08-31-2016, 11:29 AM
Friday August 19
Road trip.
One of the interesting tidbits that had been floating around was that George Domolky, from Boston, had once posed for a giant statue of a fencer. Well, that statue was in Dunaujvaros and we were going to drive down there in the morning.
It was a quick trip, just 50km south of Budapest. Sandor, our driver, kept trying to figure out what we were trying to see.
In the grand scheme of things, seeing the Domolky statue was more of a footnote than a highlight. But, how often do you get to see a statue of someone who you have met?
After a few false turns, we finally found the statue. It was a pain in the ass to take pictures of since it was completely surrounded by trees. I found one small spot where I could take a picture of it. I sent the picture off to George Domolky with a note saying we had seen it. I got a note back later thanking HK for thinking of him.
For the trip to Dunaujvaros, I also brought the drone. It was a good chance to see if there were enough GPS satellites to make the thing work. I got a couple of balky signals at first as it tried to connect but eventually all signals were green and up the drone went.
Did I mention the statue was completely surrounded by trees? You couldn’t see it from the air either. There were two other statues near the Domolky statue completely open for view. The one we needed, hid beneath the trees.
Sandor was completely impressed by the Drone Flight. I did a couple passes over the soccer complex where the statue rests but there was nothing to see there. So, we packed up the car and headed back to Budapest.
This is how it works at the Hotel Nemzeti. As previously noted, I had bum rushed poor Zoltan and acquired the use of the restaurant for the Hussar demonstration. Well, Zoltan was on vacation for the week. It probably had nothing to do with what I had done to his lovely hotel for the afternoon. His replacement, Timea actually introduced herself to me and wanted to make sure that I was to see her if there was anything I needed.
Oh, silly woman. For the afternoon session of Friday, I had a return engagement with Norbert Maday. This time, we were going to be doing a sit down interview. I had spent the week trying to track him down via Xenia. The hope was to go to the mystery man’s house to see the rest of his Piller collection.
He opted to visit us at the hotel. Not wanting to interfere with the hotel, I asked Timea if there was a suite or a private room I could use to do the interviews rather than commandeering the restaurant.
Not a problem. At the back of the restaurant up a circular staircase was a conference room. I could use that. She wanted to charge me the princely sum of 50 euros to use the room. Normal rate for the room was 250. Yes, that would be completely fine. Timea wanted to know what arrangements I needed for the room. She also wanted to put out water for the guests. I just told her all I needed was a couple of chairs. Timea couldn’t have been happier to help out. What is wrong wth these people?
I had arranged all that with Timea on Thursday. But before I could set up, there was plenty of time to go visit Androogy and get the laundry.
After all the admonitions about not losing our tickets, the trip to get the clothes was very anti-climactic. Basically, we found the baskets that had our clothes and took them. Not a lot of security checking for this one. The guy running the store, the anti-Androogy, was more concerned with smoking his cigarettes. I had to remind him to take our claim checks.
For a change, I had plenty of time to set up the gear. I wasn’t running around feverishly getting everything ready while our subjects waited. It was just me in the empty room. I had Igor the bell hop (Igor is his real name) help me bring the gear down from the room and up the stairs to the meeting room. He refused to take my tip, saying I had already tipped him the day before. What is wrong with these people?
Maday showed up bearing gifts or at least parts of his collection. He brought Piller’s mask and sabre as well as several trophies he had won during his career. HK was ecstatic. Maday also brought a painting of Laszlo Borsody he had commisioned of Borsody teaching at the Ludovica academy. According to Maday it was of photo realistic quality by the finest painter in Hungary. He proudly displayed it for us. I used it as the back drop for pictures of the trophies as well as the back drops for the interviews. This latter plan would turn out to be a mistake.
While we waited for Xenia to arrive, Maday told us a story about how he got started in fencing. One Christmas, while Hungary was still under communist control, his father took him into the living room. They closed the curtains so no one could see into the room. Then his father pulled away some moulding surrounding the doors and extracted a cavalry saber. He went to another door and did the same thing to get another saber. Then for Maday’s Christmas present, Maday’s father gave him a fencing lesson. His father told him that he must never tell anyone about this. It was to be their secret. And for Christmases after that, Maday received fencing lessons from his father.
You should have seen the joy in Maday’s eyes telling that story. He told it much better than I am relating it here. And why am I telling it here rather than using such a priceless story in the film? Because Maday refused to tell us the story on camera. I begged him. It’s the perfect story. It demonstrates many things. The fear of the communist regime. The love Hungarians had for Saber. And most of all it shows Maday’s love for his father. But no. No matter how much I tried, he wouldn’t budge.
