Buddha-Pest

I grew up in Hungary a small European land locked country - actually I spent my childhood in the Southern Hungarian town of Szeged. Then I moved to Budapest and spent my university years there - majoring in English and Arabic literature.

Since in South Africa we are so far away from Eastern Europe - not that many Hungarians are spotted around here - South Africans are sometimes suspicious about us Hungarians - we speak a funny language that doesn't sound like English or French or even Russian or Polish nor Tswana or Zulu , we were one of the "Eastern bloc" countries that spent many years under Soviet rule, many of us are also not devoted to a specific religion due to our previous dispensation.

Others think of Hungary as a magic Oriental place - a secret far away place full of exciting and mesmerising traditions and cultures - especially that the name of our capital is called Budapest - as if it had something to do with the Buddha. If something is unreachable and is so far away - one tends to build a dreamlike image of it.

However my experience is that even though we live quite far away from each other - we are similar in many ways with South Africans, I have realised the people here have been listening to the same music, have been reading the same books, many times cook similar dishes in other words the more countries I visit, the more cultures and traditions I experience I realise that we all have much more in common than we think.