^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

Ladislaus Pascal Prince Batthyány-Strattmann of Német-Ujvár (Güssing):

Copper Thieves:

"Who Do You Think You Are?" Returns to TLC on March 8: Ancestry.com

 

Open Borders and Commuter Traffic: It was only a few years ago that a narrow road was rehabilitated and opened across the national border between the small villages of Schattendorf, Austria (in the Mattersburg district of Burgenland) and nearby Ágfalva, Hungary (in the Sopron district), two villages that wanted to enhance family and social ties between the neighboring communities after Hungary joined the European Union and the border was officially opened.

However, already there is an active effort by the Schattendorf village council to close the road between 5 and 8 am and between 4 and 7 pm... the problem being that it has quickly degenerated into a Pendlerrouten (commuter route) used morning and evening mainly by Hungarian commuters from the Sopron area. When that traffic reaches Schattendorf (which abuts the border), it runs through the narrow villages streets, past the cemetery and church, and into a residential neighborhood before emptying into a minor highway through the center of town.

A recent traffic survey by the state government shows that an average of 2,300 vehicles now use the route daily, well exceeding the design capacity of the road and the tolerance of the citizens of Schattendorf. The expectation is that the requested closing will be approved, even though the road was originally reopened as part of a cross-border EU project.



Schattendorf is not the only village in the area becoming weary of commuter traffic. Nearby Sankt Margarethen (in Eisenstadt district) is along the route of another small road that crosses the border where the Iron Curtain was first breached in 1989. The associated nearest Hungarian village is Sopronköhida, but most of the commuter traffic comes from Sopron to its south. Like Schattendorf, the route goes through residential neighborhoods before emptying into a small highway that weaves through much of the town.

As for the primary commuter route north from Sopron into Austria, that would be Hungarian Route 84, which is just a two-lane highway that becomes Austrian Route 16 at Klingenbach, bypassing most of that town then passing through the outskirts of Siegendorf before accessing the 4-lane A3 autobahn a few miles north; that autobahn leads up toward the Vienna area. For those commuting to Wiener Neustadt, the route through Schattendorf is likely slightly more efficient, especially if the apparently heavy traffic on Route 84/16 is avoided, which likely explains its quick growth in traffic volume.

However, just a few miles east near the Neusiedlersee, Mörbisch is discussing the possible opening a border crossing with Fertőrákos in Hungary. This route would facilitate commuters heading north along the lake or south to Sopron but would be of less interest to those going to Wiener Neustadt or Vienna. Perhaps that is why, despite the nearby problems, that Mörbisch is considering this idea. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out!



Update for book "The Burgenländer Emigration to America": Here is this month's update on purchases of the English issue of the 3rd edition of Dr. Walter Dujmovits' book “Die Amerika-Wanderung Der Burgenländer.”

Current total sales are 812 copies, as people purchased only 12 books this month. However, despite those limited sales the book's rank went down to 398, our first time below the 400 mark, and lower is better! If you haven't yet 'joined the crowd,' do consider buying a copy for yourself or others. There is much in the book about our joint heretage and history that is well worth reading.

As always, the book remains available for online purchase at a list price of $7.41 (which is the production charge for the book), plus tax & shipping. See the BB homepage for a link to the information / ordering page and for any current discounts (and there is at least one discount on price or shipping available most of the time... if not, wait a few days and there will be one!).



Burgenland Recipes: We have a new source for ethnic recipes, courtesy of Margaret Kaiser. She shares select recipes from a cookbook titled "Recipes for the New Millennium" (copyright 2000, Morris Press) and credited as "A Collection of Recipes from Former and Present Parishioners of Holy Ghost Church, Bethlehem, PA."

