Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Hungary’

Viennese Advent

Posted in Branching Out, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 18, 2015| 2 Comments »

Straw Stars cropped

Straw Christmas Star Ornaments, purchased at the Wien Kriskindlmart in Vienna, Austria in 1978 by the Matteson family. Photo Credit; Sam Matteson

Sitting beside my son of thirty-seven years, I bit into the grilled bratwurst and was instantly transported to Vienna, carried there in the same way that Proust was prompted to recall his youth while tasting a Madeleine and tea in Remembrance of Things Past. The salty and smoky taste of the sausage coupled with the tang of the spiced mustard filled me with a sense of inexplicable joy. To me this is the undeniable flavor of the advent season.

A little less than thirty-seven sevens before, a time when I looked very like my child does today, my family and I had completed our sojourn in Budapest, Hungary. The gray days of late November in Communist-era Hungary added an oppressive air to the already gray cityscape. We were well treated by our hosts, who earned our life-long friendship by their kindness, but we longed to return home to the United States, more and more as the months dragged by. At last, the day arrived for our scheduled departure. The day before I had shipped the majority of our clothing to Munich by train.

I experienced firsthand the frustrations of navigating a rigid bureaucratic state that day. Only dollars would be accepted for international shipments I learned after standing in a long queue. The station shipping department could not accept traveler’s checks even if in dollar denominations. That was the job of the bank. At the bank in the station I stood in yet another line to have the checks cashed with a 3% fee, of course. The bank would only dispense the cash in Hungarian Forints, however. “But I need the cash in dollars,” I complained. I was directed to yet another line at the monetary exchange where for a high fee and a highly unfavorable but centrally determined exchange rate, I ultimately obtained the requisite cash to pay for the shipment. After nearly three hours of exasperation this task was accomplished.

I had heard the Hungarian quip that if you see a queue protruding from a shop you should get in the line. There was bound to be something good at the end of it. I also heard that a certain Gabor had been in a line so long that he said to the lady behind him that we was going to go to the ministry of commerce to complain. He left, only to return a few minutes later and reenter the queue with the explanation, “The line at the complaint department is even longer than this line. Mit tudok tenni?” The latter was a phrase meaning “What can I do?” that we heard often both as an offer of help and as a cry of resignation frequently rendered with a shrug. I understood the feeling well and experientially after my time in the shipping department.

 We Had a Plan

On the morning of our departure, we mapped out a plan and then proceeded to execute it. We cleaned the apartment, collected our three children, and packed all the remainder of our belongings into the Simca sedan we had purchased from a friend in Germany a few months before. It was a decent if modest conveyance, even if the floor board was rusting out from too many Bavarian winters and their salt. It would not have passed the TUV the next year, I fear. Since we had no garage, we had left the white car parked out front of the apartment building where it gradually had turned gray, as it acquired a thick coating of Budapest grime. I was concerned once when I came out to the car one morning a few weeks earlier to find a word drawn by a small finger in the dust on the rear window. It read, “PISZKOS.” I asked my host the meaning of this graffiti, to which he replied, “It’s dirty.”

I responded, “It’s okay, Peter, you can tell me what it means, I am a big boy.”

He then laughed and continued, “No! The word is not vulgar. It means, ‘I am dirty,’ you know like ‘Wash me!’ in the US. The school kids on your block were just giving you some advice.” Unfortunately our time was up before I could learn enough Hungarian to have the car washed so we traveled in a piszkos autó.

Our first stop the morning of our departure was to check out with the local police at their neighborhood rendőrőrs (guard house) as required by law for resident aliens such as we. For months we had been aliens all the while I had been a visiting researcher in an exchange between the United States National Science Foundation and the corresponding entity in the Magyar Koztarsasag (Hungarian Republic, what Hungarian call their nation).

