Re: [Cz-L] Visit

Austrians we were not. As much as we wanted to be.
  We were not yodeling beer guzzling shepherds from the Steyermark.
    Instead we were caftan- wearing cholent- eaters of the Carpaths.
      Citizenship was a document you achieved somehow and a
  matter of convenience.
        This did not make you a national.
   How accent- free you spoke the language of the reigning power
  is irrelevant. You were a foreigner even in this far away beech land.
    So next time when somebody asks you what you are you just
   ask him :" Do you know Josef Schmidt ?"
    "No" is the obvious answer.
 " He was a famous singer " from
    where I come from.
    " And Schiller do you know?"
      " Is he also one of your co-patriots ?
   " No , he was a poet very famous and we knew all his poems !"
   " So,so "says the man " why didnt you say so from the beginning ?"
   This will explain everything ,

Hardy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sylvia de Swaan" <sylvia.deswaan_at_gmail.com>
To: "Winters, Stephen" <Stephen.Winters_at_atlantichealth.org>
Cc: <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2011 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Visit

Identities: In 2000 when I was on a three months artist residency in
Vienna, almost invariably when I told people that I was born in
Czernowitz, the reply was, Oh, but your one of us, you're Austrian. I
who all my life had told people that I was born in Romania, had to
make an identity adjustment when I traveled to CZ the first time in
'96...now I'm less sure what to say...though it's rarely a one word
answer, On my U.S, passport it continues to say Romania

best
Sylvia

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Received on 2011-04-25 22:53:56