The enemy

Avoid alcoholic drinks!

The first glass Sober Mike at the age of 20 and 32 The blessings of a sober life

The last glass Drunkard Steve at the age of 20 and 32 The consequences of drinking

It is for several years now that this picture has been on the wall of the old Swabian house along the Danube * to where traditionally around this time, the end of June the Budapest-Nagymaros birthday cycling tour starts, which is such a prominent occasion that one comes home for it even from the shores of a much larger water. As we are languishing there on the porch, our eyes meet above the glass now the honest look of Sober Mike, now the watery gaze of Drunkard Steve, one bringeth fear, the other joy to me, and it is not impossible that as a consequence of the pedagogy of persuasion and deterrence one or two beer less is grabbed than could be justly taken after seventy kilometers of cycling.


This was also the purpose of the committee of the Ministry of Education which in some early year of the 20th century commissioned the design and publication of this artwork. It was surely not later than 1920, because the publishing Polatsek’s Bookstore still worked in Temesvár instead of Timişoara. But by searching for the title of the poster we find that already since 1910 it regularly featured on the lists of school supplies. In 1910 it was for example included among the school supplies requested from the Ministry by the Simontornya elementary school. In 1912 it was the only wall panel in the possession the elementary school of the Eastern Hungarian Tuzsér, and knowing well the region we find this a reasonable choice. And it was also listed together with two other posters – on the breeding of silkworms and on the operation of the steam engine – in the minutes of nationalization of the Calvinist elementary school of Dad during the short-lived first Communist proletarian dictatorship in March-July 1919. We hope it had a positive influence on the commissars. I wish there were such a panel at that time also in the Schalkház Hotel of Kassa, transformed into the House of the Soviet where, according to the daughter of the owner – Sára Schalkház/Salkaházi, shot into the Danube in 1944 for saving Jews –, People’s Commissar Jenő Landler and his staff kept drinking day and night in the middle of the general prohibition until the Czech army kicked them out from Upper Hungary, modern Slovakia.


But we also have an earlier date for this wall panel. Its scenes are included as separate illustrations in the popular anti-alcohol booklet by the pioneer of Hungarian temperance movement, Dr. Fülöp Stein: Az alkohol (Budapest 1906). Each was provided with a detailed description which cannot be very different from how they were presented by the teacher in the elementary schools.

“This is the sad picture of the drunkard’s household. The yard and the house are destroyed, rain is falling through the roof, the barn is dilapidated. The children are dirty and ragged, and they are wasted by much starvation. Their mother is perching ill on the doorstep, and the father looks at their misery with a distraught look.”

“How different is this picture, all joy, courage, good humor, the signs of external and internal order. The father watches with delight the well-being of his family. Is there anyone who would not recognize which of the two fathers is a drunkard and which a sober one? Anyone seeing and examining these two pictures will need no further explanation on which lifestyle to adhere.”

“Few people guess when they give the first glass to their children, so they would have a better mood, how fatal it can become for the further life of the child, and that the last glass of the frozen drunkard is the direct consequence of that first glass”

However, the panel is most likely not earlier than 1898. It was then that the Armand Colin & C[ompagn]ie of Paris published for the schools a wall poster which surely served as a model for the Hungarian version. We know that the anti-alcohol illustrative materials brought from the Paris world exhibition of 1901 formed the founding stock of the showroom of the Social Museum under the Rumbach street 5 seat of the Grand Templar Masonic Temperance Lodge, and although there was nothing left of the collection after the bomb hit in 1944, the Colin poster was almost surely among them.

“Here’s the enemy: the alcohol!”

However, this poster, composed by Doctor Galtier-Boissière, does not exactly illustrate the same as the Hungarian one. Although it also focuses on the difference of pre-and post-alcoholism physiognomy, nevertheless the two side panels make distinction between natural or good alcohols (beer, wine, cider and perry) and artificial or bad alcohols distilled of sugar beets, potatoes or, horribile dictu, wheat. The previous ones only make a guinea pig pleasantly dizzy and sweetly fall asleep, while the latter cause it convulsions and to snuff it. This scientifically indefensible distinction lived on in the French education until the 1950s, obviously due to the influence of the wine lobby.


