Three Strangers and a Box of Oranges

In Germany, many people talk about freedom, and they usually mean that someone is trying to prohibit something. Here in Szombathely I've started to understand the word differently — less as the absence of rules, more as a particular way of meeting one another. It took me a while to put it into words.

First, an observation that underpins almost everything that follows: people here have a certain pride, and they engage in a kind of quiet competition among themselves — not over who drives the bigger car, but over who is friendlier, more considerate, more courteous. That sounds small, but it changes everyday life entirely. For me it started with a box of oranges.

Three Strangers and a Box of Oranges

I was standing in front of the fruit display when, for no obvious reason, a stacked box of oranges started to slip. There were a lot of oranges, and they rolled halfway down the aisle. I bent down and started picking them up.

When I looked up, I noticed that three people — without exchanging a word with each other or with me — had simply left their shopping trolleys where they were and were picking up oranges alongside me. The whole thing happened in complete silence. Nobody made a comment, nobody waited for thanks, nobody turned it into an event. When the floor was clear, each of them went on their way as if nothing had happened.

That was exactly what struck me: not that help was given, but how. Without words, without a glance, without putting me in the awkward position of having to gush with gratitude. Help given, and on they went.

The Same Grammar

Once you notice it, you see the same grammar everywhere.

A confused elderly man is wandering on foot through a two-lane roundabout. A driver stops — in the middle of the roundabout — gets out, and leads the man out by the arm. Nobody hoots, nobody gets agitated, nobody shouts anything. The other drivers slow down and pass, the moment is over, done. In Germany, the horn concert alone would have put the man in more danger than the traffic.

Or children. Your child is out in public, and everyone — truly everyone — keeps an eye on whether they are all right. By the road, at the swimming pool: before you can react yourself, someone is already with your child, quietly averting the danger, no fuss made. Standing at a small coin-operated ride with no change? A woman or man will stop, open their purse, and hand you 400 forints so your child can have their go. Again, done casually, almost shyly, without making themselves important.

It is always the same movement: the hand opens at exactly the moment it is needed, and withdraws straight away.

The Other Half: Being Left Alone

Now the second half, without which the first would only be half the truth. The same people who help without a word stay out of everything that is none of their business.

Rich and poor live side by side — no problem. A hoarder and a tidiness fanatic as neighbours — no problem. Everyone is responsible for their own property, and nobody tells anyone else how to manage theirs. The idea that someone might approach you to say your nettles are too tall and their seeds are blowing onto their plot — unthinkable. The boundary is the property line, the telekhatár; that is where your authority ends, and it really ends there.

The same goes for looks. Women who dress lightly in summer are not harassed; nobody whistles, nobody makes suggestive remarks, nobody touches without being asked. You can see that women feel safe here — because their clothing, their body, their appearance are treated as their own affair, not as a public matter on which everyone is entitled to have a say. They are not even stared at; as soon as a woman looks back, the men look away. The right to dress as one pleases is not a point of contention here; it is simply taken for granted, and nobody says much about it.

The furthest this went for me was at an old fogadó — an inn — next to a playground. Christina wanted to know how long it had been open and asked a Hungarian friend to ask the owner. The friend thought about it and said she would rather not: the owner might feel insulted that the furniture was so old and might be embarrassed. A completely harmless question — and yet the possible injury to a stranger's dignity weighed more heavily on her than her own curiosity.

So the respect here extends not only to the fence and to the body, but into the interior of the other person, to their pride.

What This Has to Do with Freedom

For a long time I thought individual freedom meant above all: being left alone. Here I have learned that this is only one half, and that on its own it would be cold. The other half is that you are not left alone when it truly matters.

The whole mentality, at least here in Szombathely, in the county of Vas, comes down to this single line: your body, your property, your decisions, your dignity belong to you — and nobody feels called upon to sit in judgement over them. But when you genuinely start to falter, someone is there immediately, helps, and disappears again, without you paying for it — not with money and not with embarrassment.

In Germany the reflex sits differently. There, being helpful often means having an opinion and voicing it — about the neighbour's lawn, about the child-rearing at the next table, about the woman's clothing, about what you yourself would do differently. The letter about the nettles, the regulatory authority, the well-meaning piece of advice: that is interference that believes itself to be care. Here I have experienced the opposite — closeness without intrusion, distance without indifference.

The Honest Objections

I don't want to paint too rosy a picture, so the genuine counter-arguments.

The same restraint that moves me in the story of the inn can have its price. Where you refrain from asking a harmless question so as not to shame anyone, things remain unasked, unsaid, unresolved. What looks like tact can elsewhere be conflict-avoidance. And the principle of non-interference is a fine virtue as long as it applies to nettles — it would cease to be one if it meant looking away in the face of genuine injustice. The point at which one turns into the other is something I have not encountered here, but I am not claiming that it does not exist.

And I am a German who has been living in a west-Hungarian city for a few years. The county of Vas is not all of Hungary, my impression is not proof, and there are certainly streets and days on which none of this holds. I am describing a felt pattern, not a law, and I have no wish to turn real people into a postcard.

Where I Land in the End

What remains is still quite clear, and I am taking it with me. I want to model exactly this mixture for our three sons: helping without diminishing the other. Respecting the other person's boundary — their fence, their body, their pride — and keeping my judgement to myself. Being there when it counts, and staying quiet when it is none of my business.

Three strangers once picked up oranges alongside me in silence and then walked on. Freer than that, I think, one person can hardly meet another.

— Andreas Kurt Peter Reuter