Breaching into Hungary
The following is based on writings from my journal My Travels in Rubik's Cube Land.
I first crossed the
Hungarian border on a very chilly, windy Saturday, March 26, 2016, at Komárno
or Komarom, depending upon whose side of the border you’re on. Having lived for
nearly a year in Slovakia, once part of the Hungarian Empire, it was high time
to get out and see the neighbouring country that once claimed my new home nation
as part of its own.
We were four, my colleagues and I, travelling by car from Bratislava, or Pozsony, as the Hungarians still call it. Ben, from England, was our driver, Francisco and I made up the American contingent, and Margarite hailed from South Africa. We couldn’t have looked more conspicuous than we did driving in Ben’s UK-registered Volvo with right-hand drive. Our car drew quite a few dry stares from the locals when we stopped along the way to refuel.
Once we arrived in the border
town of Komárno, we parked the car on the side of a lonely street bearing two
names: one in Slovak, the other in Hungarian. We braved the cold and wind and
began a search for a place where we could get lunch. That’s easier said than
done in a small town on Saturday. The only place open for lunch was a pizzeria,
which was understandably quite full when we showed up. The waitress greeted us
at the door in both languages.
“Jó napot! Dobrý deň!”
Immediately upon hearing the latter, Margarite, whose could muster Slovak better than any of the rest of us, stepped in as our interpreter. None of us could’ve survived in the Hungarian tongue. If you inhaled a bunch of Scrabble letters and then sneezed them back out, well, that’s what Hungarian looked like to me.
Many streets in Komárno have two names
We all had a good
lunch and then decided to hit the streets in search of something to see. We had
wanted to see the famous fortress, but when we arrived there, that, like most
of the rest of the sleepy town, was also closed. We walked around, eventually
making our way through the “European Village”, a complex of buildings featuring
historic styles typical in each of the different European countries. It really
looked more like Disneyland. Before boredom could set in like gangrene, Ben
suggested we head back to the car and drive over the border to Hungary. So we
did just that.
The so-called "European Village"
Entrance to the fortress at Komárno
Except we ended up
driving across the wrong bridge. I think we went over the Váh River, and not
the Danube, so we were still in Slovakia. Duh! We realised the error when we
ended up on a roundabout, still awaiting that “Welcome to Hungary” sign. We finally
spun around and headed in the direction that indeed took us over the Danube. We
knew we were on the yellow brick road when we saw the blue European Union sign with yellow stars surrounding it proclaiming “MAGYARORSZÁG”, and next to it a Hungarian flag with its red,
white and green coat of arms suspended inside the bridge as we reached the halfway mark across the
river.
“My God!” Francisco
gasped. “We’re in Hungary! We’re actually in Hungary!” He repeated this several
times as we drove through picturesque Hungarian villages. It shouldn’t have
been too much different from Slovakia, except that it was. It reminded me of
the pictures I’d seen in National Geographic magazine as a kid, when the
thought of ever visiting Hungary was a hazy dream hiding behind the Iron
Curtain, sealed off in a communist box. So here we were… land of Franz Liszt,
the Rubik’s cube, and paprika. What were my other connections to Hungary? Besides
a schoolmate of Hungarian descent, there were only two others that I can
remember. Growing up, my family and I would go to the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival every summer. Just outside of the town where the festival took place
was an old ranch-style house housing an “Eastern European” restaurant. It was
owned by a Polish immigrant and his American wife, but adorning the walls were
travel posters of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, as well as of Poland. At the time,
all the gaily-coloured folk art splashed on the posters from each of the three
countries looked the same to me. However, I sure knew the difference in the
sausages offered on the menu! The Polish one was richer, but the Hungarian one
was the spicier! I usually alternated between the two. The other connection to
Hungary was when I lived in the Czech Republic. I had a box of washing powder,
which was marketed for all of central Europe, and so the ingredients and
instructions were written in a number of languages. The only language on the
box I was unable to decipher was Hungarian, although I did figure out my first
Hungarian word: “Új!”, meaning “New!”
On the other side of
Komarom (the Hungarian name for Komárno), we drove through neighbourhoods and
quaint villages with colourful tile-roofed houses along tree-lined streets and
neat little gardens. Neat little gardens adorned the houses. We noticed a
number of ceramic pigs in several of the gardens, much the way I suppose garden
gnomes exist in Germany or pink flamingoes in the United States. We laughed at
several of the pigs and made some corny, even dirty, jokes which do not bear
repeating here, especially since I don’t remember any of them.
“Oh, my God, we’re in
Hungary!” Francisco marvelled again.
A quaint village in northern Hungary
We drove on until we
passed through Győr, then we turned to go back across the Danube into Slovakia,
crossing a checkpoint that time and communism had all but forgotten. Thanks to the
European Union and the Schengen agreement, this border crossing was now a relic. By
evening, we were back inside Pozsony, and I couldn’t wait until my next trip to
Hungary.
Abandoned Hungarian-Slovak border checkpoint at Vámosszabadi