Catching up

Well I've been in Debrecen for almost two weeks now. I'm still fascinated by the fact that it's the second largest city in Hungary, and when you ask people who have lived here their entire lives what there is to do, the go to answer is "well there's the church..." and that's it. I have been lucky the last few days because I've had visitors - in fact, I'm more popular in Debrecen than in Tata I think. Not really, I'm just on the right side of the country now. Christie came to visit twice, and Tara came to celebrate part of the major holiday that we just had.

Sidenote: I'm at McDonalds, Istvan and Tomi are working - Eva must have the day off- and they've finally changed the bathroom code. Just in case anyone was keeping track.

For St. Istvan Day (August 20th) there was the nationally known "flower parade" here. I'd compare it (loosely) to the Rose parade. The floats are made out of flowers and organic material - but that's where the comparison ends. I was told by Kata to purchase a ticket for the stadium. The parade route ends in the stadium where the judges are and the different groups perform in the Stadium. So - I purchased a ticket, but the morning of, I never made it to the stadium. I figured that I'd have a better chance of seeing the floats up close if I just parked in an open spot. So I did just that - right in front of one of the malls.

This parade was fascinating to me for many reasons. First of all, there was a minimum 8 minute - up to 15 minute delay between each float. All of the floats were flanked both front and back by groups, but there were several long pauses in the parade. As evidence of this, the parade that had 16 floats - maybe there were 20 I don't remember - and several groups - took over three hours to complete. Now, I've never been strong in math, but that's about 5 floats an HOUR, maybe 6. Luckily I brought a book with me so It was not a complete loss. Additionally, I've found (and you've read) that Hungarians provide some of the best people watching in the ENTIRE world - and the morning of the parade was no different. The floats were nice - certainly not up to Rose Parade standards, but great for Hungary. Additionally, I was surprised to see that the remainder of the groups participating in the parade were solely dance groups- each accompanied by a band. There were groups from Italy, Brazil, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Finland, and other countries I can't remember. There weren't politicians, local businesses, any other groups than the cultural performers.

After the parade Tara came to town and we saw the parade again - later that night. I think it was just the "winners" of the competitions for floats that were featured in the evening parade, but to me it was the same thing again. Tara got to see some of it though, and I saw a couple groups that I missed earlier that morning so it was good. Also - we saw the BEST fireworks I think I've ever seen in my life. I kept saying "that was the finale - wow!" and they'd keep going. I saw fireworks I'd never seen before, and it went on for quite a long time. I feel like the presentation cost half of Hungary's operating budget, but it was worth it. I enjoyed it. All in all - good holiday.

Oh - by the way, it was a holiday celebrating the establishment of Hungary as a country - by St. Istvan (Steven). Just in case you were wondering.

float with cows and other animals

float representing Hungary

now THAT'S a uniform - just pin a piece of cloth on a white shirt... The whole band was like this

Hungarian long horn cattle and a traditional plains farmer/cowboy

even the pooper-scooper was covered in flowers

the support team - carrying bottles of water for the band

sexy majorettes - baton twirlers

Serbian dance group

belly dancers - why not?

another dance group with large balloons? or something like that

Bulgarians - I think

the final "float" - the street sweeper that came less than a minute after the last group finished... caused the crowd to scatter pretty quickly.