Mini Hungarian language lesson: house of cards

A historic house being demolished to make way for yet another hotel is an everyday occurrence in downtown Budapest.

But today's news about the demise of the house that used to host the pub called "The Wichmann" is sadder than most.

The pub itself was owned and operated by nine-times canoe world champion Tamás Wichmann. With its stripped-down interior, welcoming atmosphere and legendary schnitzel sandwiches it was a unique place we kept returning to in the noughties.
It was an anachronism, a place that shouldn't exist, it felt like we were stuck in the 1980s but in an absolutely positive sense.

Then in 2018 it was announced the pub will be sold; Wichmann was 70 at the time and said he was just tired and old. He died less than two years later
But the demolition of the house erases a lot more than just the memory of a legendary pub.

Take a look at this gate ornament for example. If your first reaction is WTF?, I'm not blaming you.
But that isn't a Star of David there and as for the swastika, it was yet to become a symbol of terror when this door was made. (The ankh is an ankh at least.)

For this house used to be the home of the Theosophical Society of Hungary in the first half of the 20th century.
Well, after it had ceased to be an upmarket brothel, that is.

It reportedly stood out from the neighbouring upmarket brothels by dint of the women working there taking a bath not once but twice a week.
Not only that, but according to the inestimable Falanszter Blog (https://t.co/rl6WXM9vwY), whose article a lot of this thread is based on, they also pioneered the "landing strip", ironically before powered flight.

But not all innovations in this house were of a pubic nature.
Going even further back, to the 1830s, the house was where "magyar kártya" ("Hungarian playing cards") was invented.

Of course no-one else outside of Hungary calls it that, it's called Swiss/Tell or Seasons Pattern, or Doppeldeutsche in German.
Of course various forms of this German style of cards had existed for centuries but the innovation was the mirrored pictures, and to put various figures from the Swiss legend of William Tell on the face cards.

As you can also see, this is a picquet pack with only 32 cards.
But hang on, why would a Magyar inventor put Swiss national heroes on the cards in the first place?

In 1836 censorship was pretty strict, so Hungarian heroes would've been right out. But the story of William Tell is still a nod to the struggle and liberation from the Habsburgs.
The suits are different too from the French cards used globally: they're called Hearts ("piros" = red), Bells ("tök" = pumpkin), Acorns ("makk") and Leaves ("zöld" = green).

And instead of Jacks and Queens we have Alsó ("lower") and Felső ("upper"), or archaically "filkó".
This latter word is observable in the compound "tökfilkó", referring to the "upper of bells" card, but actually meaning "dolt" or "nitwit".

I don't know if Stüssi was particularly dim in the original story but there we are.
So this is what we're about to lose.

But hey, we'll have a nice hotel instead. Much needed I'm sure, given the immense amount of tourism that's gone on in the last year or so.
P.s. and yes, I know that officially it's "an historic", but I refuse to play along with that kind of nonsense.

More from Education

** Schools have been getting ready for this: a thread **

In many ways, I don't blame folks who tweet things like this. The media coverage of the schools situation in Covid-19 rarely talks about the quiet, day-in-day-out work that schools have been doing these past 9 months. 1/


Instead, the coverage focused on the dramatic, last minute policy announcements by the government, or of dramatic stories of school closures, often accompanied by photos of socially distanced classrooms that those of us in schools this past term know are from a fantasy land. 2/


If that's all you see & hear, it's no wonder that you may not know what has actually been happening in schools to meet the challenges. So, if you'd like a glimpse behind the curtain, then read on. For this is something of what teachers & schools leaders have been up to. 3/

It started last March with trying to meet the challenges of lockdown, being thrown into the deep end, with only a few days' notice, to try to learn to teach remotely during the first lockdown. 4/

https://t.co/S39EWuap3b


I wrote a policy document for our staff the weekend before our training as we anticipated what was to come, a document I shared freely & widely as the education community across the land started to reach out to one another for ideas and support. 5/
https://t.co/m1QsxlPaV4
OK I am going to be tackling this as surveillance/open source intel gathering exercise, because that is my background. I blew away 3 years of my life doing site acquisition/reconnaissance for a certain industry that shall remain unnamed and believe there is significant carryover.


This is NOT going to be zillow "here is how to google school districts and find walmart" we are not concerned with this malarkey, we are homeschooling and planting victory gardens and having gigantic happy families.

With that said, for my frog and frog-adjacent bros and sisters:

CHOICE SITES:

Zillow is obvious one, but there are many good sites like Billy Land, Classic Country Land, Landwatch, etc. and many of these specialize in owner financing (more on that later.) Do NOT treat these as authoritative sources - trust plat maps and parcel viewers.

TARGET IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION:

Okay, everyone knows how to google "raw land in x state" but there are other resources out there, including state Departments of Natural Resources, foreclosure auctions, etc. Finding the land you like is the easy part. Let's do a case study.

I'm going to target using an "off-grid but not" algorithm. This is a good piece in my book - middle of nowhere but still trekkable to civilization.

Note: visible power, power/fiber pedestal, utility corridor, nearby commercial enterprise(s), and utility pole shadows visible.
Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.

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