Danubian clouds

The plane takes off, for one minute it seems to move toward the downtown, but then turns sharply south, it follows the line of the Danube. On both sides of the river’s strip, the colorful chessboards of arable lands, mining lakes and salty backwaters shine in the vaporous afternoon sunshine.


After crossing the Serbian border, the plane soon reaches Vukovar where the Danube, obeying the orders of the old kings, turned to the east, and still outlines the boundaries of a missing country. The plane, before saying goodbye to that country, and continuing its journey south through the long Serbian corridor in front of the crowded rooms of the small Western Balkan peoples, describes an elegant circle above the last river bend, which, along with its three tributaries, draws a complex circuit on the Bačka plain.


The Erdőd (in Croatian, Erdut) Bend, as the Danubian Islands blog writes, was forced to turn to east by the Erdőd loess range, which rises up to sixty meters above the river. The loess range, extending from Almás to Erdőd, is well visible on the map of the First Military Survey (1763-1787). To the east, at Almás the Drava flows into the Danube, from the south the stream, which the map still calls Weis Graben, and from the north the tiny river of Mostunka. If, on the map of Mapire.eu, you click on Options, and then you set the layer of “First Military Survey” to 0%, you will see that the lake under the former Rácz Millidits and today’s Srpski Miletić, which, in the foreground of the photo, repeats the bend in the shape of a half moon, gathered up from the water of the river.


The afternoon vapors have become thicker, and a multitude of tiny clouds rise up from the hot plain, forming a threatening cloud cup. Sometime, when kayaking on the Danube, we used to look up worried, whether it would be poured upon us before we camped. Below, the Danube is the reality, the paddle strikes, the country borders. From below, the clouds floating above the large water belong to it: they are the Danubian clouds. Seen from above, the three-dimensional world of the clouds is realistic and self-contained: they do not belong to anything, least to the tiny strip meandering on the worn cloth of the earth. Nevertheless, they are the same Danubian clouds. This is why I could send this photo to the Danubian clouds photo contest of the Danubian Islands blog, where it won the first prize. The river has been stretched to the sky, “the foundations flew upon high.”

Tamás Sajó: The cloud looks back

Letter to the frontline

“Жди меня и я вернусь” – “Wait for me, and I will come”, wrote Konstantin Simonov in 1941 in his letter from the front to his girlfriend and later wife, the Soviet movie star Valentina Serova (who, however, did not wait for him, but mixed up with Marshal Rokossovsky). The poem, that became public only months later, together with the music of Matvey Blanter, became one of the unofficial hymns of the Great Patriotic War, and kept up the soul and hope of millions of soldiers and soldier’s wives.

In the now-running Ukrainian patriotic war, the tables turn, and women left at home send letters to the frontline, to urge their beloved ones to endure, and to foster patriotism in every Ukrainian. This is how the letter is introduced by filmmaker Ivan Kravchyshyn, who, together with his wife Natalia, designed and photographed each page of it, and whose films – such as Політ золотої мушки (The flight of the golden fly, 2014) – fit together with the visual world of the album..


Because the letter is nothing but a twelve-page album. On each page, a beautiful Ukrainian girl is looking at the reader, dressed in the costume of a different Ukrainian historical region. The pieces of the costume are authentic: most of them come from museums in Kolomea, Tarnopol and Prelesne, as well as from the private collections of Natalia Kravchishin and three of the girls photographed. On the back of each photo they give a detailed description of each piece of clothing, they mark their place of origin on the map of the traditional regions of Ukraine, and add archival photos to show how they were worn at that time.

To encourage our sons fighting on the front with girls dressed in national costumes, and at the same time to fasten national cohesion, may seem archaic to us, who saw similar publications from the time of the First World War. But the idea fits well with the nation-building endeavor of a belated nation. The photos, the girls, the costumes are beautiful, the typography tasteful, and the archive photos and texts well-rounded and informative.

What a pity that the letter has not been signed by the whole of Ukraine. The Bukovinian Romanian, Galician Pole, Black Sea Russian, Holichian Karaim, Crimean Tatar, Subcarpathian Hungarian soldiers perishing on the eastern front are looking in vain for the pictures of their loved ones in the album. These ethnic fragments shredded from here and there into Ukraine have been forgotten in the heyday of nation-building.

