I love watching the Olympic games here in europe on Eurosport. First, it's on 24-hours per day. Second, they show competitors from every country, not just the "home country's stars". Third, it's good for practicing my Hungarian. Anyway, yet another stark contrast between American and Hungarian culture came screaming to the surface via the Olympic games recently. In the men's figure skating, an unprecedented thing occurred with the 3 American competitors: ALL three of them finished in the top 10! This is fantastic! However, according to some in the American press, we didn't win a medal and so there was some moaning and groaning about how we didn't show well because we didn't win a medal.
Now for the other side of the picture. If anyone was watching closely, and hung in there to see who ended up in LAST place in the final standings, he or she would have seen Zoltan Toth, from Hungary, finished last. His comment to the press when interviewed was something along the lines of how absolutely thrilled he was even to have reached the finals and he was so happy about his finish in the Olympics. And apparently, Hungarians are also celebrating the fact that Zoltan made the cut to the finals and did as well as he did!
This divergence in cultures was also seen in the summer Olympics two years ago. Here in Szeged, they had a big screen TV set up on one of the main downtown squares where people could come and sit outside and watch the games. At another place on the square was a huge board with not just the Hungarian medal winners listed, but the names of EVERY Hungarian who had competed and what place they finished and hearty congratulations to ALL of them for their accomplishments.
I love that just "being" is celebrated and appreciated here and not just the "winners" are recognized and celebrated.
It's not better, it's not worse, it's just different.........I must admit, though, I prefer the difference I see here.
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