if i only knew...

Hungary joins the EU in 4 days

May 1st, 2004. For the last few years, this date was etched into our brains very deeply, but it was always a distant and blurry date. Even when we got to 2004 in January, it was still 4 months away. And now... it's only 4 days until my country, Hungary joins the European Union.

In the last two weeks i grew more and more excited. I always knew that it will be a very important day for the country and a very important day for my personal future as well, but the realisation that this day is now here, and happening, it's something really new and exciting to me.

It has always been a future date. The day that Hungary joins the EU. The day we become part of Europe again. The day we give up parts of our independence - this time by OUR CHOICE and not by being on the wrong side in a local or world wide war... All of this, in future tense. And now this future tense is getting slimmer and slimmer and will become a thing of the past in exactly 4 days.

Just 15 years ago, when i was 9 years old Hungary became a free country with the fall of the iron curtain. That time, i was too small to comprehend the implications and even though i knew the significance, and i saw my family's enthusiasm over the new Hungary, it wasn't really an event that shaped my thinking or my life in general. Of course it did - but it wasn't the kind of event you remember where you celebrated.

This day, May 1st, 2004, will be an event i will remember. I am now 24, old enough to understand, to know and to care about it. And old enough to not be angry with those who oppose the EU - we do have those in this country as well - but to be sorry for them. Because they are missing out on the party of their lives.

To celebrate the event, i am changing the blog's design to an EU colored one, just for fun.

Also, i will be taking photos abundantly on Friday and Saturday about all the parties and events that we celebrate here in Budapest and i will be posting them here.

Celebrate with me, celebrate with us, Hungarians! (And our 9 fellow new EU member countries!)