For them, pars pro toto, plays the Hungarian version of Wait for me and I will come, which may be a surprise to the speakers of the other languages, too. In fact, this is not identical with the well-known version of Blanter. Inasmuch as it sounds authentically Russian, it comes from the Hungarian composer Henrik Negrelli. You can make a hit, singing it with a Russian text in a Russian company. The Hungarian translation was done by Sarolta Lányi, who probably did not have the front in mind, but rather her husband Ernő Czóbel, who kept her in countenance with his letters from the Siberian Gulag. It is sung by the great Hungarian actor Iván Darvas, whose mother was a Tsarist Russian emigrant in Prague, and who in 1945 served as an interpreter to the Red Army, and in 1956, organized a revolutionary committee against the Soviet invaders, for which he spent two years in prison and worked for years as a factory laborer; and then in 1965 he featured in the pro-Soviet cult film The Corporal and Others, so he also might have had a multifaceted relationship with what he sings about.


Konstantin Simonov: Wait for me. Hungarian translation by Sarolta Lányi, music by Henrik Negrelli, sung by Iván Darvas

Жди меня, и я вернусь. Только очень жди, Жди, когда наводят грусть Желтые дожди, Жди, когда снега метут, Жди, когда жара, Жди, когда других не ждут, Позабыв вчера. Жди, когда из дальних мест Писем не придет, Жди, когда уж надоест Всем, кто вместе ждет. Жди меня, и я вернусь, Не желай добра Всем, кто знает наизусть, Что забыть пора. Пусть поверят сын и мать В то, что нет меня, Пусть друзья устанут ждать, Сядут у огня, Выпьют горькое вино На помин души... Жди. И с ними заодно Выпить не спеши. Жди меня, и я вернусь, Всем смертям назло. Кто не ждал меня, тот пусть Скажет: - Повезло. Не понять, не ждавшим им, Как среди огня Ожиданием своим Ты спасла меня. Как я выжил, будем знать Только мы с тобой,- Просто ты умела ждать, Как никто другой.

Wait for me, and I’ll come back! Wait with all you’ve got! Wait, when dreary yellow rains Tell you, you should not. Wait when snow is falling fast, Wait when summer’s hot, Wait when yesterdays are past, Others are forgot. Wait, when from that far-off place, Letters don’t arrive. Wait, when those with whom you wait Doubt if I’m alive. Wait for me, and I’ll come back! Wait in patience yet When they tell you off by heart That you should forget. Even when my dearest ones Say that I am lost, Even when my friends give up, Sit and count the cost, Drink a glass of bitter wine To the fallen friend – Wait! And do not drink with them! Wait until the end! Wait for me and I’ll come back, Dodging every fate! “What a bit of luck!” they’ll say, Those that would not wait. They will never understand How amidst the strife, By your waiting for me, dear, You had saved my life. Only you and I will know How you got me through. Simply – you knew how to wait – No one else but you.

Budapest, a golden city

Lao Shu Huahua: “Jiangling is a thousand miles away, yet it is only one day”

This verse, illustrated by the popular contemporary Chinese artist and media professor Lao Shu Huahua, is from the great Tang-era poet Li Bai’s Early morning departure from Baidi (759). Li Bai in this poem, getting to know that he had received the emperor’s pardon in his exile, feels an exuberant joy and considers himself able to return to his distant home within a day. Lao Shu represents this dreamlike travel with his constant figure, Mr. Minguo, floating above the mountains. But the Air China airline company, by including this drawing as an advertisement in the October issue of their board magazine Wings of China, provided it with a new meaning, almost declaring that they could have helped Li Bai in really getting to his home in one day.

At least they helped me to do so. Not that much the company, since I read the October issue on the inverse way, by traveling from my homeland to the country of Lao Shu Huahua and Li Bai. But rather the magazine itself. Each monthly issue of Wings of China focuses on a different city, entrusting a known author to write an essay about it, and provides short reviews and useful information about it on dozens of pages. And the city in the focus of the October issue is none else but Budapest. 布达佩斯，金色城池, Bùdápèisī, jīnsè chéngchí – Budapest, the golden city. And the author who writes an essay about it is the most important Chinese writer living in Hungary, Yu Zemin – the Chinese translator of Péter Esterházy, Imre Kertész, László Krasznahorkai, Sándor Márai and Péter Nádas, and author of eight volumes of essays written mainly on Hungary (but never translated to Hungarian), as well as of three European travelogues.

We can be grateful for this text not only because it brings close Budapest to eight million people – that is, one twelfth of the 90 million annual travelers of Air China, the readers of the October issue. But also because it shows to us, how beautiful, how intimately close it is considered by someone who had lived half of his life in a different culture on the other side of the Earth. His vision, however, is very close to ours, who have learned in Budapest how to see a city, and now we look at every other city in this way. As he slowly moves from place to place in the city, evoking history and musing on the details, and as the past, coming alive, merges with the present which is seen as soon becoming a nostalgic past.

Yu Zemin: Budapest, a golden city

As every man has a different smell, so every city has its own color. If Athens is enamel blue, and Rome is green, like old bronzes, and Vienna is coffee brown, then Budapest is the purest gold.

