Across the Country on Four Wheels

The idea to write this post came to me while driving back to Pécs on a Sunday evening. The thing is, I live about 150 kilometres from Pécs, in Kiskunhalas, known to some people as the city of lace. I am one of those fortunate students at university, who own a car. I drive quite a lot, considering I go home for almost every weekends, this means about two to two and a half hours of driving each Friday and Sunday. 

This 150 kilometre trip takes me through the south and southwestern part of Hungary, and it offers me some beautiful sights. It takes me uphills on steep roads, downhill to vallies, over the river Danube, along forests and beautiful churches. Some of the settlements I go through during my weekly journey are Baja, Bátaszék, Dunaszekcső and Szederkény. 

Usually, I drive alone, but sometimes I take passengers. Some people might think that driving alone must be boring. Well, I can assure you, they are wrong! I enjoy driving to Pécs and back home very much, I enjoy the view, I always notice something new along the way. Rabbits, deer, foxes or maybe a hill or a church on a hilltop I didn't notice during the preivious journey. It is never boring! (I would add photos about landscapes I see, but it would be dangerous to take photos while driving :) )

Of course, while driving such a distance ( and while driving in general) you have to be very careful. You forget to look in the rearview mirror when you overtake someone and there is someone already overtaking you, or an animal suddenly decides to cross the road and  you notice it too late, and there's trouble. 

I also know the saying "everyone, who goes faster than you is a maniac and those that go slower are idiots" all too well, but I try to keep a cool head at all times. 

All in all, driving is a dangerous, but enjoyable activity, I recommend it to everyone with a driving license to go ahead and drive whenever you can, just keep it safe!

Laptop Homicide

During my Professional Writing class, the first writing assignment was to start writing a lead about anything that comes into our minds. Earlier that day, our tutor was quite surprised when I pulled my keychain out of my bag, thrusted one of my keys into the front of my laptop and opened the lid with it (this was because the opening switch on the front of it broke quite a while ago).  Because of this, I decided to write about a funny story in connection with my notebook.
Later on, I promised another story, so here it is:
Two of my friends and I like to play games via LAN (Local Area Network). During one of our usual gatherings, I asked our host  (one of the two guys, whose place is closest to a specific hypermarket I'm not going to name :D ): "Please give me something thin and pointy." "Why?" - he asked. "Because my laptop opening switch is broken." - I answered. Then he started looking around his desk, and finally, he handed me a BUTTERFLY KNIFE.
"Dude, what the hell did you give me this for?" - I asked. "Well, you did ask for something thin and pointy. This is all I have" - sounded the reply. I took the knife with a look of shock and disbelief, and pushed it into my laptop. The scenario was funny and awkward at the same time, and I saw that my friend found it very amusing. Ever since then, when I visit my friend I just say to him after unpacking: "Give me the knife", and I open the lid with an expression like this:

Fun Behind Portals

I have to admit, I am quite a geek, I love computer games. One of my recent favorites is Portal 2. It is a game, in which you have a "gun" that can shoot two "holes" on a wall, an orange and a blue one, and when both are present, they become portals, and when you enter one hole, you come out of the other. The goal of the game is to use this portal "gun" to solve puzzles created by the antagonist, a malevolent A.I. called GLaDOS (meaning Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System).

The reason I like the game lies not only in the mechanics, but in the delivering as well: wonderful voice actors create a charming story, with lots of humor about people's and machines' view of the world; and the levels of the game are filled with funny "safety" instructions and oddly placed objects.

Some of my favorites are:

Benefits of robots

Just a sentry turret at a desk...

Good to know your allergens

If a robot attacks you...

"This next test involves time travel"

That's it for today, I would like to close with a quote from the game:

"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"
  - Cave Johnson, C.E.O. of Aperture Science (a fictional company in the game)

Interpreting in Germany

A few weeks ago I've got a very interesting proposal from the manager at my mom's workplace: he asked me to interpret for him during the Anuga trade fair, which is held in Cologne, Germany. In return, he paid for all my expenses.

Before the trip, we were considering whether we should go by plane or by car. At the end, because of the very expensive plane tickets, we decided to go by car. We've had a twelve hour long trip before us on the 8th of October, at 4am, when Róbert (my mom's boss) came to pick me up. The journey was very interesting and exhausting at the same time. If I had to describe Germany in three words, they would be: highways, cool cars and solar panels. You can get everywhere in Germany, without leaving the highway once!  Also, almost every house has solar panels on the roof! (Well it makes sense, since as far as I know the government supports the installation of such devices over there...) In the end, it took us thirteen hours to get to the destination because of numerous road constructions scattered around Austria and Germany. 

