Academy has moved from France to Great Britain, got a new 'shape', but first of all, better communication between members. So, I was curious, how will it be during the hungarian meeting.

I reserved the ticket to Budapest two months earlier, but as usual,  two weeks before flight I have got a message that departing time has changed. Because of that, I was late about an hour for welcome dinner.



Wellcome dinner took place in museum restaurant, 5 minutes walking distance from the hotel. Known faces welkomed me: Toni from Barcelona, Rosita nad Pierre from Mexico, Bonnie and Jeff from Miami, Pierre from Switzerland, Tammy and Barney form Japan and long time not seen Ben Rapaport from USA.



Following day (Thursday) morning the meeting was started. Speaches were done in English, fortunately. Anna Ridovics from Hungarian Archeological Museum introduced us into a history of the room we did the meeting in. We had thema-group meetings: clay pipe, briar pipe, metal pipe, thema literature etc and then we listened to activity and financial report.



During breaks, we talked about pipes and admired members pipe stuff.



Pierre Müller admired 'Bugatti' pipe.



Almost all pipe conference attenders.






In the evening we had a Gala dinner and introduction of 5 new members including Pierre Pams from Mexico and Marc Haddad from Lebanon.



Peter Davey, our chairman thanked Tibor Kovacs - director of the museum, for the hospitality.





New Academy members.



We opened then Pipe exhibition.
Meerchaum pipes mostly,but such was a tradition of making pipes in this region of Europe..


 


Pipe – Miklós Bárczay – Arad Court – end of XiX Century.



Pipe – Mihály Kovács



Pipe with intronation of King St. István – II half of XIX Century.



Left: Pipe – Emil Spiró – Three Graces – end of XIX Century.
Right: Pipe – Emil Spiró – Bacchus – end of XIX Century.






Left: Pipe – Joseph Schweger – Palatyn Joseph – 1837.
Right: Pipe - Carl Beyer – Joseph – I half of XIX Century.



Most of those pipes apeared in Museum thanks to Piroska Osskó, here talking with Pierre.

On Friday we had mostly talks did by archeologists on a common title 'Between East and West'.




















On Sathurday we went to Debrecen to take part in Gala Dinner of World Cup in Slow pipe-smoking teams. Some of us took part in the contest also but this is different story.