Tömeny romantika, imád­lak 80s hungari­an songs-ika

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The other week­end I went to visit Erika and her part­ner at their beau­ti­ful house. I always have a nice time there. The worst thing that ever happened to me there was that I once ate too much Stilton and had to have a lengthy lie-down. If the worst thing about your day is that you ate too much blue cheese, then the day is going well.

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(Jethro Tull-heavy selec­tion of records my Hungari­an land­lord kindly left in my flat- they might have been more useful if he had also left a record play­er. The copy of the White Album was miss­ing Back in the USSR. Censor­ship at its finest.)

We were going to watch a film while having our food and drink, but then a BBC4 four thing came on of synthpop perform­ances from the TOTP archives, so we watched that instead. I then asked “What’s that great 80s Hungari­an song that goes ‘Panther, lion, gorilla . . AFRICA!'”. It’s this:

It turns out the lyrics are about how going on a safari is a kind of colo­ni­al­ism. Who knew? (Well, Hungari­an people, pretty much all of them know all the words). I had also thought the lyrics mentioned crocodiles, but it turned out to be some­thing about baobabs and coconuts instead. The like­li­hood of anyone from Hungary getting to go on a safari in the early 80s were pretty low, to be honest. I’ve put this version with just a picture rather than the offi­cial video. What was accept­able in the early 80s behind the Iron Curtain is not quite the same as what is accept­able these days. I wish they’d just stuck to hanging out on a boat on Lake Balaton pretend­ing to be Duran Duran. (The actu­al video is on Youtube too).

I went to a karaoke party on a boat once in Budapest. The (Hungari­an) friend who invited me forgot to tell me it was karaoke of the greatest Hungari­an hits from the 70s and 80s. Every­one was really into it, and my really drunk friend kept trying to get me to have a go and then look­ing really surprised every time when I said “I’ve never heard this song before in my life, and I don’t know what 80% of the lyrics mean”. I’m not big on karaoke anyway, and to do it with a song you’ve never heard before, in a language you only speak in a very basic way (and that has lots of every­day words that sound very simil­ar to some­thing filthy/​really long words to trip you up) in front of a boat­load of total strangers was not ideal. It was a memor­able and surreal exper­i­ence anyway just being an observ­er. Every­one else knew abso­lutely every word. They played Afrika at least 3 times.

We then got on to other Hungari­an bands and watched a load of videos on Youtube. I’m really inter­ested in the social history of the Cold War anyway, and it’s espe­cially fascin­at­ing seeing how people went about creat­ing artist­ic work living under strong censor­ship and limited access to outside mater­i­al. Hungary was one of the more open Warsaw Pact coun­tries, but people still had to toe the line.

This was Erika’s favour­ite- Joy by Csokonai Vitéz Műhely. It’s great. 80s art school kids let loose with a video camera. Also the one of the member’s names is Zéno Kiss. The Hungari­ans know how to do names. Zoltán and Attila are very common men’s names over there. Erika later sent me the lyrics with a trans­la­tion- “Téboly­ult magányom megosztanám Veled, kedves” – I’d like to share my deranged lonli­ness with you, my dear.

Itt van, pedig senki se hívta by Trabant. Appar­ently it means “he is here unin­vited”. It comes from this film, which appar­ently involves a love triangle with a zookeep­er and a concert pian­ist. Mari­etta Méhes, top 80s Hungari­an pinup.

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(my old hall­way in Budapest)

We looked at some pictures of vari­ous places in Hungary, and it’s badly made me want to go back. The last time I was there was 2 years ago, and the last time in Budapest was in 2007.

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4 comments

  1. I spent the winter of 95-96 in the Hungari­an town of Capos­var. I was with the US army. I won't bog yer spot down with the stor­ies (though I may bore my own readers)…but it was quite an exper­i­ence.

    There was an apart­ment build­ing next to the base and there were always lots of kids hanging around. The people were so friendly and warm….they reminded me a of South­ern­ers in that way but God it was cold.

    That language is insane..I'm impressed that you can speak it at all.

    Your hall­way was much nicer than the one I had in those old soviet barracks. Each floor had its own iron gate. Ours made a hammer and wrench when it closed. Ha

    I was there for three months and most of that was spent on the base but we had a lot of inter­ac­tion with the people and really liked them as a whole.

  2. My friend actu­ally comes from near Kapos­vár. Beau­ti­ful part of the world.

    My flat build­ing was very nice, it was in a very pleas­ant resid­en­tial area in Buda though, rather than being a barracks. Budapest is full of lovely older build­ings though, my flat was unat­tract­ive compared to many.

  3. Hi,
    I'm Emma's friend, Erika. I spent my early child­hood in Budapest, but when I was 6 my parents decided to buy a farm­house in a village near Kapos­vár. I can't believe that horrid Soviet barracks still exis­ted in the 90s? I knew it well enough, barbed wired fence, sentry towers etc. Brutal. I'm glad you had a posit­ive exper­i­ence with the locals, Erik!

  4. Erika- I'm glad to be able to tell someone from the area that y'all were a very pleas­ant bunch.

    We were tech­nic­ally restric­ted to the base…which as you point out was not such a pleas­ant place…and it was, for me as a Missis­sip­pi­an, pain­fully cold. It would have been dread­ful without the locals work­ing in the cantina and laundry…and the kids that hung over the fence after school.

    I left Kapos­var with a very good impres­sion of Hungary that has stayed with me.

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