil on May the 24th, 1932, under adventurous conditions in the company of two giant snakes. He was treated in Hungary at the state eye hospital, where his doctors confirmed that he would never see again. Here, with the help of one of the nurses, he learned to use Remington’s typewriter, which launched him into the writing career. He put his experiences, travel adventures and discoveries on paper, his first articles appeared in Budapest newspapers, and then he entered the writers’ society. Later, his twenty-six independent volumes and more than a hundred feuilletons (a part of a newspaper or magazine devoted to fiction, criticism, or light literature) and educational works were published, he acquired radio games and took part in hundreds of writer-reader meetings. From the middle of the 20th century, he became one of the most read and popular writers in the country.

In parallel with his work as a writer, he continued his adventures in the world until the end of his life, visiting Asia and South America several times, and his wife was his faithful companion and main support all the way.

(Story idea taken from HUstory’s Facebook page.)

We are looking forward for our adventures on our free tours in Budapest with you, when it will be possible to travel more freely again…!

 

 

 

Read the latest Covid-19 related news and a new story in our series about famous Hungarian people and things 🙂

Covid-19 situation in Hungary

We are still in the rising period of the 2nd wave of the pandemic. Since our last post, thins hasn’t changed much, let us summarize shortly what are the latest valid restrictions:

• The borders of Hungary are closed at least until the 1st of February (there are only a few exceptions)
• There is a curfew between 8pm and 5 am at least until the 11th of January
• Restaurants can only serve take-away and home delivery orders
• Hotels cannot accommodate guests except for business travelers or guests that are here for the purpose of economy or education
• Gyms, pools, museums, public libraries, cinemas, zoos, ice skating rinks are closed
• Everyone must keep wearing masks on public transportations, indoors, and outdoors on public areas, too (in cities that have more than 10.000 inhabitants) – in parks, nature and while doing sports masks do not have to be worn
• We are still not running our daily FREE WALKING TOURS in Budapest until further notice, all gatherings are prohibited

The joint story of chemical engineer Ernő Obermayer and the world-famous Hungarian Paprika spice

Ernő Obermayer (1888-1969) was born in Somlószőlős, Hungary, and graduated in Budapest with a degree in chemical engineering. In the two centers of domestic paprika production, Kalocsa and then in Szeged,  he achieved excellent results in the breeding and development of the world-famous paprika. He managed to introduce several spicy and non-spicy or sweet varieties, 80% of the domestic spicy varieties are the result of his experiments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ernő Obermayer

 

It is interesting to mention that Albert Szent-Györgyi, the scientist who discovered Vitamin C and whose work was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1937, told in an interview what role his wife, chance and the paprika from Szeged played in his world-famous Hungarian success: “An evening my wife gave me peppers for dinner, which I didn’t feel like eating, but I didn’t have the courage to say that. Looking at the peppers it came to mind, thath I had never tried this plant for research and told my wife that I would take this to the lab the next day rather than eat it. I already knew that night that this vegetable was a treasure trove of vitamin C.”
In his laboratory at the University of Szeged, he successfully produced large amounts of vitamin C from freshly picked sweet peppers, and it turned out that peppers are the richest source of vitamins among all vegetables, it has four to five times as much Vitamin C as lemon for example.

Ernő Obermayer, our world-renowned chemical engineer and farmer, achieved internationally recognized results in the breeding of Hungarian sweet peppers, but in addition to paprika, he was also involved in the cultivation of rice, grain, soybeans, cumin, castor and cotton.

Both the Kalocsa and Szeged Spicy Pepper grists have been included in the Collection of Hungarikums. (FYI: Hungarikum is a collective term indicating a value that is worthy of distinction and highlighting within a unified system of qualification and registry. It also represents the high performance of Hungarian people thanks to its typically Hungarian attribute, uniqueness, specialty and quality 🙂 )

To commemorate him and his work, a bust of Ernő Obermayer was unveiled in Szeged (a nice and cozy city on the south of Hungary, next to our 2nd biggest river, the Tisza) and a memorial plaque was unveiled in his hometown, Somlószőlős.

       

 

Once you can traveler again to Hungary, you can learn more about Hungarian inventions and discoveries on our General free tour of Budapest 🙂

(This story was based on a post of HUstory’s Facebook page)

 

Let us share the latest news with You in this blog post.

Border closure extended

Officially the latest border closure of Hungary was valid until the 30th of November, but the government decided to extend it with a couple of months, until the 1st of February. No foreign citizens can enter the country, there a few exceptions. They are going to see this week and next week if the Covid-19 related restrictions need to be tightened by Christmas. You can read the latest restrictions in our previous blog article:

Vörösmarty square Christmas market moves to the internet

The biggest annual Christmas market of Budapest, which has been chosen to be one of the best Christmas markets of Europe several times, was cancelled a couple of weeks ago due to the still rising number of Covid-19 cases in Hungary. The market has been organized for more than 20 years and annually about 800.000 people visit it. This year, they decided to make a website for craftsman and artisans that usually sell their products on the Vörösmarty square in Novembers and Decembers. This website is a page that collects the circa 50 craftsmen that participate in the program and introduce them and their products with pictures and links, so it is not exactly a web shop where you can buy their products, too. Here is the website, if you would like to have a look: https://budapestikaracsony.hu/

‘Karácsony’ is Christmas in Hungarian 🙂

Hope that You are doing well and safe! We cannot wait to guide you around our beautiful city again!

Here is how nice our Parliament building looks like in autumn from the Margaret island: