Adventures in Transylvania
I recently spent a long weekend with my friend Tunde at her parent’s place in a village outside Debrecen in the eastern plains of Hungary. It was a really neat experience to see how people live in the villages here, and quite strange to be in a place where the majority of roads are still unpaved, half the people seem to rely on horses and carts and bicycles instead of cars and trucks, and where they buy their Christmas turkey months in advance and let it wander around the yard with the chickens. I didn’t get to witness any chicken decapitations, but Tunde’s mom had to be talked out of bringing a couple chickens back with us to Budapest (where she was going to visit Tunde’s sister who was having an operation) “so we’ll have something to eat.” I’m still not sure whether she was just saying that to screw with the American or whether she actually wanted to bring chickens in Tunde’s little VW bug with us - that would’ve been an interesting ride!
Her parents and grandmother were really sweet, and didn’t speak a lick of English, but we were able to communicate in the very basic Hungarian that I know, and through Tunde’s marvelous skills as a translator. Her grandmother is apparently something of a nationalistic right-winger who Tunde can’t stand to listen to most of the time, but since I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, I thought she was utterly charming. She showed me a bunch of black and white pictures of their family going about a hundred years back and told me stories (through Tunde) about her grandfather who went to Canada to work and came back with tales of huge machines that could harvest the crops much faster than people could. In the Romanian village where most people to this day still harvest by hand, no one believed him. Plus she tried to teach me how to make these fried pancake things that are specific to their village (and Turkey, apparently - probably a leftover from the Turkish occupation), which was fun. Maybe I’ll try to make some when I get back.
We did day trips to several places, including Debrecen, which is a small, plains city, not much going on, but they had a really great da Vinci exhibit in the museum. We went to Eger, an adorable town in a wine-making region with beautiful cobblestone streets and a neat castle, and to the cave-baths in Miskolc-Tapolc to swim in warm spring water through caves carved out by the water and coated in sulfur deposits. It was really neat.
And we went to Romania, to the town in Transylvania where Tunde grew up, and wandered around there checking out her old home, which is currently owned by a really friendly family of gypsies, and other landmarks from her childhood. She pointed out the bakery where her parents, who were paid partially in grain, would trade it for bread. She said that being paid in grain was a comparatively good deal under communism, because at least the family always had bread. We also tried the local specialty, “sour tripe soup” which Tunde had never eaten because her mom hated it, and with good reason. We both agreed was disgusting. Aside from the tripe, it was a really fun weekend, and I’m really glad I got to see that part of the country before I leave.
Pictures:
Medical Tourism.
Every once in a while I come across an article about the growing trend of people in western countries flying to developing countries like India and Malaysia and Thailand for surgery because of the incredibly reduced costs there. Although I am concerned about the ethical implications surrounding the practice, I always thought this was a pretty smart idea, from the standpoint of westerners, considering the enormous cost savings. However, I’ve been rethinking the good sense of this since I came to Budapest. I know that one cannot generalize about all transitioning/developing countries based on just one or two experiences, but I would think twice before electing to have surgery in a developing country because of my experience here.
Budapest is known as a destination for “dental tourism.” It’s a place where westerners can get supposedly top-notch dental work for a fraction of the price, so I was eager to avail myself of the dental services here. But I must say that the one time I went in for a teeth cleaning, the dentist was not extremely rough, sprayed water and gunk all over my face, and I came out of it with my teeth looking no cleaner than they were when I went in. It was an extremely unsatisfying experience and my Hungarian friends say this is normal here.
Add to that the fact that my friend Kata went to the dentist recently and ended up with a massive infection in her tooth and the side of her face swollen up like a chipmunk for three days. I barely recognized her. Maybe I’ve just been limited in my exposure to this kind of thing, but I’ve never seen anything like that happen to anyone I know in America. It’s made me fearful of seeing dentists here, and incredibly leery of the idea of traveling to a country that’s far less developed to have major surgery. While the quality of medical schools in these countries may be high, standards in terms of patient care may not be what they are in the States.
Not to mention the frequent absence of any legal remedies for malpractice. I’ve probably beat the “I *heart American litigiousness” drum a lot in these missives home, but here I go again: contingency-based legal fees are non-existent in Europe (I don’t know about Asia), and they’re pretty much the only way for normal people to remedy things like medical malpractice, personal injury, etc. I’ve heard horror stories from several Hungarian friends of medical malpractice, and corruption, in which there was no recourse for the patients. We all heap disgust on ambulance chasing lawyers, but without them, especially in countries where corruption is high, there is very little that can be done to prevent or remedy wrongdoing.
