Tamás Cseh: Train to Krakow

Below, in a film from 1979, Tamás Cseh performs Krakkói Vonat, one of many highlights of his long collaboration with  Géza Bereményi which ended far too soon in 2009 with Tamás' death at 66.   It's easy to see why Cseh and Bereményi are legends in Hungary.  Géza wrote the lyrics; Tamás wrote the music and created iconic recordings of the songs often with János Másik.  The songs were a cut above, like the creamy Czech beer Krakkói Vonat's protagonist and his companion start with before realism sets in forcing a switch to the cheap Polish stuff. The song is a masterfully bittersweet slice of life behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970's. The everyday objects are totems of the time and place: dining car tablecloth stained with Czech and Polish beer, East German earrings, Forte film from Hungary, Plovdiv cigarettes from Bulgaria, and an Austrian cigarette lighter that must at some point have seeped over the Hungarian border as the only referenced artifact from the West.  Take heart, 2017 America: East or West, North or South, even in the Putin era, life proceeds, sometimes quite beautifully.

Behold the express, stunning countryside ride, scooting along with us

Like it used to, back to Krakow-- we’re riding the train

We drink foaming Czech beer in the dining car

Look out at the landscape with a dawn feel to it

GDR earrings sprinkle lights,

We switch to sixty-five zlotyi beer.

Gorgeous dawn, brisk galloping assembly, scoots us along

Austrian lighter flame flares up, we’re going to Krakow

Eyes reflected in the dining car

Beer-stained tablecloths from our sixty-five zloty beer

I check the window glass and see my face, it’s old

At the end of a Plovdiv cigarette, glowing coals.

Look out at the dawn and in the fields for many, many memories revolving.

There is Vanda and look at Stefan beckoning with his hand.

Think of the pigeons in the main square of Krakow,

Forte Photo made film of you and me.

Fill my cup back up and look at me again.

Well, we had a nice experience.

I reach, passing over the tablecloth, see your ring

Follow the dazzle

Last year, in Dubrovnik...

Well, we just did it for the experience

Well, we did it just for the experience

Well, we did it just for the experience

Well, we did it just for the experience ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While we're remembering Tamás Cseh, here's a beautiful cover of Váróterem (Waiting Room) performed by Bin-Jip for a tribute album of songs by Hungarian artists released the year after his death (but which may have been in the works while he was still around):