Minorities 2 - the Jews

On Sunday the sun shone out of a cloudless sky, and after a late-night at a couple of Budapest clubs we felt the need to get some fresh air. But not having much daylight time available we only made it as far as the old Jewish cemetery on Salgotarjani ut, in District VIII behind the Kerepesi Cemetery, which I visited last spring.

The Jewish cemetery has rather restricted opening hours, as it has been the target for serious vandalism over the years. Indeed, the gate is kept locked and guarded by two very large Alsatians, but after ringing the doorbell the friendly caretaker chained the dogs and allowed us through the entrance.

 Inside it is an astonishing place. Most of the tombs date from the early part of the 20th century, when Jewish people ran much of the city's industry and commerce. So many of the mausoleums are huge affairs, with magnificent stone work in a variety of artistic styles. The whole place is maintained at a very low level, so is quite overgrown and picking your way through bushes that wrap themselves around huge tombs gives quite an uncomfortable feeling.

I also had the sense, which I have never felt before in any of the cemeteries I have visited (and I have seen a few) of stepping back into a chapter in history that had definitively been closed. In most cemeteries you see people walking around, carrying flowers, stopping to look at headstones and generally paying their respects. But not in this one, and it is not because people have lost interest.

Here it is because there are no people around to pay respects as the population was almost wiped out in 1944. According to Bob Dent's fascinating "Budapest: A Cultural and Literary History" about half a million Jews died during that year as the Nazi and fascist grip on the country intensified. For reasons that I cannot comprehend the pace of extermination speeded up madly as the Russian army closed in on the city, with columns of people being marched from the ghetto to the riverbank where they were shot and their bodies pushed into the Danube. Today one of the most moving places in the city is the row of bronze shoes on the embankment just beside Parliament, making a very simple memorial for this awful period in the country's history.

As I often feel when walking around this city, stuff has happened here.

Minorities 1 - the Roma

On Saturday night we went to Budapest's marvellous Godor Klub, where they were having the last night of a festival of world music. The main attraction for us was an appearance by the Roma singer Mitsoura, and she did not disappoint.

Mitsoura at the Godor Klub

Her music really does suit the label 'world', as her band included amongst other instruments a dulcimer player and a tabla drummer, resulting in a set that sounded like jazz, like folk, like drum and bass, like Indian and, well, like Roma music. It was a really great hour's worth of music.

I have really come to enjoy hearing Roma music here, and, like many people here in Budapest, appreciate the richness they add to the cultural scene. One young Hungarian standing next to me, having noticed that I was English, struck up a conversation where he told me how fantastic she was and that she was the greatest Roma singer. And he was clearly a person of some taste: he had lived in Leicester for a year and really missed English beer and stilton cheese.

And yet the Roma people can have a very difficult existence here. They face routine discrimination and often end up being blamed for the country's ills. Some illustrations.

A colleague of mine who was looking to adopt a child told me that there were very few babies available for adoption, "... except Roma babies, nobody wants to adopt Roma babies".

We saw a film called "Vespa" at the excellent Odeon Lloyd a few months ago whose story concerned a Roma boy who wins a scooter in a competition, but who faces all sorts of discrimination when he tries to collect his prize. The director said that she had received death threats for making such a film about Roma people.

And just a few weeks ago three people died in a stampede at the West Balkan nightclub, crushed by a panicking crowd trying to leave an overcrowded venue. As with all such events the initial reports are confused, but one story was that someone jokingly called out that there had been a stabbing, and this had led to the panic. However, the story metamorphosed into a Roma person being responsible for this. There seems to be no evidence at all that anyone was stabbed at all, but somehow Roma are blamed.

Every society seems to feel the need to identify and scapegoat certain minorities. Why do we do this?

Celebration of civilisations

Our New Year visitors were Charles, Helen's brother, and his wife Julia. As well as showing them around the usual sites of Budapest we decided to pay a trip one day to the city of Pécs, right down in the south of Hungary. The guidebooks say that it is the next most beautiful city in the country, after Budapest, and indeed was a European City of Culture in 2010. True to form, we manage to visit it in the first few days of 2011.

The cultural excitement may have faded but the beauty had not, helped by a beautiful crystal-clear blue winter's sky, something we had not seen in Budapest for some weeks.

Pécs has many interesting places, but the one that caught my attention was the Catholic church in the main square that goes under the name of the Gazi Kasim Pasha mosque. Interesting.

The area now occupied by Hungary was actually part of the Ottoman Empire between about 1520 and 1680. Not much evidence of the Islamic period remains, the Austrian 'liberation' having destroyed almost everything of interest. However, the mosque in Pécs remains, albeit now a Catholic church.

Mihrab and cross

But what is interesting is the way in which it celebrates its dual heritage. From the outside it looks very much like a mosque and inside still retains many Islamic features, such as the mihrab and a marble tablet bearing some words from the Koran.

Even the cross on the top sits inside an Islamic crescent

In these days where Christians and Muslims can regard each other with suspicion or hostility it felt comforting to be in a place that celebrated their similarities and connections. Would that we could see this everywhere...

'Europeans' and what they bring

When I started writing my blog at the beginning of 2010 I thought that the only people who would read it would be those die-hards who clicked on the link I provided in "I'm still alive" e-mails. However, after a while I started to realise that other people had come across it as well, people I guess just surfing or searching for some information about Budapest.

Most of the strangers paying their respects to the site have been Hungarians, often keen to help me with my understanding of what I have described, adding extra information or putting me right. But one visitor was Marta, a Hungarian living in Sheffield.

Our role reversal always interested me. Here I was from Sheffield trying to make sense of Hungary, and there was she, making sense of Sheffield. And then she came home.

So we arranged to meet in a cafe one evening. Marta turned out to be a very chirpy character - she had lived in Sheffield for four years, arriving speaking no English but by day working in a factory canteen in Chapeltown and at night studying English by reading textbooks and watching ITV. I realised that she was one of the 'eastern Europeans' that I knew had come to Britain to find work, but about whom I knew little.

Eventually she knew enough English to find a job doing the administration in a scrapyard in Attercliffe. She was the only woman working there, and the only foreigner. She quickly learned how to understand the special language of the scrapyard business, particularly how to swear in a variety of British dialects. She told them about Hungary and even showed them my blogs and its pictures; that a Brit could survive in Hungary seemed to offer her colleagues some reassurance that civilisation had penetrated beyond Doncaster. By the time she left it sounded as if they had taken her to their hearts, and they had even said they might pay a visit.

But after four years she was missing her friends and family too much and has decided to come home. It's not easy; the jobs market here is very competitive, with over a hundred applicants for one job she had just been interviewed for. But she is bright and has a warm personality and I hope that will shine through, so that she can prosper in her homeland. I know from my own experience that an interesting job and good salary do not compensate for separation from friends and family.

Marta is just one of the people from this part of Europe who went to Britain to see what they could find. In doing so she opened up the world for many people in Sheffield and showed them how industrious and capable 'foreigners' can be. Now she has returned and, I think, will spread positive news about the British, despite our funny little ways. Better mutual understanding has to be our way forward I think, and I'm glad that my blog has played some tiny part in helping that.