The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1985 (12. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1985-01-01 / 1. szám
WEEKEND IN HUNGARY Dr. Victor IV. Molnár PART 1 - CROSSING THE BORDER During the 1984 Memorial Day Weekend this writer once again had the opportunity of visiting the land of his heritage. It was part of an eleven-day bus tour of Czechoslovakia (mostly Slovakia) that concluded with a weekend stay in Hungary. It had been organized by Mrs. Pauline Kurovsky from Wilkes-Barre, PA., as a Homeland Heritage Tour for persons of Slovak nationality, and included a 6-day stay in Kassa (now Kosice) in eastern Czechoslovakia for those people who wanted to visit their relatives in this part of the country. Afterwards our tour would have three nights in downtown Budapest at the Royal Hotel. Pauline revealed that in 1983 her tour had one night in Budapest and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable features of her tour. Consequently, this year she expanded her trip to have 3 days in Budapest. On Friday, May 25th, our bus left the modern Slovan Hotel in downtown Kassa at 8:05 AM and twenty minutes later we arrived at the Hungarian border. There were two busses in front of us, and it took 25 minutes till we reached the checkpoint. Immigration details came first. A young Czech passport officer came aboard our bus, went directly to the back and moved forward, taking our passports, checking the identity of the bus passenger with a quick study of the person’s face. He also took the two (2) exit portions of the Czech visa. Czechoslovakia is one of those countries that require you have your exit visa stamped whenever you exchange money in their country. Consequently, when the person leaves, the authorities have a good idea of how much stuff you should be departing with. And if you do not have enough money exchanged, they inquire further to see if you bought any souvenirs or articles from the Tuzex store, which is the dollar store where you purchase articles in the much needed western currency. Every communist country has an equivalent of the dollar store. At Tuzex however, they give you an 8x14 inch receipt which you must keep and show the border people if they ask for it. When our passport official reached the front of the bus, one lady did not have the two parts of her exit visa. Pauline, our hostess, tried to remain calm, even though the last instruction she gave on the bus prior to departure was to have your passport, the two portions of the Czech visa and the Hungarian visa at Page 12 hand. In fact, the night before, Pauline had stressed this information at least a dozen times. Well, the lady in front can not find the one part of her Czech Visa, the one that you have to have stamped each time you exchange money. She has 3 carry-on pieces of luggage. Our hostess rummages through one of them; our Czech guide, Olga, through the other, while the lady goes through the third one. After a dreadful 4-5 minutes, no one can find the visa. Pauline says to look once more through her large purse. Our problem lady empties the entire contents on the seat, and Olga spots the required document. Her big Hoorah resounds throughout the bus and the tenseness eases somewhat. Afterwards our bus has to go through customs. A very youthful, skinny immigration officer tells the bus driver to open each compartment; he climbs into each one with a flashlight to check that no one leaves the country illegally. In the meanwhile, a lady customs official points to two pieces of luggage which are then removed and placed on a table along side the border building. The one piece belongs to Paul Rosol, who is the only one in our group who was born there, and the other piece of luggage belongs to his sister Betty Hertneky. By coincidence or by purpose, these are the only two people who will return to Czechoslovakia after our stay in Hungary. They plan to stay an extra week to visit relatives, and their luggage is practically empty. But anyway, the lady customs official made each one open their suitcase and she slipped her hands through the upper, the middle and the lower part of each suitcase. After this examination she says, “All right”; our people close the luggage and the bus driver returns them to the compartment. Then the Czech border people wave us through to the Hungarian side. Here, the Hungarian immigration officer comes aboard to take our passports and visas. But as he reads the first Hungarian visa, he turns to Olga to inform her that the Hungarian visas are improperly filled out. Where your mother’s maiden name is asked, the travel agent in America just put down her first initial. As a result, all of us are asked to properly complete the Hungarian visa, by printing in ink your mother’s maiden name on the line where this information is requested. After this was done, the Hungarian officer rapidly gathers all the passports and Hungarian visas and told our driver to pull in along side the Hungarian end of the building that the border people shared. After a wait of ten minutes, he returns and gives everybody his passport along with the stamped Hungarian exit visa. But one passenger did not get her exit visa. The officer says everybody check to see if by mistake they have her exit-visa. We check again, but no luck. The Hungarian officer returns to the office. Five minutes later he emerges, and has the needed document in his hand. Sorry - he says, it dropped under the table after it had been stamped. And so, after all this rigmarole, we are told that we may depart. There will be no customs examination by the Hungarian authorities. The entire procedure at the border took llA hours. I have travelled to Hungary by train (from Austria), by bus (from Yugoslavia), by rented car (from Romania) and again by bus (from Czechoslovakia). The worst and longest border crossing is the Romanian border, where the whole procedure goes at snail’s pace. On one occasion it took three hours. Of the 13 times I have visited Hungary, I can readily say that flying into Budapest on a Malév- Hungarian Airline flight get you through immigration and customs the fastest and the most courteously. — To be continued — Nationalism has a thousand faces. It blurs the vision of the man with the sharpest eye. It invades every human weakness. It deals in tradition, piety, pride in race, professional jealousy, in all virtues and vices. —Ady Endre QUOTE “After the year 1945, 139 Hungarian, 57 German, 21 Jewish, 2 Armenian, 5 Turk, 6 Bulgarian, ! Serbian and 3 Lipován (Ruthenian) churches passed over to the property of the Rumanian church, or were demolished under the pretext of ‘urbanization.’ Every nationality religious denomination was compelled to hand over their archives; more than 11 millions of books written in the language of the nationalities were taken away from the community, school, town and central libraries of Transylvania, Bánát and Partium. Unfortunately of all this amount a very few volumes survived, this course of proceedings is still continues, as we could find out in the libraries of Brassó, Marosvásárhely, Kolozsvár, Gyulafehérvár and Temesvár.” Eighth Hungarian Tribe
