Dingdongs to Donuts

I was a zombie, the girls were shaky, dehydrated and their asses ached. We all yanked on our party dresses and walked to the parking lot where Chip and Eric were waiting, also completely zonked. The five of us plus an English couple piled into our rental car. (The male portion of this couple happens to be a press secretary for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Ladeeda.) None of us knew where ceremony was to take place. Maybe because only a fraction of us had been invite. We knew it was in Subotica and as the Subotica expert, I helped navigate to the outskirts of the pedestrian zone. We eventually learned via the blackberry of the female half of the English couple that the wedding was at town hall. I knew we were safe, because I had spied the building earlier.

We arrived about three minutes before the ceremony began, at the tail end of another ceremony. We quickly learned that the decorative and stunning town hall is a wedding factory on Saturdays, serving as a backdrop for two weddings an hour for about eight hours straight. The hallway outside the wedding chamber had the frantic feel of the communal dressing room at Loehmann’s.

About two hundred of us piled into the ornate church-like hall. The civil ceremony was in Serbian and English. The couple vowed to treat each other with respect and to give each other the freedom to choose their own professions.

The reception line was the reverse of what we do here. Instead of the bridal party standing at the room’s egress, they stay put and the guests form a line up the center aisle between the pews. It was hot and crowded and Cat and I deliberated whether to make a run for it to escape further awkward greetings. We decided to do the adult thing and stick around. As we waited in the overflowing queue we noticed a whole new crop of guests filing in for the next ceremony. An old lady elbowed me out of the way so she could position herself for the vows that were to begin in five minutes.

The cyclists were in need of caffeine and chow so we placed an order at the Golden Arches right around the corner from town hall. I think you’ll agree that the setting beats most McDonalds in the States.

Back at the lake, we sipped beer and a modicum of Slivovitz at the outdoor cocktail hour. It was a glorious early evening – sunny, breezy and in the low 70s. Valery suggested we brace ourselves for the long night ahead with some coffee. The idea that delighted us to no end. As we threw back double espressos beside a dozen platters of sliced meats and cheeses, there was a collective feeling that through our sensible beverage choice we were contributing in some small way to the success of the party, and therefore Ryan and Ersi’s happiness.

The party migrated inside where dozens of white tables were arranged across three rooms. Shockingly, my name was not on the seating chart. Eric stepped in, finally putting his State Department diplomacy to good use, and negotiated an additional seat at the end of Table Dingdong.

The first few hours of the wedding consisted of dancing and then a whole lot of sitting. It turned out we were meant to sit and eat for at least two hours before we were allowed to dance again. And eat we did. Here’s a look at the light supper ahead.

I always enjoy starting dinner with dessert. Some of my companions balked at this savory cheese strudel, but I find it hard to resist a creamy curdy cheese wrapped in filo dough. If they had spooned some of that cherry sauce from the night before over it, I (and certainly Charlotte) would have been even more content.

Next was a non-cream cream of beef soup in which small beef and vegetable cubes co-mingled in a simple but flavorful broth. Very nice.

Valery and I wondered aloud whether chicken *and* pork were really necessary. She said that at the last wedding she attended in the Former Yugoslavia (FY), everyone was too full to eat the meat when it was served, but they attacked it at three in the morning after hours of drinking and dancing. Intriguing. Valery also said she usually swallows a couple of tablespoons of good olive oil before a Balkan wedding to coat her stomach. Valery, I was learning, was hardcore.

It was around this time, somewhere between the soup service and the toasted almond colored logs of stuffed, breaded deep fried pork arrived, that Charlotte casually mentioned Chip would undoubtedly remove his shirt by the evening’s end. I laughed and made further inquiries. It seems he does this striptease at every party he attends, no matter the level of formality or his intimacy with the hosts.

Ok, then.

Finally the band took up instruments again and the Serbs and the Huns started kicking it, as did we.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

I hereby take full credit for the conga line. While Chip was the head of this drunken snake, he was merely my puppet, bobbing to and fro at my will.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

At midnight sharp, Erzsébet appeared in what looked like the crimson doppleganger of her wedding gown. Cue up the frenetic polka music for the Hungarian Turning Dance! This creepy show takes place following the consummation of the marriage (presumably somewhere nearby). Wedding guests dance with the newly minted wife, while father of the bride accepts cash money from her dance partners, male and female alike.

