ABSTRACT
The author's family had of course experienced all the possible horrors of the twentieth century that a family in Central Europe can survive: deportation, forced movement and imprisonment. In 1988, she accompanied her husband, Istvn Gyrgy Tth to Freiburg, Germany and began studying, getting to know the equally charismatic Gottfried Schramm, who was a professor of Eastern European history. While German had been the traditional second language of the region, it had become less important to the extent that scholars preoccupied with the German unification tended to ignore Central Europe. A whole literature has been developed about travelling concepts and travelling selves that questions this stereotypical essentialising of East and West, but her own story is different. The biggest challenge for the teaching at the CEU, which is graduate school-accredited both in the USA and in Hungary, is the international student body.