HUNGARIAN GULYAS (from Erika M Cirullo)

1 1/2 lbs. beef cubes    1 lg. onion
2 T. lard                1 green pepper
2 tsp. paprika           2 lg. carrots
1 tsp. salt              3 lg. potatoes
1/2 tsp. pepper

Saute onion and green pepper in lard. Add paprika; stir well. Add meat and saute for about 5 minutes. Add seasonings and just enough water to cover meat. Cook slowly for 1 hour. Add sliced carrots and 3 cups of water and cook slowly for 1/2 hour. Add potatoes and continue cooking for 15 minutes or until done. Mix in dumplings (see below), if you like, and serve as a main dish. Serves 4.

Dumplings:

3 eggs, beaten           1/4 tsp. baking powder
3 c. flour               1/2 to 2/3 c. cold water
1 T. salt

Mix all ingredients and beat with wooden spoon until smooth; drop by teaspoonful into salted, boiling water; cook until dumplings rise to top. Drain and rinse with warm water. Serve with chicken paprikas, goulash, stews or any of your favorite recipes as a side dish. Serves 4.



Ed Note: I just made this dish for myself (and for my wife). First, I used off-the-shelf plain grocery store paprika... which probably was a mistake! While you could tell it was there (barely), I doubt it gave the intended flavor kick that proper Hungarian paprika would have done. I found myself adding salt and pepper to the dish to give a little more flavor and impact. My wife, who likes things less spicy than I do, thought it was fine. Regardless, it prompted me to do a little research into paprika.

The off-the-shelf grocery store paprika, according to thekitchn.com, "may be Hungarian, Californian, or South American, and it is sometimes mixed with other chiles like cayenne. This paprika tends to be neither sweet nor hot and is a suitable garnish for things like deviled eggs or wherever you want some color." Note that this says nothing about delivering flavor or aroma!

The website goes on to say that "Hungarian paprika is made from peppers that are harvested and then sorted, toasted, and blended to create different varieties. All Hungarian paprikas have some degree of rich, sweet red pepper flavor, but they range in pungency and heat. The eight grades of Hungarian paprika are különleges ('special quality'; mild and most vibrant red), csíposmentes csemege (delicate and mild), csemege paprika (similar to the previous but more pungent), csípos csemege (even more pungent), édesnemes ('noble sweet'; slightly pungent and bright red), félédes (semi-sweet with medium pungency), rózsa (mildly pungent and pale red), and eros (hottest and light brown to orange). In the US, what is marketed as Hungarian sweet paprika is usually the édesnemes variety."

That explanation was well and good, but what exactly, I asked myself, did it mean by the word pungency? A little exploring in Wikipedia revealed that "Pungency is the technical term used by scientists to refer to the characteristic of food commonly referred to as spiciness or hotness and sometimes heat, which is found in foods such as chili peppers." A more every-day definition being "the condition of having a strong, sharp smell or taste that is often so strong that it is unpleasant."

With that information in mind, I went online looking for places to buy Hungarian paprika. One of the first articles I found asked "Where is the Hungarian paprika?" and noted that it had disappeared from almost all chain grocery stores in the Washington, DC, area... you had to go to specialty spice stores to find it, one such being Penzeys Spices in suburban Rockville, MD. I looked at their website and found a number of Hungarian paprikas in stock at reasonable prices.

Penzeys appears to be a spice re-marketer, buying in bulk and then re-packaging into their own containers in consumer sizes. For example, Hungarian Style Sweet Paprika (a különleges) could be purchased in jars, 1.2 oz 1/4 cup or 2.4 oz 1/2 cup, priced $3.89 and $6.65, and bags, 4, 8 or 16 oz, priced $5.69, $10.25 and $19.30. They also offer a Hungarian Style Half-Sharp Paprika (not identified as a specific Hungarian grade... but other websites say the nomenclature refers to félédes) in the same quantities and prices. I bought a small jar of both, actually paying slightly more to have them shipped than the total price of the spices... but such is the price of convenient, to-your-door delivery. (Once they arrive, I'll make another batch or two of Guylas and report on my impressions.)

Do note that the Penzeys Sweet Paprika is a különleges. However, the recommended grade for Hungarian Guylas is édesnemes (noble sweet), which is slightly more pungent (spicy/hot).