We tried not to take it all so literally. After all, it’s an old tradition (and certainly a vast improvement upon the practice of producing a bloody sheet) and Ersi and Ryan were no doubt a modern couple. But the dizzying music and endless spinning, coupled with Ersi’s stifling dress – and the fact that she had to sit down every few minutes lest she pass out – made for a loony display that had us all feeling a little queasy.

We managed to bounce back and danced some more – to Flashdance, and Beat It, and Aquarious, among countless other Tunes of Yore.

I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves here.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

When I tell people the wedding reception lasted 11 hours, understandably they don’t believe me. But I have photographic proof that we were at that restaurant from 5pm until 4am. And, as promised, Chip went topless round about 2am.

When the band stopped at 3am, and then the DJ at 4, we peeled ourselves figuratively, and Thomas here, literally, off the floor and hobbled back to the room. It was agreed, dingdongs to donuts, that we had all had a rather full day.

Horgoš, I hardly knew ya

Back in Horgoš, I found my way to a bus shelter that had a small cluster of people around it, a hopeful sign that my ride was in the offing. The unremarkable border town had signs in both Serbian and Hungarian. I never thought the day would come when a sign in Hungarian, with all those wacky diacritical marks, would be a comfort, but that day had arrived. I knew, if necessary, I could stumble my way through an explanation of how fate had conspired to bring me to Horgoš, a town that until 1918 was centrally located in the great empire of Austria-Hungary. It was perhaps a thriving little village where travelers would stop for a Tokaj refresher on the dusty journey from Budapest to Belgrade, Zagreb or Dubrovnik.

It would have been delightful to stumble upon such a tableau, but in 2007, Horgoš is an unhandsome spot with a few dingy restaurants lined with old housing blocks. But it possessed the most beautiful bus shelter I’ve ever known. Within 10 minutes, a surprisingly nice bus rounded the corner and headed our way. I wanted to say to the men and women around me, “Can you believe it? Can you believe this wonderful vehicle has arrived?” I thought better of it and focused my energy on getting confirmation from the driver that Palić was indeed on his route.

If I had had to guess how far Horgoš was from Palić , it would have been on the order of 75 kilometers. It felt very far away. As it turned out the distance was only about 20 kilometers and the bus zipped right along and I was back in my hood in about 15 minutes. Note to self: next time in Palić and want to go to Szeged, take bus.

(Many people have asked me why I didn’t just race back to Palić, grab the passport and then head back to Szeged. Even the fastest route would have taken two or two and a half hours and that just seemed like an unreasonable amount of time to expect Nora to wait for me. Also, I didn’t have my own cell phone and if there were other problems I would have been at the mercy of my fellow travelers. Plus, I was so tired and couldn’t really think straight. Maybe I should have just made the effort. Maybe I’ll alway regret the decision. I just don’t know.)

On a lark, I decided to go five minutes beyond Palić, to Subotica, the largest town in the area and one I had read about in the guidebook. I knew there would be things to see and food to eat. My blood sugar level was waning and I had left my granola bar back at the hotel.

The heart of Subotica is a tree-lined pedestrian zone that spans several streets and includes a beautiful town hall and a peppy mixture of restaurants, cafes and shops. On the outskirts of this area, there is a synagogue, built in 1902 in the Secessionist style, a kind of pre-Art Nouveau. I had read about the synagogue online and since the trip fell between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I was determined to see it. Plus, I adore Secession art and architecture, some of which you can see in Budapest and Vienna.

The building, crumbling after being closed for decades but is still stunning and the diaspora is in the process of renovating and restoring it. It’s hard to imagine there were ever enough Jews in this region to fill its pews but so there were. Despite a long history of discrimination and state supported anti-Semitism in Serbia, including deportations following World War I, Serbian Jews numbered about 12,000 in 1941. During the summer of that year, 4,500 Serbian Jewish men were rounded up by the Nazis and shot to death in a concentration camp outside Belgrade. Today, there are about 2,500 Jews in Serbia and Montenegro combined.