He then gave us a speech about honor and how a man’s word is his bond. We all shook hands. Then I had to tell him I needed him to sign an appearance release form so he could be in the movie. That went over really well. Sure, honor and all, but could you sign this because the lawyers in the US don’t trust you? For a minute, I thought that might be it. But he signed the release and it was on with the show.
Before we got started, HK took me aside and said he wasn’t going to use my list of interview questions. He felt it would be best if he just winged it. Umm? No! I’ve been with HK for a while now and that’s the last thing I want. I have stood behind the camera many times listening to him go through the trackless wastes of his interests far astray from anything that would be relevant to the movie. Needless to say, I was bit concerned by what was to come.
Fortunately, most of his questions came from my list. And we didn’t get too lost.
All during the week, Xenia had constantly told us she thought Norbert Maday was the Hungarian Hitler. That doesn’t make for a good relationship between interpreter and the one who needs to be interpreted. Because Xenia was Russian, I got the sense the feeling of hatred between them was mutual.
The interview started poorly. First off, Maday speaks English well, not great, but I thought he could do our interview in English. He opted to do it in Hungarian. Well, he starts telling Xenia the story in answer to our question at about 4 words a time. The subtext being she couldn’t keep up properly with him speaking. Maday spoke as if he was talking to a child.
Well, that was going to be horrible to cut to. So, I stopped the interview and made Maday talk like a person. He acquiesced and we got on with it. I think Xenia spoke to him during the breaks because it did go much smoother after that.
Maday’s viewpoints are all filtered through the Hungarian is best filter. Any questions we had about other early Sabre Coaches in Budapest like Santelli and Gerenscer, were swept aside. The only true genius in fencing was Borsody. There is going to be a little filtering of our own when I go through the Maday interview.
Towards the end of the interview, Janos Mohos came in. He was going to be our second interview of the afternoon. Mohos was a bit of a mystery. When I was building the list of subjects to interview, I chose him because he had been on the list of speakers for the Piller exhibit at the museum. But I couldn’t find out any information about him online. He didn’t have wikipedia entries in either English or Hungarian. He was a blank. My list of questions was very general and weak. I didn’t know where he was going or what he could tell us.
In order to find out about Mohos, the first question from HK was for him to tell us about himself and how he got started in fencing. Oh, boy.
For about twenty minutes, it could have been hours, Mohos spun the most detailed personal essay I had ever partially heard. Partially heard, because Xenia was only giving us the highlights. All I could think was that we had made a terrible mistake. This was a guy who liked to talk and we had given him a captive audience.
It was deadly dull until he brought up the fact that his first coach had been picked up by the secret police and never heard from again. Then he mentioned he had to leave the country after the 1956 uprising or he would have been killed. He ended up in Switzerland where he was the national champion, according to the translation, for 27 years in a row. Doing the math later proved this statement to be inaccurate but still.
His stories went from sleepy time to edge of the seat amazing. I never wanted him to stop talking. Then, he mentioned that he had dated Piller’s daughter. Well, crap. Sitting in front of us was the man who knew all the Piller stories.
He just kept going, unprompted. Maday, who was sitting off to the side at this point, just told HK to put the question list away. We weren’t going to need it. I am dying to hear the translations. I think Mohos could have talked all night.
Then HK made a fatal mistake. He called for a break. Maday saw this as an opportunity to get his wife and say good night to us. Maday was only supposed to be with us for an hour and it had already turned into three hours.
Maday started to pack up his things. I helped corral his painting which I had been using as a back drop and looking at all night. Staring at it. Pondering it. Noticing there was a big mistake in it.
I made the comment to HK about the mistake. He was aghast that I would think of telling Maday that his beloved painting was flawed. He tried to get me not to tell Maday, but the compulsion was deep within me.
The painting shows Borsody in the foreground with two lines of fencers opposite each other in the background. They stand in a gymnasium with arched windows on opposite sides of the room. Sunlight streams in the windows giving the gym a golden glow.
My problem was that the light streamed in from both sides of the building. Unless Earth suddenly gained a second sun, there was no way this was possible. Since, I had stared at the painting and pondered it all afternoon, it had become an itch I had to scratch. I told Maday. HK was disgusted. Maday told me he would ask the artist about it.
Maday wrapped up, grabbed his family, and headed for the door. I was all set to continue hearing Piller stories from Mohos. It seems that Mohos goes where Maday goes. Since Maday was leaving, Mohos was leaving. But. But. But.
Nope. He was done. Xenia offered to give him a ride home. The interviews were done for the day.
Our biggest problem on the trip was that people would always tell us about Piller’s great stories. When we would ask what were the stories, they would tell us they didn’t remember them. They just remember he had them. One more man had them, too. His name was Janos Mohos. He left me wanting more.
I wrapped up the gear. The bell hops came and took it to my room. I don’t think they took any tips. When I tried to give Timea a few bucks, she declined as well. She said if I wanted to, I could tip her when I left in a week or so.
