In 2005 I spent Halloween in Budapest, Hungary, and this is definitely the most memorable Halloween I've ever had. We were there for a visa trip during my semester in Romania. The picture above is at a cemetery on Halloween night. After wandering around Budapest for a while we decided to explore this island between the 2 divisions of the city (Buda and Pest are actually 2 divided areas that make up the big city, separated by the Danube River). We were going off of a tourist map that told us there was some kind of fountain show or something going on at the end of the island, but we wandered the whole island, which was almost pitch black except for a few lights along the path, and found nothing except some ruins. It was actually pretty cool, and perfect for Halloween. We took advantage of the setting to get some good scares out of each other, and one of the girls got some pretty good video footage of it that I wish I had.
One of my roommates had gotten really sick in Romania and had to stay an extra week in Budapest to get treated, so I stayed with her so she wouldn't be travelling back alone. I was really excited about having that time because I had some great opportunities to observe home-bred Kodaly (pronounced "Koh-die") teachers at work. (The Hungarian composer/educator Zoltan Kodaly developed a revolutionary and extensive approach to music education that has found a large following in the US . . . that's what I was trained in at BYU). The concert hall above is at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where I attended a performance of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Requiem among other things. This concert really blew me away. After being in bleak Romania for over 2 months at this point, this beautiful concert was stunning to me, and now I listen to this Requiem every Halloween.
With my friend Holly at the LDS stake center in Budapest (probably one of the very few actual meetinghouses in the country). The summer after I got back, the church news did an article about how the district in Hungary had become a stake, and quoted some of the people I'd met at church on this particular Sunday.
Inside the Kodaly Academy. There are several Kodaly schools throughout the country, this one in Budapest is the most specialized/advanced.
Outside the Kodaly Academy.
Outside the Kodaly Museum, where he also lived.
At a castle in Visegrad next to the Danube.
A mold of Franz Liszt's hand, at the Franz Liszt museum in Budapest. He claims he was Hungarian but Kodaly and Bartok take issue with that because the Hungarian folksong he incorporated in his compositions was popular gypsy music versus authenttic peasant folk music. In case you were wondering.
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Wow! That video is so COOL! Reminds me of that video they showed us of the Hungarian music classes up at BYU. I tell ya, that video was one of the reasons I went into elem. music ed. I'm very envious that you got to see some of that in person. Lucky duck!!
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