This past weekend, I had a great opportunity to get a close look at gypsy villages and urban slums in the Northeastern region of Hungary, near Slovakia. I traveled with a guide who has been studying gypsification in villages such as Csenyéte and Misckolc for over twenty years. Also on the trip were people from Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Hungary, France, and America.
After we got off our three hour long train ride, we all saw this bus and likely had similar thoughts about the fact that it's falling apart and covered in spray paint. Then we learned it was our bus for the weekend.
Which, in all honesty, was a great thing because it would have been extremely embarrassing to drive around Hungary's poorest areas in a bus that was shiny & new.
One of our destinations was Szanticska, but I'll post about that another day.
We stopped at a "market" in the city center of a town near Csenyéte. There was one woman making lángos; a fried piece of dough covered in sour cream, cheese, and garlic.
So. Incredibly. Delicious.
Csenyéte is down there in the valley, and those mountains in the background are actually in Slovakia.
The most direct route to Csenyéte is down that dirt road. The problem for the people that live there is that there isn't public transportation for them and most of the people do not have cars. Therefore, they have to walk in and out of their town to do any sort of shopping or errands. You can only imagine how miserable this must be in the winter.
We encountered these cows on the way into the village. Nobody knew what they were actually called, just that they are a rare Hungarian breed.
See? Our bus blended right in!
We paid a visit to the only school in town. It is compulsory to finish 8th grade, but the school in Csenyéte only reaches 4th grade. To attend 5th-8th grade, the kids must travel far away to another location. Like I said before, this is extremely difficult and most parents chose to keep their kids at home. Even though it is technically required, there is no outside force that mandates whether or not the children are receiving their required eduction.
This is a 4th grade classroom. Even though the kids are the same age as 4th graders in the United States, they are much smaller due to malnutrition. Also, there is only one boy in this classroom.
We asked the kids how many brothers and sisters they have. Most of them have at least 7. We were told that the kids start having babies so young that it is likely for a woman to be a grandmother by the time she is 28 years old.
The school is the only adequate looking facility in the entire village and it was obvious that the children were having a great time there. It's impossible to tell in the photos, though, but there were flies everywhere.
The cafeteria where the children eat lunch.
The third grade classroom.
There were many more boys in 3rd grade, but I don't know why.
The 1st grade classroom. We asked the children how old they were and they didn't know. Also, we saw the first chubby kid since we arrived.
Their playground, obviously inspired by communism.
A house.
There will be many more photos to come. We visited other villages and Csenyéte once again with more interaction with the locals on our second day.
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