On Politeness, Hand-kissing, Smiling, and Not Smiling

Dear reader, I shall wander off campus for most of this post, if you don’t mind, to talk about everyday life in Pécs.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned before what a very beautiful city it is.  It is hilly, which reminds me of my native town of San Francisco, and it is mostly encircled by bigger, green hills.  Like San Francisco, it combines beautiful architecture with natural beauty.  Of course, there is no Pacific Ocean here, but on the other hand I think Pécs buildings are far more impressive even than the “painted lady” houses of San Francisco.  But that is neither here nor there, today, as I wish to speak of a couple of differences between my interactions with people in Pécs and my normal interactions back home.  These differences speak, I think to significant cultural differences, though I confess I am not quite sure what that significance is.  Let’s see what you make of them.  Here they are.  First, Hungarians strike me as far more polite in everyday interactions than I am used to in the U.S.A.  Second, Hungarians seem to smile far less, at least with strangers, than Americans do. 

            Let me illustrate my first point first.  Just the other day, I went to a map store.  (I love maps, dear reader, so you may imagine my delight to find an entire little mom and pop store devoted to maps, just down the street from my apartment  I must say, small neighborhood businesses in Hungary seem to doing better than in the U.S.  I think it is because people seem to drive less here).  Anyhow, I entered this fine establishment, wielding my child-level Hungarian, and some knowledge of what one is supposed to say upon entering a store in this country.  Our conversation went (translated literally from Hungarian) something like this:

Me: Good Day!

Proprietress: I wish you a Good Day!  Please, is there something I can help you with?

Me: I don’t speak Hungarian well, but I want to look around.

Proprietress: Please, help yourself. 

As I looked around, and asked questions, the storekeepers were extremely helpful, and when new customers entered, the greeting conversations started again…

Woman enters: Good Day!

Proprietress: I wish you a Good Day!  Please….

Young Man enters, says to Proprietress: I kiss!  I am looking for….

In the U.S., Pepe Le Pew kisses hands 

Here let us stop for a moment, dear reader, and talk for a moment about kissing hands.  You read that right: the young man said to the older woman, “Csókolom,” meaning, “I kiss,” which is the usual short form of “Kezit csókolom,” or “I kiss your hand.”  I hear this a lot, dear reader. Children say it to adults they don’t know well.  Beggars say it to women who give them something.  Grown men say it to women who are a generation or more older than themselves.  (Indeed, I say it to my wife’s great aunt).  Many men older than 60 or so seem to say it to any woman they don’t know well.  Imagine, dear reader, if one heard a man saying “I kiss your hand,” in the U.S.A., or saw him actually kissing someone’s hand.  This man would probably a stock cartoon or movie character, most likely a native speaker of one of the Romance languages, whose character was supposed to be charming to the ladies, but ultimately insincere and over the top.  And yet here, among Hungarian speakers, it is perfectly ordinary.  It is perhaps becoming rarer than it used to be, but it is still quite common.  Obviously, there is a gender angle to the term, but is part of a whole suite of such words which sound extremely polite in English, but are everyday civilities here.  Here is a short list of common Hungarian pleasantries, with their English equivalents, followed by their literal translations.

Hungarian Term     English Equivalent         Literal English Translation

Csókolom                hello (to older person)      I kiss (your hand)

köszönöm szépen     thank you very much        I thank you prettily

legyen szíves            please                               be of a heart to…

jó napot kívánok      good day                          I wish you a good day.

bocsánat                  sorry                                 forgiveness

örvendek                 nice to meet you                I celebrate (this meeting)

It is not just that these literal translations sound really formal to American ears, but that one hears these formalities all the time, walking around Pécs.  Is it just that I tune out formalities in my native culture?  I don’t think so.  I think Hungarians use these more and the formalities are just more formal to begin with.  Moreover, you may remember from an earlier post how my students always greet me, in English, with a “Good morning” or “Good bye” if they come within about ten feet of me before or after class.  To me, it seems like these pleasantries and words endow everyday interactions with a certain, well, pleasantness.  And I like it.  It makes me feel quite at home and on good terms with people I meet. 

            I feel less at home when I reflect on the culture of smiling that I have encountered so far.  To put it briefly: Hungarians simply smile less than Americans do, at least with strangers, and I have trouble figuring out social situations as a result.  Let me give a couple of examples.  About a month ago, in Budapest, as I was packing the car to travel from my sister-in-law’s apartment to Pécs, I had just propped the building’s front door open to carry a couple of heavy suitcases to the car, just a handful of steps away.  As I was doing so, a grandmother and granddaughter returned to the building, entered, and the grandmother directed the granddaughter to remove the prop.  I smiled, and said in what I think was perfectly good Hungarian, “I’m just going to pack the car a little bit.”  Grandmother and granddaughter paused, turned, and stared at me for what felt like a minute or two.  The expression on their faces was one of inscrutability, at least to me.  No smile, no frown, not a blank expression, but for me an expression that I simply could not read.  It seemed to say: ‘we are just going to stand here and examine you for a minute, without expressing our feelings about you.’  Then, without a word to me, the grandmother told the granddaughter to leave the prop, and I continued packing, but was strangely unnerved the encounter. 

