Notes from a blustery week

1. Saw a bit of the Budapest parade on Saturday. Nowhere near as many people that turn up for Berlin's parade. And the music wasn't very good either. Still, it was fun to see girls in bikini tops and shimmery pants shimmying their booties away on the trucks.


2. Last week, I was having a coffee at Jégbüfé, an old-style stand-up place where you identify what you want from behind the glass cases, pay the lady cashiers in their polyester blouses who give you a sheaf of receipts, and then hand these over the counter to get your pastries. I go there a lot because they have lovely milky coffee. So anyway, I was watching many of the passersby stopping to scrutinise the framed picture propped up in the window. Many establishments - banks, restaurants, sex shops - have these in their windows, of the graduating class of a secondary school nearby (all the kids and teachers framed in oval portraiture). It's funny how Hungarians are so fascinated by these. Maybe they're imagining their own pictures in the past or in the future?

3. I've been listening to some new albums (latch tracks):
The Outsider (3 Freaks, Backstage Girl, Erase You)
Idlewild (Morris Brown, The Train, Buggface)
Game Theory (In The Music, Long Time, this list is growing...)

4. And old ones:
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (Elsewhere, Hold On, Fear)
Hail to the Thief (Scatterbrain, Backdrifts)
O (Delicate, Cold Water)


4. It's suddenly turned into autumn. My skirts are not ready to go back into the closet.

Storm on!

When we were sitting on the steps listening to the Border Police Big Band, someone said, there's supposed to be a storm tonight, see the lightning? It was hard to believe; the entire day had been blisteringly blue and not very humid. I'd spent the afternoon in a park and then watching the Red Bull air show, where the pilots were flagged off with a "Smoke on!" and the commentator screamed to nu-metal. 9 o'clock, he said. You mean they've got the storm timed that precisely? No no, that's when the fireworks start (Yesterday was St. Stephen's Day - basically Hungary's national day). Storm schmom, I thought.

5 to 9, we headed closer to the river for a better view. Funny to see fireworks and not hear it - takes away from it somehow. The lightning behind the clouds provided a cool backdrop, though, until we realised that the sporadic pelts of water splashing into our beers were rapidly turning into torrential rain and it was time to RUN!

And run we did, mightily helped by the gusts of wind propelling us forward across the lawn. We laughed at the state of our hair and our fellow drenchees - people were wringing clothes over potted plants. Meanwhile, the fireworks continued to pop and burst over the riverbanks.

We giggled in the shared comraderie of dampness and joined the queue for a beer while waiting for the rain to stop. On the way home, I got a call from a concerned friend asking if I was ok. I was a bit perplexed, then found out from her and later at home that there had been a couple of deaths and some injuries from uprooted trees by the river, and lots of parents and kids separated from the helter skelter.

It'll be too hard for newspaper editorials to resist reading into this and the whole heap of hikes the (increasingly despised) re-elected administration are implementing in a week - taxes, electricity, VAT, gas. Something about spending money on a show that no one got to appreciate fully and some people suffered over, except for the privileged dry in flats facing the river.

For a more detailed take, go here.

Sweet or retarded?

Guess which:

1. fried fish skin
2. perfectly matching accessories
3. tablecloth
4. Daniel Bedingfield
5. tiger balm
6. goatees
7. ski-jumping
8. mint body lotion
9. sambucca
10. doing dishes

Radiohead Sziget set list

Probably not interesting to most people reading this, but heck, it was a great show. 15 Step and Nude are new songs, and the former has a rockin beat. Loved the way How to Disappear started. And Everything in its Right Place was a great closer. Mostly it was just a kick to be able to hear all this stuff live, sometimes as is in the studio recording, especially the slower tunes (and there seemed to be a lot of them actually), and sometimes sped up and with different loops and samples.

And after that we danced in the Volt tent to Gnarls Barkley, B-52s, Rage Against the Machine and Fat Boy Slim. Weird combination I know, but we were head banging and everything. Now if only they'd also played Vanilla Ice...

I got the setlist from radiohead at ease, where Radiohead aficionados really go to town:

01 Airbag
02 The National Anthem
03 There There
04 15 Step
05 Exit Music
06 Karma Police
07 I Might Be Wrong
08 Nude
09 Paranoid Android
10 No Surprises
11 The Gloaming
12 How To Disappear Completely
13 Pyramid Song
14 Lucky
15 Just
16 Idioteque
17 Street Spirit

Encore:
18 You And Whose Army?
19 2+2=5
20 Bones
21 Fake Plastic Trees
22 Everything In Its Right Place

(I realise some people might object to Vanilla Ice and Radiohead being mentioned in such close proximity to each other)

Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to Budapest

On a pierced passerby today. She looked pretty bad-ass.

Sziget festival's here again. That time of year when the scruffy neo grunge of Europe descends on Budapest and the aunty cashiers at Kaiser's supermarket suspect all youth looking vaguely dishevelled of sneaking elderflower Schweppes past them. I'm going tomorrow. To see Radiohead. Yeah, I know you're jealous. You should be.

Money origami

In Chinese weddings in Malaysia, you get cash (or if you're very lucky, Jaya Jusco vouchers) in red packets. In the wedding I went to this past weekend in Germany though, cash came folded as boats, fans, flowers, wrapped around plant stalks, toy frogs, umbrellas, and in my favourite incarnation, the 10 Euro coins were hidden in the tufts of grass.


Another present involved all the guests getting a square of a Monet which, throughout the day, they had to paint onto a canvas set up in one of the villa's rooms. I used it as a convenient escape during the 'games' part of the evening and did my Impressionist best not to botch my bit up. 10 points if you can guess the square...


It was a long day of a wedding, and the baby held up well, though in the morning his suit was somewhat less crumpled even in his dad's arms.


My 2 minutes with the bride during champagne and cake in the afternoon. The villa overlooked a park where they first met. Perhaps the most thoughtful present came from her brother, whose gift was permission from the city council for the couple to choose a tree and plant it wherever they want in that park.


The mother of the bride, who later delivered a speech in the manner of an epic fairy tale. Her father then gave a long speech including the etymology of the word 'connection', Goethe, Schiller, Socrates and married men jokes which had everyone rapt and/or in stitches. Luckily I had a translator. One of the memorable bits referred to the bride and groom having lived together for a while now before marriage. Grandpa said something like "It's always good before you go on a cruise to be able to walk around the ship and make sure you like the look of it before you book your passage."



Some hangers-on I picked up in Munich. We spent the better part of the day drinking white beer with cherry syrup (tastes better than it sounds, really), wandering around Weimar's town square in our odd combination of dress: North Indian, Bavarian, European businessman, and having fun taking pictures of random strangers holding interesting signs.

3 reasons to celebrate

1. Got my residence permit!
2. So I can leave the country on Thursday!
3. Which is my birthday! (though maybe that's more of a reason to hyperventilate)

I killed time while waiting for my permit this afternoon by trying to remember recent birthdays. It took ages. Distracted me from the constant beeping of numbers at the residency office.

2005 - Sushi. Got the most amazing flowers I've ever received.
2004 - Dinner with two people who didn't like each other very much.
2003 - Hiking to a water fall, crossing the river back and forth.
2002 - Indian take-out and two films, one of which was Amelie.
2001 - Dancing - lots of hip-hop humping (Not me of course).
2000 - Champagne in a warm kitchen after a cold day at a waterpark.
1999 - 40 degrees Celcius in a dusty Beijing. Lots of lots of Bailey's.
1998 - Violent food poisoning for 2 out of the 4 people at dinner.

The next birthday I can remember is dancing with the A&W bear and eating too much ice-cream. I guess it's been downhill from there.