I remember the excitement of the yearly Fair in the village when I was at primary school. We all the children in the village collected our pocket money to spend it on the `Fair`. This is what it meant for us, getting new things. At that time, we hardly travelled to the town to do shopping. And if we did we were looking forward to it with great excitement for weeks, counting how many nights we still had to sleep. We had breakfast at home and were back by lunch. I remember visiting the main shops in the county town, which were all government owned and the market with many Romanian traders, who brought cheap clothing items to the bordering town and villages of Hungary and took food back to Romania. The market was all packed and you could get almost everything. Nowadays we just hope on the train and go to the town. All the government owned shops had been taken over by Chinese traders and we don’t call the market Romanian any more.
All kinds of traders came to the village every first Sunday of September. This was the first place I saw pet trader selling budges and hamsters. The boys tried their luck at the airgun hut. The single ones only to their own amusement showing off in front of their mates and the coupled up ones to show their girlfriend how well they can shoot. The prizes were all sorts of kitsch, fake gold necklaces, soft toys and transfer pictures, nothing really you would ever need, but it used to be a big thing in the village to get something form the airgun hut shot buy your boyfriend. I did get a transfer picture of Rahan the blond barbaric cartoon hero from my one of my classmates` brother, but he wasn’t my boyfriend. He just liked shooting, that`s all.
The other thing you would get from your boyfriend through engagement up until you get married and a red honey biscuit heart with traditional Hungarian motifs sometimes even with a little mirror in the middle, where you could both smile in before or after a kiss. I have seen the heart-shaped honey biscuits` stand. The young couple selling them were sitting under the shade of their garden umbrella. It was 34C far too hot for 11th of September. When I was little I was so looking forward to growing up a little bit and get a red honey biscuit heart and some unnecessary but so sentimental prizes shot by the man of my life. Years have gone by and the biscuits are still being sold and the airgun hut still opens up every single day on the first Sunday of September.
I went to the `Village Fair` today. It was a lot smaller than I remembered and the traders were selling stuff like on a normal market day. Nothing extra, no pet traders. There was a merry-go-around, but empty, no queues to get on. There used to be more kids, the village shrunk its half since I was a child. Most of the youth migrates to the county town, the capital and even abroad, like myself. Only those stay, whose family have a well-established farm with hundreds of hectare land and those who don’t want to leave. There are hardly any jobs apart from day-labouring on the farms.
I thought my little nephew would have loved to get on the merry-go-around, but it was his parents` 10th anniversary of meeting each other the first time and they didn’t come home. I got some `Bucsufia` some special sweets: cockerel shaped red lolly for my little nephew, `Turkish Honey` (Honeycomb), `Bocskorszij` (long black and chewy) coconut roly-poly and the long colourful candies. I don’t think he can eat the lolly though as he is granted from all kinds of sugar to keep his teeth healthy. We baked cupcakes once together and he licked off all the icing from the top of the buns asking me with great delight if that white thing was really sugar what he was eating, in case it was only an illusion and he wanted to make sure even if it was an illusion, the illusion would stay if he asks if it was really sugar. He is not 3 yet and a great little kid.
I had a vague idea about `Bucsu` was something to do with a Catholic celebration, but didn`t really know what. I learnt today, that it was something to do with Mary. And going to the Saint`s Day to visit the relics of a saint means repenting for the sins that are not confessed between confession and death if I understood correctly. There were quite a few people in the church today and the new priest gave a really good sermon. During communism Bucsu was more about the celebration of the end of harvest the `Zarszamadas` when the members of the government`s farmer`s co-operative got their little shares and spent some of it on the village fair as their children their pocket money.
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