Keeping the bigger picture in mind
Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. Having a Hungarian passport is advantageous. It consistently ranks in the top 10 passports. (Yes, there is actually something called the Henley Passport Index.)
With a Hungarian passport, you can enter nearly 200 countries without a visa, and, most importantly, you can live and work in any other European Union country. Many people start their Hungarian citizenship journey with this goal in mind.
I admit, that was me too. I have always imagined myself swanning around the South of France one day, and this passport allows me to do that for as long as I want!
I write, that was me because, as I hope you'll begin to see in this blog, gaining my Hungarian citizenship quickly became much, much more than a passport.
A Baby Girl
It started when I saw the photocopy of my great-grandmother’s birth record, and the word leány (an old-fashioned spelling of lány, which means girl) next to her name. When I saw the physical evidence that this old lady I knew who lived in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, was once a newborn infant in Hungary, it changed me.
Thinking about that baby Anna, born in 1897, with genes that eventually created me, was heart-expanding.
Origins
Then, in my very first Hungarian class, online I said the words:
“magyar származásu vagyok” (I’m of Hungarian origin)
...and it opened my heart more.
But I was nervous. I knew that my great-grandparents had to leave the Kingdom of Hungary because they were peasants in Eastern Hungary, struggled to survive, and frankly, were treated poorly by the ruling class.
How would the people at the fancy Budapest-based language school treat me?
There was no reason at all to worry. Overwhelmingly every Magyar I met on my citizenship journey was fascinated by my family, impressed with my great-grandparents perseverance, eager to help me, and honored that I was choosing to join them as a citizen.
And along the way, I developed this pride too. But more importantly, becoming a Hungarian citizen helped me understand myself.
The Home
Traveling to the Múzeumfalu (Village Museum) in Sóstó and walking through a house that was typical of peasant homes in Eastern Hungary in the early 1900s (the type of house that my great-grandparents would have lived in) was overwhelming (see the video here, where I struggle to put my emotions into words and babble a bit!)
Learning the Hungarian language (and realizing I already knew a bunch of food-related words from my family) connected me to an important part of Hungarian culture - eating!
Seeing the trees and grass in Eastern Hungary helped me see my birthplace in Northeastern Pennsylvania in a new light, as I imagined what my great-grandparents thought when they arrived in the new country–how the land was similar, but different.
Learning more about Hungarian history helped me understand why my family had to emigrate when they did and what might have been on their fears and hopes at that time.
And getting to know so many kind, generous, smart, darkly-funny, and very private and reserved Hungarians completely helped me understand why my family is often this way. I realize being reserved and private isn’t a fault, it’s simply in our blood. With so much political upheaval in Central and Eastern Europe through the years, my ancestors would have kept their thoughts to themselves to survive. It seems that tendency has been passed down to me, even if it is contrary to these current times of sharing everything online!
(in fact, writing this blog feels very out of my Hungarian privacy comfort zone.
But I'm pushing through it!)
The Invitation
Finally, when I received the email from the Hungarian Consulate, inviting me to my citizenship ceremony, I cried.
In that moment, I wasn't thinking about a passport, or hanging out in the South of France.
I cried because I was becoming a citizen of The Old Country. I was fulfilling a longing to go back to the place where my ancestors wanted to return to. I was being celebrated as a new citizen, whereas my family had to leave to survive.
In more blog posts to come, I’ll give advice on how to navigate the citizenship application process. But I hope that you too will quickly come to the understanding that being Hungarian is much more than a great passport!
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