hungarians de-frost.

it’s cold, so i curl up next to him. Our stomachs are full of sweet hungarian specialties, satisfied by milk in bags and i doubt. The question of what i am to do when i get used to this surrounding that once seemed so strange, arises more and more often. What shall I write about, what can be a source of inspiration to make this project work, when alienation and surprise are traded for logic and habit?

The remarkable grayness of this “city” with cold sighs of twisted heads that wander around in it and the constant sleeping mode of the streets, loose their originality. It’s when i take pepper from the cupboard and am confronted with the unpronounceable hungarian translation, that i realize my geographical position. Or when wrestling with german fluency in a conversation with the one girl i met. Or on my birthday, when i wonder if the denial of the importance of it may be rooted in tradition. But more often, it starts to KABBELEN.

Some small changes are taking place. On the flea-market, some of the salespeople recognize me, and nod. The ladies in the shop across the street (the one with the cow at the counter, who makes my milk go bad), are getting softer. In the library my existence is acknowledged, and my acquired skills concerning hungarian forms of politeness were yesterday even encouraged by a thumb pointing towards the ceiling. When I come search for my man and some inspiration in the waiting-room of the emergency department of the hospital, i regularly find a smile of a doctor within my sight.

So while the air is turning into ice, the townsmen are defrosting for my presence, i am -very slowly and still only by few -being accepted, recognized and seem to be “validated” in my existence. While this warms my heart, it turns the conviction i thought to be true at my arrival, concerning the sad and cold humans surrounding me. Gradually i understand how knowing only a few words in Hungarian, feed their linguistic pride, how many are so surprised by a smile of a stranger on the sidewalk, that they mainly look stupified and how the amount of fat in their bodies is a direct consequence of the traditional, national dishes.

What will come after becoming aware of these things, after the values show themselves to my surface, after learning about absurdly low wages and the hungarian eye walls?

eye wall

Meteorology noun

the area immediately outside the eye of a hurricane or cyclone, associated with tall clouds, heavy rainfall, and high winds.

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