Totallympics Annual International Song Contest 2022

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Remembering a Historic Moment

 

 

It’s time for our next break and I would like to use this opportunity to share a moment with you. Our most well-known folk song is Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt (Spring wind floods water) and a lot of artists had their own covers of it over the years. But one is above all other. Queen had their concert in Budapest in 1986, which was a landmark event in the history of Hungarian music right before the fall of the Soviet Union. And Freddie Mercury prepared with something special for this concert, he sang Tavaszi szél in front of tens of thousand of Hungarians. Let us now remember this moment.

 

Queen - Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt

 

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On the Hungarian National Blue Trail

Aggtelek and the Baradla-Domica Cave System

 

 

We are now at the border between Hungary and Slovakia. Say hello to @hckošice, we are only 74 kilometers away from Kosice. So what do we do now? Go inside a cave and hopefully we won’t get lost. We can enter the Baradla-Domica cave system to see its vast stalactite caverns. The system is 25 kilometers long and you can visit it all year long to explore it. It even has a concert hall. Yes, there are concerts inside this cave.

 

 

You may have noticed that this cave system has a Hungarian and a Slovakian name. It’s because they were known as two separate cave systems until a connection between the two was found. This means that you can cross the border between Hungary and Slovakia in a natural cave. Back in the old days there were actual border patrols inside the cave, you can find signs of it to this day. A team of journalists and cavers went down and crossed the border a few years ago. They found the border stone, plus some Soviet era stuff like old landlines. It's time to write a heist story about this cave!

 

Hungarian border stone in the cave system

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On the Hungarian National Blue Trail

Füzér and Hollóháza

 

 

The Blue Trail ends in the Zemplén Mountains at Hollóháza. But first we arrive at, you guessed it, another castle. The Füzér Castle. It’s 800 years old and it was renovated a few years, which means that it’s a great condition and looks beautiful. After the castle there’s one big climb left to the top of Nagy-Milic. We are literally next to Kosice now, which is only 30 kilometers away. We arrive in the small village of Hollóháza, where a little momument welcomes us. But this isn’t the end of our journey, Szeged is still far away, it’s time to cross the Great Plain!

 

Füzér Castle

 

Blue Trail Monument at Hollóháza

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On the Hungarian National Blue Trial

Hortobágy

 

 

Technically we are still on the trail, just not on its main line, because, as I said earlier, there’s the Great Plain hiking trail, which is part of the Blue Trail circle around the country. If you thought that the journey around the mountains were a bit flat because Hungary doesn’t have large mountains like the Alps, well… you haven’t seen flat until the you visit the Great Plain. There’s literally nothing here to obscure the view, it’s just flat nothingness. Here you can find the Hortobágy National Park where the Great Plain is preserved as it always was, the land of the betyárs (Hungarian bandits) and the pastoral lifestyle. If you want to make a Hungarian western movie, this is definitely the place to shoot it.

 

 

Nine-arched Bridge at Hortobágy

 

Heron well, a symbol of the region

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On the Hungarian National Blue Trail

Ópusztaszer

 

 

This isn’t exactly on the trail but I have to mention the Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park. It’s an open-air museum dedicated to celebrate Hungarian history, most notably the Hungarian conquest. The museum’s most well-known exhibit is the Feszty Panorama, which is titled Arrival of the Hungarians. It’s a large circular panoramic painting which depicts the beginning of the conquest. It’s a sight to behold just for its sheer size.

 

 

Ópusztaszer

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The Journey Ends

 

 

All trips must come to end at some point. I mean, you need to catch some sleep before we start the Grand Final tomorrow, the Opening Ceremony can’t go on forever! But before we arrive to Szeged, there’s one more performance you should listen to. Bea Palya is the most successful Hungarian artist of TISC with her 4th place at the 2019 open contest. We will listen to her song Hazatalálok én, which means “I will find my home”. And indeed, we will very soon find our home of the contest, Szeged.

 

Bea Palya - Hazatalálok én

 

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The Host City of Contest: Szeged

 

 

We did it! We are finally in Szeged! And you know what we deserve? A proper intro to our hosting city. You know what they say, steal from the best, and this is exactly what we will do. Here’s an intro to Szeged, inspired by the title sequence of Game of Thrones where you can see the various sights of the city, including a certain building that should be familiar to you by now.

 

 

We are next to the Serbian border now, in one of our largest cities, Szeged, the home of around 160 thousand people. The home of Hungarian canoeing, the home of the handball club Pick Szeged. And while it has a new large arena where we could have had our contest, I have decided that Dóm Square is the best place for TISC, the venue for the largest open-air theater in Hungary.

 

 

Besides the Dóm you can visit the Reök Palace and its famous confectionery. And before someone gets very angry at me for never mentioning it, Szeged has its own large river, the Tisza. The Tisza is the second largest river of Hungary and Hungarian canoeing wouldn’t exist without it as we know it today. The water that we see at Maty-ér during the canoe sprint even comes from Tisza. But let’s not get sidetracked now with some sport fun facts, it’s time to back to our venue for the last few moments of the Opening Ceremony

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Prayer

 

 

The Opening Ceremony shouldn’t end without mentioning a certain tragic event that is currently happening in one of our neighboring countries, Ukraine. We can’t stay silent when Russia invaded a sovereign country. I am a citizen of a country that may not take a clear stance, but there’s one thing that every Hungarian agrees on: the bloodshed must end. We are one of the peoples of the Carpathian Basin, everyone living here knowns what is the cost of territorial disputes and of hatred towards various ethnicities. We have left our historic disputes behind because everyone living here, Austrians, Croatians, Serbians, Slovakians, Slovenians, Romanians, Ukrainians and Hungarians have learned that bloodshed will never be the solution to our problems, we have to live in peace. Hopefully the people living East of Ukraine will finally learn this lesson instead of chasing their dreams of a large empire while they kill their own brothers and sisters for nothing.

 

 

What you will hear now is not a wartime prayer. It’s a prayer of the working men and women after a long day of work and it’s appropriate at any time. It’s a Csángó prayer, they are a Hungarian ethnic group living in Western Moldavia. So let us now pray for better, peaceful days to come.

 

Mária Petrás - Esti ima

 

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The Oaths

 

 

To ensure fair play for all, the official oaths will now be taken by the representatives of the competitors, the jury members and the hosts.

 

Competitors' Oath

Kateryna Pavlenko, Ukraine

In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in

this Contest, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern TISC

- committing ourselves to a competition that values respect and the

true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of music and the honor of our nations!

 

Jury Members' Oath

@hckošice,  Slovakia

In the name of all the jury members, I promise that we shall adjudicate

in our deliberations at this Contest with complete impartiality, respecting and

abiding by the rules which govern TISC in the true spirit of sportsmanship!

 

Hosts' Oath

@Vektor, Hungary

I promise that I shall organize this Contest, respecting and abiding by the rules

that govern TISC - committing myself to overseeing a competition that values

respect and promotes the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of

music and the honor of our nations!

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Closing Act

 

 

The time has come for the final act of the ceremony. It was a hard decision to choose from the various great Hungarian singers to end the ceremony, and that's why I didn't choose any of them. Instead let me introduce something a bit different. There's a Hungarian shadow theater group called Attraction, you may have heard of them when they won Britain's Got Talent in 2013. They rose to fame when they performed at the 2012 Hungarian Olympic Oath Ceremony, so I thought that performance would be appropriate to close on now that we are getting close to the 10 year anniversary of those Summer Games. The London Games were kinda special to me for various reasons, so with these final moments of the ceremony I would also like to remember the great times many of us had during those 16 days.

 

Attraction Shadow Group