Kate Honeywell, a member of Radlett's Singing Circle was one of the group who visited Dunaharaszti in Hungary last month and here she explains what happened.
On April 14th 2011, less than a year after Radlett hosted a school choir from Dunaharaszti, 15 women, three teenage girls and a seven year old boy queued excitedly at Luton Airport for the EasyJet flight to Budapest and our turn to be the guests. Armed with two specially learned Hungarian songs and a clear programme of our performances and leisure activities we were anticipating an excellent cultural experience. So it proved to be thanks to the liaison between our director Helen Lappert and Suzanna Connett, our Dunaharaszti contact, and the hard work of Sue Vale, our planner and coordinator, assisted by Singing Circle members with local knowledge and contacts.
After a warm welcome at Budapest airport from Marian, an English teacher, and Gabor, a music teacher, both of whom had come to us in 2010, we travelled by coach over the River Danube to our hotel. The Danube bisects the city into the hilly side (Buda) and the flat side (Pest) with several fine bridges joining the two. As the hotel was in Buda and our programme largely spent in Pest or beyond in Dunaharaszti we were to cross this beautiful, though not blue, river many more times over the four days, on cheap, clean efficient trams, on buses provided by our hosts or on foot.
Our first encounter with Hungarian food was an enormous shank each of smoked pork which none of us could finish, to the disappointment of our karaoke bar hosts. However, honour was later satisfied when we sang our Hungarian numbers with some of their regulars. Later still some of us discovered just how effective the herbal concoction in the intriguing little green phials in our hotel minibars was at counteracting the effects of rich food!
Friday began with an early warm-up and practice in our hotel, a scenic bus journey and then a full day in the pretty town of Dunaharaszti, where we were beautifully looked after by everyone we met starting with the staff and children at the primary school. On low tables in the classroom set aside for us were bottles of still and sparkling water and bowls of delicious little cheese snacks, like scones but much lighter. We were regularly offered these during the trip.
Although they were in their own clothes, aged 11 to 14, and clearly excited as they filed into the school hall where we were waiting on the stage, the children were a joy. Under the instruction of Suzanna, who teaches English at this ‘primary’ school, the children had worked hard to learn the lyrics to Abba’s Super Trouper and were keen to demonstrate their new-found skills. With Suzanna translating for Helen and the head teacher we had a delightful informal workshop with plenty of opportunities for the children to sing together with us. Other staff were either in the hall with cameras or creeping in at the back every few minutes. The event was neatly rounded off for us when we were walking to lunch and saw a picture of ourselves on a poster announcing our visit.
Lunch was a splendid leisurely buffet in a large, airy restaurant, courtesy of the mayor. To finish we were offered shots of a traditional take your-breath-away clear drink Palinka which some of us rather took to and named ‘firewater’. Afterwards we strolled through the town, ending up at their music school in the early evening ready to participate in a formal concert. The deputy mayor made a welcoming speech, we were treated to a variety of classical, jazz, pop, and traditional music by their orchestra and choir, a Hungarian folk group and several soloists and then we were on, singing with yet another group of youngsters. They did well with the music we had sent ahead and were kind about our rendition of the two Hungarian songs so we climbed back into our coach feeling good about our day in Dunaharaszti. Back in Buda the night was still young so some had supper at an attractive restaurant nearby whilst others sampled our hotel’s cuisine.
Our next engagement was not until Saturday evening so this was the day for experiencing the world famous Gellert thermal baths, starting with champagne in the dressing room, and then either swimming, wandering through the amazing Roman atria, steaming, chilling, being massaged by men or all of the above – in our case wearing bathrobes and swimsuits. In the afternoon we climbed the steep hill from the Gellert hotel to the Liberation Monument, the huge statue of a woman with upraised arms that looks out over the Danube from Buda. She holds a mighty palm leaf in an arch over her head and was erected by Russia to celebrate the replacement of the Nazi occupation by the Soviet one. She is awe-inspiring like so much that we saw in Budapest.
The architecture in the city was overwhelming particularly for those who had never visited an Eastern Bloc country and for the two of us old enough to remember the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviets. The inevitable Tesco Express, Macdonalds and a Lidl made no impact against the majestic stonemasonry all around us, mostly old but a few equally impressive modern structures.
On Sunday we had the chance, on bicycles and buses, to make up for daydreaming away school sessions on the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dry textbooks came alive as we visited specially preserved sites like Heroes’ Square, the Terror Museum, the Liberation Monument, and learned the chequered history of a nation with a past of invading or being invaded, of great power or terrible repression, of glories and suffering, of Asian origins and waves of later European influences. Some of these events happened within living memory and there was a general feeling amongst us of longing to know more.
But before that fascinating last day we had our last engagement to fulfil. We had been invited to ‘sing for our supper’ in a wine cellar underneath a bar in Üröm, north of Budapest. Once more we hopped onto a coach and over the Danube into the countryside for an evening that turned out to be the most fun of our entire visit. The landlord and his team served us great bowls of steaming goulash and drinks, including a tray of firewater shots. Whilst we ate they entertained us, beginning with the landlord in fine voice doing Elvis. They were such good musicians and knew so many familiar songs, that Helen quickly revised our planned performance. We did give them the liveliest numbers from our repertoire but mostly we all made music together and had a party, a few following the landlord’s lead in lubricating our throats with firewater. A lovely surprise was Sarah who borrowed a guitar and sang some of her own compositions with her mother, Helen, and another of the teenagers, Yasmin, for one or two of them. Our hosts complimented them, and then praised Sam who is only 7 but joined in tunefully with everything, and then thanked us. We complimented and thanked them. It was a truly cultural exchange and a delightful finale to our singing programme.
The Singing Circle in action!