 

Here’s another example.  This past Sunday, as my family and I were late to go to the special children’s Mass at a nearby church, we decided to go to another nearby church, a famous Mosque-turned-church in the center of Pécs.  This Mass was also full of children, though mostly school-age and, as it turned out, an amazingly quiet and well-behaved bunch.  (I suspect that Hungarian children have a special skill in being quiet in certain circumstances.)  As my two- and five-year-olds were mostly being quiet and only emitting occasional noises, I thought this was not bad behavior for church.  Apart from a particularly loud episode after the end of the Mass, this would have qualified as good behavior back home in Oshkosh.  Nevertheless, I got a lot of these inscrutable looks from various adults and children throughout the Mass.  In almost every case, the adults would turn around, not at all bashful about staring at me, and just sort of look at me, with this expression that was neither blank nor readable.  There was no shaking of the head, no raised eyebrow to express disapproval.  Neither was there a smile and an “I’ve been there, buddy” look like one usually gets in Oshkosh.  Instead there was, again, this inscrutability.  Again, I found it rather unnerving.  What did it mean?

            I know that Europeans often stereotype Americans as insincerely friendly.  All of this asking “How are you?” and smiling is meaningless if you don’t really want to hear how someone is or you are smiling just to smile and not out of friendliness.  For me, though, the absence of the smile is disorienting.  Usually, an American smile signifies to me that ‘things are going well,’ ‘this interaction is a happy one,’ ‘we are all well-meaning here.’  The absence of a smile, as a result, makes me wonder: ‘wait, what is wrong here?  what are you thinking?’  I am, perhaps, over-sensitive about this, but it is difficult to get along without the social cues I am accustomed to.  I love the expectation of formal politeness I have encountered and I have gotten used to it very quickly.  The scarcity of smiles, though, at least among strangers, is something I am still figuring out. 

On Doors, Doormen, Doorwomen, Coming & Going

     You may think this a minor point, dear reader, and it is.  Nevertheless, I am rather fascinated by how important doors have become to my day-to-day teaching life in Pécs.  I think far more about doors here than I do in Oshkosh.  The reason is this: doors at the University of Pécs are almost always closed, and usually locked.  Moreover, members of the faculty usually do not have keys to these doors.  The doorwoman or doorman has the keys.  Lots of them.  Entire walls of the doorperson's office are covered with keys.  I must say I am fascinated by the offices of the doorpeople.  In Hungarian, the word for doorperson is rather elegant: it is portás (pronounced pore-tash).  There is a portás at every entrance from the outside world into the Faculty of Humanities campus.  I suppose that the portás keeps an eye on who is entering the campus, and the portás often seems to be answering questions about where something is, but his or her chief occupation seems to be handing out keys.  (At two entrances to my building, moreover, there is a coat-check room, where students and others may check coats and bags, if they so wish.  My first thought on seeing this was: what is this, the Opera?  On second thought, I find it quite civilized.  Imagine, Oshkosh friends, if students did not have to lug winter gear around Sage Hall!  Since I have never used the coat-check, though, I will comment here no further.  Rather, humor me as we return to the subject of doors and keys.)  On my way to most of my classes, I must schedule in time for a swing by the portás office, to make a request for the appropriate key.  

     The appearance of the office of the portás varies wildly, I must say.  Some sit in shacks outside of the main buildings (like the shack soon to be pictured here), some sit in worn, old offices just at the front door of a building, but the portás I most frequently request keys of sits in a beautiful, newly renovated office, mostly glass, which has a commanding view of the main entrance to the Faculty of Humanities (the main entrance which is pictured here below).  

     Not wishing to offend the portás, or invade her or his privacy, and not commanding enough Hungarian to explain why I want a photo, I have not photographed this office, so you will have to imagine with me, dear reader, an office that looks a bit like a ticket office in a train station, inhabited by one or more people, behind a very large glass window, ready to deal with the public.  In some of the lesser-used buildings, the portás-es have little enough to do that they can read the newspaper or do crosswords, but the main portás office seems very busy, a bit like the information desk in a busy train station.  It is there that I must request keys before class and then promptly return them after class.  No zooming down the halls into an open classroom as in Oshkosh.  No showing up a couple minutes late as I was once advised by a master teacher.  Here, one's professorial entrance into class requires a bit more forethought and some fumbling with keys.  Let's talk now, dear reader, about that entrance into class, fumbling with the portás's keys.