A unique feature of the Colin tableau is the comparison of the look of the healthy and alcoholic internal organs, stomach, liver, heart, kidneys, brain, which must have been a great deterrent: a French gentleman is always solicitous about the public appearance of his kidneys. These were not taken over to the Hungarian poster, but they do figure in the form of a photo series in Stein’s book.

“Omnibus to Charenton! [the mental hospital]
By change through alcohol or directly through absinthe.”

The Hungarian poster is dominated instead by scenes of life. This idea could also take its origin from the back side of Colin’s tableau, which represented in four stations how the drunkard loses his will, his dignity, his judgment and, finally, his common sense.


However, their direct source must have been something else. Among the illustrations of Stein’s booklet we also find a complete life story of an alcoholic from the first glass to the last convulsion, and they are quite similar to the career summarized in two pictures on the Hungarian poster. Some research will reveal that these illustrations come from the elementary school book Histoire d’une Bouteille, “History of a bottle” by J. Baudrillard. In fact, the French temperance societies achieved in 1895 that a mandatory course was introduced in the elementary schools on the dangers of alcohol – of bad alcohol! –, equal in rank to geography or mathematics.


Moreover, the face of the protagonist, Jean-Louis at the age of 20 is confusingly similar to Sober Mike, while as a 40-year old alcoholic to Drunkard Steve.


This book shows in twelve pictures the path of the drunkard from family happiness through the fall and decay to the prison and death. The illustrations were originally black and white, and the kids had to color them, thereby carefully committing to memory each deterrent detail. For the adults they were also sold in the form of color postcards.

A happy family

The first step

Bad habits

On Pay Day

The alcoholic rage

The drunkard makes scandal

The way to craziness

The crime

On the tribunal

And despite the theatrical compositions, even though we know well that it is propaganda, this series of images does not remain ineffective on us either, for we know that what they represent was reality for thousands of families.

The woman reduced to misery

Madness

Death of the drunkard (delirium tremens)

Not for school but for life we learn.

Wine card

Abroad, if only I can, I inspect the assortment of wines. Not primarily in the wine shops, but rather in the supermarkets which better show how the people passes time (Petőfi).


In Azerbaijan, as expected, mainly the Georgian wines dominate the shelves: Khvanchkara, Kindzmarauli, Pirosmani, the classical varieties and reliable quality known from the times of the empire, although I find their taste not particularly complex.


Among the wines of Azerbaijan the Yeddi Gözəl, that is the Seven Beauties is considered the best, although on the basis of its label you would not vote much confidence to it, neither to the one called Qız Qalası, that is Maiden’s Tower after one of Baku’s main architectural monuments, whose label is just hanging on the right  in the picture below.


The wines of the winery of Ganja (in Azeri Gənjə, birth town of the 12th-century poet Nizami, author of the Seven Beauties) are made much more reassuring by the classical labels and varieties as well as by the fact that  they do not include any semi-sweet sort which always gives food for suspicion in the case of the wines of the former empire


A special group among the Azerbaijani wines are the ones named after the legendary Turkic heroes: Koroğlu, hero of the first Turkic epic poem, Attila, king of the Huns and Sheikh Ismail, unifier and Shah of Iran and founder of the Safavid dynasty, who was also one of the most significant early Azerbaijani poets. Since these wines are to be found on the lowest shelf, there are concerns that the heroes do not refer to the result of their consumption but to the courage necessary to it.


However, as my host is Muslim, therefore I have not yet tasted any local wine. I will take to Wang Wei an elegant Shiraz from Ganja. Since the wineyards praised by Omar Khayyam have been wiped out in the Iranian Shiraz, this is the nearest region where a wine is produced under that name.

A bor

József Rippl-Rónai: My father and Uncle Piacsek drinking red wine, 1907

“Wouldn’t you like to summarize in a post – as i bravi do it – this thread of ideas and publish all this macedonia on río Wang where I’d translate it also into Hungarian as a mirror to my compatriots?”

