Tokaj hungary nov12.2010
should have spent longer in romania. underrated and under the radar. we did manage to get very close to beclean/betlen (former stomping grounds of salamon simon). only spent one night in cluj. seemed like a vibrant beautiful spot. Then had one of thosed crazed travel days that one can never capture with words. left cluj. took a bunch of trains. borders were crossed. passports were stamped. ended up in tokaj at around 10pm. at some point on a train in hungary the conductor asked us for "ticket". We said "no ticket." We had been hurried on to the last train by official people who did not want to sell us a ticket. i gave the confused ticket collecting hungarian conductor a sheepish grin and handed over all the currency i had (56 romanian lei and one twenty dollar bill that was tucked in my wallet). conductor pondered these foreign bits of paper for what seemed like a long time, returned my sheepish grin with one of his own and the transaction was complete. Still don't know who got the better of the deal.
No taxi at tokaj station. did the 3km hike humping all of our stuff into town. No room at the inns. some folks from poland who were on a multi family trip took pity on us, carved a bed out of their own lodging space and we crashed. waking up in a stranger's hotel room instead of the street--priceless.
looking forward to the dinnertime flight of tokaj.
56 lei = 17.771 U.S. dollar
ReplyDeleteGlad you made it to Salamon's turf. On the Romanian half of the Soose family a possibility has emerged that Spiridon Fratila came from Austria to the U.S., not Romania. Still much more archival work needed. On his 1917-1918 Draft Registration (Jackie is bringing a photocopy) he lists himself as being from Austria and of "short" stature. From his pictures he was not short. I'm pretty certain this is his draft registration, but that too needs to be nailed down further. Larry's historical take is that he may have thought it would help him with the lottery if he registered as being from Austria and mixed it up a little on the description stuff. Since everyone wanted to assimilate, being accurate about the past wasn't a priority and just maybe it might keep him from going to war at 37 years of age.