March for Szeged people normally is the time to remember and celebrate the River Tisza. March 22 is World Water Day and March 12 is Flood Day in Szeged. This March we’re so preoccupied with the COVID-19 epidemic that we seem to have forgotten about the anniversary of the 1879 Great Flood of Szeged. I’d…
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…
„The water came in on us on St Gregory’s day… oh, what an ugly devil that was…. And the strong winds that drove the water all the way…. I had an old boat and we used that for fleeing. When the water was coming, it was rolling like rocks, high up! It was roaring loud……
In this Paprika & Chili blog I have already written about representations of paprika in Hungarian literature. Now I’d like to continue with a series of literary texts written by early-20th century writer and columnist, Zsigmond Móricz. The stories appeared in his prose collection called Paprika is in the air. Móricz was non-native to Szeged, but…
Szeged Lowertown has always been a separate entity within Szeged city. Its homogeneous Hungarian population followed strict Roman Catholic ethics and made a living from agriculture. Among their most famous crops were tobacco and paprika. The two most important characteristics by the end of the 19th century were their religious faith and the sweet paprika spice called…