hétfő, március 21, 2005
Dear Judy,
I'm the English guy that wrote about my trip to Hungary on Martin Hruda's
blog. First of all, I'd like to apologise if you didn't like what I'd said;
I did say in my post that I didn't mean any offense to Hungarians in general
and my article was not supposed to be completely serious, but maybe it did
not come across in this way.
I've got nothing against Hungary or the Hungarian people whatsoever. I
thoroughly enjoyed my trip to Budapest and would most certainly go back
there again, given the chance. It was a very interesting and diverse city. I
was only joking about Hungarian being "pricks" from stuff that my friend
Martin and myself had kidded about in the past - it's just natural
stereotypes, it doesn't mean that we actually hate one another. For example
the English often say that they hate the Germans, that we still do not
forgive them for World War Two and that they have no sense of humour, but
most Englishmen do not hate Germans personally.
Martin's already explained to you that the Slovakians have nothing really
against the Hungarians, and really I don't either - I didn't even know
anything about Hungary really before Martin told me about it, so how could I
possibly dislike it? The food did seem a bit weird to me in places, and we
did see catfish on the menu in several places :) but I'm sure a lot of
Hungarian food is very nice. We English just like to stick to what we know
:)
The language naturally is very awkward for an Englishman - you guys use far
too many consonants and not enough vowels, making every word look very long
and unpronouncable. I still believe English is easier to learn since we have
no accents on our letters at all and use many vowels, but maybe for
foreigners it is still difficult to an extent.
Coming from the West, it is a bit of a culture shock seeing a city like
Budapest, with many signs of its communist past, but I did not mean my
comments to sound like Hungary is a really backward nation. It's made a lot
of progress since the fall of communism, and will no doubt be a worthy
member of the EU in the years to come, but it did just seem a bit run-down
in places, with some of the parks seeming like a wasteland (still, there are
many parts of England that look like that too :))
As I say, I hope this explains things a bit better, that I didn't mean to
cause any offence to you or your fellow Hungarians, I was just expressing
some general perceptions which were not entirely accurate. I hope there are
no bad feelings,
Warren.