Next we motored through the crowded streets of the capital city, dodging honking Ladas and Vilamos electric trams as well as thousands of pedestrians. We pulled up to the Intourist office and returned our keys to the manager and signed more paperwork.We now were officially homeless. We had also expended almost all of our Hungarian currency and dollars, since we were prohibited from “exporting” currency from the country. Thus, we were nearly penniless. We hoped to replenish our cash reserves by cashing a personal check at the AmEx office in the Austrian capital. This was in the days before international banking and the convenience of widely accepted US credit cards in Europe.

One Last Stop

The Ministry of Culture was our final stop before embarking up Bécsi utca (Vienna Road) for the 250 km (150 mile) trip to Vienna and the approximately three hours of driving (plus one hour at the border station at Hesgeshalom). We were, we had been told, to return our “staying permits” and reclaim our US passports at the ministry offices. Thus, as properly documented aliens we could depart by vehicle. When I was able, after several minutes of futile inquiry, to reach an English speaking official, I was told that the request was supposed to have been made two weeks prior to our departure, a fact nobody had informed us of.

I told the assistant that that was unfortunate, indeed, since we had been informed otherwise and that we now had no apartment, no money, and must drive to Vienna before the American Express Office closed so that we could find accommodations for the night. The image of Carolyn sitting with our three children in the echoing hallway is seared into my memory. I gave my long-suffering wife a hasty brief of our situation, then added “If little Peter [our six month old] starts to cry don’t try too hard to pacify him. You don’t have to pinch him or anything, but the more annoying we are, the more motivated they will be to get us on our way.” Anyway even a communist bureaucrat cannot be unmoved by a crying infant, I reasoned. Whether, our desperate measures were the reason or not, we will never know, but the passports eventually materialized hours later and we were on our way, but well after noon. All that lay between us and Vienna were two hundred fifty kilometers and a heavily armed border.

In the days of preparation before funds were exhausted, snacks and juice had been purchased for the trip at the local fruit stand and at the government-run ABC market at the train station. These victuals fortified us as we sped through town past empty shop windows. I noticed an irony: finally a shop was displaying clothes pins for sale that had been unavailable for the nearly four months of our visit. As we headed out the Vienna Road, I also recalled a story my host had told me. István and Gabor were chatting.

“That is a beautiful coat you have on Gabor. Where did you buy it?” István asked.

“Bécsi utca, the Vienna Road.”

“I was out that way yesterday. I saw no coats like that for sale.”

“Ah!” said Gabor, “”You went to the wrong end.”

We were on our way to the other end, now. But the clock was ticking. Would we make it by 1700 hours?  That time, 5:00 p.m., was when we though the American Express Office would close. If we arrived too late. what then? My mind reeled at the potentially awful scenarios.

To Be Taking Picture, Forbidden!

Photo TilosAt the border, the cars lined up waiting to be searched, for what I was never certain. The scene was intimidating. Gray flannel clad soldiers carrying machine guns paced before the barbwire-topped fences. Nearly an hour passed as we incrementally crept forward. We have no photographs of Hegeshalom, by all accounts a lovely village. On the highway were posted signs of cameras with a forbidden slash symbol that we had seen before near Soviet military posts. We learned that this Hungarian phrase Fényképezni Tilos means the taking of pictures forbidden! We complied as quickly and courteously as we could with the instruction to completely unpack the car, then repack it when none of our suspected contraband or our hidden defectors were uncovered.

