09-02-2016, 02:18 PM
Tuesday Aug 22
Ah, Tuesday, you are going to be fun.
Although, I had been to the Military History Museum to film their medals, I hadn’t yet interviewed Dr. Sallay or his boss Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs. That was all going to change today. Plus, as an added bonus, Mr. Mohos was going to come back for another interview. Three interviews in one day!
With one little tiny caveat. HK was still sick. Not only was I going to have to film the interviews, I was going to conduct them as well. That should go smoothly, right? And I was going to have to get all the gear there by my lonesome.
I reconfigured the bags so I had one less to carry. This still meant I was bringing six bags with me to shoot the interview.
Sandor picked me up and drove me to the Military History Museum near Buda Castle. It was a beautiful sunny day. Sandor was a little startled to see that HK was not going with us. We left in plenty of time to get to the castle.
Almost too much. Since the Castle environs are so small, cars are only given a limited time to get in and out. Sandor was under the gun to get me dropped off as soon as possible. Except, since we were there so early and it was beautiful, I might as well stop at the Mathias Church to take a few photos first. Which I did.
Still had plenty of time when we pulled up between the cannons at the rear of the museum. Well, I did get a memo that they were having a conference in the museum and the didn’t want me roaming the halls and disturbing everyone.
Dr. Sallay met me at the guard barricade and was kind enough to carry some of my equipment up the two flights of stairs to our meeting room. I put on the brave face as I toted the big heavy pink fencing bag that held all my tripods and light stands. I only had to put it down once for a breather.
Dr. Sallay agreed to do his interview in English so I gave Xenia a later call to help with the Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs interview. I told Dr. Sallay to come back at 9 once I had finished setting up all the gear. We were filming in a beautiful conference room that overlooked Buda. Dr. Sallay cracked open some windows for me to get some air while I worked. Setting up is always the sweatiest time for me. I really need to start bringing a change of shirt for when I’m done.
Dr. Colonel came in at one point to see what I was up to. I shook his rock solid hand. He look like he was built from stone.
I finished a few minutes before 9 and proceeded to wait for Dr. Sallay. And I waited. And waited.
I ventured out into the hall to see if he was around. Nope. I decided it was time to pace. I checked out the display cabinets. This was my second visit to the museum and I still didn’t know what was in it besides the Piller medals.
Sallay finally came out of Kovacs office brimming with apologies. The Colonel and he had strategized what they were going to say during their interviews so there wouldn’t be any overlap.
Before we sat, I broke one of the cardinal interview rules and showed Sallay my questions. Naturally, there was a bunch he couldn’t answer, but it gave him a sense of what we needed.
We squared off opposite each other. I sat next to the cameras so I could monitor them. Sallay sat in front of them.
The first question I asked was about Sallay’s background and then I asked for a bit about Piller. When he finished, I did a quick check of the cameras and realized none of them had been running. Probably reason number one right there on why you don’t do interviews alone.
I apologized to Sallay and had him start over. Naturally, his first answers were better. He tried to pack in all the stuff he said or wanted to say on the second go round rather than speaking freely.
The interview went quickly. It was pretty definitive what Dr. Sallay knew and wanted to say. We finished up at eleven which meant I had ninety minutes before the Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs interview.
I opted to go towards the tourist areas near the castle and get some lunch. I avoided the Houdini museum. I had a nice lunch. I took some more pictures of the town.
I tried to call Xenia about coming early to give us more time with Kovacs but I got her answering machine. She called me later with the usual strangeness. I told her about trying to get her early. By the time she called me back early wasn’t an option. She also mentioned something about getting a cab and would be there soon.
So, how could this continue on in an embarrassing fashion? Easily answered.
First Dr. Colonel came into the conference room ready to go. His first question was why wasn’t the air conditioning on in the room. Dr. Sallay learned for the first time there was air conditioning for that room and prompty turned it on.
