I just spent five days fully immersed in Hungarian culture as seen through the eyes of friends who had gathered with family to celebrate the 80th birthdays of their mother and father in the same year. Fabulous!
I will have much more to say about their warmth and generosity and a trip that will forever change my travel perspective. We stood in large gardens, drank homemade raspberry juice, grilled over an open wood fire, listened to men sing together as they had for decades, and ate too much (totally high fat, carbo-loaded) food that 80-year-old Grandma kept cooking and forcing on us.
In the men, I saw a similarity to my father (who died much younger): a mix of warmth, humor and the scars of a life hard fought with unexpected twists and disappointments along the way. Yet they were standing together still fighting the fight. Watched tolerantly by wives (and children) with whom I'm sure they had also argued and laughed in turns for decades. This unexpected feeling of connection in a totally different culture with a fully different history surprised and moved me. Dad would have appreciated that.
But then again, Dad probably wouldn't have as much appreciated the homemade schnapps as the rest of us, which was totally as hot as it looks here (not that they warned us before the first shot!).
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