Twenty-six years ago, on a late autumn morning, a train from Moscow to Vienna rolled into Budapest’s Eastern Railway Station. As soon as I opened the door, and looked out, I was immediately grasped by the impressive golden view, the walls of golden shades pierced by opaque glass windows, and the huge glass dome, like that of the temple of a rich deity. The bright, but not burning autumn sunlight broke with golden bars through the metal and glass structure of the roof, and reflected on the solid golden walls. The air in the station trembled in one golden dazzle.

The main façade of the Eastern Railway Station. Photo by Péter Visontay

The eclectic-style Eastern Railway Station was built in 1884, during the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. “Eclectic” does not mean compromises in the spirit of the building, but rather that it combines the form language of multiple styles, instead of rigidly sticking to one of them. If I go to travel, and pull my suitcase along the halls of the station, I always look around like in a museum, and every time I found new details. I spend the most time in the Lotz Hall, attached to the long corridor of the international ticket office. Károly Lotz was one of the greatest Hungarian academic painters of the 19th century, and as the name of the hall shows, the frescoes here are his masterpieces, imbued with a rich symbolism.


Later I discovered an even more stunning Lotz Hall on the upper floor of the Parisian Supermarket, between the Opera House and Liszt Ferenc Square, along Andrássy Avenue, which is a local equivalent of the Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. The supermarket’s predecessor, the Terézváros Casino was a renowned dance and music venue, built in the same year as the Eastern Railway Station. In 1910, the casino was converted into the Parisian Supermarket, then it went through the smoke of the war, and was reborn in the 1990s as a member of the Alexandra Bookshops’ network. Coffee was also served, and the well-known bookstore café was open until late evening. They had many regulars, and I also often came here. Unfortunately, the network recently closed down, and the bookstore café became history. Nevertheless, I hope it does not take long, and the Lotz Hall will be again filled with the scent of coffee.

Most of Budapest’s visitors dutifully visit the Chain Bridge, the Fisherman’s Bastion, the Royal Palace and the Heroes’s Square, but very few know the charm of the underground city. The metro lines in Budapest are marked with four colors, yellow, red, blue and green. The history of the “yellow subway” goes back to the oldest times, since this is the second oldest underground line after that of London. But it is the first two respects. It is the first electric subway line, and the first one that was awarded the World Heritage title. It is also called “millennial subway”, because it was built in 1896, on the millennial anniversary of the Hungarians’ ancestors coming to and settling in the Carpathian Basin. Franz Joseph, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy personally tested the line. Some years ago the renowned British film critic and film historian David Robinson came to Budapest to watch some movies, and he invited me to keep with him on the yellow subway. The yellow wagons shook incredibly, but exactly that’s why we felt much more like traveling through space and time.

Not just the yellow subway, but the trams running on Budapest’s surface are also yellow. They meander between the old houses, there is almost no distance between two stops, and they follow each other by short intervals. This makes easier the life of the locals, and it also shows the small size of the old town. The yellow trams form a kind of yellow landscape on the boulevards, the banks of the Danube, and in the junctions connecting the old city to the suburbs. To me, they are much more lifelike symbols of the city life than the Chain Bridge or the Fisherman’s Bastion. The latter live in static, two-dimensional form in my memory, while these are dynamic and three-dimensional.


“This is a yellow city. Yellow is the tram convoy with rusty spots, which writhes with metallic noise between the yellow façades, blue-gray roofs, high-rise palaces with deep doorways and high windows, dang-dang, ding-ding, it is heard in both stops, as it passes from the one to the other. In this city, every sound is also yellow, a golden yellow sun casts ocher yellow shadows, the dim yellow street attracts yellowish moths. The park under the spring sky is full of yellow flowers, autumn leaves, dead leaves, yellow-green moss. Even the air tastes yellow, as it is penetrated by the sour smell of rusty river water and decomposing plants. A girl with long wheat-colored hair walks with her golden-brown beagle on the uneven, glittering dark cobblestones, the proud shining of both filling the whole unpopulated little street…”

This is the beginning of my novel 纸鱼缸 Zhī yúgāng (Aquarium), which I wrote in the yellow color of Budapest, from inside to outside, from near to far, from me to him, from the moment to the history. I emigrated here twenty-six years ago, and the number of years that had passed before it and after it is the same. The first half of my life I lived in the red-walled capital, the second half belongs to this golden city. To me, even the blue Danube is golden in color. If you come to this city, go to the golden-glittering Opera House for a performance, to the yellow-walled Széchényi Bath, where you can bathe in hot springs for a half day, or just sit down somehwere in the golden shade, drink a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, and let the golden time slowly infiltrate and settle in your memory.

