Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2006 (18. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)

2006-04-21 / 17. szám

Memories of Old Europe on the Upper East Side In a recent issue, the New York Times visited that part of New York where immigrants from Central Europe had settled - among them, many Hungarians - and created a few blocks long miniature models of their old countries. Our family came here 30 years ago this past March, and we still remember the streets where all the store signs were in Hungarian: Paprikás Weiss, where you could find all the familiar flavors of home, the little Mocca family restaurant, where a dark-faced waiter, I believe he was from India, welcomed us with perfect Hungarian words, and brought us goulash soup and great palacsinta, and Kovi Pali’s elegant Four Seasons restaurant, where even the greatest stars needed advance reservation. We bring you a few excerpts from the article, the parts about Hungarian heritage. -j-ONCE, New York’s Mitteleu­­ropeans lived side by side along Second Avenue, with the Czechs and Slovaks lodged in the walk­­ups of the upper 60’s and the 70’s, the Hungarians occupying the low 80’s, and the Germans in the high 80’s and 90’s. “It was very funny, the Czechs, next to the Hungarians, next to the Germans — just as it was in Europe,” is the way Jan Hird Pokorny, a courtly 91-year­­old Czech, put it, with the kind of droll appreciation of life’s odd arrangements that itself was an emblem of that Old World cul­ture. The days of ubiquitous Gemütlichkeit on the Upper East Side seemed to vanish toward the last decades of the 20th century, as terraced high-rises replaced working-class tenements, and the striver children and grandchildren of the immigrants fanned out to Queens and the suburbs. But those immigrant cultures are not entirely dead. A weekend anthropologist can find more than a few wizened survivors and still pulsing cultural remnants scat­tered among the raucous singles bars, nail salons and fusion res­taurants. Walk along Second Avenue or the blocks branching off it, and you’ll spot churches with ser­vices at least partly in Hungarian (Hungarian Reformed Church), German (St. Joseph’s Yorkville) or Slovak (St. John Nepomu­­cene). Sadly, Paprika Weiss, once the Hungarian Zabar’s, has been missing for roughly 10 years, its barrels of creamy apricot and prune lekvár a haunting taste-bud memory. But there are two ethnic food shops where pork sausages and salamis hang in the windows like vertical Venetian blinds, two heart-clogging bakeries, an irresistible marzipan shop and perhaps the nation’s only Hungar­ian bookstore, a hole in the wall rather grandiosely named Blue Danube Gifts. The little that is left emerges more fragrantly this time of year, as those who remain prepare for services and get-togethers on Easter, and stores like Schaller & Weber — German products since 1937 — and the slightly older Elk Candy Company decorate their windows with bunnies and eggs made out of things bunnies and eggs were never meant to be made of. Glaser’s Bake Shop is already fashioning its funny bunnies — confections that combine cake and chocolate and sell for $3.50 each. Yorkville Meat Emporium, once unapologetically Hungar­ian, is bringing out smoked hams dried for four month?, especially for Easter. Throughout the neigh­borhood, Hungarian boys are preparing to celebrate the day after Easter with an old custom — going to the homes of girls and spraying them with a scent of spring — even if it is cheap perfume. At the First Hungarian Literary Society, a 117-year-old private club on East 79th Street, whose members, mostly Jewish, generally don’t celebrate Easter, there are nonetheless more hands of gin rummy played and more plates of wiener schnitzel served because the snowbirds are return­ing from their Florida sabbaticals. The long-dormant Bohemian National Hall (Narodni Budova), the gray-stone shrine of Czech life, is in the midst of renova­tion. But its Dvorak Room — an exhibition space with a fireplace rescued from the composer’s demolished Manhattan row house — as well as a library with a siz­able Vaclav Havel collection are already in use. The neighborhood has always resonated for me,-.even though my roots are among the Jews of Poland. After all, the dignified manners and the dense food — goulash, dumplings, horseradish, schnitzel, strudel — did not obey national boundaries, which kept shifting in any case. It was always a wistful return to a region I tasted only in infancy to dine at Mocca on goulash and nockerl — slen­der dumplings my parents called kliskelekh — and on palacsintás, a more refined variant of blintzes. The restaurant’s molded tin ceil­ings, native Hungarian crafts and a jaded blond waitress, known to all as Magda, gave the place the proper Continental coziness. Mocca closed in 2004, facing rising rents. But, displaying American pragmatism, it merged with a diner a few doors down, and the unlikely alloy is called Frankie’s and Mocca. You can have goulash, while the table next to yours is having a tuna melt. On March 27, 2006, after the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved its version of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation it was delivered to the full U.S. Senate for consideration. On March 6, 2006, both Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a „breakthrough compromise” under pressure by the President and other influential constituents who wished to complete immigration reform legislation before the U.S. Senate went into its spring break recess for two weeks. The Senate compromise legislation provides for enhanced border security, regulates the flow of future immigrants into the United States and settles the legal fate of the estimated 11 million men, women and children that are already in the country unlawfully. While details of the compromise have yet to be finalized, among other provisions, it divides the current undocumented population