Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1988. január-június (42. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1988-03-03 / 9. szám
Thursday, March 3. 1988. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11. Underground Fast Comfortable nation The tourist couple - having organized day trips from their base in Budapest - have admired the basilica in Esztergom; been swimming at Lake Balaton and naturally roamed around the streets of the Buda Castle. Next, they were planning to take a trip to the Hortobágy, the Hungarian plains - the "puszta". "Your express train leaves at 7 am," the desk clerk at the hotel informs them, "you'll be in Debrecen around ten, and within another half an hour you could be having an early luncheon while admiring the sight of the beautiful 'nine-arched' bridge. If you take the metro at 6.30 am from the Southern Railway Station, you could be at the Eastern Railway Station by 6.45, in time to catch your train." "I would rather take a taxi," says the husband. "I don't mind spending a little more, but I would like to get there on time." "You misunderstood me," explains the clerk. "It didn't even occur to me which is the cheaper way. It was precisely the time factor that I was considering. If you get caught in a traffic jam on the bridge in a taxi, the trip could take you anywhere between a half an hour and an hour. If you want to get there reliably and on time, take the metro." Whether the couple took his advice or not, the fact remains eertain that the transport system of the Hungarian capital - with its two million inhabitants and an enormous flow of transit traffic - would collapse without the metro lines. Just as in any other European capital cities, it is not easy to get from one end of Budapest to the other, especially if you go through the central area. Once the construction of the metro system in Budapest is completed, the network will cover the entire city. At present it consists of three major lines. The first one is not really a metro, but the "little underground" which was the first of its kind on the continent. It has been in operation since 1896. Only the one in London preceded it in Europe. The second is the east-west line, one of the main arteries of the capital's mass transport system, connecting a number of major traffic centres. The average distance between its stops is 1004 metres, the first train runs at 4.30 am. and the last one at 11.10 pm. It transports an average of half million people daily. The third major line is the north- south one. Leaving one of the terminals at Kőbánya-Kispest, crossing the other two lines at Deák Square, it continues on to its temporary terminal at the Pest side of the Arpad Bridge. ISADORA IN HUNGARY Isadora Duncan, the great American pioneer of modern dance, died 60 years ago. The American Society of Dance History Scholars devoted a conference to her memory in Irvine (California), where various aspects of her art and life were discussed and analysed by a large number of dance historians. One of the foreign guests was a Hungarian dance historian. Dr. Gedeon P. Dienes who delivered a lecture on Isadora's performances in Hungary in 1902, based on research into the contemporary press and documents found in archives.-My interest in modern dance dates back to the times I spent in the Duncan colony in Nice and Paris as a child and was particularly aroused by the uncertainties in the descriptions of Isadora's stay in Hungary. I started a kind of fact-finding research to ascertain dates, places and other data giving a solid background for assessing the series of her first appearances in a public theatre in her own solo recital programme.-What I could establish as facts is that she danced on 20 occassions in the Uránia Thetare, Budapest (between 19 April and 23 May) and gave another ten recitals in five provincial towns of Hungary, adding up to the thirty she speaks about in My Life. She slightly varied her programme but the main items were Primavera, several dances to music oy Chopin, Pan and Echo, Orpheus and Eurydice, Bacchus and Ariadne and others, many of them encored in most places. Let me stress that what I have found is just the objective background against which her success with the critics and the audiences will have to be analysed in detail which I am planning to do; not to speak about further research into the exact dates of her coming to Hungary and leaving the country as well as the circumstances, social and artistic, without which no correct assessment of her days in Hungary can be made.-Let me mention that the scientific conference was accompanied by demonstrations of the Duncan tradition in dance by such eminent performers as Lori Beli- love, Alice Condodina and Jeanne Bresciani. The President of the Hungarian Tourism Council and the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) concluded an agreement, under which the 58th World Tourism Congress will be held in Budapest in October, 1988, the first time ever in a socialist country. Some 10,000 tourism experts are expected to attend. The Hungarian hotel industry will be tested by the most competent, as Hungary has never before hosted such a large congress. According to a recent survey, most visitors find the Hungarians helpful, friendly and inquisitive, proud of their Hungarianness and their country. Without a desire for something new and better, and courage to go with it, our ancestors would not have set out from a distant land in Asia in search for a new country, or found one i-n the heart of Europe more than a thousand years ago. The Hungarians, a Finno-Ugric people, were able to survive as a nation among the Indo-European peoples surrounding them by combining protection of their own national culture with receptiveness towards the values of other peoples, from whom worthwhile habits and customs were learnt. The nation, which numbers over ten million today, retained its independence even though it occupies only 1% of Europe's territory. Inquisitiveness may be arbitrary, but more often than not it is a symptom of a thirst for knowledge. A good example of this in the Hungarians' case is the speed with which printing was introduced. There was already a press in Buda in 1472. And there is a strong publishing tradition, several hundred years old, that the greatest writers and poets also render the great works of world literature into Hungarian. There are few countries where so much domestic and foreign literature is published and read as in Hungary, despite the long hours most adults work. The demand for information can be gauged from the high library tending rate and the high sales of more than 1,700 dailies, periodicals, magazines, reviews and journals. The figure show that juvenile books sell best, followed by fiction, belles lettres and popular science. Sentiment and humour are appealing to Hungarians, who visit a cinema an average of six to eight times a year. The most popular films are Hungarian cartoons (also appreciated internationally) followed by American adventure films, French crime stories and Italian comedies. As there is one TV set for every three people, one can safely say every family watches the television several hours a day (at the expense of physical recreation, for instance). Polls give the news, serials and sports coverage the highest audiences. On the radio, music is the most popular. When the Mass Communications Research Centre asked about types of music, they were surprised to find Hungarians like their own folk music, folksongs, composed songs and operetta more than rock and pop, although the last had more followers than organ music and other classical music. The liveliness of the music scene is indicated by the international prizes won by Hungarian recordings, and their sales of more than seven million a year. Two-thirds of these are of entertainment music, and the other third “serious" music. The desire to become acquainted with and understand other people's culture can be measured in the theatres as well. Foreign musicals like “Cats", “Fiddler on the Roof" and “Les Miserables" have all been I outstanding box office hits. The city of Szeged's newest form of "pub- lic transport", the horse-drawn omnibus running on wheels with wooden spokes is a nostalgia vehicle reminiscent of the original that operated 130 years ago. It carries 24 passengers on trips to see the sights of the city.