Then Dr. Sallay comes up to me and says “Your translator is downstairs and doesn’t have the money for her cab” Of course, she doesn’t. I’m wondering where showing up at a military institution in an unpaid cab is a mark of professionalism? I gave the money to Sallay. Sallay gave it to the secretary who went downstairs to pay off the cab.
Xenia eventually made it to the room out of breath with excuses about forgetting her purse. She was also mad at the cab driver who treated her badly because she didn’t have money.
Dr. Colonel had a limited window for us. He marched in and said he had to be done by 1:30. Multiple times during the interview he would pointedly look at his watch.
I only asked him three questions. The first was to give a me a little bit about his background. The second was to have him tell me about Piller. The second answer lasted about 35 minutes. He just started talking and didn’t stop. I told Xenia not to translate because that would have just wasted time. It was better for Dr. Colonel just to speak and for me to record it. It was an awesome display of dissertation. I can only hope he had worthwhile things to say. Sallay later said he basically went over Piller’s CV with details.
Dr. Colonel looked at his watch and said I had ten minutes. I gave him a choice for his final question. He could either tell me why Sabre was so important in Hungary or he could tell me why the Hungarians had been so dominant in Saber for 40 years. Dr. Colonel laughed and said I was a very nice man. Dr. Colonel spoke for another ten minutes solid on the importance of Saber to Hungary.
He popped up and said it was time to go. I begged for another minute to take a picture of Dr. Colonel and Dr. Sallay. He agreed and the whirlwind left. It seemed like a great interview. I hope the translation bears me out.
I started to pack up the gear. Sallay remembered one more thing he wanted to get on record. So, I filmed him with the one camera that was still set up. After we finished, I packed up the rest of the gear. I called Sandor and told him to meet us outside.
Dr. Sallay and Xenia helped me carry the gear to the car. I again carried the evil pink bag that would best be used as ballast on a trawler.
One of the quests I had been on for this trip was to find an actual place where Piller taught or lived here in Budapest. Everyone I had asked couldn’t remember or didn’t know. That is kind of why the Ludovica was important. Piller had been there.
Well, that changed with Dr. Sallay. From his military records it came to light that Piller lived in a barracks for single men not far from the museum. And from a letter written by a jewish family that Piller had hid during World war 2 to save them from deportation by the Nazis, came the address from when Piller was married. It too was not far from where we currently stood.
I asked Sandor if the addresses were on the route back to the hotel. Sort of kind of. Xenia and Sandor argued a lot about how to best get there. I figured it was a pain the butt to get to these spots but we were going anyway since I had paid for the freight.
It turned out it wasn’t too hard. The barracks on Atilla still exists but we only stopped long enough for to snap some quick pictures of it. The married home had been turned into tennis courts.
Back at the hotel, Zoltan didn’t even bat an eye as I requested use of the back room again for the interview. He even agreed to the same rate as Timea gave me, 50 euro.
I had the bell hops help me take the bags up the circular stair case. Igor did a less than successful job. At the base of the stairs was the champagne and glasses for the morning breakfast buffet on a small table. As Igor swung the devil pink bag around to get a better grip, he misjudged the size of the bag and swung it through the glasses, sending five glasses crashing to ground.
Zoltan who had come by to supervise, looked at the damage and remarked “You should go for six”
Since I didn’t see any sign of Mohos, I took my time setting up the cameras and the lights. Xenia had gone off to get lunch. At first she didn’t want to go since she realized she didn’t have any money. I gave her the rest of the money from the taxi ride to cover her lunch costs.
Xenia came up to me and pointed out that Mohos was waiting in the lobby. He’d actually been in the lobby since 2pm. He was a bit cranky. I had noticed the guy sitting there but I didn’t recognize him. The three previous times I had seen him, he’d been in a suit. Now, he just looked like some scruffy old man.
I apologized profusely. I explained again that I had just gotten back from the museum. I didn’t know how to explain how I didn’t recognize him.
So, Mohos started the interview cranky. He was also kind of confused what else I wanted him to say. I explained to him that he was one of the few people who knew stories Piller told. No one else. Slightly mollified, we started the interview.
