George Mikes emigrated to Great Britain and wrote his iconic little book “How to be an Alien” in 1946 including the shortest chapter in the Guinness Book of Records: “Continental people have sex life: the English have hot water bottles”.

It is said that Hungarian émigrés have lost everything except their accent. Mikes went on to write many more “How to” books including jokes about Hungarians desperately trying to assimilate in their new habitat, as in adapting to the British obsession with the weather: “Spring in the air, Mr. Weinstock!” to which his friend replies dubiously “Vy should I?”. Then there is the one about the Hungarian lady at the greengrocer’s: “Do you have blood oranges ?”

“Are they for juice ?”
“Yes ve are.”

My husband reveled in a whole string of Tassilo and Aristide jokes, the two Hungarian émigrés in NEW York as Hungarians pronounce it, and I apologize for this one: Tassilo calls Aristide: “The number I am calling it is vun-vun-vun-vun-vun-vun ?”
“No, correct number she is ELEven, ELEven, ELEven.”

Mikes was once explaining to his wife that someone they had met was in fact originally a Hungarian. “Isn’t everyone ?” his wife replied. When we were in Washington I was astonished at how many prominent figures had a Hungarian grandmother and were still nostalgic for some of her recipes such as fozelek. I don’t know if anyone has ever assessed the enormous contribution that Hungarian émigrés have made to the world from Hollywood to the H bomb.

There used to be a sign up in the Hollywood studios saying: It is not enough to be Hungarian. It is said that however assimilated Hungarians become they still count, pray and dream in Hungarian. George Mikes sustained that the last bulwark of Hungarianism was football patriotism.

My husband would travel miles to see a Hungarian team play. Theirs was the generation of Puskas and the Dream Team. Hopefully Hungarian football is rising like a phoenix again and hopefully the Hungarian repats will be able to do as much for their country’s image as the émigrés did back then.

By Anne Marshall Zwack for XpatLoop.com

Anne was born in England in 1946, grew up in Cambridge and was educated in England and in Belgium. She lived and worked for several years in Paris, Rome and Milan where she met Peter Zwack who swept her off her feet and eventually brought her back to Hungary.

During this time she wrote for many important American publications including the Travel Section of the New York Times, Travel + Leisure and Gourmet Magazine. She currently divides her time between Budapest and Tuscany. Peter and Anne Zwack have two children and were married for forty years.