Speaking Hungarian in Minnesota at Vietnamese Restaurant!

Mike, Veronika and Nancy

We enjoyed supper at a new Vietnamese restaurant in Austin, Minnesota last night with Pastor Bill and Miala Glaser and our son Paul, his wife Kate and our grandson Levi. We were chatting about our upcoming return to Hungary just as the waitress came to take our order. "Hungary?" she said. "I'm Hungarian!" That started a wonderful conversation in which we learned that Veronika Kiss's parents are scientists who left Hungary in the 1980's. Veronika graduated from high school in Austin with Natalie, Bill and Miala's daughter. We even talked a little bit in Hungarian, exchanged email addresses and discovered that Veronika's grandmother lives just a few kilometers north of where we live in Hungary. Veronika is planning to visit her grandmother sometime later this year and we hope to be able to connect when we are all in Hungary.

We spent almost a year traveling all across the country and ran across only a couple of other Hungarians who spoke the language. Then we found one almost in our own back yard!