Photo by ḆΞ₪¡

George Soros in Luppa Island

Our partner blog, the Dunai Szigetek / Donauinseln is eight years old today. We celebrate the birthday with a post of the blog’s author, Dániel Szávoszt-Vass, specifically written for Poemas del río Wang.

It is an eternal question, how good is it for a community existing in blissful ignorance, when the wider world finds out about its existence, and hordes of tourists are attracted for a visit? For such isolated communities, one does not need to go as far as Papua New Guinea. You can find similar ones even in Hungary. What is more, one lies just seven kilometers from Budapest.

In Luppa Island near Budakalász, parceled between the two world wars, a unique architectural environment and micro-society emerged. In 1932, just a year after the inauguration of the experimental housing estate in Pasarét in the north of Budapest, the other Bauhaus reserve of Hungary was established here, on a one-street island in the Danube. Military officers, manufacturers, lawyers, architects, artists bought land here and spent their summer holidays in their cottages standing on high “legs”. The lawyer Tivadar Soros (originally Schwartz), father of George Soros, also bought here a cottage in the name of his wife.

Until it was parcelled, Lupa or Luppa Island was just a boulder with some lonely trees and a shepherd’s hut. Perhaps this is why it was called Mészáros (Butcher) Island. Administratively it belongs to Budakalász, but it is almost completely isolated from it by the Danube. It can be approached only across the water. It is completely covered during larger floods, so it is no accident that the airy ground floors of the cottages are primarily used for storage. During flooding, probably the inhabitants of Luppa Island are the most assiduous visitors of water level reporting websites.


In summer, Luppa Island is full of life. The surrounding Danube roils with motorboats, tugboats and oher hand-driven watercraft. On the shore, clouds of cyclists are wafted by the wind to the north, Szentendre and the Danube bend. Meanwhile, Luppa Island, nestling in the shadow of mighty plane trees, is filled with the noise of tinkering. The owners repair the damage from the spring flood, clear off driftwood, in order to prepare everything to receive family members and their guests during the summer. Not many unknown people visit the island. A few canoes stop here for a beer or for lunch, but they usually do not stay there for a night. They also feel that this is still a closed community.


A study by Bálint Ablonczy reports about the beginnings of the settlement in the island:

“On the 6-hectare island, 160 plots were parceled, each between 2700 and 8000 square meters. At the beginning, not all plots were sold, and the new owners built houses only on a few of them. (Some owners bought more than one neighboring plots.) The average plot size varied between 3000 and 4000 square meters, for which the buyers paid between 1200 and 1800 pengő. If they wanted so, they could also pay in installments. [...]

By 1941, 33 houses were built in the island. Their number rose only by two by 1947, but five of them were in ruins – not so much because of the destruction of the war, but due to the overwhelmingly devastating ice flood at the turn of 1944 and 1945. The first cottages already stood in 1934, and at the end of that year, the Budakalász-Lupasziget Baths Association was established in Fészek Club.”

The 33 cottages built before 1941 also included the holiday house of the Soros family, designed by Endre and György Farkas. The Budapest lawyer Tivadar Soros was born in Nyírbakta, to a family of ten children, and later died in New York. He was a famous Esperanto enthusiast. He had learned the language during WWI in Russian captivity. He also wrote in this language his memoirs, which contain many references to the summers spent in Luppa Island. Just like many other cottage owners, he bought the plot in the name of his wife. The Bauhaus-style Soros Cottage was completed in 1935. His designer, György Farkas had been acquainted with Tivadar Soros in Berlin, and later he married Klára, the sister of Soros’ wife Erzsébet. The two tennis courts in the island were established on the proposal of Tivadar Soros. The cottage was owned by the family until 1944. Then Soros donated it to a certain Hászka, in whose villa in Buda he was hiding during the Nazi occupation and the siege of Budapest, together with the famous architect Lajos Kozma, who was also a cottage owner in Luppa Island.


George Soros, born in 1930, also often spent the summer vacation in Luppa Island. It was not only a holiday, but also “work”. He established a newspaper, of which he was the author, editor, reporter and distributor. The periodical was called the Luppa News. And in times of flood, he sat in a kayak, and slalomed between the recently planted plane line, as evidenced by the following images.

