“Kartka dla Bratanka/Üdvözlet-egy-Barátnak 2016”

Readers’ letters – “Kartka dla Bratanka/üdvözlet-egy-Barátnak 2016 ” turned out to be successful and participating in its final day, 23rd of March.

The idea of organizing an initiative that would make Polish citizens actively participate in a celebration of Polish-Hungarian Friendship Day first occurred to me in December last year and was made public on Facebook as a page and event about month later, i.e. 27th of January 2016. I wanted to show that Polish-Hungarian friendship is still a current thing and we should celebrate it not only through official channels like meetings of ambassadors or presidents but also through grass root initiatives. The aim of Kartka dla Bratanka, that is collecting as many greeting postcards for Hungarians from different parts of Poland, was simple, innovative and, what is important, manageable. I received great support and positive feedback regarding the plan for “Kartka dla Bratanka” from many Poles during its duration.

What the initiative lacked from the beginning was time. We had only 54 days till Polish-Hungarian Friendship day, but nevertheless we managed to collect more than 400 cards! 200 of them were sent by post from more than fifty cities of Poland and another 200 were printed from digital designs made by students in Polish primary and secondary schools. We also got postcards sent by Poles living abroad, e.g. in England and in Germany. I was really surprised and overwhelmed by how many got involved in this initiative! With the big pack of cards, I left to Hungary on Monday, 21st of March.

The plan was simple: to approach citizens of Budapest in the streets, hand them cards and explain briefly the occasion. My level of Hungarian is pretty basic, so I mastered few sentences like “Hello, today is Polish-Hungarian Friendship day. Here, this is a card for you from Poland”.

I consider myself very lucky, because during the time of the initiative I was contacted by a Hungarian blogger, Gabriella Kovacs, who had lived for four years in Poland, and offered her support with the initiative in Budapest. Her support was priceless – not only did she assist with the distribution of cards that day, but she also gave me loads of useful advice and provided detailed explanations of the initiative for those people who asked further questions. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with my Hungarian language skills.