First off, he wanted to talk a little bit about Borsody and what Borsody brought to the evolution of Sabre. Once again Xenia’s lack of fencing knowledge hurt her. Just by the way Mohos was moving his arm and fingers, I could tell Mohos was explaining how sabre went from arm movements to finger tip movements. It was good to get on film.
Then Mohos started counting off on his fingers. He mentioned Piller’s name a lot. Xenia tells me he was listing the stories he knew about Piller. Problem was, Mohos wasn’t going to tell all of them. Damn. But I would take what I would get.
At some point Xenia informed me that a guy from the Flea Market was coming to show collectibles he had about Sabre and Piller. Great someone was going to interrupt the interview.
Sure enough, thirty minutes in, a guy pops into the room carrying a stack of papers. Mohos was already cranky. I hated to stop the interview for fear that Mohos would take that as an opportunity to leave.
I made the guy sit in the chair while Mohos continued his tales. Mohos sounded a bit scratchy so I gave him a bottle of water I had. Mohos looked at me and said something to Xenia. Mohos was not an uncouth slob. He wanted a glass for the water. Sigh. I didn’t have a glass. I was on the verge of going to get one when thirst got the better of Mohos and he drank from the bottle.
I took this as an opportunity to see what the guy brought. It was newspapers from the 1930’s one of which showed Piller. Mohos was equally interested in them. The guy wanted 10000 forint for them. I countered with 5000. He blah blah blahed. I blah blahed. We settled on 8000. HK would have given him 20000.
I shooed flea market man from the room and continued with Mohos.
Mohos tells very detailed very long stories. I was tiring quickly but I wanted to milk this cow for all that it was worth. Xenia was getting frazzled. She needed a break but wanted to put the onus on Mohos. She said she thought Mohos looked like he could use a break. I looked to Mohos and he said he was fine. I wasn’t going to stop for anything. I handed Xenia the bottle of water I had taken back from Mohos.
At this point, I had been running my cameras on batteries all day. This was the third interview for me. I was starting to scramble to keep everything going. I might have lost a few bits as I swapped out batteries, but I hope not.
Mohos mentioned something about Mrs. Piller, who is always a curious subject in these stories since no one has anything good to say about her. I tried to clarify the timeline for her by asking when Piller’s wife ended up in Germany.
Mohos looked at me like I was a fool. The gist was that Piller’s wife never went to Germany. He then proceeded to give a detailed description of the last years of her life and how the medals came to be at the Military History Museum. There was even a mention of how Tamas Kovacs had turned down an offer for the medals. This was awesome news since I was going to interview Tamas Kovacs later in the week.
Mohos had one last story he wanted to tell. I told him to pause since the audio recorder had stopped due to the fact it’s card was full. I scrambled to find another card to put in the slot.
Xenia urged me just to let it go. Why not just hear the story and record it with my mind, just experience it rather than capture it? Did she not understand on the purpose of my visit?Was she unclear on the fundamentals of movie making? Is she that clueless? I didn’t travel 6000 miles to experience stories. So, I punched her.
I finally got the SD card going in the back of the recorder and switched it on . The story Xenia didn’t want me to record was a Mohos personnel story about a Hungarian violinist he had met in NY. They had made love and the violinist had serenaded him with the violin while she was nude. This was the story Xenia didn’t want me to record.
No, I didn’t punch her.
I also got Mohos to tell me about his experiences during the Uprising. It must be twenty or thirty minutes long. On the one hand, I wanted desperately to sit and rest. On the other hand, I never wanted him to stop talking.
But stop he did. As is usual, it sounded like a great interview, but I have no idea. As a side note, I have to be more active when filming Mohos’s interviews since he doesn’t sit still. He constantly leans forward and back in his chair. So, I am constantly adjusting focus. Unlike Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs, who sat ramrod straight for every one of his 45 minute interview.
What a long day. I messaged the wife once I got back in the room that I needed someone to go get me food since the Hotel’s biggest deficiency was it’s restaurant menu in the afternoon and evening. Sadly, I ended up in the restaurant.