Studiolum

I have the luck to be in that privileged moment of learning a foreign language in which, crawling like a baby, for the very first time you explore a totally unknown environment. The language is Hungarian, which explains – if it wasn’t for tokaji, paprika, goulash and hussar – the absolute degree of my ignorance. In view of the basis of departure, that is, the said four (4) words, in moments like this even the slightest step forward, such as a single new word learned, may represent, at least in relative terms, a giant leap, which results in a feeling of unlimited confidence in progress. The privileged status you enjoy in these moments is complemented by a certain recklessness and an audacious inclination to associate to each other, in a more or less justified manner, the elements you find as long as you proceed along the path you have taken, possibly relying on memories, which are not necessarily exact.

I’ve just started crawling thanks to Studiolum’s encouragement (“learn Hungarian in five minutes” – and it’s known that the conversion of the Hungarian time unit into the Italian one requires at least a yotta factor) starting from a basic grammar for foreigners: Hungarian: An Essential Grammar by Carol Rounds. The privileged status which I referred to let me perceive from the very beginning a general nature, a background atmosphere which I never happened to taste in other cases and which now I’ll be trying to offer in the most concrete way possible. In the Hungarian grammar there is no example whatsoever even slightly looking like the topos of examples of each and every traditional grammar, which in English sounds like: The pen is on the table. You can rather find examples in these terms:

Mit iszol a vacsorához? (What will you drink with dinner?)

Nem tudom kinyitni az üveget. (I can’t open the bottle.)

Ahelyett, hogy cukrot tenne a teába, egy kis rumot tett bele. (Instead of putting sugar in the tea, she put some rum in.)

– Nem akarod megkóstolni ezt a vörösbort? (Don’t you want to have a taste of this red wine?

– Dehogynem. (Of course, I do.)

Neked nem szabad tejet innod. (You are not allowed to drink milk.)

Nagyon berúgott, hiszen egymaga megivott egy egész üveg bort. (He got very drunk, for he drank a whole bottle of wine by himself.)

Elittuk az egész havi fizetését. (We drank up his whole month’s salary.)

And don’t think for a second that the selection of examples offered here was made on purpose to prove a preconceived idea. How could I ever develop a prejudice starting from four (4) words and no (exactly 0) verb? At any rate, in order to avert any thoughts of this kind, should the uncommonness of the last example be insufficient, I’d invite you to consider the textbook Halló, itt Magyarország!, a book in which – I’m not saying in a random chapter and I’m not saying either in the first one, but since the introductory legend – from the very beginning it is provided an explanation of the only thing that makes sense to put on a Hungarian table: a bor.


In short: I felt an immediate and irrepressible attraction to it and, right after that, an unavoidable question arose: how much do they drink in Hungary? Do they drink like a Serb, as I think Slovenes use to say, i.e., the neighbors and not a small part of the people living in the place where I was born and grew up, Trieste, where people also drink quite a lot; do they drink like a Russian, as I think Serbs use to say, do they drink up to approaching the sublime, like Yerofeyev or, to avoid any ethnic comparison, do they rather drink like a piria (funnel), as people use to say in Triestine dialect or, again in this dialect, but in a joking version having a kind of slavic suffix, like a piriavez (drunkard)?

Nothing like that:

iszik, mint a kefekötő.

They drink “like a brushmaker”, let Studiolum know, adding a poetry source dated 1844, that of Sándor Petőfi in The sun’s married life and, just after that, a request: “don’t ask me why”.

And that’s how, observing the prohibition to ask it to him, I happened to be sent by the Hungarian brushmaker directly to Germany, from which the comparison originated and in the language of which I was pleased to live. It’s there that an uncontrolled drinking (and smoking) ability was attributed to him: trinken wie ein Bürstenbinder or saufen wie ein Bürstenbinder (in addition to rauchen wie ein B.) are in fact expressions perfectly corresponding to the Hungarian one pointed out by the host who is generously offering me this place. But the brushmaker seems to be completely innocent and he seems to have been involved through a joking association with the verb bürsten.


