That’s Hungarian for ‘hello’. We’ll get to that later. I just had a wonderful trip to Germany and Hungary with brief stops each way in the Eastern US.
The trip started out with a gig in Portland, Me. I stayed with Patti Bradley, my first friend. We go back to 1946 when our parents moved into the same neighborhood in Pelham, NY. It was one of those dream-like, late-forties and fifties existences in the safe, comfortable suburbs of New York City. The war had just ended and all things were possible in the good old USA. I remember walking up our hill as a little tyke singing with the rest of the kids, “Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini bit his weenie now it doesn’t work.”
When I mentioned that song to Patti, she didn’t remember it. Maybe it was a ‘boy thing’. But she did remember being on the Howdy Doody show (I knew it! I hadn’t made this up.). Our class was chosen to be the on-camera audience; sit in the ‘Peanut Gallery’. We couldn’t believe it. This was the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to a little kid in America at that time. The only problem was… I couldn’t go. I had chicken pox. I remember watching my friends on TV, laughing it up with Buffalo Bob, Dilly Dally, Flub-a-Dub and Princess Summerfall Winterspring; not to mention Clarabell the Clown. It was torture. Patti does not recall my absence. Why would she? She was too busy yukking it up in the Peanut Gallery to notice that her supposedly best friend, sweet little Geoffrey Muldaur, was suffering at home in quarantine.
Buffalo Bob w/ Howdy Doody
I took a little time in Portland to visit the Portland Museum of Art. Of course, there was an abundance of Maine painters represented there, most of whom I had never heard of. I was introduced to the work and life of a terrific artist named Rockwell Kent, and, predictably, I got a good dose of the Wyeth family. N.C. Wyeth especially knocked me out. Primarily an illustrator of magazines and books, N.C. Wyeth, like Winslow Homer before him, had so much creative energy that he crossed the line between ‘illustrator’ and ‘fine artist’. (Sort of like Barry Manilow leaping from jingles to pop stardom, but different)
N.C. Wyeth – Dark Harbor Fishermen 1943
I did a sweet gig in Portland at One Longfellow Square. My friend John McAlevey and wife, Penny, came to the club and the next day I headed north to their home in Warren, ME for a two-day visit. John is woodworker I’ve known since my days in Cambridge when Maria and I made frequent trips to Eric Von Schmidt’s farm in Henniker, NH. John lived and worked in Henniker at the time. He now has a studio in Warren where he makes furniture, turns bowls, and teaches at the nearby Center for Furniture Craftsmanship.
I took out on my own the first day to visit the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, home to many more works from three generations of Wyeths (and a couple of Rockwell Kents as well). I’ve appreciated Andrew Wyeth’s work for many years, perhaps because the look and feel of much of it is so reminiscent of Martha’s Vineyard where I’ve spent so many privileged days. Andrew learned his craft from his father, N.C., and although he did a few illustrations as a young man, his early success as a fine artist lead him on a less burdened path than N.C..
After the Farnsworth Museum, I drove over to nearby Cushing, ME to visit the Olson House. This was the site and subject of numerous Wyeths including “Christina’s World” where the artist obviously took creative liberties.
The Olson House – Cushing, ME
Andrew Wyeth – Christina’s World 1948
John and Penny gave me the grand tour of their coastal haunts in the late afternoon and we wended our way to Tenants Harbor for a lobster dinner by the water’s edge. It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening. I would not say that the call of a herring gull is a pleasant sound, but for me it conjures the fresh air of the seaside, fishing, the feel of salt spray on the skin, sailing, the smell of fried clams. Curiously, I’m spared the vision of town dumps, an area they also inhabit.
The next day I drove to Logan Airport in Boston, checked in, had a delicious piece of baked scrod at Legal Sea Foods Restaurant and then flew off to Germany.
I arrived Frankfurt the next day in the late morning, so I was able to register at my hotel near the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and head right over to the Städel Museum. I needed to check on a particular painting.