Vienna, At Last

We roared into the Stadt Mitte of Vienna a few minutes after 5:00 p.m. and ran as fast as a couple, two toddlers, and an infant can move to the AmEx office. They were open! Until 1800 hours, thankfully. We cashed a check, learned of where we could book accommodation, and what was happening in the city center that evening. Across the cobble stone square we made reservations for that night at one of the most luxurious hotels of our entire European adventure. All the Mattesons were exhausted by our headlong flight from Eastern Europe and the adults decided that it was foolhardy to ask the children to submit to sitting in a civilized restaurant in our condition.  We strolled the Wien Kriskindlmart (Vienna’s Christ Child Market), a wonderland of glittering lights and Christmas festival foods that runs daily during advent. We marveled at the opulence of objects in the shop windows of Austria’s jeweled city. The lights and the tree shed a soft and welcoming glow across our path. Hot tea and cocoa warmed us. Pretzels, strudel, and cookies satisfied our hunger. Indeed, it was for us Wiener Adventszauber (Viennese Advent Magic). Among the ornate and expensive items we found more humble but equally delightful ones. We selected traditional straw stars that even at this Christmastide adorn our tree. I found my grilled bratwurst and senf (spicy German-style mustard), and it tasted of joy, the joy of freedom, the joy of knowing that we had completed something significant in our lives, and the joy of a faith affirmed that though the way may be hard, by God’s grace we can triumph over hardship. This I feel again every time I taste once more my Viennese Advent. May your advent be filled with joy also.

Vienna Christ Kildl Mart

Vienna Rathaus Kriskindlmart 1978 Photo credit: Sam Matteson

Read Full Post »

All-day-singing and Dinner-on-the-Grounds

Posted in Beach Spring, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Church Towers

In Europe one cannot avoid the presence of ancient church houses. Their towers dominate the skyline while the influence of the congregations who built them has waned. Photo credit: Sam Matteson 1978.

I saw much of the public kind of religion growing up. I saw it put on like Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, but it did not always fit well like the too tight dress shoes you out grew not long ago. I saw. I was not blind. I could tell that it was a show that made no difference most of the time. But many of us for “Momma’s sake” or “old time’s sake” or just for “Pete’s sake” went through the motions. I wondered if some folk were touchy about religion because the one they had was not really theirs. They must have borrowed it, for even bringing up the subject made them feel a sham, and a good thump from a question was enough to produce an echoing hallow “thud” from the empty shell of their faith.

Even I went dutifully to church despite such considerations. In defense I cultivated strategies to endure the deadening weight of stultifying music inexpertly rendered with pretension and immodest but undeserved pride; I sat through endless pompous orations delivered with stentorian rhetoric that seemed so interminable, irrelevant and beside the point of my life. I found that I could entertain myself with mental games that only occasionally were disruptive. For example if I stared at the podium, spot lit with a single bright light, I could burn into my retinas the image of the scene so that I could erase the figure of the sweating evangelist and he would disappear. I could still hear his voice however.   I counted the holes in the tiles and did mental arithmetic calculating the average number of holes per tile and per square foot. As much as I could I often went elsewhere in my mind.

Despite the boredom I complied with my parents command to get ready every Sunday morning without audible protest partly because of the guilt I felt whenever I was apostate and partly because of the deep-seated hope that flickered in my breast that perhaps I would at last meet God in the church and that He would begin to answer some of my most troubling questions. But I was taught to look with suspicion on novelty in matters religious; questions raised by science and “Higher Criticism” were dismissed by most as new fangled and suspect. The “old time religion” we sang about that was “good enough for Paul and Silas” had to be “good enough for me.” Unfortunately and paradoxically, the religion of my fathers I learned was a twentieth century contrivance, and I suspected that the novelty of the first century Jesus-way would have shocked the congregants and parishioners of my church with its alien form and Middle Eastern subtlety.

All Day Singing and Dinner on the Grounds

Now don’t get me wrong; there were plenty of things that I liked about the church, but they mainly had to do with the people, imperfect as they were. We were a family, or a community at the very least. I felt loved and cared for by people who did not have to give a care about me, but did nevertheless. This community of a few hundred souls was nowhere more evident than when we had “All day singing and dinner on the grounds.” The church potluck was something I looked forward to with the pleasure of a healthy adolescent appetite. Of course there was an etiquette and morality that was not spoken of in public nor declared explicitly but that you learned at home. I can still hear my mother’s admonition: “Never take as much as you want. If there is only a little left in the pot take no more than half. Remember the people in line behind you. Don’t embarrass your momma or your God. You don’t want to make God or me blush, now do you? Instead make them both proud of you.” I perversely dreamed of an all day dinner (and singing on the grounds) when we could have as much as we wanted. When I heard stories about heaven this metaphor always leapt to mind. I wondered about what was the church, at the first. I hoped it was like what I dreamed of.

