Kati and István's

I brought mom and dad to “show and tell” again since on Thursdays I have all new students I didn’t have last year. The first class was a bit awkward as I was also subbing for two other teachers, so there were 48 students in the class, 30 of whom I didn’t really know and who just happened to be there the day I brought my parents. It was a bit disoriented as the students are already a bit weaker in English so they are shy, and then many of the students didn’t necessarily know me, so they weren’t sure what to ask my parents. Many of the students who ended up asking them questions were not even my students, but it worked anyhow. My dad wowed the students at the end with his usual red cloth trick and it seems to captivate them every time. One girl asked him, “do you have to buy a new cloth every time?” and another girl asked me afterwards, “do you know how he did it? Can you tell me?” of course I didn’t tell her anything J

In the afternoon we wandered around town again and did some more shopping. We had a dinner planned for Kati and Istváns that night, so we had to get back and get ready for that too. I was trying to figure out a way that we could make sure to get ourselves out of Kati and Istváns house at a reasonable time. During my last lesson with István, he opened the door and greeted me with, “Hello Carla, I’m hangover.” Their Austrian friend Robert had been in town, and three consecutive nights they drank with him until the wee hours of the morning. I knew this could not, would not be the case with my parents and I. There also isn’t really a polite way to refuse anything in Hungary. They just don’t take no for an answer. So when planning for this particular dinner, especially after the time we had drinking the night before, I had to go in with a good escape idea.

We got to their house and they welcomed us warmly. They had some issues earlier that day and were without power for 10 hours, but they had prepared the food the day before and were ready to rock and roll with candles if need be. After a brief tour of the first floor, István poured liberal shots of pálinka for everyone to try. Oh boy… it was the real thing too – clear strong smelling liquid in a tequila bottle – so you know that someone made this in their basement somewhere- the real thing. Ugh…. It was a plum pálinka, but I’m still not convinced that there is actually a difference in the taste of all the different flavors. It just burns… burns… burns. SO, anyway, back to the tasting- my mom took hers like a trooper in a small sip, and a finishing large sip. I took mine like a Hungarian in one big gulp with the slightest shudder at the end, and my dad took a little sip. I offered to finish his, but I ended up not actually following through on that. We of course washed down the pálinka with wine – as most Hungarians do. Kati then served dinner. It was a delicious pörkölt with a wonderful pasta again. Pörkölt is like a Hungarian stew. It was absolutely wonderful, and canceled out the “salad” that we were served. The salad that we had was apparently a typical Hungarian thing – pickled peppers and tomatoes. They were a bit hot, and quite strange, but it was the “salad” that we had so we went with it. I found that if you just ate some of the peppers in conjunction with a mouthful of the pörkölt that it was tolerable, but it’s not something I would ever serve to anyone, but it was good to try. I also managed to work into the conversation that we would be getting a call from my brother in Japan that night at a certain time so we’d have to leave at a decent time. Of course this was not true, but we could have been there forever if we didn’t have an exit card like that. Don’t get me wrong, Kati and István are great people, but we were already thinking about the next day and getting 6 pieces of luggage to the train station and then to Vienna. We finished dinner with some rum cherries that they grew in their yard at their house on Lake Balaton. They were good, but again had alcohol involved in the consumption of them. After an enjoyable time there, we headed home to finish packing things up and get ready for the next day’s trip.