Road trip.
One of the interesting tidbits that had been floating around was that George Domolky, from Boston, had once posed for a giant statue of a fencer. Well, that statue was in Dunaujvaros and we were going to drive down there in the morning.
It was a quick trip, just 50km south of Budapest. Sandor, our driver, kept trying to figure out what we were trying to see.
In the grand scheme of things, seeing the Domolky statue was more of a footnote than a highlight. But, how often do you get to see a statue of someone who you have met?
After a few false turns, we finally found the statue. It was a pain in the ass to take pictures of since it was completely surrounded by trees. I found one small spot where I could take a picture of it. I sent the picture off to George Domolky with a note saying we had seen it. I got a note back later thanking HK for thinking of him.
For the trip to Dunaujvaros, I also brought the drone. It was a good chance to see if there were enough GPS satellites to make the thing work. I got a couple of balky signals at first as it tried to connect but eventually all signals were green and up the drone went.
Did I mention the statue was completely surrounded by trees? You couldn’t see it from the air either. There were two other statues near the Domolky statue completely open for view. The one we needed, hid beneath the trees.
Sandor was completely impressed by the Drone Flight. I did a couple passes over the soccer complex where the statue rests but there was nothing to see there. So, we packed up the car and headed back to Budapest.
This is how it works at the Hotel Nemzeti. As previously noted, I had bum rushed poor Zoltan and acquired the use of the restaurant for the Hussar demonstration. Well, Zoltan was on vacation for the week. It probably had nothing to do with what I had done to his lovely hotel for the afternoon. His replacement, Timea actually introduced herself to me and wanted to make sure that I was to see her if there was anything I needed.
Oh, silly woman. For the afternoon session of Friday, I had a return engagement with Norbert Maday. This time, we were going to be doing a sit down interview. I had spent the week trying to track him down via Xenia. The hope was to go to the mystery man’s house to see the rest of his Piller collection.
He opted to visit us at the hotel. Not wanting to interfere with the hotel, I asked Timea if there was a suite or a private room I could use to do the interviews rather than commandeering the restaurant.
Not a problem. At the back of the restaurant up a circular staircase was a conference room. I could use that. She wanted to charge me the princely sum of 50 euros to use the room. Normal rate for the room was 250. Yes, that would be completely fine. Timea wanted to know what arrangements I needed for the room. She also wanted to put out water for the guests. I just told her all I needed was a couple of chairs. Timea couldn’t have been happier to help out. What is wrong wth these people?
I had arranged all that with Timea on Thursday. But before I could set up, there was plenty of time to go visit Androogy and get the laundry.
After all the admonitions about not losing our tickets, the trip to get the clothes was very anti-climactic. Basically, we found the baskets that had our clothes and took them. Not a lot of security checking for this one. The guy running the store, the anti-Androogy, was more concerned with smoking his cigarettes. I had to remind him to take our claim checks.
For a change, I had plenty of time to set up the gear. I wasn’t running around feverishly getting everything ready while our subjects waited. It was just me in the empty room. I had Igor the bell hop (Igor is his real name) help me bring the gear down from the room and up the stairs to the meeting room. He refused to take my tip, saying I had already tipped him the day before. What is wrong with these people?
Maday showed up bearing gifts or at least parts of his collection. He brought Piller’s mask and sabre as well as several trophies he had won during his career. HK was ecstatic. Maday also brought a painting of Laszlo Borsody he had commisioned of Borsody teaching at the Ludovica academy. According to Maday it was of photo realistic quality by the finest painter in Hungary. He proudly displayed it for us. I used it as the back drop for pictures of the trophies as well as the back drops for the interviews. This latter plan would turn out to be a mistake.
While we waited for Xenia to arrive, Maday told us a story about how he got started in fencing. One Christmas, while Hungary was still under communist control, his father took him into the living room. They closed the curtains so no one could see into the room. Then his father pulled away some moulding surrounding the doors and extracted a cavalry saber. He went to another door and did the same thing to get another saber. Then for Maday’s Christmas present, Maday’s father gave him a fencing lesson. His father told him that he must never tell anyone about this. It was to be their secret. And for Christmases after that, Maday received fencing lessons from his father.
You should have seen the joy in Maday’s eyes telling that story. He told it much better than I am relating it here. And why am I telling it here rather than using such a priceless story in the film? Because Maday refused to tell us the story on camera. I begged him. It’s the perfect story. It demonstrates many things. The fear of the communist regime. The love Hungarians had for Saber. And most of all it shows Maday’s love for his father. But no. No matter how much I tried, he wouldn’t budge.
He then gave us a speech about honor and how a man’s word is his bond. We all shook hands. Then I had to tell him I needed him to sign an appearance release form so he could be in the movie. That went over really well. Sure, honor and all, but could you sign this because the lawyers in the US don’t trust you? For a minute, I thought that might be it. But he signed the release and it was on with the show.
