4 Weekend in the mountains with EKE (Transylvanian Mountain Association): and a Dummies Guide to the Hungarian Language

EKE weekend, Sep 27^th- 28th

Great weekend in Moldavia with EKE (Transylvania Mountain Association), As promised, I was picked up outside St Anne's soon after 7:30, and after being told that there were unlikely to be any English speakers in the group, was pleasantly surprised to find that in the car that in which I was travelling, was a 24-yr-old girl, Zsusi,  who after working as an au pair in England (for a Chinese family!), now spoke English well enough to be able to act as interpreter. Zsusi works for her family's small business, started by her grandfather. They collect plants, some of which have medicinal properties, and make creams and extracts from them, working from her grandmother's home. Also in the car were her mother Puna, and her cousin Uno. Istvan and his wife Bobbi travelled separately, together with Cottie and another Zsuza. (There seem to be a lot of Zsusannahs here, as well as Andreas.)

Driving past Lacu Rosa ('Red Lake', or 'Killer Lake' ), we soon travelled through the impressive Bicaz gorge, then gradually ascended along a twisty road, with the surroundings getting more and more rural.with haystacks outside many of the houses, and the odd horse and cart on the road.

Reaching the start of our walk in the Ciahlou national park (now in sunlight), we started on the 20km trail to the 'Cabana Dochia', where we were to spend the night, from the base at 797m. The hut was at an altitude of 1760m, meaning that we had an ascent of nearly the full height of Snowdon, or Pen-y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons, from sea level. 

The trail climbed steeply through thick pine forest for a couple of hours. There were bears and wolves in these mountains, Istvan told me, but no reports of any tourists having been attacked. 

Our leader, Istvan

                   

                                                                                                                  

Nevertheless, there was evidence of the bears' presence: shocked at a heap of litter on the ground in one place, Istvan pointed at an upturned bin, and mimed the action of a bear. In many places in the world, walkers would have been asked to take their own litter out, to avoid such scenes. A bear paw print pointed out the next day emphasised that the bears were real.

 

On one steep climb, one of the women behind me kept muttering 'Isa-dook'. I asked Zsuzsi what it meant. 

“I'm sweating,” she said. 
Oh. And how do you say 'warm' and 'cold'?

“Me-leg/Hi-deg. And 'I love you' is 'Serret-Leg',” she added helpfully.
“Hold on – I'm only here for three weeks, so I doubt that I'll be needing that!”

“Ah, but I like to be able to say 'I love you' in as many languages as possible!”

Understandable, for an attractive 24-year-old; for me, nevertheless,  'I love you and I'm sweating' didn't seem likely to be the most useful of conversation openers; and there's only room in my bursting head for essentials. 

Viper warning!

Picking berries

 

It took us about four hours to reach the hut, including a number of stops to admire the jaw dropping karst formations, which we could see, whenever we reached a clearing in the forest. Sometimes, Istvan would encourage us to scramble up to the base of one, so as to be able to look down over miles and miles of thick forestry, and the huge lake/reservoir, stretching for many kilometres, right up to a huge dam, that we could see in the distance.

 

Leaving the forestry, we could see the hut above us – not so far, now. Once at the hut, where renovation was in progress, we dumped our stuff in the room which the eight of us were to share;

Mountain hut accommodation: kind of cosy!

and then came down to enjoy our 'bring and share' lunch: quite the best food I'd eaten for a week, with home made pickles, cheeses, different breads, deep fried coated courgettes, cucumber, tomatoes, pork fat, pork meat, and home made jams. We tucked in - but not until after three hip flasks of home made spirits had been passed round: one made from raspberry, one from blackcurrants, and another from plums! These EKE people certainly knew how to feast: and we still had another hour to walk, up to the top (crowned by a weather station), though this time with only a further 180m ascent.

After lunch, we continued to the weather station at 1940m, and relaxed for a while, overlooking the reservoir, before making our way back to the monastery behind the mountain hut, picking berries on the way: junipers, which according to Szuzsi were good for your kidneys, small bitter red berries, apparently full of vitamin C, though I don't know what they were, and winberries.

Just below the small monastery, was a spring, from where water was pumped up to the building. There was a small wooden church next to it.

I

 

Monastery just below the hut

 

After the sunset, we were ready for more food. Hot food is available at this hut, at a very reasonable price, but we had enough supplies with us for an evening meal, breakfast and lunch the next day, so tucked in once more. By 9pm, everyone was heading upstairs. Just as well, since sometime in the early hours of the morning, a large group of Russians, who had evidently been entertaining themselves with plenty of alcohol, came clumping up the stairs, shouting to one another at the tops of their voices. This went on for a good hour or so, meaning that nobody got any sleep. In the morning, we found their boots lined up outside our door, as well as their own. Istvan was not happy  . . . .