     Re-live with me, if you would, the first meeting of my lecture class at Pécs, two Thursdays ago.  I left my office early, in order to have enough time to visit the portás and request not only the appropriate keys, but also a small, weathered tin box, in which is kept a microphone that I could use for lecturing.  With this equipment in hand, I made my way to the lecture hall, and found dozens of students waiting outside the locked door.  I said hello, unlocked the door, and waited for the students to flood in after me.  None came.  I opened some windows, unlocked the little box which contains the slide projector's remote control, set up the department laptop to show some slides, opened the little tin box and waited.  Still, no one came.  What were they waiting for?  I could hear them all outside, chatting excitedly, hanging out.  I had opened the door about twenty minutes before lecture time, but it was not until a few minutes before lecture that the first students dribbled in, quickly followed by the rest.  (Eighty-three students are signed up for the lecture though I have yet to see that many at once.  More on that in a later blog.)  As they filed in, many of them greeted me with a "Good Morning" and class began.

     These are little details, I know, but they strike me as so interesting.  Can you imagine, Oshkosh friends, students refraining from entering the classroom as soon as possible?  In my experience, students in Oshkosh are quite eager to enter classrooms as early as possible at the start of class, and leave as soon as possible at the end.  I can't say that Pécs students were more reluctant to leave, but they certainly had no desire to be early.  I wonder why?  Do they cherish the socializing outside of class more?  Are they trying to give me some time alone in the classroom?  I am just wondering.  I am also struck by how polite these Pécs students are.  This is not to say that Oshkosh students are rude, mind you.  It would be hard to imagine, though, twenty or more students greeting me on the first day of lecture class, or telling me good bye as they leave.  And yet here, it seems to be de rigeur in a class of eighty-three for any student who passes near me to greet me both coming and going.  I find it quite endearing.  So endearing that I am exceedingly polite when I hand back the keys to the portás, bobbing my head and telling her or him multiple times in Hungarian that "I thank you prettily" for the keys.  (I had, after all, requested them by saying "I want, prettily, the keys to such and such room.")  I even might wish the portás "good day" on my way out of the building, but it being a different portás from the one who holds the keys I want, he doesn't know me and I'm not sure if he looks up from his crossword puzzle.  So I steal another admiring glance at his wall of keys and, ready to greet him if he looks up, off I go.

On Beautiful Buildings

Of the seven years it took for me to complete my Ph.D., dear reader, I spent six on or around the campus of Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts.  I can say many, many good things about that university.  I would not have wanted to get my Ph.D. anywhere else.  There is one thing, however, that I can’t say.  I can’t say it is a campus of beautiful buildings.  With a couple of exceptions, Brandeis is a collection of mostly brick, mostly square, mostly post-World War II, utilitarian buildings.  Except for “the castle,” a twentieth-century faux castle-turned-dormitory, I never wanted to let my eyes linger on the built environment of that campus, as much as I admired its rapid emergence as a great university after having been founded only in 1948.

                 The University of Pécs, by contrast, mixes humdrum buildings with beautiful ones.  There are enough of the latter for one to pause in one’s workday and think: this is what a university town should look like.  Not all of these buildings, mind you, belong to the university.  I have often been told how European universities are more likely to be spread around a city while American universities are usually collected onto one campus.  Pécs is a good example of that.  I work at the Faculty of Humanities, roughly equivalent to a college of letters and sciences in the U.S.A.  I have never seen, however, the main administrative building, or the faculties of medicine, law, business, education, or arts among others.  These are all scattered around the city.  The result of this is that the buildings of my faculty are closely surrounded by non-university buildings, some of which are rather drab, but others of which are quite something to look at.  Here are some examples from my walks to and from work each day.

                Walking to work each day is a pleasure.  It’s about fifteen minutes, and halfway through the walk, the towers of this Catholic church swing into view.  It is called Heart of Jesus church and, for reasons I don’t yet fully know, the main building of the (state-run) Faculty of Humanities is sort of wrapped around three sides of the church.  Once I see the church towers, I know my office is close and I quicken my step. 

This (to the right) is what it looks like when I’m almost there.  My office is in the building to the right of the church, a maze-like building.  It reminds me of M.I.T. in its rabbit warren of hallways that you lead over long distances and to hundreds of offices and classrooms.  As lost as you get, though, you can always find a window that looks out onto this church or the gardens behind the building. 

                 

Here (above left) is the main gate of the Faculty of Humanities, and here (right) is a view of the front door of the maze-building, taken from a classroom building next door.  Again, I say: this is what a university should look like.

              

Going back home, by the way, I can fix my eyes on the towers of yet another church: the Catholic cathedral of Pécs: St. Peter’s Basilica.  This cathedral is only about a block from my wonderfully located apartment, so I know that these towers represent home.  The walk along the way is also full of communist-era apartment buildings, which have never been known for their artistry and were never intended as a visual pleasure.  Still, there is always some building in view that is quite inspiring.

