I am back from two months in USA. I shall not attempt to recount all that happened during that time, since many of you are a part of that story. But to summarize briefly, I spent time in NY, visited my sister and her family in NC for ten days, stayed overnight at Anna's brother's daughter's in Georgia, and then spent ten days visiting friends in Sarasota, stopping in DC over the weekend on the drive back to NY.
The day following our arrival we attended the annual Crystal Run Village Picnic. It marked the 50th Anniversary of the founding of Crystal Run and afforded us an opportunity to see a large number of colleagues without having to go to a couple of dozen locations. The most noteworthy event of our NY stay was my meeting with Barbara, the daughter of a long-ago acquaintance who is a very famous painter and author. I had not seen her in over 25 years and only once in the past forty years, but had written to her because while in the Metropolitan Museum last year I chanced to see a poster of a painting that I suspected was one of her mother's, and it turned out that it was so, so I bought it and also bought copies of two books written by her older sister, which I read during train rides between here and Debrecen. We met twice, once alone and the next time with Anna. It was a very affecting experience for me, for Barbara is the closest I came to having a daughter, and it was very satisfying to me to find that the relationship between us remains a close one notwithstanding the passage of so many years and the transpiration of so many events.
We also visited--albeit briefly---Anna's niece, Kim, whom I last saw in 1999, when we spent a couple of days with them during our trip around the US before leaving for Hungary. Her two eldest are now in college, and they are all moving from their present home in rural North Georgia to a rural setting outside Ocala, Florida, where they have just purchased a home. I have known Kim for thirty plus years, and we have always been quite close. It is a strange experience, however, to adjust to the fact that someone you knew as a child is a mother of three, two of whom are in college; or, as in Barbara's case, that someone you knew as a teenager is now 57 years old and has three grown daughters.
This Saturday we shall visit an old acquaintance in Serbia. I was last there in 1983 (!), and cannot say that I remember anything about the town, though it is only about 1:45 drive from the frontier. I was going there in 1989, but at the border they insisted that I had to convert $200, even though I intended to return that evening, I was only going to have dinner with friends. What on earth, I asked, could I possibly spend $200 worth of dinar on, since I did not intend to buy a VCR? But they were adamant, so I just got the bus back to Szeged and my friend went on without me and brought me dinner and a bottle of wine back that evening, and the dinner was still warm.
SEPTEMBER 21
The visit to the friends in Serbia was very satisfying. The most difficult part of the drive there was finding the border crossing, as there was no sign----well, there was, but the "sign" consisted only of a very small symbol on a sign that I thought meant that I was going onto the expressway, which was in fact the case, because the only way to reach the crossing point is by going down onto the expressway, which then ends at the crossing-station. The crossing itself took only a few minutes, and the drive was just more than an hour or so. To be honest I remember virtually nothing about my visit there and was pleasantly surprised that everyone remembered me, even the grandson who had been only six years old at the time of my visit. (He is now 29 and has two daughters!) We had a great time, marred only by the fact that for some reason my digital camera, though it showed the photos I took in the memory of the camera, for some reason I am unable to understand did not impress them onto the memory-card, with the result that I have no photographs.
This past Friday we went up to Budapest to the Iranian Embassy and submitted our applications for our visas. the official there checked them over, said everything was in order, and told us to return for them the end of September. I replied that I would come in early October, as we would be in Austria at that time, whereupon he asked me for the passports and told us to take a seat. He returned in about a half-hour and handed us the passports and said, "It is all taken care of, you need not come back." We asked if that meant that we had the visa, and he answered that yes, we did, whereupon we looked inside and saw to our amazement that we had indeed been issued our visa on the same day, when all our information had been that we had to expect it to take at least a week, and probably longer than that, since nothing happens sufficiently often when dealing with the Iranians for one to safely conclude what can be considered "regular". So the result is that we are all set to go to Iran on the 10th of October, as the travel agency has mailed all the information and documents to our relatives in Vienna, whom we shall meet up with this Saturday as we spend a week together in Austria before we leave for Iran. We celebrated by going to a restaurant in Buda and having dinner, as we were to attend a concert in Szeged that evening. I had not been in Budapest since February and was surprised to note numerous changes. For one they built a large office building nesxt door to the railway station. Not in a mere six months, of course; but I had not noticed it before, or that they were constructing it. For another they have closed the Margaret Bridge and are laying some kind of tracks on it---or so it appeared to me. If indeed they are tracks I am confused as to what the purpose might be. There is a tram that runs along the Danube Embankment from the Margaret Bridge on the Pest side clear up beyond the Palace of the Performing Arts, but I cannot imagine what the purpose would be of extending it to cross the Danube to Buda, nor can I imagine where it might go to once it crossed the river.
