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9. Deprived illusions

In 1988-89, our new vacation home at Lake Balaton was
completed, which we built together with my sister and her
family, after we inherited the beautiful plot of land on the lake
side, where it was actually no longer possible to vacation in the
old house built in the beginning of the fifties after the II WW.
In 1989, it was possible to apply for an American scholarship
for the language teachers at the University of Technology where
I taught. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Soros
Foundation organized the trip, though in fact the American
government financially supported the scholarships. I won and
spent the summer at Penn University for almost two months.
The scholarship came in handy because I got an insight into
American life and the world of the American university. It was
possible to deal with many professional issues, as it was
expected that the interest in foreign languages would increase in
this country after the change of regimes in 1989, communism in
our country collapsed.
We enjoyed the elegantly arranged receptions and lectures, and
miraculously, I also met Stepán in one of the groups. It turned
out that he was not only a Russian language teacher. On this
occasion, however, I shared an apartment on campus with an
English teacher from Debrecen, a famous university town in the
eastern part of Hungary. The apartment was very well equipped
with everything. We were free to bring movies from the video
rental for language practice. I visited the university bookstores
and bought heaps of language books and audio materials. I
bought a mini cassette tape recorder-player and recorded talk
shows in my free time so that I could use all of these at home
when teaching and also pass them on to my colleagues at the
language school.
In general, Hungarians were treated with great respect at the
university. They emphasized that they know that the
Hungarians have a lot of knowledge, and they cleverly

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