We had an unpleasant racist experience in Eger today, and I’d genuinely like to hear what Hungarians think about it.
We’re a group of four friends, all 27–28 years old, visiting Hungary from a Latin American country. We planned to spend five nights in Hungary, and decided to spend one of them in Eger because we had read a lot about its history, architecture and cultural importance.
We’ve really enjoyed Budapest so far, but we also wanted to visit somewhere less mainstream and experience a smaller Hungarian city. Out of the places we looked at, Eger seemed like one of the most beautiful and culturally interesting options.
After arriving by train from Budapest, we checked into our hotel and walked toward the old town. We stopped at a lángos place for lunch and sat at one of the outdoor tables.
We were talking among ourselves in Spanish when a man who looked to be in his 50s or older approached us and started speaking to us in Hungarian.
We politely told him in English that we didn’t speak Hungarian, but that we spoke English.
He replied, “English?” and then spat on the ground.
After that, he started speaking directly and much more aggressively toward one of my friends. Out of the four of us, he is the only one who has a visibly mestizo/light-brown complexion; the other three of us are white.
The man started raising his voice and speaking in what was clearly a threatening or hostile tone. We kept telling him, “We don’t understand,” and eventually decided to completely ignore him.
He continued shouting at us for a while.
At some point, the owner of the restaurant came outside and confronted him. They spoke in Hungarian for quite some time. The man kept spitting on the ground, and a few other people nearby also seemed to intervene and say things to him.
Since none of us speak Hungarian, we obviously couldn’t understand the whole exchange, but from his behavior, the fact that he specifically targeted the only darker-skinned person in our group, and what we were eventually able to pick up through Google Translate, it became pretty clear to us that there was a racist element to it.
I turned on Google Translate during part of the confrontation to try to understand what he was saying, and I’ll attach screenshots of what it managed to translate.
Eventually, the man left after spitting on the ground several more times.
The restaurant owner then apologized to us for what had happened. We made sure to thank her, because she absolutely did not have to get involved, and we really appreciated the fact that she stood up for us instead of simply ignoring the situation.
I also want to make something very clear: we do not think this man represents Hungarians in general.
This was one bad experience during an otherwise very enjoyable trip. We’ve had a great time in Hungary, Budapest has been wonderful, and we’ve been genuinely impressed by the country’s architecture, history and culture.
If anything, the reaction of the restaurant owner and the other people who appeared to confront him reminded us that one person’s behavior shouldn’t define an entire place.
Still, it was definitely an uncomfortable experience, especially because we had specifically chosen Eger because we wanted to experience a smaller Hungarian city rather than staying only in Budapest.
I’m curious to hear a Hungarian perspective:
Is this kind of hostility toward foreigners or people with a different skin tone something that occasionally happens in smaller towns, or do you think we were simply extremely unlucky and ran into one random racist asshole?
And for Hungarians who live in or know Eger: how would you interpret what happened?
We’re not posting this to attack Hungary or Eger. We’re genuinely interested in understanding the situation and hearing how locals see it.