“– Gyuri! – I tell him strictly. – What does this mean? What do you want here with this big money?
A light flashes in the two angelic whimsical eyes.
– I brought it to the Finns. They are fighting a freedom fight now. Daddy said.
I put Gyuri under gritty cross-questions. He patiently replies to the questioning. The money belongs to him. No, he did not get it from his dad. Neither from his mom. It is his. He earned it. How? In the summer. Because in the summer he is a newspaper editor, publisher and paperboy in one. They spend the holidays on Luppa Island. And then he composes a newspaper, the «Luppa News». He is the only journalist, editor, reporter and paperboy of the news. As if he is a chamber member? No, no. In any case, the newspaper was mainly bought by the adults, since children do not have money. He, however, can earn money in this way. Until now he kept the two banknotes, put aside for Christmas, in a plaster money box.
One can even see the plaster dust on the crumpled banknotes. He broke the money box, and brought the money. To the Finns.
Gyuri Soros, a fourth elementist, who had five B marks in his recent certificate, this apple-faced smiling little guest, the all-in-one editor-in-chief of Luppa News, the golden-hearted little Hungarian calms down, when we take over his gift. Then he closes his pen holder, he says good bye, reaches up to the door handle, and goes home.”

„Soros Gyurka adakozik” (Gyuri Soros donates). 8 Órai Újság, 23 December 1939. Quoted by Béla Nové

Gyuri’s mother was also not idle. She opened a confectionery on the ground floor of their cottage, since she had studied pastry at the renowned Gerbeaud. She obviously did not base her business on local demand, since 33 families on holiday could have not keep it alive. The world of the rowers, buzzling all over the summer, presented a greater demand. The confectionery was an interesting island of social equality, where the high bourgeois served the rowers belonging to the most various social classes. The rest of the cottage owners were not so sensitive to equality, and they asked the Soros family to pay more into the common cash because of their industry.

WWII and the icy flood of 1945, and then the nationalization of the buildings caused serious damage both to the buildings and the micro-society coming together in the summers in the island. Despite the nationalization (and then restoration) of the cottages, the extinct high bourgeoisie and the M0 bridge monster pulled on its neck, Luppa Island is still a delightful and special relic of the Danube.


Literature:

• Soros Tivadar: Masquerado. Dancing around death in Nazi Hungary. Canongate, Edinburgh, 2000
• Ablonczy Balázs: Rejtelmes sziget. A Luppa-szigeti nyaralótelep első másfél évtizede, 1934–1950
• http://www.6b.hu/Luppa-sziget
• „A Soros” - mint személy és intézmény
• https://dunaiszigetek.blogspot.hu/2012/09/egy-idos-ur-dunan-iden-80-eves-luppa.html
• http://kollarbence.blogspot.hu/2010/11/mome-511-lupasziget.html
• http://docplayer.hu/4661916-Kulturalis-oroksegek-megorzesenek-tamogatasa-palyazat-project-luppa-sziget-epiteszeti-es-kulturalis-oroksegenek-feltarasa.html
• http://www.mediaklikk.hu/radio-lejatszo-kossuth/?date=2017-06-14_11:07:00&ch=mr1

Un testigo

«Estamos en 1920. Salamon Tannenbaum toma asiento en la Posada del Emperador de Austria, cuyo nombre cambió hace dos años pero a la que ningún cliente, tampoco Salamon Tannenbaum, llama Posada de los Tres Ciervos, según mandan las ordenanzas municipales. Es más, cuando Salamon lanza su gorra desde un extremo a otro de la habitación y siempre acierta a colgarla en el perchero, exclama: ¡Moni ha llegado a El Emperador de Austria! Y el coro de borrachines allí presentes responde así: ¡Que el buen Dios le otorgue larga vida!»

Miljenko Jergović: Ruta Tannenbaum

En Sarajevo, que —salvo unos años terribles— ha sido respetado por la historia y donde los estratos del tiempo se han acumulado como la hojarasca quieta de un bosque, desde los pequeños cementerios turcos y las cornisas Art Nouveau hasta los edificios cubistas, se encuentra junto al bazar Baščaršija, en la calle Brodac, donde el fundador de la ciudad, Beg Isa Ishaković en 1460 fundó su primer monasterio de derviches, una pequeña planta baja con tres puertas. No se sabe cuánto lleva cerrada. Tal vez sea una de las que Ozren Kebo describe en su Sarajevo za početnike (Sarajevo para principiantes), que trata del asedio de 1992-1996:

«El primer abril en guerra estuvo marcado por un gran éxodo. Los más avisados escaparon atemorizados. Los menos prudentes no supieron reconocer el miedo. La ciudad estaba paralizándose. En Baščaršija dos tiendas aún vendían el burek, comida tradicional, una čevapčiči, y tan solo quedaban dos pastelerías. Cada mañana aparecía una más con un candado en la puerta. Solo habían pasado dos semanas desde que se oyeron los primeros disparos y nadie imaginaba qué clase de hambruna se nos venía encima.»


Esta tienda, sin embargo, no tiene candado. Su persiana solo está medio bajada, quizá no hubo tiempo para más al salir corriendo. Por ello la inscripción oxidada de la cerradura es visible aún con claridad.