So here was the Synagogue, occupying an enormous lot in the center of town. I would have liked to ask the citizens of Subotica what they thought of the Synagogue, if they ever met a Jew and if they knew that Jews had been instrumental in the creation of their town and making it the lovely place it is today. But such interactions were not possible, given my language skills and the complete and utter lack of context for such an exchange.

Instead, I settled for pizza at a café overlooking some pretty Art Nouveau apartment houses. A few Middle-Eastern looking men passed and I was reminded of the false sense of connection I often felt in Hungary when I saw minorities on the street. This part of the world is so unrelentingly white that when I see anyone darker than a latte, I want to run up and say, “Hello, I’m one of you!” when in fact I am decidedly not. I am paler than the majority of Slavs, or Hungarians for that matter, but feel very much like an alien and form an illusory, outsize kinship with the “other” when I am over there. One could argue that I look Semitic, but my guess is that most Serbians wouldn’t think twice about it. I’m the one doing that.

I used my better judgment and did not accost the dark-skinned men. I finished my pizza, which I had requested without ketchup, the base for most pizzas in the region. It’s not the viscous too-sweet condiment we use in the States, but I still wasn’t quite on my game and thought a ketchup-y pizza might hurl me over the precipice again. So it was a bread circle with melted cheese, ham and tomato that I ate. I hadn’t exactly ordered the ham, but when it was placed in front of me I was reminded that everything in Eastern Europe comes with ham unless otherwise requested. A bit of oregano sprinkled on top was a plus and the cheese was very good, a recurring theme throughout our trip, in which dairy was a key player.

Feeling full and close to restored, but completely exhausted, I headed back to Palić in a taxi. I lay down for what seemed like two minutes, but was probably more like 20, when Cat and Charlotte flew in, more than slightly frenzied post Death March. They weren’t expecting me to be there –particularly in my pyjamas with a sleep mask on– and after I blurted out the passport story Cat said we had five minutes to get ready for the wedding, which we had officially been invited to.

The Serbian Death March

In the meantime, another type of march was happening back in Palić , one that would come to be known as the Serbian Death March. Cat, Charlotte, Chip and Eric decided to rent bicycles for a leisurely ride by the lake. The plan quickly evolved into a circumnavigation of the lake, a reported seven kilometers.

By all accounts the day started off swimmingly with the rental of crappy hotel bikes that were by turns too small, hard seated and lacking suitable gears for a perfectly flat surface, let alone for unforeseen off-roading. Charlotte donned flats and Chip wore the one pair of shoes he had, the leather dress ones he would wear to the wedding later that day and for the rest of the weekend. Cat and Charlotte regretfully carried their handbags.

The boys were on mountain bikes, the girls on one-speeders. Cat’s five-foot-ten frame was an unsuitable match for her bike and each cycle of the wheels meant her knees traveled to within millimeters of her chin.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

No one had a map of the lake and it became increasingly clear that there were multiple “far ends” of the lake, meaning that tributaries forced the bikers to continually increase the scope of the ride, but they would not abandon their quest, no matter how painful or bruise-inducing.

Pavement begat dirt, which begat rutted farm fields which eventually begat fields of manure stew. That last part was especially fun for Chip, now shirtless, whose bike could only operate in first gear. He had to pedal like a banshee to make any headway.

Luckily for the group, there was no shortage of onlookers. When they passed a cluster of litter collectors well into their journey, one muttered something in Serbian and then called out, “Tour de France!” A farmer repeatedly shouted “Palako” at the peloton, which Team Dingdong thought was suspiciously close to a certain epithet for Polish people. (Later, Abby from Buffalo said the farmer was telling them to slow down, a curious demand given that a chipmunk could have shredded their asses.)

Without warning, the four rounded a turn and landed on a main road near the lake and was several times close to flattened by semi trucks— as if the quadricep and tushy pain weren’t punishing enough.

And so it was that a casual, half-hour bike ride devolved into a two and half hour cycling saga. As the sweaty, sorry group wound its way into the little town of Palić , it chanced upon MOG, dressed in wedding finery en route to the ceremony. She inquired whether the invitees and crashers planned on attending the wedding, which was 40 minutes away.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Cat would later describe the whole affair as a cut-rate Butterfield & Robinson trip gone wrong.

