Sigh of relief

It seems like the bulk of the attention has blown over and I can now go back to the normal barren desert of this blog, occasionally frequented by tumbleweed.

Some interesting things came out of my brief flirtation with national fame (or whatever it was)

• The sheer niceness of most people who wrote to me
• The sheer absolute craziness of a very few people who wrote to me, who varied between people furious that Hungarians should ever be allowed to speak Hungarian at all, even in their own homes (quite possibly in their own dreams too) , to people at the other end of the scale (but actually at the same end, just upside down) who think that it should be Romanians who are learning Hungarian and that should be the only language of Transylvania.  Could I disrespectfully ask all such bigots from both sides to just piss off and go and wank over a picture of Gigi Becali or Gabor Vona.
• The sheer persistence of the fear engendered in this country by so many years of vicious authoritarian rule.  A lot of people were very worried for me, and my family and so on, because - essentially - putting ones head above the parapet can only end badly. In the eyes of many there is now a bulging file on me kept by the securitate somewhere, ready to be used when I next dare to say anything that might not tally with the orthodoxy
• How fascinating it is to be the one listened to, when for years and years people - real experts, not just language teachers like me - have been saying just the things I said, and being ignored. Because I'm neither Hungarian or Romanian, I guess it seems I don't have an axe to grind, and am not carrying a backful of historical baggage.
• I suspect the brief rush of excitement (and, yes, panic) has died out and with it the subject.  That's the only regret I have, now.

So, for any readers of this blog who want to review some of the things that were published, here they are

• The original article I wrote on the blog, translated into Romanian
• An interview with me and follow up also in Adevarul (Romanian)
• An article by a Romanian teacher backing me up (this is my favourite)
• An interview with me in Hungarian (including asking whether I wanted to be a political figure here like Raed Arafat. For those who don't read Hungarian, the answer is an absolute emphatic no)
• An interview with Todor Erika from here who is much more of an expert than me (also in Hungarian)

There are a few other articles in the local Hungarian press which I either can't find online or can't be bothered to now.

Anyway, I have more to say, but it'll have to wait.  I'm going off to do stuff in the snow for the weekend