If what is provided here is true, in fact, the German idiom would come from the student environment, an environment of heavy drinking, at the times in which students used to share the money of their whole community in a bag (bursa, in Latin). In particular, it turns out that the German terms Burse and Bursch, with which in the past students, their communitarian life and their hostel were designated, would come from bursa and that also bürsten alludes to the same, meaning polishing the glass off – here I’m supported by the Grimm brothers –, and thus drinking. On the basis of this path, the final shift from bürsten to Bürstenbinder should be the outcome of a classical Witz of associative nature used in assonance with the name of the guiltless – and maybe even abstemious – brushmaker.


Among the unavoidable uncertainties of the case scattered here and there, I should still determine if the German idiom was imported into Hungary by a Hungarian student or teacher hanging around German universities or if it was rather exported by a German of Heidelberg early escaping from the massive influxes of tourists who would have subsequently invaded his hometown or else – why not – if it was brought by Germans coming from the Ulm area who settled down in Hungary around 1700, such as those ended up north of Budapest, in the village of Solymár/Schaumar. In their gazette they report their version in the local dialect: Śaoft, wii ə Pieschtnpində, the discoverer of which is completely unnecessary to indicate to readers who are acquainted with the wonders of the blog having me now as a guest.

But I can’t determine this because the macedonia is a mixture normally prepared with the fruits you have and today these were those I had. On my side, it was a pleasure for me to prepare it. I hope it can be appreciated by the readers of río Wang: I know they have sophisticated tastes and they are, at least on these pages, extremely spoiled.

A bor

József Rippl-Rónai: Mio padre e lo zio Piacsek bevendo vino rosso, 1907

“Non vorresti riassumere in un post – come i bravi – questa catena di idee e pubblicare tutta questa macedonia sul río Wang dove lo tradurrei anche in ungherese a mo' di specchio per i miei compatrioti?”

Studiolum

Ho la fortuna di trovarmi in quella fase privilegiata dell’apprendimento di una lingua straniera in cui, gattonando come i bambini, si esplora per la prima volta un ambiente totalmente ignoto. La lingua è l’ungherese, il che spiega – se escludiamo tokaji, paprika, gulasch e ussaro – la totalità dell’ignoranza. Data la base di partenza, vale a dire le quattro (4) parole dette, in fasi come questa, anche il più piccolo progresso, come l’apprendimento di una singola parola, può rappresentare, almeno in termini relativi, un avanzamento notevolissimo, da cui un senso di illimitata fiducia nel progresso. Una certa incoscienza e una spavalda inclinazione ad associare tra loro, più o meno giustificatamente, degli elementi trovati via via lungo il percorso intrapreso, magari affidandosi ai ricordi, non necessariamente fedeli, completano poi lo stato di privilegio di cui si gode in queste fasi.

Ho appena cominciato a gattonare grazie all’incoraggiamento di Studiolum (“impara l’ungherese in cinque minuti” – ed è noto che la conversione dell’unità di tempo ungherese in quella italiana richiede almeno un fattore yotta) partendo da una grammatica di base per stranieri: Hungarian: An Essential Grammar di Carol Rounds. Lo stato di privilegio cui ho fatto riferimento mi ha permesso di percepire fin da subito un carattere generale, un’atmosfera di fondo che non mi era mai capitato di assaporare in altri casi e che ora cercherò di restituire nel modo più concreto possibile. Nella grammatica ungherese non c’è nessun esempio che assomigli nemmeno vagamente al topos degli esempi di ogni grammatica tradizionale, che in inglese assume la forma: The pen is on the table. Vi si trovano piuttosto degli esempi di questo tenore:

Mit iszol a vacsorához? (Cosa berrai per cena?)

Nem tudom kinyitni az üveget. (Non riesco ad aprire la bottiglia.)

Ahelyett, hogy cukrot tenne a teába, egy kis rumot tett bele. (Invece di mettere zucchero nel tè, vi mise un po’ di rum.)

– Nem akarod megkóstolni ezt a vörösbort? (Non vuoi assaggiare questo vino rosso?)

– Dehogynem. (Certamente.)

Neked nem szabad tejet innod. (Non dovresti bere latte.)

Nagyon berúgott, hiszen egymaga megivott egy egész üveg bort. (Divenne molto ubriaco perché si scolò da solo un’intera bottiglia di vino.)