Before we got started, HK took me aside and said he wasn’t going to use my list of interview questions. He felt it would be best if he just winged it. Umm? No! I’ve been with HK for a while now and that’s the last thing I want. I have stood behind the camera many times listening to him go through the trackless wastes of his interests far astray from anything that would be relevant to the movie. Needless to say, I was bit concerned by what was to come.
Fortunately, most of his questions came from my list. And we didn’t get too lost.
All during the week, Xenia had constantly told us she thought Norbert Maday was the Hungarian Hitler. That doesn’t make for a good relationship between interpreter and the one who needs to be interpreted. Because Xenia was Russian, I got the sense the feeling of hatred between them was mutual.
The interview started poorly. First off, Maday speaks English well, not great, but I thought he could do our interview in English. He opted to do it in Hungarian. Well, he starts telling Xenia the story in answer to our question at about 4 words a time. The subtext being she couldn’t keep up properly with him speaking. Maday spoke as if he was talking to a child.
Well, that was going to be horrible to cut to. So, I stopped the interview and made Maday talk like a person. He acquiesced and we got on with it. I think Xenia spoke to him during the breaks because it did go much smoother after that.
Maday’s viewpoints are all filtered through the Hungarian is best filter. Any questions we had about other early Sabre Coaches in Budapest like Santelli and Gerenscer, were swept aside. The only true genius in fencing was Borsody. There is going to be a little filtering of our own when I go through the Maday interview.
Towards the end of the interview, Janos Mohos came in. He was going to be our second interview of the afternoon. Mohos was a bit of a mystery. When I was building the list of subjects to interview, I chose him because he had been on the list of speakers for the Piller exhibit at the museum. But I couldn’t find out any information about him online. He didn’t have wikipedia entries in either English or Hungarian. He was a blank. My list of questions was very general and weak. I didn’t know where he was going or what he could tell us.
In order to find out about Mohos, the first question from HK was for him to tell us about himself and how he got started in fencing. Oh, boy.
For about twenty minutes, it could have been hours, Mohos spun the most detailed personal essay I had ever partially heard. Partially heard, because Xenia was only giving us the highlights. All I could think was that we had made a terrible mistake. This was a guy who liked to talk and we had given him a captive audience.
It was deadly dull until he brought up the fact that his first coach had been picked up by the secret police and never heard from again. Then he mentioned he had to leave the country after the 1956 uprising or he would have been killed. He ended up in Switzerland where he was the national champion, according to the translation, for 27 years in a row. Doing the math later proved this statement to be inaccurate but still.
His stories went from sleepy time to edge of the seat amazing. I never wanted him to stop talking. Then, he mentioned that he had dated Piller’s daughter. Well, crap. Sitting in front of us was the man who knew all the Piller stories.
He just kept going, unprompted. Maday, who was sitting off to the side at this point, just told HK to put the question list away. We weren’t going to need it. I am dying to hear the translations. I think Mohos could have talked all night.
Then HK made a fatal mistake. He called for a break. Maday saw this as an opportunity to get his wife and say good night to us. Maday was only supposed to be with us for an hour and it had already turned into three hours.
Maday started to pack up his things. I helped corral his painting which I had been using as a back drop and looking at all night. Staring at it. Pondering it. Noticing there was a big mistake in it.
I made the comment to HK about the mistake. He was aghast that I would think of telling Maday that his beloved painting was flawed. He tried to get me not to tell Maday, but the compulsion was deep within me.
The painting shows Borsody in the foreground with two lines of fencers opposite each other in the background. They stand in a gymnasium with arched windows on opposite sides of the room. Sunlight streams in the windows giving the gym a golden glow.
My problem was that the light streamed in from both sides of the building. Unless Earth suddenly gained a second sun, there was no way this was possible. Since, I had stared at the painting and pondered it all afternoon, it had become an itch I had to scratch. I told Maday. HK was disgusted. Maday told me he would ask the artist about it.
Maday wrapped up, grabbed his family, and headed for the door. I was all set to continue hearing Piller stories from Mohos. It seems that Mohos goes where Maday goes. Since Maday was leaving, Mohos was leaving. But. But. But.
Nope. He was done. Xenia offered to give him a ride home. The interviews were done for the day.
Our biggest problem on the trip was that people would always tell us about Piller’s great stories. When we would ask what were the stories, they would tell us they didn’t remember them. They just remember he had them. One more man had them, too. His name was Janos Mohos. He left me wanting more.
I wrapped up the gear. The bell hops came and took it to my room. I don’t think they took any tips. When I tried to give Timea a few bucks, she declined as well. She said if I wanted to, I could tip her when I left in a week or so.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm