HUNGARY: In Hungary "How are you?" isn't a rhetorical question eliciting the automatic "Fine". People pause, think hard, then tell you, and very often they're not good.
On paper Hungarians should be Europhiles. Access to the internal market means they're already attracting big foreign investment, and the country also has a strong European identity, born of being far from Moscow and close to Vienna.
Don't ever tell a Hungarian he's eastern European. This is the heartland of Europe.
But people aren't queueing up to join the EU. In last year's referendum 84 per cent may have voted for membership, but the turnout was underwhelming: 45 per cent, the lowest of any of the applicant countries and a long way from Ireland's 70 per cent turnout in 1972.
You'll hear a number of explanations for this, chief among them "pig-slaughtering" and "poppy seeds". Pig-slaughtering is a national pastime. Even in Budapest people keep small plots with hens and pigs, whose throats are cut in front of enthusiastic crowds.
Makos cakes are so laced with poppy seeds they make New York bagels taste lightweight. It is, of course, poppycock to suggest that the EU is banning these or saving the pigs. Cultural fears (generally about food) are whipped up in every country before, during and after EU referendums.
Attila Benedek, director of the EuroInfo Centre in Budapest, says that what he hears most is "pensions, small farmers, and 'What will the EU do for me?' People want to know about concrete personal benefits, but these are hard to spell out."
All EU campaigns are wary since the Austrian experience, when people were told that membership would bring down the price of milk. The reverse happened, and now Austrians are among the union's biggest Euro-sceptics.
Concerns in Hungary that pensioners and small farmers will lose out are driven by Fidesz, the centre-right opposition party. Its attitude to the EU can best be described as "Yes, but . . ." The Vice-President, Zsolt Nemeth, has called accession "a forced marriage".
I hear the most enthusiastic response to EU membership from Roma gypsies. With 5 per cent of the population, these are Hungary's biggest minority.
Andor Urmos, director of the government's Roma integration department, says: "Without the EU accession I'm completely sure we wouldn't have any of this anti-discrimination legislation."
He's looking forward to serious structural funds but is worried that many of the Roma NGOs won't be up to the sophisticated tendering process.
Benedek says the latest complaints are on labour issues. Until recently Hungarians were led to believe that on accession they'd gain the inalienable EU right to travel, live and work in any member-state. But now the current states are demanding a "transition period".
A Hungarian official in the European Parliament says that the right to work is a matter of principle, not practice.
"Hungarians don't like leaving home," he says. "People from Miskolc won't even leave to work in Gyor. Apparently only 2 per cent of the population want to work abroad. So Hungarians weren't planning to take up Europe's offer, but now it's been withheld they consider it a violation of EU law."
The transition period adds fuel to the argument of MIEP, the right-wing Party of Hungarian Justice and Life that "Hungary will join the EU as a second-class citizen".
However, MIEP has less than 5 per cent of the vote and no seat in parliament. So it's not that Hungary is anti-EU exactly. They call it realism. We'd call it pessimism.
Visiting Hungary it's hard to see where this pessimism comes from: it's got wonderful landscapes, stunning architecture and a great climate and is rightly known as the valley of beautiful women.
Historically, however, there is every reason for gloom. The subordinate partner in the Austro-Hungarian empire, they accompanied Austria into two World Wars and as a result lost two-thirds of their national territory in 1920.
Three million ethnic Hungarians still live in neighbouring countries.
The 1956 uprising was mounted in the firm conviction that Europe would come to Hungary's aid. But the Soviet tanks rolled in and Europe looked on. Sympathy in Ireland was high, and it opened its doors to 530 refugees, the greatest single wave of refugees into the country until the 1990s.
So if Hungarians are wary of Europe, they can't be blamed. Saturday will at least remove one of their grounds for pessimism: they are actually getting in.
A few years ago I worked for the EU delegation in Budapest and had to make speeches round the country to students. These followed a mantra: once Hungary had a civic society, market economy and the capacity to apply EU law, it was assured membership.
So it was an easy if unlovely job, that made me feel like a particularly starchy schoolmarm. At the end of one talk, at which I'd even estimated an entry date, a student stood up: "Bridget, do you think we will ever get into the European Union?"