Elittuk az egész havi fizetését. (Ci siamo bevuti tutto il suo stipendio.)

Non si pensi neanche per un istante che quella offerta sia una selezione di esempi creata ad arte per dimostrare una tesi preconcetta: come potrei mai elaborare un preconcetto a partire da quattro (4) parole e nemmeno un verbo (proprio 0)? Per scongiurare in ogni caso qualsiasi pensiero di questo tipo, se non bastasse nemmeno la straordinarietà dell’ultimo esempio, invito a considerare il libro di testo Halló, itt Magyarország!, libro in cui, non dico in un capitolo qualunque e non dico nemmeno nel primo capitolo, ma fin dalla legenda posta a premessa, si mette subito in chiaro quale sia l’unica cosa che abbia senso mettere sul tavolo in Ungheria: a bor.


Insomma: simpatia immediata e incontenibile e, a ruota, un’inevitabile domanda: ma quanto si beve, in Ungheria? Si beve come un serbo, come mi pare ricordare dicano gli sloveni, i vicini di casa e anche non piccola parte degli abitanti del luogo che mi ha visto nascere e crescere, Trieste, dove pur si beve parecchio, si beve come un russo, come mi pare ricordare dicano in Serbia, si beve raggiungendo le vette del sublime, come Erofeev o, per evitare qualsiasi termine di paragone etnico, si beve semplicemente come una piria (imbuto, in italiano), come si usa dire in dialetto triestino o, sempre nello stesso dialetto, ma nella sua variante scherzosa dal suffisso slavizzante, come un piriavez (ubriacone)?

Niente di tutto ciò:

iszik, mint a kefekötő.

Si beve “come il fabbricante di spazzole”, mi ha fatto sapere Studiolum, aggiungendo una fonte poetica del 1844, quella di Sándor Petőfi in La vita sposata del sole e, subito dopo, una preghiera: “non chiedermi perché”.

Ed ecco che, rispettando il divieto di chiederlo a lui, mi sono trovata spedita dallo spazzolaio ungherese direttamente in Germania, da cui il paragone è partito e nella cui lingua ho avuto il piacere di abitare. È lì che si è iniziato ad attribuirgli una smodata capacità di bere (e di fumare): trinken wie ein Bürstenbinder o saufen wie ein Bürstenbinder (oltre a rauchen wie ein B.) sono infatti le espressioni perfettamente corrispondenti a quella ungherese segnalatami da chi mi sta generosamente ospitando. Solo che il fabbricante di spazzole pare sia del tutto innocente e che a lui si sia arrivati tramite un’associazione scherzosa col verbo bürsten.


Se è vero quello che si trova qui, infatti, il modo di dire tedesco deriverebbe dall’ambiente studentesco, ambiente di grandi bevute, ai tempi in cui gli studenti condividevano i soldi di tutta la comunità in una borsa (bursa, in latino). In particolare, pare poi che da bursa non siano solo derivati i termini tedeschi Burse e Bursch, con cui in passato si denominavano gli studenti, la loro vita comunitaria e anche l’ostello che li ospitava, ma anche bürsten, nel senso di spazzolare il bicchiere – qui mi sorreggono i fratelli Grimm –, quindi di bere. In base a questo percorso, il passaggio finale da bürsten a Bürstenbinder dovrebbe essere il frutto di un classico Witz di tipo associativo, per assonanza con il nome dell’incolpevole – e forse addirittura astemio – spazzolaio.


Resterebbe ancora da determinare, tra le inevitabili incertezze del caso disseminate qua e là, se in Ungheria il modo di dire tedesco sia stato importato da uno studente o da un professore ungherese che bazzicava per le università tedesche o se sia stato piuttosto esportato da un tedesco di Heidelberg in prematura fuga dalle ondate di turisti che avrebbero poi invaso la sua città o ancora, perché no, se sia stato portato dai tedeschi provenienti dalla zona di Ulm che nel 1700 si sono definitamente trasferiti in Ungheria, ad esempio quelli finiti a nord di Budapest, nel paese di Solymár/Schaumar, nella cui gazzetta riportano la loro versione in dialetto locale: Śaoft, wii ə Pieschtnpində, un link di cui, per i lettori che conoscono le meraviglie del blog che oggi mi ospita, è del tutto superfluo indicare lo scopritore.

