TISZA-UJ-TOPIA!

Imagine a land, a glorious place, created from scratch in the 1960s to house, entertain and educate the thousands of proletariats needed to man three brand-new mega-industrial-plants.

Welcome to Tiszaújváros!

Way back in the day, not so long ago, when they first planned the foremost Hungarian planned city, they called it Leninvaros -- think Leninville or Lenin City. But these days, since 1989, the city's more casually know as Tiszaujvaros, literally the New City on the Tisza River.

I've been there four times now, it's become my utopia of sorts. Compared to Heves, it is deserving of some heavenly title. There's a Tesco, and when you live like we live, you're willing to deal with the negatives of Hungary's Wal-Mart. There's a restaurant, fabulously Italian with an owner who even dabbles in English. There's an amazing sports complex, home to pools, tracks, courts, lanes, gyms, you name it! There's a world-class thermal bath, more modern than any I've seen. And there's Camelot, our first taste of the Hungarian disco scene. This city's got it all, along tree-lined streets that follow nice grids, I suppose that's why we keep coming back.

Now some, like Emily, might find a bit of fault in the city. There's a tinge of Stalinistic sameness in each block. And the cement apartment complexes leave something to be desired by our funny Western standards. And you might even be able to call it a fiction, a bit of something carved out of where there used to be nothing. I guess that's why I like it.

But this time around, there was a new highlight. Liz has long claimed that, along with a bowling alley, Tiszaujvaros has a skating rink. The incredulous part? It's open-air, but open year-round, or so Liz asserted.

After a long walk (she didn't know exactly where it was), we saw it smack-dab in the middle of one of the giant industrial plants: a perfect little skating rink. We merrily paid our entrance fee and rental fee, laced up our blatantly-communist, metrically-sized ice skates, and hit the ice.

Here we were, simply skating around a rink in an endless circle, with smiles on our face. I was celebrating winter for the first time in Hungary. The previous two months had been a struggle of survival, the beating back cold in whatever manner possible, not the all-out embrace of winter-time fun. I missed that. No broomball. No snowball fights. No snowshoeing. Not even any ice-fishing. Winter hadn't been fun, the fun it can be, just a challenge, up until we hit the ice.

And then a new song came on the radio. The Chariots of Fire. I don't remember much from 1984 and 1985. Those years don't even exist in the worlds of most of the kids I talk to in the Hevesi discos. But one of the earliest, brightest memories of my childhood is The Chariots of Fire. And loving it. Everytime I heard it, I ran around the coffee table. That's a big lap for a 4-year-old running prodigy.

Alight with memories and happiness and youthfulness, I did the only thing that made sense: I started to interpretative ice dance. If the Hungarian were caught off guard, the Americans weren't. As soon as I spun my scarf off and began twirling it around my body and trailing it behind my fluttering skating, they got out their cameras.

Ba-bum-bum-bum-bah-bum! I held my hands above my head in grand triumph.

Do-do-doo-doo-doooooo-do-do! I stretched them out as i lifted a leg behind my body.

Ba-bum-bum-bum-bah-bum! I glided across the ice, body arched.

Do-do-doo-doo-doooooo-do-do! I slid on one knee to a final, triumphant stop.

As the music faded, I crumpled to the ice in feigned death, just like they do in the Olympics.

Luckily, Magyarorszag was the next song on the radio and brought me back to life.