Part 11 the place for the camp was at the edge of a village I went there 2 weeks before the beginning of the camp to organize different things, repair the tents and so on the people in the village did not speak any foreign language and there I began to really learn the local language there was not much in the village, only a little church and many pubs alcohol was and probably, since then has always been the only fun for the inhabitants x I was born in the countryside myself and now saw more or less the same picture, however, in a poorer country binge drinking in another language very proud people, proud of their traditions (drinking before church and after / pardon for my humour) it was already summer and so the adults having grown up there, however, having left for the city for a better life were sending their children to their grandparents so, generally said, there were two kind of people in the village: children and drunken but proud grandparents and then, the children of the richer city people arrived to the camp x one group stayed for 2 weeks, there were 4 groups one after the other, so I stayed in the camp for 2 month schedule of the camp - waking up at 7 a.m. - breakfast at 8 - lessons from 9 till 11 - dinner at 12 - play, sports and other kind of activities till 5 p.m. - lunch at 6 - sitting around the campfire, storytelling, singing there were around 50 children, 5 or 6 teachers, me and my dog probably, the children thought that I was the biggest child x the schedule for the children in the camp looks nice however, it did never really happen like that the children in the camp were on holiday and of course, they didn’t really want to learn it was much more about playing and having fun I don’t think the children really considered me a teacher many years later when I met the children in Budapest, I saw, already on their outfit, that very often in such a 2 weeks camp, I had given them much more than their own parents could being together with them all along the year x the camp was always in summer, everybody walked around in bathing clothes and sprinkling water at each other was the biggest fun in the middle around the fireplace, of course there was no grass anymore one day at around 2 a.m., I took the water hose and went around sprinkling water at everybody the children understood my invitation to have a kind of water battle then they managed to take the water hose away from me therefore, I took some mud from the floor and threw mud the children were delighted and began to throw mud as well I think it was the biggest mud battle in their life I was the biggest child in the camp x I had spent 2 month in the country and not learnt much of the local languages however, in the next 3 month in the camp my knowledge got so much better that in the end, I could read my first book in that language so, while the children learnt German and English, I learnt Hungarian it’s very interesting, people in general look very differently at you if you speak their language even if you are not perfect, however, you try, then, they will always accept you as somebody amongst them x in a distance of 25 kilometres of the village, there is a big lake however, as everything in country is small and they don’t have any exit to the sea, they call their big lake “the Hungarian ocean” twice a week, we took the children to that lake for some sunbathing it wasn’t dangerous as one had to go at least 3 hundred meters into the water to get to one and a half meters of deepness in the lake for me, who had lived near the sea for some time, that lake resembled more to a puddle x at the end of the camp, me and some people decided to have bicycle excursion around the lake we had tents, sleeping bags and of course, my dog therefore, we couldn’t go too fast and too much every day sometimes, we even left our bicycles in a village and went into the hills by foot the whole circle is about 150 kilometres and we needed about 2 weeks for it x on the northern side of the lake, there are many hills, however on the southern side, it’s rather flat first we cycled round the northern part and when we came down to the southern side, one of the girls called out to me: Look! she pointed to something on the northern side however, at that moment, I passed behind a smaller weekend house so I asked her: Where is the hill? and she answered: the hill’s behind the house and so the joke was born in my mind: Hungary is a small country where the hills are behind the house now, some Hungarians are very nationalistic, I would even say chauvinistic, have a feeling of inferiority and therefore didn’t like my joke very much Part 12 Back to list!