Questo, però, non lo posso proprio determinare, perché la macedonia è un miscuglio che generalmente si prepara con la frutta che si ha e io, oggi, questa avevo. Da parte mia, è stato un piacere prepararla. Spero possa essere apprezzata dai lettori del río Wang, che so avere gusti ben più raffinati ed essere, almeno in queste pagine, viziatissimi.

Catuli ursae, or To the Two Bears

When Hungary, on the first of January of 2004, joined the European Union, I was sure that now, with the suppression of customs frontiers, within some months the majestic Italian and Spanish wines will be available at us in a wide range. Not only because these full-bodied wines with an extremely sophisticated taste are among the best wines of the world. But also because they are among the least expensive ones as well. In the supermarkets of Barcelona or Florence you can buy already for a few euros so subtle wines that outrival a great number of Hungarian wines sold for fifteen-twenty euros. Not to mention the strong, rich, fruit-flavored vino sfuso infused for one or two euros into the large damigiane in the farms of Tuscany when we arrive there at the end of the year, after the vintage of grape and oil, to buy our supplies for all the year. To import so excellent wines for so low prices is a great business for any wholesaler, I thought. And I was looking forward to the arrival of the wines of Tuscany, Trentino, Navarra, Rioja, Catalonia, or the Ribera del Duero on the shelves of Hungarian supermarkets.

But they did not come.

There came, however, the category which a Mediterranean farmer would be ashamed to give away even for free. Mean wines from Puglia and Calabria, Andalucía and La Mancha, the cheapest imaginable quality on which the exporter can realize the greatest profit. Eight euros for a bottle of five litres, one point twenty for a pint. Because the wholesaler had got it for the tenth of it in their homeland. They filled up the shelves for a period, they were offered at various hot sales. And then they disappeared, as suddenly as they came. And I understand why. Whoever cared for the price only could also find cheaper ones, the plastic bottle category. And whoever cared for the taste could unambiguously feel how vile, sour, empty they were. They did a lot to ruin the reputation of Mediterranean wines in Hungary. Whenever I praise Italian or Spanish wine to my wine gourmand brothers and brothers-in-law, I see on their faces the lowest shelves of Auchan and Tesco appearing on the screen of their minds, and I feel that every word is in vain.

And I think that perhaps this was the purpose.

Hungary is the northernmost country where vine is grown. With much care, great investments and at a high cost even quite good wine is produced. But, obviously, there is far less sunshine as down there. Vine is the child of the Mediterranean, this can be clearly seen in the autumn on the vegetable markets where you can see side by side the big, sweet, desirable and inexpensive Italian import grape and the small, hard-skinned, somewhat harsh but expensive Hungarian one. Nevertheless, we have a nationwide structure for producing and selling wine which has firmly established itself since the beginning of the 90s, and what is more, it is inextricably intertwined with the political élite. Most Hungarian politicians have vineyards, winehouses or at least favorite and supported wine producers. Wine has become a question of prestige, just like the hegemony of Hungarian wine on Hungarian market (if we are not able to sell it abroad). Today in Hungary in the supermarkets, stores and special shops you can practically buy Hungarian wine only. If good Spanish wine could freely enter this market, it would break this hegemony in no minute with its excellent proportion of price and quality.

So let it not come.

When arriving at this point in the deduction, I decided to make a counter-proof. If it is really the intertwining of wine producers, wholesalers and politicians that prevents good and inexpensive Mediterranean wines from entering the Hungarian market, then in our northern neighborhood, where there is no significant wine production and respectively no political interest, they must be offered in a wide range.

And I entered the Billa of Banská Štiavnica.

It was a singular sight. At the end of 2004, hardly a year after the entrance to the European Union, in this little Slovakian town the great part of the wine shelves were filled with good quality Mediterranean wines: from Italy and Spain, but even from Croatia and Bulgaria. And all that for a much more buyer-friendly price than the Hungarian assortment of the same quality. Obviously there was a cheap low middle category as well, but even that was not the plonk which had been carefully used to make Hungarians customers loathe Southern wines.

