A few years ago, after a strange trip down the rabbit hole of the internet, my husband and I discovered that both he and the kids were eligible to become Hungarian citizens.
After a thorough amount of research (including whether or not he or the kids would suddenly get called into military service or if we would owe taxes in Hungary), we discovered that the process was not precisely easy but doable. My husband is a first-generation Canadian; his mother and grandmother came to Canada in 1956 with a large number of other Hungarians escaping the chaos and terror of the Hungarian revolution against Communist rule.
Hungarian immigration peaked in Canada, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia, in 1956-1957 with over 37,000 refugees pouring into the country. My mother-in-law ended up in Surrey and years later my soon-to-be husband ended up working in Barkerville and that's where we met. The world is weird and strange and now my children and my husband are dual citizens of Hungary and Canada.
We had to finalize the citizenship process with applying for their passports in Vancouver this last week so we took a quick mid-week holiday to the Lower Mainland. I had not been down to Vancouver and area for a few years and, to be frank, I never know where I am going or what city I am in when I am down there so usually, my husband drives when we are in The City.
I find it all very stressful when I am down on the coast. There are so many cars driving so quickly that the longer I am there, my anxiety never really goes away. You have to plan your route to go anywhere in The City keeping in mind weather conditions, traffic, time of day and your ultimate destination.
Because we had an appointment in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day in downtown Vancouver, we had to plan our trip from Langley with consideration of all of the above. Plus, after driving for ten hours, the children were less than enthusiastic to be back in the car for another day of driving.
We left at 8 a.m. and did not get back to my mother-in-law's house until 6 p.m. This is including the quick trip to the Stanley Park beach (while it was snowing) to pick up 100 rocks for a school project for our son and we also made it to Science World (now known as Telus World of Science).
The beach was freezing, my son fell in goose droppings, my daughter fell in the wet sand and then we went to Science World driving in Vancouver while it is snowing and no one but us has winter tires. The freeway was a bit hairy.
Luckily, we made it back to Langley in one piece and then decided to hightail it back to Prince George on the only day that it wasn't snowing for the next week. We came home just in time to shovel a foot of snow.
It's nice to be back home.
