Hungary!!!

For those of you unaware - I am back in the land of slanted roof-tops and vegetarian options limited to fried cheese or a pickle. I'll be updating when it occurs to me. For those of you on facebook, I'm posting photos there. If anyone knows of a free forum to do this where anyone can see 'em, please share.

Today I learned what it means to be “American.” On Saturday evening I heard the first reference to being American - referring to sappy endings like the one at the unfortunate end of the first Harry Potter movie. I was spared the dialogue since it was dubbed into Hungarian. Toady I got a longer explanation. In the Hungarian lexicon, for something to be “American” means that it has a happy ending where the good guy gets the girl and the bad guy gets what he deserves. The term also applies to books, specifically those that may be good and depressing all the way though as long everything ties up unrealistically happy at the end with a tidy moral as fitting as a bow on a brick. This whole definition of America and American movies was new to me.
When I think “American” I think American History X, I think of House of Sand and Fog, Super-Size Me, Fight Club, Dancer in the Dark and Elephant and any movie that recognizes that something is terribly wrong and doesn’t try and sugar-coat the ending. Of course, silly me, I was thinking of America as I see it, not the shiny, gift-wrapped variety coming soon to a theater near you! One Hungarian told me that there are probably very few depressed Americans. I told them that the only reason this might be true is because every third person is medicated.
To contrast this I learned what a “Hungarian” theme looks like: the hero is a loser who tries his or her best to get ahead using whatever tricks necessary and inevitably gets screwed in the end. All is for naught. True, deserved happiness is a foriegn concept.
In Hungary, if you play by the rules you’ve already lost. With regards to salary and taxes, it is a common secret that none of the rich report their actual income. On paper they make minimum wage – about $300 a month. Of course, since the government expects this, the whole tax structure is based on the assumption that those who actually follow the rules are the exception. This hits agriculture hardest since for dealing with the EU they have to have complete fiscal transparency. But in general, the paper record in Hungary is enormously different from the reality. Because of all sorts of taxes and zoning issues, many landlords don’t actually rent their properties; they just have “friends” who happen to be living in them. Studios are even worse, requiring even more permits and monthly taxes and permissions and applications and kilometers of red tape. However, if you happen to be a studio artist and want to sell a piece but don’t have a legal studio, on any sale you must sell the service of making the piece, not the piece itself.
More fun: for those of you that haven’t heard, they’ve found bird-flu in domesticated birds here in Hungary. And everyone around studio is sick or getting over something. I have yet to be stricken (and hope to be spared).
And even yet more fun: Putin’s in Budapest and they’re shutting down the major part of the city periodically over the next few days. If one of the policemen now lining the streets there gets the call, all traffic in the area is immediately stopped – for a few hours. The communist/socialist party in control of the government is bringing in all the celebrity they can muster for next month’s election. Everyone I speak to from the older generation who lived through the 1956 Revolution are appalled that Russia’s back in the picture and the same politicos are back in power.
In other parts of the country, whole villages are under a foot or so of water because canals haven’t been built to channel the waters.
For those of you wondering, I doubt that I’ll be making Hungary my home anywhere in the foreseeable future. It may have affordable produce, but it also has an endemic instability so that salary is only measured by month, who knows what will happen by the end of the year?