I walked along the Main River, lined with sycamores; couples spooning on park benches; workers on their lunch break snoozing on the grass. In a few minutes I was at the Städel. The Geographer by Vermeer was still there, safe and sound. It’s such a rich, beautiful painting. This time I noticed something new. Vermeer’s male model, leaning over the table, had a huge left hand. Some theorize that the model for this painting was Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, the famous microbiologist known for his development of the modern microscope. I say no way… not unless Leeuwenhoek played cello when he wasn’t busy grinding lenses.
Johannes Vermeer – The Geographer c. 1668
The next morning I got on a train for Würzburg where, at the invitation of Jürgen Königer, I was to play as part of their Hafensommer Festival. Würzburg is a small city in the northern most part of Bavaria; the Franconia region, famous for it’s white wine. The train would continue on to Munich after my stop so I set my alarm just in case my jet lag put me in the zone for a snooze-through. I arrived to a beautiful sunny day and took a walk along the Main. (Wait a minute… I left Maine for Frankfurt on Main and from there to Würzburg on Main. Hmmm.) Young girls were sunbathing by the river. Bicyclists were out and about weaving in and out among the pedestrians. It was a typical day for these people, but for me it seemed so sane and civilized.
That night I went to a harp recital at the Hochschule für Musik; a concert for the students of Professor Gisèle Herbet. The performer was Andreas Mildner, a wunderkind ex-student of the school who had also been a teaching assistant to Ms. Herbet. Since then he had won numerous prizes and scholarships. This particular evening, he played Bach, Hindemith, Fauré and some seriously impossible modern pieces; including a piece for one man band in which he played harp, bass drum and gong. Whoa. This guy was dangerous; jug band quality. I’m just glad I don’t play harp. Imagine changing those strings. Who could afford it?
After the concert I walked through the altstadt (old part of the town) to the river and found a traditional German restaurant overlooking the Main. I got a seat with a good view and sat curiously observing the people on the pedestrian bridge, looking up every so often to the castles and villas perched above the river and the vineyards draping the steep hills. Swifts were chattering by in flocks. It was a beautiful summer evening. As I was officially in Bavaria, I ordered some leber knodel suppe and sauerbraten with kraut.
Statue of St. Kilian on the Würzburg Pedestrian Bridge
The next morning I went over to “Lumen” restaurant to play for the festival organizers and the Lord Mayor of Würzburg. They wanted two songs from me in addition to their coffee and croissants. In preparation the night before, I had put together all the ‘morning’ blues verses I knew and tossed them into Leadbelly’s “Good Morning Blues”. It was the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to sing my favorite Sleepy John Estes lyric: “I’ll get up in the morning and do like Buddy Brown (2x), I will eat my breakfast, and I believe I’ll lay back down.”
After my musical cameo, I slipped next door to the Museum im Kulturspeicher to see an exhibition of Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. Those Bauhaus boys were very cool. Klee, especially, had moments of brilliance. Like the Pinakothek Museum in Munich, the Museum im Kulturspeicher was architected as if molted from an existing structure so that bits and pieces of the original building – in this case a large storage house – show through the new construction. I like it; but then I would.
That night I performed in a club on the Main River called, “Das Boot”; so named because it was… you guessed it… a boat. The gig was intimate and subsidized, my favorite combo. After the show, Jürgen and I went back to nearby “Lumen” for a delightful meal of sautéed scallops.
Würzburg is a city of universities, museums, tourism and wine. So, on the way to the train station the next morning, when my driver, Oli, mentioned the almost total destruction of Würzburg in WWII as being grossly unjust, “We had no army bases, no manufacturing, nothing strategic to the war, yet they decimated us with their bombs,” I said, “Gee, maybe they were pissed.”
(I remember a time in NYC in the early eighties. I had been trying to get jingle [advertising] work for about six months and I was discouraged. I could do the writing, arranging and singing. I had done some prestigious jobs already. Why couldn’t I get more? My friend, who had worked in advertising his entire adult life, delivered me a gift in the form of a question. “I’m sorry, did you come to New York looking for justice?” Substitute “war” for “New York” in the case of Würzburg and you get my point.)