Would that I had a passport microchip in my head

I woke up slightly foggy, but eager to get my trip on. Breakfast was sausage and cold fried egg at the hotel buffet. The dining room was empty save for the mother and stepfather of the groom. I had been introduced the night before, but there’s no getting around the awkwardness of being a friend of a friend of a friend of their son.

I had some time to kill and wandered around Palić, whose architecture is a mix of Socialist Grim and turn-of-the-century decorative Swiss. There was an open-air market, mostly with produce vendors, that was reminiscent of small Budapest markets. Gorgeous multi-colored peppers, cauliflower and cabbage dominated. One vendor sold distressingly large poultry parts. I walked up and down the main drag several times and eventually made my way to the little train depot to buy a ticket to Szeged. It cost less than 200 Serbian dinars, the equivalent of about $2.80.

(From this point forth, I will refer to all non-U.S. currency as dingdongs. Chip coined this phrase and it stuck. Hard.)

I was soon on my way, exhausted from the long day before, but tingly with excitement about my adventure on this clear sunny day. There were about a dozen of us in the aging train car, which trudged along through small farming villages, backyards and hayfields. There were apple trees thriving in what looked like sand traps and the landscape was mostly green and gold, completely flat. I rested my head against the warm window and closed my eyes, soaking up the lonely thrill of those first few hours in a completely foreign land. Those speaking spoke softly and I was introduced to the beauty of the Serbian language. It is soothing and smooth without gutturals or uneven singsong to disturb the pensive traveler.

The train went absurdly slow, but I wasn’t troubled because I was certain (based on no evidence) that they factored that into the travel time. And then we stopped completely. I opened my eyes and saw a conductor talking to a few people on the platform beside a small train station that looked just like the one in Palić. I looked around and saw that a few people had out their passports. Then my thoughts went something like this: Passports, passports, going to Hungary, crossing border, like going to Canada, passport. Oh shit.

I dug into the outside pocket of my back pack where that little blue booklet should have been tucked away, sleeping off its jetlag. But it wasn’t. I knew damn well my passport was behind the counter in the lobby of the freaking hotel. The crabby lady who checked us in the night before had snatched it from me without my actually registering what was happening. I continued to jam my hand into the pocket, delaying the inevitable – a sullen border guard from the country I was exiting and the one I wanted to enter, both of whom would require more than a sad face with cute cheeks. No, I wouldn’t be able to talk my way out of this one, especially with my preschool Hungarian, or even cry my way across the border (a stunt that occasionally works when trying to avoid the middle seat on an airplane).

I climbed off the train and spoke to the most official looking person around, the conductor fellow I mentioned earlier. Mercifully, he spoke some English and emphasized the need for a passport. I explained that it was at the hotel, to which he responded that I might be able to bribe the border guards for 65 Euros. I entertained the idea for three quarters of a second and then I considered the call I’d have to make to my mother when in four hours I can’t get back into Serbia, or home for that matter.

As that dreadful scene flashed through my overloaded brain, I think of Nora, speeding towards Szeged to meet me for the first time in three and a half years. She had been sick earlier in the week, she told me the night before, and had been so upset at the thought of not being able to see me. Her condition had improved and now she was more than halfway to Szeged and I was nowhere in sight of Szeged. This was a big problem. It would take ages to get back to Palić by train and then ages and a half to get back to Szeged. The whole thing would probably take three more hours.

I was completely screwed and had to get the news to Nora. I asked the conductor about a phone and he said there wasn’t one at the godforsaken station in front of us. I asked if I could use his personal cell phone in exchange for some dingdongs and out of the kindness of his heart he handed over his phone. I dialed Nora, she picked up and the moment I started to explain my predicament, I started crying and could barely speak. I gained some composure and was able to get across the basics: at border, no passport, can’t meet! I was overtired and felt so horrible that she had made the trip for nothing and that I had been so flaky, especially when I had wandered aimlessly around Palić that morning and had plenty of time to remember and retrieve my passport.

