Located something like 20km from the Serbia and not much further from the Romanian border, the town of Szeged is situated. This locale is a pleasant conglomeration of Mediterranean culture, with its Roman-esk architecture, along side terracotta accented facades. In summer, every café has patio seating, so umbrellas line the main square two or three deep. The main square has mainly brick pavers geometrically laid out, wooden benches, fountains, and heroic battle poised statues honoring fallen countrymen, and whats appears to be 5 apothecaries per capita. The side streets are cobbled and angle downward in the center, for drainage I presume. The city needs be concerned with having proper drainage, as it was almost whipped of the map once during a great flood that occurred in the 1990s. There is a stately Jewish temple, despite a minimal number of Jews due to their not so friendly swastikas bearing neighbors and their red army comrades to the north, who made themselves at home in Hungary a couple of generations back. There are also notably Gothic influences and a narrow winding river that runs through the north side of town to sweeten the "European any-town" feel.
There is a large park in the middle of the city, which is quite lovely, there is a noisy street car, which quaintly clatters up and down the streets, and there is something else quite unique; a public water fountain. It is a serous of faucets, which spouts water of different temperatures ranging from luke-warm to hot to very hot to boiling. The water is pumped in from a natural spring some distance away. It took some time to adjust to the salinity and variety of minerals in the water. However, once I make the adjustment, it became the water of choice, much preferred to bottled water. Hungarian bottled water is crap, and not even an option as far as I was concerned. The teachers and I would often take midnight strolls to the fountain, filling up our bottle for the following day. It became a fun ritual, we would have private talks about our students, the other Hungarians that lived in the house, the boss, and the one black sheep teacher that we all thought was nuts, all of these topics were frequently visited on the way to the water fountain, and became known as "water fountain gossip".
There are two other very remarkable things you must experience if you are ever in Szeged:. One is a'Capella. It is a cosy bakery and creamery in the center of town, known for high quality baked treats and cakes , but the reason you really go there is for the "fudlare"(ice cream) it is spectacularly and cheap! Imagine the best gellato you've ever had, reduce the amount of sweetness and portion size and increase the icy- creaminess, and you have Hungarian ice cream. Hungarians seem to prefer fruit flavors to rich chocolate varieties, much like me, so I was totally on board with the flavor selections. My favorite combination was a grapefruit- lime-kiwi in a waffle cone. I think I had one everyday, despite making statements like "I'm going to try a new flavor every time".-No, that didn't happen, I always got the same thing. The best .80 cents I ever spent!
The second fantastic find in Szeged was the Farmers' Market. First step: order a garlic "pancetta", a pancake that looks a bit like Bobboli (the pre-made pizza crust that was super trendy in the late 80s in the US) outside the front gate of the market. Pancetta is made like a funnel cake I think, the dough is deep fried, then covered with garlic salt and toped with melted sour cream and mozzarella cheese. Heart attack on a plate- for sure, but so rich and good! After you recover from the coronary, hold on tight to your wallet and foreign accent, because it's time to enter gypsyland. You'll see all kinds of child labor and fake cripples. You'll be buying watermelons from a 6 years old that will still manage to trick you out of a few extra Forints. There are rows and rows of produce, you can taste everything, so hopefully you're not too full of pancetta. There is a lot of competition and bargaining is acceptable if you can speak Hungarian, and expected when you are Hungarian, but laughable if you are foreign. I'm fairly certain the foreigners' price makes up for the Hungarian discount. The sausage house was a particular delight for me, so many to choose from….. and so many phallic pictures to take, we spent a while in there. I love a good farmers' market, and I found this one to be exceptional. The following week I never ate so well. I realized that paprika is delicious on everything, by week's end I was eating slices of paprika like carrot sticks, and had figured out how to introduce sausage into every meal. Yes, paprika and sausage on dark rye bread, with fudlare for dessert, it was a happy...fattening existence.
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