Slightly Confusing Minor Cultural Differences
An extraordinarily large segment of the population here wears cute, vaguely 60’s-looking, heavy-rimmed rectangular-shaped glasses. They’re much more popular than they are in the US, and it’s weird, because glasses that in America would signal hipster/nerd can mean anything here, including Brittany-Spears-wannabe-airhead. I find it all very confusing.
Her parents and grandmother were really sweet, and didn’t speak a lick of English, but we were able to communicate in the very basic Hungarian that I know, and through Tunde’s marvelous skills as a translator. Her grandmother is apparently something of a nationalistic right-winger who Tunde can’t stand to listen to most of the time, but since I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, I thought she was utterly charming. She showed me a bunch of black and white pictures of their family going about a hundred years back and told me stories (through Tunde) about her grandfather who went to Canada to work and came back with tales of huge machines that could harvest the crops much faster than people could. In the Romanian village where most people to this day still harvest by hand, no one believed him. Plus she tried to teach me how to make these fried pancake things that are specific to their village (and Turkey, apparently - probably a leftover from the Turkish occupation), which was fun. Maybe I’ll try to make some when I get back.
We did day trips to several places, including Debrecen, which is a small, plains city, not much going on, but they had a really great da Vinci exhibit in the museum. We went to Eger, an adorable town in a wine-making region with beautiful cobblestone streets and a neat castle, and to the cave-baths in Miskolc-Tapolc to swim in warm spring water through caves carved out by the water and coated in sulfur deposits. It was really neat.
And we went to Romania, to the town in Transylvania where Tunde grew up, and wandered around there checking out her old home, which is currently owned by a really friendly family of gypsies, and other landmarks from her childhood. She pointed out the bakery where her parents, who were paid partially in grain, would trade it for bread. She said that being paid in grain was a comparatively good deal under communism, because at least the family always had bread. We also tried the local specialty, “sour tripe soup” which Tunde had never eaten because her mom hated it, and with good reason. We both agreed was disgusting. Aside from the tripe, it was a really fun weekend, and I’m really glad I got to see that part of the country before I leave.
Pictures:
Medical Tourism.
Every once in a while I come across an article about the growing trend of people in western countries flying to developing countries like India and Malaysia and Thailand for surgery because of the incredibly reduced costs there. Although I am concerned about the ethical implications surrounding the practice, I always thought this was a pretty smart idea, from the standpoint of westerners, considering the enormous cost savings. However, I’ve been rethinking the good sense of this since I came to Budapest. I know that one cannot generalize about all transitioning/developing countries based on just one or two experiences, but I would think twice before electing to have surgery in a developing country because of my experience here.
Budapest is known as a destination for “dental tourism.” It’s a place where westerners can get supposedly top-notch dental work for a fraction of the price, so I was eager to avail myself of the dental services here. But I must say that the one time I went in for a teeth cleaning, the dentist was not extremely rough, sprayed water and gunk all over my face, and I came out of it with my teeth looking no cleaner than they were when I went in. It was an extremely unsatisfying experience and my Hungarian friends say this is normal here.
Add to that the fact that my friend Kata went to the dentist recently and ended up with a massive infection in her tooth and the side of her face swollen up like a chipmunk for three days. I barely recognized her. Maybe I’ve just been limited in my exposure to this kind of thing, but I’ve never seen anything like that happen to anyone I know in America. It’s made me fearful of seeing dentists here, and incredibly leery of the idea of traveling to a country that’s far less developed to have major surgery. While the quality of medical schools in these countries may be high, standards in terms of patient care may not be what they are in the States.
Not to mention the frequent absence of any legal remedies for malpractice. I’ve probably beat the “I *heart American litigiousness” drum a lot in these missives home, but here I go again: contingency-based legal fees are non-existent in Europe (I don’t know about Asia), and they’re pretty much the only way for normal people to remedy things like medical malpractice, personal injury, etc. I’ve heard horror stories from several Hungarian friends of medical malpractice, and corruption, in which there was no recourse for the patients. We all heap disgust on ambulance chasing lawyers, but without them, especially in countries where corruption is high, there is very little that can be done to prevent or remedy wrongdoing.
Slightly Confusing Minor Cultural Differences
An extraordinarily large segment of the population here wears cute, vaguely 60’s-looking, heavy-rimmed rectangular-shaped glasses. They’re much more popular than they are in the US, and it’s weird, because glasses that in America would signal hipster/nerd can mean anything here, including Brittany-Spears-wannabe-airhead. I find it all very confusing.