Old Europe, New Europe
Reflections on cultural identities and migration
Our little travel group wanted to squeeze in a vacation as soon as I was ready to travel after my ankle surgery exactly a year ago. Luckily we found a Danube river cruise for 8 days with a land segment to Prague, and it was the best fit for an easy hassle-free vacation alongwith 150 other seniors from Anglo countries, mostly US, plus a smattering of UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa.
I saw Europe after many years. So, when we landed in Budapest to get driven to the ship, we saw one McDonalds after another. Old beautiful buildings with the ugly M sign, modern buildings with the same sign and even ugly Communist era buildings with the same sign. This is very sad I thought- hegemony through bad food? Isn’t there a local popular food chain? In Pakistan, I am told people dress up to go to McDonalds as if it’s a fancy restaurant. Fatima Bhutto (Benazir Bhutto’s niece) in her book “New Kings of the World” makes a case for a shift in this unipolar hegemony thankfully. And she is right- we took my husband’s niece to see Manhattan thankfully before the UN Assembly week- which brings it to a standstill-and saw biryani and falafel stalls at many corners.
We loved the tour of Budapest and its history! I didn’t know Hungary was a non-Slavic and non-Germanic race descended from…
