So -- I got back from the Fulbright's Berlin Conference Thursday afternoon, and subsequently enjoyed the shortest week ever. The Conference was really great, although admittedly moslty thanks to the people and the location. A lot of the panels were extremely German-centric, which I suppose makes sense in light of the fact that over four hudred of the five hundred plus participants were from Germany. There was one grab-bag panel with the touchy-feely title "European Dimensions" which seemed to be for everyone else. One of our Hungarians spoke, as well as a guy from Slovakia, someone in Spain, a woman from Sardinia (who is an archeologist! How cool is that?), someone from Norway, and (dull and out of place), a man doing research at the LSE. The topics discussed were wide-ranging; my favorite, and one we should have spent more time on, was the issue of language, and how important it might be to speak the language of your host country. I think another audience member put it best when she pointed out that professionally, she was doing a disservice if she did not speak English. Socially, however, you lose a lot by not speaking Hungarian (or, fill in the language of your host country here).

A topic which we also spent a great deal of time on (much too much, in my opinion) was the racism/descrimination/immigration aspect of the host countries. I don't mean at all to imply that it's not important -- quite the contrary. Discrimination is a *huge* problem accross Europe, albeit one that varries substantially from place to place. However, the nicest way I could describe forty-five Americans talking to each other about descrimination abroad is "worthless and futile." I get immensely cynical when I think about how many Fulbrighters get money each year to come to this or that country and study the Roma problem, or the Turkish problem, or pick-your-favorite-immigrant-group-in-your-favorite-country problem, and how little actually changes. I'm sure a lot of people start nice academic careers for themselves, and maybe some of them end up working for non-profits or what have you, but at the end of the day no number of do-gooder Yankies can increase anybody's tolerance, or further anyone's integration into society: the impetus has to come from within the communities themselves.

Another problem I see with Americans, based purely on my own limited experience, is the failure to recoginze that while race in America does have many superficial similarities to race problems in other countries, the substantial differences are what set them apart. Discrimination is bad; everyone should have equal access to quality education; hating people based on their racial or ethnic backround is not okay. Etc. etc. However, Americans coming in and screening videos about Martin Luther King Jr. or preaching about the Civil Rights Movement are worthless because Hungarians see no parallels whatsoever in this regard between the United States and Hungary. None.

Sorry about the rant! I'm sure I offended somebody.

In other news, my great plans to have a delicious sandwich for lunch went terribly awry when I made it last night and put the tomatoes in. It was really, really soggy.