Many years ago, just as my girlfriend and I arrived at the seaside, we ran into a cousin of hers. He boasted that his father had fixed him up to stay for free in a bungalow. When he found out we were looking for somewhere to stay, he invited us – the bungalow had four beds and would be his for another week.
He settled us in and hurried to take us to the beach. He was late for his date with two Hungarian girls – Erzsi and Bözsi – whom he had met there. They were girls our age and were already waiting impatiently for cousin Emil. I greeted them in Russian, the international language of our socialist camp back then, but they parried straight away: “Nem tudom.” Emil told me not to even try Russian. He got by with them by explaining what he wanted to say in pictures on the wet sand by the sea. They answered him the same way.
At a pinch, they also used the odd word of German. My girlfriend and I wondered how the three of them could amuse themselves for hours drawing on the sand. The Hungarian girls giggled quietly, and the cousin – like a typical Bulgarian Black Sea Casanova – loudly and in a macho baritone.
In the afternoon he explained in sign language that he had a car and was inviting all of us to Burgas. He wanted to treat us to a big glass of fizzy boza. He wouldn’t rest until both of them had learnt to pronounce the word boza properly.
In the pastry shop he brought a tray with 5 big bozas to our table. He looked as if he were serving us divine ambrosia sent to him by Zeus himself, a personal friend of his. The three Bulgarians drank our bozas at once and even licked our lips. The Hungarian girls hadn’t touched their glasses and were staring at us in horror. They stood up, pale, and showed with their fingers that they would wait for us outside, they wanted a little walk.
Emil smoothed over his blunder somewhat in front of a kebapche grill. He got them to breathe more deeply and decide whether they wanted some kebapcheta.
There we wolfed down three kebapcheta each with shopska salad, and the colour came back to the two girls’ little cheeks. That is all I remember of Erzsi and Bözsi from the year 1974.
In 1977 the Bulgarian State Railways brought out a special student discount for travelling on the Sofia–Prague–Budapest route. Two friends and I decided to take advantage of it. We left for Prague on 07.07.1977 – the day on which the end of the world was supposed to arrive /because of all the 7s in the date/.
There one of us fixed it for us to sleep for free in a friend’s room in the student halls. Not only did the end of the world not come, but we had a good time and well within our budget. After a week we reluctantly took the train to Budapest. We arrived early in the morning and immediately fell into the trap of the language barrier. The Hungarians spoke only their own language. One of us knew French well, another English, and I German and Russian, but so what?
For hours we wandered about looking for cheaper lodgings, guessing whether the signs meant what we were looking for. The station was in the Pest part of the city, where we went round in helpless circles until the afternoon, when we were absolutely desperate for the toilet.
Luckily for us, we spotted a low building, similar to ours. There were little signs on both sides of it, but they didn’t say “Homes” and “Dames”, but “Noi” and “Ferfi”. The very prospect of imminent relief made our bladders fit to burst, but we didn’t dare go in or pee next to the building. Quite some time passed before at last a man ducked in on the “Ferfi” side, and we flew in after him.
Inside we got talking, and the man in question turned out to be a Bulgarian on a business trip, and he told us how to get to the nearest hotel. We were pretty fed up by then and quickly gave in and stayed the night there for more than a third of the money we had, and to make up for it we skipped dinner.
In the morning we took advantage of the free coffee at the hotel and fretted about how we would manage for money until, a week later, the date on our tickets to Sofia came round.
I remembered that those two Hungarian girls were from Budapest, and that when the cousin and I had seen them off at Burgas airport, they had written their addresses in our notebooks in their own hand. I told my friends this, and that I had the notebook with me, and we set off hopefully into the city. I shoved the addresses written in Hungarian under the nose of the first young man we met and he took us to Erzsi’s.
There was a big inner courtyard there with 4 tall, very old buildings of 5–6 storeys each. My friends fell silent, but I, the man who had taken on the role of “the catcher in the rye”, rejected the passive option of waiting who knows how long for Erzsi to turn up from somewhere.
We sat on the bench in the middle of the courtyard, and I stood up and started shouting loudly, with my hands cupped round my mouth: Erzsi! Erzsi-i! E-er-zsi-i-i!!
If I had done the same in a similar Bulgarian courtyard, indignant residents would have leapt out onto the balconies and given me an earful. I was encouraged by the thought that either the people living in the buildings had died long ago, or they were used to someone down below shouting the name of their neighbour Erzsi every day at that time. After a while my friends began shouting in sync with me.
Soon Erzsi herself appeared on a balcony, and this time she looked much prettier to me. She gestured for us to come up to the third floor for coffee. Her grandmother was at home too, and she made it and served it without showing the slightest curiosity, as if we were old acquaintances.
Over coffee, Erzsi and I “reminisced” about the seaside. She said “boza” with a frown, then “ke-bap-che”, and after rolling her eyes, she pointed at me: Bo-zho-mil?
I decided to get straight to the point and “explained” our problem to her. How I did that almost without words and without drawing on wet sand I don’t remember, but she seemed to understand me, because she picked up the phone and shortly afterwards led us off to Bözsi’s. Clearly her little flat only had room for her and her grandmother.
The bus was almost indecently clean and the three of us looked around anxiously for tickets, but Erzsi gestured to us to keep calm. At one stop a uniformed conductress got on and simply sold us three tickets, and with a smile at that.
We looked around curiously and noticed that quite a few young people sat in their seats without glancing round guiltily, while some old codgers stood, but didn’t hurl “harsh abuse and cold words” at them. To top it all, the young Hungarian women on the bus weren’t wearing bras, and with every jolt their breasts bounced like piglets in a sack.
The bus crossed the Danube and crawled up the streets of Buda. Yesterday we had been annoyed that we had abandoned Prague for some Budapest or other, and today we were wondering what on earth we had liked so much about Prague.
We arrived at Bözsi’s. We were ready to sleep on the floor, as long as it was free. Her house turned out to be big, with a garden of closely trimmed grass and a view of the Danube. She put us in separate rooms and invited us for coffee and whisky outside, in the shade of a marquee. She and Erzsi disappeared somewhere, and we, who had never seen such wonders, didn’t dare believe what was happening. There followed a lavish dinner, which the two Hungarian girls prepared and served for us. Late in the evening Erzsi left, and Bözsi showed us to our rooms. I lay awake for a long time, replaying in my head the magical film of the day on which fate had smiled on us.
In the morning after breakfast the two of them took us to Gellért Hill above the Danube, with a fortress, musicians and views of the river and the lower part of the city – Pest. We had coffee in a bar where a man played the piano and quietly sang popular hits in English. Then the girls steered us into a restaurant nearby, because they were hungry. We, sensing that we might well have to pay the bill, had only a beer each, while the two of them ate a pretty hearty meal.
We somehow “justified” ourselves to them by saying that after such a big breakfast, we Bulgarians wouldn’t even dream of lunch. In the afternoon the two of them took us back to Bözsi’s estate, where, to our surprise, her parents were waiting for us, having already laid out a sumptuous spread fit for a banquet.
It crossed our minds that maybe they wanted to take their daughter home so she wouldn’t be left alone in the house with three dark Balkan characters, but they were in the mood for a party all together, and that is exactly what we got. Dancing, jokes, stuffing our faces and lots of laughter, perhaps because the parents plucked up the courage to speak Russian too.
The next day, after breakfast and coffee, as far as the three of us could tell, the two girls seemed to have suggested going to a swimming pool, which worried us. We explained to them, after a fashion, that first we had to buy swimming trunks, because we hadn’t brought any. They gave us a puzzled look, but took us to a shop and waited for us outside.
We each bought a pair for a whole 12 leva in our money, when in Bulgaria they cost up to 3 leva, and came out a bit sulky. The two of them were also a little sour, but they put us on some cheerfully painted little train, which took us to an artsy little town called “Szentendre”. In the streets there were artists selling their paintings, and every other house was an art gallery.
Nothing to do with a swimming pool.
The look on the Hungarian girls’ faces suggested they had brought us here only because of our whim, and ours said: “So where’s this swimming pool of yours, the one we spent a fortune on trunks for?”
But all of us began to like the little town more and more. In the end the two of them got tired and hungry, and so did we. They pointed out a beautifully painted house nearby, an arty tavern it seemed, at the sight of which we lost our appetite. We offered them an alternative: to grab a sandwich on our feet and have a little beer in the street. Suddenly Bözsi blushed and spoke in pure Russian:
“Sandwich – dry! Beer – warm! Nyet, I don’t want that!”
In the tavern we were amazed that people sang along to the tunes from Kálmán’s operettas drifting over, and soon all five of us had joined in. Singing, we “forgave” the Hungarian girls for the swimming trunks, and they forgave us – perhaps even for having landed ourselves on them at all. Again they ate a lot, and we drank wine. Our money stretched even to a tip, and we went home almost collapsing with laughter on the way.
What we found funniest was how Bözsi had suddenly started speaking Russian so as not to go hungry, and what they found funniest, perhaps, was that we Bulgarians buy swimming trunks before going to an open-air art gallery. We filled the little train and the bus with our giggling, and even infected some of the passengers. Real oddballs, these Hungarians – the whole time we were in Budapest, not one of them told us off!
We got back “home” grinning from ear to ear. Erzsi stayed the night at Bözsi’s, and Bözsi invited her parents over by phone, and once again there was a crazy party. Meanwhile it turned out that Erzsi also knew a bit of Russian, and the language barrier between us collapsed completely. A pity, because our funniest misunderstanding was due precisely to that barrier.
As we danced with the two of them and with Bözsi’s mother, we were both cheerful and cross with life, according to which everything comes to an end.
Days later the Hungarian girls saw us off at the station. They weren’t cheerful, and to make them laugh we said “Egészségedre” to them – cheers in Hungarian – and they said “kebapche” to us.
Right there at the station in Sofia, to drown our sorrows, we each had a sandwich and a little beer, remembering Bözsi’s words:
“Sandwich – dry, beer – warm”. That was exactly what awaited us again, we students who had lived it up abroad.
