Hungarian Eyes

Episode 2 of a 3-part podcast series that investigates cultural clashes at the Chinese-owned Hungarian chemical plant, BorsodChem. In the second episode, we speak to both Hungarian and Chinese workers about what it is like to work across cultures.

This is episode 1 of a 3-part podcast series that investigates cultural clashes at Chinese-owned Hungarian chemical plant, BorsodChem.

In this first episode, my brother Tom and I travel to Kazincbarcika and meet with BorsodChem’s former Union Leader Gábor Salagvárdi. We talk about the plant’s history and how Kazincbarcika became a hotspot for German and Chinese business executives. (1/3) 

On All Saints Day, I decide to spend a day in Budapest's famous Kerepesi Cemetery. The result? Good music, candle-lit tombstones, and a conversation with boy who has paranormal visions.

I love talking to old people. Chat someone up and within two minutes you’re going to learn something you would have never otherwise found out. That’s how I felt when I spent an afternoon at a retirement home in Budapest, reflecting upon Hungary’s 1956 revolution with a poet.

Bajkai Janosné’s work has not been featured or published anywhere. I will be posting her trilogy of poems (Hungarian and English translation) about the revolution next week and linking it here. For now, enjoy listening.

Dr. Ambedkar School is a Buddhist secondary school in Miskolc, a northeastern industrial city in Hungary. Its student body is almost exclusively impoverished Roma youth. I spend a day walking around the halls, listening in on classes, and learning about the school’s distinctive approach to education.

It seems that anytime I talk to people in Budapest about politics, we land on the topic of immigration. Regardless of whether they disdain Orbán Viktor and his harsh migrant policies or agree with him, the 2015 migrant crisis always seems to come up.

In this episode, I want to focus not on the people who came to Hungary but, rather, on the people who decided to leave. Hungarian Emigrants who, because of work or study or family, chose to leave.

Balint is one of those people. He moved to the United Kingdom for university and, even though he plans to move back to Budapest someday, his immediate future seems to be taking root in London.

In a 2018 European Union survey on immigration, only 10 percent of Hungarians said they would feel "totally comfortable" having an immigrant as a friend. 55 percent said they would feel "uncomfortable."

Hungary has a xenophobia issue. It is perpetuated by Orbán’s government, public institutions, and everyday people in the country. Instead of rambling on data and research, which many more educated people have done here, here, and here, I wanted to talk to a person who experiences prejudice and xenophobia on a daily basis. Kwene Apah, a Canadian Masters student who is studying at the Central European University, sat down with me to discuss her research about nationalism and immigration, and her experience as a black woman in Hungary.