Thursday, October 23, 2008

Krtek - A Kisvakond

From my experience - and maybe it is just this way in our church and nowhere else - there is almost nothing that Hungarians like to talk about more than "mesék" (tales or cartoons).
Every now and then at church someone will bring up some mese that they used to watch when they were a kid, and then everyone else gets really excited, and they all start talking at the same time about which mese is the best, and which part of it was the funniest, and then they talk about how the mesék these days are super bad, and how much better things were when they were kids.
And it seems that all their favorite mese are from the socialist period, which makes sense, since that's when they were all kids.
Tonight I was driving some people home from church, and they rattled off a whole list of mesék which I "must" watch. I don't remember all of what they said, except something about a Vízipok (water spider) and some other one from Poland.

But recently someone gave us a DVD of one of these mesék, called Krtek, or in Hungarian: Kisvakond (Mole). Its a Czech cartoon from the 50's and 60's.
We had the disc for about 3 weeks before we even tried it out, because we honestly didn't have very high expectations that it would be any good. But one day we decided to give it a try, and now we LOVE the Kisvakond!
Nathaniel loves the Kisvakond too! He has a few other movies, like Baby Einstein, that he gets excited about - but none as much as this one!
For some reason, Nate prefers to stand up while he watches Kisvakond - sometimes on the floor, usually on the couch - and he sometimes just cracks up laughing as he watches it! There is something magical about the Kisvakond that Nate loves.
I guess I understand now a bit better why the Hungarians in our church get so excited every time anyone starts talking about some socialist mese. At least this one is really good. I'll have to look into that Polish one...
Here's my personal favorite Kisvakond video - The Mole in the City:

10 comments:

  1. oh, it is so funny you bring this up (and it is so true).

    are you looking for a list? because i have one (my own) to share with you:
    1. lolek and bolek (lolka és bolka) - this is the polish one
    2. vízipók, csodapók
    3. kockásfülű nyúl (my personal favorite)
    4. mikrobi (one of my other favorites)
    5. frakk, a macskák réme
    6. kukori és kotkoda

    have fun watching :)

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  2. Thanks for the list! I see you are a big mese fan too!
    Now that you wrote these down, I remember that I've heard some of the titles before (quite a few times...:)
    I'll be sure to check them out.

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  3. One time in Debrecen at the women's meeting, I asked all the women to tell what their favorite mese is as a part of introducing ourselves. They were all excitedly talking and arguing about which is the best mese. I was a bit lost since I had never watched a Hungarian cartoon.
    My favorite part about the Kisvakond is that they act like children and clap their hands when they're happy and wave their arms in the air when they're excited!
    We're still looking forward to the day when Nathaniel will start to clap.

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  4. Yes, I liked mesék from the communist time. Our favourite was Magyar Népmesék, and Vizipók, Kisvakond, Nils Holgelson. In Summer, Nils Holgelson started to be on TV every night at 7.30 pm., so when I was at home in that time, I watched it. :) I'm glad you tried it and it turned out good.

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  5. I've never heard of Nils Holgeson before. Where is that from?
    Someone gave us some of the Magyar Népmese too - those are ok, but some of them are kind of strange. There is one called "Szusza" which is pretty strange - there is a really stupid woman and her lord keeps spanking her... Kinda weird!

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  6. Yes, you're right, if I consider some of the népmesét with a teacher's eye :) it's weird. I don't know Szusza...
    I think Nils Holgelrsson is from Sweden. Here, in Denmark, there is a Swedish cartoon which is very popular, it's called: Emil. (I knew it from when we learnt the letter "E" with the 0. class, they told me):)

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  7. Here is the Szusza mese, ha érdekel:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmU8RQdTDYo
    Its kind of funny, but its also pretty weird, because this guy keeps spanking his wife!
    And the other strange thing, is that the end of the story is that the woman just goes crazy and then disappears!
    What a nice thing to tell your kid - Yes dear, and then the stupid lady didn't know who she was, and she totally lost her mind and ran off, and no one ever saw her again...Good night! Sweet Dreams!"

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  8. Anonymous5:28 PM

    ah rosemary this is so funny.I do remember that women's meeting where you asked that question. :)))) It was quite fun talking about the different kinds of mese

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  9. There are more reasons while we all had to like these mese stories. First of all we had only 2 TV chanels. Only one of them had mese, every day always at the same time except on Monday. We had no TV at all on Monday. Since everybody in the country watched the same program we could discuss it nex dayt at kindergarden, school, work, etc... :)))

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  10. Anonymous12:11 PM

    Hi!

    I found some Krtek dvds from here
    http://tsekkitavaraa.valmiskauppa.fi/krtek-the-little-mole-dvds-c-33_42.html

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