Ah, Tuesday, you are going to be fun.
Although, I had been to the Military History Museum to film their medals, I hadn’t yet interviewed Dr. Sallay or his boss Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs. That was all going to change today. Plus, as an added bonus, Mr. Mohos was going to come back for another interview. Three interviews in one day!
With one little tiny caveat. HK was still sick. Not only was I going to have to film the interviews, I was going to conduct them as well. That should go smoothly, right? And I was going to have to get all the gear there by my lonesome.
I reconfigured the bags so I had one less to carry. This still meant I was bringing six bags with me to shoot the interview.
Sandor picked me up and drove me to the Military History Museum near Buda Castle. It was a beautiful sunny day. Sandor was a little startled to see that HK was not going with us. We left in plenty of time to get to the castle.
Almost too much. Since the Castle environs are so small, cars are only given a limited time to get in and out. Sandor was under the gun to get me dropped off as soon as possible. Except, since we were there so early and it was beautiful, I might as well stop at the Mathias Church to take a few photos first. Which I did.
Still had plenty of time when we pulled up between the cannons at the rear of the museum. Well, I did get a memo that they were having a conference in the museum and the didn’t want me roaming the halls and disturbing everyone.
Dr. Sallay met me at the guard barricade and was kind enough to carry some of my equipment up the two flights of stairs to our meeting room. I put on the brave face as I toted the big heavy pink fencing bag that held all my tripods and light stands. I only had to put it down once for a breather.
Dr. Sallay agreed to do his interview in English so I gave Xenia a later call to help with the Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs interview. I told Dr. Sallay to come back at 9 once I had finished setting up all the gear. We were filming in a beautiful conference room that overlooked Buda. Dr. Sallay cracked open some windows for me to get some air while I worked. Setting up is always the sweatiest time for me. I really need to start bringing a change of shirt for when I’m done.
Dr. Colonel came in at one point to see what I was up to. I shook his rock solid hand. He look like he was built from stone.
I finished a few minutes before 9 and proceeded to wait for Dr. Sallay. And I waited. And waited.
I ventured out into the hall to see if he was around. Nope. I decided it was time to pace. I checked out the display cabinets. This was my second visit to the museum and I still didn’t know what was in it besides the Piller medals.
Sallay finally came out of Kovacs office brimming with apologies. The Colonel and he had strategized what they were going to say during their interviews so there wouldn’t be any overlap.
Before we sat, I broke one of the cardinal interview rules and showed Sallay my questions. Naturally, there was a bunch he couldn’t answer, but it gave him a sense of what we needed.
We squared off opposite each other. I sat next to the cameras so I could monitor them. Sallay sat in front of them.
The first question I asked was about Sallay’s background and then I asked for a bit about Piller. When he finished, I did a quick check of the cameras and realized none of them had been running. Probably reason number one right there on why you don’t do interviews alone.
I apologized to Sallay and had him start over. Naturally, his first answers were better. He tried to pack in all the stuff he said or wanted to say on the second go round rather than speaking freely.
The interview went quickly. It was pretty definitive what Dr. Sallay knew and wanted to say. We finished up at eleven which meant I had ninety minutes before the Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs interview.
I opted to go towards the tourist areas near the castle and get some lunch. I avoided the Houdini museum. I had a nice lunch. I took some more pictures of the town.
I tried to call Xenia about coming early to give us more time with Kovacs but I got her answering machine. She called me later with the usual strangeness. I told her about trying to get her early. By the time she called me back early wasn’t an option. She also mentioned something about getting a cab and would be there soon.
So, how could this continue on in an embarrassing fashion? Easily answered.
First Dr. Colonel came into the conference room ready to go. His first question was why wasn’t the air conditioning on in the room. Dr. Sallay learned for the first time there was air conditioning for that room and prompty turned it on.
Then Dr. Sallay comes up to me and says “Your translator is downstairs and doesn’t have the money for her cab” Of course, she doesn’t. I’m wondering where showing up at a military institution in an unpaid cab is a mark of professionalism? I gave the money to Sallay. Sallay gave it to the secretary who went downstairs to pay off the cab.
