Lelki Cukkini?

You've seen our spiritual pizza and spiritual cherry pie. How about spiritual zucchini? Or at least zucchini bread? When we visit members or have them over, it helps us with our Hungarian if we have a repeating theme to talk about, and thus perfect as we go along.

Here's the zucchini bread we are taking to all the members, active or not. We are taking their picture to create a book everyone can refer to. That way we (and whoever comes after us) will recognize the members on the street in this small friendly town. We also sing to them "As I have loved you, love one another" and invite everyone to come to church or give them some other spiritual challenge. The zucchini bread tastes great and everyone so far loves the visits--and our Hungarian is getting better.

Birthday Bash

Why is this bi-plane buzzing our house?


They must have smelled the birthday goulash cooking in the backyard, Hungarian style.

It looks better with each new ingredient added about half an hour apart--two handfuls of chopped onions, six handfuls of cubed meat, a handful each of chopped tomatoes and paprika powder, two handfuls chopped carrots, and finally towards the end three handfuls diced potatoes--give or take a handful or two of each ingredient according to taste. Half a tube of goulash paste hits the spot. The whole process takes about four hours. Add water a little at a time. Too much water all at once dilutes the flavor. It's done when you can easily mash a potato with your stirring spoon against the side of the pot. The smoke adds just the right touch that you can't get if you cook this in the kitchen. Make sure you have nice man-sized hands for the measurements if you want to serve 15 guests two or three helpings.

Did you say you needed some more wood chopped?

Do the birthday people Erika, Elder Thompson, and Csaba look happy with their presents, a lasagna pan and a Csaba plate for his motorcycle? (You can't see my chocolate bar.)

How about the joy on the faces of the guests eating away? Notice the traditional Thompson Birthday Cake (watermelon) for all the dieters.

Zone Conference in Györ

Wednesday we had zone conference in nearby Györ so we got to see another of the chapels in Hungary. Györ is a ward in the Budapest Stake. The chapel is hidden away in the midst of apartment buildings and is easy to miss if you don't know the right alley to go down, but it is in a pretty setting, as you can see.

Volt Fesztivál

All this week we have been having the Volt Festival--billed as the largest youth concert in Eastern Europe. It is located in the forest about 4 long blocks from our house. Downtown by the church this booth has been selling advanced tickets at a discount since April.

Last year over 70,000 young people came from throughout Europe, most camping out in the woods since all the panzios and hotels have been booked up for months. Most of the events start at about 4 and go on simultaneously until 2 or 3 in the morning on two large stages and five smaller stages spread through the woods and surrounded by acres of campsites. Almost 200 bands from throughout Europe perform various types of music from classical to folk to pop to rock. In some of the smaller venues, various famous European DJs take their turns entertaining the troops for an hour or so for a change of pace.

When we came home from our zone conference in Györ on Wednesday, they had 6 extra cars on the train packed with kids. We walked the mile home rather than try to fit on our bus. They have extra busses every 10 minutes or so packed with riders from the incoming trains. Still, hundreds walked with us up the hill. It was like swimming upstream with the salmon during spawning season.

The grassy sides of the streets everywhere in town but especially on the streets near our house are filled with picnickers and people enjoying the sun until the events start at 4. It costs $50 (10,000 forint) for a day ticket, $135 (25,000 forint) for the full four days if you buy at the gate. Most everyone we see has the wristband for the four day ticket.

Our normally empty neighborhood convenience store has been packed with customers getting picnic supplies.

Of course, the first thing the bakeries run out of is the delicious Hungarian version of the hotdog.

The trails that we hike on through the woods are filled with cars and tents. If you look closely you can see the masses of young people heading down the trail to the festival.

Here they are at the official entrance.

Since the festival is over the hill and deep in the forest, we don't hear a thing other than the sound of lots of people singing and talking as they walk up or down the hill in front of our place all day and night. Being from Florida, it all reminds us of spring break--lots of energy and fun--but at that price, we'll stay home. We'll see if we get any extra comers at church on Sunday.

Was it really popcorn?

Was that really popcorn popping on these trees last spring?

They look more like apricots now! And they taste much better than popcorn--nice and sweet. We were thinking of making jam with the bagful that Tibor, one of our English students, gave us, but they were just too delicious. You can see why people love Hungarian fruit.

Primary activity

As you can tell, we're having so much fun as missionaries helping people to enjoy the gospel. This month the primary activity was to go to the movies together. We saw the animated Rio. It was great. (Mom and I called it our Hungarian lesson for the day.) Afterwards we treated everyone to ice cream sundaes at McDonalds.

Returns on investments

My mission president in Germany taught us "invest in people, not in things." That's what we've been doing here. One of our investments has been to encourage the members to plant gardens. We gave many of them seeds, small tomato plants we started on our balcony, and bulbs of various flowers. These beautiful gladiolus are an example of the return we have gotten from our investment.

Villa Row

On one of our walks we came upon a hidden street called Villa sor or Villa Row, filled with huge single family homes, many built probably 100 years ago. Most big houses like this now have two or three families living in them. These are still single family homes. Here is the back of the chapel that served the residents. This is a reconstruction but the original was built in the 1700s.

The following are a selection of the homes. Notice the different roof and window styles. That's what we like about Hungary. The first one is for sale. Anyone want to come join our branch in Hungary?

Dope fiends?

This past month there were fields of poppies everywhere. You might wonder if opium is a major agricultural product here.

Actually, poppyseeds, which are sold by the package, are a basic food here.

As you can see, they are a basic ingredient of rétes, or strudel, as the Austrians call it.

These rolls are stuffed with them too.

I think Hungarians would have a hard time passing a drug test in the USA.

Picnic in the woods

We're in the foothills of the alps and the forests are magical and perfect for hikes.

You certainly would expect to see fairies and elves.

When the branch stopped for their picnic, it was a bit nippy for a late June day so we built a fire.

The wood was wet from the early morning rain so the fire was more smoke than fire if it burned at all.

All our events begin with a reading from our branch poet Marika.

The planners preferred vegetarian fare so these are the cream cheese, tomato and pepper sandwiches we had rather than pig fat dripping from bacon on bread.

I think the vegetarians were a bit too adventuresome in gathering mushrooms in the woods. Would you like to try one?

Sound of Music?

Have we been transported back in time to when everyone in Hungary wore fancy clothes instead of looking like Americans?

Nope1 These are just performers in the Sopron Folk Festival, sort of like the folk festival at the end of Sound of Music when the von Trapp family makes their escape from the Nazis. The first act we saw were these drummers. They were great with lots of showmanship, just what Thompsons are trained to look for. Notice that their drums are garbage cans, washboards, and various industrial containers--

Next up was this band playing Hungarian folk music. Here is a snippet.

They were followed by these horn players. Do you feel like the von Trapp family should be coming up soon?

There were lots of slap dancers for the rest of the evening.

The following is about as close as we got to hearing "auf wiedersehen--good night" sung to us. This last group sang and the little kids entertained us with their jig.

I guess we'll have to wait until we get home for our grandkids to sing to us. But I'm sure they'll all enjoy learning some slap dancing. Get ready to follow grandpa's lead.

New man cave?

You might remember that this was our guest room/computer room that Debbie, Eric, and Kim stayed in when they visited.

Our landlady needed the bed for another room in her guest house so she gave us a "French" bed. I've heard of French fries and French toast but never a French bed. Any way, with the new French bed our guest room has been transformed into a man cave. Do I look more manly in my man cave?

We'll test out sleeping on the French bed so we can give our recommendations to future visitors.