Back in the United States, and no longer in Kansas

View of the Danube from Gellért Hill in Buda, Hungary on a rainy, foggy day. The right side of the river is Pest.

Hi Erika,

I got a cultural shock when I arrived in Hungary, and I got a cultural shock coming back to the United States. When boarding the plane in London, people were speaking in somewhat ugly, Germanic sounding language. I was familiar with this language -- I knew the words, as it was English, but I heard it for the first time as a foreign language. Something seemed very wrong because people were not speaking the beautiful Hungarian that, while I understood hardly any of, I was comfortable with. And the people boarding the plane were so ugly. I had never seen so many ugly people before in one place. In Hungary, hardly anyone is ugly. Hungarians are incredibly beautiful people. I was not used to looking at people who were not beautiful. It was shocking. (There are of course exceptions like Eszter. Don't believe the crap I said in front of Zozo about Eszter being beautiful. Eszter does not look very Hungarian to me; she looks Germanic.)

When I got to Boston, Customs really, really fucked with me. They of course had nothing on me, but they interrogated me, asked horribly personal questions, and looked through every inch of my luggage -- even the dust they inspected. Finally, after clearing Customs, exhausted and really pissed off, having two suitcases, one in each hand, I ran to the bus that would take me to a train, that would take me to my apartment. The rear doors of the bus were open, so I hopped on with all my luggage, and the bus driver closed the door while I was half way in. I managed to squirm in, dazed and confused by why anyone would do something like that. A passenger said to me, "You have to pay." I had to pay? Then I finally realized that I was no longer in Budapest. In Boston, like every place in the U.S., you pay the bus driver up front. They open the rear doors in order to let people out.

I was in a big department store in the U.S. called BJ's. A woman was getting annoyed and frustrated with her son, because her son wanted to wander around. That is what children do; it is in their nature. Very rarely do parents get annoyed with their children like that in Hungary. People love the hell out their children in Hungary. Americans do not understand children. Children in the U.S. are often treated much in the way you might treat luggage. You lug your luggage around, and it is a hassle. In BJ's when I wanted to get around people in crowded aisles, I would have to resist the urge to say "bocsánat." Something seemed horribly wrong to be living in universe where you don't say "bocsánatot kérek" to get people out of your way.

Yesterday, when I was driving on the hi-way at night, I thought about the view from Gellért Hill and all the places and people and things I missed about my Buda. It was of course not "my" Buda, but it was the only place I had ever know that felt like home. I cried.