Hertzler’s Outpost

On The Way to the Christmas Market
in Budapest

It was relatively warm (40 F) at the Budapest Christmas Market today, but it was still freezing. I don’t know how that works.

Mostly all the same stuff is there from the last time we were here. Food-wise that meant a turkey shishkabob for lunch followed by kürtöskalács and coffee at the Gerbeaud to warm up after shopping.

Giving The Presentation Today

If I was in control of life’s situations, I would have given my presentation two years ago to the audience who heard it today. Our campus ministry directors from Eastern Europe meet regularly, but it wasn’t until this year’s meeting that I was able to get on their agenda. God’s timing I suppose.

It is great to be back in Budapest for the second time in two months, and better still to be here with Cathy. Like me on my first trip back two months ago, Cathy feels totally comfortable and at home here. After dinner at the Adler tonight we had to catch ourselves and remember that we can no longer simply walk home!

And I did enjoy ‘the Jerry’ dessert tonight, having been offered it by that name by my friend, Tomas, the waiter. It was as good as ever, too.

Keleti Train Station in Budapest

After my stop in Budapest in October I discovered an opportunity to further the EveryStudent.com agenda in Eastern Europe by going to the conference where all our national campus directors meet to discuss strategy. This will be an opportunity to explain to them again how students search for spiritual truth on the Internet and how we need to have a presence on the Internet in the local languages that students use to search.

This trip Cathy gets to go, too! Frequent flyer miles from my two Asian trips earlier in the year put us in range for an international ticket. She is very excited and can’t wait to see our friends there again. We hope to get to the Christmas market and freeze our toes off again like we did every December when we lived there. And eat at the Adler. And ride public transportation again. And take a look at our old home again.

Tom and Jerry in Budapest

On Saturday, of my weekend in Budapest, I just wanted to take public transportation downtown and enjoy the view again. Tom and I had a good time, and the weather was perfect. I wish I could do this every weekend.

Hertzlers, Rodds, Parkers, Burroughs

Jack and Diane Parker are in town, so we got them up to the house along with two other couples who moved from Budapest to Orlando this summer. There is a unique experience we all share, living in Budapest, which makes our friendship in this context extra meaningful. Only this group would appreciate one of our prized possessions from Budapest; a menu from the Adler. We’re all making adjustments to our new lives, and it was good to dump those things out around friends who were in the same process. We miss Budapest, but it’s nice to have some of Budapest here with us, too.

During the last year we have puzzled over the species of a particular animal roaming our neighborhood at night. It seemed too big to be a weasel, yet it was too out of place to be a mongoose. Tonight Annie cornered it under a car and then flushed it out into full view. I got to watch it dart back and forth across my neighbors’ driveway looking for an escape route. Finally it ran up their stairs, scurried up their vine to the roof and disappeared into the night.

The animal is a ferret.

With that mystery solved, we can now resume packing. It’s 11:30 pm - eight and a half hours until the movers arrive. Lots to do still.

On a cold, drizzly day today here in Budapest Andrew finished his least favorite class; Hungarian Culture. His first year of this class was a dud because the teacher was, well, not a good one for sixth grade boys. I forget what last year was like, but the reason this year’s class fell to the bottom of his, and all the other boys in his class, popularity charts was because they had to learn and perform a traditional Hungarian dance. A day has not passed in the last six weeks where we have not heard of the pain and suffering each of these boys has endured. While this could reasonably be expected from girls, he asks, how can anyone expect 8th grade boys to like this? His sympathetic father didn’t help the situation any either.

Today, though, his sympathetic father took a step down the road of sinister behavior. I recorded video of his Hungarian dance performance. He trusts me enough to know that I probably won’t post this video here, but his friends weren’t so sure. When one of his friends saw me filming, a look of horror shot across his face.

“Please tell me you will delete that video, Mr. Hertzler!”

“Hertzlers.com,” was my only reply.

This sent him over the edge. He almost tackled me to get the camera.

While I don’t plan to show you this video, I do plan to hold it over Andrew’s head as a threat whenever it serves my ends. Let the blackmail begin!

Cherry Picking

Cherry pie is not far behind!