«Patent Polivka & Paschka, Budapest»

Ya escribimos sobre la la imperial y real fábrica de persianas Paschka, de la isla de Csepel, al sur de Budapest, cuyos productos todavía se encuentran delimitando la frontera de la antigua Monarquía. Después de cien años de destrucción, se ven en Lemberg y Košice, Bačka y Böhmerwald. Y, como podemos comprobar, también en Bosnia, puesta bajo protección austro-húngara en el Congreso de Berlín de 1878. Pasaron guerras y asedios, ustashas y chetniks vinieron y marcharon pero la marca del cerrajero del emperador de Austria, junto a los habitantes de la ciudad, permanece.

The witness

“It is the year 1920. Salamon Tannenbaum is sitting in the inn of the Austrian Emperor, which was given a different name two years ago, but, just like Salamon Tannenbaum, no guest calls it the Three Deers Inn, as prescribed by the city. Furthermore, when Salamon throws his hat from one end of the room to the other, and always hits the hat-rack, he shouts: Moni has come to the Austrian emperor! And the sots present reply like this: may Good God give Him long life!”

Miljenko Jergović: Ruta Tannenbaum

In Sarajevo, which, with the exception of a few terrible years, has been avoided by history, and where the layers of time pile up on each other, from the small Turkish cemeteries through the Art Nouveau ledges to the Cubist buildings, like unstirred litter in the forest, there stands next to the Baščaršija bazaar, in Brodac Street, where the founder of the city, Beg Isa Ishaković in 1460 established his first dervish monastery, a small three-door stop. It is not known how long it has been closed. Perhaps it is one of those of which Ozren Kebo writes in his Sarajevo za početnike (Sarajevo for beginners), dealing with the 1992-1996 siege:

“The first month of April in war was marked by a great exodus. The wise fled in panic. The less wise did not know how to recognise the panic. The city was shutting down. At Baščaršija, two shops were still selling burek, one traditional food, one čevapčiči, with just two cake shops. Every morning a padlock appeared on a different one. It had been just two weeks since the first shots were fired and no one knew what kind of hunger was coming our way.”


This shop, however, has no padlock. Its shutter has been pulled down only halfway, maybe there was no time to do more before the escape. So the rusty inscription of the shutter label is still clearly visible.

“Patent Polivka & Paschka, Budapest”

We have already written about the imperial and royal shutter manufacturer Paschka from Csepel Island in southern Budapest, that its products still designate the boundaries of the former Monarchy. After a hundred years of destruction, they still can be seen in Lemberg and Košice, Bačka and the Böhmerwald. And, as we see, also in Bosnia, placed under Austro-Hungarian protection by the Berlin Congress of 1878. Wars and sieges subside, ustashas and chetniks come and go, but the shutter label to the Austrian emperor, just like the inhabitants of the city, perseveres.

Bears are very good Turks

Mr. Zoltán Medve – in literal translation, Sultan Bear –, the Governor of Krassó-Szörény County was not the first bear to visit the island of Ada Kale. Even if we discount the medieval Hungarian and Vlach bear-leaders, whose animals appeared in the island’s market place not of their own will, we must not be silent about the renowned Maczkó Úr – Mr. Bear – who preceded his colleague only by a nose. That he preceded him is beyond doubt, for Mr. Medve paid his official visit to the island on 12 May 1913, but at that time the book about Mr. Bear’s visit to Ada Kale, from the pen of Zsigmond Sebők, was already for sale with great success throughout the whole of Hungary.

The book Dörmögő Dömötör utazása hegyen, völgyön és a nagy ládával (“Travels of Grunty Demeter – Mr. Bruin – through mountains and valleys with the great chest”), published in 1913, was the last volume in the series about the travels of Mr. Bruin from Maramureș – “Huszt Forest, Third Valley, Second Stream, Fourth Rock, Sixth Cave, not far from the rest place of the wolves, any of whom will willingly show you the way” – which had been published since 1883. It guided its large audience, the children of Hungary, to Budapest, the Tatras, and the Iron Gates on the Lower Danube. To many of them, this was the only source of knowledge about the most beautiful parts of pre-war Hungary.


Mr. Bruin and his two small cubs, Zebike and Pimpi visited Ada Kale on the way to the Iron Gates. To their credit, they did not get the annexation of the island ahead of their senior relative, but were satisfied with annexing some caviar, coffee and tobacco to their native Maramureș. A great stroke of luck, since seven years later an island under Czechoslovakian, and later Soviet, sovereignty would have caused much international complication on the Lower Danube between Serbia and Romania.