The study of the origin of words that we daily use tells us much about how humans have used (and misused) them over the ages and what we are unwittingly saying when we speak them. The etymology of the word “church” in English versus the New Testament word “ekklesia” (the called out ones) that it translates is informative in this regard. Scholars of language tell us that “church” originates in the non-Biblical Greek word “kyriakon” (literally “of the Lord”) perhaps also a contracted form of “kyriake oikon” (Lord’s House). Over the centuries the word slipped into Gothic dialects as kirche that, in turn, migrated to “church” in English. How different is the current meaning and connotation of this word from the original meaning it translates! It seems that “church people” have mistaken the church house for the “called out ones” that assemble there, substituting architecture for biology. The Apostle Paul likens the ekklesia to the body and bride of Christ, a living entity, not a brick and mortar edifice.

Over the decades of my life, as I wandered from place to place, I came to understand more of this reality. I saw empty church houses throughout the world: beautiful buildings dedicated to God but that had no life within them any more. I have also observed ecclesiastical institutions that still functioned but were as empty of real vitality as a deserted kirk on the moor. Gratefully, I have known exceptions.

When we arrived in Pasadena for our sojourn in a postdoctoral assignment we, as was our custom, visited the local church house on Sunday early in our stay. When we walked into the meeting room we were immediately embraced by the group that included (to our surprise and delight) friends that we had known years before and thousands of miles away. The seminarians in the small gathering of the Sunday School, who were as transient as we, showed us that we must “love in a hurry.” Strangers no longer, we went deep and were loved well even to this day.

A Sojourn in the Desert

Our assignment called for a time abroad in Germany and Hungary. Despite our best intentions, we were unsuccessful at connecting with a local congregation in the six months we were abroad. Surrounded by kind but secular friends and coworkers, we were nevertheless “on our own” spiritually. It was a sojourn in the desert, dry and difficult. We felt the presence of God as we traveled but we missed the encouragement and fellowship that we had known in Pasadena. Great was the rejoicing when we returned. I resolved never again to live in isolation.

Thus, as we have relocated the several times in our itinerant life, we have sought out where God would have us graft into His body, the church. There were occasions of heartache, for sure, on this journey when human imperfections caused hurt in the body. There were times of desperation that drove us to our knees, as when our long-time faith family came close to shuttering the church house doors. But from our humbled position God amazed us and filled our hearts with joy as we realized that it was not “our” church but His. Yes, it was a Lazarus moment when the congregation roared back to life as satellite a “campus” of a larger, healthier body. Ultimately, the resurrected congregation became again a separate and independent entity, unique in its context and membership. It was then that I re-learned that a real church was not a social club but a living, breathing collection of Christ-following but not yet-perfected-saints committed to Christ and one another.

It was there I was known most intimately for the first time outside of my family and—wonder of wonders—loved anyway by my brothers and sisters in Christ, a terrestrial example of heavenly grace. When we were led at my retirement to leave the college town to be nearer our children, we grieved our separation from the dear saints we had come to love. In our annual migrations to and from our summer retirement home in the Colorado mountains, the pull of this faith family is irresistible. We inevitably find reason to deviate a few hundred miles from a direct route just to worship again with our sibs there, for it was there we learned that church means “doing life together,” complete with mutual accountability and encouragement. You cannot long mutually care deeply about others and appreciate them without it becoming habitual and natural.

