Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Visitors to my blog

I have just had a look at the stats for my blog and found that I have had some visitors, which is surprising and quite nice. None of them liked it enough to comment, but then again I don't write much, and there doesn't seem to be much of a theme. The visitors came from Poland and the Russian federation, so I suppose it was due to someone idly clicking on my username after I had left one of my comments over at Polandian.
My comments there follow a predictable pattern (most patterns tend to be predictable, that being a condition of patternness.) Basically one of the Polandian writers makes some observation about Poland, mostly in contrast to the UK (or western Europe in general, if it really can be generalised.) I then write and say that it is just the same in Hungary and/or Romania. Someone once commented favourably on the wider persepctive I bring to the discussion, but that was a while ago. Hmmm. Anyway, I like to add my tuppence about one of my hobbyhorses - really, there are lots of similarities between the countries round here. Its the real differences, and the really unique things about each country and people which fascinate me. It just gets my goat slightly when bloggers claim that some feature of their adopted country's culture, cuisine, politics or building malpractice is "uniquely Polish" or "typically Hungarian" or "only in Romania." I know better, so I say so. Like this post on the Day of the dead which is quite interesting, but still mildly objectionable in claiming the practice for Poland alone.
Its my personal hobby horse, setting these slight inaccuracies to rights  and I feel qualified to ride it, so giddy up. And you shouldn't switch horses midstream. Neigh, neigh and thrice neigh.

 An example - gathering plums to make plum brandy, AKA pálinka, AKA śliwowica AKA ţuica AKA slivovitz, slivovice etc etc. All claim to be different - if so, then only as far as Czech plums are different to Hungarian ones. And what if the plum tree was on one side of the border, and the fruit fell on the other?