Visiting journalist sees more flags waving now, but it’s not what he would call patriotism

You might figure that somebody from Transylvania would have a different take on the United States.

Good guess.

No, I am not talking about the Transylvania which only exists in the movies. I mean the real one. Transylvania is a real place, a province in Romania, and there never have been vampires there.

Vlad Tepes lived in the state called Wallachia, located south of Transylvania. “Dracula” means “Son of a Dragon.” Vlad senior received the name because he was part of the order of the Dragon. That is it. The rest is a story.

Transylvania used to be part of Austria-Hungary, but became part of Romania after World War I. Treaties signed after World War I were extremely harsh on Hungary. She lost two-thirds of her territory, and half of her total population, as borders were redrawn. Add to this the loss of up to 90% of vast natural resources and other infrastructure. This was done to a nation with borders that were established over a thousand years earlier (896 A.D.) and one that lost countless lives defending the rest of Europe from numerous invasions from the Mongolian Tatars and the Ottoman Turks.

For people in Transylvania, and Eastern Europe, history is extremely powerful. Some Americans simply don't understand why we're so attached to the past.

Some hundreds of years ago, the Hungarians lost a war to the Austrians. The Austrian soldiers drank gallons of beer and they cheered with it. The Hungarians swore not to do that for 150 years. I remember we were not supposed to cheer with beer until only a few years ago. Can you imagine?

I was surprised to see many things here in the United States. It’s my second time in this country, but I am still amazed how slow people drive. I know, a lot of accidents and all that. In Transylvania our driving style is simple: pedal to the metal.

You don't have to worry about getting a ticket since you can always bribe the police officer. Because he earns not more than $150 a month, you have an easy job knocking him out with $5.

I was driving around with (Houston County News editor) Tom van der Linden the other day in La Crescent and I noticed all those American flags.

In my town, Cluj, we have flags, too. The Romanian ones I mean. But we also have an ultra-nationalist Romanian mayor who hates ethnic Hungarians (like me) and wants to prove that Kolozsvar has always been Romania, not part of Hungary. We tease him by saying, “You know, mister mayor, you put up so many flags in the center of the town, it really looks like the Romanians just occupied the city.” He would get really mad. I know that here it is about something else. You don't have to prove to anybody who was here first.

I didn’t see so many flags in August 2001 when I was here. It seems some Americans have just discovered patriotism. It reminds me of how everybody in my country became highly religious right after we had the bloody revolution and ousted the brutal Communist dictator, the atheist Nicolae Ceausescu. After that, even the Stalinists would go to church regularly, including those who tortured the political opponents in dark basements, members of the Romanian Secret Service. Quite a few people woke up on the morning of September 12, 2001, and became patriots.

For me patriotism is making everything possible for your community: helping the disabled, or the blind, like the Lions Club does. For me they are more patriotic than those who put an American flag out in front of their house.

I have the feeling that some Americans don’t fully realize how lucky they are to live in this country. I remember when I was a kid I looked out the window into darkness waiting for cars passing by with their lights on. Before 1989 they would cut the electricity so that the country could save money and prove to the capitalist-imperialists that we can be self-sufficient.

I always hoped that the Americans would come and kick the Communists out. You never came over.

So we got used to the rationed food (just like in Germany after WW II), the half a bread per person per day, the misery and the censorship. I remember eating my first banana in early 1990 (I was age 14) after Communism fell. I think that tells a lot.

It is hard for me to understand when Americans complain. All the problems you have are considered luxury ones to me: building another highway or not (we don’t have money to build any in Romania), a business closed in St. Paul and 100 people lost their jobs. My town is the size of St. Paul and 10,000 people lost their jobs when the shoe factory closed in 1999. Both my parents worked there and have been unemployed ever since. My father finally found a job two months ago only.

That is Romania today.

Kiss is an ethnic Hungarian journalist working for the "Szabadsag" (Freedom). This is a Hungarian paper published in Cluj, Romania. He writes about politics, local, national and international. He speaks Romanian (the country’s official language), Hungarian (his native tongue), excellent English and French, plus a smattering of Dutch and Italian. He spent three days in La Crescent to learn about small-town community journalism. He is one of 9 fellow international journalists traveling the United States through October as part of the World Press Institute, founded at Macalester College in St. Paul. – Editor