Despite the disturbed night, everyone was up before 7am, for the sunrise, despite the uninviting sound of a strong wind outside, causing the mist to swirl around, hiding the rocks, and then revealing them again, in a dramatic way. To my surprise, most of the others went back to their sleeping bags afterwards: waiting for the morning brew, that Istvan and Bobbi were gallantly preparing for everyone, on the slowest of slow gas stoves. 

 

Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to leave, and when people were finally ready for breakfast, we had to grope our way along the corridor and down the stairs, because there was a power cut. The renovation of the hostel was still very much 'work in progress', and this was all part of it, I guess.

 

We were away by 10.30, for an enjoyable descent to the starting point, going down a different way, with less forestry.

 

After an easy and leisurely descent, with just one more meal stop, we were back at the cars by halfway through the afternoon, and returned to Gheorghieni via Lacu Rosa, where I watched

kurtoskalacs being prepared,

After the weekend in the freshair, I wasn't particularly looking forward to Sunday evening in the home: my mind is beginning to focus on the homework I have promised to help a 17-year-old with:'Conjugate the verb to eat in the past simple tense, then write some sentences, then write a dialogue, using it.' (Yet when I asked her her age, she didn't understand the question!) However, the welcome back from both staff and children was heartwarming, so it took no time at all to settle back in, and prepare for my second week in Gheorgieni - and help with the homework . . . .. 

Dummies Guide to the Hungarian Language

Hungarian bears no relation to any other language, except Finnish (apparently), so there's only one thng for it:  forget the book and write down what you hear, and try and connect it to something familiar, even if that only gives only an approximation. So:

Hello/bye (two for the price of one) :  'See ya!'

See you later: 'Vees lat' (Think 'Vis' [or 'vees'] is like vista [view] and lat short for later? Wrong, 'Vis' is later, 'Lat' is a short version of see!)

Goodnight: 'You ea(t)s a ca(t).'

Good day (polite greeting at any time of day): 'Yo-knee-pot' (in the rhythm of 'honey pot').

Small: 'Kitchie' (rhymes with 'Titchy', and used a lot)
Large: 'Nurge' (a cross between 'large' and 'nudge')

The days of the week go something like this:

Hate-4 Cad (Monday, Tuesday: nobody likes a cad), Sair-do (think 'Hairdo' : Wednesday )

Tutors-took Peinteg ('Tutors took painting' [really 'pain-teg']: Thursday, Friday)

Samtog, Wash-a-nob (think 'washing up'): Saturday, Sunday.

Sunday caused some confusion: Zsuzi had helpfully told me that 'Nob' meant both 'sun' and 'day', so misunderstanding her, I thought the word for Sunday was 'nob-nob', I was happily saying, “mo nob-nob” (today is Sunday):  potentially useful once a week, and even possibly on other days by adding 'Nem' (no), should somebody happen to think it was Sunday on another day.

The EKE people were nodding and smiling at 'mo nob-nob', but I suppose I must have been saying something along the lines of 'today sunny day' (which it was). Trotting this out as my 'phrase of today' when I got back to St Anne's, however, all I got was bemused looks. Only later in the week did I discover that the real word for Sunday sounded like 'washing up': 'washanob'..

Numbers are even more confusing, but I can now count up to 29:

1 Edge

2 Cat-2

3 Harem

4 Neigh (not quite, but think horse)

5 'Urt (think hurt)

6 Hot (easy)

7 Hate (a bit too like 8 – and also more or less the same as Monday)

8 Noinz (too much like 9)

9 Kelem

10 Deez

11 Deez 'n Edge

12 Deez 'n Cat-2

etc

20 Hoose (Scottish house)

21 Edge 'n Hoose etc

Word order probably doesn't apply to me, since I'm going only for pidgin, for the short time I'll be here. Don't think I can cope, otherwise. Lonely Planet example for correct word order:
'I have bags' = 'there are bags my'.

And to conclude, I quote a tongue twister, again from the Lonely Planet phrase book - as if the language wasn't tongue twisting enough in any case. It's all about mocking birds, and goes something like:

"A tarka tsarka farka tarka. De nem minden  szarka farka  aarka sark a tarka farka sarka tarka.1

I rest my case!