(Hungary)...From page 508 of the 1973 Penguin edition of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk and his Fortunes in the World War (in Czech: Osudy Dobrého Vojáka Švejka za svě Tové Války), translated by Cecil Parrott, come the lines... 


"…At the same time he got the order that out of these six crowns every man should deposit in the office here two crowns for the war loan….According to reliable information your brigadier has got paralysis.” “Sir,” said Captain Ságner, turning to the station commander, “according to regimental orders and our schedule we’re going to Gödöllö. The men have to get fifteen dekas of Emmentaler cheese here. At the last station they should have got fifteen dekas of Hungarian salami, but they didn’t get anything.” “I’m afraid they’ll get nothing here either,” the major replied, continuing to smile pleasantly. “I know nothing about any order of the kind for the regiments from Bohemia. Anyhow, that’s not my affair. Apply to supply command.” “When are we leaving, sir?” “There’s a train in front of you with heavy artillery bound for Galicia. We shall send it off in an hour, captain. On the third track there’s a hospital train. It’s leaving twenty-five minutes after the artillery. On the twelfth track we’ve a munitions train. That’s leaving ten minutes after the hospital train. Twenty minutes after that your train will be going.” “That’s to say, if there are no changes,” he added, continuing to smile so that Captain Ságner found him utterly revolting. “Excuse me, sir,” asked Ságner, “will you be so good as to explain to me how it comes about that you know nothing of any order of the kind for the issue of fifteen dekas of Emmentaler cheese for the regiments from Bohemia?” “That’s secret,” the station commander at Budapest replied, continuing to smile." 


I have just finished reading this wonderful anti-war book about the trials and tribulations — and above all good nature — of the soldier Josef Švejk. I, like him, albeit in more pleasant circumstances, walked through the Hungarian village of Gödöllö, 35 kilometres or so east of Hungary’s capital, Budapest.
Its main sight is the Lázár Lovaspark (www.lazarteam.hu), an equestrian and horse-breeding stable and lands for champion teams of show horses. I have a postcard of it on my work desk, a team of eight horses in three rows — two, three and three, respectively, away from the rider — bridled together and ridden by a man, dressed in a black hat and flowing blue garments, standing with one foot perched on each of the backs of the first two horses. From what is written on the front of the postcard it seems the park is actually in a smaller place near Gödöllö called Domonyvölgy, which gives me an excuse to write on line that wonderful name.
I went there one sunny morning in a May. The owner, Vilmos Lázár, was there. He won a World Championship gold medal in 1989, so the literature available told me, as a member of a Hungarian team that included, apparently, Mihály Fehér and Gábor Szegedi. He also came in third in the pair-driving World Championship held in the Hungarian town of Balatonfenyves, which I also visited to sample some wine. Undulating green fields contained strange-looking oxen with huge curving horns, and several thoroughbred horses charged around. A horse and cart delivered hay and was driven by two young men. I was brought a very good cup of coffee in a darkly paneled room covered in prizes, rosettes and photographs of past riders and horses. Nearby is the Grassalkovich Palace, also called the Gödöllõ Royal Palace, which seemed half way through some renovations. It is ornate, with touches of pink paint, a cupola and a large arch leading to a beautiful brick path and neat gardens.
At the back were two buildings yet to be restored that still showed vandalism — bullet holes, knife marks, general decay — left by Russian troops who were stationed here in the 1950s and 60s (see photograph above). Also on site was an exhibition on the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Queen Elizabeth, better known as Sisi or Sissi, depending on one’s preferred spelling. Everywhere I have been in this region seems to have an exhibition on her, although this palace was more than entitled to one, considering she and her husband, Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria, spent their summers here. The guides even now haltingly admit that she suffered from what we now call either anorexia or bulimia. I am sure there is a difference between these two conditions, but I do not know what it is, and I cannot now remember which one they said she suffered from.
In addition, quite elatedly I discovered that Gödöllö was the site for the fourth World Scout Jamboree, held in 1933. The official badge of the event, with a gold border on a brown background, is of a jumping white stag. Lord Baden-Powell was welcomed to the event by Count Teleki, the Scout Movement’s Hungarian ambassador, and Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s Prince Regent. (Twelve years later all signs of aristocracy would have disappeared in Hungary.) Almost 30,000 scouts attended the jamboree, including six from Siam and 23 from Syria. One post soon I will tell of my interest in early English scouting movements, especially the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift set up by the Scout Movement’s original force John Hargrave.

(Mississippi, USA/Hungary)... The tourist brochures state that Robert Johnson, the King of the Delta Blues Guitarists, is “buried” in two places. After driving several kilometres west of Greenwood, Mississippi, I reached a small road that passes through the tiny town of Itta Bena. Long lines of fields ploughed in parallel lines permit the imagination to picture gangly, stooped cotton pickers; after another eight kilometres the road crosses a flat concrete bridge spanning an algae-covered pond full of snapping turtles.
A dirt track to the right leads to the Payne Baptist Chapel, behind which is a large patch of grass with 30 or so graves. After some searching, a flat tombstone marking Robert Johnson's final resting place was found beneath wind-blown straw. A simple epitaph reads: “Resting in the Blues.” Deserted, remote, poor, magical — some adjectives that could well describe Quito, Mississippi, a hamlet so small that on most maps it is not marked.
On the other side of the bridge is a run-down shack, and from this a motley family emerged, the young children wearing nothing from the waist down. This shack was formerly the Three Forks general store, where a jealous husband poisoned Johnson for supposedly cheating with his wife. That was in August 1938, when Johnson was 27 years old. Since that murderous day, the store has been physically moved to the main road — such as it is, dust and all, some three kilometres from its original spot. The original store sign is now in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, 150 kilometres to the north, which also changed location some five years ago.
There is some dispute amongst Blues historians as to whether Quito or the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Morgan City, five kilometres farther south on the same road, is the actual burial site of Robert Johnson. This church, though in better condition than the chapel, is equally remote. Commissioned by Robert Johnson's record company — which, with other labels, must have made millions of dollars from the record sales of numerous Blues legends, without, in most cases, paying their estates much in the way of recompense — the memorial lists his complete discography, which was recorded in only three sessions. Romantics will prefer Robert Johnson buried at Quito, I feel, but both sites give a fair impression of his resting at the edge of the world. I was listening to Robert Johnson as I travelled through Hungary two years ago.
I had no Hungarian music with me, save for an album by Musikas, featuring the voice of Marta Sebestyen, performing interpretations of Béla Bartók compositions. I'd played that one several times, so I went back to Johnson as I drove along the Danube Bend, where a certain something reminded me of the Mississippi. Communities along these two great rivers almost appear as though they do not fully exist. The rivers dominate, the villages and towns beg permission daily to be there. The castle at Visegrád overlooks a broad sweep of the river, but more than that I enjoyed the huge forests behind that dwarfed this imposing edifice. Built in the 13th century, the castle reached its height during the reign of Hungary's King Matthias Corvinus, and a pleasant museum — the papier-mâché peasants were very tacky — exists in its central tower. For a hundred years in the 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was in Turkish hands, but I think I would have preferred my luck with them, rather than the spa attendants I met at the nearby Hotel Silvanus.
It is interesting to note that Visegrád lent its name to a political movement set up to foster improved relationships between Central European countries. Formed in 1991, the Visegrád Group involved the leaders of Hungary, József Antall; the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and of Poland, Lech Walesa. The ceremony marking this friendship was conducted at the castle and mirrored a similar pact held in 1335 that was attended by Antall, Václav and Walesa's predecessors, Charles Robert, King of Hungary; John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and Casimir III, King of Poland.