This subchapter was compiled from the personal experiences of (~ 30) Hungarian girls (all university students) who spent 1-2 years living in England mostly as au-pairs sometime in the past 5 years. Therefore, please note that the content and the style are understandably highly subjective and informal. Please, do not read these answers as factual, well-grounded, impartial descriptions of The English People in general!! Rather, they should be read as testimonies reflecting the individual impressions of Hungarian girls living in middle-class English homes.
1. What did you like the most about the English?
§ Their humour
§ They are reliable (punctual and trustworthy)
§ They are not nosy
§ Their fair trade movement!! (‘Fairtrade’ chocolate like Geobar, Starbucks coffee, etc.)
§ That charity is important for them
§ How ‘fair play’ permeates their attitude to most everything
§ How cars stop when pedestrians want to cross the road on a zebra crossing
§ How everybody has a well-kept garden
2. Which was your favourite place in England? (What would you not let your friends visiting England miss out while touring the country)?
§ Lake District
§ York
§ Leeds Castle
§ Brighton and Canterbury
§ Bath
§ Oxford
§ Castles and parks
§ Yorkshire Dales
§ The charity shops… J
§ My favourite PUB
§ The sandy beach by Bamburgh Castle
3. In London?
§ Tate Modern Gallery
§ The British Museum with its amazingly informative and lively guided tours
§ (The Dress Collection in the) Victoria and Albert Museum (4 centuries of fashion from the 1540s to the 1990s + the explanations on how and why social trends/fashion developed)
§ Richmond Park and Kew Gardens
§ The double-deckers
§ Walking along the Thames
4. What does being English mean to the English? (Where does their Englishness come through the most?)
§ Being an island nation, not part of the Continent (they love to remind us Europeans of that all the time)
§ ‘Fair play’ even in the news: BBC (so much more factual and unbiased than CNN)
§ Drinking tea many times and in different settings during the day (not coffee)
3. What are the English most proud of?
§ The English language and their proper accent
§ Proud of winning both world wars
§ Their gardens!
§ Their queen and their traditions
4. How do English people compare with the Hungarians?
§ More polite (Lots of PLEASE-es. Could you please …? in situations where Hungarians would use an exclamation mark. They don’t criticize as easily as we do, only very carefully, using understatements.)
§ They are punctual and trustworthy!
§ Practical minded
§ Much more reserved than we are
§ Much more involved in charity world-wide than Hungarians
§ A readiness to joke + a different sense of humour (more subtle and sophisticated than the Americans or Hungarians, use of irony, suggesting the opposite of what is said)
§ Don’t cook well
§ Don’t dance as well as Hungarian young people
§ Many speak with a stiff upper lip
§ More tolerant
§ More superficial and distant (even cold, they don’t open up as easily about their private life as Hungarians do)
§ More calm and introvert
§ More prudish when it comes to dressing
§ Cleanliness is not nearly as important for them as for us (?)
§ They are much more used to cold weather as we are. (Don’t dress up as warmly in cold weather, happy to swim in the cold sea, etc.)
§ Fair-play in all fields of life is a must: queuing in the bus stop and everywhere else
§ Not so child-oriented: it is very common to have au-pairs or nannies take care of their children instead of staying at home and doing it themselves, the English don’t play with their children as much as we do, don’t read bedtime stories as much as we do, etc…
§ People lead an active social life even well past age 35!
5. What is the weather like compared to Hungarian weather?
§ Wet, but otherwise quite pleasant
§ It doesn’t get as cold in the winter time as here in Hungary
§ It can get really chilly even in summer time (pack warm clothes)
§ Be careful about hanging clothes out to dry (sudden showers can be an everyday occurrence)
§ It is good to have an umbrella with you most every day
6. What is the typical English house/home like? How is it different?
§ No fences in the front! In the backyard the fence is usually made of a well-kept hedge all around, high enough so your neighbours can’t see what is going on in your garden.
§ Most middle-class homes are semi-detached houses or terraced houses (identical brick 2 floor houses in a row) with a small, well-kept front-yard and a nice, spacious garden in the back with a lawn and a flower- bed (often with small statues and a tiny artificial pond with a fountain).
