Marika

This travel bug is dedicated to Marika. She would like to travel to Budapest Hungary, and then around Hungary and on to Slovakia. If you pick up any good Kapusta recipes, or other Hungarian recipes along the way, please include them in the log.
Körömvirág akar szeret -hoz utazik átmeno Magyarország és Szlovák

Marika Molnar Soltezs is a character in a play we are writing, called Boomtown. She was born in Budapest Hungary, in 1873. She came to United States via Ellis Island in 1896. She landed in New York first and became a garment worker. She was active in the Garment Workers Union, and eventually was fired for activism. She came to Detroit/DelRay in 1914 with her husband Viktor Soltezs. He went to work for Solvay Chemicals. She went to work in the Turnsteadt Ford plant. At the beginning of the play, she is newly widowed. She is an old-school communist and rather opposed to church involvement. Marika believes only in economic change, she is quite conservative socially. She does not believe or support the suffragettes and thinks the effort to get votes was a waste of time and energy. She dresses very poorly. She lives on South Street, where she has turned her house into a boarding house. Her husband died of tuberculosis in October 1924, after working twelve years at Solvay. She has had six pregnancies—only two children have lived. Both are daughter (Irma and Rozsika) who have married and moved to new community of Lincoln Park. Her last child, a boy named Janos, died at the age of two during the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Boomtown revolves around five women from very different backgrounds that have come to Gus’ all night diner, across the street from the Ford Turnstead plant in Detroit Michigan in 1925. Boomtown will be produced at the Matrix Theatre in Detroit Michigan in March 2005.