Everybody wanted to believe Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, that we will have peace in our lifetime ... but we all knew somehow, that it will not happen.
The German war machine was in full swing, slowly devouring one country after the other.
In Hungary, things were relatively calm in 1939, but people were concerned, worried about the future. Nobody felt anxiety about immediate danger, so people tried to go about their every day life, as usual... My fondest memories from this year are two vacations. One with my parents in the summer, the other with my class mates during the winter break at the end of the year.
I was 17 years old and felt very grown up. I figured, that this would be my last vacation with my parents. ( I had no idea how right I was...)
We and two other families, good friends of my parents (their children were good friends of mine), rented a nice house (a so called "Villa") with three apartments in a lovely Spa-village in Yugoslavia, called Rogaska Slatina (Rohics in Hungarian). The place was famous for its spas and bitter - but good for you - mineral water.
We spent the whole month of July there. I was swimming, playing tennis, walking in and out of those tiny stores loaded with merchandise, catering to tourists, listening to the afternoon concerts, dancing at night after dinner, etc. Also writing a lot of postcards to my boyfriend Andy and receiving some. My mother was never interested in sightseeing trips, so my father and I took a lot of one-day bus tours, while she was happy to stay in the village with her friends. We went to beautiful places: Bled, with its famous lake and Split, a busy seaside vacation spot. We went for two days to Ragusa ( later called Dubrovnik) on the Adriatic Sea.
Our most adventurous trip was to the Dinaric Alps, where we hiked with a small group (I was the only girl going with my father, the rest of the group included the other fathers without their children) to the top of the highest peak. It was a spectacular sight on the top, but getting there was also amazing. The little wild cyclamens growing in the snow, the eagles above us, the white snow bunnies hopping everywhere - how can I ever forget it?! This vacation created memories for a lifetime.
The senior class students were offered a nice two-week vacation during the winter break after Christmas. It was January, 1940. My parents decided that I should go -the first time in my life alone, without them - but with plenty of supervision from our teachers. About 40 girls and boys signed up to go on this ski-vacation, to Czechoslovakia, to the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. We went by train as far as we could and continued by bus to go to a village in Rusinsko. It was a tiny little village with no hotels, so we stayed at local families, two girls or two boys per house. The guest rooms were clean, the straw mattresses, white sheets, pillows and huge down-feather comforters were inviting. The houses had dirt floors and thatched roofs. One big oven heated the whole house, part of it was used as a stove for cooking. It was a new experience for us big city kids. The people were kind, happy, satisfied with their life. Their language was Rusin, a dialect of the Ukrainian language, but they all spoke Hungarian too. (This area belonged to Hungary for centuries and everybody had to learn the Hungarian language. After the end of World War I. the 1919 Treaty of Trianon butchered Hungary by creating new countries like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania. Rusinsko became part of Czechoslovakia.)
Mornings our hosts served us wonderful breakfasts and for lunch and dinner we went to the only tavern in the village. After a short walk out of the village we were at the ski-slopes. We were all self-taught skiers, all mostly beginners, willing to try everything. The small "Idioten-Wiese" (German for the stupid beginners) suited us perfectly. We worked hard to get up to the top of the hill, (T-bars or chair-lifts were unknown to our hosts). Sliding down was the easy part! We watched in amazement, how the local men schussed down from the very top of the mountain - not on skis or sleds, but on their shoes at an unbelievable speed. These special shoes had long, pointed toes, turning up at the points like skis, beautifully embroidered like their shirts or other garments.
The evenings were also special, dancing, singing, listening to the howling of the wolves, watching the men making juniper berry brandy (it was a big seller for the village, poured in long, narrow bottles with the berries floating in them) or try to learn some stitches from the women to make our own souvenirs. It was a wonderful trip with unforgettable memories.
1940 started out to be a good year for me, graduating with honors at the Academy and enrolled to the College of Economics. I found out that starting in the Fall I only had to go three times weekly to lectures, the rest was homework. Meanwhile, Andy got his high school diploma too. With his stormy childhood he had a lot of catching up to do.
The summer changed everything. My father had a heart attack!! I was having lunch with my parents in a restaurant. We enjoyed being together as usual, when without any warning sign, my father fainted and fell on the floor. By a lucky coincidence, there was a doctor at another table, who gave him a caffeine injection while we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. This saved his life, but he became an invalid for the next 20 years. He was just 50 years old, never sick, just a strong, very active, healthy man. He had Angina Pectoris, which created several blood clots and thrombosis during the coming 20 years. Nowadays a simple bypass operation could have solved all his problems, but in 1940 it was only bed rest, some medication and hope.
His working years were over, and every day was a challenge to stay alive. Luckily my parents had enough savings, so they didn't have to worry about finances. My mother became his devoted nurse for the rest of his life. I had an excellent example when my turn came...
Copyright 2008 - Gabe Dalmath Foundation