I took the ICE Train from Würzburg to Munich and we arrived in a torrential downpour. I was to stay at the home of my friend, Karl Bruckmaier, and he was supposed to meet me at the station. But I had given him the wrong time of arrival and had written his phone number incorrectly; not good. All looked bleak for a while. Fortunately I had the address of Optimal Records, a wonderful little vinyl record shop run by Christos Davidopoulos. If Optimal was open I would be safe and connected. I waited for a let up in the rain, dashed to a taxi and headed to Optimal. Fortunately, the store was open. Christos was there and he also had a mobile number for Karl, so all was fine. In short order, I was tossing my bags into Karl’s car and we were off to his home in the residential Laim district of Munich. This was a rare treat for me… a home stay in Germany rather than a hotel. It was time for me to find out how the ‘natives’ really live.
In addition to being a writer and radio drama director, Karl has a weekly radio show on Bayerischer Rundfunk called ‘Nachtmix’ and he’s the pop music critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung. Karl lives in a comfortable house with his wife, Isabella and their two children, Merit and Fleming. On the first evening, after the rain subsided, we had a lamb dinner in the backyard. The children (teenage twins) had a friend over for dinner and they all seemed so well-mannered; although, as with other situations in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, I cannot understand what anyone is saying, so I’m inclined to assume everyone is bright, thoughtful and articulate.
The next day Karl and I drove into Munich to visit the new Brandhorst Museum – mostly to check out the architecture – but it was way too crowded. So we opted for the Neue Pinakothek even though I had been there before. The museum has a few choice impressionist works… Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Lautrec. Love these guys of course, but a side story emerged on this visit, thanks to Karl. I was given some nice tidbits about a nineteenth century, satiric genre artist named Carl Spitzweg. He was quite successful in his mature years and often created multiple versions of his works. Spitzweg used a signature stamp for his smaller paintings and was known to loan the stamp to other, less fortunate, artists so that they might copy his work, stamp it with his signature, and pick up a little cupboard cash. Nice guy.
I played a gig that night in Dachau, a beautiful old town about twenty minutes drive northwest of Munich. They celebrated their 1200th anniversary in 2005. Dachau was the summer home for Bavarian princes and a palace sits atop a promontory overlooking the town to the south. We walked up to it before my gig and were able to get a breathtaking view of Munich and beyond to the Alps. Far off to the southeast, somewhere behind a thick cover of trees, was the Dachau concentration camp. I got quiet for a moment and closed my eyes.
The venue for the performance was a small, open courtyard sunken into a hill. Above it was a narrow lane where bicyclists and pedestrians could stop and listen to my show. They were as quiet and respectful as those in the regular, paid audience. In addition to the Bruckmaier family, other friends showed up from Munich in the persons of Andreas Schaffler and Katrin Sorko w/ friends and co-workers. I met them all on my last trip to Munich when I was giving musical support to Joe Boyd for his "White Bicycles" book tour. At the time, Andreas and Katrin worked for Joe’s German publisher, Verlag Antje Kunstmann. We all made plans to meet up at a Munich beer garden, the Augustiner Bierkeller, before Karl Bruckmaier’s radio show the next night.
Munich beer gardens originated in the 19th century and were the first public places in Germany for the wealthy and middle class alike to gather… a medium for the cultivation of German democratic thought. Some of these places are grand. The Augustiner Keller, for instance, seats 5,000 people. The benches and chairs are set out among lush chestnut tress that cool the area in the summer months with the shade from their large leaves. We tend to think of Munich beer gardens as arenas for the rowdy, barf-o-rama 16-day Oktoberfest celebrations where 6 million obese, red-cheeked slobs converge to slosh down countless gallons of beer and gorge themselves on deep-fried pigs knuckles and potato dumplings. Well, okay sure… this is true. But beer gardens aren’t anything like that normally (unless Americans and Brits are in attendance). They are primarily meeting places for people of all walks of life… a place to eat a good meal and sip a few beers with friends in conversation.
