Chapter 21
The German Connection
In the first month of our life in the new home I started a new study again. After my 10-month morning German course at the foreign trade company and the successful medium-degree examination, I applied for the last year in a similar course at the same institute, where I had completed my English study. I have been accepted and from September 1982 my course for the high degree began. My knowledge has been proper and thus, I was accepted an eminent in the group.
Also, another girl of great assertiveness I met in that group. Bigger half of the team consisted of women, mainly young girls. They have been from foreign trade companies newly discovering the German language as an important factor in Europe. Most of these were fascinating girls with good manners, but the one I am speaking about has been the opposite. A real go-getter, as ugly, as possible, she had the idea of taking me her consort. She sat beside me in the first lesson and I could not remove her from my vicinity. Till the examination came, I could not avoid her.
Our course has done me a lot of good even during its time, of course, later, too. During that course I had two business trips to German-speaking partners.
Start of the course made my life harder. Three times a week I had lessons until half past eight, I reached home past nine o’clock. Days between, I had a lot of home-work, preparing vocabulary and memorizing words and expressions. I have again made a vocabulary of the double-sided alphabetical type.
One evening at the beginning of December coming home I found a label on the toilet door: "Caution, angry dog!” I opened the door and a yellow puppy greeted me inside. My first reaction has been double: place of the dog was outside, and it was inhuman – even if it was an animal – to place her into a tiny dark room. I took her to the basement. At that time our old boiler still worked satisfactorily.
Some days before, my wife got an address three bus-stops away, where a small kitten had expected to be taken. We went there, and I put him into my coat, holding him all the time, as we walked home with him. We could not risk to get on a bus. Traffic was enormous, and he tried his claws on my flesh every time a bus or a truck passed us with great noise. At home we placed him into the basement, put in a sand-box and in another corner a plate with milk. He could go out any time, as the builder of the house had made a hole beside the door for his own cat.
When the dog became his companion some days later, she wanted to dominate the place at once, but she would be fastened to the bench to prevent her bothering constantly the cat. She had not been there long. The next evening I cleaned the old dog-house left by the former owners and put it into order with a new bottom. She liked it very much and she would have it until her death eight years later.
Although our dog liked her house, it did not prevent her from going through the right-side bar fence and from the neighbour out to the street. Her straight way led then to her mother three houses down the street. With sufferance I had to chain her for a few days. Later she would never go away. She has been a very good-natured dog. We named her Shayyow as my childhood dog had been called, but soon I gave him the same nickname as to our dog in Africa: Shomphordah – it means in Hungarian something like slinky – for her manner. I called her generally Shomphy.
She had a longing for digging. Her place has always been a true hillside country. Once she dug under her house and at last it went into the hole. The inclination of her home did not cause her any serious problem. From time to time I put her quarter into order – in my sense that was completely different from hers –, but she has not been content, until she restored the original state.
Our street was in development. Across the road on two neighbouring sites two enormous houses have been built. The men had been in a good relationship before, even the design of their houses have been identical. As construction went on, differences between the two houses became numerous and by their finish the two owners reached a state of enemies. It has not changed so far.
Our left-side neighbours have had a split property, the owner on the street end was an old lady not completely responsible because of her sclerosis multiplex. She was a friendly person, she hated only her rear neighbours. This feeling has been mutual. They owned the rear end of the site with their own house.
On our right side an old couple had been living. Our site, even the site of our left-side neighbours had been in the ownership of the woman’s parents at the beginning of the century. To earn a living they had their big site split and sold parts of it. I learned from them, our old pear tree has been planted in the first year of the 20th century. Their daughter with her husband and their daughter has been living on the same living estate, from where we moved here. The old man would pass in two years and the lady would follow him in another two years. Their house would stay empty until the heirs would move here.
Our left-side front neighbour would change three times. After the old lady’s death her grandson, a ballet dancer, would move in, but he would soon sell it to a young transport entrepreneur. His legacy would be guarded by the felled apricot tree at the fence. His chief occupation was to disturb our TV programs by his black-market CB radio. After some years he would sell the estate further to a young divorced woman with a daughter. She would fell another tree, a walnut tree, but she would turn her garden a pretty one with her constant work. Her former husband would appear from time to time on place.
