French people abroad are probably the most 'anticipated' and apprehended group of people during the tourist high tide. Sziget was no exception. That is after all the major reason why I work at the information tent with very little hungarian to offer to the locals with lost passports, wallets, tents... Most of the French nevertheless tried to talk to me in English, an offer I wouldn't refuse (but most hungarians speaking french might switch straight away - a kind of eastern communication pragmatism), well glad to test french adaptational capacities. In the face of those french people who went there that failed to get very far with their english (in which case I didn't leave them suffer for too long), I found Italians refusing to try and communicate with me in spanish much worse. If they did know a few words in english, it was generally very rapidly pronouced, and regarding my complete
incomprehension, a few refused to even try spanish, or a slower italian I may have found some logic in.
Sziget is curious for me, because it is obviously at the very heart of a very strong Eastern european identity (even putting them 'in eastern Europe' might offend some), and because my own complex but mostly western roots are constantly tested by the available french or british stereotypes.
But people there are very fond of French culture, and although most of them have the worst to say about their experiences in Paris or the south of France, they somehow keep going there, because it's part of the holiday sacrifice, the western exotism. A strong clash of identity hungarians probably like and identify too, altough it must be hard for people who have to speak two or three foreign languages to gain a good professional position in the new european era, to arrive in a country where people sometimes litteraly
refuse to try english, or to listen to it.
I have been to Paris a few weeks ago, and was curious to test this facet of french people in Bars, in the street, at Bus-stops... I got surprisingly encouraging results even when I started to talk english, sometimes without even engaging with them to get directions or a particular Bus number. Parisians know their foreign '
numero'... they know their numbers too, but I find it's one of the cities where populations mix the most, in slight contrast to London and its communities.
Everything is complicated in France, maybe too complicated for other cultures, part of the laique ideal, the 'Laic' inheritance. but altough I can feel a bit foreign to everywhere, myself I'm never completely foreign to the french context...
The three days I spent last year in the sziget festival were quite marvellously simple; it made me think of what lake Balaton was to the East-Germans during the soviet regime, a little paradise for
us (we western wizzers) and
our little problems with it. Hungarians are, to my point of view, such good guests. There is a simple feeling all around this island during festival week in August, and that is pure
contact...