Augustiner Bierkeller - Munich
We did indeed meet up the next evening at Augustiner and had a wonderful time of it. One thing caught my ears. The people at our table seemed to be impressed with Katrin’s Bavarian accent… her pronunciation. She does have a beautiful, sonorous voice, but I had no idea she was speaking in a way that other Bavarians would find so interesting. To me it just feels good to hear her speak.
This infatuation with pronunciation reminded me of Umm Kalthum, the great Arabic singer. Egyptian cab drivers and others with whom I’ve spoken about her have always mentioned the way she pronounced words; the ‘correctness’ of her pronunciation…and most importantly, how she spoke the words of the Koran. One cabbie, about to drop me off in Manhattan after a ride in from La Guardia wouldn’t let me out of the cab until he listed some of the words that Umm Kalthum pronounced better than anyone else… something like, “You should have heard her say, ‘heart’, or ‘longing’. No one can say those better”. Umm Kalthum was a great star. Over a million adoring fans showed up for her funeral… after she was pronounced ‘dead’.
Afterwards, Karl and I went over to nearby Bayerischer Rundfunk to broadcast his ‘live’ radio show. We conversed a bit and played a few cuts from the new "Texas Sheiks" album and a few from my past recordings. The time went too quickly as it always does when I get together with a radio person who’s well versed. Hopefully, Karl and I will get back into the studio for part ‘zwei’ soon.
The next day, I met up for lunch with Carl-Ludwig Reichert and his wife, Monika, at another beer garden, the Salvatore Keller. This is a restaurant that serves ‘stark’ beer, a very strong brew that monks concocted to get them through Lent. (“Yeah, Baby, it’s time to do a little fastin’!”) It’s also the location of the annual ‘roast’ for local Munich politicians. There’s more to tell about Salvatore Keller, but I’m beer-gardened out.
Carl-Ludwig is quite the character. He’s a founding member of the Bayern rock band, Sparifankal (Tricky Elf) and the newer group, Wuide Wachl (Wild, Huge Guy From the Sticks), a roots music band that takes early music forms and renders them even more primitive. He is also a contributor to Gaudiblatt Magazine, the motto of which is: “Volksbildung in zeiten der dummheit” or “Education for the people in times of stupidity”. This guy is ‘beat’. He and Monika are wonderful people to hang with. They are knowledge sources for all things German, and especially Bavarian, yet somehow I feel like I’m back on MacDougal Street when I’m with them.
It was time to head for Hungary. I said goodbye to Isabella and the twins in the morning and Karl drove me to the Hauptbahnhof to catch the “Rail Jet” to Budapest. “Jet” it was not, but it was a solid train and I was very happy to be on it.
After we pulled out of Munich the train climbed out of the Isar Valley and we were soon making our way through the beautiful evergreen forests of the Bavarian high country. In time, though, the terrain gradually flattened and it became progressively less enchanting. Sometime after crossing the Hungarian border – somewhere between Györ and Budapest – I spotted my first European white storks wading in a shallow pool next to a farmhouse. This is a fairly common bird in Central Europe. Nonetheless, it was a ‘lifer’ for me and a rather romantic one at that, what with their nesting in chimneys and delivering babies into the world.
We pulled into Budapest Keleti Pályaudvár (railway station) on time, about 7½ hours journey. I was met there by a young lady named Dorottya. I will explain.
My reason for traveling to Hungary actually started in Stockholm in 2006 when I met Lars Johansson. Lars (or Lasse as he is regularly called) invited me to play a concert and guitar workshop in Stockholm. He also summers in Hungary with his sweetheart, Ágnes, a native Hungarian. Lasse is an incredible guitar picker and teacher. Each summer he teams up with other pickers for a one-week instructional camp called the Köveskál Guitar Seminar. Köveskál is a little village southwest of Budapest on the northern side of Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe.
Hungary and Lake Balaton
This year, Lasse invited me to the seminar along with Woody Mann, a wonder picker from NYC.