On my working place I could be acquainted with everything about brake business in two months. There were great plans of taking into production certain brake units designed by KB in place of obsolete ones. KB included them in our production lists at our latest talks. I had to make trips to our three factories in the country, and sometimes I went there with executives from other divisions to make different ideas meet. My constant companions have been for years Julius B. of the research institute – sometimes his director, at the same time technical deputy general manager of the company – and a man of my age of the production division. Sometimes my colleague, the secretary of our department head, also came with us.
Beside brakes I retained two fields for machine tools: the Meehanite licence for good-quality cast iron machine tool beds and the ball-screw workshop. The cast-iron licence involved our foundry in Esztergom – actually the foundry of our factory for milling machines there –, the ball-screw workshop had been built before my mission in Africa in our Kecskemet brake-unit factory on a separate place.
Thus the most frequented place for me has been Kecskemet in the middle of our country. Another place of brakes for both railway and road vehicles was our factory for cylindrical grinding machines. It has been in Szekesfehervar, halfway between the capital and the lake Balaton. The third one has been developed in Karcag, a town 100 miles from the capital to the east.
In the first year after taking my job for brakes I could not convince our sales manager to allow our participation with brake units on the spring industrial fair held in May every year. But from the next year, among the automotive exhibitors we could be found with our units and, having a good cooperation with Margaret, our protocol executive, our prospectuses have always been attractive.
In the first year I have not been selected for duty at the exhibition – our machine tool products have always been exhibited, and there was a good pavilion for reception of our customers –, the sales manager wanted me to deal with topics inside the company.
Shortly after the exhibition I have been sent to a business trip to Bulgaria with a sales executive from the foreign trade company for export of railway brake units. She has been a woman of 40 with an ordinary appearance, but she has been a very precise person. Our trip has involved the company’s export of spare units that year for the Bulgarian state railways.
It has been a very useful trip to me. I have been in Bulgaria only in Rousse 20 years before, going ashore from a tug. Now I could see the vast difference between their negotiation style and that of ours.
In the coming years I would visit that country repeatedly, but completely I would never be accustomed to their ways. During that trip I have had an experience that made me think of Addis Ababa, our first year in a high-rise apartment. In our hotel, sitting in my room, I let my thoughts wander and suddenly I felt myself sitting in my Addis Ababa room. When this sense left me, I realized I was in Sofia. Then I guessed the reason: the hotel has been built in the same style, equipped with the same windows and handles as our apartment in Africa. Besides, the end-of-May weather with gathering rain clouds, may be, even an air moisture aroused in me a feeling of the coming monsoon. And the Vitosha mountain outside impressed me as the Entoto next to Addis. It was amazing, how this environment reminded me of Addis Ababa.
This trip has established good connections between the girl and me. We trusted each other and we could work well together for some years.
In two months there came another business trip, that time to the KB. It was my first one in Munich. Another specialist from our factory for railway brakes has been selected and the sales executive was the same girl I have been in Sofia with. This time our trip has only been a regular annual event, there was no responsibility to take.
I tried to compare the West-Germany I saw to that seen almost 20 years before. I would not think it was the same country. It resembled more America 20 years back. Actually our allowence has been little, and we could only buy some souvenirs. Or rather I would, had I not taken some extra money with me from my account. Thus I could buy a good watch for my wife and a model car with radio remote control for my son.
My next trip to KB followed in February 1983. It was about a new cooperation agreement – our export of brake units to KB – and about opening of a consignment store for these units. That time the responsible foreign trade firm was that of the automotive industry. Sales executive was a woman, whose husband has been a Turk living in Hungary. She was not inducing any illusions about being a female person, but her precise work-style I liked very much. She would rely on me and never take any risks. I could also rely on her for taking me with herself.
It was a pleasant, but hard program with very little time to walk and shop. The weather has also been very cold and those three days few. We have returned content with the results. Any time, also later, KB has been a very honest partner.
That year in the spring news came about weak health of Andropov. When he appeared on TV, he has always been supported from both sides. But the world would wait another year till his death.
In May I finished whitewash of the room we prepared for the parents of my wife. Soon their moving to us has been done. It was a complicated matter for octogenarians to pack up their things for a moving. My father-in-law has been unable to do that with his shed built after his retirement 20 years before. When the truck arrived, we loaded packages and furniture on it, but his shed and its surrounding wire-mesh fence was still intact. When we took apart the shed, his instruments, gauges, etc. remained there in fine order where he packed them. We had to pack it up with my brother-in-law and we could leave their place only after that. His things have been packed again in order to our basement and would stay there until his death 13 years later.