Xenia eventually made it to the room out of breath with excuses about forgetting her purse. She was also mad at the cab driver who treated her badly because she didn’t have money.
Dr. Colonel had a limited window for us. He marched in and said he had to be done by 1:30. Multiple times during the interview he would pointedly look at his watch.
I only asked him three questions. The first was to give a me a little bit about his background. The second was to have him tell me about Piller. The second answer lasted about 35 minutes. He just started talking and didn’t stop. I told Xenia not to translate because that would have just wasted time. It was better for Dr. Colonel just to speak and for me to record it. It was an awesome display of dissertation. I can only hope he had worthwhile things to say. Sallay later said he basically went over Piller’s CV with details.
Dr. Colonel looked at his watch and said I had ten minutes. I gave him a choice for his final question. He could either tell me why Sabre was so important in Hungary or he could tell me why the Hungarians had been so dominant in Saber for 40 years. Dr. Colonel laughed and said I was a very nice man. Dr. Colonel spoke for another ten minutes solid on the importance of Saber to Hungary.
He popped up and said it was time to go. I begged for another minute to take a picture of Dr. Colonel and Dr. Sallay. He agreed and the whirlwind left. It seemed like a great interview. I hope the translation bears me out.
I started to pack up the gear. Sallay remembered one more thing he wanted to get on record. So, I filmed him with the one camera that was still set up. After we finished, I packed up the rest of the gear. I called Sandor and told him to meet us outside.
Dr. Sallay and Xenia helped me carry the gear to the car. I again carried the evil pink bag that would best be used as ballast on a trawler.
One of the quests I had been on for this trip was to find an actual place where Piller taught or lived here in Budapest. Everyone I had asked couldn’t remember or didn’t know. That is kind of why the Ludovica was important. Piller had been there.
Well, that changed with Dr. Sallay. From his military records it came to light that Piller lived in a barracks for single men not far from the museum. And from a letter written by a jewish family that Piller had hid during World war 2 to save them from deportation by the Nazis, came the address from when Piller was married. It too was not far from where we currently stood.
I asked Sandor if the addresses were on the route back to the hotel. Sort of kind of. Xenia and Sandor argued a lot about how to best get there. I figured it was a pain the butt to get to these spots but we were going anyway since I had paid for the freight.
It turned out it wasn’t too hard. The barracks on Atilla still exists but we only stopped long enough for to snap some quick pictures of it. The married home had been turned into tennis courts.
Back at the hotel, Zoltan didn’t even bat an eye as I requested use of the back room again for the interview. He even agreed to the same rate as Timea gave me, 50 euro.
I had the bell hops help me take the bags up the circular stair case. Igor did a less than successful job. At the base of the stairs was the champagne and glasses for the morning breakfast buffet on a small table. As Igor swung the devil pink bag around to get a better grip, he misjudged the size of the bag and swung it through the glasses, sending five glasses crashing to ground.
Zoltan who had come by to supervise, looked at the damage and remarked “You should go for six”
Since I didn’t see any sign of Mohos, I took my time setting up the cameras and the lights. Xenia had gone off to get lunch. At first she didn’t want to go since she realized she didn’t have any money. I gave her the rest of the money from the taxi ride to cover her lunch costs.
Xenia came up to me and pointed out that Mohos was waiting in the lobby. He’d actually been in the lobby since 2pm. He was a bit cranky. I had noticed the guy sitting there but I didn’t recognize him. The three previous times I had seen him, he’d been in a suit. Now, he just looked like some scruffy old man.
I apologized profusely. I explained again that I had just gotten back from the museum. I didn’t know how to explain how I didn’t recognize him.
So, Mohos started the interview cranky. He was also kind of confused what else I wanted him to say. I explained to him that he was one of the few people who knew stories Piller told. No one else. Slightly mollified, we started the interview.
