Szeged is internationally-celebrated for it's world-famous paprika, champion salami, renowned fish soup, and 2,100 hours of sunshine each year. Situated at the confluence of the rivers Tizsa and Maros, Szeged is the third-largest city in Hungary and is home to the second-largest university. The Hungarian Fulbright Commission arranged another great tour of a can't-miss national region... deepening my knowledge, understanding, and exposure to real-life in Hungary. I love it and appreciate everything the kind folks at Fulbright do to make our experience authentic and enriching... Really, they're pretty freaking great to us!
In the morning, we visited Deác Ferenc High School, said to be one of the best bilingual schools in the area. They hosted all of the Fulbright scholars for a conversation and tour of the school, introducing their international perspective and language focus. I had the opportunity to sit-in on a geography lesson (in English), and was extremely impressed. The students (ESL Hungarians, grade ten) could speak about the advanced earth sciences better than I (a native English-speaker with a Masters Degree from an American University).
Of course, I also made it a priority to tour the art classrooms and discovered some interesting similarities to Munkácsy... confirming some of my thoughts on art education in Hungary. Though I am still learning so much about cultural methodology and requirements, I struggle with some aspects of the art education model in Hungary, mainly the lack of creative challenge presented. The lessons are well-organized and worthwhile, but coming to Hungary with my personal roots and interests, I constantly want to push the students to be different... to get outside the box, way outside the box... to do things that they have never done before, and maybe even things that nobody has ever done before! I have observed much more conservative, history-based instruction here. Not to be misunderstood, I think it's completely valid, I just have a different perspective on what is important for young teenagers to explore in order to fully appreciate aesthetics and their individual creative potential. I love teaching art, and I also love diversity... so it's a pretty cool personal task to piece together different perspectives and constantly evolve; my goal is to always remain contemporary and relevant to my students and life around us. Plenty more to come on this...
In the afternoon, we visited the University of Szeged and toured the University Library. There were a lot of books. Ha, it was alright, but wasn't life-changing. It was cool to see some really old-school books (like the kind of books I would imagine behind glass in a museum, not ones I figured they'd let us thumb through) and it was a throw-back to see a functional card-catalogue... I found it obscurely ironic that when I opened the drawer, this is the card that faced me...
After leaving the University, we went on a walking tour... we saw a great deal of the city and all the sights... and we were accompanied by the spectacular Szeged sun for the whole thing. Szénchenyi Square, where our hotel was, boasts the beautiful Town Hall (adorned with Zsolnay Porcelin roof)... pretty beautiful.
The Reök Palace was pretty spectacular. Ede Magyar's ornate design is one-of-a-kind and singular thoughout all of Europe. The Palace was built for water engineer István Reök, cousin of Mihály Munkácsy (the artist that my school is named after). I dig the stylised vine ornamentation climbing the facade... it winds up the stairwell, where the flowers appear to bloom.
The Szeged Synagogue is a unique fin de siecle (or Magyar-style) fusion of Art Nouveau and Historicist styles. Wow, pretty remarkable structure, but we didn't get a chance to go inside... However, we did go inside Votive Church... whoa. Oh, and we had a jumping contest from the steps of the Móra Ferenc Museum... points for distance and style...
We did have a top-shelf supper at Roosevelt Téri Halászcsárda, where I finally got a chance to try the highly regarded fresh fish soup... local paprika, fish from the Tisza... spicy, fenom!
Our hotel (Hotel Tisza) was a classy joint... Béla Bartók performed there several times over the years and eventually became the namesake of the concert hall. Anyway, great place... however, when we came back from the pub around midnight, we ran into a little tough luck... the key wouldn't unlock the door (unfortunately they don't have magnetic swipe cards, but OG skeleton keys). Kent and I both tried, the girls next door gave it a try, and even the night manager of the hotel came to give it a go... an hour later, we found ourselves camped outside the room (with all of our stuff inside, of course) watching the hotel owner's son rip the door jam out... it was pretty entertaining... crow bars, screwdrivers, hammers thrown around... making tons of noise, and finally they ripped the lock out. They didn't offer a different room or compensation or anything (even though we didn't even have a lock), but we didn't care... this is central Europe after all. All's well that ends well.
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