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When You Strip Away the Surface …

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Dancers from the Kárpátok Folk Dance Ensemble

… of me, what you will find is a strange sort of Hungarian. Although I have read no studies to this effect, I think that the first language you learn to speak is what determines, at the deepest level, who you are. My first language was an older dialect of the Magyar language from the region just to the southwest of Budapest. Today, when I speak the language—haltingly—Hungarians laugh at my choice of words and horrible grammar. Yet, my ever-so-sophisticated American English is merely an overlay on a base that was set in concrete before I was five. I feel myself to be a kind of Brummagem Hungarian.

Last night, Martine and I attended a Hungarian folk dance program at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church just south of downtown L.A. The dance was put on by the Kárpátok Folk Dance Ensemble, which has just recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. That a city like Los Angeles, which does not have that large a Hungarian population, could support an organization like Kárpátok is an unending surprise to me.

For many of the fifteen-odd dances they performed, I was in tears. There are certain themes in Hungarian music that take me way back to my beginnings. I could not lay my finger on it, but a deep emotional chord is struck deep in my core.

The people in attendance were curious about me. My pronunciation is near perfect, but I might as well be retarded. As for Martine, she doesn’t know a word of Magyar and depended on me for many things I was unable to explain.

Flyer for the “Thousand Faces” Dance Concert We Attended

That didn’t keep up from enjoying the music and dances—and the Hungarian meal that was served afterwards—even though we were both suffering from nasty colds. She might be French, but Martine enjoys these Hungarian events as much as I do, though in a different way. I do believe she prefers Hungarian food to the great cuisine of France, especially where pastries are involved.

 

Beigli

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Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Today was a combined Spring Festival and Mother’s Day Celebration at the San Fernando Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Reseda.Martine and I always show up the first Sunday in May to help relieve the parishioners of their excellent home cooked food. Available was gulyás leves (better known as Hungarian Goulash, actually a beef and vegetable soup), Hungarian kolbasz sausage with red cabbage, barbecued pork (laci pecsenye), and langos (a fried bread concoction that Hungarians go gaga over). But the starring attraction were the many varieties of pastries, especially a type of custardy cheesecake not quite as sweet as the deli variety, and, of course, beigli.

When I was a kid in Cleveland, it was the beigli with ground walnut that I most particularly remembered. My Mom made it at least once a week, together with the ground poppy seed variety which I did not like nearly as much Although Martine made major inroads on the pastry table, including several varieties to take home, for the first time I passed up sampling any. I know what it tastes like. I love it. But I have Type 2 Diabetes and am fighting a difficult battle.

Still, we had a good time, watching a recitation, singing, and dancing presentation on the subject of Mother’s Day. Then, the local dancing master, Tibor, showed couples how to dance the csardás, the most famous of the Magyar folk dances.

Finally, there was a literary event in which the author of a book on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution had two reciters read passages about how he fled Budapest to Yugoslavia and finally settled in the United States. I didn’t understand very much, as my Hungarian is quite rudimentary, and both the book and the recitation were mostly above my head. Still, it’s good for me to reacquaint myself with my native tongue, however much I stumble my way through it.