Lest I depart Europe with the smug confidence that I had learned how to drive and park on the sidewalk, the Budapest parking patrol gave me a lesson in humility a couple days ago. Upon returning to my car, parallel parked with two wheels on the sidewalk like the other seven cars adjacent to mine, I found a 10,000 Forint ($50) parking ticket on my windshield. The ticket was issued 15 minutes before my parking permit expired, so I had no idea what was going on.

A call to the city administration (made by a helpful friend) revealed that I should actually have parked all four wheels on the street, not just two. Of course, the only way a foreigner like me would know this would be if I had either recognized a sign marking the area or maybe if I had acquired a Hungarian driver’s license and studied all the parking rules in the process. Having not done this, I suppose the last laugh was on me after all.

Valerie once got a ticket for parking all four wheels on the sidewalk in a two-wheels-only-on-the-sidewalk area, and plenty of others we know have parked all four wheels on the street and received tickets. Furthermore, all the other cars around me were parked identically to mine. This is simply an unsolved mystery for me, a departing gesture of affection from Budapest.

The Cherries Are Ripe!

Mmmm. The cherries are good this year, indeed. Can’t wait to get some more.

The US Embassy in Budapest

Yesterday I solved my looming passport problem; the upcoming inclusion of an RFID chip in all newly issued US passports. This is a problem for me, and anyone else who is even the slightest bit paranoid, because it makes identity theft one step easier for hi-tech identity thieves. (Read more about how the Dutch passport RFID chip encryption has already been cracked.)

I fixed the problem by simply applying for a new passport that will be good for another ten years. The RFID-chip passports are still in testing and only in use by government employees, so the ones currently issued don’t have the chip. Sure the solution cost $67, but my passport expires next year anyway.

In solving one problem I created another, though. I had to get more passport photos made, and the photo store I used hit me with the ugly stick right before they took my picture. Living with that picture for 10 more years may be just as bad as having an RFID chip on my passport!

Car Papers Hungary

“Do you have the car papers?” is one of the most common questions around our house.

One consistent factor of life in Hungary: car papers. These official documents must be with the car at all times when in operation. Not too hard there. These official documents must NOT be in the car when it is not in operation. Therein lies the challenge. Once you remove the papers, it is hard to always remember them again.

I have never seen anyone’s car papers in anything except these plastic wallets. I would expect people to want to customize the appearance of their own car papers, but apparently no one does. It’s probably not allowed.

This will be another thing we will leave behind in Budapest. It will be nice to just leave our car’s registration papers in the glove box again and forget about them.

Budaörs City Hall

Yesterday I went to City Hall - by myself. This was a new challenge for me; interacting with local government without someone along to help. Actually I brought my mobile phone with me, and I used it twice, so I guess I had help after all. It was an accomplishment either way.

The people at the Budaörs City Hall could not have been nicer. They helped me find the right place to go, and they even found someone to translate into English for me. It was a very pleasant experience!

If everything works right, in two weeks I should have a laminated card indicating that I am the official owner of my 1995 Ford Windstar - at which point I hope this fact becomes history as the ownership passes to someone else.

This morning I unloaded a van-full of rummage sale items to the kids’ school. Since I had to leave room for a few kids, too, there is one half van load to go. I figure this will amount to about 2-3 cubic meters of stuff leaving our house and not going to Orlando. What a great feeling!

To make the morning even better, after I dropped off all that stuff I took the van across the street to get the air conditioning repaired. This was a huge gamble, as I had no idea if they spoke any English, or whether they would understand my Hungarian, or whether they would fix my A/C even if they could and, most of all, if I’d discover I had expensive A/C problems. (Are there any other kind?)

After successfully communicating in Anglo-Magyar (not that hard after all; how many types of problems can you bring to an air conditioning repair place? “nem hideg” - not cold - did it.) and a five minute wait, they took a look and made a diagnosis; two old gaskets that let all the freon leak out. Within 20 minutes they had them replaced, and I was on my way with cold air blowing out my vents. Cost: 12,000 Forint ($60).

St. Vitus Cathedral Window

While the “New Cathedral” (St. Louis Basilica Cathedral) still ranks at the top of my list, St. Vitus Cathedral is right up there with it. In Prague we had the privilege of seeing St. Vitus again, and I especially enjoyed my favorite windows. Unlike other old European cathedrals, this one completed only recently in 1929. As such, popular Czech artists at the time, including Art-Nouveau master Alfons Mucha, designed some of the windows. The tales told in these windows relate to local Czech traditions rather than Biblical truth, but they are a visual feast otherwise.