I should add that I can even see these towers clearly from the men’s restroom nearest my office.  (See them there, in the picture to the left, in the center of the photo?) How’s that for a perquisite?

                 

Finally, just for fun, here is a picture of the fifteenth-century or earlier castle gate which is, quite literally, across the street from my apartment building. 

                In sum, dear reader, I maintain that Brandeis gave me an excellent grounding in history.  And yet, I do so appreciate elements of beauty in the buildings of a university.  Let me leave you with these questions.  Do beautiful buildings improve an educational institution?  How so? 

On Long Lectures...

One thing that interests me as I begin to teach in Hungary is the difference between Hungarian and American students’ styles of learning.  I have heard, in an anecdotal way, that European students in general are much more accustomed to listening to lectures than American students are today.  I hope to test this impression and to figure out what lays behind this difference while I am here. 

As a teacher of American history I have, of course, a very personal interest in this question about lecturing.  One of the most formative experiences of my own teaching career happened when I first taught a class by myself, at Clark University, in the Fall of 2005.  It had been seven years since the last class of my own undergraduate career, and I modeled my course in part on faculty at my graduate school, and in part on my undergraduate professors.  My undergraduate professors had been almost entirely lecturers, except in explicitly seminar-style classes.  And I had loved it.  The same would not be true of my students at Clark, however.  My plan was to lecture for an hour, and lead discussion for a half hour.  Sometimes my lectures would creep towards an hour and a quarter.  Still, I thought, I gave some awesome lectures on race and ethnicity in American history.  Then the student evaluations came.  They were not pretty.  Let’s just say that the one evaluation that had really nice things to say, well, I treasured that one all the more for its being so unique. 

Since then, I’ve adjusted my teaching style to interweave lecture, discussion, class analysis of primary sources, and some small group discussions.  I think I am pretty successful as a teacher, and students seem much happier now with my teaching style.  Wistfully, though, I still think back to my own undergraduate career, much of which was spent listening to lectures.  Is lecturing a lost art, I wonder?  Is listening to lectures a lost art?  Does it matter?  Are these other methods of learning as effective or more?

                I have not yet even arrived at Pécs yet.  I will travel there on Saturday and begin teaching Tuesday.  Already, though, I have had a taste of Hungarian pedagogical styles.  All week I have been attending the Fulbright orientation for Hungary.  It has been a lot of fun to eat, drink, and be merry with my fellow Fulbright scholars, and to study in brief Hungarian history, politics, language, higher education, and culture.  I will not bore you, dear reader, by dwelling on all of my favorite parts of this orientation.  Suffice to say that language lessons can be a lot of fun, that the Hungarian State Opera House is probably the most beautiful building I have ever been inside of, that few people know how to eat lunch like members of the Hungarian Academy, and that a certain historian named Tibor Frank sure knows how to give a great lecture.

                It is this last point that I want to dwell on for a minute, since it goes to my point in today’s blog about lecturing.  Dr. Frank visited the Fulbright Commission this past Tuesday and covered 1,000 years of Hungarian history in a 75-minute lecture, with another 25 minutes or so of questions and answers afterwards.  Dr. Frank relied on nothing more than his voice, a physical map of the Carpathian Basin and, occasionally, markers and a whiteboard.  Oh, and his eyebrows.  He made sparing but quite effective use of his eyebrows.  With well-considered use of this oft-overlooked feature of the human face, he could accentuate a point quite effectively.  Anyhow, I was mesmerized.  This was the best lecture I’ve heard for a very, very long time.  Moreover, I do not usually respond like this to lectures at home.  Even listening to talks that I am really interested in, I find myself spacing out for a few minutes here or there.  Listening to Dr. Frank, I think I spaced out for maybe a minute.  The other seventy-four minutes I was paying rapt attention, and absorbing every point.  Ask me if you want: I think I could do a pretty good job summarizing his lecture.  Yeah, you might think, but that Gabriel is a history nerd.  He’s been like that since high school!  True, I grant you.  But my colleagues were equally impressed.  Artists and Communications scholars, businessmen and healthcare experts all seemed equally drawn in and raved about the lecture later.  The rule of thumb that I’ve heard – lecture for no more than twenty minutes – simply did not apply in this case. 

                Thus, I am left wondering: what makes Dr. Frank such a great lecturer?  Would my own students have a similar reaction to his lecture?  No doubt he is far superior to my raw, inexperienced self at Clark, and even now.   But I still wonder: is it because long ago I trained myself to listen to lectures that I enjoyed this so much?  Is it just because he seemed to expect people to listen?  Was it the context of Hungary that made this lecture feel so right?