Palacsinta or pancake!! ha ha :) So here in Hungary they call pancakes palacsinta, and we eat them commonly. They are a sweet dessert type thing and they are very similar to creeps. The Hungarians are always so fascinated with 'american palacsinta' and two of my friends from school were really interested. So we got together one day after school, at my friends house and made something like a pancake. We used a recipe from the internet but they were so different. They were a lot thinner and not as fluffy and tasty :( They girls loved them but for me it was eating a completely new food. It was also funny cause they wanted to eat them with a sauce or something that they had seen in a movie so we made cheery jam or something like that to put on top. It was fun to try to share part of my culture with the people here and they were really interested and liked it! After we made sweets we watched my new favorite musical; Chicago! I love it!!
It is funny that I come all the way to Hungary and watch an American film that I never heard of it before.
On Saturday the 21 I went on a trip that was organized by the Debrecen University. About 15 of us started out in the center of Debrecen where we learned about the city. A really long time ago, when people were settling in Hungary they wanted to make a village in Debrecen because it was a center point. In three directions away from the city there are different kinds of soil. In one direction on the soil is very rich and good for growing crops. In another the soil is sandy and good for growing fruit, and other is salty. You cannot grow much in salty sand, but there are lots of big open fields here where they can raise animals! Also I learned that through out history Debrecen was off and on the capital of Hungary and always one of the largest cities. They even declared
To be an independent country in this big yellow church, in the the picture! I love learning about the Hungarian history which is great because the Hungarian people are really proud of everything they have done and been through. After this we went to a town out side of Debrecen call Hajduhadhaz where we looked at famious Hungarian art. This piece here was my favorite because it was modern and interesting and has the most amazing story. So It is a picture of Europe and is it representing the Hungarian history/life and the time line. So it shows the dates of the wars, independents, greatest leaders, how the countries boudaryies changed and so on. Soon we went to a school where we had lunch, in the cafeteria.
It was really sweet, and funny because when we entered the building a group of old ladies were standing there with big baskets of my favorite home made pastry, pogacsa and giving us glasses of the most famious alcoholic drink palinka. Then we had one of the most traditional hungarian foods, slambuc which is pasta, bacon, fat, and potatoes cooked together in a big pot over a fire. Then we watched a movie about the Hungarian cultural and it was great cause some of it was about cooking hungarian food! I learned how to cook 3 different kinds of pastries and it was so sweet cause when we watched how to make the old ladies came and gave us freshly baked pastries. Then a bunch of real Hungarians came and set up tables where they worked on their traditional Hungarian hobbies. So there were ladies sowing, knitting, making beads. There was even a lady dyeing eggs that were so beautiful. She had this special wood stick that would like it so wakes came out of it like a pen, and thinly on to the egg. She created these beautiful patterns on the egg shown here in the picture. There was also a guy who was carving designs into cow horns. He was doing it so beautifully and just with a knife! No machine or anything!
I talked talked talked with all these people because I was so interested. But they too were also very interested in me and asked for my phone number so that I can come back and visit! ha ha! Then we went to a brewery place where they make the famious hungarian alcohol palinka. They have 28 different flavors and are usually fruit. So what they do is first grow the fruit and then pick it, wash it and seed it. Then put it in these big machines that make it liquid and then in big barrels add the liquor. In the barrels they also put whole fruits that way it has a very fruity flavor. After some where between a year and half a year they run it through their machines, heating it up, and doing all these different things that I do not know. ha ha. We got to try a cheery flavor and it was not very good, ah ah because it is really alcoholic and so it had a bad-dry taste :( blehh! ha ha Then we went to dinner at a restaurant where we had the famious stuffed cabbage and then turos rita for dessert. This is a pastry filled with turo which is something like cottage cheese but it is big chunks and dryer, not really liquidly. You should look at it on the internet but it is very common here. So I had a great day! And learned lots about my amazing home and country :)
