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I'd say yes there is an over-representation of historical/cultural influences in me of the places I have been longer at, and that much of these influences were nationalised (e.g. a state TV, a dish provided...), but to call that a national idenity, I think is forced.

Maybe I'm reading things into what you write, but my impression is that it is there, even if in an attenuated, rejected form. As the what it should be called - I don't know. Presumably at least as a child you felt Hungarian to some extent as the default, almost automatic way children assume things. That wouldn't necessarily been the case with Germanness as a foreigner, though it could have been (I have no way of knowing).

In my case, while I developed a strong feeling of attachment to Geneva and to French culture in the broadest sense of the word, to the extent of feeling a sense of being at home when I visited Quebec in college, I never got any Swiss or French national identity - I was always a foreigner.

by MarekNYC on Thu Jan 18th, 2007 at 06:09:53 PM EST
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