Polish-Hungarian Friendship Day

Dry Erase Board in Polish and Hungarian

Poles and Hungarians are apparently really good friends. Each of them even has a saying about how great their friendship is. In Hungarian the saying goes:

Lengyel, magyar két jó barát, együtt harcol s issza borát

In Polish:

Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki, i do szabli, i do szklanki

The basic idea of both in English is "The Pole and Hungarian are friends at all times, they fight side by side and then share each other's wine."

I lived in Hungary for two years as a teacher, and to be honest, I don't remember this day being a big deal (at the very least, it wasn't a school holiday. I would have remembered one of those). All the same, they do have a definite historical friendship, easily going back to the 16th century when the Hungarian István Báthory was king of Poland, and later when several Polish-born kings like Vladislav III were king of Hungary. When Hungary fought an unsuccessful revolution, Poland was there on their side. Polish-born József Bem is a national hero of both countries as they found for independence against the Habsburgs in 1848. In 1956 a violent workers revolt was put down in Poznań, Poland. After concessions were made (in what's now referred to as Polish October), Hungarians thought they might be able to do the same and on October 23rd students started a protest in front of the statue of Bem in Budapest. The protest quickly turned into a full revolt as government and state-run media offices were stormed, and the gigantic statue of Stalin was torn down, dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Danube. At first, it seemed like the Hungarians had succeeded in kicking the Soviets out of their country (of course, the Soviets came back with plenty of tanks but little mercy). Poles gave blood in droves to the wounded Hungarians, and sent as many supplies as possible.

But despite all this, I'm pretty sure we took this day a lot more seriously than most Poles and Hungarians did. The holiday did allow us to enjoy something of a concept dinner, as I thought it would be fun to have one Hungarian dish and one Polish. Originally I was just going to be lazy and buy some Polish kielbasa (though made out of Turkey, since it's way healthier) and eat it with sauerkraut. But then I found a recipe for Bigos on Wikipedia that sounded way more fun (and by recipe I mean some loose guidelines). I boiled around 2 cups worth of cabbage for about half an hour till it got soft, then I mixed that up with an equal amount of sauerkraut and a can of diced tomatoes. I fried some onions with some ground beef and turkey bacon (no we're not obsessed, it's just the only kind we can get here) and added that to the pot. Finally I diced up an apple, and added the sliced kielbasa, as well as a handful of peppercorns and a bay leaf. Then I let it all simmer on low for about an hour.

A steaming pot of Bigos

For the Hungarian dish I was going to make káposztás kocka, which is pasta tossed with fried cabbage, but we already had a lot of cabbage going on. So I decided instead to make gránátos kocka, which again is pasta, only with bits of fried potato instead. I boiled the potato in its skin for about half an hour (though I probably should have done it longer), then let it cool for a minute, and cut it into cubes. I fried the cubes with more diced onion and then added a little paprika. Well, tried to anyway. The top came off of the shaker and a ton of paprika fell into the pan. I had to scoop most of it out. As a result, the dish ended up with far more paprika that was ever necessary. 

Final Product

The gránátos kocka, like I said had just a little too much paprika, but the Bigos was very good. Truly, it is the best way I've found to eat cabbage. We enjoyed our dinner while reminiscing about the trip we took to Kraków together as well as the things we missed about living in Hungary. While in Kraków, I bought a book of children's stories in Polish (which of course, I couldn't read). But back then we didn't have Google Translate, and I figured it might be time to finally figure out what it says. I translated one about the dragon of Wawel, which I would publish here, but since I don't have the copyright I figure it's probably better if you just get the gist of the story from this Wikipedia link.

In the end, whether your Polish, Hungarian like me, or none of the above, today was a good day to celebrate friendship.