The only complication during his visit remained inner-Maramureșan, inasmuch as Uncle János Hörpentő (“John the Sipper”), the cousin and evil spirit of Mr. Bruin also took part in the journey uninvited, now traveling in the chest of Mr. Bruin, and now acting as an inhabitant of Ada Kale, dressed as a local Turk, Mustafa Herpendji, who keeps drinking and eating whatever and whenever possible ahead of the honourable bear and his cubs.

In the course of this short visit, the little readers only get to know the most important topoi about Ada Kale. That you can get there from Orsova on a boat. That Lajos Kossuth, MP of the lost war of independence of 1848-49, set off from here to exile in Turkey. That here you can already encounter the Orient, the bazaar, women wearing hijab, coffee and real Turkish delight. Mr. Bruin was not exactly an Ignác Kúnos. But this much was enough for a little schoolboy to whet his curiosity, and once he grows up, he will also set out to see this wonderful East, as did Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Ármin Vámbéry, Aurél Stein, and many others.


“Orsova is a pretty town with some five thousand people. If you stop at the bank of the Danube, flanked by one- and two-story houses, you can see three countries. On the other bank is Serbia, to the left Romania, and on the Danube a small island shines in green, it is Ada Kale. This belongs to Turkey. […]

When the company was fed, Mr. Bruin asked:

– And now, what shall we do until evening?

– Come, my effendi, to Ada Kale, – said Mustafa, the Herpendji. – There you will get fine Turkish tobacco, fine Turkish coffee.

– Turkish tobacco? Turkish coffee? – happily asked Mr. Bruin. – That’s fine, my friend Mustafa Herpenji, I love Turkish tobacco, Turkish coffee, Turkish pipes, Turkish divans, Turkish comfort… Hehehe, bears are very good Turks. So, let’s go to Ada Kale.

The boat harbor was close, and an old Turk soon carried them over to Ada Kale. The Turk was a silent man – to the good luck of Mustafa-János Herpenji-Herpentő, because I don’t know how he would have replied to the questions of the Turks. The Turkish ferryman broke the silence only once. When the boat arrived under Orsova, they saw a creek flowing into the Danube. This was the Cserna. Then, a mountain observing himself in the river. This was the Cserna. And a mountain, which staring at itself in the Danube. This is called Alion Mountain. The old Turk pointed to the bottom of the mountain, where the Cserna runs into the Danube, and he said, in good Hungarian, although with a Turkish accent:

– Lajos Kossuth kissed the soil of Hungary there, when he had to say goodbye to it forever.”



“Ada Kale, or in Hungarian New Orsova, is a two-kilometer-long island. Most of it is occupied by the fortress, and inside the fortress, its streets, houses, and shops. It is inhabited by Turks, only the army is Hungarian, because, although the island belongs to Turkey, since Serbia gained its independence, it has nevertheless fallen so far away from the motherland, as a button that had been cut off the coat. So, Hungary undertook its defense.

This is an interesting little place. As Mr. Bruin entered the fortress gate, his mouth gaped in amazement. Here he found a world which was completely different from anything he had ever seen during his journeys. Here, the men wore not a hat, but a turban or a fez, and the women a long mantle that covered all their face, except for two holes for the two eyes. It looked like a masquerade. The merchants sold their goods not in glass-door shops, but in an open bazaar. There they were squatting, under tent-like carpets, on soft Oriental carpets. There they were selling all kinds of sweets, trinkets, beautiful Oriental rugs. It was a real Turkish world.

Mr. Bruin immediately stopped in front of a candy store, like a big bumble-bee on the sugar, and the two cubs like two little flies on the peach jam. They just foamed, sucked, swallowed, chewed, sipped the sugar, dates, dessert, Turkish honey, that even the serious Turk smiled.

– Well, never did I hear such noisy chewing, even when the Budapest students came to Ada Kale, and visited the candy bazaar!

But when it came to the payment, Mr. Bruin and the Turk did not understand each other.

– Where is that Mustafa Herpendji? – said Mr. Bruin. – He would speak in Turkish with this Turk. Look, he’s nowhere just now, when he would be most needed!

But Herpendji–Hörpentő was clever enough not to be there, where he would have had to speak in Turkish. Finally Mr. Bruin agreed with the merchant, and then he sat down at the breezy porch of the Turkish café.

– Bring me Turkish tobacco, Turkish coffee, Turkish pipe! – he shouted.”


“Soon the Turkish coffee and Turkish tobacco was on his table. Sitting in the Turkish way on a carpet, he smoked the latter from a pipe called nargile. The fragrant tobacco floated around his head, made him sleepy, and soon he fell asleep, forgetting even the black coffee. The cubs also bumped with him. The Turks of the island gathered in the street, and asked each other:

– What is this? They are shooting with mortars in the fortress?