I uploaded a larger image of this window so you can see it up close if you click the picture here.

Here’s an excerpt from my email thread yesterday.

From: Jerry Hertzler
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 5:44 PM
To: Brian Alex Dorsey Larry
Cc: Tom Mark
Subject: 300 responses from GodLovesRussia.com this month!

Earlier this month (March) Mark and Mike began using Google’s program to display ads for www.GodLovesRussia.com on other popular Russian language websites. This resulted in an increase in visits to our site and a 10x increase in responses! During the last five months our site saw about 20 people each month indicate they had trusted Jesus by clicking “Da” [Yes] at the end of the 4 Spiritual Laws page. This month there were 300.

Below is Ella’s description of what the new flood of responses was like.

Yours for the remaining 250 million (or so) Russian speakers,
Jerry

——————————————————————————–
From: Ella
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 1:21 PM
To: Jerry Hertzler
Subject: Re: I have a question

yes, it is working now. volunteers receive letters. We were indeed overwhelmed with many letters, some of them weren’t easy to answer and we neede time to think and prepare an appropriate answere to someone’s problem. some of these people still keep in touch with us. One girl from Russia even asked Andrey if we can come and visit them (they are in “deep Russia” far from major cities as far as I remember. Some asked us about our work and our testimony. It was about 10 letters per day at time for the two of us. Andrey usually takes care of all “relatively easy” letters and I take care of “heavy stuff” addressed for us.
It may be close to truth that we’ve had around 300 letters.
Ella
—– Original Message —–
From: Jerry Hertzler
To: Tom ; Andrey
Cc: Tom (Eastern Europe)
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 5:04 PM
Subject: RE: I have a question

Andrey,

Last week you said to Tom that responses from GodLovesRussia.com were not going to your two new volunteers. Is this working now?

The Google ad campaign indicates that over 300 people have clicked “Yes” on GodLovesRussia.com this month.

Have you been seeing an increase in responses this month?

Jerry

Much of our experience in Hungary has defied conventional wisdom regarding cultural transition. It’s been a wonderful time for us, and in hindsight it is hard to remember if, or when, we had any significant “culture shock.” Today’s experience marked both an accomplishment and a first. It was the first time we have been totally without understanding on an issue and simply had to fork out the money. (We didn’t understand why we needed to spend another $100 to renew a customs bank guarantee which does not expire until one month AFTER we leave.) On the other hand, upon nearly getting stymied at our local bank for our request to extend this customs bank guarantee, I pulled out my Hungarian and saved the day. Here’s how the conversation went:

[English]
Clerk: This letter will be ready tomorrow.
Jerry: I will not be in town tomorrow, and my renewal deadline expires before I return. Is there any way I can have this today?
Clerk: No.
Jerry: Can my wife sign for me?
Clerk: Yes
Jerry: When can she come by and sign for this?
Clerk: As soon as we open in the morning. We will probably do this at 5:00 today.
Jerry: Can I come back at 5:00 today and pick this up?
Clerk: I’m sorry, I don’t understand. (meaning, she didn’t understand my English.)
Jerry: “Lehet vissza jövök ötkor? (Can I come back around 5:00?)
Clerk: You speak Hungarian? Pillanat. (One moment.)
[Clerk talks to coworker then turns back to me.]
Clerk: My coworker is checking to see if we can do it now.

Five minutes later I walked out with the paper I needed.

In the mean time we had a nice conversation in broken Hungarian and broken English.

Last week on the train to Zagreb, Croatia I found that my reserved seat was occupied by an American. I walked past that cabin to discover it wasn’t just the three Americans in “my” cabin, but there was a big group of Americans, apparently all together in this train car. My hopes of some incognito down-time vanished, and I resigned myself to riding in my 6-seat cabin with these touring Americans, albeit not in my window seat.

When Americans travel they become louder. I don’t know why this is, but I’ve observed myself doing it as well. When Americans travel in groups everyone within 50 yards is aware of their presence. Avoiding or ignoring this American group was not going to be possible on this train ride, so I sat down and listened to the conversation while I did some work.

