A Hungarian Shabbos

This past shabbos I felt more at home than usual, for a few unexpected reasons. A Hungarian fellow, Reuven Weiser, invited me to his house for Friday night dinner. Well, he was born in Argentina, but his parents are from Hungary, and he identifies strongly with his roots. My paternal grandfather, as many of you know, is also Hungarian. Interestingly enough, like my grandfather, his wife is Sefaradi. It may be coincidence, or it may actually be mutual minhagim, but Reuven Weiser did a few things that reminded me of home. The first was kiddush; he said kiddush with the same tune that we do, though lots of people use said tune, and it was not that remarkable. The second was his bracha of 'al netilas yadayim.' He said it out loud and ended it the exact same way Sabba does. Well, not exactly the same; he doesn't yell it out at the top of his lungs, but those of you who know will know what I am talking about. After cutting the challah he tosses the challah to everyone at the table instead of passing around by hand or in a bread-basket, exactly the way we do it at home too. After that it was just a normal Argentine-style meal except for two things. At one point, he brought out a homemade book, over 200 pages long, that traced his geneaology in Hungary. He was able to find some relatives as far back as the 17th Century! He told me it took his entire life to work on, and I was quite impressed. The second was that we sang Sol a Kakas Mar, a traditional Hungarian-Jewish song. I knew the words, him, mas o menos as they say here. Sabba and Judy Lefkovits would have been proud.
Tonight I went the Hillel, to a barbecue that had as well as to get my ticket for tomorrow, and I need to correct something that I said in the previous post. I thought that this River vs Boca is the biggest rivalry in Argentina. I met with a British fellow, and he told me that anyone who knows anything about futbol (not me) knows that River-Boca is one of the biggest club rivalries in the WORLD and that the River-Boca game is one of the biggest sporting events in the INTERnatioanl community. My analgoy, then, was innacurate. I guess this game would be more like said Yankees-Sox game if it was also a World Series game and if the world actually cared about baseball.
I also mentioned to a few people that I was going to the game and they said "Do you have a gun?" They have separate sides of the stadium for the different fans, and they let out each side at different times, that's how intense it is. Psyche!