Up the hill

On the hill stands the church of my grandfather’s village, the oldest wooden building in present-day Hungary, constructed in 1670 in the honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Its icons are from the 18th century, the furniture from the 19th, and in the 20th it was transferred here, in the open-air museum. As a child, I have not seen it any more, but my brothers saw it, down the street, on the hill of Bukots, and Bandi even preserves a postcard with its image, sent to him by our mother from the village. Just now I learned that the village as well as the surrounding Rusyn villages come together here, to the museum of Szentendre on every 8 September, the feast of the Birth of the Holy Virgin, and celebrate a mass in Rusyn and Hungarian. Next year I’ll also be there.