It didn’t take long to learn that this group of Americans was a bunch of high ranking US military officers touring Europe as part of a military academy. In “my” seat was a colonel, and in the seat opposite him was a major. Both were pilots and had been to (or over) Croatia before; just not on a train nor under friendly conditions. After a half hour or so I figured I should let them know I was an American, so I joined their conversation for a while. Really nice guys. Being in a group, they all moved around between cabins, and I met a few more of them as they stopped by.

After an hour or so on the train a few of them starting exploring. They checked out the first class coaches, the dining car and walked the train from end to end. All was well until the first stop just inside Croatia.

The first thing I noticed was the team of four Hungarian border guards walking down the hall of our car. Normally they get off the train at the last stop in Hungary, so something was amiss. A minute later the leader of the American military group was coming down the hall asking if anyone had seen three of their group. (One of the missing was named Vapor, and as soon as I heard the name I knew exactly who it was; tall, blond, flat-top haircut, chiseled upper body, Air Force jet pilot; one of the explorers.) Apparantly three of them got off the train back in Hungary and didn’t get back on. D’oh!

These weren’t just tourists, they were high ranking US military officers traveling in an official government attaché. Losing a few of them without their passports was not an option. The group leader had to call the US Embassy and let them know what was going on, but his phone wouldn’t work. Being just inside the Croatian border, his phone had not yet locked onto a roaming service provider, and he was having trouble knowing which sequence of numbers to dial.

So I saved the day and dialed the embassy for him with my phone.

[Now I don't want to exaggerate my role in this, but I have to point out that my swift, clear-thinking action averted a certain political disaster. My country could have found itself in an international dilemna of enormous proportions had it not been for my quick phone dialing abilities.]

They finally decided on a course of action, and our train was once again on its way, a mere ten minutes behind schedule. Just before reaching my destination they received word of what happened to these unfortunate military travelers.

Whether they needed to visit a non-moving toilet (the prevailing reason offerred by those who remained on the train) or whether they were attempting to photograph Flat Stanley in an exotic location for their kids (the explanation that found the most amusement) is unclear. What seems clear is that they got off the train and got back on it - only a few cars back from where they got off. As they walked toward their car (inside the train) they discovered that the rest of the train had separated from the car they were in and was pulling away from the station!

“We are never going to hear the end of this,” was the somber conclusion of the major.

Shortly after hearing about the train separation explanation I found myself in a bit of a dilemna, too. For a number of reasons I began to think I should have been on that other section of train that broke away. In the course of the next few minutes I learned that the car I was in was not the car with my reserved seat and that my smug “I’m not an American tourist” attitude might have been dead wrong. (Not to mention how glad I was that I didn’t try to kick the colonel out of a seat that was not really mine either.) Just as I was thinking about how I would navigate my way back to Zagreb we passed a sign that said we had entered the Zagreb area. Whew!

Pasaréti út

‘Random Street’ is one of the best collections of Budapest street photos around. The publisher of the site, Bálint, asked me to contribute to his series. Reducing my selection to 6 photos was more difficult than I expected, so I posted the ones I liked but couldn’t include in his feature.

One of the pleasures of living here is getting to know people whose lives are far more interesting than ours. Last night was one of those occasions.

The neighbor who owns the house next to ours lives with her mom and sister’s family in another part of Budapest. Along with our landlord, Peter, we went to dinner at this other house where one of the first people we met was her mom, Nora. Nora spoke excellent English and had amazing things to tell us.

Their beautiful house has a history. Purchased before WWII by Nora’s parents, its current ownership by her family is a miracle. Her father died when she was young, so she and her mother managed the property for most of its history this century. During the Nazi occupation of Budapest they turned it into a shelter for Jewish refugees at great risk to their own safety. Then, during the Siege of Budapest (November through February, 1944-45) by the Soviets, they survived in the house and kept many others safe until it ended.

One of the most interesting turns came shortly after the Soviet occupation of Hungary and the subsequent Communist government. Since all houses with more than 6 rooms became national property, they subdivided their house into three apartments, each with less than 6 rooms. The unfortunate consequence of this move was that anyone was now free to declare themselves renters in their house, and a prostitute availed herself of this opportunity. For 25 years she lived there, and at one point she sold her apartment to another family! Eventually the family abandoned the place, and Nora and her two daughters (one of whom is our neighbor) saw this as a chance to re-aquire the apartments. The whole house has been in their ownership since.