NOVEMBER 2
Well, as you can see, a great deal of time has passed since my last entry. Since then we went to Schladming,Austria for a week with Anna's cousin's daughter and her husband, and also with our friend, Sari, from here in Hodmezovasarhely. the resort was quite nice and, as it turned out, was part of a chain in which we own a timeshare to which we have never been, which was something I did not know at the time I made the arrangements. We really had a great time. We arrived Saturday. On Sunday we drove to Bad Gastein, a very famous resort to which all of us except Anna had been numerous times. On the way there we came upon a caravan of vehicles participating in the celebration of the Autumn Harvest Festival. The assembly point was in Bad Hofgastein, which is just before you get to Bad Gastein, and it has a brand-new bath to which I went last year with Sandor and Julianna. From there we went to Zell am See, to which--again---everyone except Anna had been numerous times. The following day we went to a waterfall in a national park about 25 miles north of Zell am See. Clemens and Saci had been there before, the rest of us had not. the following day, Tuesday, we drove to a nearby resort to spend the day with Clemens' parents, who were vacationing there and who had invited us to have dinner with them. We spent the day with them, taking in numerous local sights. On Wednesday Saci and Clemens drove to Italy to do some shopping for Clemens, who had just been promoted to head of his department where he works; the rest of us decided to take in the wonders of Schladming, which is certainly a quite picturesque place. Thursday we drove to Salzkammergut, to Aussee, Wolfgangsee, and Mondsee----these sees are lakes, if you did not know---all of which were known to Clemens, but only the latter two to me, and only Wolfgangsee to Sari and Anna. On Friday we drove to Radstadt, about 25km away, and then went up to a place which makes things from pine and also has a very nice restaurant. Saturday we drove home, 700km to Hodme-zovasarhely, in something of a rush as we were to attend a performance of Berlioz' Damnation of Faust that evening in Szeged. It was one we were scheduled to see last season, but we missed it owing to a mixup as to the day of the performance and had to end up giving our tickets to friends. This year we were determined to not miss it, and were rewarded with one of the most spectacular performances we have ever seen anywhere of any opera. Neither of us is a great fan of Berlioz. I had never see his Faust and quite disliked his Benvenuto Cellini that I saw many, many years ago, although I do like Le Troyennes well enough. But this performance was simply breathtaking!
The next week we went to Iran. I shall make that a separate blog and shall only relate the series of events leading up to our departure. To recount what I may have already mentioned, we learned of the trip through a newsletter which I receive via e-mail monthly from a travel agency in Vienna. Since the newsletter is in German (which I do not understand), I usually pay no attention to it; but for some reason I decided to peruse it on this occasion and saw that they had a trip to Iran, at a time suitable for iour travels, and at a quite reasonable price. I spoke to Anna about it and then sent an e-mail to the agency requesting further information. they replied in English, advising me that the guide would likely speak only German. We decicded that that would not be a problem, he would be able to tell us what time we would leave and that kind of information in English, or, if not, there was bound to be someone in the group who could tell us, as English is fairly widely spoken/understood in Austria, especially by younger and educated persons. While in Vienna in June we wnr to their offices and made the arrangements. the xeroxed my Mastercard and said they would charge it in September. Well, September came and nothing happened. Here we were in Schladming and they still had not charged my card, even though they had sent us our flight tickets and all the information for the trip. So I called and they said, "We are old-fashioned, we do not charge your card until you tell us to do so," whereupon I told them to do so! Several days later I got an e-mail saying that the bank had declined my charge! Impossible! I screamed. the card I gave them was a debit card, not a credit card; since I had ample funds in my account to cover the charge, there could not be alogical reason for the bank to refuse to honor it. So I called the bank and, in the course of conversation, learned that they had a limit on the amount a transaction could be; this of course I did not know, for I do not use my debit card to pay transactions, but only to withdraw money. But it would not be a problem, she assured me. Since I know the President of the bank very well, I could call her the next day---she was not in that day---and ask her to have them raise the limit temporarily to the amount I wanted to pay. I did this, and Nancy said, fine, just send me a fax, which I did at the resort where I was staying. But when I called two hours later, she said the fax had not come through yet! So I went down to the post office and sent it, but the woman there said that for some reason the fax would not transmit. So I went into a nearby hotel and asked them to send it, and they did, refusing my offer to pay for it, and told me that it did go through. when I called Nancy she said, Yes, we got your fax twice and it has been arranged that they will pay, just have them re-submit. I notified the agency, which finally submitted and had it accepted only a couple of days before our departure. I asked the agent why she would send us the tickets and other materials when they had not been paid; she said that they felt I would find some way of paying them and were not worried that I would not. Bear in mind that I had never dealt with this agency before and that we are in different countries!
This will be the end of this. The trip to Iran will have a separate blog.