Church Mosque Pecs

 

The church/Mosque in Pecs, Hungary that was constructed as the Pasha Gazi Kasim Mosque during the century-long Turkish occupation, demolishing the original Gothic church to obtain stones to build the mosque. Then in the 19th century, the building was rededicated for use as a church. In the foreground the Matteson girls pose in the late fall of 1978. Photo credit: Sam Matteson

 

 

 

 

So now that we have moved in retirement to two new locales, we as genuine “snowbirds” we have identified two congregations where we can do life. As we alternate seasonally between the two ranges, the Rockies and the Cumberland Plateau, we have endeavored in each venue to invest in the lives of our Jesus-sibs and be shepherded and nurtured in return. Thus, we hope that in a real sense we can continue to partake of an appetizer of the banquet that awaits the church, the All-day-singing and dinner-on-the-grounds.

Read Full Post »

A Great Name

Posted in Branching Out, tagged , , , , on October 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Villamos (Electric Tram) in Budapest. Photo Credit:

Villamos (Electric Tram) in Budapest. Photo Credit:
“Budapest tram 3” by Siemar – originally posted to Flickr as El 2. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons

The motor coach cruised the French countryside through fields of dazzling yellow canola. I and about thirty other conferees from an internationals scientific conference were enjoying an excursion to the CRNS laboratory in Saclay. The young graduate student in the window seat turned to me and glanced at my name tag. His eyes widened slightly and he exclaimed, “Are you the Matteson?”

I laughed but inwardly was pleased at the recognition. In the relatively small community of scientists in my field of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, I was indeed the only “Matteson.” I, perhaps like many who strive to become distinguished in their disciplines, secretly craved recognition and the acquisition of a great name. I was happy to exult for a few moments in the wan glow of a qualified superlative: I was in fact, the Matteson who had dripped an arcane fact-drop into the vast ocean of knowledge. I was pleased that the ripples of that discovery had caught his attention. But all I had done was uncover a scientific detail that would take an hour to explain to a layman and who would, at last, be left scratching his head in puzzlement at its dubious significance.

Canola fields, France. Photo credit: Scott Wenzel

Canola fields, France. Photo credit: Scott Wenzel

Over the years I had struggled with the desire to make something of myself which in the sciences consists of being the first to discover a phenomenon or to explain accurately a physical process. I had been trained well by my scientific mentor in my graduate student days to design and construct critical experiments. Dr. Powers had insisted that I become my most severe critic so that my work alone could answer any subsequent reviewer or reader. If anyone would read my published work, they could trust that the results were diligently obtained and the conclusions were trustworthy.

A Hungarian Sojourn

I recalled as we passed through the brilliant yellow kilometers how that years earlier for a few weeks in the summer and early autumn of 1978, I and my immediate colleagues were the sole trustees of the knowledge of the temperature dependence of a process called “ion mixing,” because we had completed a difficult but exciting experiment. I had been dispatched to Budapest by my post-doctoral mentors both to present the results at the biennial international conference and to remain in Hungary along with my family, consisting of a wife and three children, aged six, five, and four months.

After a few weeks of acculturation in Germany at the Max Planck Institut with my European collaborator and host, we had relocated to the east and set up housekeeping in an apartment in Buda the weekend before the conference. I stepped onto the Villamos, the electric tram, that ran to the city center. I was ready, clad in a dark suit and tie, my beard neatly trimmed but still full, my poster and the draft of my paper tucked securely in my brief case in my lap. As the tram neared the stop for the Institute for Science and Culture where the conference would be held, I pulled the cord that signaled my stop.

