Per suggestion of an Australian mate (whom I hope has received his parcel of fishing equipment, refridgerator magnets, and raisinets), I'm going to employ a new device in today's blog: My random stream of consciousness style will be consciously divided into vaguely cohesive sections, and each section will have a heading, to be listed at the beginning of the email. Per positive feedback, said devices will become permanent.
1- 20th Century Hungarian Political History
2- Museum Pieces
3- English as a second language
4- Closing Statements
Hungary is, for all its modernity, still a bit hard to access from Western Europe. Flights are expensive, rail travel extensive, and seemingly rivalled for touristic incovenience in these areas only by Slovakia, immediately next-door. Hungary was at one piont part of the USSR, but was one of the westernmost bloc nations, both in geography and political theory. There'd been a Bolshevik revolution in the 1920s, but it went horribly wrong (for its sponsoring party) and the resultant fear of Communism drove Hungary's government, much as the various Allied powers, to choose the lesser of two evils when choosing their camp in World War II. It seems, or so the Hungarian National Museum puts forth, that the Hungarians were no more favourable to Germany and Hitler than they were Stalin's Russia, but geography (close proximity to Hitler, existant ties to Austria, standard eastern-European suspicion of Russia) helped to determine the solution. It was geography that further allowed Russia to reach Hungary before the other Allied forces, and hold political sway over the Hugns and Magyars for the better part of the 20th Century. However, the Hungarians' inherent notion of independence, and their distance from the Kremlin, allowed them a great deal more political freedom than other bloc nations. Hungary contains a significantly lesser amount of the concrete, cubicle infrastructure normally associated with Communism (say, as in the Czech Republic, for instance) and a great deal of their pre-WW II, and even pre-WW I, architecture is still predominately visible.
I am travelling, after all, with someone doing tourism research (Celine, from France), so I've had to be more necessarily touristic than I normally prefer, but I have gotten to see some wonderful sights. Tuesday we went to the Hungarian National Museum, where we ended up being more like one of the displays than overservers of. There was a batch of second or third graders there, and one, Alex, heard me speaking about something or other in the Imperial Roman room, and duly spent the rest of his duration there introducing himself and his peers. "Hi! My name is Alex!" I heard countless times. Eventually, his limited English grew tired of merely saying names, so, ornery little cuss, took to introducing his friends by their traits. "Hi, my name is Barbie" he said of a skinny, long, blonde-headed girl; "Hi, my name is Papo," he laughed, pointing to a portly fellow who was obviously his best chum. I took it, correctly it seems, that 'papo' is 'fat.'
Alex did show me a first glimpse of what I'm finding to be true-- most Hungarians are vaguely familiar with English. It's written on signs in public places, it's taught in schools, most folks under 30 seem to have a rudimentary command of the tongue, and even the elderly folks appear to understand a few words. The bottom line, impressibly enough, is that no one seems put out if you only speak English yourself. The girl at the metro-line ticket booth, the older gent at the rail depot, the guy my age in the rail car, all of them and countless others seemed genuinely happy to exercise their English skills. Nearly all of the Hungarians I attempted to speak to--in the pastry shop, at the gelati counter (she'd spent 3 years in Arizona, I believe it was, and spoke as if she'd been raised there), the random, entirely non-English speaking rail employees who managed to convey that we were on the wrong train and saved us a small fortuen in corrective travel-- were as helpful and genuinely amicable as you could never hope to find. The hostel employees, the waitress at the Hungarian restaurant we patroened twice, and the international rail ticket merchant were far more typical. Save for their dialogue, they could've been American or British-- they were only helping us in so much as that, in its driest, most basic extenses, paid their bills. But, that's how it goes all over the globe-- be it in China's Forbidden City, Cosmopolitan London, or the back roads of Springdale, Arkansas; it takes all kinds to make a world.
Well, that's about 40% of what I'd planned to write tonight, but I'm tired, as I'm sure you are as well, at this point, so I'm going to wrap it up there. Sorry to end on a bit of a down-note (Minimum wage employees in the US and UK are all surly), but that's just where we've ended up, isn't it. Reparations will be made when we pick up tomorrow morning (New hostel- free internet!) with "It takes all kinds..."
Good On Ye...
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