Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
Identities in change 57 not travel, brought and took packages, provided information about other relatives and former neighbours living in Hungary. They usually stayed in Matuškovo for several weeks. These stays had a character of a “pilgrimage”, where these people revisited all their relatives who stayed in the village, and the places of their memory (the old family house, some symbolic parts of the village as the church, the graveyard, the brook called Sárd, the village pub, etc.). The “younger first generation” started its visits a bit later, in the 1960s. They were also emotionally driven, but because their adulthood had connected them already to their “new home”, Hird, their ties to Matúškovo were qualitatively different from those of the “older first generation”. It was a certain nostalgia that made them call Matúškovo “home”, and travel to the lost world of a distant, but unquestionably important childhood. The “unavoidable” exchange of presents between families living on the two sides of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border and the “systematic” shopping trips started with this generation, in the mentioned period of the 1960s. Presents had a double function: they symbolized family connections and strengthened them in a ritual way, but at the same time they had an important economic function. Due to the “shortageeconomies" of both these socialist countries, there was a whole list of products that could be obtained only on one side, or at a much better price. Exchange of presents attempted to balance these shortages and inequalities of supply. Visits by the second generation were unquestionably of economic motivation. In their case the drive was not emotional, emerging from childhood memories, or from any personal memories at all. Their visits were often connected with some other tourist destinations and occasions (e.g. a labour union trip to the High Tatras). Regarding the length and frequency of these visits, they became gradually shorter and more rare. In the beginning, resettled family members from Hird visited Matúškovo for each important holiday, especially in spring and summer, for