The dull yellow Villamos halted, the doors opened with a whoosh and I stepped down to the pavement, as inconspicuously as I could. I wanted to be mistaken for a Magyar, a Hungarian or at least a Német, a German from Munich, perhaps on holiday. An öregasszony clad in a black shawl, print dress and apron accosted me. From her crouched position, bent over with age, she looked up at me and began to berate me in Hungarian with a curled fist from which protruded an arthritic finger. Of course, I had no idea of what she was accusing me since my Hungarian consisted of only a few phrase book essentials, like please (kérem) and thank you (köszönöm). The pedestrians that coursed by on the busy street stared at the scene. When they looked at me, I only shrugged (as Hungarian-like as I could). Mercifully, the old granny moved off having relented briefly in her assault. She crossed the street while I headed in the opposite direction. I was relieved but felt guilty at my relief when I looked over my shoulder to see her addressing her harangue at another hapless man. “Not an auspicious beginning to my stay in Hungary,” I thought.

I was wrong. Fortunately, my work spoke for itself. Broken Hungarian was unnecessary. I was encouraged when one of the big names in the field acknowledged the significance of our results and also the typo of an erroneous minus sign in one of his published papers (that we had identified and he had previously corrected, but in an obscure errata). My post-doctoral mentors were pleased, as well, at the reception of the work. They were also delighted when their fears were put to rest at lunch that day. We dined with the Minister of Science for the nation of Hungary who was partially footing the bill for the exchange between the National Science Foundation of the US and his country. The future of the collaboration between Caltech, my academic home, and KFKI, the Hungarian National Institute for Physics hung upon his favorable impression. My Hungarian friend and host fidgeted with his white linen napkin as I told of my experiences over the weekend and my encounter with the old crone. I elaborated on my adventure at the meat market when I had held up five fingers and had tried to ask for öt szelet, five cutlets. The butcher, apparently very proud and protective of his Hungarian tongue, corrected my pronunciation. It seems I had learned to pronounce the difficult Hungarian short umlaut o from a southern Hungarian and those sounds offended his northern ears. I would later hear that I pronounced Hungarian words (since I did not actually speak Hungarian) with a Transdanubian, that is Austrian, accent. I do not think that it was a compliment.

The Butcher’s Friend

My host and my mentors all leaned back in their seats when the Minister remarked through his interpreter (although he spoke excellent English and understood every word I said as his immediate laughter revealed), ”It is clear who will be staying behind after the conference. He is the one who is making friends with the butcher.” We all laughed and relaxed a little. My mentors beamed at me, sensing the approval of this powerful man, when the his excellency patted me on the shoulder and said, ”You remind me of my son. I hope that you will have a productive and pleasant stay in our country.”  Then he lifted his glass for a toast to the collaboration.

It was indeed a grand adventure. Decades later I still remember those days with fondness and gratitude. That scientific paper (tudományos könyv) ultimately appeared in the scientific literature and has been cited many times. By it I began to achieve my childhood dream of becoming an explorer, not of geographical spaces, but of intellectual ones. Over the years, too, I have struggled with pride, wondering if it were unworthy to desire a great name. Then, I recently hear a sermon about Father Abraham and his call that liberated my heart at last.

Abram, as he was first called, heard the Almighty saying, “Go to a land that I will show you. . . . And I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.” Oh, how I identified with this call! I went to a far land when we sojourned in Hungary, where we dwelled as aliens and strangers. It was there I began to acquire a “great name,” at least among the small community to which I belonged. And the point of this “fame?” I learned finally to become a blessing. Ultimately as a professor, I was able to encourage thousands of students. One of my graduate assistants once even gave me a button that read, “Almost famous,” not quite world renown but important enough to a few. I pray that I have been and will continue to be a blessing to those who trail after me, that I will indeed be “The Matteson” who showed the way and the one that demonstrates that a great name can be earned even by a child sprung from the mud of the swamp of his youth.

The Matteson clan in Budapest 1978, (left to right) Anya Carolyn, kicsi (little) Peter, lánya Lisa (6), and nővére Carrie (almost 7) Photo credit: Sam Matteson

The Matteson clan in Budapest 1978, (left to right) Anya (Mother) Carolyn, kicsi (little) Peter, lánya (daughter) Lisa (6), and nővére (sister) Carrie (almost 7) Photo credit: Sam Matteson

Read Full Post »