Page 56 - Microsoft Word - 01_A MÁSIK OLDAL English.doc

language practice, they said, and the next 2-3 weeks were
settled with that. We didn't go to the symposium with Sztyepán
- a colleague from Keszthely, a town at Lake Balaton who put
up with me calling it that way, but we decided to visit the closed
churches and monasteries. We walked a lot and saw a lot, we
even went swimming on a beach and on the banks of the
Moskva River. The very next day, a young man in Moscow
approached us, saying that he once built roads in Hungary and
that he had good memories of our country. We told him: There
you were a soldier...
- Why are we walking around so much anyway? - asked. We
said that we also wanted to go to Zágorksz and Vladyimír as
religious centers. These were religious places like Esztergom in
Hungary but they were little talked about and neglected. He was
surprised that we were interested in such a thing, but he did not
argue with us. He came every day and helped with everything,
including shopping, as our apartment in Budapest was finished
and quite a few household appliances were missing. In
Moscow, they were very cheap and durable, but it was difficult
to get them. But our "supervisor" helped us in everything, if
nothing else, he "found out" where we had to go the next day.
In Zagorsk, we visited the functioning monasteries and listened
to the beautiful church songs, and watched the mass throughout.
I had not previously been to Orthodox Greek churches and I did
not know the religious Russian person either. I liked the onion-
domed church towers. They also took us to Leningrad, which is
now St. Petersburg again, and we spent a few days there. We
didn't like the fact that we were blocked off by a cordon in the
harbour to get close to a large passenger ships. Only Western
tourists, such as Finnish, could go there. Architecturally, the
city was closer to what we had imagined, and we didn't feel the
power of power here as much, but we couldn't even sit in a
restaurant here, even though they were empty and the tables
were set. The answer to everything was: no - in Russian. It will
never be a problem to say that.

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