I wasn’t explaining myself well because Nora, whose English is superb, was under the impression that I had lost my passport. I cleared that up and then she told me to stop crying and not to worry about it. But I kept blubbering about how bad I felt. Eventually, the conductor, who I realized was a little uncomfortable with the scene before him, signaled that I was holding up the train and that he wanted his phone back. I said goodbye to Nora, wiped the sweat and tears off the device and handed it back.

The nice man said I could catch a bus back to Palić about a kilometer away in town. I wiped my face and sunglasses, which were now greasy with bodily fluids, and marched slowly towards the village of Horgoš, in the middle of nowhere in northern Serbia.

Three cheers for the happy couple—and for the slivovitz

Palic, we learned, is in the Vojvodina region of northern Serbia, which juts up against Hungary’s southern border. With the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, this swath of land was designated as a home for ethnically Hungarian Serbs. (FYI – Hungarians descend from the Magyar tribe of central Asia, while South Slavs, who settled in the former Yugoslavia area, come from what is today Ukraine and southern Belarus.)

Having lived in Budapest for a year, this was of interest to me and over the course of a few days we finally wrapped our heads around the circumstances of the bride’s family: Erzsébet (Hungarian for Elizabeth), had grown up in Palić , where her father owns several stores, including one of the aforementioned pizza joints. She is a citizen of Serbia and of Hungarian descent. Her father, we heard, had also spent a chunk of time in Croatia. The wedding guests spoke both Serbian (formerly known as Serbo-Croatian) and Hungarian, so I was at least able to toast with the proper pronunciation of egesegedre, the Hungarian le chiam. The oft- mispronounced version is something akin to “up your ass” so its best to stick with chin chin if you can’t get it right.

Erzsi (Erszébet’s nickname, pronounced Air-shee) and Ryan, the American groom, met at a Halloween party in Belgrade two years ago. Ryan is from California and works for the Foreign Service.

The rehearsal dinner took place at a fish restaurant right on the lake, about a quarter-mile from our hotel. Somehow, the five of us ended up sitting front and center, right by the bridal party and parents. Beer was flowing, as was the Slivovitz, an excruciatingly strong brandy that I took to immediately. While others grimaced and gagged sipping the colorless alcohol, which is distilled, most notably, from plum juice, but also from apricot, pear and other fruit juice, I sprung to life with the inevitable esophageal burn that accompanied each swallow. Imagine whiskey on acid and you will have Slivovitz. Historically, the drink was a popular digestive with Ashkenazi Jews. It’s not distilled from grain and therefore kosher for Passover. Perhaps I have some genetic love of the stuff – or maybe I just wanted to avoid beer bloat.

Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

Dinner highlights included a divine smoked trout that had been plucked from the lake and sour cherry crepes, or palacinka, a dessert Charlotte would reminisce about for the remainder of the trip. The paper thin pancakes were filled with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with a garnet-colored sweet and tart cherry sauce, a Hungarian specialty.

The bride, it was observed, seemed stressed out. None of her family was in attendance and she had been entertaining Ryan’s peeps all week, so one could hardly blame her. She hightailed it out of there shortly after dessert.

Dinner lows included a red fish soup that tasted like a pet store fish tank and an unfortunate exchange between Chip—who had had a beer glass affixed to his face for the previous several hours—and Valerie, Ryan’s lovely friend who has worked for an NGO in Sarajevo for the last eight years. It seems that over the course of a half hour, Chip asked Valerie no less than four times where she was from. She asked him if he was testing her. Chip came away from the evening certain that Valerie’s name was Abby and that she was from Buffalo. She’s actually from Iowa. (It should be noted that Chip addressed me as Abby earlier in the evening when he was only three away from sober.)

Chip, Ryan and Eric Photo by Cat Fitzgerald

After heartfelt toasts (by others) and inappropriate amounts of Slivovitz (by me), I toddled my way home. Cat and Charlotte followed later. I was early-ish to bed because I had a big day planned for Saturday. I had organized a train trip to Szeged, in Hungary, where I would meet up with Nora, a Hungarian friend I made while teaching English at a public high school in Budapest. It was all set: I would take the 10:50 train from Palic, which would arrive in Szeged at 12:25. Nora would arrive shortly before, following a two and a half hour journey from Budapest. We would find each other at the station.