Somewhere in the notebook that my friend gave me before I left for Europe, I had scribbled something about traveling to other countries as being a way to learn about your own. I meant it, you know, figuratively. I met Tünde, a Hungarian girl with a French accent she picked up while studying in France, at the Nyugati metro station in Budapest at 12:45 p.m. We took the metro a few stops and got a train out to her university, passing “weekend cottages” made of pieced together corrugated metal. They looked as if they were waiting for a big bad wolf to come and blow them all down.
We had spent the week in a platonic romance that began at a nightclub. My friends had been talking to hers, and the two of us ended up dancing to “New York, New York” in that swing-dance, playful way you dance with your aunt at a wedding. She wanted to work on her English; I wanted a personal guide to the city. Maybe it was more Aristotelian then — a friendship of utility.
We passed a mountainous region and watched the fog move through valleys of thickening snow. The train ride was only 35 minutes but the snow at the university was much thicker — about two inches — than the dusting in Budapest.
The school, a conglomerate of modern buildings, rose up slowly from the snow-covered field like the broad hills that surrounded it. Tünde had to do some paperwork there, and she wanted to show me where she studied English and French literature.
She went to see her teachers. I sat on a wooden bench in front of a statue — the patron of her university– reading a textbook printout on America that her professor had written. She wanted to know if I thought it was accurate and if I thought it was funny. Small clumps of snow from people’s shoes collected into puddles on the marble floor as I sat, miles away from my hostel, in the impromptu study abroad program in which I had inadvertently enrolled myself for the day.
Americans value self-reliance as a result of the push to tame the West. As an early agricultural nation, America had farmers whose success depended on whether or not they could grow a successful crop on their own. This led to Americans valuing what is practical and having a “do-it-yourself” attitude. This is still evident today in the many “do-it-yourself” books that Americans buy.
A group of dark-haired girls in long wool coats spoke Hungarian on
the bench beside me. Besides the “yeses” and “no’s” of their conversation, I couldn’t understand anything.
But the whole scene already had the feeling of eavesdropping to it.
One of the drawbacks of American life is that it is viewed as a competition. Americans, especially men and increasingly women, feel tremendous pressure to rely on themselves to succeed. Children are often forced to rely on themselves from the ages of 18 or 21. When men retire, they often feel useless because they are no longer part of “the game” and they are no longer contributing to society. This has resulted in less respect for the elderly in America.
Tünde came back but told me she had to speak with another teacher. She had failed one of her exams. I was devastated for her.
Americans do not have an aristocracy due to the restrictions of lordships established in the Constitution. So Americans often rely on material things to show their status and how successful they have been at achieving the “American Dream.” This has become known as “materialism,” but Americans find it offensive to be called materialistic because it means they put objects before their ideals. Americans are big on ideals.
While I was waiting, I went to the snack bar in the corner of the room. “Hello,” said the thickset man behind the counter.
“Do you speak English?” I asked because he had said hello.
“Little bit.”
I pointed to the pile of pastries on the counter behind him. He pointed to a chocolate-covered croissant. I gestured left and his hand followed mine, but I guess I didn’t do a good job of guiding it because his finger rested on a circular Danish, not the figure-8 cinnamon roll that I wanted. He then moved to a square pastry, which I accepted and told myself I would learn to love, the way people learn to love one another in arranged marriages.
“Mennyebe kerul?” I asked — one of the only things I learned how to say in Hungarian.
“One hundred,” he said.
I handed him 100 forint, sat back down and kept reading about America, biting into my mystery snack and laughing at what I had stumbled upon: It was cold apple pie.
Steve Macone, a senior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].