Familiar Place Names, Unfamiliar Territory

This morning I took a virtual tour around Magyarország.

So many familiar place names, but I was unable to reconcile how I could possibly have known them. I affectionately call myself geographically challenged. Geography has never interested me and I have always struggled to remember place names and their locations. (I also get place names confused if I have never been there. For example, Palmerston North and New Plymouth, or Brisbane and Melbourne. If someone refers to one, I can never recall which. The only reason I can decipher between Napier and Nelson is because I have actually been to Napier!)

Having only completed one year of school in Magyarország, I highly doubt my knowledge of place names came from geography lessons. In fact, there isn’t much that I remember about school. I remember a large, white building with stairs leading up to the entrance doors. I recall a wide corridor and wooden desks and chairs. I remember learning cursive handwriting and mathematics using coloured blocks of varying lengths. I remember flower petals that were coloured in daily in either red or black to visually record how well or poorly you performed in class.

But mostly, I remember the last day of school.

At the time, it was simply the beginning of the summer holidays. I had no reason to think that I would never return to that school, and never see my friends again.

The significance of the day, as far as I was concerned, was that I received a prize for being a good student. Better still, I got to choose a book to keep as my reward. I chose one that was full of illustrations, but no story – the premise being that the “reader” invented the story as they turned the pages.

I have no idea what happened to that book. I do not recall it making it to Aotearoa, but I remember yearning for it for a long time.

Until it slipped out of conscious thought.

Until now.

The familiarity of so many place names in Magyarország fascinates me. As far as I know, I have only ever been to two: Budapest, where I was born and spent the first seven years of my life; and Balatongyörök, where we owned a tiny holiday home on a property with a small vineyard and spent many summer and winter vacations.

The place names were so very familiar, but the images captured on film looked so very foreign.

I found myself scanning the screen – searching for even just one scene that I recognised.

But nothing.

I could only have heard of these places through stories I was told whilst growing up, and folk songs Apuci used to sing. Any images I may have attached to those places either came from black and white photographs or a mere figment of my imagination.

This morning, however, my eyes, my body, and my soul feasted on the rich and colourful tapestry of cities, towns, and villages, bursting with culture and history spanning centuries.

And I found myself yearning to return to my homeland – in a way that I have never before.

As I have aged, I have wanted to return to the places I inhabited as a child and visit the cemeteries where my ancestors – and Apuci – are buried.

But now I have a burning desire to visit all those other places with familiar names.

To discover why they are so familiar.