Our accomodation was around 60 kilometres from Cologne, in Wuppertal, at Etap hotel. Our room was a bit small, but it was enough for the two of us. We had our own toilet and shower, and we didn't have to sleep on bunk beds, like the other Hungarian guys on the second floor. The hotel had free wi-fi access as well, so we could check our emails and keep in contact with our friends. We had dinner at a local pizzeria, and went to sleep arout 9pm.

We got up at 6:50am, had breakfast and left for the fair. We got there in 35 minutes! (Again I would like to emphasize that you can get anywhere in Germany via highway. Actually, we got to the fair by going on three different highways, on a 60 kilometer trip!) Koelnmesse (the building complex in which Anuga took place) is HUGE. There are eleven halls, the smallest of which is around 8 thousand square metres, and the largest is around 22 thousand. We were walking non-stop for about 8 hours, and we could finish only 3 halls, and the bottom two floors of the fourth.

Front entrance of the bulding complex

 The negotiations were quite successful, Róbert ran out of business cards around two hours before we left the place. Interpreting was not hard, no sophisticated language was needed, though I have to admit, at the beginning, I've felt awkward and shy. Luckily, these feelings went away after the third or fourth stand we wisited. We felt really tired at the end of the day. We decided to have dinner at the same place as the day before, this is where we met the other two Hungarian guys I mentioned about earlier. We went to bed a bit late that day.

Between two halls

Next day, we decided to go for a quicker approach, so when we liked something, we just took a prospect, and we didn't stop, unless it was absolutely necessary. We only stopped at three places for a longer time, an Italian cookie making company, a company making instant chai tea powder (chai tea is a kind of tea from India, you can see some recipes here: http://www.chai-tea.org/recipes.html ) and a Belgian chicken-meat exporting company.

Ham-pyramid in one of the halls

We started our journey back at around 15:30. In the end, the 12 hour trip turned out to be 14, because there was a traffic accident on the highway some kilometres after Frankfurt, we were  for two hours. Finally, we arrived home at around 5am, and full of thougts, experiences and being dead tired, I fell into my bed and went to sleep. 

An Intercultural Wedding

My first blog post will be about a very important thing in my life. In the past months, after living together for several years, two of my best friends decided to finally join their lives and get married. There were some complications concerning bureaucracy at the beginning, but finally they could settle everything. The most interesting thing about this wedding was that the bride (now wife) is Indian and the bridegroom (now husband) is Hungarian.

Being their good friend, I helped them with some of the preparations, like picking up the Hungarian translation of the bride's birth certificate from Szeged, or taking her home from the cosmetician, or picking up a couple of guests from the train station. As for the preparation, everything went well (apart from about 10 people thinking they will come with me in my car that is uncomfortable for even 5), eveyone banded together, and we went to the place the ceremony took place, Csipkeház in Kiskunhalas.

The bridegroom was wearing a dark suit with a red bowtie and a red spanish belt, and the bride was in a beautiful red and gold Indian dress. As the best friend of the couple, I had the honor of holding the rings to them when they had to ring each other's finger. Unfortunately, the bride's parents couldn't be present, because they didn't get their visa in time, but they were connected through Skype during the whole time of the ceremony.

For the time of the wedding party, the bride wore a beautiful, white wedding dress. We had dinner at 6PM, there was chicken soup and lamb stew followed by roasted meat and bakery stuff, according to Hungarian customs. During dinner, a local band called Five Non Bonds played some contemporary music for younger people, so we went a bit out of custom here, when many of us stood up in the middle of dinner to dance and enjoy ourselves.

After dinner, the original band came back, continuing casual wedding music, though up to that point, our moods were "elevated" enough to enjoy it, and we had great fun until 11:30, when the bride and bridegroom danced slow waltz and went to change clothes. At midnight, the "menyecsketánc" took place, the now husband wore a red shirt and the wife a beautiful red and white dress.

Sadly, after 1am, people started going home, so by 3am, only about twelve of us were dancing around. Around 2am, I suffered a minor injury while, namely I have sprained my ankle, but I didn't care about it (until the next day) and kept on dancing. The party ended at 3:15, everyone went home.

This concludes my first blog post, it turned out to be a bit long, I'll work on the length in later posts. Also, expect pictures in this post, when the wedding photos arrive =)