Oh, no, they were not. It was just the three bears who were snoring in the café. But who is this figure silently approaching the sleeping ones, and sipping their coffees one after the other? Yes, it is Herpendji–Hörpentő. Then, just as he came, he left, in silence, unnoticed.”


Soon Mr. Bruin woke up.

– Oh, I sneaked a little. Well, the coffee will come the more in hand… But where did the coffee disappear to, from my cup?

– And from mine? – was upset Zebike.

– And from mine? – whimpered Pimpi.

Mr. Bruin cried out angrily:

– Where? Where? Why do we ask it? It went down the throat of my alter ego! He has a devil, that he is able to get to wherever I am. Hey, you Turk! – he shouted –, coffee!

The waiter brought the steaming cups.

– You, Turk! – shouted Mr. Bruin. – Pour the coffee right in my mouth! Dont put it down, because my alter ego will immediately sip it – let him be suffocated on his name day!

The waiter poured the coffee into the respectable traveler. Mr. Bruin coughed, cleared his throat, because the hot coffee burned it.

– No matter if it burns me, at least I drink it on my money, and not my alter ego – he comforted himself. Then he exclaimed: But it’s already getting dark! Cubs, let’s say good-bye to Ada Kale, and go back to Orsova. Where’s that Herpendji? Let him carry the luggage to the boat. Waiter, my dear friend, didn’t you see Mustafa Herpendji somewhere?


The coffee owner knew Hungarian. He wondered:

– Who is that Mustafa Herpendji?

– Don’t you know him? He is a Turkish porter from here.

– From here? No Turk of this name has ever lived in Ada Kale.

– It’s impossible, my friend. For he had such a great turban, that it even covered his nose… it never let me see his face. And he spoke so well in Turkish! He said: djin, djin, choje to, djin, djin, potjesem.

The coffee owner smiled:

– But this is in Slovak, not in Turkish! – he said

Mr. Bruin shuddered.

– Oh my, how this wasp stung me!… Or rather this idea, more stingy than a wasp. I start to believe, that this Mustafa Herpendji was my alter ego. That Mustafa drank my beer, he ate my caviar, he sipped my coffee. That’s why he pulled the turban in his face, so we could not see his face.

– Hehe, what a fooldji he has made of you! – laughed Zebike.

– You cub, if you don’t shut up, you’ll get a slapdji! – grunted Mr. Bruin.”



After Mr. Bruin’s visit, the island began to fade from the Hungarian children’s horizon. Seven years later it lay behind new borders, fifty-nine years later it was submerged under the new water level. Today even the oldest bears of Maramureș can not easily say where Mr. Bruin had sipped his Turkish coffee. But since then, his adventures have not faded.

“When on Rákóczi street we passed before Manó Vidor’s bookshop, my father asked me whether I want a new book. He knew that a book was the most precious gift to me (and still it is). We entered the bookshop, and my father asked me which book to buy. I looked around excitedly on the shelves of the novels for the youth, and I discovered a rather thick Mr. Bruin book, perhaps the most exquisite fable book of Zsigmond Sebők: The travels of Mr. Bruin to the Iron Gates. That’s what I asked for. My father bought it, and right there, in the shop he wrote in it these unforgettable lines: “To my son Géza, on the day of the proclamation of the Hungarian Republic, and of the rebirth of Hungarian freedom, in Nagyvárad, on 31 October 1918, from your father.” I had this book until the end of the Second World War. I kept it as one of the great historical documents of my life. But it also belonged amaong my first important readings. In fact, here I read about the evil alter ego of the benevolent Mr. Bruin, Uncle Hörpentő. Only decades later did I realize that this masterpiece for children is actually a parody of Dostoyevsky’s novel Likeness. And, to tell the truth, since then I cannot take seriously this masterpiece of Dostoyevsky. It always reminds me of Uncle Hörpentő, the wicked bear, for whose jokes always Mr. Bruin must pay. And in the course of my life, if any inconvenience fell on me because of others’ inhumanity or meanness, I always calmly realized that now I am Mr. Bruin, and the malevolent, the wicked souls, the shady characters, the parasites all are in some way Uncle Hörpentő.”

Géza Hegedüs remembers like this Mr. Bruin’s Ada Kale adventures in his memoirs Preludes to an autobiography. From this inspiration sprung the historical novels which meant to my generation what the wanderings of Zsigmond Sebők’s bear had meant to him. The island of Ada Kale, like Hrabal’s house on the Dam of Eternity, submerged deep and flew up high, and now forever

floats above us, like the clouds of the ideal buildings on a Baroque painting.

“– Mr. Bruin for President! – shouted the bears.”