Girls Gone Hevesi!

Double -- even triple! -- meaning!! The phrase "girls gone hevesi" can mean any of the following:

1. The girls are now, unfortunately, gone from Heves!
2. The girls went native, became hevesi (from Heves), during their stay here!
3. The girls went heves (wild, passionate), during two nights in Heves!

In Eger, we prioritized the Palincsintavar (pancake castle) over the Egrivar (the famous castle above Eger), because the chicken liver lunch just hadn’t fit the bill. After loading up, we walked the churches, squares and streets that make Eger wonderful.

Atop the 16th century minaret, we befriended five little girls and a boy who heard us speaking English. The 5th graders spouted off impressive phrases, and we made each other giggle all the way down the ancient spiral staircase. The kids in Tiszaujvaros are getting a good English education, it seems! Unfortunately, they didn't know Teacher Liz.

After a bus ride and nap, we set off for a "traditional Hungarian graduation party." Bandi Bacsi (Uncle Andras) and others had invited me to the Friday night get-together, and they assured me that the girls were welcome, too.

Yea they were welcome!

The party commemorated class 14C. For some reason, they stuck around the trade school for two extra years and were just now being handed a mechanics diploma. That made them the exact same age as the beautiful American girls I had imported for the evening.

We walked in a little late, but cheers went up as soon as we did. Without any open chairs at the long banquet table in front of us, the ladies and I sat down at a side table. The class of 15 or so boys, not a single girl amongst them, wouldn’t have any of that, though. They whisked a table next to their end and urged us to join them. We couldn’t resist the honor.

Rachel started to meet the boys first, as she was sitting next to one rather charming young lad. I didn’t know any of them, they weren’t my students. It’s important to note that the English they have learned comes not from a classroom. Viktor their English teacher confessed that he spent many of the English lessons discussing the more pertinent topic of entrepreneurship, but from pop culture.

The boys threw down shot glasses in front of us, and that was the final time they were empty for more than half-a-second all night. As soon as the ladies could manage to gulp one down, it was filled with a new beverage of various strengths. Mostly way strong. We gobbled down another meat and potatoes dish, this paprika specialty was much more to our liking.

About the same time as we hit the bottom of our plates, we started to notice that the boy next to Rachel seemed to have fewer buttons buttoned on his shirt than before. This is a trend that will continue throughout the night. It also the formal beginning of the true sketchiness of the evening.

The boys asked the girls if they knew how to play strip poker. This is when the girls decided it was important to learn the word "nem."

For some reason, immediately after this discussion, Rachel peels off her sweater. The boys, of course, like this. Button-boy grabs her arm. Rachel swats him away.

One boy handed Rachel his cell phone. On it, the word "nookie." I don’t know if it had a question mark or not, but it got a "nem" from Miss Modesty.

Another boy handed Rachel his cell phone. I don’t know why she looked at it. On it, a movie. And an actress that Rachel thought looked like Margaret. So she pointed at Margaret and yelled to the boys "porn star!" Rather loudly. The boys were agreeable to the concept. Marge and I were rather concerned.

Another button undone by sketchy-boy. Another leg touch. Another "nem." There are some classic, classic pictures that document the progression.

So Rachel ran off to the kitchen to hide from the boys. She turned her (apparent) Hungarian sexual irresistibility to the teachers, instead. One of the boys turned to Margaret and smiled. He knew a couple important English words. "No Rachel? You next!" Shatabi, shatabi, shatabi.

There comes a time at every school-canteen graduation-party where you are consumed by the urge to begin taking riding-tractor pictures. It also served as a good excuse to leave the hormone-fest for a while. We hopped on a good three or four tractors, all sitting like an outdoor-museum on the school grounds. We tried not to leave any prints on windshields.

About at the same time that our tractor-photo shenanigans had run their course of amusement, Viktor and the boys realized we were outside. Viktor put on Rachel's previously small green "jumper," then made her strip it off of him. All under the shadow of a rusty tractor.

Fun does not usually come in this fashion, folks.

Another urge took us to play foosball, as all nights of revelry generally boil down to that primordial instinct sooner or later. I think it has something to do with Neanderthals, going for the kills, then twirling hunks of meat over a roasting fire.

There, Rachel and Victor battled Marge and I. The Boston Babe and the Heves Hunk (Margaret and I, mind you) battled the bad guys furiously for four rounds, but lost the tie-breaking fifth round. It cannot be said that Rachel didn’t do enough to encourage me to win one for the team, we just lost to a superior squad, as much as that moniker stings.

By the time Margaret had posed for pictures on a motorcycle and I introduced the ladies to one of my ninth-grade students who was at the kocsma, we figured it was time to leave. The arrival of Button Boy only sealed that commitment to expediency. We did, though, manage to stage a rather stunning reenactment of The Sound of Music in the "downtown" park gazebo and hop on nearly half of the cities statues for commemorative pictures.

As we waited for the train the following afternoon, the ladies and I debriefed their stay in Heves. They weren't impressed by the market, but the library made their day. They decided they enjoyed the personal tour of this little outpost of Eastern Europe, and that the overt "sketchiness" of parts was half the fun. That was even before they saw the little two-car train pull up. That made them laugh.

In BP we met Eva and hit up Statue Park. Don't go. It's lame. The (massive) advertising campaign makes it seem like the 5km trip outside of the city limits would be well worth the trip. Massive soviet statues. The cruel eyes of Lenin or Stalin bearing down on you. A trip back in time to a very different Hungary. Instead, it's a little plot of land with completely underwhelming memorabilia. Even with Eva's personal stories of learning Russian long ago couldn't bring it up to any sort of magnificence. The ladies liked better the Fishermenás Bastion, riverfront-walking, and a short tour of Margit Island, compulsory when touring around a young lady named Margaret.

Sunday morning it was off to the train station rather early. The ladies were bound for Slovenia, the same train I'd taken a few weekends before. Portoroz was their next port of call, but I've heard rumors that they were considering making a (short) detour off of their 21-page itinerary in the forthcoming days.

I thanked the girls profusely for coming during hugs. It had meant so much that some friends were willing to come and share this little experience. Rachel will be able to stand testament next fall to all -- well, some -- of my stories, when we call a little white house on Johnson Street our own.

And then they were gone. Whisked away on an Italian train. I was left alone with me.

So I went to the Hungarian National Museum. Go. It's free. And good, lots of understandable history. Well presented and displayed. Lots of English.