The Hungarian Fulbright Orientation
We had a full week of orientation activities, with sessions starting at 8:00 am Tuesday through Friday. This orientation was run like clockwork and introduced the Fulbrighters to each other and provided a crash course in Hungarian language, history, politics, and society. A lot of this was due to the organization of Annamária Sas, the program officer for American grantees. Annamária is the one that I emailed when I was freaking out about getting our consular approval paperwork to get into the country, when we were having trouble finding a place to live, and she will help us when we are setting up our appointment to get our visas here in Hungary.
The orientation activities were held in the Corvin Hotel, which was just a few tram stops from our place. They set us up with all the coffee, water (both still and sparkling, which is a big thing here but I don’t like ‘water with gas’) and Coke Zero we would want, and provided pastries each morning and a delicious Hungarian-inspired lunch in the afternoon in the patio garden behind the hotel.
There were a lot of Fulbrighters at the orientation, more so than usual because many of the awardees were deferred from last year. There were four categories of awardees. Researchers (there was only one), who will not teach but only conduct research. Lecturers are faculty who will mostly teach but also do other activities (this is what my award is). Students vary from those just out of undergrad to those who just finished their doctorate. These students will be researching different topics and maybe taking classes, I’m not too sure since they are all in such different fields. Finally, English Teaching Assistants will help with teaching English, working at a university. Student awardees come for two semesters (and I think the English Teaching Assistants do as well, but I could be wrong about that), and faculty/researchers for one semester. The Fulbrighters are in such diverse fields, from music to mathematics, chemistry to gender studies. They come from all over the United States, from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges. But all have one thing that brought them to this Fulbright opportunity—Hungary!
The first day of the orientation we were introduced to several key members, the Cultural Affairs officer of the US Embassy, the Deputy State Secretary for Strategic Affairs of the Hungarian Ministry of Innovation and Technology, the President of the Hungarian Fulbright Alumni Association, and the Executive Director of the Hungarian Fulbright Commission. We then learned about the history and structure of the Fulbright program in Hungary.
Mrs. Mária Sántháné Gedeon gave us an overview of the cultural similarities and differences between the United States and Hungary. Hungarians have been very much molded by their history, which is long and varied. More recently, the older generations distinctly remember growing up before the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and the hardships that went along with that, and those experiences have shaped the Hungarian culture. Mária also gave us language lessons each day, which were amazing. I had been working through Duolingo for the last few months, but it was so much better learning from an actual person. I am definitely not the best with languages, and these four short lessons (along with my attempt at self-teaching) are definitely not adequate to allow me to talk to others, I can at least be polite on the metro, say good morning, and ask how much something costs.
We were given a Hungarian History lesson, which packed as much into two hours as possible. I love learning about history and would have been happy to take an entire course of Hungarian history. In a nutshell, the Magyars conquered the Hungarian region in the year 896, so that is considered the birthday of the nation of Hungary. Hungary went through Mongol rule, then Turkish (Ottoman) rule, then finally Hapsburg rule. In 1896, the 1000th year of Hungary, a huge celebration of the millennium erected many of the large fancy buildings still standing today. In fact, if you don’t know when a building or monument was built, the guess of ‘around 1896’ is probably a good one!
Hungary was on the losing side during WWI, and as a result the Treaty of Trianon at the end of the war reduced Hungary to about a third of its previous size. This created tension, and Hungary sided again with Germany in WWII in part because of the promise to restore their territory to its pre-1920 size. We know how this goes, and when the Soviets ‘liberated’ Hungary from Germany in 1945, it began over 40 years of Soviet occupation. In 1989, when the Soviet rule had ended, Hungary had to reinvent itself, eventually becoming part of NATO and the European Union. Anyway, that is my really quick lesson in Hungarian history of the last 1000 years in case anyone was interested.
Over the course of the next few days we learned about the current political structure and economics in Hungary. I am typically not one to get too interested in politics, but the situation in Hungary scarily reminds me of the current situation in America. I also knew that JonPaul would be interested, so I tried to listen closely. Generally, and to the best of my limited knowledge, the party that currently has the majority of seats is called Fidesz, led by Viktor Orbán, who is the prime minister serving for his third consecutive 4-year term. To make any big changes in the government you need a 2/3 majority in Parliament, which the major parties (Fidesz and KDNP) currently have. However, many people are not happy with Orbán and some of his policies, so there are several other political parties called the Opposition that are against Orbán and Fidesz. The Opposition is made up of many diverse political parties, including those on the far right, the far left, and everywhere in between that would previously not have worked together and been dramatically opposed to each other. However, they have come together to oppose Fidesz and instead of each party having their own candidates they are going to collectively nominate one candidate to run against Orbán in the hopes of getting Orbán out of office. The elections are in early 2022, so it is an interesting time to be here with the political friction.
We also learned about the history of higher education in Hungary and the current higher educational systems. One interesting point was that students do not apply to a bunch of universities and then get to choose out of several that accept them, but rather they rank their choices beforehand and are accepted into their top choice that also accepted them, sort of like the APPIC match (for my fellow psychologists) or a medical residency placement. The country uses a point system for applications, and if you get a certain number of points your school is automatically paid for by the state (if you keep your grades up of course), which is pretty cool.
One of my favorite sessions over the course of the week was the hour and a half lesson about Hungarian music. We listened to traditional folk music and learned about some of the great Hungarian Composers, including Liszt (of course!), Erkel, Bartók, Kodaly, and Dohnányi. I would have liked this session to last the whole day!
Finally, we had some previous and returning Fulbrighters discuss about their Fulbright experience, particularly when living in Budapest. It was nice to hear that some Fulbrighters enjoyed the experience in Hungary so much they came back a second time! During this orientation week, the Hungarian Fulbright Commission had several excursions planned for us. The first night there was a nice dinner at Dunacorso Restaurant. We sat on the patio overlooking the river, had some excellent wine, food, and conversation, and even had a string trio playing music during dinner.
I am not sure if every country has gone out of its way to be so welcoming to the Fulbrighters and provide so much information to orient us to the location, but I am very appreciative of the amount of organization, planning, and thoughtfulness that went into our orientation week. In the next few posts I will be talking about the excursions we took as a Fulbright group that first week.
