Smile A Little Smile For Me, Hungary

 

I want to be a good American, perhaps the good American, but so far I'm failing miserably. I walk the narrow streets of Eger seeking to make eye-contact with each passing person. And, if it should happen that someone does look up from the pavement to meet my glance, I smile, only to be returned a deflating, cold stare. From my perspective, perhaps from an American perspective generally, Hungarians are hard people, at least on the surface; from their perspective, they probably wonder why Americans have this idiotic need to smile when there is really no basis for it.

It's difficult for me not to throw Hungary on the couch and psychoanalyze it a little. After all, it is only little more than twenty years since the Soviet-backed communist government -- paranoid and obsessed with spying on its own citizens -- fell, and so most of those I pass in the street are children of that era and that regime. Perhaps what I construe as unfriendliness are simply the childhood lessons of reserve and distrust carried forward into adulthood. 


Which is not to say that Hungarians are impenetrable. I have been met with kindness and humor, though none of it immediately, and none of it without a certain feeling-out or vetting. The good news is that with each other, when familiar with each other (friends, lovers, families), they demonstrate spirit equal to any American. Broad smiles; big laughs. I just need to get on the inside of all that. And I will.