Tuesday was a bit of a train wreck. My mom has been looking all over for these “traditional” Hungarian Christmas stockings to buy one for me. She has found them on the internet from a Hungarian family living in New Jersey. Unfortunately every Hungarian I’ve met – IN HUNGARY – has NEVER seen these stockings. Well… perhaps they’re catering to an American market? I think so! At any rate, the stocking is beautiful and it is completed in a traditional Hungarian way in terms of the embroidery and appliqué process. At some point, she saw on line that they were made in the Hungarian city of Sopron. This is a beautiful town that incidentally I had never been to. So, we asked my colleagues if I could take Tuesday off and go with my mom to Sopron in search of these stockings. We got on the train and made the two hour journey to the city that touches the border of Austria.
The city itself is beautiful. In the winter time it kind of shuts down though, and there wasn’t much in terms of traffic out and about. It was also raining out, and I was still recovering from my earlier bout with what could have been H1N1 so it probably wasn’t the best choice that I was walking around in the rain the entire day. There was an old walled area of town that seemed like the place to go in search of these stockings, and unfortunately we struck out, but it was a beautiful area to tour. We stopped at a Hungarian folk art store where a woman was actually doing the embroidery on linens and had produced the majority of things in her store. I wish I could have afforded some of the embroidery because I would rather support someone who actually completed the work rather than the machine made stuff that I see in Budapest. We continued walking and came to an old church that we wanted to check out. We were there just in time for the end of church so we waited for everyone to leave. There was a Catholic school adjoining the church and all the kids had been at a service. I swear 500 children came pouring out of this small little church- they just kept coming and coming, it was amazing. I couldn’t figure out why they’d all be at church on a Tuesday, with their parents waiting to pick them up afterwards- but then I looked at a calendar and there was something written on a calendar there about Maria, so in my infinite wisdom I asked my mom if there was a Mary holiday on that day. Well, how disappointed was she when she sighed and said “ugh, it’s the feast of the Immaculate Conception.” I think that 98% of my Catholic teachings has left my brain since I left the Catholic schooling system. Oh well, at least it explained why school was let out early and all these kids were at church. We had a nice lunch and returned for an early evening in Tata. I'm glad we went because it's a city I've wanted to see, but the weather made it a little less than fun to be there. Oh well. AND we didn't find the stockings anywhere - in case you were wondering
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