On my own again

Andrea left this morning, so I am on my own again. She was still in quite a bit of pain and I certainly do not envy her for the two-day trip that is ahead of her, but she is very brave and evidently tolerates pain quite well. Now I am a bit sad, also because while packing this morning I watched a really corny American movie on HBO about losing mothers and family members, and despite myself, tears were streaming down my cheeks for the last half hour. Sentimental fool. AND Rob Lowe played the protagonist, so you can imagine how great it was.

I will leave La Paz today to go to Lake Titcaca, although by now I started liking the place. But it is safer to go now because the road blockades that had hampered traffic around and out of Bolivia have been suspended for a while. I asked various people about these and apparently the problem is that the Bolivian government agreed to sell a lot of their natural gas to Argentina knowing that the Argentinians will sell the gas on to the Chileans, who are the Bolivians' mortal enemies due to the various wars that the Chileans had won against them in the past. There are still demonstrations around town and people are collecting signatures to oppose the referendum that is to be held on the gas issue in a couple of weeks. The opposition claims that the questions are phrased such that they are aimed at confusing people, so the results will not be fair.

I do not know what to make of it all: at the heart of the whole issue seems to be Bolivian national pride, which appears to have been hurt many a time throughout their history. Since I started my trip, I have been thinking quite a lot about the whole nationalism issue. The Brazilian nationalism that I had encountered while traveling there did not come across as aggressive or pathetic, which, in my mind, are the two main attributes of Hungarian nationalism as I know it. The fact that the Brazilians, encouraged by the performer, broke into their national anthem at the end of a lovely concert that I went to in Recife seemed perfectly all right; they are proud of their country because it is a beautiful place and has a lot to offer. If this was at the crux of Hungarian nationalism, then I would be a nationalist: I think Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and there are some great things about Hungarian culture that I am proud of. Sadly, according to the self-proclaimed nationalists in my country, I am not entitled to feel any sort of pride, because I am not a real Hungarian by virtue of the fact that I do not agree with their political views and that I am Jewish (as far as they are concerned). And that is what I think makes the difference: the Brazilians' nationalism is not directed against someone else in particular - it is a way of asserting themselves in a world where despite being one of the biggest and most populous countries with all the natural riches you can imagine, they remain underdogs; Bolvian nationalism is different (and hence, to me, a bit more pathetic): it is directed against their former enemy who won a war (that they started) and annexed some of their territories; still, Hungarians' nationalism is the worst of the lot by a long shot, because it defines itself by excluding a certain percentage of its own people from the "nation" based on political views and, in some cases, religion or ethnic origin. So that is my conclusion on the issue for now with the caveat that, of course, I cannot claim to know either the Brazilian or the Bolivian "soul" as well as the Hungarian; and one's own people, country, politics will always induce much stronger emotions than any "foreign" one, no matter how well you may get to know it. It is like with reading poetry: no matter how well I can speak English or French, no poem read in either of those languages can touch me the way a Hungarian poem can.