into the following three categories, based on their period of residence in the United States: Those individuals who have been here and working for more than 5 years would be eligible for earned permanent residence and ultimately citizenship, which would involve a 6-8 year prospective work requirement, a clean record, English language study, and the payment of significant fines and back taxes. Those who arrived less than 5 years ago but before January 7, 2004 would be required to pay fines and, within three years, would be required to leave the country and reenter in a temporary status. Upon reentry, these individuals would have ability to change employers provided they remain employed Magda is gone, but a younger Hungarian, Gabriella Zadori, is there, as is a Mexican chef who has been cooking Hungarian for 20 years. The nockerl was as good as I remembered, and the palacsintás only slightly less so. A more colorful remnant of Hungarian life is Blue Danube Gifts on East 83rd Street. Its owner, Melinda Bartos, will sell you novels by Hungarian writers like Imre Kertesz, a 2002 Nobel Prize winner, and Sándor Marai, but it also has “The Da Vinci Code” in Hungarian. It has Play­boy and Cosmopolitan in Hun­garian, newspapers like Magyar Szo (The Hungarian Word) and CD’s by the gypsy singer Apollo­nia Kovács. There aren’t enoúgh Hungarians left in the neighbor­hood to support even so tiny a shop, but Zsolt Rózsavölgyi, a construction company driver from Brooklyn, was there the other day to buy a present for his wife’s name day. Francesca Sagi, a resident East Side Hungarian, remem­bered that when she came from Hungary in 1971, she could stroll Second Avenue, and “it reminded me of walking around Budapest.” She still goes to Yorkville Meat Emporium for potato bread and stuffed cabbage, but her jaunti­and could apply for permanent resident status after the first category of undocumented workers completed their processing. Sadly, last group of undocumented workers, those who arrived after January 7, 2004, would be required to leave the U.S., but they would be permitted to apply for the new temporary worker program subject to the numerical limitations. At this point, it is not clear how difficult it would be, particularly for those in last category, to get immigration visas to return to the United States. This compromise legislation modifies the Guest Worker Program and the Conditional Nonimmigrant Worker Programs. At this point, we are still waiting to see what the full text of this Senate compromise immigration reform legislation will contain. In the mean time, the immigration reform legislation currently favored by the House of Representatives is almost completely enforcement based ness is muted. “This one died, and that one died,” she said. “It’s sad when you see it getting smaller and smaller and smaller.” The First Hungarian Literary Society should be piekled; its way of life is endangered. Every after­noon, elderly Hungarians gather to play gin rummy or backgam­mon and reminisce about the old days, in the actual Budapest as well as in Manhattan’s vanished Little Budapest. With Old World formality, men put on ties, and the women splash on jewelry just to play cards. The Hungarian talk is salted with a tart wit, though it sometimes touches on Auschwitz or Buchenwald, where many members spent time. “As they lose a husband or wife, it’s the only place they can come,” said Steven Kaldor, the club’s chair­man. “It’s their second home.” The club is down to 350 members who pay an annual fee of $100. It would go under if it didn’t own the build­ing; there’s a rent-paying restaurant on the ground floor. There is, however, at least one great survivor: Glaser’s at First Avenue and 87th Street, a family bakery founded in 1902, when Theodore Roosevelt was president, and a loaf of bread cost 4 cents. and advocates among its stringent provisions mass deportation, non­­compliance penalties and building of a wall along the U.S. and Mexico border. What you must keep in mind, however, is that although this compromise is quite significant, once the full U.S. Senate approves this bill it must still be reconciled with the „enforcement­­only” bill passed by the House of Representatives last December. In other words, this Senate compromise legislation must next be approved by the House/ Senate conference committee by a 2/3 majority, before it can be presented to President Bush for signature. Then and only then will this legislation become law. Mr. James E. Root devotes his legal practice exclusively to Immigration law. He has offices in the Los Angeles and Orange Counties. For more information and/or confidential legal consultation please contact Mr. James E. Root at 1(888) ROOT-LAW or visit his website at www.RootLaw.com . DUNA Travel 8530 Holloway Dr. #102 W. Hollywood, CA 90069 SPECIÁLIS ÁR LAX-BUD-LAX $439.­­+TX. Információért hívják ZSUZSÁT TEL: (310) 652-5294 FAX: (310) 652-5287 1-888-532-0168 KIZÁRÓLAGOS BEVÁNDORLÁSI ÜGYINTÉZÉSI 11-888-ROOT-LAW www.RootLaw.coml ■■7668-529) »UNKAVÁLLALÓI BEVÁNDORLÁS • Munkavállalási engedélyek gyorsított intézésé (PERM) • Bevándorlási koreimek rendkívüli képességűek részére CÉGES BEVÁNDORLÁS •Befektetők és cégen belüli áthelyezések NEM - BEVÁNDORLÁSI VIZŰKOR •{MtB. Hi L1, E. 0, P. R: F,J1,TN,$tb.) CMUsiomrrd •ívAndohUs • Etjegyzettrt, héz»tér«k. szüld», gyermekek KONZULÁTUSI ELJÁRÁS KÉPVISELET DEPORTÁLÁS ALATT B.IJL ÉS SZÖVETSÉGI 8ÍRÓSÁG! FELLEBBEZÉSEK MENEDÉKJOGI KEBELNEK ÓVADÉKI ÜGYEK INTÉZÉSE ZÖLD KÁRTYA; UTAZÁSI OKMÁNYOK ÁLUMPOLGÁRSÁG US CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES INTERJÚK KANADAI BEVÁNDORLÁS ROOT LAW GROUP ORANGE COUNTY 8 Corporate Parti, Suite 300 Irvine'CA 32606 LA COUNTY 6757 Witshire Btvd . Suite 440 Los Angeles. CA 90036 Közjegyzői Szolgáltatás BESZÉLÜNK MAGYARUL U.S. Senators Reach a Compromise on Immi­gration Reform Legislation AMERICAN ^ -Hungarian Journal Április 21,2006

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