But who is Dorottya?... Dorottya is Ágnes’ niece. Unable to get into Budapest when I arrived, Lasse and Agnes asked her to meet me at the station, get me to my hotel (in Pest) and show me around a bit. This she did. We talked a little, and in time Dorottya revealed a sharp wit concealed by an economy of words. She thought before she spoke. Her answers to my questions were concise, reasoned. The more we talked the more I realized she was far too intelligent for me. I decided to conserve my energy and keep my babbling to a minimum. I don’t know to what extent I was successful. Only Dorottya would know this.
As soon as my bags and guitar were in the hotel, we took a stroll around the area nearby. Nothing too exciting, but I was already eating up Budapest. I had already begun to sense the grandeur of the city and the warmth of the people. We converted some euros to forint, bought a couple of gelatos and took an easy walk to the Danube; then back away from the river past cathedrals and parks. We discussed the agenda for the next day and Dorottya tipped me off to a very good restaurant to order a little goulash (gulyás) for supper. Then she left and I was on my own in Budapest, Hungary. Amazing. This is one place I never thought I’d visit. I was in bonus territory for sure… playing with house money as they say in Las Vegas.
The next day I walked to the Danube (Duna) and across the “Chain Bridge” to the Buda side of the river. From there I rode the Budapest Castle Hill Funicular up a sharp incline to the Buda Castle and the Hungarian National Gallery.
Castle Hill Funicular (looking across to Pest from Buda)
Buda Castle
When we got to the top of the hill, there was a fair going on which didn’t interest me… maybe because it was so damn hot. I opted to jump inside the museum to cool off. Once inside, I repeatedly found myself lost and spent most of my time asking directions. But it was so comfortably cool inside that disorientation was not a bother… actually, it was kind of a buzz. I later found out that the museum I really wanted to see was on the Pest side: The Museum of Fine Arts. It houses works by Bellini, Sassetta, Bruegel, Cranach and an extensive collection of Spanish artists including Velázquez and Goya. The National Hungarian Gallery, on the other hand, was filled entirely with Hungarian art except for a few referential pieces by Western Europeans. Nothing really floored me. Maybe I need another visit. But there were some interesting prints by Jolan Gross Bettelheim and a few nice photographs; my favorite being a beautiful portrait of Pablo Casals by Jozsef Pécsi.
In the early evening, Dorottya picked me up for dinner, and we drove to her parents’ home in the Újbuda district of Buda. This was a special treat to be invited to someone’s home for dinner… and a traditional dinner at that. When we arrived, I was introduced to Dorottya’s father and mother, Endre and Erzsébet Hujber. Endre is Ágnes’ brother. I also met Dorottya’s boyfriend, Tamás, and Moshe Shuster, a doctor from Israel who had flown in for the guitar seminar and was staying with the Hujbers in Budapest before heading down to Köveskál.
By this time, I had started to recognize some common Hungarian words and I heard them this evening as well. When Hungarians meet, they most often say, “Szia”, pronounced “see-ya”. When they part, the occasionly say, “Hah-lo”. That’s enough to love these guys right there.
We ate a delicious supper in the backyard. The main dish was pásztor tarhonya; shepherd’s barley stew with sausage, potatoes and paprika. This dish will warm your stomach and stay fast to your ribs.
Dorottya, Geoff, Erzsébet and Endre at the Hujber’s
After dinner, as the heat subsided, Endre generously offered to take Moshe and me for a little sightseeing tour around Budapest. We drove over the Danube back to the Pest side and down Andrássy út, a magnificent boulevard with remnants of the golden age of the Austro-Hungarian empire… palaces, theatres, cafés, the Opera House and museums that leads down to Heroes’ Square. In the middle of the square is a monument with statues of the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary in the 9th century. Behind it are two colonnades with statues portraying famous historical figures in Hungarian history.
Heroes’ Square
Soon we were back in the car, further along Andrássy út at a beautiful castle, built in honor of Hungary’s millennium anniversary. A classical concert was in progress. We stopped a while to listen. The sound of the orchestra and the solo violinist in the courtyard was ultra rich… with elegant reverberation. From there we drove past baths, spas and more magnificent buildings back to the Danube, crossing the Chain Bridge to Buda.
