“If I had the power, I would try at least two things in this country. One would be organising exchange programmes for students, associations, for everyone. Let them see the world, meet other mentalities, and let them be more open. I would send them primarily to Holland and Scandinavia. The other thing: I would oblige every officer and bureaucrat who look down on his subordinates and cannot get rid of the language used in the Communist era to attend a course.” These are not Jap Scholten’s own words, but are quoted in one of the interviews in the book Things Are Strange Only on the First Day by translator Tibor Bérczes. That’s what he said in that book about Dutch living in Hungary.
I never understood why the Dutch move to Hungary, but after reading a few pages of the book I had an overview of the Calvinist mentality. They are normal people, in contrast to what Hungarians believe, but they think ahead and work for the better wherever they have the opportunity. That’s what they learned from history: efforts pay off, and it’s worth living a life only when you have a say in how things in your village or country are, not spotting others’ mistakes and pushing them down in the mud, and envying them all the time.
Jaap Scholten’s Heer en Meester was also presented, Tibor Bérczes talked with the author of the short stories, and the addressed the issue of how it feels for a foreigner to live here. Only a short extract from the book explained it all, the one set in the accident surgery where the author was taken with a sprinkled shoulder. We Hungarians are used to that insensitive bureaucracy that is present even in health care. Jaap was an outsider, a precise observer, and we are ashamed to have been able to get used to it. Perhaps we love it so, only to have the chance to be ironical and cynical. Jaap got used to it, too, and stayed in Hungary, an isolated writer living the life of a romantic aristocrat. And we are  left with a Dutch mirror, at least as sharp as a Venice one.