Events such as these, had they occurred in an American house, would qualify it as a signficant point of historical interest. In Budapest, this is just another house like most of the rest, and the history we learned only covered half the house’s life!

[This site (http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/sites/siege/framee.html) has a great history, with photos, of the Seige of Budapest and what the city looked like during those days. Click "Sections" on the left first, rather than "Photos."]

Budaörs Two Days Before Christmas

Today is a slow day in the office, so I decided to take a batch of letters to the post office myself. It’s a beautiful day, so the trip was a nice break from being inside for the last few weeks. I hopped on the bus across town and enjoyed watching mid-day village life happen. The whole experience is one of the things that makes Budaörs such a nice place to live.

Last night I had an interesting discussion about Wal-Mart and the effect it’s had on small American towns. Our little village has similar corporate giants (Tesco, Auchan, Praktiker, etc.) planted just across its highway, and I shop at those locations because it is most convenient and cheaper.

But occasionally it’s nice to do things the old-fashioned way and do business in town. It’s hard for me to believe this lifestyle will exist much longer near the larger cities of Hungary, but it’s nice to see while it lasts!

Here in Hungary, All Saints Day means a cemetery full of lights.

Ever since we moved here people warned us to beware of the Right Hand Rule. When approaching an unmarked intersection, you must yield right of way to the person on your right, regardless of how much your own street looks like the main thoroughfare. We never quite abided by our understanding of this rule, and it never seemed to come into play, my accident notwithstanding.

For two years this notion frustrated me. It makes no sense to disrupt the main flow of traffic along one street just because a side street feeds into it. Why make all the cars on the main road stop when a car approaches from a side street? I never yielded, and I never understood.

Recently another American, Tom Seely, explained the logic of the right hand rule to me, and now everything seems much clearer. Here’s the deal. Signs are expensive, so if you can avoid using them, it saves money. An unmarked four-way intersection therefore requires the right hand rule; the car to your right has right of way through this intersection or else you have a mess. In lieu of stop signs, this makes sense and saves money.

I was happy with this conclusion for a few days until I realized how few unmarked four-way intersections I traversed. Virtually none. On the other hand, I pass unmarked “T” intersections all the time, and the Right Hand Rule applies there, too. This rule went right back into my category of Things I Am Frustrated About. Why apply this rule to a “T” intersection; it only slows traffic down?

Compounding my frustration has been my observation that many “T” intersections are marked with a yield sign on the side road but with nothing on the main road. Isn’t this the second worst of all possible situations? Both roads are told to yield. (The worst would be if both roads have right of way.) The yellow diamond sign, which indicates that the road you are on has right of way, , should resolve this ambiguity, but it is rarely posted near the intersection in question, and it is hard to remember to take note of it until you are at an intersection where you need to decide who has right of way. Add to this the habit of most Hungarian men when they approach a yield-marked intersection to pull out anyway as though they had right of way, and it makes you feel like you are driving in one of those bumper car rides at an amusement park.

In searching for something that officially describes this rule I ran across this hilarious article that does a great job explaining what European driving conditions look like from an American perspective. Aside from some salty language, it is the best description I’ve read!

Ráckeve Convent

Twice a year the Campus Crusade for Christ Eastern European and Russian national directors have a week of meetings to take care of business. Every few years they meet at a place outside Budapest, and this year it is in Ráckeve, Hungary 50 km south of Budapest on the Danube River.

Knowing that once I entered the hotel in which everyone was meeting I would not come out until later in the evening, I took a walk through town first and enjoyed discovering this wonderful place.

We all met in the Kék (blue) Duna Hotel, and I think it’s a place to which I’d like to return with Cathy someday.

(And I don’t normally work on Sunday, and I didn’t like the fact that our organization continued working today.)

- More photos of Ráckeve

It turns out that information is the key to many things, not the least of which is getting your car fixed. My good Hungarian speaking friend, Beni, guided me to an auto electronic repair shop today which had my headlight, tailight and broken passenger window fixed in less than an hour for less than $45.