Our Seder in Budapest, Hungary (by Maggie)

Since my family and I were in Budapest, Hungary during Passover (one of the Jewish holidays), we decided to celebrate it at a community center with a lot of Hungarians and some other Americans who were on vacation there. We came into the Seder thinking the rabbi would speak the Seder mostly in English. The beginning of the 4 1/2 hour Seder started - in Hungarian! They continued in Hungarian for around 5 minutes, then they started speaking in English - for 20 seconds! We all thought maybe they were just doing a longer greeting in Hungarian because there were more Hungarian-speaking people than English-speaking people, but it turns out, that is how the whole Seder was.
Eventually, an hour went by and my dad said, "you guys can have a few minute break." We were very relieved that we got to have a few minutes off.  Luke and I sat a table and spoke in ENGLISH!

The most fun part of the Seder soon came where we got to fight with scallions! This hasn't happened at our Seders at home, but apparently it is a tradition at this Hungarian Seder.  I don't know why they fought with scallions, because I couldn't understand the explanation in Hungarian.  We got to hold up our scallions that were on each plate, but since Luke didn't have one, he held up his spoon. We could not believe how funny it was that Luke held up his spoon, so we giggled.  We got to hit each other with the scallions which was really fun. I totally won the scallion fight - both of my brothers lost.

After another hour or two, we finally got to eat our matzah! We ate it sooo quickly because it was so good and we were starving!  

We soon got the real part of the dinner which was duck and french fries. If you know me, I'm not such a good eater. I was not so happy with the duck part of the meal.

My other favorite part of the Seder that we do at home too, is finding the afikomen which is a piece of matzah that adults hide and kids try to find.  Jacob found the afikomen first, so he got a chocolate bar that was bigger than ours.

Next, Jacob and I got to hand out matzo to everyone at the seder which was really fun.  I did not speak Hungarian like most of the people at the Seder, so when I passed out the matzah, I would stick the matzah next to them and hope that they grabbed a piece.

The Hungarian seder was very fun and very long.  It was also fun because we got to talk to other Americans who had also just been in Prague, where we had just traveled, too.  It was nice to have other people to talk to.  We will never forget the Seder because it was so different from the Seder that we have at home.