Since then, whenever I go to the North, I always check the ever improving wine offer in the supermarkets. The last time in the Tesco of Brno, where eight large counters were full of the best assortment, from the reliable wines of the Mediterranean to the well known Southern African and Australian brands, and all that for a more than affordable price – just like in their respective homelands. It was enthralling. It demonstrated more tangibly than any political slogan the true meaning of freedom, open borders and Europe. Of course local Moravian wines also received, with full acknowledgment of their merits, three shelves in a counter, exactly as much as their deserved. Perhaps I have even seen a Hungarian bottle.

The above Bulgarian wine with the two Balkan bears was bought on my first exploration in Banská Štiavnica. We purchased ten different sorts for testing, known and unknown ones alike, from different countries and of different categories. Almost all of them stood the test, they were just what they had to be. This was the only extra bottle, one I have only bought for the label. I have not even expected much of it, and I have kept it reserved for an occasion when the wit makes pardonable the eventually low quality.

And the occasion has come. I have recently taken the two bears for the inaugural party of a newly purchased flat. And as I stopped in front of the row house built in the fifties in the style of the so-called “Stalin Baroque,” and I looked up on the facade in search of the house number, I immediately noticed that I brought them to the most appropriate place.


And to cap it all, the wine was good as well.

Golden apples

Directly from the garden of the Hesperides – Vespertina, al-Sepharad, in short the Land of the Sunset –, what is more, directly from the Western Islands. The first crop.


The little tree from the garden sees the sea to the right, the mountains to the left and, down in the valley protected by the mountains, the olive tree plantation of Arabic origins of the estate Son Bunyola. In warm summer nights, when laying under the open sky near to the tree, you can hear the bells of the sheep grazing between the olive trees, and the breathing of the sea in the background.




Behind the mountains there live bears. Nobody has seen them in daylight, but at sunset they emerge from behind the mountain to the sky.


As Wang Wei dispatched the first fruit of the little tree from the Western end of the Mediterranean, so at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean a bottle with the majestic fruit of the Golan Plateau also set on the way thanks to Gyuri. The two ambassadors of the South met halfway, on our Christmas table.

The third ambassador of the South is the Iranian spice blend for the rice with almonds that we had received as a gift in the Isfahan bazaar. “Here only foreigners are served, or also Iranians?” a woman asked half-amusingly after the grocer having enthusiastically described to us for more than twenty minutes the subtle nuances between the different sorts of saffrons. “Only Iranians!” shouted merrily the grocer. “Cant’t you see that he’s Iranian, too?” he caressed with love my thorny beard, and he slipped a package of seven spices blend into the bag with the saffron.

The gorgeous wine of the Golan Plateau – according to Gyuri the best wine in Israel – perfectly matched Iranian rice and the fish steamed on ginger according to Zhen’s Chinese recipe.

And lemons were as tasty as no other we have hitherto tasted.

On the occasion of the New Year we hereby want to say thanks to all our friends for their love towards us. May God give all the best to them, and to us the possibility of meeting them several times on this or that navel of this world.


Odysseus Elytis: Ο Ήλιος ο Ηλιάτορας (The Sovereign Sun). Music by Dimitris Lagios, sung by Giorgos Dalaras (1982). First piece: The song of the Sun (omitting from the translation the two first lines of the introductory choir).

Εσείς στεριές και θάλασσες τ' αμπέλια κι οι χρυσές ελιές ακούτε τα χαμπέρια μου μέσα στα μεσημέρια μου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Από τη μέση του εγκρεμού στη μέση του αλλού πελάγου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Με τα μικρά χαμίνια του καβάλα στα δελφίνια του με τις κοπέλες τις γυμνές που καίγονται στις αμμουδιές «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!»

You rocks and seas vines and golden olives hear my word as I follow my course: I turn above all places but I love this only one! At the middle of the universe among all the islands of the sea I turn above all places but I love this only one! With its little rascals riding on dolphins with its nude girls laying on the seashore: I turn above all places but I love this only one!