Yesterday I had already the first opportunity to comply to my plan. There was a reception and concert in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 23 October 1956. What I would have preferred is to wear my final-exam-outfit: Black shoes, dark blue Jeans, grey T-shirt, black jacket. It's sportive but elegant. At least in my opinion. I can't see why nice jeans are considered so much worse than cord trousers. But anyway. As Erzi was not satisfied I thought, what do I lose by going home and taking my suit? It's funny. I brought that suit and so many people in Austria were asking me: "What, you are taking your suit with you? Why." And I'm so glad I did, I had no idea I'd need it so much. It's funny. My colleague Premek has two suits, ten shirts and ten ties here - which is only half of his total suits, shirts and ties! (What a good lawyer and Diplomat.) While I have only this one suit - and at home two or three more shirts and one other tie. I guess my granny will be happy now because finally I found something which I'd like to have as a present for the completed studies. A second suit because I've got the feeling I might need them more often in the future..

Anyway, the preparation for that concert was interesting. Earlier this week, before knowing about the event, I saw Sylwia and Erzi setting up this Hungarian flag with a huge hole in the middle and holding a golden "50" into the middle. So I thought: Obviously some important member of the Hungarian community is celebrating a birthday or marriage anniversary .
I assumed that this flag was made for such events, for putting different numbers or photos into the middle, and as a joke I said: "Oh, is that an old communist flag?"
Erzi didn't hear it and soon afterwards explained: "The hole is where the communist symbols used to be."
So I asked: "Oh, did one of the Hungarian refugees bring it to Canada."
"No it was made here."
I was puzzled: "Why would someone who fled from the Communist regime later on in Canada sew a flag with the communist symbols" - assuming that those symbols had finally been cut out after 1989 - "instead of producing a plain Hungarian flag without them?"
It took a while until the misunderstanding was solved: The flag was already produced this way in Canada: A flag with a hole.



Thinking about it I feel it's a very interesting sort of symbolism. You are not producing a flag without the despised symbols, or with the preferred symbols instead, but still a complete flag. No, you're leaving the flag, the nation, incomplete. A hole instead of a whole. Would an outsider have recognised that the symbols were missing? Probably not. But this way, it's unmistakingly obvious. Everybody realises: It's damaged. It's wrong. At present there's something in the country which should be cut out. It represents dissatisfaction of the present, without making clear what the future should be like. Also it so strongly conveys that idea of future action, of a change, because usually the symbols are only cut out after the regime had fallen. It's a wish - a wish that in this case eventually became reality..