First off, he wanted to talk a little bit about Borsody and what Borsody brought to the evolution of Sabre. Once again Xenia’s lack of fencing knowledge hurt her. Just by the way Mohos was moving his arm and fingers, I could tell Mohos was explaining how sabre went from arm movements to finger tip movements. It was good to get on film.
Then Mohos started counting off on his fingers. He mentioned Piller’s name a lot. Xenia tells me he was listing the stories he knew about Piller. Problem was, Mohos wasn’t going to tell all of them. Damn. But I would take what I would get.
At some point Xenia informed me that a guy from the Flea Market was coming to show collectibles he had about Sabre and Piller. Great someone was going to interrupt the interview.
Sure enough, thirty minutes in, a guy pops into the room carrying a stack of papers. Mohos was already cranky. I hated to stop the interview for fear that Mohos would take that as an opportunity to leave.
I made the guy sit in the chair while Mohos continued his tales. Mohos sounded a bit scratchy so I gave him a bottle of water I had. Mohos looked at me and said something to Xenia. Mohos was not an uncouth slob. He wanted a glass for the water. Sigh. I didn’t have a glass. I was on the verge of going to get one when thirst got the better of Mohos and he drank from the bottle.
I took this as an opportunity to see what the guy brought. It was newspapers from the 1930’s one of which showed Piller. Mohos was equally interested in them. The guy wanted 10000 forint for them. I countered with 5000. He blah blah blahed. I blah blahed. We settled on 8000. HK would have given him 20000.
I shooed flea market man from the room and continued with Mohos.
Mohos tells very detailed very long stories. I was tiring quickly but I wanted to milk this cow for all that it was worth. Xenia was getting frazzled. She needed a break but wanted to put the onus on Mohos. She said she thought Mohos looked like he could use a break. I looked to Mohos and he said he was fine. I wasn’t going to stop for anything. I handed Xenia the bottle of water I had taken back from Mohos.
At this point, I had been running my cameras on batteries all day. This was the third interview for me. I was starting to scramble to keep everything going. I might have lost a few bits as I swapped out batteries, but I hope not.
Mohos mentioned something about Mrs. Piller, who is always a curious subject in these stories since no one has anything good to say about her. I tried to clarify the timeline for her by asking when Piller’s wife ended up in Germany.
Mohos looked at me like I was a fool. The gist was that Piller’s wife never went to Germany. He then proceeded to give a detailed description of the last years of her life and how the medals came to be at the Military History Museum. There was even a mention of how Tamas Kovacs had turned down an offer for the medals. This was awesome news since I was going to interview Tamas Kovacs later in the week.
Mohos had one last story he wanted to tell. I told him to pause since the audio recorder had stopped due to the fact it’s card was full. I scrambled to find another card to put in the slot.
Xenia urged me just to let it go. Why not just hear the story and record it with my mind, just experience it rather than capture it? Did she not understand on the purpose of my visit?Was she unclear on the fundamentals of movie making? Is she that clueless? I didn’t travel 6000 miles to experience stories. So, I punched her.
I finally got the SD card going in the back of the recorder and switched it on . The story Xenia didn’t want me to record was a Mohos personnel story about a Hungarian violinist he had met in NY. They had made love and the violinist had serenaded him with the violin while she was nude. This was the story Xenia didn’t want me to record.
No, I didn’t punch her.
I also got Mohos to tell me about his experiences during the Uprising. It must be twenty or thirty minutes long. On the one hand, I wanted desperately to sit and rest. On the other hand, I never wanted him to stop talking.
But stop he did. As is usual, it sounded like a great interview, but I have no idea. As a side note, I have to be more active when filming Mohos’s interviews since he doesn’t sit still. He constantly leans forward and back in his chair. So, I am constantly adjusting focus. Unlike Dr. Colonel Vilmos Kovacs, who sat ramrod straight for every one of his 45 minute interview.
What a long day. I messaged the wife once I got back in the room that I needed someone to go get me food since the Hotel’s biggest deficiency was it’s restaurant menu in the afternoon and evening. Sadly, I ended up in the restaurant.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm