Joška and Vanji were on their special schedules, vacations and whatnot, so we got somewhat off cycle this time. So we had no transportation but public. To Szeged with Go. Got the bus to Délkút, then tried train to Gemenc, but it was bus again. Not that I was lost on the bus station there, but I was getting a bit confused with which is our bus, didn't quite have the time to see the markings... I just went on a hunch and followed the best young female ass, two perfect hemispheres, that I could see. The instinct didn't fail me - she was of Gemenc, and we got to exactly the bus we needed to.
There was a spare chaise longue, which was very short to play the role of a regular couch. It was fine while Joška slept on it, given his size, and wasn't too shabby for Go for a few days.
Joška has already moved to the front room, with Vanji. It's a panonian pressed-clay house, minimal windows, the room is dark. Of course, the old woman heats it only when she must. Once someone asked Vanji whether it's cold there. „Joška covers himself with a duvet up to his beard, while this guy sleeps in just underpants and no cover. I don't know whether it's cold or not.“
Of hungarian she learned nary a thing in these ten days, but at least she learned the reading, which is actually straightforward, the rules actually exist and fit half a page of text (to differ from english, ahem, sorry about your languague). There's only a few exceptions, like the ch sound which is regularly written as cs, but for historical reasons may be a ts or cz in some surnames*. Ditto for ty, which is regularly a very soft ch (as in gotcha, just an octave softer), but may be a ti in some surnames, but pretty much everything else is straight. And of course, once she saw CSNY on a playlist slip on one of our cassettes, it was pronounced as čnj (cs as ch, ny as nj, as in nyu yorke). We kept referring to the band as čnj ever since.
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* old gentry mostly, „we may have lost our lands, but let's be recognized at least in orthography“
30-III-2020 - 20-XI-2024