By the way, my local grocery store sells "smoked paprika" ...but my research says that this is usually a Spanish paprika that adds a lot of smoke flavor to dishes... I doubt it is right for Guylas.

My other comment on the recipe concerns the Dumplings, specifically the amount of water to be blended in the mix. The recipe calls for "1/2 to 2/3 c. cold water" and I used somewhere in the middle... however, the mix was quite liquid and wanted to "boil over" the pot as I added teaspoonfuls. I suggest using as little water as needed to get the mix smooth (it may depend on the size of the eggs, as they are the other liquid source). That way you'll have more dumpling-like (rather than spaetzle-like) results and less boiling froth in the pot.



Follow-up: My ordered spices arrived a few days ago so I made a second batch of Gulyas, this time using 1 1/2 teaspoons of Penzeys Sweet Paprika and a half teaspoon of the Half-Sharp Paprika (to make up for the difference in the lower pungency of the különleges versus the recommended édesnemes). I also decreased the water amount in the dumplings to between 1/4 and 1/2 cup.

As for the Guylas, the new spices clearly added flavor and pungency over the off-the-shelf grocery paprika. I enjoyed the slight 'warmth' of this version and felt no need to add compensatory spices. Even my wife (heat-adverse as she is) thought the second version was better. As for the dumplings, the slightly dryer, thicker mix cured the problem of the pot trying to boil over and reduced the froth that formed. The resulting dumplings were slightly larger, came out as small chunks of dumpling rather than spaetzle-sized, and yielded slightly greater usable quantity. These also met with joint approval!



Cartoon of the Month:


 

"We are living in the capital city of an empire that is looking very much like one on its last legs. Our emperor is a tired old man, an anachronism. Our Parliament is cacophonous and disruptive beyond repair. Our army, in spite of its grandly colorful uniforms, has not won a battle, let alone a war, in this century. Our borders keep shrinking. We have built a splendid boulevard of gaudy marble facades, but we cannot house or care for our lower classes. We have huge uncontrolled debt, and no one with a clue how to reduce it. All the nationalities, our dear Slavic countrymen, are dangerously restive, clamoring for attention and independence. And all we Viennese want to do is drink our coffee mitt schlagg, listen to operettas, meet our sweet girls, and waltz ourselves silly to the strains of Strauss the younger. Let us not call it 'dancing on the precipice,' heavens no, that would be cynical. Let us look at the rosy hues only."

The character speaking is one of the Jung Wien who made famous the Viennese coffeehouses, the sons of the haute bourgeoisie, who took up the aesthetic, creative and intellectual life and rejected the world of business and industry of their fathers, a world that had generated the wealth and luxury that allowed them their easy existence. Their fathers and grandfathers were the ones who thrived after the establishment of the Austrian constitutional monarchy in 1848... an event that also initiated the move away from peasants (our ancestors) being beholden to the landed nobility.

What I found interesting about the book was that the time-displaced characters of the novel both observe and become involved in this Viennese world... using their knowledge of "the future" to comment on "current" affairs. While the book spends much time in this Viennese world, the back-stories of the lead characters (their original lives in their original time eras) also consume much of the book. As you can imagine, allowing time displacement creates opportunity for many interesting plot twists. I will not go into those, as it will ruin the story for you, should you choose to read the novel. The book is also quite complex (perhaps too complex for some readers and reviewers), touching on many social issues... but again I'll avoid comment on those and let you discover (and judge) the usefulness of this complexity.

One interesting oddity that I will mention is that a pivotal character in the book is Arnauld Esterhazy, a (fictitious) member of the Esterházy noble family that owned much of northern Burgenland for many years.

All in all, I was most fascinated by the author's descriptions of 1897 Vienna and the impact of that world on the present... and I really wished for more of that. But, as I noted above, this is merely a novel and a light-hearted romp of a novel for all that.

However, in the Author's Note at the end of the book, he says that much of the 1897 history in the book comes from a non-fiction 1982 book by Carl Schorske, titled Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Perhaps I must read that!