Endre wanted us to see The Fisherman’s Bastion, a building with seven towers (once again, those tribal chiefs) that looked a little something like Cinderella’s castle.
Fisherman’s Bastion at Night
That was it. Köszönöm (thank you) to the Hujbers… time to get back to the hotel for a night’s rest before heading down to Köveskál.
Lasse and Woody came to get me the next morning and we were off. Within an hour or so we were motoring down south side of Balaton. At Szántód we took a ferryboat across the narrowest part of the lake to Tihany on the north shore. From there we drove on country roads past farms and vineyards to the little village of Köveskál and the summer home of Lasse and Agnes. It was here that we would stay and give guitar lessons to the students.
The Road To Köveskál
Dinner that night was specially prepared by Ágnes and Dorottya for the attendees of the seminar. The students came from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Austria, England and Israel. They each chose an instructor for a morning session and one for the afternoon. My students were Frank (Italy), Moshe (Israel) and Erik (Norway) in the morning session and Tomas (Sweden), Hugh (England), Betina (Austria), Cliff (Sweden) and Anders (Sweden) in the afternoon. I won’t tell you stories about each of them (I’ll tell a few), but I can say that I came away from Köveskál with warm feelings for all of them.
Lasse Teaching in the Back Yard
The first day of sessions went well. The students were as serious as only gravely out-of-pocket distance travelers can be. When the afternoon sessions wound down, Lasse and Ágnes gave us a once-in-a-lifetime treat. We were all going to a nearby town that evening to hear Muzsikás. This was impossible.
When I first found out I was going to Budapest, I asked my friend Joe Boyd if he could hook me up with Muzsikás. Joe had recorded them with singer, Márta Sebestyén, for his Hannibal record label. I had seen them once in San Francisco and they really got to me. Since then, they have become world-famous, booked around the world at festivals and concert halls. Joe did his best to bring us together, but as it turned out Muzsikás would be away when I was in Budapest, so it was not to be.
Until… miraculously, Muzsikás turned up in Mindszentkálla, a village just a stone’s throw from our little guitar camp. They had intended to be at a World Music Festival, but it had been canceled, so they decided to do a little gig for a friend at his café restaurant, Pannon Udvárház. What a scene it was…
We arrived at the restaurant in time to get a little something to eat and mill around before the show. There was a table set up outside where a woman was selling cloth of various types and I bought a red and white table cloth (terítö) from her.
Woman Selling Cloth
Muszikás Instruments
After a while I decided it might be a smart idea to go inside the small enclosure where the band would be playing. I staked out my territory and watched the people as they came in. There were some real characters...
Muzsikás Fans Before the Show
When Muzsikás finally got started, the place was packed and the music was fantastic. They remind me of The Band, but on goulash… where the four members are comprised of two Rick Dankos and two Garth Hudsons. This was such a special treat for everyone.
Muzsikás
Daniel, the bass player and emcee for the band, held court after the show. The subject was Béla Bartók. Muzsikás has a strong musical connection to the composer through Hungarian folk music. Daniel told us that as young man, Bartók and his lifelong friend, Zoltán Kodály travelled into the countryside to collect Magyar folk music (1908 first trip). They lived with peasants in their homes, befriending them, breaking bread with them, doing their chores… getting them comfortable enough to sing and play their folk songs into the awkward and imposing recording devices of the time. Daniel wasn’t very kind to Franz Liszt, whom he considered the antithesis of Bartók. The city-dwelling philanderer – Cosima Wagner’s father – never understood, nor even tried to learn, the music of the Hungarian people. His Hungarian Rhapsodies weren’t even Hungarian! Daniel was passionately incensed, showing no signs of fatigue after Muzsikás’ energetic performance.
