Monday, August 8 – Wednesday, August 10

Monday, we started work on the building owned by the church - they call it the Mission House. It is separate from the church – a few blocks away from the church on the main street of downtown Szeged. The building was built in the 1830's as a very elegant and large single-family home. There are also two shops on the ground floor that face the main street, and one of the shops on the first floor was a “coffee shop” of sorts where famous writers and politicians spent time. In 1929, the building was donated to the church by the owners, who were members of the Reformed Church in Szeged. Unfortunately, the church only had possession of the building for a short time because in 1948 the building was seized by the Communists. The church was only allowed to use two rooms of the building for office space. The remainder of the space was divided up into very small flats for people to live in. Although Communism ended October 23^rd, 1989, the government retained ownership of the building. The Hungarian Reformed Church of Szeged worked very hard to get the building back, and finally in 2003 they were successful. They spent two more years finding places for the tenants to go, and finally took possession of it in 2005. While the building functioned as flats, they were not taken care of and as a result, the building fell into disrepair. The church has been working very hard to raise money and find grants to restore the building, but it is a very expensive venture. There are strict historic renovation laws in Hungary, so the church is required to restore the building with the exact historic replicas of the building... floors, walls, heating stoves, etc. This means that for anything that is no longer produced, they have to have it specially made, adding even more to the cost.

Brad at the end of the chute

We worked on at the Mission House from 9am – 3pm Monday through Wednesday. The biggest project was knocking the plaster off of the walls with sledgehammers and other various tools. The plaster was ornately decorated – painted with intricate patterns and stencils. Some people had the job of knocking the plaster off the walls, others shoveled the plaster into buckets and hauled them to the trash chute to the ground floor, and a few people shoveled the plaster from the end of the chute to another pile where it will be hauled away. Brad mentioned how this process is a bit more labor intensive than it would be in the states where the end of the trash chute would empty into a dumpster that would be hauled away. However, it's not that simple since the Mission House is situated on the main street, which includes restaurants, etc. We couldn't even have the windows open in rooms that faced the main street for fear that plaster dust would rain down on the restaurant patios below. The trash chute emptied out at the back of the building, which is a walled-in courtyard, with no opening big enough to get a dumpster through. Hence, the increase effort required to transport the materials out of the courtyard.
It was hard work, and VERY dirty work. We wore masks over our nose and mouth and most of us had goggles on, as well. We were quite a sight by the end of the day, covered in plaster dust and sweat!

Plaster dust on the camera lens!

We worked side-by-side with members of the church, and despite the language barrier with some, we had an amazing time working with and getting to know the Szeged folks. Everyday, we walked several blocks to the restaurant behind the church for lunch. We had great food, and they always prepared a special plate for me that was gluten-free!One f the high-school boys that was working on the building has a dairy allergy, so we formed the “special plate” club :-)

Delicious "special plate" lunch

Lunch at the cafe behind the church

Our days were full with working on the building, then tours of Szeged later in the day. Luckily, parts of the Mission House have already been remodeled, including an apartment and another section that has a bathroom with a wonderful shower. This allowed us to wash the plaster dust off, then leave from the Mission House for the tours. Kata, our host, acted as our tour guide around Szeged – she, of course, speaks English very well, and spent many years as a tour guide. We saw several churches and a synagogue, (the names of which I don't remember!), and many other sights around the city. Szeged is the third largest city in Hungary, after Budapest and Debrecen. I don't remember exact numbers, but Debrecen is only one-tenth the size of Budapest, and Szeged smaller than that, so Budapest is the largest city by quite a margin.

Szeged

Monday night, we ate dinner with a delightful couple, Andrew and Esther, and her mother. They are retired, and were very entertaining. She gardens on a plot of land outside the city that includes fruit trees, so they served us many fresh fruits and vegetables they grew in their garden. The food was delicious!

Tuesday night we had dinner at George and Eniko's house – they are hosting one of the members of our team, and Eniko visited Iowa with one of the Hungarian delegations a few years ago. They served us a very traditional Hungarian mean of Paprika chicken and dumplings. She also made a delicious cucumber salad – soaked the cucumbers in saltwater, dried them off in a towel and tossed them in salt and sugar. Simple but wonderful, just like much of the food we've eaten here. They also have a cat an a dog, and both were very nice. We were happy for even more animals to play with!

Family and hostee

Brad and Noel, the pug

Their beautiful grey cat

Wednesday after our work on the building, we had a free afternoon. We went with one of the other host families and 2 team members to a museum. They thought Brad should see an exhibit by an artist/architect - Hunderwasser. It wasn't a typical architect exhibit, so the rest of us enjoyed it, too!  (I'll get an eye-roll from Brad when he reads this!) After the museum, we went to a local market to get.... Hungarian Paprika from Szeged, of course! It was a wonderful afternoon.

Wednesday night was our final garden party at Sandor and Livia's with our host families (although Kata and Gulya werent able to come). Since I've already posted so many pictures, I'll save the garden party photos for the next post! Until then....

~E