§ Typically there are 2 floors:
Ground floor: A sitting room (as you enter) and a separate living room (in the back) with a fire place and a big sliding glass door to the garden, a large kitchen with a dining area (or a separate dining room),( a study) and a toilet (+ a laundry room)
Upstairs: (the stairs are typically covered with carpet) several bedrooms and bathrooms (nowadays in upper middle-class homes each bedroom comes with its own bathroom or 2 bedrooms share a bathroom)
§ Every home has a dishwasher!
§ Often there is an airing cupboard or a dryer to go with the washing machine
§ Bathrooms will almost always have a window (sadly not in Hungary) and wall-to-wall carpeting!
§ It is very common to have a housekeeper/cleaning lady and a gardener come once or twice a week. (They get good money, too! ~£8 per hour!) (So, English wives are not expected to cook, clean or stay home with their children… Hmmm…)
Peculiarities:
§ It is always cold! They don’t turn on the heating as early as we do. It has to be really cold at home for them to do so.
§ Electric appliances have different plugs (3 square pins)
§ Separate taps for hot and cold water in most bathrooms (Instead of mixed water taps)!! You either burn yourself or freeze when washing hands or brushing your teeth.
§ Bolts and doorknobs instead of door-handles
§ Water pipes run outside the house walls (don’t look very nice, but easy to fix if they leak)
§ Windows are often hard to open (some need to be pushed up, they might slide back down acting as a guillotine)
§ Older homes still have water closets (WC) in the kitchen – and from the outside the door blends in, it looks just like any kitchen cabinet door (bizarre)
§ Washing machine in the kitchen!
§ A water boiler is a must in every kitchen to make tea quickly
7. What was difficult to get used to while living in England?
§ British people come across as very serious, measured and unfriendly at first sight
§ Driving on the left
§ Shops, museums, etc. close early (4-5 pm)
§ The weather: mostly cloudy, dull and grey
§ The silence on public transport (most people hide behind their newspaper)
8. Could you mention any noteworthy differences concerning eating habits?
§ Their cooking is not nearly as varied and creative as Hungarian cooking. They simply and typically don’t cook well and hardly know how to bake.
§ Tea (the most common breakfast drink) is either black (without milk) or white (with milk) but never with lemon (most people will not even have any lemon juice at home)
§ Reading the morning paper with a cup of tea/coffee is much more common in England than in Hungary (where most people will rush off without even having any breakfast)
§ Packed lunch is perhaps more common than in Hungary (a sandwich, fruit juice, yoghurt and chips, may be an apple)
§ Afternoon tea is big. It is between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon. They will have some scones and jam to go with the tea or very simple, small sandwiches.
§ The English have their main/hot meal in the evening:
ú meat (beef/ sausages/ fish/ pork / minced lamb (interestingly chicken and turkey are not nearly as frequent as in Hungary)
ú potatoes
ú steamed vegetables
ú tea
ú OR: Chinese or Indian takeaway… (eaten at home)
§ Dull menus for children (at school or prepared by the au-pair) Parents expect the au-pairs to make the same simple meals every single week. For example: Mondays its pizza, Tuesdays its fish and chips, Wednesdays its mashed potatoes with gravy and steamed vegetables, Thursdays its sausages and potatoes, Fridays its rice and tuna, Saturdays its veggie burgers or hamburgers
§ Sunday lunch traditionally: Roast beef (rare), roast potatoes, gravy, Yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables, desert
§ Wine + cheese + biscuits are a favourite by the fireplace
§ The English put their napkins in their lap when they start eating and wipe their mouth a lot more snobbishly than we do
§ The English will hardly ever set the table with a table cloth, instead they use table/place mates
§ The milkman still brings fresh milk to the door in many parts of England.
For answers to the following questions visit our internet site at: www.lr.uw.hu
1. Give us a few tips on how to relate to the English people. What should we be careful about as Hungarians?
2. Was it easy to make friends in England?
3. Do they express affection within the family or between friends in any way different from us or much the same?
2. What should the Hungarians learn from the English?
3. What should the English learn from us Hungarians?
4. What are English people really picky about?
5. How do they dress differently? (The young people, the middle aged and the older generation)
6. How about cleanliness and personal hygiene?
7. How do they spend their pastime differently?
+ Read short stories about au-pairs and their host families.