The next day we went to a farmer’s market on our lunch break. Some of the same ‘characters’ were there from the night before. It looks like this area has some professional Bohemians in their midst. Later that evening we ate at the first of two vineyards we would go to for dinner. We could see Lake Balaton from each…
Lake Balaton from a Vineyard Dinner Table
Getting Ready for Dinner at the Vineyard
As the week progressed I started to learn a little about some of the students. Erik, a farmer with a big heart, had come down from his dairy cooperative in central Norway; we had met before at the Portland Bluegrass Festival in January when he came down there from Alberta, Canada where he was visiting. Hugh is a physicist from England, the nicest one they have. Tomas is a music writer and incredibly knowledgeable about American blues. Frank travels extensively with his guitar and has lived with gypsies. Anders is a businessman with musical talent to spare. He’ll be teaching me next time. Betina was shy at first, and unable to speak or understand English, but she softened during the week and her eyes seemed happy. She could read musical tablature like the newspaper and helped me proof some of my tab charts. Danke Betina.
Cliff had a quiet, elfin charm, and every time I looked over at him during a lesson, he was playing exactly what I had just shown him. He also seemed to understand quantum mechanics or whatever Hugh and Moshe were talking about when they got into it at dinner one night; something about the water in my glass exploding up and out of it… or the probability of the water in my glass actually going through the glass. I don’t know. There was even some dispute about whether something was 10 to the 21st power or 10 to the 24th power. I just kept nodding and sipping my mixture of bodza szörp (elderberry syrup) and soda water.
Moshe is a doctor in Israel. His gig takes him on a precarious circuit of clinics in the West Bank. He told us, “I’ve been shot at. They throw rocks. They throw Molotov cocktails… and that’s just my patients!” Moshe is a trip. I couldn’t keep up with him. For Moshe, every conversation is a game of chess. Like Dorottya, he is far too smart for me. But unlike Dorottya, who uses her intelligence for good in this world, Moshe uses his superior intellect to spook the cosmic order. He had a particularly sage thing to say about the German persecution of the Jews though. After I told him about my feelings looking out toward the concentration camps from the palace in Dachau, Moshe said, “Imagine. If the most profound culture in the history of mankind could do this, anyone could.” He may have been right on both counts.
Lasse knew of my love for birds, and he found out about a stork nest in a nearby village. We drove over and I got a pretty good shot of it.
European White Stork on the Nest
The last day of the guitar seminar was spent preparing for an early-evening concert at the Calvinist church across the street. The instructors and the students would play for the townspeople. So, at the end of the day we all sauntered over…
Lasse with Students in the Church
This would have been the final curtain if the church had one. The 2009 Köveskál Guitar Seminar had come to a close.
Köveskál Guitar Seminar 2009
My sincere thanks to Lasse and Ágnes for their hospitality and for giving all of us such a full and enriching experience.
We drove up to Budapest the next day. I did a little shopping in a folk crafts store near my hotel (mandatory painted egg, shirt for my grandson, a parna [pillow case], etc.). Then Lasse came by the hotel and we went off to spend a little time looking in antique shops for bird prints. A little later, we met up with Woody and Moshe, took a walk through the old Budapest Jewish quarter, and then found a restaurant near Andrássy út and had dinner. I had hoped to go to the Museum of Fine Arts this day, but it’ll have to be the next time I’m in Budapest. After dinner we said our goodbyes.
The next morning I flew to Frankfurt and then on to Boston. I had an engagement to play the next couple of days in Vermont at The Champlain Valley Folk Festival, so the next day, there I was. It rained cats and dogs the whole weekend, but it was still a lot of fun. As a matter of fact, the moisture in the air loosened the pipes for singing.
On the way out of town, I stopped in nearby Shelburne to have little lunch and a chit chat with a friend. We went to a nearby bistro. The burgers were recommended, so I ordered one. It tasted incredible; seriously; I’m not kidding. I hadn’t tasted a burger like that since the 50s in Pelham when little Geoffrey used to sit at a table by the swimming pool at the Pelham Country Club with his lips blue, teeth chattering and his legs restless before their time, scarfing a juicy burger with some salty shoestring French fries. I wonder if Patti Bradley did that. I’ll have to ask her.
I’m off to tour again in a couple of weeks. This trip will take me to New England, Holland, Germany and Sweden. The Eurpoean dates, and a couple of others, will be duo gigs with my old pal, Jim Kweskin. I cannot wait.
Geoff