Society in our country began to polarize. From the beginning the Kadar system had had to follow the "big brother”, but it could be always organized that this following had some delay. The ruling party had a core of a few communists – not always at helm –, but the majority of its members were critical to Leninist ideas – to Marx not always as he had been right in a number of his statements – and backed reformist ideas. After Afghanistan many viewed things through different eyes. There were attempts to make clear what happened in the period after the war, especially after 1956.
In one of the films made that time there was a joke.
The eagle is flying by slow, big wing-strokes. The sparrow is following him and asking: "Where are we flying?” The eagle flies on. The sparrow asks him again and again. At last he answers: "Who knows?”
Our stand at the exhibition, allowed by our sales manager at last, was successful. There were a lot of customers from different countries and I have met people not seen since my years at the university.
In June I received my high-degree certificate of German language after the exam. I thought I studied enough to stop. But time would show that it would never be enough.
From the foreign trade company for automotive industry an inquiry has been sent to me for export to Bulgaria. This sales executive I did not know, but we soon became good friends with that young man. He suggested to meet our customers at the Plovdiv industrial exhibition. Our sales manager agreed, he even sent the director of our railway brake factory with us. It was a relatively easy task and we had time to see the town itself.
There are historic ruins including a great amphitheatre. The place had been the seat of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. There are younger monuments, too, as the statue of a Russian soldier. People erected it for the liberator of World War II. It is called Alyosha.
My second visit to that town would not be so easy with an almost hopeless task and a passive company representative.
The same executive has been responsible for Poland, too. One of the visitors at our exhibition has been a Pole and he addressed us for a technical cooperation. Our trip has come to reality in October. A technical man from our Kecskemet factory accompanied us. The seat of our cooperation partner has been far from the capital, the representative of the foreign trade company transported us there in his car.
It was a terrible period for Poland. There were no goods in the shops, all have been taken by people abroad. It was the only country, from where travel allowance was permitted to take home, as it was impossible to spend. People were so distressed that a girl would come to a foreigner’s room for a dinner. It was a pain to see such a poverty with my deep respect for the Polish people. When we went into the largest department store of the capital, its big halls have been empty. Even shelves have been removed. In one corner there was a counter and stainless steel utensils have been sold, without handles.
Our partners have been true gentlemen. All day we were kept busy with cooperation topics and in a special room -- hidden from the eyes of workers -- we have been served a good lunch. When we mentioned the antagonism, they told us, the company was keeping pigs in the factory and the management provided food for their workers on a minimum level.
Even in the evening there was enough food and vodka. I cannot drink without having nausea, all night then I turned from one side to the other to prevent illness.
Sorry to say, in spite of all our goodwill and that of our partners, this technical cooperation would never realize. It was one of the most unstable times in policy. Almost anything might have happened, it is not only by chance that such films as "The Day After” have been produced.
Shortly before our trip in a September morning I have heard about the Korean 747 being shot down. That event made most of us feel unsafe. After a long period of war by lip service, real war has been sensed not impossible.
That November my family joined to an excursion, organized again by the trade union of our directorate, to the northern Carpathian mountains. That part of the mountain is called Tatra. That excursion was well arranged, weather was beautiful, last days of the Indian summer, but one of our experiences made us, my wife and me, wish to forget it as soon as possible.
Around evening one day we stopped and the group went to see a kind of attraction. This involved a long descent to the site and ascent on the return walk. My son was with us downwards, but, as we came up slower, he would go to the front and back again. I told him not to make detours as dusk was on us.
Arriving to the bus we could not find him. Darkness fell already and I began to run down and up, my heart near to an attack, but he was nowhere. It is impossible to describe my despair. I could not help imagining him dead. Our group slowly learned about the situation and some of them helped me search for him, others were very sympathetic.
Suddenly another child came to us and said:
"Joe has been sitting on the other side of the road for half an hour.”
Well, he became tired and sat down unaware of the fuss about him.
I remembered the despair of my parents when my brother died. I could feel now something similar they felt. This was the last trip I joined my colleagues. Neither my wife, nor me could bear the manner of that trade-union woman.