beetrock

Today I had to go to the U.S. Embassy to add pages to my worn out passport. The star-stripe-spangled building is promiscuously located right across from Budapest’s controversial Soviet War Memorial in Szabadság ter also known to English speakers as Liberation square. If I were ever kicked out of my apartment, this is where I would set camp – in between the statues to my two homelands so inclined to liberate…

But the real point of my story is in that lighthearted feeling that every American citizen is entitled to having abroad. Tightly guarded and blocked off with metal separators, the embassy carries signs of warning for all those seeking a visa –“line up here,” “do not enter without permission” etc. The proud citizens, on the other hand, are allowed to cruise through, flashing their blue books at the guards. The quality of services received is also visibly different – while poor Hungarians had imprints of 2 hour waits on their faces, while it took the clerks about 15 minutes to insert new pages into my passport.

The insert carries wise expression by some of my recently acquired forefathers. For example, this one is smugly put on the page with the stitching and a picture of a locomotive: “A big iron needle stitching the country together”. And this pearl by Thomas Jefferson is planted next to an image of a giant cactus – “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” Indeed!