Hungary from a British perspective: strange food and dirty underpasses?

Norman Jope’s book, Gólyák és rétesek (Storks and puff pastries) was recently published, in which the less-popular sides of Hungary are presented. WMN published an interview conducted with the author by Katalin Burns.

Norman Jope’s book, Gólyák és rétesek (Storks and puff pastries) was translated from English to Hungarian by Zoltán Tarcsay and was published by Apokrif/FISZ

Norman Jope has been visiting Hungary for almost two decades now, as his partner lives here. Katalin’s husband, Mark Burns, lives in Hungary since 1997 and tells Katalin about his experiences and impressions of Hungary on a daily basis, ranging from the weird people inhabiting the underpasses all the way to the Túró Rudi. Katalin thus grabbed the occasion to present two British perspectives on the less-promoted aspects of Hungarian life.

Let us first take a look at a passage from Norman’s book:

“A shopping bag sporting the colours of the Hungarian flag is my talisman on the crowded streets, with which I try to fend off lost tourists, pimps and believers of Krishna asking for donations. The tricolour has a neutral meaning here, so I can run around the city carelessly with this red-white-green bag.

The British flag, on the other hand, would rouse some suspicion. I’m not a foreigner anymore, but an intruder.”

Katalin Burns: Most of the foreigners visiting Hungary do not go beyond Budapest, and sometimes they are not adventurous enough to explore the city outside the boundaries of the downtown. What do you two think about the Hungarian countryside?

Norman Jope: I wanted to see something in Hungary that is not Budapest right from the beginning, that is why I visited Dunaújváros, to which I took a liking instantly. It was built around the time the city centre of my hometown, Plymouth, was rebuilt. The architecture and the general feeling of this strangely captivating town are enlaced with the striking marks of Stalinism, though with the less scary signs of the era. Throughout the years I visited at least 50 places around the countryside, like Pomáz, Gödöllő, Debrecen and Kecskemét.

I even wrote about the Great Hungarian Plain on several occasions in my book. I think it is an astonishing and attractive place. It is very inspiring.

Mark Burns: I was teaching at Szolnok for years, so I could get a real taste of what life is like in the countryside. I went to the Tisza cinema regularly, I knew the shops, the lunch bars. The town left a good impression.

Though I have to mention that

I was always reminded of our Western perceptions of the ‘Communist East’ based solely on what we saw in films,

when it came to Szolnok, especially at the end of the 1990s. This feeling was further strengthened by the huge army base where I was teaching and the enormous train station.

K.B.: Old-fashioned coffee houses are lacking in Britain, such a coffee house culture as the one we had and still have here was not ever present there. Do you like going to coffee houses?

N.J.: Nowadays we have coffee at franchises in England, it is true that we do not have traditional coffee houses. The traditional Hungarian coffee houses bearing almost historical significance from the Habsburg era cannot be translated into English. Although, I think that these coffee houses are mostly frequented by tourists nowadays.

I like those cafés in Budapest where you can meet the locals. Where the puff pastry is good, and they have plum dumplings flavoured cake.