We had a great Super Preparation Day! Mondays are our Preparation days, or days off of missionary work, when we can get shopping, laundry and cleaning done. It is also a day when we can sightsee. Monday after Easter is a national holiday, and when that happens, our P-days are called "Super P-days". So after church on Sunday, we headed to Sopron to spend the night and day with Elder and Sister Flammer. They are from Providence, Utah, and came to Hungary a month before we came. We had such a nice time visiting with them and sharing our struggles with the language and our appreciation for the Hungarian people. On Monday we went to a place called The Picnic. In 1989, in August, 10-12,000 Hungarians and East Germans met at a park to protest the Communist guarded border. At the end of the several days gathering, 150 of the people forced the barbed wire border. Only a couple of guards had been left to guard this area outside of Sopron, and they thankfully decided to assist those escaping. (Up to that time, over 4,000 people had tried to escape that year, and only 38 were successful.) Over the next few days, more people escaped until the border was once again secured. They left their cars, their children's toys and everything they had just to get out. Only one person was killed during that time. By September, the border opened at this spot, and floods of people poured into Austria and West Germany. There are pictures and signs around the grounds, detailing the events. Many of the pictures showed whole families weeping for joy. Families who were once divided were reunited. It also told how kind the western countries were that took these refugees in. Later, it was said that this event is what eventually tore down the Berlin wall in November of that year. As I read about the events and looked at the pictures, I felt so grateful that I have always known freedom. I also had a flashback from when I was young and living in Germany. I remember our family at the border to East Germany, looking at the barbed-wired fence, and feeling some anxiety about being there. When I asked my siblings if this had happened, my brother wrote and confirmed the encounter and added that we were escorted out of that area by some military personnel.
After this, we went to lunch at a Hungarian church member's apartment. Her name is ZsuZsa, and in November she returned from a 18 month mission at a genealogy center in another part of Hungary. Like us, she is an older woman, and she was so gracious! When she found out we were coming to Sopron, she asked the Flammers to bring us to lunch. First we had a broth soup. In a separate bowl, she had some noodles. So you put those in your bowl and then poured the broth over it. I made the mistake in thinking that was the main course and took a tiny bit of a second serving. Then she served the main course which was stuffed cabbage, or Toltott Kaposzta. It was delicious! (Last night, when we were feeding the missionaries in Sekes., Elder Peterson said there really wasn't any dish with cabbage that wasn't delicious in Hungary, and he hadn't liked cabbage at home in the U.S.) Then she brought out a plate with about five different desserts on it. Soooo we had to try each kind to be polite, right? I felt like the stuffed cabbage when we left! We had a great visit with her and she talked about what it was like under Russian occupation. No one here would like to go back to that, but they all talk about the fact that everyone had a job and a little money, and that now the economy is so bad. She was the first member to be baptised in Sopron, eleven years ago.
We drove home a different route that we'd taken to get there and got to see more spring countryside. Every little village has it's white, tall-stepel church, and small country homes. It's very picturesque.
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