Although we’re experiencing a short winter return and COVID-19 virus news is depressing, let’s not forget to notice and feel grateful for SPRING coming. 25 March takes a special place in the Christian and rural folk calendar: it is the Feast of the Annunciation or Lady Day in the Christian Calendar. Hungarian language is beautifully…
The Paprika Museum item of the month series continues. For February we selected a funny folk, the Folqa Paprikamiller. This month we selected a small round hand-embroidered placemat from Kalocsa and placed it on top of an old tin water can to add accent and more meaning. This is a piece of art that represents…
We’re in the middle of the carnival season, which in western Christian calendar is marked with parading, dancing, eating and merry-making. Colourful costumes, masquerades and masks, people engaging in earthly pleasures like eating and drinking, partying and dating are all hallmarks of the season. This time is intense with colours and images. The colour red,…
The Paprika Museum item of the month series continues. Last month we portrayed the porcelain Paprika-stringing woman from Hollóháza. She is fragile, young and is performing one of the simplest activities in paprika processing. This time we’re displaying a more robust male character who’s representing paprika expertise. The Paprika Museum item we picked this time…
We’re now publishing a new literary series under the title Pesti Paprika. We’ve done this before with our literary series on Szeged called Paprika is in the air. Back in 1958 the Hungarian Radio broadcast a three-part cabaret series under the name Pesti Paprika. The cabaret scenes are sassy, witty and funny. They tell stories…
January 18 is the name-day of Piroska in the Hungarian calendar and we use this occassion to write about Saint Piroska and the Paprika Bell. In our previous post we wrote about how Hungarian princess Saint Piroska became St Eiréné in Constantinapole. 900 years later, in 1921 the people of Szeged Lower Town – which…
January 18 is the name-day of Piroska in the Hungarian calendar. No longer a popular name today but a hundred years ago Piroska was a common name given to newborn girls. Who was Piroska? Saint Piroska plays an important role both in Hungarian history and Szeged local history. In 1921 the people of Szeged Lower…
After our Advent recipe for fasting before the feast HERE it is high time to remember how we celebrate Christmas with an original Szeged fish soup on the festive table! Christmas customs and Christmas menu What do we celebrate at Christmas? Obviously: the birth of Jesus. The date of Jesus’ birth is known as December 25th.…
A colleague of ours, Eva, shared this lovely family story with us. The story is made of paprika bags, commercial opportunities and some colourful people from the Szeged region. But most of all it portrays the ingenius creativity of women. Smuggling paprika bags. Background of the story During the early years of communism (1950’s) free…
The Advent period – in fact all of December – is a collection of celebrative days. There is Borbala Day, arriving with a branch of a blooming fruit tree, then there is Luca the witch, and of course the holy night of Christmas Eve, followed by two days of Christmas. Then finally the Small Saints…
While the old paprikafarmers around Szeged were busy picking their harvest, during the beginning of September, obviously other events of the economic life took place parallelly. Already at that time, much attention was paid to the preparation of pig slaughtering. For most people the making of hams, sausages and bacon were crucial winter activities and…
Hopefully loyal readers of our blog still remember last week’s post. We wrote about the paprika uprising happening 100 years ago in December 1919 and mentioned that the case was closed only 5 years after. Recalling the 1919 paprika uprising The March 13th 1924 publication of the Délmagyarország newspaper already gives an exciting prediction of…